This is fine, Pastor Reed only sees her once a week and she's just one person in a crowd.

Sophie doesn't want to take a hand off of Emily, so she'll kick the gym door a little, to get him to open it.

She'll also try to open the door with her mind powers, just in case she has mind powers.

No mind powers, sorry.

Reed yanks the door open so hard it bangs off the wall. His prayer cuts off in midword as he tries to understand what he's seeing. There's a strange woman framed in the doorway, tall and confident-looking, light shining faintly from her skin, dressed in a long red tunic (medieval, his unfinished history degree puts in, maybe 13th or 14th century). She's wreathed in mist, and heat pours off her like a campfire, but she's not burning, just staring at him intensely.

And she's holding Emily Merrill, what the

"Don't be scared!"

That helps. "Who - " no, wrong first question, "is she hurt?" Also idiotic, he can see the blood on her face, but maybe it's better than it looks?

So far so good. "She got hit in the head with a piece of flying wood, I think. She's awake but pretty out of it. I'm worried about her. Is - she needs a nurse. Or a doctor."

She almost just asked, "Is Ms. Blogett here?" Ms. Blogett is the school nurse. Ms. Blogett is not someone Sophie's mysterious alter ego should know about! Maybe this will get easier with practice.

Reed will reach for Emily, if the radiant, enigmatic stranger is offering her up.

Right, yes, she'll pass Emily over.

Emily stirs a little as she's handed across. "...don' put the bear in the gym today. Saf'r in the library..."

That doesn't sound good. "We'll see to her immediately. But she probably needs a hospital, and it isn't safe to travel in this storm." He takes a breath. "What's going on here, really? And when will it stop?"

Why would she know that. What possible explanation can she give. Her first thought is, "the psychic bear didn't know either"; what would a better second thought be?

People are looking your way, Sophie, from all across the gym, drawn by the sound of the banging door.

Or consider: when adults ask Sophie questions, she has to answer them. But right now she isn't Sophie, exactly, is she? Would her Friend stick around and answer impossible questions?

Right, of course not! That's the mindset she needs right now.

"I have to go," she says instead. No need to add anything dumb like "Please take good care of Emily", obviously they will. She turns and runs away.

"Wait!"

And, assuming that holds her: "Is anyone else hurt or missing? Please, at least tell me that!"

Nope! Didn't even hear it! Sophie's finally trying out her new powers at full strength, and if they work as advertised she's already across the parking lot.

They sure do! You cross the parking lot in seconds, and once you're under the trees you feel even faster.

Where are you going, exactly?

Toward that thing her new Friend is paying attention to, obviously. Sophie wants to know what the hell happened today, and it probably won't know all the answers but it's sure a place to start. She was going to talk to Otso some more, but probably this is faster, and if it's not she can talk to him later.

Otso picks up the new direction, and charges after her through the underbrush. He'll do his best to keep up, or failing that to follow Sophie's trail of broken branches.

No offense, Otso, but right now Sophie wants to leave you tracking branches.

Let's see what Super Sophie can do! FULL POWER!

You're faster than Otso even when he's sprinting all-out. One difficulty, though: you have super strength, but apparently not so super reflexes. After a minute of sprinting up hills and leaping over bushes, you misjudge a jump just slightly and clip your shoulder off a big oak tree, and suddenly you're spinning through the air, then bouncing through the underbrush. After a few confusing seconds you come to tooth-jarring stop at the base of another big tree.

Your shoulder hurts a little, like you ran into a door, but otherwise you're fine.

No scratches, no bitten tongue, nothing?

Not that you can see, and you sure did plow through that blackberry bush with your bare arms and legs.

The BEST superpowers. Sophie doesn't really know what she can do for her new Friend, but she's going to figure it out and do it SO HARD.

How close to her target did she get, before her little accident?