Sophie turns back to the Juice Man. "You. What did you do?!"

Nico's still too deeply in his trance to laugh, but surely he can manage a smile at least.

Let's see you get out of this, thief.

She has to find out what's going on. Is this the kind of garage door with windows?

No, but there's a human-size side door to the side that has some.

She has to go look and see what the Juice Man did, she can't let him get away...

"Otso! Cover him! Don't let him up!"

Awww, she does trust him!

Otso trundles over to the dark-haired guy and puts one paw on his chest, gently.

A bear is now looming over you, Nico.

Ack!

Nico's deep trance has another benefit; he manages, barely, to stop Kyle's body from panicking and trying to escape.

This is progress, if you think about it, Nico tells himself. Bears are strong, but so was the thief, and she was surely smarter.

Now, as quickly as she can, Sophie will head for that window. What's happening outside?

The lightning isn't as frequent as it was, but as you look out there's one quick flash, enough for you to take in the scene. Jill's house is surrounded by a moat, now: there's water clear to the street, flowing around the side of the house and swirling up at the doorframe. Right now it's about two feet high. The impact was from the car you saw in the driveway, carried toward you by the flood as far as it could go.

What? How? It's not even that much water!

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Fine, whatever, this is happening, no point in complaining about it.

What else is happening here, what else does she need to fix.

What's Jill doing?

She's...frozen in shock, to her own belated embarrassment. "Is that - "

"It's him," Sophie points at Kyle. "I don't know how he did it but he summoned a flood here. He's trying to kill me, before I can get rid of him."

...she hadn't consciously put that together until just now. This total stranger is trying to kill her. He might kill Jill completely by accident! What the hell? And how does she stop it?

Does this house have a second story? Can Jill maybe climb out of reach?

Like most of the houses on this street, it's one story, built long rather than tall.

"Get as high up as you can, maybe sit on a table or something. I'm going to try to fix this." She'll glance briefly toward Kyle; with luck Jill will read this as "I don't want to talk about my plan where our enemy can hear" and not "I just made a promise I have absolutely no idea how to keep."

Jill nods shakily, and retreats back into the hallway. She leaves the door open.

She'll head for the living room, to get some cushions to put on the dining room table. But first she'll try and find some salt. Just in case.

The floodwater is spreading across the garage floor, flowing toward Kyle.

Not toward Sophie?

Not particularly. It's spreading out, as water does, but not as much as it should: it's as through the flat garage floor is secretly somewhat curved, into a funnel with Kyle at the bottom.

Just to see, she'll put one foot into the flood's path.

It doesn't part around you or anything, but you can feel the rain shield engage. There's pressure, a sense of conflict between the water and your Friend, and the water gives up and flees in a cloud of mist.

So she can, with effort, fight off maybe 5% of the water her enemy found. Great.

He managed to make water out of nothing before, just drop it on her out of nowhere. It was a lot less than this but he can, he did, and just for a moment it took her powers away. She could grab him, punch her way out of the garage roof, and then try to escape by jumping from tree to tree, but what if he caught her in mid-leap? She needs to put him to sleep first, for real, only where's she going to find the time? The flood's already here!