What does it matter how there came to be soap in the water? Obvious on the face of things there would need to be. Fire does not burn anything completely. Perhaps one day long ago it did as part of some long defeated scheme of the Dark Dragon but today a fire merely burns out the combustible portions of various materials and leaves behind waste product. Ash, soot, mineral deposits, these manner of things. In short, impurities. The smell of smoke would be everywhere and the blackened deposits would cover and cling and obscure all manner of architecture and debris that might otherwise be sorted, repaired or else identified as salvageable. To say nothing of how much more instantly re-habitable Vespergift will become if it is washed instead of merely doused. 

Create whatever extenuating circumstances you will. Lock a door, throw away the key, seal the cracks and pour mercury in the keyhole. Create a perfect Locked Room Mystery if you must, a Maid-Knight of the Aurora will find a way to clean properly regardless of circumstances. Say that the water was 'compelled by Eclair Espoir's argument', if that satisfies you. Say that she stole supplies from four dozen homes and seven different businesses. Say the magic of her  Say that she killed a man and rendered his fat down to lye. Consider yourself as clever or as foolish as you like, as undeniably correct or as impossibly stymied as satisfies your heart. For all that it matters.

Eclair Espoir has stored away her skateboard. This is because it is not enough to simply unleash the waterways: they must be guided where they are needed. Force must be applied in the problem spots and avoided where it would cause collapse. Fortunately where fire is temperamental and beyond her skill to tame, water is an incredible conduit for her Heartblade and its magics. Water loves to dance and it loves to flow where it is guided, and so it is that Eclair can be seen at the crest of the wave washing over the city standing goofy foot on her polearm, holding a mop in each hand. 

One one street she cuts the wave in half to avoid flooding a kitchen. In another she climbs the wall with her great surge to hold the shop inventory where it lies. Here and there she twirls, leaps, and demonstrates her mastery over two-sword style in the name of scrubbing the streets and walls of the city until they sparkle. She is as methodical as she is fast, though this is rather too much concentration on saving everything she can for the sake of those who will return that she has hardly any attention leftover for those who have remained. The consequence of directing water away from something is that it will spray one some[i]one[/i], and probably a fair few someones at that. Certainly many among the Civil ranks will find themselves sputtering and briefly losing themselves to invectives thrown in the direction of a maiden moving too fast to catch.

Through it all, she fights a yawn. Through it all she fights fatigue that threatens to sink so deep into her muscles that it infects her very bones. When she comes to a halt at last Eclair does not dismiss her Heartblade so much as it sputters out and vanishes. She does not land gracefully on her feet amidst the gently dispersing water (now that someone has realized what is happening and turned off the taps): she collapses onto her knees and is immediately knocked onto her side by a random gush of water, which sends her rolling on her side through a marketplace until she smashes her back against a stall heavy enough to arrest her. 

She does at least push herself to a seated position. Here in her one time home she closes the book on her story with some semblance of her dignity intact. But nevertheless, Eclair Espoir sits in a puddle with her legs tucked under her and her body dripping from head to toe as though she'd just jumped into (and out of) the shower with all her clothes still on. And she closes her eyes while she waits for the world to stop spinning.

Her head squeezes underneath her ears with the pounding force that only nine consecutive cups of sake can muster. Quizzically, her stomach growls with hunger. It is here, under these dual assaults that Eclair Espoir finally relents. 'Pace yourself', her commanders so often told her. 'That is unnecessary', she would chirp in reply.

She can hear their disappointed tsking ringing in her head. It hurts. She wishes they would stop.