"...really?"

"I mean, I've never tried telling him a few other things, either, but I doubt 'Oh, by the way Dad, I found some magic and now have to go on a few somewhat perilous missions to try to save the world' would go over the best."

"I had a hard time convincing Mum not to come with me to fight the invisible magical threats."

"Awwh!"

"Though I'm sure the minute we face anything more dangerous than a jumping bunny or naughty cake she'll change her mind and come with no matter what I say. Not that I'm likely to say anything, either, having a smart adult on hand is a pretty good idea no matter what YA fantasy novels might tell you. I mostly don't want to bother her until we get to that point."

"Yeah, so far it's just been worrying, not ridiculously dangerous."

"Well, there was that fight against the giant bird. And also the time when you do ill-advisedly tried to grab the magical jumping bunny with your hands and could have fallen to your untimely death. It could be worse, and probably will be, but I think we probably need to plan these things better."

"There... there were, yep. Those are some good points. Do we have a plan for our... vigilantism?"

"I don't. Lacking a list of possibilities isn't much help. I think it's time we actually get Kero to list all cards in alphabetic order. Probably in your room. With pen and paper."

"Yeah, and a quick description of each next to it."

They go upstairs to his room (with some cake!) and he grabs out a pen and notebook.

"Want to start listing the cards then, Kero?"

"Arrow, Big, Bubbles, Change, Cloud, Create, Dark, Dash, Dream, Earthy, Erase, Fight, Firey, Float, Flower, Fly, Freeze, Glow, Illusion, Jump, Libra, Light, Little, Lock, Loop, Maze, Mirror, Mist, Move, Nothing, Power, Rain, Return, Sand, Shadow, Shield, Shot, Silent, Sleep, Snow, Song, Storm, Sweet, Sword, Through, Thunder, Time, Twin, Voice, Watery, Wave, Windy, and Wood."

Sadde whistles. "Did you get all that?"

"Yep!" Theo says brightly.

"We'll look at general usefulness later. Which of these seems likely to have thrown a cake at me?" She looks at the list. "Float, Move, maybe Arrow, Shot, um?"

"Arrow and Shot can't do that, but Cloud, Mist, Storm, and Shadow can. Float and Move wouldn't do that..."

"Are they able to do it remotely, or can they be invisible? I'm pretty sure I didn't see anything actually throwing the cake..."

"Mist and Shadow could be invisible, and so could Move and Float, but Move teleports, and Float is usually very docile."

"So, tentatively Shadow, with Mist as a second possibility and Float as a third."

"That sounds about right. What's Shadow like?"

"It's troublesome. It steals other people's and things' shadows to grow in power and it can become very powerful. If it's just activated, then it will probably cause a lot of trouble tonight, when the bakery's closed."

"Oh, okay, so it's probably a good thing that we planned to go back tonight," Theo says. He also quickly checks his and Sadde's shadows to check they're still there.

They're still there. "And how do we catch it? It's shadow, how physical can it even be?"

"You can't touch it, but it can touch you. You'll need to use Windy to entrap it."

"Well... that shouldn't be too bad, right? Just... a ridiculous amount of property damage..."

"Not to mention potential cameras being quite able to tell just who caused said property damage."