Almost two weeks pass. Sadde still has work, even if school's out, but they and Theo hang out a bit more. No new cards appear, and Kero seems to not think that strange, so Sadde themself doesn't care. And one day Theo gets a text in the morning: Happy birthday!
"Is there any magic we should be able to do without the cards? Other than my weird speed thing, whatever that is."
"Probably, but I don't know it. I'm an incarnation of the magic used to create the cards."
The rest of the day proceeds without anything really important occurring. Theo wants to see if he and Sadde can target different things with Change at once, but unfortunately it seems like the 'only one thing at a time' thing applies to the card, not to them, so when Sadde tries to change something after Theo still has something targeted, Theo's one reverts. They have more cake. Kero has to be stopped from eating all the cake. Theo's dad continues to stay quiet, watching TV, and remains ignorant of the magic that's going on in the house.
Here Theo is, at the bakery, late at night. He asks Kero to try telling him when Sadde gets here, in case they don't spot each other immediately.
Hm. Theo wonders who that could possibly be.
He goes over to the bush, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, and says, "Hi."
Of course.
Mind you, Theo's not much better. He's dressed in really dark clothing, including a hoodie that can hide his face.
"So. How are we getting in?"
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea! I've got the torch," he says, holding up the torch, "– and also the cards. We find it, we turn on the lights, and then we trap it with Windy, yeah?"
Theo stays quiet, but holds the torch at the ready, looks around warily, and tries to focus on his magic. It's a long shot, but can he maybe detect magic around him without fully dropping into meditation?
Oh well, it was worth a try.
"Yeah, go ahead," he says quietly, holding out the torch.
—and a huge mass of shadow and darkness punches the three of them away from the bakery, throwing them back a couple of metres and sending the torch flying.
Theo lands, trying to soften the landing, grunting in pain, but is quickly back on his feet, blurring a little. He looks around for the torch, but it's so dark all around, he can't find it. Fuck. The plan. Turn on a light. Not happening; they're outside. Get Windy to capture it; infeasible, shadows all around, try it anyway. Shine a torch on Shadow. Not happening, the torch is gone. Fuck.
He grabs the Windy out of his bag, activates the staff, then summons Windy, tries to see where Shadow is, but oh for god's sake whose idea was it to fight the bloody Shadow in the dark.
Sadde isn't as quick as Theo, but he glares at the oppressive darkness inside the bakery. "Come on! That's cheating!" He looks around for sources of light... well, there are the streetlights! He looks at them speculatively.
Theo can just about make out where Sadde's looking in the dark, sees the streetlights, and quickly suggests, "Can you change their direction? Intensity? Make them hand-held? Something?"
More things that they can use. They could try to make some ground glow, or they could try running at it and— nope. They could... use Jump? Not helpful. Fly? Not helpful. He runs over to Sadde and hands it over – he's not gonna use it – and ugh, another card would be useful right about now. No, he doesn't mean that; if the universe is listening to him and conspiring against him, please don't send another card to attack them.
"Windy, try to keep track of Shadow. Warn me if it gets too close!" There, now he hopefully has some early warning system, and if Windy can't do it, no loss anyway.
He has his staff at the ready.