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!
"Okay, so if we find someone using magic, it could be Fight or Through, but otherwise it's either Sword or Twin? What did they do again?"
"Fight makes you good at fighting, Through lets you become immaterial, Sword is a sword, Twin duplicates things."
"Yeah, I guess so," he says, and starts looking for any ongoing fighting, mysterious duplication or suddenly appearing objects.
Laura silently looks for anything unusual, with the understanding that her lack of magic probably means she will miss obvious things.
Aw. End of hand-holding. It's okay, though. They're doing something important.
You can tell what Theo thinks of that.
Theo finds no shiny things. He also finds no intangible things, and he finds no weirdly duplicated things.
"Any idea where the card is, Kero?" he asks.
"Oh, what the fuck?" he shouts, jumping away from the sword. He runs away from Sadde, keeping out of reach, and pulls out his key, activating it into a staff.
...that's not her child. "Sword, then," she says. "It would have been nice to be informed that it could take over people's minds," she mutters, looking around for something to get that sword away from Sadde.
Sadde continues mindlessly trying to stab at Theo.
He's a much better fencer than one would expect given his complete lack of previous experience.
Theo manages to grab Windy out of his bag, and activates her, shouting "Windy!" and tossing the card in front of him. "Restrain him!"
—but apparently the magical rapier can cut through wind, who'd've thought? Sadde's eyes are blank as he slashes and steps forward with unprecedented grace, avoiding the worst of Windy's attack and cutting through everything else, continuing to increasingly close the gap to Theo.
Okay, that is worrying.
Time to try the stereotypical thing?
"Sadde?" he says, hoping that it'll trigger a change. "Sadde!" he repeats, continuing to back away; if it doesn't work, he doesn't want to be sliced, thank you very much.
"Baby? Let go of the sword," she tries. She spots a likely looking stick over there, maybe...
Maybe, but Theo's not focusing on the potentially helpful stick right now.
"Sadde?" he tries again, slowing down so he can focus a bit more. He pulls out Jump just in case.