"Change!" he whispers, twisting the lock so it's... unlocked. He opens the door.

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?

Nah.

"So 'm I gonna change this torch into something more powerful?"

Oh well, it was worth a try.

"Yeah, go ahead," he says quietly, holding out the torch.

So he grabs 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.

Windy stands/hovers in front of the door.

The bakery is still eerily quiet and dark.

Sadde manifests Fly and then uses Change on one of the streetlights, causing it to emit much more light than it should, effectively turning it into a spotlight. Then he changes it again, twisting it so it's pointing into the bakery. "Can't do both," he says.

And the shadows produced by the streetlight are much darker and denser than they ought to be, that's for sure.

When the streetlight shines brighter, Theo quickly searches for the torch again, but fails to locate it. Those shadows are worrying, but he already knew it was in the bakery, so it doesn't provide much meaningful data. Windy helps to confirm that at least Shadow (probably) hasn't moved, but there's still the problem that it's wild. Seriously, way to jinx a plan. 'What could go wrong,' they said. 'The other times just went badly because you didn't have a plan,' they agreed. That is not happening again.

Time for a daring move?

... Of course it is. Theo has a quick look around for a weapon. Wait, not a good idea, it can just be used as ammunition. Wait, yes, a good idea, Shadow already has plenty of ammunition inside the bakery. Do they have knives? Who's he kidding, of course they do. This just gets better and better. He picks up a small branch nearby, holding it and his staff at the ready. Disposable weapon that he doesn't care about, plus a potentially stronger magical weapon.

"Windy, can you shield me, somehow? Kero, any ideas?" he asks, trying to brace himself mentally for the inevitable battle to come. It's reckless, but maybe charging into the bakery with a weapon and Windy at the ready will let him drive it out of the building.

"No? What are you going to do?"

Windy leaves her post and envelops Theo, forming a whirlwind around him.

"Good luck! Try to get the torch back!"

"I'm charging into the building," Theo says with a grim smile.

Taking a deep breath, he looks at the door, then decides to just get it over with.

He rushes at the door, moving far quicker than normal past the threshold, and then scans the room for the torch, a light switch... or a shadow to throw himself at.

As soon as he's in, tendrils of darkness lash out, sneaking into Windy's whirlwind and being cut off. Some tendrils manage to hit Theo before Windy can do it, though, feeling like punches and shoves.

And with the light shining through the window and the thinning of the shadows due to the attack, both the torch and the light switch become visible, the former close to the door and the latter behind the counter.

He looks overhead, making sure the lights aren't obviously damaged, then runs for the light switch, charging past the tentacles, aiming to turn it on. The torch would be nice, but it's better light up the whole bakery instead.

Tendrils of shadow slip through Windy and wrap themselves around Theo's right foot, tripping him before Windy cuts them off and they dissipate. The darkness around the switch gets denser, it becomes harder to make out, as if there was something blocking out what little light the twisted streetlamp managed to shine through.

He falls over – there's nothing he can grab in time to steady him – but gets up immediately afterwards, then continues towards where the light switch is. He can still remember where the it was, even if he can't properly see it. He manages to get within reach of it, and moves to turn it on, dodging away from another of Shadow's tendrils.

The moment he does it, a huge mass of darkness crashes through the window—

—and Sadde changes the streetlamp into a spotlight as soon as it does.

It doesn't hiss, but it looks like if it could it would. The mass of shadow dissipates, leaving a hooded figure behind, writhing underneath the light.