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 then.
They finally reach the park. Theo looks around for anything obviously card-like; Sadde will probably tell him if they see their mum.
And there she is. She notices the two of them holding hands, pauses, and says, "Hello. Is there anything you want to tell me?"
Sadde looks at his hand, then Theo, then Laura, and grins. "Oh right I forgot, we're dating now."
"Uh, hello," he says, giving Sadde a look. "It's, um. Nice to meet you too."
"So, we need to find a card here, right? One of the fire ones, that's Sword, Arrow, Fight, Shot, Through, Thunder, and Twin?"
Someone's done her homework.
"And Firey itself. I think Thunder and Firey would be pretty obvious so probably not those."
"Yeah. Shot attacks things a lot, doesn't it? I don't see anyone screaming about murder, but it's probably not that? I'm not sure about the others."
"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.
It may be that rapier with the wing-shaped guard Sadde's stabbing at Theo with.
"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.