"Yeah. Can you get your hands on crossbows or guns anytime soon?"

"The crossbow is probably possible," he says, raising his eyebrows a bit, "but I definitely can't get a proper gun through any legal means, and I don't exactly have black-market contacts lying around."

"What, really? Where would you even get a crossbow?"

"I don't know? Some sort of history shop, or maybe by looking on eBay or something? But it's at least more doable than a gun."

"Yeah, but I mean, whatever the Twin's gonna do, if it's active, it's gonna do it like, today, or tomorrow, or very soon."

"Okay, I probably can't get it before then," he says. "If you get the lighting set up properly, slashing with a knife might allow you to do some good damage? Though I wouldn't really want you to walk around with knives, on account of it being dangerous and at least slightly illegal."

"And we have the Sword."

"So you don't even need a knife, right." He tilts his head. "So this sounds like a plan that would probably work, then, using the Sword and duplicating your attacks with the Shadow. Unless either of them fails in some way that it doesn't seem like they actually will, you should be fine?"

"Well, there's an angle thing. We'll need two light sources or a way to align the Twin halves perfectly with one, and need to keep those sources steady. Shadow doesn't strictly seem to need to obey the laws of optics but this still sounds relevant."

"Well, if you find it at night or in a dark room, you could use torches to do the two separate things? Or, since there aren't three of you, maybe just use one torch to cast out a shadow to attack one of them, and then, as you say, you could arrange to move so the two are in one shadow by getting up close to one."

"I'm not sure this is something we can actually plan in advance as opposed to just being ready to face many possible, er, battlefields, so to speak."

He nods. "Makes sense. Carrying a torch or something should at least increase how many different 'battlefields' you're ready to face, since you won't have to look for and manoeuvre a light source while you're there."

Theo nods. "That's probably a good idea."

"Probably two torches apiece, if either of us runs into the card without the other. It'd be ideal if we had the Light..."

"It's gonna be kinda difficult to set it up properly if we run into it without the other, but yeah, two torches would be good – luckily I think we got some small ones a few months ago? They're probably…" He waves his hands a bit – "around, somewhere."

"Under the stairs, I think," says his dad.

"Yeah," he says, then asks Sadde, "Do you have some torches, or should we go buy some more, uh, probably tomorrow since it's getting a bit late now?"

"I have a couple."

He nods.

Is Sadde done eating yet? Can Theo put his dish away?

Yes, now he is done eating.

Theo indeed puts his dish away, then! Then suggests they go upstairs, since they've probably bothered his dad enough for now.

Fine by Sadde.

Then upstairs they go!

And right now, Theo wants to cuddle in bed. Kero may or may not wish to vacate the area – Theo doesn't know. Right now he just wants to cuddle Sadde, because: Sadde.

Awwww!

Cuddling will happen, then.

Kero's fine with cuddling. For now.