So he snaps it in two and then uses one of the sharper bits of one end to try to dig into his hand.

They watch as it heals, very fast, without any noticeable difference caused by the fact that it's wood.

"Guess wood's a no, too. So other possibilities are various herbs, possibly fire, house thresholds... The picture thing isn't a weakness per se but it'd be interesting to test anyway, and some vampire blood in fiction has supernatural properties as well. Also it's weird that the sun only hurts but doesn't do anything else, I wonder if it'd do something after you spent long enough under it...?"

"I hope the 'something else', if it does something, is not literally catch on fire because I don't know how well I'd fare against that."

He goes into the kitchen and places the two bits of the cross onto the counter.

"Me, too, but on the other hand it's better to find this out under controlled circumstances than end up having to bet on it."

"So hopefully it's not instant death on a certain amount of time out, yeah." Shrug. "Should I start sunning myself now, then?" Eugh.

"I mean, if you don't want to you shouldn't, you're the one who's gonna be in pain."

"No – I mean, I don't want to, I'm not particularly happy about it, but I think it's probably a better idea to than to not, so I mean, do you have anything you want to do right now first before I go do that or should we just continue stuff outside, or what?"

"I could try to take your picture now, I guess, and if you have any interesting herbs now's the time to tell me."

"I mean, I have rosemary which is sometimes used for stuff like that but other than that… no, don't think so?"

He goes and fetches some of it anyway. Checks if it burns on contact or smells revolting or anything and if not he's probably mostly okay.

The herb is completely harmless, so Sadde grabs his phone and takes a picture of Theo.

...and furrows his brows at it.

"… Something wrong?" he asks, turning to face Sadde and– hm. He tilts his head a bit.

"Hm? No, nothing, let's just continue testing, we need to figure out how to keep the thing from happening again."

"I– the thing? You mean, we need to work out a way to neutralize me?"

He's looking at Sadde somewhat intently.

"Yeah, you're holding up fine around me but we don't know whether that's 'cause you woke up super hungry when you turned or what. So. Need to figure out whether there's anything we can do."

"Yeah," he says. "Agreed. Sunlight probably isn't gonna work too well for that though, to neutralize me, so should we brainstorm other ideas now or test that just for the information?"

"It might, if it turns out that, I don't know, your teeth are less sharp in the sun, or you're weaker, or whatever, someone needing to run from you could just go outside."

"Yeah, I agree, I'm not discounting it as, like, a way to hopefully reduce my ability to do damage, I'm up for doing it, I was just– yeah, nevermind."

"For that matter, after we've determined what if any weaknesses you do have, we should figure out exactly how fast you heal, how strong you are, how sharp your teeth are—unless you have fangs? I didn't notice any—et cetera, to see just how unstoppable you are."

"I don't have fangs, no, not that I've noticed, and yeah, that's a good idea, but um, is it so you know what weapon you'd need against me if I do go rogue or, um, what?"

Theo is still looking at Sadde's face quite intently.

Sadde doesn't seem to make much of this fact.

"Yes, something like that. Also maybe there's something you could do on your end to notice that people are, in fact, people, and should not be eaten. I should maybe get a stake just in case..."

"It might be better to carry a knife or something if you can do it without getting caught, I don't know how illegal it is, but since wood didn't seem to do much? But then nor did the knife. I'm not sure what to do from my end because usually I don't have to try to force myself to remember people are people because they just are but I'll try… repeating it as a mantra, maybe?"

"If that'll help. I'm not sure how to best test this, but—let's do the sun thing first."

"Okay," he says. "Could try my healing every so often and see if it's slower?"

"Hmmm sure, but then we'd need something that naturally takes longer than a nick on your pinky, I think."

"Yeah," he agrees, "but it's not like it'd be hard to arrange that, other than being painful?"