"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?"

"Yeah, I suppose. What kind of damage, then?"

"… Not really sure. Could just be a larger cut but that might heal too quickly anyway."

"Well, we could try to time it as precisely as we can, anyway, if there's a change and it's not detectable then it might as well not be there."

"Yeah," he agrees. "Uh, time the bigger cut now, you mean? And if the change isn't detectable then pick another method?"

"I'm thinking more that if the change isn't detectable then the kind of damage we'd have to generate for it to be detectable would be too great for someone trying to not be eaten."

"… Uh, so if this change isn't detectable then I'm too overpowered for the sun to matter? Or what?"