He…. Is curious enough that he want’s to risk gross inside sensing. “Hand me the staff? I wanna look.”

Ennis hands him the staff.

Ignore all the gross things living inside him, just focus on the ankles. Oh, yep that looks fixed, theres a little muscle damage that Ennis missed. Hearing that Ennis just copied over from the other side Andrea tries to do that. It works! Wow that was easier than he thought. Honestly managing how much of the bio sensing to pay attention to is the hardest part.

”Cool… I just did a magic… and all the pain is totally gone now! This thing is great!”

If copying over is so easy… He’s had a bad shoulder ever since wilderness camp made him hike 3 months with a broken pack. He could just copy over the good shoulder… He focuses on his shoulders, fixes all the weird muscles that seem to not match how they work on his good side. The constant pain he’s been feeling for over a year is gone! “Ohhh wow, I just fixed something thats been hurting me forever. This is like… actually a medical miracle.”

As long as he’s copying… this seems pretty simple… He copies over undamaged skin over his forehead scar. He starts deleting moles by replacing them with the skin next to them. Some of the weirder placed freckles on his arms? Visibly disappearing. This was so easy! He was gonna be able to get rid of every problem in his body!

While it isn't visually as disturbing as fixing Anders' leg, bunch of rapid minor changes spreading over his skin is still a little worrying given all the warnings they just translated.

"Anders, please slow down with the changes. We need to be very careful with this thing."

“Oh uhhh… yeah” What was he thinking? But it was just… so easy to do it. Normally he would be way more cautious! Thats some mindfucky stuff! He puts the staff down. “Yeah uhhh… I’m just now noticing some very out of character thoughts while I was holding that… I think the notes are right about using it alone… I was considering even bigger changes and I barely know what I’m doing with it.”

"Well, I didn't feel anything like that when using it on you. I think we should probably avoid self-modification for now."

Ennis is definitely feeling quite tired at this point. They've spent a few hours down here waiting for internet and translating and messing around with weird magic and it's definitely worn him down.

"I'm going back up to see if the storm's abated at all yet." Ennis climbs up the ladder and sticks his head back out the invisible wall — what's the situation up top?

The storm is no longer rattling the very walls of the house, which explains the internet coming through. The wind is not that bad now. But it’s still raining hard enough you wouldn’t want to drive in the dark like this.

"I'm going out to the car to get more of my stuff!"

Ennis walks out to his car — getting thoroughly soaked in the process — and grabs his suitcase, food bag, and sleeping bag. He packed some first aid stuff, but somehow he doesn't really think he'll need it.

Well, Ennis will at least be considerably less dusty than Andrea then, if more cold. Unless he decides to sit on any of the very dusty furniture in the house. The magic basement might actually be the least dusty place in the house.

Andrea just hangs out in the magic basement because hey, its a magic basement. And climbing that ladder seems like too much effort just to have access to a couch. He does get off the floor and into an antique wooden chair from the old furniture in the corners of the room, which seems to hold his weight fine.

Ennis drops his stuff down the ladder to the basement with a heavy thud. "I'm exhausted. I'm going to eat and go to sleep, you can have some food too if you want." He clears a space on the basement floor and unpacks his stuff. His sleeping bag is unrolled on the floor. He gets out a sandwich from his food bag and starts eating.

He will definitely accept a sandwich. Chips are not exactly filling. “So uhh… what should we do with magic?… should we tell anyone?… I don’t trust the government to not like… use it terribly.” Andrea should probably ask this after Ennis has fallen asleep. But he is just mostly thinking out loud.

"I have no idea. Giving it to the government is probably a bad idea, but they might already know magic exists. Maybe we can cure terminal cancer patients or something, but I don't know how to do that without getting discovered. If this goes public or something the government will definitely take it..."

“Guantanamo exists. Turning someone into wood is probably more effective than water boarding…” It’s a morbid as fuck thought, but Andrea’s mind reaches those logical conclusions quickly. “Or the way they poisoned random people with LSD for decades… but now with magic? Or something really stupid like: ‘I have a great immigration plan, it’s the best plan, all illegals are turned into trees.’ “ With Andrea putting on a trump impression for the last one.

"Yeahhhh... maybe I'll come up with better ideas in the morning, but I need sleep."

Ennis is going to get ready for bed, now.

Welp, Andrea will actually climb that ladder for the couch then, sleeping on the bare floor sucks. He will brave some dust for cushioning.

Zzzz

It is a brand new day and MAGIC IS REAL and NONE OF HIS BONES ARE BROKEN! Today is a great day. Andrea does his best to de dust himself before going through the fake side of the fireplace and down the ladder. 

Ennis is awake! He has energy! This road trip has been way cooler than he expected, what with the MAGIC STAFF and this other guy. Unfortunately he is hungry and only packed food for one day, he'll have to get breakfast at a nearby town if he wants it.

"Good morning! We can do some magic or we can get breakfast first, what do you think? I'm out of food, we'll have to drive somewhere to get something."

“I mean… you don’t have to get me food. I can figure stuff out. You already gave me a sandwich lasg night.” Andrea still feels uncomfortable with too much charity, even though he has visited food banks before. Before all this magic happened he was planning on buying jugs of water and carrying them all the way back here. Then figure out something for food.

He’s running pretty low on cash though… and his surefire way of making money is… bad. He doesn’t like stealing either because getting caught would mean being sent back to Utah.

… could Andrea magic some food? He’d need food to copy from though…

"Okay then, time for some MAGIC, we can get food later."

Ennis sits down next to the staff and motions Anders over.

"We need a plan. We're not going to use this thing properly if we just play around with it. This thing is... incredible. Your foot would have taken weeks to get anywhere close to normal, at least. It could help so many people — so long as it doesn't get locked away inside a government vault."

“Hey uhhh… you think it can change… not people? The notes mentioned dogs… and it was turning your hand into wood. So could you change a tree into not wood?”

Does Andrea want to turn a plant outside into food, yes. But also. You could grow organs on demand for hospitals. They have shiny magic and he wants to science at it. Test all the weird ideas. “I mean sure yeah a plan is good but we should know what it’s capable of before settling on anything.”

"That's a good idea, we should test if it works on plants. Plant and animal testing seems somewhat wider than human testing... want to head outside, then?"

“There shouldn't be anyone around right? It’s not like this place has neighbours… Let’s fuck up some plants.” welp, time to go back up the ladder, why couldn't the magical basement have stairs instead?

Up the ladder they go! Out the back door there is a large yard with a bunch of plants, bushes, and a few trees. Ennis carries the staff up and sets it down once they get outside.

Well if Ennis doesn’t want to hold it… Andrea will grab it. Just need to ignore being aware of gross squishy organs and being full of bacteria thanks. He presses it against the grass… grass is big it turns out, its all interconnected so he can sense the workings of entire patch of grass. Plants are a little less gross on the details though. Okay… free transplant organs here go. He focuses on everything he can sense about his heart and wills the grass to be that through the staff.