"Can you do tacos?"

“I can absolutely do tacos!” Have a taco.

"Can you do more tacos than that?"

Have a tray full of tacos!

"Thanks!" Off he trots with his tacos. He eats them in two bites each.

Teenagers do be like that.

“I admit I don’t particularly anticipate keeping anything alive long enough to do starvation or procreation tests. But poison I can do.”

"The province of Alberta has no rats. I think we should generally take more cues from mundie pest control."

“Oh, good thought, I should see if they can suffocate on carbon dioxide.”

"Good question! Though, like, you might be able to, so watch out."

“Oh, absolutely. But it is a lot safer to be on the one side of carbon dioxide fire extinguisher than the other.”

"I guess it's worth a try but I do not hear about people outside who sometimes run low on mana having fire extinguishers on hand."

“Well, you know, much lower overhead for me than for most people. And probably more effective on swarms than single big critters.”

"Yeah, it might be good if you wind up with lye-flies or something."

“Oh, are there any parasitoid mals that burrow into your flesh and eat you from the inside out, because if so I should have a corkscrew.”

"Yes, there are those."

“Good to know. Ones that spread plague? That aerosolize their own toxins?”

"Plague not so much. Lots of toxins, though, some probably aerosolize."

“I could keep asking for hours but it’d probably be more efficient to just find a mal studies textbook at some point.”

"- I actually have a spare first year one in Chinese, everybody gets that textbook in particular in their native language and the guy who traded it to me wanted to learn mal studies in English."

“And you didn’t give him yours?”

"I wasn't good enough at Chinese then. He got an English one from somebody dead."

“Ah. That tracks.”

"If you wanna come to my room after dinner you can see the agglos and have the book."

“Thank you! That sounds great.”

"Hey there, it turns out a surprising number of people have never had gulab jamun -"