"I mean, the wood was easiest and I sort of expected that, but I don't know for the brick and concrete and iron? The main problem with the brick was that it was getting under my nails and it was breaking off in bits."

"And the wood and concrete weren't?"

"The concrete was doing it less and the wood was doing it less annoyingly, yeah."

"Huh. How about your teeth?"

"I don't really want to bite these things but okay, I guess," he says, then tries biting each of them.

The wood one seems quite damaged by this, the brick less so, the concrete not much – ow – and the iron… quite a bit. Not quite as much as the wood, but definitely more than the concrete and the brick.

"Is iron actually less sturdy?"

After going to wash out his mouth a bit – ew, brick and concrete, why – he says, "Than brick? I don't think so."

"So... why."

"I dunno?" he says. "Maybe I bit down harder on the metal than the brick because I was less like 'ew crumbly brick' and more like 'oh well metal'?" He shrugs. "It seems weird."

"Maybe you could open your mouth and I could just try pressing both against your teeth at the same time?"

"Yeah, if you can do it with enough force – it depends on if my teeth are actually that sharp or if they're just stronger and I have more force or something. Which, I guess, you might have intended with the suggestion, okay whatever, yeah."

So he tries that, first pairing up brick and iron.

Theo opens his mouth and his teeth – slightly pointy – are available to be pressed against the various materials!

The iron, again, seems easier to get damaged by his teeth. The brick isn't that difficult – apparently his teeth are quite sharp – but it's not as easy as the iron.

"Okay, so it's your teeth, but is this because we don't understand materials well or because your magic is weird?"

"I don't know?" he says. "I would suggest researching it but I'm not sure if we should be looking at hardness or strength or malleability or what, and I don't know if people have tested regular teeth against this or if the properties of the sharp material matter?"

"They'd obey the laws of physics anyway, regular teeth would."

"Well yes, but I mean, I don't know if anybody has tested how regular teeth interact with them and what properties might contribute to regular teeth's ability to damage it and if this corresponds to how my teeth deal or not." Shrug.

"Why would teeth be special in any way in how durable or whatever iron and brick are?"

"Not teeth being special, different materials being special in how they interact with the materials to determine which properties matter. Like, there's hardness and strength and other properties, and some properties will matter if you're talking about trying to shatter it, and others will matter when trying to slice, so I was meaning we should see which ones matter with teeth, what type of damage it does and such – presumably something slicey but most teeth aren't all that sharp I don't think – and then see if mine respect those."

"...that sounds like online RPGs mechanics."

"Well yes it does sound like that and typically if something is sharp it's going to be able to damage something but– ugh, nevermind, whatever, just. Ugh."

"I mean, it's not like the physics is different, sharp things don't do different things than non-sharp things."

"… No, the underlying physics are the same, but sharp things act differently from non-sharp things by virtue of being sharp? I mean, brick would crumble if you just pressed against it really hard, but iron would just flatten, whereas brick with something sharp ends up breaking apart, again by sort of crumbling, and iron shears? So the different properties of the different objects interact with the different properties of the different methods of destruction differently. Or am I somehow failing to take something into account here?"

"Oh. Yeah, I suppose you're right."

"So it matters, assuming my teeth just act like stronger and slightly sharper normal teeth with a bit of extra force, how teeth interact with these various materials? Which I guess isn't a safe bet anyway, and I'm not sure it's that likely anyone's studied them, but I just mean – I don't know enough about materials either, and I don't know what might be relevant here, but it's possible these results make sense for upscaled teeth or something because it might not be as clear." He frowns. "Except, you know, I don't think they do make sense because, um, iron being easier to cut through than brick can crumble? Nah. Probably not."