"Only usually?"

"You saw the crater!"

"Ah, so that doesn't qualify as a fuckup?"

"Okay, I guess that was technically fucking up in general even though it wasn't fucking up a specific recipe."

"You could also cause an explosion without fucking up a recipe if you found a recipe for flour," she says innocently.

"Flour wouldn't explode immediately on appearing unless I did fuck up the recipe by, like, drawing an extra line of fire ink on it," he points out. "Or conducting my recipe experiments near an open flame, but I think that qualifies as fucking up too, granted not in the same way..."

"Did I say immediately? I did not."

"I don't enjoy exploding!"

"Fuses. The explosion doesn't have to happen close enough to hurt you."

"What are you so eager to blow up?"

"Oh, just entertaining hypotheticals."

"...So, not eager to blow up anything in particular, just eager to have the means to blow things up in case it comes in handy?"

"Not even so much that as that you suggested a thing couldn't be done so of course I had to figure out ways that it would be possible for it to happen."

"I meant exploding immediately!" laughs Tiro. "There's no reason at all why there couldn't be recipes for explosives, I wasn't saying anything about exploding after a delay!"

"Aww."

"Yes. Explosives: very disappointing."

"Maybe you should record one of your fuckups as a recipe and then there will be a recipe for explosion."

"I should not do that. Anyone who painted it would explode."

"Tsk. Ruin my fun with logic."

He snorts.

"Exploding might actually be kind of fun if you could somehow take out the parts where it's lethal and/or incredibly painful."

"...I guess?"

"...Trying to make light, that was kind of insensitive, I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"Still. I'll shut up about explosions. If there's anything the rest of us can do to be helpful, do let us know."