Successful conversational redirect! "The latest on eradication is... some kind of genetic thing with the carrier mosquitos, right? My eyes glazed over the details, but I remember seeing some of my IntAid friends posting excitedly about it recentlyish, and then getting into arguments with people who thought it would be fucked up to wipe out the mosquitos." She'd roll her eyes to indicate how she feels about this, but her face is still up against his neck because mmmmmm skin contact.

"I don't think mosquitoes that bite humans are even ecologically important!"

"They sure are not! This did not dissuade the dissenters, however, I got the vibe that their objections were more... aesthetic? misanthropic?" she shrugs. "I dunno. There's a breathtaking variety of bad opinions and ways to arrive at them, and I'm only being about half sarcastic when I say it like that."

"Hm, I don't know if I'd call a principle against driving things extinct misanthropic as long as they also have it about weird marine worms and not just specifically the malarial mosquito?"

"Ah, sorry, I'm lumping the two different guys I saw complaining about it together. The guy who was all like it is sad whenever a species goes extinct, that is a loss that could only ever be recovered at great expense and probably never will be, the diversity of our natural world is unique and important and precious - that's not misanthropic, and I think it's in fact kind of a delightful way to see the world, in some ways, and I can't agree because I do think people are more important than an entire species of mosquito." 

"The take I was glossing as misanthropic was - it's arrogant and wrong for humans to drive another species extinct for their own selfish benefit. And maybe this is me being unfair, still, because probably he'd feel the same way about weird marine worms if we were harvesting them to extinction to make novelty lube, but - it's importantly different, right, I don't think wanting malaria gone is selfish by any reasonable standard."

"I guess if you really stretch it you could construe humanity as a collective which can be selfish?"

She shrugs. "Maybe! Or maybe it's - anti-hubris instincts, or something like that, which I find equally unrelatable. We went to the moon! We eradicated smallpox!! How can you read about those and not get excited about what else we could do!" 

"Absolutely! I wanna eradicate more diseases. I'm gonna throw a party when we get malaria."

oh no she likes him so much "Malaria eradication party!!! I hope it ends up falling somewhere midsummer, I feel like that's a great time for that kind of party and it'd be a nice midpoint between the two smallpox gone days."

"I usually low-key celebrate the spring one but not with a party, I just put on the song. Summer seems symbolically appropriate. We can go out in the height of mosquito season and we might itch but we will not get fevers and die."

"We may still die of other things but we will not die of this!", she sings in response.

"I hope somebody writes a song for malaria too. I don't think rinderpest has one."

"If nobody does, I will spend some of my esper money on commissioning one! ...Assuming I can dungeon at all, I mean."

"You still get esper money if you don't. Healers make bank. Even professional partners or security-screen espers whose powers are good for fuckall make enough to commission something as long as you don't have expensive taste in musicians, I think, like, musicians are not as a class super rich."

"Oh! That's really reassuring - I think I'd be equally happy healing and doing dungeons, and if I can't do either I will at least have a solid backup plan and the ability to commission an appropriate ballad."

"I would've liked healing powers, before I awakened I wanted to be an epidemiologist."

Sparkly-eyed esper! "Did you have your sights set on Malaria back then, too?"

"Of course! Though I might have wound up working on something else depending on what opportunities and ideas came my way."

She nods agreeably. "Comparative advantage is real and important, yes. Which, one assumes, is why you are clearing dungeons instead of continuing in epidemiology." 

"Yup. The ideal allocation of human capital involves esper capital going into dungeons so I'm playing into that."

She smiles, then searches for a new topic. "How's your backlash? I can feel it ticking up, but I don't know what's comfortable or tolerable for you, or if this is the right kind of chatty?" 

"This is a good kind of chatty! I'm experimenting with not actively flying the whole time, and letting mundane momentum carry me whenever possible, so I'm hoping to get a couple more minutes of airtime before I need to go home and guide this off. Backlash doesn't feel good but I'm used to it and used to managing it, and having you on hand solves two of my biggest complaints about it completely."

Yesss she's getting a good grade in guide!! She wiggles involuntarily at the praise. "Okay, cool! In that case..." 

She'll ask Haru questions about his experience interacting with agents and what kinds of things to look out for in that field for their last few minutes of flight. 

He chose his agent mostly because she picks up the phone really fast but she is also good at wrangling stuff for him. Agents for espers sort of blur the line between personal assistant, disability aide, and agent-of-the-sort-actors-have. Haru thinks probably Cara will want her backlash to be private from genpop but her agent should probably know.

That makes sense to her! She probably will want to shop around until she finds someone she really trusts, though, because it's a lot of power to have over her, potentially.

"...I probably need to make a tiny list of people who I'd get to, like, have a rotation to keep an eye and ear out when I'm backlashed to make sure I'm not..." she trails off.