Neverwinter Forest Don't tell me this is all for nothing.

Mal actually was trying to not be a jerk.  He was trying to be cool, and maybe that made him a bit patronizing but that's about it.  There was no saying he was perfect, but he was at least trying to be something other than an angst-ball.

However, it wasn't like he got taught manners, because hearing her talk, well.. That kind of killed his hopes that he could learn to talk his way into anything if she was gonna have issues understanding in the first place, and his face fell a bit as he tried to figure out if there was a way to salvage it besides just outright finding out if this chick was a potential recruit or not.  The fact she hadn't called struck him as a little odd, and her particularly amiable behavior otherwise reminded him of Elysium, so he wasn't entirely sure what to think. Ugh.

It wore away at what little polish he'd tried to put on things, and he dropped the lame attempt at (for Mal) florid language and put him back as the blunt, negative guy he always was -- someone else would get to be a test subject, apparently.  Yeah.  I'm Mal and this is my pack.  So you're gonna have to tell me who you are and what you could provide before you'd have a chance of joining up, but if you can't I can point you in the direction of a pack that'll let in anyone.  Except Elysium was gone.  Not that he knew.  He was still left in the dark when it came to that but assumed that Okeanos and Ibis and Eshkrawhatsit had ran off to gallivant around in the hippie commune or something just to spite him. It would be typical.