"Yeah... She's weird."

"And apparently a dragon. Weird might be part of the package."

"I might have competition for strangest around!"

Hug.

"A little bit of competition is good for you."

Heh. Hug!

"Inspires me to ever new heights of strangeness!"

"So fill me in on what I missed..."

She does so, summarizing the meeting.

"Hm. The problem with making- guns and explosives for the dwarves is- they're not really around here? People don't have the history of strategy or tactics on how to use them or how to defend against them. Which could be good if it makes the fighting go quicker and smoother, but. They'd need to be mundanely craftable to get any kind of effective scale so if any get captured the enemy can figure out how they work and make their own. Which is bad, because I've been enjoying not having to worry about getting a gun pointed at me."

"And also- Guns against swords is a massacre. And orcs are people; we met one. If we give the dwarves guns when they didn't have them before, we're sort of responsible for what they do with them, and if what they do is- Ishval. I don't think Professor Curtis would like that."

She hums, thinking. "We could make cannons, just for us, on the front lines if there's a siege, and deconstruct them after. Sieges are really bad for everyone. And we could put conditions on how the army behaves if they want our help."

"I also don't know if there's a way to - assassinate Sauron, or focus our fire on just the top brass. That'd make the fighting shorter and less bloody, probably, and then if we're the ones using it, we could refuse to use it on just... Foot soldiers. And maybe make a condition about accepting any surrenders from foot soldiers."

"...Dwarves would also keep having them, if we make them more widely available," she says, more slowly. "And some of the representatives seemed - keen, on the idea of getting them."

"Once the idea is brought up, guns are going to happen eventually whether we do them or not, I think. I'm just- not sure what the best compromise is, between responsibility and oversight."

"Honestly 'mining explosives' and 'combustion engines' to cannons isn't that big a jump, and neither is cannons to guns, and all those happened pretty quickly on their own after the printing press in our world..."

"Maybe if we start them out with good, solid practices for when and how to use them? But unscrupulous people might ignore those anyways..."

"Also we want to go home, right? Which makes - if we're all their oversight, if we decide to enforce not being assholes just by being the most powerful around so no one argues - I don't think we want to be in that position forever, and when we leave stuff might collapse."

"Yeah." Sigh. "Just kind of a hard problem."

"And I don't think I'd trust... Finding a few reasonable people to give all the power to?"

"No, that seems like it would not end well."

"Even if people start out reasonable, they won't stay that way..."

"Yeah. I dunno, Lion."

She sighs. "I like problems I can solve with science more..."

"You and me both."

"The king will probably want to get details from us at some point. I can try talking to him then."

"He's more reasonable than some of the Councillors," she says, shrugging. "...Man, I wish we had sensei here..."

"Yeah, that'd solve a lot of problems."

"We could make her do all the work!"

"I'm sure she'd appreciate that."

She laughs. "She'd probably assign us more homework..."

"Three laps around the mountain and two books on the ethical philosophy of war."

"I feel like ethical philosophy is only fun when you can literally fight the philosophers."