The look shifts to one of skepticism tinged with concern.

"Is this a Sith thing?  Most Jedi use these for pretty much any training exercise.  Sometimes it's a switch in their actual lightsaber, even.  No reason to cause unnecessary damage, even if I don't have any reason to think that's something I should worry about.  And I still have my actual sabers here, if I need them."  There they are!

    "She says that most Sith consider nonlethal lightsabers degrading, ma'am, if they're aware that they exist at all - she didn't until she started learning lightsaber engineering."

...Oh empty void why does that almost feel nice.

"Well, I'll just have to give a good accounting of myself despite the seeming handicap, then!  Jedi philosophy is that you shouldn't use more than necessary force, generally; that means, these."

She only mostly manages to suppress the full-body shudder, twitching slightly instead; it's more obvious in the Force that she's still quite disturbed. But she takes the blaster rather than say anything further, checking its power setting before doing anything else with it.

"...Yeah, I have no idea why I felt that either."

Each of the nine individual blaster pistol firing mechanisms is physically incapable of outputting damaging fire without first being reassembled!

    "She says that's not what bothered her, ma'am - one moment."

Deskyl leans against the wall and looks at the ceiling, gesturing inscrutably; it seems like she's calculating something.

"...Trust me, I've been hit by thousands of those, it's a bit of a sting, but even in larger volumes it's safe as long as they don't all hit the same point at once.  Even without my armor on."  (And she has it on, though she's waiting to put on her helmet until Deskyl's ready.)

She finishes her calculation before answering:

    "She says it's her responsibility as the one wielding it to check, ma'am, but she's ready now."

"That's very good practice, honestly.  Alright," she pulls her helmet on, "fire when ready, Deskyl!"

Pew!

And Diana only barely manages to deflect all nine of the bolts, even with her incredibly overengineered sabers and the skill and speed to move both of them into blocking positions that would have quite a few people taking self-inflicted injuries!  "...Good, that means that the most I'll need is two of these.  Or shooting with my blaster-saber as well."

    "She says 'well done', ma'am."

"Thank you!  I'm glad this works!  I should see if I can get any balanced weight and kickback distributions that nonetheless don't end up with any symmetry to the shots..."

    "She knows some tricks for that, she says, but they'd all require a kyber crystal."

"Ooh, I'd love to hear about those, but I was actually thinking about just throwing this at one of R4's engineering sims and seeing if the math works out.  Being able to do spread-out shots too would be neat..."

    "Yes ma'am. She says you both should have lunch first, though."

"...That's probably a good idea!"

Lunch it is, then. She invites Diana to sit next to her again.

Diana is very eager to accept that invitation!

No hairpetting this time, Deskyl needs her hands for signing, though conveniently enough she can sign with one hand full so she can eat while she does. She does seem a bit more hesitant about it, though, pausing to think about how to word things more often than she usually does.

    "She says she genuinely doesn't mind that you reacted the way you did, ma'am, or that you think of her that way in general; you're right that she's not really interested in things like that, but she does like you, and she doesn't see a reason for you to avoid that kind of thing if it feels right to you."

"...You'll tell me if it's ever making you uncomfortable, okay?  Please?  It's - important to me, even moreso if - I allow myself to - think along those lines, to know that - I'm not accidentally hurting you?  Please."

This gets Diana a brief hairpet.

    "She says 'of course', ma'am. But she really doesn't expect it."

Oooh, hairpets continue to be really nice.  ...She did good?

Apparently! And now, back to eating.