She sends Daisy to go start on a meal before addressing the rest: Pradnakt was out practicing her swordwork; Daisy asked if Diana needed anything and then said she would have to get Pradnakt, and then did that. Neither Pradnakt nor the droids are good at teaching language, so the plan is to get Diana a book or books on the topic; they can inquire at the library in the morning if Diana still wants to go to the clinic, or Daisy can make the trip to town alone once they've got a shopping list for her, though it won't be surprising if such a book will need to be ordered in from the city. They can work on the shopping list now, or Pradnakt can tell Diana more about the state of the galaxy.

"...why the fuck is the space future still relying upon physical books instead of education software," ::Absolute bemusement, homeworld - programmed language-learning, Ring - programmed language-learning, Daisy - programmed language-learning, why does language-learning require physical-object-book?::

::Irrelevance; que-sera-sera.  No clinic - exposure unnecessary.  Request: galaxy-information.  Strategic-overview, culture.::

'Book' was a metonymy, though if Diana wants something interactive that's going to require hardware they don't have here. Most likely in the form of a teaching droid, actually, but she'll sort that out later.

Anyway. The state of the galaxy. (She pauses to get a sketchbook and some colored pencils out of the cabinet by the cot.) The galaxy looks roughly like this; this bit is the Sith empire, where they are now, this bit belongs to the hutt trade empire, and this bit is the republic, which has some kind of complicated democratic thing going on. The rest of it is the outer rim, which isn't a coherent polity on a galactic scale. The empire and the republic are - or were last she checked, but she'll be surprised if it's changed - at war; the hutts are more closely aligned with the empire but mostly neutral in a 'selling weapons to everyone' sense. The Sith started the war and can be assumed to be in the wrong about it, though it's been long enough since the war was relevant to Pradnakt's life that she's forgotten most of the details beyond that; they can get Diana a book or something on that, too.

None of these three polities are particularly morally upstanding, in Pradnakt's opinion, but the empire is arguably the worst and in any case it's the one Diana is going to have to deal with at least at first. To explain the empire first she has to explain Sith, and the Force - the Force is the part of physics that can be interacted with by some people to let them do things that look like magic; there are various methods of interaction that have various prerequisites in terms of mental state and allow for different effects, and Sith study a method called the dark side, which uses emotions - particularly negative emotions like anger and fear - to empower the effects it can create, with the side effect of also strengthening those emotions. If Diana is thinking that this sounds like an incredibly bad idea, yes, it rather is; your average Sith finds a balance that leaves them functional enough, but it's not exactly rare for them to wind up in destructive feedback loops, and the culture doesn't help. All Force sensitives - people who can interact with the Force, which is a very rare ability - discovered in the Empire are trained to be Sith, starting from early adolescence, and the emperor and entire upper government are Sith, though in practice most governance happens on a planetary level and is run by Forceblind people, and the main effect of having Sith around is that they're entirely above the law and beholden only to other Sith.

(Yes, Pradnakt is a Sith. She's been opting out of interacting with most of the empire for the last fifteen years or so for personal reasons, but she still is one. That's why she's not going to go into town unnecessarily; her mere presence terrorizes people. And reasonably so, on their part.)

Relevantly to Diana, Sith culture runs on a power-based hierarchy, with Sith always on the lookout for resources that will help them overpower or defend against their rivals. Diana will be seen as such a resource, if her powers are discovered.

::...Surprising similarity (Lanterns: Red Orange Violet).  Musing: Sunset-Dusk is non-practitioner of Sithness; why is Sunset-Dusk Sith?::

She hasn't been participating in Sith culture but that's only one part of being a Sith; using dark side techniques, which she does, is the more central one, and she's still in the position of being ungovernable by mundane means - cooperating with someone trying to enforce laws on her sounds about as appealing as cutting one of her limbs off, and she expects to be able to fight off any number of mundane police.

::...Counterargument: By that standard I'm a Sith.  I'm not a Sith, I'm sure you agree.  Ergo, that argument doesn't make sense.::

::...fuck the police, anyway.::

::Lawfulness and Goodness are dissimilar axes of prediction.::

::Sith(philosophical) are Chaotic and Evil.  To reject Sith-nature does not inherently cause Lawful Goodness.::

She's actually developing a lot more facility with this technique as she gets used to it.

::You give half a damn about other people, and if you try to bullshit me about that, I'm right here as proof otherwise.  You might not maximally care - but you could wield Indigo, as I do.::

::Ergo, why claim to be Sith like those (derogatory-sentiment(emphatic)), who absolutely (emphatic) don't care about the impact they have on other people's lives?::

And now Pradnakt is bodily dragging Diana off the bench and to the front door. (By her good arm, but that could be coincidence.) Unless she comes up with a counter in the couple seconds this takes, she will be deposited on the front stoop with the door closed behind her.

::I'm pretty sure that the fact that you feel so indignant about this means I'm on to something.  Because you wouldn't be so angry about it if you were confident that I was spouting bullshit.  You'd just be dismissive.  Because you don't have to care what I think.::

(She's entirely fine with being dragged around.)

The door remains closed.

It's very dark out here, but at least the stars are gorgeous without any light pollution.

"Well, let's see what the fuck happened to you," she directs at her power ring.  Not like she has much else she can do right now.

If she could get a single resonator back online, or fix the compute bits, it'd be pretty useful.

She doesn't expect that to be viable without a workshop rated for molycirc, but she does have a full diagnostic readout stored on her emergency Batcomputer, and even knowing what broke ought to be pretty useful.

(She's kind of expecting it to be something about micronization, or subspace; those are the really wibbly bits of ring-tech.)

She's not left alone for very long: after about ten minutes, Daisy comes out with a tray of food for her, lit by a miniature lantern that also sits on the tray, and settles next to her on the stoop with it.

If Pradnakt is paying particular attention to Diana's emotions, there's a sense of something like vindication, mixed with exasperated fondness, for a moment.

"Thank you, Daisy."

"...Dusk is really something, isn't she?"

Diana starts nibbling away at the food as she continues working on her diagnostics.  The preliminary results are "so much of this is fucked up that it's probably easier to list what's not broken", but she can get a couple of the coarser Light-sensitive components to reset, and some of the inductive communication systems - the way her ring talks to her - which is good, because she really needs to be able to listen, as well as speak.

She's never been as good about caring for herself as she is about others, and that's biting her in the butt, right now.  She needs just a little kickstart to properly bootstrap herself into having a two-way translator, at which point she can probably power through on determination or hope if she must - but she does need to get that started with compassion.

So after fairly bathing the ring on her finger, worn beneath a glove that actually fits around it, in Indigo...

Diana drops into an almost meditative state, and certainly a contemplative one - and speaks to Daisy, her Ring glowing as much as her Lantern does.

::"Can you say something?  I want to see if this translation effect works."::

"Yes ma'am. Did it work? I'll recite you some poetry if you need more than this."

"I think it's working.  And if it's working at all, it probably ought to be working totally...Oh, here, let me see if..."

"I'm going to stop translating my speech and see if I can translate Batman's language file format for you."

And she offers the tip of a semi-undefined luminescent Indigo cable to Daisy!

She hesitates slightly, but takes the proffered cord and plugs it into a port hidden amidst a spray of small yellow flowers on the side of her torso.

"That worked, ma'am," she says, in English. "Thank you."

"Oh, thank goodness.  Thank you, for trusting me enough to let me do that.  I'm sure we could have managed to learn to speak eachothers' languages some other way, but this brings down the complexity a few notches.  Even more if I can unfucken my Ring's translator components.

"...how's Sunset holding up?  I feel like I might have..,pushed too far, too soon, earlier."

"She's fine, ma'am, but it seems like you did, yes. I didn't get a very complete explanation from her of what happened; can you tell me more about it?"

"There is a Sith philosophy.  There is also a Sith organization.  Sunset has distanced herself from the organization, but claims to adhere to the philosophy.

"I don't think she really adheres to Sithism as it's practiced, as evidenced by the way I am still alive and mostly unmolested.

"As evidenced by the way she is actively protecting me from the organization, when my admittedly basic understanding of the philosophy says that she ought to hone me into a weapon against it.

"...For all that I can't not smack the Empire in the face regardless.  I'd hardly have a right to this Lantern if I didn't.

"And I might be talking out of my ass, here, but it seems like she gives too much of a damn about other people to be the...self-centered fear-and-anger monster she passes herself off as.  That she wraps up an altruistic streak in selfish justifications."

"She does, yes ma'am, though I wouldn't let her hear you say it if I were you. And it's more complicated than that, anyway."

"...mmm?"

"She'd prefer to find a way for things to work that you're comfortable with, in the long term. But there's a real danger to you and her both, if another Sith finds out about your powers while you're with her, and her first priority if that happens is going to be her own wellbeing. There's a real chance that she'll hurt you herself, too, if you offend or upset her too much. She has an altruistic streak, but it's not the only impulse she follows."

"I see."  Yeah, she's been here before.  Reminds her of the Terror Twins, though she expects the maybe-a-Sith to have more critical thinking skills than them.

"I'll keep that in mind; thank you for telling me."

"I've dealt with situations somewhat akin to this before, honestly, and I almost worry I'm coming into this with bad assumptions from previous work.  Because, back home, I - did a lot of work 'redeeming' villains.  Finding people who'd just been - kicked into the gutter by society, rather than having truly chosen the lifestyle of terrorizing the masses with power they had accrued - by hook or crook - for fun and profit.

"And something about everything about this situation...it's got those instincts running in high gear."

"Mmhmm. I should talk to her about it before I tell you much more about her, but while I'm not surprised at that, her situation isn't quite either of those, and it'll offend her pretty badly if you assume it's the former - Sith culture considers having the strength to make your own choices about your life important; you shouldn't suggest that she hasn't done that without very good cause."

"She's making her own choices, yeah, it's just that her options are kind of shit, and enforced by threat of some powerful fucker murdering her.  Because if the Emperor doesn't do that, I'll eat my nonexistent hat.  Relatedly, fuck the Emperor.  With a rusty spork."