In the end, she decides against the broadsword. She hates that broadsword is an option here. It's like. On the one hand, Yaji isn't a person. Which is a terrible sentence and one that feels dirty in her mouth. It's a seven-syllable horror story that someone out there--someone on [i]this ship[/i] went out of their way to create a walking, talking, laughing [i]thing[/i] to-- They aren't friends, to be clear. Dyssia sees what Yaji does--what Yaji makes those around her do, what [i]she[/i] does to keep herself in the good books of this automaton. But at the same time, you can't spend any amount of time with someone without. Well, not liking. Definitely not liking. Nothing this side of loathing. But it's like, the second it twigged to her what Yaji was, Dyssia also couldn't help but pity her? Which is the weirdest feeling, by the by? Yaji was created to cause harm. She takes no joy in it. Joy does not exist. She was created for one purpose, and it was to control a population of pix through incredibly violent suppression. You don't pity a broom for being dirty. But the idea of doing it with-- Not a person. Not a people. Easy to see, once you've asked the question and can instantly see the answer, but so hard to internalize. Somone out there figured out the optimal way to cause harm. Somebody asked themselves how to police the pix, came to the conclusion that bullying was the answer, perfected bullying, and loaded it onto this chassis that would go out there and cut someone down with a well-placed word. Someone could have figured out the optimal way to do, you know, [i]not[/i] that, to do the [i]opposite[/i] of that, to build people up and do something constructive with a highly-customized drone chassis, because that's what Yaji is, and instead they made her-- She doesn't [i]feel[/i] like not a person, is the thing. The illusion is so perfect that you only spot it once you're there, once you've been accepted, once she's. Decided is the wrong word. Once whatever process behind the eyes has optimized for you as an element of bullying, rather than a target. The books never tell you what it's like to see someone as a target, incidentally. It's all well and good to tell herself that she's not a person. That she's a thing, and one designed with harm in mind. That if she doesn't get rid of Yaji, somehow, all of her efforts to save the Pix will be frustrated and come to naught. Or possibly nought. What a fun word. But none of that prepares you for holding the knife. Will she make noise? Will she even know it's happening? Slit the throat, or jam it between two important vertebrae? How will the Pix react to her straight up murdering one of them? Can't tell them "whoops, you don't understand, she wasn't actually [i]real.[/i]" But… Ignore the reasons for and against, for a second. Is that something she can do, something she can bring herself to do? Can she stare at this not-a-friend-not-a-person-pitiful-thing and end it? She's been seeing it in her dreams already. How much worse if she actually does it? But! But but but! She's decided against it! Because there's a better way, and one she's actually really damn proud of figuring out! See, there's this theory one of her teachers taught her about. About ethics, right? Some old bastard wrote about how the best thing was about maximizing goodness for the most people, right? If you have one option that benefits twenty people a lot and one that benefits thirty by the same amount, you maximize goodness and choose the thirty person option, right? Not a very convincing theory of goodness, she admits, because, like, how do you quantify goodness, and who's picking the measures of goodness, and who's doing the measuring, and so on, but! But there's the idea--rather applicable in this case--of the monster, right? Figure there's a monster, right, who derives infinite pleasure from somebody else's suffering. The good in the world is always higher if the monster gets to carry out their torture than if they don't, right, because the pleasure the torturer derives from it is greater than the pain it causes the torturee. It's meant to be a big ol' gotcha to the theory, right, that the greatest good in this system could logically be to torture someone for a monster's satisfaction. But hey, even if the theory is bogus, the exercise… Because, and here's the genius thing, right? Yaji is a drone. Or something similar enough to it that it doesn't matter. A drone evolved not to need food, to take satisfaction--no, wrong word, no mind. Pleasure? Purpose? Instinct. Yaji acts on [/i]instinct[/i] to be cruel. There's some kind of prioritization there, which is why Yaji jumped on the malcontent pix first. So, if she can reverse engineer Yaji, and figure her out, it should be possible, then, to engineer an equally built-to-purpose drone of her own. Something that can't think, can't feel, definitely can't feel hurt by the abuse golem pointed at it. Something absolutely [i]irresistible[/i] to the arcane process inside that empty head. Three days base, but she's sure this one could last at least a week--maybe even two. Which isn't a lot, and she's doing her best not to think that she's creating a life for the sole purpose of being attacked and degraded and eventually blessedly dying, and how different does that make her from whoever made Yaji, but. But it's gotta be worth it, if the Pix live, right?