A Lesson in Humility

[Lúka Jibral]

"I didn't try to do anything: I shot you." The shrug was invisible, inacted, but definitely there. "In doing so, I forced you into finally making your choice."

Lúka drew in a steady breath an released it slowly, eyes closed, reaching into the depths of his mind for old pain and unsatisfied anger. He mounded them beneath him, pressing down against the training floor like the impulse of a repulsorlift, a cushion of Force levitating him gradually upwards until he could place his legs beneath him. As before, Lúka's hands clasped behind him, and once his eyes snapped open the calm instructor of minutes before had fully returned.

"You think too much, Cadet. You entertain possibilities; hope for hidden alternatives. You want this to all be a mistake, a bad dream you can wake from and go back to being the officer candidate you once were." A tiny shake of Jibral's head interrupted his words. "There is no hope for that. The past is gone. You are what you are."

A contemplative furrow formed on his brow. "Those hopes and considerations, that indecision? It will get you killed. Worse, it will get others killed. But you are bullheaded and stubborn: this is not a lesson I could simply explain, and expect you to understand. You would listen, and then you would try: and we would gain nothing. You had to see for yourself, feel for yourself, the difference between the two. If this remained a classroom, if this remained a lesson, a test that you strove to achieve the best possible grades on, you would have continued to try. Survival meanwhile? A do or do not binary in its purest form."

[Jeryd Redsun]

The sight of Knight Jibral floating upwards on nothing but a bed of air struck him like something from a work of fiction. Indeed, he remembered a story from The Grand Adventures of Casper Moridian, in which Casper and his faithful companion, BOTO, discovered a settlement of droid monks that generated repulsor fields to levitate whenever they prayed. The smirk that attempted to betray his composure was immediately banished.

When Knight Jibral spoke, Jeryd found he recognised him again. This was the man who helmed lessons, a model of Imperial confidence and propriety. What he spoke of, however, was far more personal and cutting than Jeryd had anticipated. And it was all true. His dream of becoming an officer in the Imperial Army died the moment he was handed that hateful piece of flimsi. The results are positive. That was what they told him, in their woefully inadequate way. Now, thanks to Knight Jibral, his situation had been made abundantly clear. And, as he considered the space around him, and all that had just transpired within it, he realised they were terms he'd already accepted.

Nausea passed over him like a wave of rancid swamp water. He swallowed hard to stop himself from reeling. His eyes widened, a reflex, as he shook himself out of it; they darted, pinging over each of the new truths that had been revealed to him.

"I think I understand," he said. Then, with a sudden glance at his instructor, he amended his words, "I understand. I cannot serve the Empire on half-measures. If this is the duty that has been asked of me... I will perform it to the fullest."

A breath to steel his nerves.

"Thank you, sir."

[Lúka Jibral]

The smile found Lúka's expression again; but this time it was targeted, and the meaning behind it was deliberate. Satisfaction. Recognition. A non-verbal variation of the kind of praise and positive reinforcement that a young man like Jeryd Redsun craved.

Plan executed, and situation resolved, Lúka allowed himself to feel relieved. While he had been confident since the outset that his strategy was the best course of action, it's success had by no means been assured. At times, it had been just as likely that he would have been stood here talking to an emergency medical team as the Cadet: it had been why the slugthrower had been aimed at Redsun's shoulder and not center mass. A calculated risk. Extensively calculated. As much as he had encouraged Redsun to be decisive, and to react to the Force's impulses that he comprehended as his subconscious, Lúka was the exact opposite beneath the surface. Every situation was an equation. Every decision was measured, the alternatives weighed. That was what happened when you took a creature such as he from it's habitat of strategy and theory, and placed it in a situation such as this. Life became little more than a series of calculated encounters, and considered experiments; and Cadet Redsun was merely the latest successful test subject.

For a moment, Lúka envied the young man; envied the satisfaction that must come from the kind of praise that Lúka was deliberately providing. The more he considered himself, the more he wondered if he was the same type of individual, and wondered how different he might be if that appreciation ever stopped being denied to him. The Cadet's words offered him the tiniest sample.

"You are -"

Welcome. That was the word that wanted to follow. A moment of humanity. A moment of connection. The sentence began with more softness than was typical; Lúka forgot to modulate his tone properly, forgot to perform the words his mind scripted for him to speak. He rectified that oversight quickly.

"- dismissed, Cadet," he finished, barely skipping a beat.