"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."