"Sympathy is propagandized, Volition is dangerously real. Either way, Thrawn will kill way more than one person and there is no privileged null action."

"Very true. The choice to do nothing is still a choice. But how many people will die, if everyone with a choice like yours chooses murder?"

"Nah, I like the people Thrawn's coming to torture and murder much more than him. And the actual New Republic, as in the real political bloc, not the Jedi wet dream Luke's talking about, will probably give you a medal."

"Can you just take his hand?"

"No promises kiddo.

We've got time before we get there, and the details are going to get chaotic, maybe his horse will sing. 

But I'm not letting him throw the Katana fleet at the galaxy or whatever bullshit it was. Katana fleet sounds right, but I didn't reread the books a bazillion times like I did movie rewatches."

"The Katana fleet? Were the Republic actually that stupid? I wasn't sure if that was just - official Imperial anti-disinformation communications. ...How does this power work. Can you not just mysteriously get in there now." There's always some kind of crack in the dream, that's one of the few weaknesses of Sith sorcery or whatever this is.

"Ok so, while I have some powers that are obviously flash and impossible like summoning my axe, this one is subtle. Well mostly I do have some last meter teleportation to jump scare people who thought they got away.

Anyway Mythos bullshit I can impose a story on the universe. The more sense it actually makes the easier that is to do, but the stronger the myth is and the stronger I work in narrative checkpoints the less sense it has to make for things to still play out.

From the inside this looks like a mix of stupidly good luck, other skills and powers getting buffed, and everyone being mind tricked to be a bit more willing to go along with the plot than you would guess from their actual personality. 

We should already expect good luck, especially on timing in getting to the base but we do need to travel there. We should expect the guards to be unusually stupid or expecting visitors that superficially resemble us or both ect.

Also, Luke is good at sneaking into places though frankly he does raise the chance there is some sort of catch.

One of the ways to fight Mythos is to cut from their triumphant escape to explaining that you told the stormtroopers to miss their shots because you already put a tracker on the Falcon."

"... The Emperor did do that. He probably foresaw this and prepared the Empire to fight you. Be careful."

Why did she say that. Is this it? Was this a loyalty test, is she going to wake up and die now? She doesn't think anyone would last this long in a nightmare- excuses make it worse- 

- well, she's still here -

He's not going to smile at her. She does still have the blaster. 

"All right. The important thing now is to get out of the forest and back in contact. Then we can make sure everyone's all right and go from there. Thrawn probably isn't onworld right now anyway."

She... left the Empire. It's dying, it's not what it was, she has no rank with the Emperor dead. Should she be loyal to the Emperor's heir, he never appointed anyone... she should kill Luke Skywalker is that just part of the dream?

Total existential despair isn't one of the things she's been trained to resist, but it's not that bad, she remembers the spiders. It might however just possibly be visible on her face, or in the Force, even here.

In this scenario... probably she stays alive, avoids whatever trouble is brewing, and... What? 

What would the Emperor even want, in death?

*yeah she'll echo all that to chat.*

"Mara are you ok?"

" Please put the blaster away. It isn't safe when you are doubting reality as much as you obviously are.

I am pretty confident you live this if you try."

"Why would I be OK? How is that relevant? Why should I believe you about anything?" All right apparently her mouth is just making talking noises now, fine. 

"I'll admit that I have a skew towards false positives, but I have a feel for total existential despair."

"All right, enough, how do you know specifically that. If Skywalker can't use the Force here you can't either and I worked for Emperor Palpatine himself, nobody can get that much context from facial expressions or I'd be able to." Fuck it. Fuck it, see if the dream breaks at any angle, the Emperor has more than enough pretext to slowly publicly execute her by now, not that he needs any.

"Earth θ keeps magic, which I suspect may not be the same thing as the force, secret from the general population. Suddenly finding out about Mythos BS is frequently harmful to people. I also have a lot of experience and training dealing with people who are about to die. Whether at my hands or their own. And with being confused about what is real, as you already saw, everything being a lie is salient for me.

Even with all that, I suspect I got lucky and framed it in an unusually on the nose way. Weird coincidences pop up a lot around Mythos." 

"No fucking shit." 

"Language." It's not the safest thing to say, but nothing is ever safe anyway.

"No, even you can't possibly be serious, and I'm not in the mood for Jedi mind games." 

It doesn't seem like Skywalker's style for this all to be him playing some kind of trick with the Force, but at this point it makes about as much sense as anything.

"I am serious. How you talk to people is really important. And Violet - especially when you don't know what's real, you need to think about what can't be a lie. What would be the right thing no matter what."

"I'd say, who the fuck do you think you are, but you'd say, the last Jedi-" it's suddenly strangely difficult, to remember what she's supposed to be doing and why. It might be all the sleep deprivation, and the constant battle against the impulse to execute Skywalker because it would get all her friends killed. 

"I prefer to think of myself as the first new one." That's not his line, but Ben owes him this much at least.

She holsters the blaster and scrubs her eyes with her hands, shifting her balance so she can break Skywalker's knee with a kick if he takes this moment to lunge. "Right. Fine." 

If this kind of thing normally breaks people, she'll just not be normal. It's fine. It's not the first strange situation she's ever been in. Lots of things break normal people. "Violet, what makes you think I'll live through this?"

"So, keep in mind all of my prior caveats, but in the Star Wars expanded universe you and your kids were depicted as fairly major characters even when things got a stupid amount of books deep. Ergo, your EU depiction didn't die at the start of the Thrawn Trilogy. Ergo, if Star Wars is an accurate guide to the future you have plenty of time left.

Also, I'm pretty good in these sorts of situations and so is Skywalker. And you for that matter."