(An ally isn't an enemy you like, that's just silly. An ally is an enemy who's most useful to you doing what they're independently doing. And if they come to be more useful as a corpse, well. Hopefully you figure that out before they realize you're about to.)

(Pradnakt does not, to be clear, think of Kalbetis as an ally in the Sith sense. Not quite as a friend, either, but some third thing, as yet poorly defined.)

"It's good to be here. That was very impressive."

(...Like she said.  An enemy you like.)

She - blinks, as if she had not quite realized that.

"I suppose it must be, now that I think about it; in truth, I was just...  Dissatisfied, with Soresu, and everything grew from there.  An impenetrable, enduring defense means little when your enemies have far more overall endurance than you could possibly hope to achieve without some serious Force Nonsense.  The best defense becomes a good offense.  Which isn't to say that I don't practice Form III, because it's important to be able to hold ground as much as take it, but - well.  If I had been waiting on Soresu in half of the fights I've picked with massed blasterfire, I think quite a lot of people would have died needlessly."

Pradnakt nods along. "It's always good to have more options, yes. - it occurs to me, by the way, that my old credentials probably still work on the lightsaber research datacache, if you'd like me to get up to speed on the cutting edge there, or just to retrieve it for storage somewhere safer. I have no way of knowing if it's being monitored for unusual activity, though, of course."

"Hmm.  I don't think it could hurt to try, at least.  Not in any significant amount.  And, well, we want to keep that data, surely.  ...We have rather a lot of practice getting around the commonly used tracking measures, as an organization.  Talk to Elcie about it, perhaps."

Nod. "I may just give her the credentials, it's not like there's much point in keeping them secret anymore. Anyway, did you want to try anything in particular here?"

"It would be good to acquaint you with our field procedures before you and we are on the same field, so I thought something of a demonstration of our tactics would be good - either with yourself in the demonstration, or observing, as you see fit."

"Observing first, I think. I'm very out of practice if I ever was in practice with this."

There are quite a few notable things about Kalbetis' forces.

Their standards of equipment.  The small integrated droids-and-organics squads, quite often kitted out further with the variety of nondroid semiautonomous objects commonly known as remotes.  Their preference for stunners in many situations where standard Sith doctrine prefers killshots.  That the way they handle a simulated Surprise Jedi in their operational area isn't "immediately shoot them until they're incapacitated" but instead diplomacy, unless the Jedi picks a fight.  (The way they bother simulating specific allegiances and the presence of noncombatants in their training exercises.)

The way they all seem to actually work together rather than merely alongside eachother in the same direction.

It's a lot to take in, even with her skill at separating the wheat from the sensory chaff. She's particularly surprised at the approach to Jedi - sure, ex-Jedi Sith have to come from somewhere, but her understanding was that Jedi encountered in combat can be depended on to lightsaber first and ask questions never.

She dictates her thoughts to Daisy as she watches, to be returned to her later as written notes, and will probably still be at it when Kalbetis comes to find her.

Not all of the encounters are immediately 'in combat', as was, though the likelihood of Jedi-in-combat needing to be taken down rather than talked down is, in fact, noticeably rather higher than, for example, previously captured Jedi.

"...It helps when the people that are talking to them aren't noticeably Force-Sensitive.  I'd have a much harder time of talking one down, if I haven't prepared very specifically to work around that problem vis-a-vis general obscurantism, or dressed up as a Jedi myself."

"That makes sense. Though even that isn't common knowledge, at least in my sector."

"No, it wouldn't have been; the Empire wouldn't want it to be.  The Empire's propaganda painted the Jedi as unfeeling exterminators of anything Sith-touched for a, hm, strategically sound horrible reason - it benefitted the Empire to paint the idea of.  Well.  Not killing the Jedi, and also Jedi not killing you, as something that would be absurd on its face, both for its Sith and for the average citizen.  It inspires more revolts in captured territory, and makes it even less likely that Sith will ever think of even speaking to Jedi before resorting to violence."

She nods. "I'm still a little surprised there wasn't more heterodoxy about it." Shrug. "It hardly matters now."

"...I suppose it doesn't."

She can't say anything more, it seems, and not for lack of trying to articulate an inchoate pain.

"...I wanted to fix it, you know?  To realize the promise of breaking all our chains.  That was never going to happen, but...  I wanted it."

She suddenly badly wants to hug Kalbetis. She doesn't, even if she were confident that it'd be welcome there are still people around, but it'll be visible in the Force. "Yeah. It's -" she doesn't have words; when in her life has she had an opportunity to talk about compassion? But - there are people around, but she can put up a gentle notice-me-not and -

"Were I a farmer I would call you vermin
Because you'd be the villain of my crops
And gnaw on my wealth, but I am not a farmer,
But only one who walks the farmers' fields.
And so when I came on your stiffened body
Lying alone and covered with frost, your eyeballs
Glazed and your little front paws so beseeching,
Crossed on your breast and pink like human fingers,
And when I saw your deadness in the frozen
Light of winter morning, I, unmanly,
Unfarmerly, and most impractically,
Felt that rats even have a right to live
And knew that there was beauty in your body
Dusted with starry marvels of bright frost,
And beauty in the little hands you crossed
Upon your breast before you died this morning."

[source]

...honestly, the Force-felt sentiment is almost as good as the physical action.

"...thank you," she murmurs.

Elcie nudges Kalbetis gently.

"-- ah, yes.  Right, I did come over here for a reason.  We've got a bunch of scenarios the ops folk whistled up, knowing we'd want to stress-test our ability to integrate a Force healer and specifically integrate yourself.  Don't know if you would want to be involved, or just watch and hopefully provide feedback, or do something else I didn't cover with those options, but this is about when we're going to start running them."

"What kind of timeline are we on? I'll make a better showing if I have a day or two to go over my observations but I don't object to learning by jumping right in, I've got enough of the basics for it I think."

"...Timeline's two weeks before we're sending you scanning, I believe.  I'll trust your judgement on whether starting now or integrating your observations first would produce better results."

"Probably starting now, if it won't throw your people off if I change my approach later. Though maybe not right now, we might want to bring Nine in too - he's kitted out for tactical command, and I know he's been missing having the opportunity to do any. He might fit..." She's not a brilliant tactician or anything but she's identified a couple of spots where he'd be useful.

"We can always use more tactics support.  If you want to go get him, there's time.  And, no, it shouldn't throw us off, I don't think, there's not much off to throw as of yet."

"Sounds good. Daisy, do you want to come along while I talk to the ops people, or go get Nine?"

    "I'll stay with you."

"All right."

Yes, here are some of the scenarios they want to run through, are they constructed appropriately?  They especially want Pradnakt's opinion on things to do with her healing.

Well, for right now she shouldn't be at the front if she's on healing duty, so the only real question with that is whether they want her staying put so injured people can be brought to a known place or going to where she's needed, either on request or independently. If and when she can hold the technique while in active battle it'll be a gamechanger - she expects to be able to make a unit effectively invincible - but she's not there yet and doesn't expect to be for the first few excursions at least.

She also has some commentary on how her sensory powers can supplement their existing communication and some questions about how to integrate that with their existing strategic command structure - she doesn't expect to be able to just overrule Kalbetis' plans, obviously, but if she sees something that makes them a bad idea she needs to know what to do about that - and she'll point out the scenarios that look most useful to getting the details of that worked out.