...Kina is clearly not a fan of this 'hitting people with her lightsaber' thing.  In the few spars where using the Force is encouraged, she sometimes doesn't even turn it on, in favor of using bits from belt pouches of spare parts, the exact same wrench she beaned Darth Maul with, or the loops of grappling cord she's taken to carrying, to trip, entangle, ensnare, and otherwise render-inert.  (And quoth she, "Frankly, I expect that if I am in need of a response as powerful as a lightsaber as a combat tool, I will likely turn to a gun.  Unless it is a matter of blaster deflection.  Lightsabers make excellent cutting tools, though!")

It doesn't help that something about the design she presently has just feels wrong for her, still.

Perhaps her mom will talk about what's bothering her when Kina visits the workshop to tinker with her training saber?

In truth, though, it's hardly tinkering that she's doing, the parts laid out in exploded-diagram form, and many more scattered before her.  It's more of a total rebuild, as parts shift back and forth, the casing clearly laying discarded elsewhere, because it's not sufficient for the task at hand.

What Kina's building is at once simple and yet complex, because it's as much an indication of philosophy as a tool of battle.  She's building the ideal parrying dagger, in lightsaber form.

(Not that she knows this, when she starts out - she just has the image in her head, the parts in her hands, and the Force whispering in her ear.)

Shmi is comforted by seeing that Kina's building a lightsaber for defense, but she's still worried, and Kina saying she'll use a blaster doesn't really help much.

Eventually, she does let on that Palpatine's death is sticking in her mind. It's ridiculous, of course, Kina didn't even kill him - well, technically, she killed him, but Dooku had stabbed him first, he had about ten seconds left. Nothing Kina did was wrong in any way.

But still...

"...yeah.  I - I can't say I regret it.  Sometimes...Sometimes people are just...too horrible, and too unwilling to stop being horrible, to let them continue to live and inflict their horribleness on others.  But I do wish I hadn't had to do it, especially not like I actually did.  I don't want to hurt people.  Frankly, if I hadn't known that the other Sith Lord had claimed a way to heal anything, I would have not done that at all.  But - he needed to be dead, because he'd - I could feel his emotions and they were like a three-year-old pitching a fit at losing his favorite toy, or losing the game he was playing.  He wouldn't cooperate with - rehabilitation attempts.  He was wrecking things out of petty spite.  Not even strategically.  And given that...he needed to die, because allowing him to keep living, especially if he escaped, at that point, was - so much cost, for absolutely no gain.  He'd demonstrated he wouldn't cooperate."

And she nods, because everything Kina said is true. But it still doesn't really reassure her.

This is how they said it would go.

Shmi knows she shouldn't trust the message. She's worked out, by now, that it was from Palpatine, that its only purpose was to manipulate her into trying to stop Kina from ruining his plans. The obvious reaction to an argument deliberately made to deceive you is to not listen to it, and that's what she did, that's what she's been trying to do...

But it did, in fact, successfully predict that Kina would kill Palpatine.

She didn't kill Palpatine!

Yes, she did.

No, she really didn't!

...but she did?

She knows Kina has good reasons for all of this violence, and that she's only trying to keep the galaxy safe. She tries to put her fears aside, and just trust her daughter to do what she knows she can do.

But she keeps going back to the message.

Shmi Skywalker,

 

Your daughter is going down a path she won't be able to come out without losing who she is. Already you've seen her fighting, trying to change the world, and it's always been for a good cause, the power she collects always for the sake of helping others. But in time, she'll begin to harness powers that are too great. The dark side of the Force, whether she likes it or not, grants more power to its users than anything else, and when she has no other choice, no other way to help make things right... she'll turn to it.

But for all the strength the dark side offers, it takes a toll on its users. Though it draws from one's passions, it also requires sacrifice of those passions, in the most terrible way possible. The sacrifice necessary to become a Sith Lord, to reach a full potential in the Force that no other path can rival, is not one that you'll want your daughter to make. But if you let her continue, she'll make it anyway.

Right now, Kina Skywalker is on her way to the Galactic Senate, with a hope to murder Chancellor Palpatine. YOU MUST STOP HER FROM DOING THIS. She has good reasons, of course, flawless reasons. She'll tell you that Palpatine is evil, and she's right. She'll tell you that killing him will make the galaxy a better place, and she's still right. But it will change her mind in a way she can't recover from.

If your daughter kills Palpatine, he won't be the last person to die at her hands. She'll find more people, those who are planning horrible crimes, and she'll kill them to keep others safe. Over time, she'll get used to it. She might not question, as much, just how guilty someone is, as long as she knows it'll probably be worth it. Slowly, she'll start to draw more power for herself, and if someone stands in the way, they're a necessary sacrifice. Every Sith Lord in history has followed that path, and she'll be no exception.

And the final sacrifice to become a Sith... well, she'll make that too, telling herself that one life isn't as important as the many lives she can save with her new powers, no matter who that life is. She'll struggle with it, but she'll find the strength to complete it, in the end. The last step in order for her to become a Sith is to kill the person she loves the most. It's not just your daughter who's running out of time. It's you.

"...You don't look like that explanation helped with - whatever it is that you're worrying about - any."

"Well... maybe. I'm just... it's fine."

"...That response never means it's actually fine, Mom.  What happened?  Please.  You're important to me."

"It's... well..." She sighs. "Kina, when you shot him - and I'm not saying it was the wrong decision, just... what was going through your head, at the time?"

"That -"

Kina drums her fingers on the table.

"I wanted to arrest him.  Have him tried for treason, fraud, bribery, corruption, tax evasion maybe.  But if Count Dooku had already struck a killing blow - and, the biologist Sith Lord claimed to be able to heal any physical wound -

"The Republic's defenders needed to visibly defend it.

"If Count Dooku hadn't struck, I feel like I would have just stunned him again, though I can't be totally sure, because of hindsight bias.

"But I didn't want to kill him.  What I did there was - participate in his already-occurring death.  For optics reasons, and because losing your head means that you're very dead and if he was already dying I didn't want him coming back later somehow."

"I... I mean, I guess this is probably the most innocent way to kill someone, but that's not saying much! Kina, you... I... what are you going to, going to do, are you... someone else... would you..."

She starts to break down. Turning away, she shows Kina the message.

And Kina is hugging her mom, stat.

She has a very important counterargument, to what Palpatine said. Some of it she's already laid out, but she'll go through it all again.

She didn't want to kill even Sheev Palpatine, when she headed out to the Senate building.  She wanted to arrest him, to contain him - but not kill him.  Not even maim him.  She specifically took steps to preserve even his life, while his plans were doing their best to end hers and the Jedi Masters who were also there.

If she'd like to see the camera footage, and have Kina walk her through everything that happened...She can do that.

It'll suck, but she'll do that.

Because kriff no; Palpatine is simply wrong.

She can see the logic that he's spinning, but it's built on a flawed premise.

Kina wants even Jabba and Gardulla to live happily.

Maybe not unconstrainedly, but happily.

They can't do that if they're dead.

So Kina can't kill them.

Not if she has any other choice.

Palpatine denied her any other choice, at the end.  Or perhaps Dooku did.  She might have shot to stun, otherwise; it worked before.  A nontrivial part of her in the moment calculation, there, was that Dooku could not be the only person in the room to have visibly defended the Republic from the Sith Lord if the Republic, and the Jedi Order, were to stay even remotely intact.  This is yet more of Palpatine's bantha dung; he's trying to deprive her of support in self-fulfilling prophecies.

So kriff him.

"Mom?  You are hereby appointed chief 'tell-Kina-she's-staring-into-the-suns' person, and if you tell me that, I promise I'll listen.  Because he's not wrong that getting into high-pressure situations can change a person for the worse, and while I hope I have a better hold of my ethics than that, I really can't be sure; that's not a thing easily noticed from the inside.  ...Maybe holocrons?  I've certainly heard they can store - memory, personality, ethics, judgement.  Need to look that up..."

After another brief period of thought, Kina has something else come to mind, about why Palpatine's shpiel is lies.

"...It's never been about guilt or innocence.

"It's always been about whether someone can cooperate with others, to make something better than this horror.

"And he's defecting, all the way from the other side of the grave.

"I'd be impressed with his tenacity at being so very himself, if his self wasn't so terrible."

"You know what's funny?  The Sith continue to sabotage their own best chances at turning me.  Because maybe I wouldn't have noticed that so clearly before, but - if it's you at risk...I know I won't take unnecessary chances with my values."

Whenever Plagueis finds out about this - which he will, he finds out everything - he will be so pissed off. Of all the ideas Palpatine could have tried, this, and it didn't even work! What was his plan - was he trying to stop Kina from becoming a Sith? Why can't any Sith work together for five minutes without betraying each other? This is why they never conquer the galaxy!

Well, Plagueis did kill his own master. He'll ignore that part.

Shmi seems to have recovered a little. "Maybe you should get back to your training, Kina. I'll... I trust you, you know that? No matter what anyone says. You'll make the right decision, always."

Honestly, Palpatine's plan might have worked if Kina was running around dead on her feet for long enough for that seed of doubt to germinate in the background.

But she wasn't, and Kina was trying to hold tight to her anchors.

So she found out the plan and tore it to pieces.  Because kriff him.

He rolled the dice, and he lost the game.

"...I hope to prove worthy of that trust."

It's hugging time.

It's hugging time.