It seemed that the Force truly did favor Skywalkers.
The relocation of the fugitive aristocrat from his den of vice to a small one-story house on the outskirts of Anchorhead, accompanied by an unexpected salary increase, had come at exactly the right moment.
I now effectively possessed a safe house, a place where a former Inquisitor on the run could be hidden without attracting attention.
The girl herself had spent the past two days mostly sleeping and eating whenever she was awake.
Vuz, whose knowledge of psychology was admittedly basic, claimed she was suffering from severe emotional exhaustion accumulated over many years and could explain little beyond that.
This was clearly something I should have understood better.
Unfortunately, the heavy look Qui-Gon was giving me suggested that I understood far less than I thought.
For perhaps the first time ever, the Force Ghost had appeared somewhere other than the Lars homestead.
That alone was enough to make me nervous.
Reva Sevander had been a Jedi youngling in the Temple when Order 66 had occurred.
The massacre within the Jedi Temple had happened twelve years ago, in the sixteenth year after the Great ReSynchronization.
It was now the twenty-eighth year after the Great ReSynchronization.
Seven years remained until the Battle of Yavin.
Assuming that battle would even happen in this universe.
Reva had somehow survived, losing her entire world in a single day as the Jedi Temple burned around her.
Later she was taken in by the organization she called the Inquisitorius, where she was given the title of Third Sister.
The first warning bell rang immediately.
If I remembered correctly, Disney’s Rebels-era Inquisitors had used similar numerical designations.
I had never finished watching that series, but things could not possibly be that simple.
Her training there had been brutal.
Not particularly effective, but merciless.
The former youngling had fallen deeply into the Dark Side while simultaneously dedicating herself to a single goal: revenge against Darth Vader, the man who had led the slaughter in the Temple.
Afterward she devoted herself wholeheartedly to mastering her new profession.
She even managed to kill at least one fugitive Jedi Knight, earning favor within the organization dedicated to hunting and exterminating Jedi.
The Inquisitors apparently were not especially successful at their work.
Or perhaps Darth Vader simply harvested most of the surviving Jedi himself.
Eventually their investigations led them to Obi-Wan Kenobi, who in turn brought them to Tatooine.
Reva stubbornly pursued his trail while the rest of the Inquisitorius eventually departed, satisfied after hanging some unfortunate Padawan.
Those were the Dark Side presences I had sensed back then, the ones Tank had spoken about when Qui-Gon had started giving me his emergency crash course in Force Push.
Kenobi was eventually lured out.
Somehow Reva managed to capture Leia Organa and hold her hostage.
For a brief time she even became the acting leader of the whole operation.
Then she attempted to carry out her grand plan and attacked the biological father of my current body with a lightsaber.
Naturally, Vader crushed her.
Yet somehow she survived.
Thanks to Rebel incompetence, she acquired a recording containing fragments of a conversation between Kenobi and Bail Organa.
Through it, she learned of my existence.
Then she flew here.
Tried to kill me.
And ended up getting beaten by a Skywalker once again.
Well, beaten wasn’t exactly the right word.
Considering everything that had come to light afterward, I had clearly won on points.
Then came the moment when I instinctively invaded her mind through the Force.
Everything after that was the result.
“Luke,” Qui-Gon interrupted my thoughts, “you must understand that you possess both a great Gift and a great Curse.” “Uh…” I awkwardly removed my hands from Reva’s head.
For some reason she had fallen asleep half an hour earlier with her head resting in my lap.
“I mean, sure, she’s pretty, but…” “I am speaking about your ability to influence others through the Force,” the Force Ghost replied, completely ignoring the joke.
“To enter their minds.
To influence their thoughts and decisions.
To shape them according to your will.
It is a rare gift, one that does not appear in every generation of Jedi.
Most who possessed it were either weak in the Force or used it unconsciously, influencing those around them without realizing what they were doing.” “But don’t Jedi—” I caught myself before saying something I should not have known.
“Reva mentioned abilities like that.
Can’t Jedi affect the minds of others?” “Most can only learn basic mental techniques capable of influencing weak minds, and only briefly.
People like you affect those around them deeply and permanently, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Many became great Jedi, or equally great Sith, throughout history.
Revan, who was both a great Jedi and a great Sith, who saved the Republic twice and nearly destroyed it.
Meetra Surik, known as the Exile, who restored the Jedi Order from the brink of extinction.
Lord Hoth, who led the Army of Light during the final years of the New Sith Wars.
All of them possessed an extraordinary affinity for mental techniques, to the point that much of their influence operated subconsciously.” “What did the Jedi Order do to help people like them control it?” I asked, genuinely surprised.
I had never heard anything about this in any source I knew.
After a brief silence, Qui-Gon answered.
“Following the Ruusan Reformation, the Order concealed the existence of this gift.
Only a few dozen individuals in each generation knew of it.
The Sith had supposedly been destroyed, and the Order feared the emergence of another Revan.
Another Hoth.
Your gift came to be viewed as something marked by the Dark Side, though that belief was false.
The Order did not welcome those who possessed this ability.
My own Master told me about people like you, but at the time I paid little attention.” “So what am I supposed to do?
If the Jedi find out, will they kill me?” “I do not know whether anyone besides you still lives,” the Force Ghost replied.
The lie was obvious.
He was clearly still communicating with Obi-Wan and Yoda.
“You must learn to control your gift and use it only for good.
Think carefully.
Have strange things happened to people toward whom you wished harm?” “One of my teachers attacked security guards after I wished something bad would happen to him,” I admitted, referring to the Agricultural Academy instructor who had met an unfortunate end.
Then something occurred to me.
“Wait.
You’re not going to forbid me from using it?” “You cannot stop using it.” Qui-Gon shook his head.
“It is part of you forever.
I cannot forbid you from being what you are.
You are alive.
I am not.” “Wow.” I stared at him.
That was an astonishingly unorthodox attitude for a Jedi.
“So I accidentally broke Reva’s mind too?” “Unlike your teacher, she was fortunate.” Again, Qui-Gon paused before continuing.
“In essence, you gutted her mind with the Force without understanding what you were doing, at a moment when she was already in a profound crisis.
She survived.
She will live as she did before, without madness or insanity.
However, her life is now centered entirely around you.
Most likely she has become completely focused on you, viewing you as the purpose of her existence.
Similar defensive mechanisms manifested in young Rolan, the future Lord Hoth, when he tore through the minds of those around him.
At least among the ones who survived.
You must use your gift responsibly, or it will become a curse.” “Holy kriff.” That was all I could manage.
The explanation clarified the second half of the former Inquisitor’s story.
After awakening from my mental assault aboard a ship carrying her away from Tatooine, she had been placed under the supervision of a pilot named Ferus.
Ferus Olin, most likely.
He promised to cut her down with a lightsaber if she returned to Dark Side activities and watched her closely for six months while she recovered in an anonymous clinic on Alderaan.
Reva, having suddenly reevaluated her entire life after it had once again been shattered by my interference, developed a desire to atone for her sins by protecting me.
Fortunately, she was smart enough not to tell her jailer that.
Instead, she spent six months convincing him that she had changed, been rehabilitated, and was perfectly sane.
During those same six months of Jedi-Alderaanian therapy and reeducation, her desire to protect gradually transformed into a desire to serve.
Honestly, I still had no idea how that happened.
Apparently her already fragile psyche, pieced together from fragments of incomplete Jedi and Sith teachings, simply collapsed under my influence and reassembled itself according to what I had subconsciously desired while standing on the edge of death.
After being released from the clinic, though not from Alderaan itself, she spent another six months near Ferus under equally careful supervision.
At least she had someone to spar with while learning new skills.
At one point Olin departed on some mission and asked her to watch over Leia.
When he returned, he finally declared that the now-reformed Sevander was free.
Reva then spent an entire year emptying the caches she had hidden during her time as an Inquisitor and reconstructing the trail that would lead her back to me.
The kind-hearted Jedi had apparently made her forget that everything had happened on Tatooine.
As a result, she had to follow the trail from the beginning.
After searching the entire planet and somehow avoiding Obi-Wan’s notice, she eventually found me and chose her moment to reveal herself.
What truly bothered me was how Ferus Olin, Revan, and the Exile could coexist in the same universe as Disney’s numbered Inquisitors.
Something about that was undeniably strange.
Unfortunately, I still knew far too little about the world I had already spent thirteen years living in.
I needed to become more proactive.
Time was running out.
“I can no longer decide what the Order will become,” Qui-Gon repeated, voicing the same lesson he had taught me countless times before.
“But your responsibility has grown even greater.
You cannot abandon those whom you have influenced.” “We are responsible for those we have tamed,” I said quietly.
“Crude, but accurate,” my teacher agreed.
“Now try to remember.
When was the first time you felt what you experienced when you touched Reva’s mind?” “Well…” After a moment’s thought, I decided to throw a certain hermit under the speeder.
“When I was younger, I accidentally hid myself in the Force while playing with it.
Shortly afterward, old Ben Kenobi appeared and used the Force on Uncle Owen to make him let him into my room.
I remember that.” I wondered whether Qui-Gon would finally give his former Padawan the scolding he deserved.
Or perhaps his philosophy would prevail even here.
Either way, I had a great deal to think about.
I could not remember any version of Luke Skywalker possessing abilities like these.
Unless they had never manifested strongly enough to be noticed, functioning passively as Qui-Gon claimed they did for most people.
Honestly, Luke’s life, especially in the Expanded Universe, fit the pattern perfectly.
He constantly accumulated friends and lovers with incredible ease.
He persuaded strangers effortlessly.
People repeatedly overlooked his mistakes and failures.
From a Doylist perspective, that could simply be attributed to protagonist privilege.
But I no longer doubted that the world around me was real.
“You must control yourself, Luke,” Qui-Gon continued.
“You must use your power for good.
Now and in the future, you bear responsibility for those you influence.
If you use your gift carelessly, it will become a curse.” “Master, does that mean I can use this ability and still be a Jedi?” “You cannot avoid using it,” the Jedi replied.
“It is your nature, as fundamental as breathing.
You must not repeat the mistakes of my generation.
Do not fear yourself when what is needed is self-control and proper training.
Mental influence is not the worst thing that can happen to a sentient being.
Falling to the Dark Side is far worse.
A galaxy ruled by Sith is a greater evil than a Jedi who fully realizes the potential of a rare gift.” ———- The Force grows stronger with every power stone.