Kresst paused for just a few seconds as he glanced over Mevenn's lightsaber, which was rather large in his hands. He took another step forward, craning his head up to make eye contact with her. "Those are all very easy words to say right here, in this ship, far from any danger. How many hours have you been here in this room thinking about it? How long have you been imagining all the other ways you could have reacted, all the incapacitating attacks you might have used at different parts in the fight? Now, compare that to how much time you [i]actually[/i] had to think in the moment. Seconds? Less? Can you honestly say to yourself that these plans you are coming up with after hours of thought would have been just as reasonable to carry out in the heat of the moment? The clones were professional soldiers too: deadly and efficient. And they were trying to kill you. Just one blaster bolt to the wrong spot is all it would have taken, and they would have known how to punish any mistake you made."

Extending his hands upwards, Kresst offered Mevenn's lightsaber back to her, if for no other reason than to bring her closer to him for a moment. He did not often take any issue with his own height, but if there was one annoyance it caused him, it was that it made him seem more distant, literally and figuratively, during these sorts of conversations. Some of the emotion he might want to convey could be lost. "I haven't seen the recording, but I have to imagine you tried to convince them to stop. And I have to imagine they refused. The men you considered your brothers, who you fought with for years, were not the men who tried to kill you. They would not have done that to you of their own will. Whatever twisted their mind destroyed who they were, and there is no guarantee it was even reversible to begin with. Just take a moment and exchange your roles; pretend that it was you who had lost your rational mind and suddenly tried to kill them without cause. Would you have expected them to take such great risks to incapacitate you, even if it meant their own deaths?"