You didn't get compliments from Roz Coralix. Not the pandering kind, at least. She didn't hold your hand, and tell you what was good about yourself, or explain gently why she felt the way she felt: she smacked you up the side of the head, and used her stubborn bluntness to smash your flawed opinions to pieces, and beat her perceived reality through your idiot skull. Her only concession to civility was to brand Soto's doubts as an act of being humble, rather than calling him out for allowing his opinion of himself to differ so drastically from what she considered to be fact.

She wasn't wrong, per se, not when she weaponised her perspective in the way that she did. He knew how to fight this kind of war. He knew how the Rebellion had fought before it became an Alliance, and how you took the almost nothing that you had, and somehow turned it into exactly what was needed. For Soto, the insurgency had always been an exercise in abstract engineering: diagnose the fault, divine the solution, and fix as best you could with the tools you had available. Maybe that wasn't anything unique or special, maybe that was just his words for the same thing that everyone did. After all, if you stretched the definition and squinted hard enough, diagnosis and repair was a layman's description of medicine, social reform, education, and more. He might not know enough about biology or social injustice to quite understand what a fix looked like, but he supposed that was why you didn't rebel alone.

"Lets say I do this."

He regretted the words immediately, because despite the way he dressed it up as a hypothetical, he knew Roz would see it as a breach in his defenses, and you'd be a fool to bet against Roz Coralix when she knew that victory was within reach. He sighed, throwing a warning glare in her direction before she decided to start celebrating her win early.

"You realise that I wouldn't be able to do this without you, right? I can't Captain this Resistance of yours without a navigator to help point me in the right direction. If you think I'm just going to let you off the hook to fight and crack heads like the old days, you're mistaken. If I have to tumble down into this Selonian warren of leadership and misery, I'm dragging you down with me."

It was a playful threat, but also a warning. As much as it might have seemed like a jest, Soto meant his words. You didn't simply walk into a room full of rebels and assume command. Roz would have to vouch for him. She'd be gambling her reputation and the Resistance's trust in her on Soto's ability to lead: not just to make the right decisions, but to sway the free-thinking members of the Resistance into agreeing to follow them. These weren't soldiers of the Alliance, who'd ask how high when he ordered them to jump: any one of them could walk away at any time, any one of them could take issue with his choices and opinions. Any one of them could bring this whole ordeal crashing down, or summon Imperial death and destruction to rain down on their heads. Roz was asking him to stand up and challenge the Empire head on, but in doing so, by standing behind him, she turned herself into the barrier shielding him from anyone who might try to stab him in the back.

Soto's tone shifted, subtly, a new edge of gentle sentiment creeping into his words.

"You're willing to risk your life for Corellia, and that's damned noble, but are you sure that I'm the hand you want to double down on?"