Dor'shan, Dorin [GFFA, Wednesday morning Fandom time]

[momslilassassin]

Ben didn't often feel like a complete outsider, but Dorin (even aside from being one of the ugliest planets Ben had ever seen) seemed bent on convincing him that he was.

It started with his breath mask that covered his face and attached to an extremely heavy backpack full of an oxygen-nitrogen mix that he could breathe (as opposed to the Dorin atmosphere of mostly helium that he couldn't), but left him with the distinct feeling of being chained to his luggage. It continued to the people: Kel Dors were tall and angular, with bald heads, sunken eyes, noses that looked like failed attempts to become beaks and large, toothless mouths that looked like they belonged on really old people. It bothered Ben to realize that how much it, well, bothered him. Maybe this trip was a good thing: too much time surrounded by humans had gotten him thinking only in terms of what humans found attractive.

Finally, the three of them stopped before the gates of a large estate that had been labeled on their map as the home of the Baran Do sages. Luke put on his serene Grand Master face, made sure his robes were smoothed, and headed in. Ben ran his fingers through his hair (trying not to mess up the suction on his face mask) and followed.

The entrance chamber was large and imposing, with black stone walls climbed more than six meter until they hit a blue-black stone ceiling that sparkled like a starry sky. At the very end of the room was a Kel Dor female standing on a raised platform who asked in a lightly lilting accent: "Who comes to us?"

"I am Luke Skywalker, a Jedi," Luke said. "These are my companions, Jedi Ben Skywalker and Andrew Wiggin."

"Famous names," she noted. "What is the business that brings you before us?"

"I'm investigating the travels of a former student of mine, Jacen Solo, trying to determine if he came here and what he might have learned," Luke replied.

"Also a famous name. I think these are questions for the Mistress of our order, Tila Mong, but there is a problem. How can I go before her and say the famous Luke Skywalker is here when I cannot prove you are he?"

A faintest trace of a smile appeared on Luke's face. "You could take my word for it. I do also resemble my holos, somewhat."

"As would any truly skillful imposter." She spread her arms, palms upraised. "I fear we are at an impasse, unless...I would stand no chance in combat with the true Luke Skywalker."

Luke smiled outright. "A useful solution, but impractical," he said agreeably. "You are not worthy to face me."

Ben's eyes widened. That was the most arrogant thing he'd ever heard his father say.

"Still," Luke continued "if a former apprentice of mine can best you, then the same conditions apply." He turned to Ben. "Son, go beat her up."

Ender	Ender's eyes had widened briefly, too-- and then Luke had called on Ben, and it had all kind of fallen into place. Now, said eyes of his were flicking towards the Jedi Knight in question with a combination of amusement and earnest encouragement. He had absolutely no doubt Ben was resourceful enough to manage this one, but he'd watch carefully.
Ben	It was taking Ben a little longer to put the pieces together. Right now he was staring at his father, wondering if maybe Valin Horn'd had a point about the Jedi being replaced by crazy imposters. "Yes, sir," he said faintly, climbing onto the platform to stand before the Kel Dor female, who gave Luke a scornful look. "I hope you have another child so that a healthy one can be in rotation while this one is bruised and crying."
Ender	"Do all the Kel Dor talk so much when they're challenged to a fight?" Ender wondered. "Unless you're trying to postpone it." Don't mind him putting some fuel on the fire there, Ben. You're welcome.
Ben	Ben gave Ender a "thanks a lot" look just before the Kel Dor female lashed out with a flat-fisted blow at his face. He swayed out of the way, missing get hit in the nose by centimeters, and trapped her wrist with his left hand and struck at her elbow with his right--a hard but not savage blow Ender would recognize from their spars that hyperextended her joint. He dropped into a defensive stance in time to meet her charge that ended in a solid kick to his midsection that sent him back a step but didn't make him fall. He spared a glance at Luke and Ender. Luke had his back to his fight and seemed to be picking at his nails.
Ender	Ender wasn't looking as casual; he had his eyes trained on Ben, observing every move carefully. But he didn't seem tense. The moment Ben looked anywhere near them, however, something in his expression seemed to narrow. Don't get concerned with what was going on here now, Ben-- that could be a rookie mistake.
Ben	The Kel Dor female advanced more carefully and Ben's attention focused immediately on her, echoing her stance. He didn't know how much longer he should continue to let her be the fight's aggressor, demonstrating her skills--the longer he spent learning her skills, the longer she had to develop an equally effective strategy against him--but he didn't want to walk blindly into an attack that she was ready for. She stopped well short of him and gestured as if shooing children, but the move was more sudden and forceful. And Forceful: a sudden wind threatened to push him off the platform, something he knew instinctively would end the fight. He braced himself using his own Force powers, stopping mere centimeters from the platform's edge. Then her attack tore the breath mask from his face. This was bad. If he spent time trying to get the mask back on, she'd assault him while he was distracted. If he did nothing about the mask, he'd be limited to the endurance the air in his lungs gave him for the next, oh, minute, based on his exertions. But he had to do one or the other, right?
Ender	In his training with Ben, Ender had been paying attention to the things he didn't teach, the things he seemed to compensate for just a little that weren't actually there -- symptoms of a fighting style that relied on the Force. Now, he was getting to see the other side of that, and the Battle School mind he'd all but buried took note, felt a brief surge of admiration for a clever attack. And registered it, so that if he had to fight someone else in this place, he would not be taken aback by use of the Force. (Honestly, if he had had Ben's experience with those fighting styles -- hell, even if he didn't -- he would have struck out much sooner, cut the Kel Dor off at the knees before the fight could have ever gotten to this point, if he could.) What he didn't feel - or didn't let himself feel - was concern. He hoped Ben would make the right choice and not leave himself open by going after the mask. If he could create an opportunity in that last minute somehow... On the sidelines, Ender shook his head briefly to clear it of military thinking, but it didn't quite work, and so he glanced at deceptively-idle Luke instead. He was playing his role pretty well.
Ben	Ben chose to do the third of two options. He shucked the heavy backpack and let the Force-gale toss it away to clunk into the wall, then ignoring his opponent's taunting and launched into an aggressive pattern of punch-kick-punch that was second nature to him after years of practice in the gym, first with Jacen, then with Ender. Because it was second nature, he could focus more on the discarded breath mask and canister pack, lifting in the the Force and bringing it to rest against the base of the platform. The Kel Dor female's fist hit him in the ribs, an attack he hadn't anticipated because his attention had been elsewhere. The rock-hard blow drove what little air he had left from his lungs. "Wake up, Jedi boy, whoever you are," she taunted. Ben felt a twinge of panic, but he knew it was just a physical reaction to not being able to breathe and shoved it to the side. She struck, he parried, exerting himself as little as possible while he slowly inched the pack up the side of the platform. "Would you like to rest?" she asked, all fake concern, and he glared, then yanked with the Force. The mask rig sailed over the lip of the platform and caught her behind the knees. She windmilled her arms, caught off balance, and Ben spun on one foot and kicked her squarely in the chest. She flew off the platform to land only a few steps from Ender and Luke.
Ender	Ender's lips quirked up just the tiniest bit. Then he glanced aside towards where the woman had landed, firmly outside of the combat zone. It was good to know Force-users could still be caught off-guard like that, though that hadn't been the whole reason why he'd smiled.
Ben	"You failed," the female asserted, eyes flashing. "You brought outside objects into play." Ben was too busy taking a couple deep breaths of oxygen to do anything more than roll his eyes for a second. "You brought it into play," he replied. "You yanked it off me and made an attack of it. I just followed your lead." She glowered at him but had no other retort. "I will communicate your request," she said to Luke, who gazed at her blankly. "Are you all done?" he asked Ben. "Yes, sir," he replied from the platform, donning his backpack again. "Did you win?" "I only knocked her down once, but it was off the platform." Luke's lips quirked up. "Well, that will have to do." Ben waited until the Kel Dor female had gone to summon her mistress before hopping off the platform and approaching Ender and Luke. "What was that about?"
Ender	"Tactics," Ender said, glancing at Luke, though he didn't think he'd made a wrong assessment. "From what little I've seen, they seem pretty set on the importance of rank and prestige here, and she was just a student. Like you."
Ben	"Close," Luke said with a smile. "It's rival school traditions. If I'd agreed to fight someone beneath my rank, I would be acknowledging that I wasn't the equal of her Master and we'd never see the leader of the Baran Do Sages." "Ohhhh," Ben replied. "So your student had to beat her student." "Which you did very well," Luke said. "And you got clean nails, so it was a win all around," Ben teased.
Ender	"Nice work with the breathing mask," Ender said, honestly. Then added: "But minus a few points for your own hygiene at the moment."
Ben & Luke	"Thanks," Ben said dryly as his opponent returned and gestured them through a door. "Mistress Tila Mong will see you now." The room they were led into was must less showy than the entrance chamber had been. Tila Mong rose from her desk to shake their hands and tell them to be seated. "We heard with sympathy and misgivings the news of your recent unpleasantness." Ben tried not to snort at that diplomatic spin on what had happened. "Thank you," Luke said. "Because of those events, it would be inappropriate to refer to me as or give me any of the benefits that would come to me as Grand Master of the Jedi Order." "Then we shall limit ourselves to the benefits due to the man who re-founded the Jedi and helped break the hold the Empire had on the galaxy," she replied and Ben decided he liked her a lot. "Part of the...unpleasantness...was due to the actions of Jacen Solo," Luke continued softly. "I'm trying to retrace his steps prior to the Second Galactic Civil War, and he demonstrated a Force technique a while back that I believe he might have learned from you." She nodded. "He was here nine years ago, when Koro Ziil, who has since accepted death, was Master of the Baran Do."
Ender	That... was an interesting turn of phrase, and Ender tilted his head. He briefly considered whether it was his right to speak up here, considering Luke had seniority - then decided he didn't care. He wasn't looking to get recognised as a force of any importance here (much the opposite) but there was no reason why he couldn't interject. "Accepted death?" he asked. "Please excuse my interruption - I'm new to this part of the galaxy, and I don't wish to misunderstand anything." It could, after all, be a cultural thing; the only reason he even felt it was worth asking was because it had pinged on his intuition. She didn't make it sound like a regular suicide.
Ben	Tila Mong didn't seem to take offense. "To accept death among the Baran Do is to decide your time has come, to make preparations, to say farewell, and to die. It is a very peaceful end: we offer up the life within us to merge with the Force. Life flees, the body perishes. It is a technique known to the Masters of our Order." Luke nodded. "Was that one of the techniques Jacen learned?" "I think not. He was more interested in the areas of our specialty--extension of the senses, detection of danger, detection of evil intent. Also of keeping himself from detection." She lowered her eyes. "We thought he was a good man. We didn't hesitate to teach him our methods." "He was a good man," Ben said firmly.
Ender	"There was no shame in teaching him," Ender agreed. "Now, or then." He tried not to say too much - this was Ben and Luke's pursuit for knowledge above all, though he was soaking up everything they had to say about Jacen.
Ben	"Would it be possible for me to learn the techniques Jacen learned?" Luke asked. Tila Mong gave him a direct stare. "Would it be safe?" "I'm not sure I know what you mean," Luke replied. "Our observation, thankful distant, has been that Jacen Solo became a nryghat, a creature of nightmares, but he was not always so. Could it be that the methods we taught him, developed for our species for our own use, could have affected the mind of a human in a damaging way?" "It's...possible," Luke admitted slowly. "Then you should not be subjected to the same danger," Tila Mong said. "If Jacen Solo, a very powerful Jedi, were transformed by what we taught him and did all that he did, what might Luke Skywalker, the most famous, most powerful and most experienced living Jedi, do if he were similarly affected?" "Teach me instead," Ben blurted.
Ender	This constant-- obsession, fascination, fact-of-life, what was it? --for the dark side - light side continuum, it seemed to be in everything here, Ender observed. He did not interrupt them this time, because doing so would probably derail the whole conversation into a matter of concrete philosophy. But to think that a single lesson, an act, a teaching could sway someone into a life of evil, like kicking someone across a line and dubbing them unsalvageable-- it did not sit well to him. It was too simple, and he had to restrain his frustration at seeing this treated this way. Fear-- that's where it came from. And a chicken-or-egg issue that Ender hadn't cracked yet. With that understanding, he felt his irritation sinking back to neutral.
Ben	Ben picked up on Ender's flash of irritation, but misinterpreted the reason behind it. "If I change the way Jacen did," he said, guessing that Ender was frustrated by his charge into something potentially reckless, "well, I'm not as powerful as he was or Dad is. I'm no danger. Well, less of a danger. My father could find a way to cure me." Luke shook his head. "I'm sorry, Ben. It needs to be someone as educated in as many subtleties of the Force as possible, and that means me." "But if you turn the way Jacen did--" Ben shoved back the panic through force of will. "It took Jacen years to become Darth Caedus, and in that time he exhibited signs we missed or ignored...signs we're much more attuned to now. If something happens to my thinking processes, I suspect I'll notice. And if I don't, you will."
Ben & Luke	"No, Dad," Ben argued. "What if it's sudden and total? What if you're Luke Skywalker today and Darth Starkiller tomorrow?" "Then it would be your job to find a way to stop me," Luke said. "Even kill me." "No." "Ben," Luke said, shifting his entire attention to his son, "I don't think anything like that will happen. But if it does, you need to be a Jedi first. To put personal loyalties behind your responsibility to the innocent, to the Force. If you can't promise me you can do that, you may need to return to Fandom."
Ender	Again, Ender couldn't help but wonder how much havoc this insistence on perfect duality had wreaked upon the Jedi-- no, not just the Jedi, but Force-users throughout history. The humans, at least, did not seem to be biologically much different from the ones Ender knew, and while half his old friends had gone on to become would-be world-conquerors, he could never think of any of them as especially evil. Even though in some ways, some of them were doing exactly as Jacen had. But if you did live inside the Jedi philosophy, then this was more important than anything, and that's why he didn't allow himself to get annoyed again. Instead, he let his eyes drift from Luke to Ben and back, already sure what the latter's answer would be, and shifted his stance a little to underscore the fact he was playing the quiet rock role in this conversation. Moments like this, he missed Val. Or even having Jane around ubiquitously like she had been for the older Ender.
Ben	Ben stared at his father, knowing that Luke completely meant what he said. Attachment, the ultimate stumbling block for his family. The things Jacen and his grandfather had been attached to had meant more than all of the other innocent lives in the galaxy, and they'd become monsters. His father's attachment to his mother, though without the galactically tragic consequences, had put him out of Ben's reach when he'd needed him most. Ben's own attachment to Ender, at least in one future, had left him, if not evil, at least a lonelier, more cynical and drunker version of himself than he liked. Would he let his attachment to his father stop him from nipping a potential catastrophe in the bud? Would he have a leg to stand on arguing with Fandom's Jaina about her choices regarding Jacen if he did? "All right, Dad," he said softly. "Promise me," Luke insisted. "You have my word. As a Jedi." Every word of that sentence twisted his heart. Luke sat back, satisfied, and the Mistress of the Baran Do nodded as well. "Return tomorrow at dawn," she told them.
Ender	Well, if Ben wanted lessons in detaching himself from anyone who could possibly know him, warp him or do him harm, he had the resident expert standing right here in the room with him. Ender nodded respectfully at Tila Mong, and didn't let his eyes slide back towards Ben until the last of what went for pleasantries in this situation had been exchanged.
Ben	Ben waited until they were halfway back to the ship before he could bring himself to speak again. "I think I'd rather be tortured again than go through another conversation like that," he said, kicking a nearby rock.
Luke	"You can only kill me under certain circumstances," Luke said, trying to lighten the mood a bit. "Not just because I insist you eat your vegetables."
Ender	"Once you start stretching up those boundaries, you'll never stop," Ender agreed. While his tone was equally light, it had a strange sense of sharpness hidden away in it somewhere.
Ben	Ben snorted softly. "Well, if you start to feel evil, tell me as soon as possible. Don't wait to cut my hand off first." Their family was strange.
Ender	"He's hoping to go for the keeping-his-limbs record," Ender added. His own family also had a terribly morbid sense of humor.
Luke	Luke chuckled. "Someone should try for it," he said. "Did either of you notice she was lying?" He'd noticed that while Ender didn't have the Force, he was remarkably perceptive.
Ender	"She was being very careful," Ender volunteered, after a moment. He hadn't been sure, really, but he'd learned to rely on his intuition early.
Ben	Ben nodded. "Kind of like she was trying not to get us to notice the pink bantha in the corner." Not that he had excessive amounts of experience in that technique. "Nah," he decided with a grin, "you're imagining things. Masters of ancient orders who study the Force never have secrets. Never have shameful events in their families..."
Luke	"Ben, I think your words alone might turn me evil," Luke replied.

[OOC: preplayed with endsthegame and based off of Aaron Allston's Outcast. NFB due to distance, but open for emails and phone calls if you're interested!]