Brilliant, on a curve of Skywalker

The good news: Ben was getting a home-cooked meal for the first time in forever. The bad news: Aunt Leia was making her feared spiceloaf. He sat down on the comfortable white sofa in his aunt and uncle's living room, flipped the channel to the Perre Needmo Newshour, and reached down--well, less down now than over, Allana's pet nexu had gotten big since he'd been gone--to scratch Anji's ears.

Allana plopped down next to him and handed him a cup of hot cocoa. "It's traditional," she informed him solemnly.

"Traditions are important," he agreed, smiling. "Did you bring enough for Ender, too? He'll be here in a second."

She tilted her head, getting used to feeling Ender's presence through the Force. "More like a few minutes," she corrected, "but yeah, we've got plenty."

"We'll need it to choke down Aunt Leia's spiceloaf," he murmured under his breath. He was feeling the knots in his shoulders gradually start to unravel. For however brief a stop this was going to turn out to be, it was nice to be back home.

( Let's watch the news and make fun of Leia's cooking! )

( Where Ender and Luke have a little chat. )

( Where Ender and Ben say goodbye. )

Dathomir, Ben thought a little darkly, was picking up where the Maw had left off. First they'd been hassled by a low-level bureaucrat for even being on the planet, then they'd run into one of the Dathomiri witches who'd used Force lightning to short-circuit their lightsabers, comm equipment, and unfortunately, the speeders they'd been riding on.

So now they were tromping through the rain forest on foot, following the blood trail that Luke had put on the Sith girl and trying to avoid the increasingly devious traps the Dathomiri witch was placing in front of them. Ben was currently meditating while Luke and Ender stood watch, trying to get a better idea of where their little shadow was hiding.

He reached into the Force and found...Aunt Leia. He let out a sigh of relief and set her a Force-pulse of reassurance--the mental equivalent of a smile--and then looked around for the Dathomiri witch. He found her nearby: stringing cord to turn a patch of poorly balanced boulders on a hillside into a dangerous deadfall. She was unhappy about it, Ben could tell, upset that this trap was so much more dangerous than the other ones, but she wanted, needed them to go away.

He opened up his eyes again. "We still need to head northwest?" he asked his father, who nodded. "Then we need to watch out for rockfalls." He smiled at Ender. "I have our tactic all prepared: when the rocks fall, we get out of the way."

( The exploits of Ben Skywalker, master tactician, continue! )

[OOC: Taken and tweaked from Aaron Allston's Backlash in the Fate of the Jedi series. NFI, NFB, say hello to Vestara, everyone.]

Ben pointed with his right hand to the building coming up next to them as he and Ender zipped through traffic in Ben's birthday speeder. "That's where we're heading," he said. "Aunt Leia's going to meet us at the docking bay." He smiled wryly. "We can watch the Senate debate for a while and if you still have an appetite, we can find some lunch after."

[OOC: For the other quiet repressed one. NFB due to distance.]

Ben sat as unobtrusively as possible in the room as Jaina made her case to the Council and to her parents. “Mom and Dad, I’m sorry for this,” she said, looking them straight in the eyes, “but I think we have to go after Jacen. I think it’s our duty.”

“What do you mean ‘go after’?” Saba asked when it was clear that Han and Leia weren’t going to speak. “This one knowz you have been training with Boba Fett, but that has not worked before.”

(  I mean eliminate. I mean hunt down and kill. )

[OOC: Dialogue stolen from Troy "Whack Off More Limbs!" Denning and his book Invincible. NFB, NFI, etc., etc.]

Ben sat in the tiny room that had been set aside for him on Endor, packing up the few belonging he’d left there. The next time he returned to this galaxy, the Jedi would be somewhere else: too many people knew about this place.

The days that had passed since Centerpoint he’d spent productively: asking questions, trying to get a sense of who was on what side these days. Finding out how his father was really doing. And figuring out where Tahiri was. That answer had not made him happy at all, for a number of reasons he wasn’t about to share with anyone in this galaxy.

Or, he reflected as he folded up a robe, any other galaxy.

Most of his questions had been concerned with exactly what had happened with Alema, and why his father thought she’d killed Mara. And as many times as he went over the pieces in his head, they still didn’t fit together for him into a coherent whole.

( Ben's smarter than he thinks. )

[OOC: Dialogue taken and tweaked from Karen Traviss's Revelation. NFB, NFI, OOC is love.]