Brilliant, on a curve of Skywalker

A mattress had been bought for guests, the house had been scrubbed from top to bottom and then bottom to top, and Ben, even though he knew that Luke wouldn't care in the slightest, had stressed out about what they'd have for dinner for the last three days.

Now he was a half-hour early for the time his father had sent him for the portal, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet.

He was excited and terrified in almost equal measure.

Sounds like a fun vacation, huh?

It was all over, or at least as over as it was going to get for a while. Their Fandom friends and the Jeesh returned to their separate universes after Jaina's wedding. Allana's identity was no longer a secret, Wynn Dorvan was running the galaxy, the Jedi were leaving Coruscant permanently, and Luke, well. The meddroids said that Luke would never fully recover from his attack on Abeloth. Ben tried not to think about that.

Ben was trying not to think at all.

He was clearing out the last of the stuff in his room when a hollow ache started to build inside, and then his vision narrowed and went completely black. He thought for a minute that he might be passing out--he'd certainly done enough of that recently--but there was no dizziness or nausea to suggest that the vision change was the result of a concussion. He braced a hand on the nearest wall and stood waiting for his sight to return.

Instead, stars and nebulae began to appear in the darkness, rushing toward him at extreme velocity, but with no noticeable red-shift and without spreading apart as they drew closer. He began to feel apprehensive and disoriented, as though he were traveling through a galaxy far different from the one his parents had known.

He saw Coruscant mottled by patches of flickering red flame and black banks of drifting smoke, and beyond it there was a legion of dark silhouettes rising from a shadow-cloaked world, fanning out across the galaxy to meet a much smaller force of luminous shapes.

He saw a pair of tiny disembodied eyes floating through the darkness, collecting wisps of drifting gas and specks of loose dust, in its endless patience swaddling itself in the stuff of cold matter.

And Ben saw his cousin Allana, a young girl sitting cross-legged in front of a white throne, playing with her pet nexu while a small circle of Jedi fought a desperate battle at the foot of the dais, holding off an endless onslaught of beings. There were dark silhouettes and bejeweled women and horned aliens, and every so often a gray tentacle, which would appear on the steps to the dais and attempt to slip past unnoticed before a lightsaber descended to send it skittering back into the darkness.

Ben felt a sudden, overwhelming, flash of anger. All of the pain of the last few years--the last month--and nothing had changed. The Jedi would forever fight the darkness, Abeloth would go on feinting and parrying, the Sith would peek back out from whatever rock they'd gone to ground under...it was pointless.

He glanced at the faces around Allana, looking for familiar ones, and to his surprise didn't see his father. Luke fought the darkness as easily as he breathed, and a Jedi Order without Luke Skywalker was one that, while inevitable, still took Ben's breath away. Ender had pointed out many times that the Order needed to refocus, learn to work without a Skywalker, but a vision of that as reality was both painful and a bit of a relief.

His vision gradually returned to the here and now instead of the future, and he was still feeling off-balance and angry. Why did they fight so hard and lose so much when it never changed anything?

He glanced down at his lightsaber and a thought occurred to him. He could change himself...

( Let's have a heart-to-heart with Ender! )

( Four years of Ben's life have led up to this moment. )

[OOC: Borrowed, then modified, from Troy Denning's Apocalpyse. Preplayed with the fabulous endsthegame, and concluding our two week spam of your flist!]

It had been three days since the frigate Redstar had dropped Luke, Jaina and the Fandom folks at the entrance to the Maw, and that meant it had been three days since Luke had first been handed the crumpled flimsi he now held in his hands. On the flimsi was the text of a short S-thread message from Corran Horn, which the Redstar’s communications officer had retrieved as soon as the frigate emerged from hyperspace outside the Maw.

SOLOS OUT SAFE WITH AMELIA.
JEDI WARV KILLED IN SITH AMBUSH LED BY VESTARA KHAI.
FALCON CRIPPLED, BUT TARGET HEALTHY FOR NOW.

The message was only three short lines, but it had done more to incapacitate Luke than any of the wounds he had suffered fighting Abeloth. He had trusted Vestara—had even been the one to persuade the other Masters she would be a valuable asset inside the Temple during the battle against the Sith. He could not have been more wrong. His mistake had cost Bazel Warv his life and—assuming he was correctly interpreting Corran’s conspicuous use of the word “target”—nearly gotten Allana killed.

Now, after three days of meditation, he continued to find himself mired in doubt, wondering what else he might be wrong about, and reluctant to trust his own judgment.

And he was running out of time. The Rude Awakening, a sleek little pinnace infiltrator manufactured for the space marines’ elite Void Jumper units, was already approaching the choke point where Sinkhole Station had once hung suspended in a binary black-hole system. Luke could see the accretion whorls of the two black holes with his naked eye, a pair of fire-rimmed disks centered in the forward viewport, and he could feel Ben ahead, on Abeloth’s hidden planet, reaching out to him in the Force, urging him to hurry.

And still Luke didn’t know what to do, whether he was following the will of the Force by following Ben—or defying it.

( Ender and Luke have a chat about destiny. )

( Luke learns about how Tara's magic works )

( And people check in on Ender. )

[OOC: Preplayed with the fantabulous life_inshadow, endsthegame and hoorayimrich.]

Ender and Ben's house in the Lake Country of Naboo was as spotless and welcoming as always, even if neither inhabitant was currently home. A bit of tinkering by Ben in a moment of boredom allowed the visitors access to the house via face recognition, and the fridge was full of food, if not exactly the color or consistency Earth folks were used to.

( Welcome, friends! Chat awkwardly until Ben arrives! )

( And then Ben tells you what the problem is. Four letters, starts with S, isn't shit. )

--------------------------------------

The ship that brought Ben and his friends from Earth from Naboo to Coruscant docked smoothly and lowered the landing platform into a sea of sentient beings of all colors, sizes, and number of heads.

Ben, his hair a bright, terrifying yellow gelled up into a double row of spikes, and wearing the latest in Coruscanti fashion (which, unfortunately, meant a skintight black jumpsuit with shiny sequins glued onto it) leaned in to point to a Coruscanti Immigration inspector, his zero-g motility pack emitting small hisses as he twirled in slow-motion cartwheels, demanding identichips and ten-credit “expediting fees.” Behind him followed a pair of Bothan escorts, their snouts wrinkling in disdain each time their superior solicited another bribe. "Those are the guys we have to get past," he said with a tiny smile. "No problem, right? Just remember, no violence. We're not trying to get any attention. Give the guy your documents and any bribe he asks for and meet me on the other side."

( Everyone else has Cunning Disguises too! )

( And then Ben, Tony, Valentine and Vestara pay a call on a Sith pretending to be a Senator-- )

( --While Tara and Petra look for Ender. )

[OOC: Adapted from Troy Denning's Apocalypse (cheery title, yes?), and preplayed with the wonderful life_inshadow, hoorayimrich,, endsthegame and a_demosthenes.]

“They took Leia,” Han said without preamble.

Luke stared at him. Han was contacting him via hologram, and he stood there in miniature, holding an Allana who was actually considerably calmer than her grandfather.

“What? Who took her?”

By now Ben, copiloting, and Vestara, engrossed in reading a datapad Natua had prepared for her, were paying attention.

“The GAS. Those sleemos took her away on a whole slew of trumped-up charges. You know about the anti-Jedi legislation that’s being enacted? And the whole news slant?”

“I’ve heard some,” Luke said. “But this is ridiculous. What were the charges?”

“Conspiracy to overthrow the rightfully elected government,” Han snarled. “Espionage. And get this. Spice smuggling.”

( Because that makes sense )

( Paging Tony Stark-- )

( Hello, Petra. How'd you get this number? )

( After some time to think, Ben realized he had some logistics to take care of. Time to call Ender's TA! )

( And finally Ben had to call Ender's sister. All the flailing. All of it. )

[OOC: Taken and turned into a paper swan from Christie Golden's Ascension. Preplayed with the stupendous hoorayimrich, life_inshadow, a_demosthenes, and endsthegame as Petra.]

Ben could think of about ten thousand planets--including Hoth, Tatooine, Ziost, and the stupid hole the Hidden One had lived in--before he'd have voluntarily set foot on before Dromund Kaas, a planet so seeped in the dark side that Luke had erased it from star charts and general Jedi records for the safety of the public.

But here he was anyway, stomping through the humid guck with his father, his cousin, and Vestara, searching for Abeloth and trying not to lose his lunch because of the physical and spiritual nausea he was feeling.

“I don’t like this,” Luke said without preamble an hour into their search. “More than half a dozen places searched and no one’s found anything. Nothing at all.”

“Well,” Ben offered, “the galaxy is a fairly large place.”

“Of course,” Luke said, “but we should still be finding something. If nothing else, I’m surprised Abeloth hasn’t taunted us in some way. She needs an audience. This absolute inability to find anything at all, about either her and Ship or the Lost Tribe—” He shook his head. “It’s not adding up. She’s not hiding from us because she’s afraid. She’s hiding because she’s planning something. Combine that with the same inexplicable disappearance of the Lost Tribe—I’m willing to bet that they’re working together. They’re planning something. And when Abeloth and the Lost Tribe drop out of sight to plan something—it’s going to be very big, and very bad.”

Ben sighed. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to find them here.”

( Sith are drama queens, news at 11. )

[OOC: Adapted from Christie Golden's Ascension. Warnings for NPC death and soooo much scenery chewing.]

Tony had returned to Fandom a few days ago, and it was soon going to be time to catch a transport to Coruscant to face the Council. Ben had tried to repress the stress of that upcoming conversation, which meant that his nightmares had gotten steadily worse over the last few nights.

Last night he'd even foregone the pretext that he'd end up spending the night in his room and had curled up in Ender's bed from the beginning. He'd only woken up in a cold sweat twice and was now--finally--truly asleep.

And unfortunately for Ender, truly invading his space--his arm was sprawled out across Ender's chest and his head was tucked against his shoulder.

The attack came later than Ben had anticipated--past midnight instead of at sunset--and with a lack of subtlety that spoke of a hurriedly thrown together plan.

But then, Ben reflected, lightsaber glowing as he stared down the cliffs into the forest as they prepared for a third salvo, how subtle could you be when you were attacking with rancors?

"It's unfolding like we thought," he commented to Ender, "no cohesion between the groups. I'm now accepting brilliant suggestions on how to fix that. We're down to half-strength."

( Don't get eaten by rancors, boys )

[Follows this, NFB, NFI, loosely adapted from Aaron's Allston's Backlash and concluding our summer of preplay flist spam! Thank you sooooo much to endsthegame for putting up with my insanity on this!]

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.]

A few minutes—or a lifetime—of meditation with Rhondi and Ben felt himself slipping free of his body. He had a thousand questions about what was happening to him, about how long they had been gone and what would happen to his body. But when Rhondi appeared next to him, looking more refreshed and beautiful than she ever had, he had only one thing to ask her: “How do we find my father?”

She extended her hand. “Take my hand and walk with me into the light.”

At any other time, Ben would have had a comment about how walking into the light sounded a bit ominous, but right now Ben did as she instructed, and together they walked into the crackling purple radiance beyond the viewport. He was instantly filled with an eternal, boundless bliss beyond anything he’d ever experienced. He became one with the Force, melted into it and was filled with a calm joy as vast as the galaxy itself. How long he and Rhondi hung there together, Ben would never know. It was less than an eyeblink, long as eternity.

And suddenly Ben was looking out on a narrow black mountain lake with a surface as still as glass. From one shore rose a sheer granite face, sloping toward a domed summit lit with the light of a blue sun. Along the other shore lay a boulder-strewn meadow. Directly ahead was his father standing next to Ryontarr and the Givin, looking toward a half-hidden female form floating in the silver mists that concealed the far end of the lake.

Ben released Rhondi’s hand, no longer consumed by the same sense of urgency that had been troubling him on the station. True, his father had grown perilously weak over the last few weeks, and true his own life was also in peril since the Mind Walkers were still trying to kill them. But Ben had left such mundane worries behind with his body. He’d swum in the incomprehensible infinity of the universe, and now he understood: life and death were the same because moments did not vanish, could not be consumed like air or water or nutripaste. They existed once and forever, spread across the entire continuity of the universe. Just as atoms gathered together to make matter, moments gathered in packets of minutes and hours, which mortals perceived as time passing.

But those packets were no more the essence of time than sunlight was the essence of a star, heat the essence of fire. They were simply the perceptions through which the mind of finite beings experienced the infinite. When he had time to think about it, he wondered how this would change his perceptions of his vision of Jacen, or the view of the future he’d experienced with Ender.

Now—for the given value of now—he had to talk to his father. “That was some trip,” he said with a smile.

( Where Ben and Luke go on an extremely trippy...something )

[OOC: Taken and modified from Abyss by Troy Denning. Contains gratuitous icons of Christian Bale and happens at the same time as this. NFB, NFI, OOC is love.]