Brilliant, on a curve of Skywalker

Ben had disappeared in the Force almost immediately upon arriving back on their ship so the other him wouldn't know he existed, but he'd never kept the wall up for this long a period of time and it, added to the general stress of just waiting for a younger Ender to get beat up, was starting to really wear on him.

He was walking around the ship for his tenth or eleventh lap that day when he felt it--the tiny shock of pain from a couple thousand kilometers away from a person he'd both never met and knew better than he knew himself. He leaned against the nearest wall and began taking deep breaths in through his mouth and out through his nose, trying to calm down without drawing on the Force for it.

"Kuso," he whimpered, squeezing his eyes closed but not willing to cut off contact, to feel in a diluted way a bit of what Ender had felt. It felt like the very least he could do right now--to bear witness to what was happening, even without being there.

Ender had wandered off on his own for a while, which meant that Ben now had a chance to really explore Eros.

Wearing his most Earth-friendly pair of jeans and a black t-shirt (and slipping his lightsaber into his backpack just in case), Ben joined the people in the narrow hallways (careful not to bang his head on anything--half-gravity made for a really bouncy experience) and fought back the almost constant feeing of vertigo caused by the way the floors sloped downward.

He wouldn't want to spend an hour more than absolutely necessary here and he noticed a slightly green tinge on the faces of those he guessed were the most recent arrivals. But Ben loved learning about new places--even really weird ones like this--and soon he was searching for a food vendor and people to talk to.

[OOC: For the NPCs what populate Eros...]

In the morning, Bean got up and posted a message to Achilles, naming a time about an hour later for their meeting. Then he wrote a brief note to Petra, just so she’d know he was thinking of her in case this was the last day of his life. Then another note to his parents, and one to Nikolai. At least if he managed to bring Achilles down with him, they’d be safe. That was something.

He walked downstairs to find Peter, Ben and Ender already waiting beside the IF car that would take them to the perimeter that had been established around the compound. The Wiggins seemed to have achieved some kind of truce, with Ender using Ben as an invisible wall between him and his brother.

They rode in near silence, because there was really nothing more to say.

At the perimeter, near the east gate, Bean found out very quickly that Peter hadn’t lied-the IF was standing behind his determination to go in with Bean’s group. Well, that was fine. Bean didn’t really need his companions to do much.

As he had requested before leaving Damascus, the IF had a uniformed doctor, two highly trained sharpshooters, and a fully equipped hazard squad, one of whom was to come in with Bean’s party.

( This was always here, lala )

[OOC: NFB, NFI, ABC, PDQ, LALALA. Preplayed with the luminous endsthegame, and holy GOD, OSC needs therapy.]

So Bean and Petra were going to have children - even in the midst of all of the confusion, the unsolved problem of Achilles, and the puzzling, continuing absence of Ender in the light of everything Ben and Karla claimed was going on.

They'd found a clinic, though. A place that would get them the children they didn't think they could have otherwise. It'd taken a lot of poking around to get the right doctors to check to make sure none of Petra's children would have the genetic problems that Bean had - the gene that would ensure he'd be dead before he turned twenty.

The morning of her in-vitro fertilization, Petra was still in bed, sleeping off her nerves before they'd head towards the hospital. Bean wasn't. He was restless, his desk a continuous presence in his hands, and eventually he'd slipped into the living area of their two-bedroom suite - and don't ask what kind of strings he'd pulled for that - in order not to bother her.

He ran a quick check of all of his waiting emails.

( Where Ben and Bean don’t kill each other. Yet. )

[OOC: NFI, NFB, preplayed with the talented endsthegame, OOC comments fed pie.]