"Wedge," Luke said tiredly, scrubbing his fingers through his hair, "I've already submitted my resignation to Mon Mothma and the Council and they've accepted. It's done. I'm out of the military."

Wedge made a face. "Luke--"

Luke shook his head. "No. After Mindor--no. There are dozens of people who will make better generals than I ever could. It's past time I devote myself to the thing only I can do--restoring the Jedi Order."

[OOC: Open for calls and emails...]

Luke sat on one of the beds in the Falcon hugging Leia and trying to get warm. He felt like it had been years since the Justice had crashed, rather than just days. He closed his eyes as if that would block the feeling of the thousands of deaths he'd witnessed.

The living rock that had killed his crew through slow suffocation had been a living, sentient species. They'd called themselves the Melters, made of a material called meltmassif, and they had been linked to Blackhole through his hideous Shadow Crown. Blackhole had been trying to use them--and the Darkness they generated--to rule the galaxy. Luke sighed regretfully. Why did they always have to be trying to rule the galaxy? Granted, Blackhole's plot took a fun twist in that his body had been failing and he was trying to take over Luke's--and then Leia's, when she had arrived to rescue him--to fulfill his destiny.

Luke was also very tired of the word destiny.

He'd fought the Dark with light, using the Shadow Crown to shine the Force upon every crystal of darkness, and every shadow stormtrooper. He stayed as the exit of the meltmassif triggered their deadman interlocks. And he'd felt every death. It was all he could do for them.

He leaned his head against Leia's shoulder, hearing the Melter's voice reverberating in his head as they thought they were spending their last moments together (before Han's insane rescue, and somehow, Luke realized, he should have expected that). Unlike the Knights of old, Jedi Luke Skywalker...you are not afraid of the dark.

"I want to go home," Luke murmured, feeling a hundred years older than his 23 years, and at the same time about six years old. Leia stroked his hair. "We'll be back to base in a few hours."

He shook his head. "Fandom," he said softly. "I want to go home. Just for a few days. And then I'm resigning. I make a lousy general."

Well, crashing into a planet and losing most of his crew had definitely not been on Luke's list of things to do before homecoming (not dead losing, either. Sucked through the floor and disappeared losing. Luke had no idea how that was even possible), and he'd sat around for a little while feeling heartily sorry for himself and out of his depth before remembering he was a Jedi.

( Where Luke meets a seriously teal deer baddie. )

[OOC: Did I mention this book is kind of cracky? Dialogue snurched from Matthew Stover's Shadows of Mindor. NFB, NFI, OOC is love.]

"Unidentified Rebel command cruiser, I am Lord Shadowspawn," the voice intoned through the holoprojection as Luke watched from aboard Justice, his ship. "You have defeated us. I respectfully request permission to board, that I may formally treat for the lives of my men."

( Plot be here! )

[OOC: Um. Oops? Taken from Shadows of Mindor, by Matthew Stover. Truncated version of book to follow later!]

Luke sat as his desk staring at the holoprojection of Mindor, then down at the battle plan Lando had left for him.

He sighed and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. "This is going to get messy," he said to the empty room.

[OOC: Open for emails or phone calls. Shake up the Jedi general before I send him off on plot next week!]

It still hadn't gotten old, having someone to share a birthday cake with. Granted, it was a slightly stale cake that Wes had dug up from somewhere (Luke had learned the hard way that when Wes said not to ask not to ask), and they were eating it as they packed up to leave yet another temporary headquarters, but still.

Birthday. Yay. He grinned at Leia, then tossed a chunk of cake at her. She rolled her eyes. "You've got to be the younger twin," she decided.

[OOC: Please excuse me as I spam the crap out of you all...]

Luke had been rubbing his eyes for the last, oh, six hours, but it wasn't helping.

His lightsaber and Artoo had been talking trash about him since he woke up to, well, his stuff turning human.

"And really," Artoo continued, "they way he interprets the things I'm saying. I swear..."

Luke groaned and reached for the comlink when it chirped.

"...what do you mean, 'where's my X-Wing?'"

Luke was waiting in the pastry shop, tearing a croissant apart with his fingers as he waited for his father to arrive.

He was going to get to meet his baby sister today! He concentrated more on the "aww" and less on the "wow, that's kind of weird" aspects of that.

[OOC: So very open.]

Luke had been far to busy being a general to have anything even approaching a personal life. This hadn't really bothered him, or even registered, until sometime this week, and then it had thumped down on top of him like a Hutt.

What? He still didn't have time to deal with it, so he deflected by thinking of the least sexy similes ever.

He'd finally scraped together a couple of hours of free time, requisitioned an X-Wing and took off to the nearest hole of a cantina where he prayed he wouldn't be recognized. He wasn't exactly...adept...in picking up girls and it would be doubly humiliating if it was in front of someone he knew.

He shouldn't have worried. He was barely halfway through his drink when a Twi'lek female approached him, wearing an outfit that left very little to the imagination, and practically purred his name into his ear. The request she made before dragging him away was enough to set him blushing for weeks, if it also hadn't been, well, kind of what he'd had in mind.

He'd worry about what was wrong with him another time, he decided, following where she led.

Luke grinned to himself as he typed out a communique to the folks back in Fandom. It'd been far too long since he'd seen them.

To: [The Usual Suspects]
From: Luke Skywalker [farmboy@holonet.net]
Subject: Graduation!

It seems the New Republic can spare their general for a few days--I'm coming back for graduation! Anyone need something from a different galaxy (that isn't a live Ewok)? Have I missed anything good?

...did anyone else turn into a little kid randomly last month, too?

--L.

[OOC: If you think you got it, you did!]