Lights flashed, words lost meaning in the foray. The Hegemon himself...Peter Wiggin was welcoming back...his brother. Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin. Ender stepped down from the shuttle only moment ago, only to be assaulted from the left and from the right by questions and thoughts, and opinions.

It was...his brother...the tormentor of all people who had come to his rescue...and played the whole thing as a press conference. Ender could barely keep up with the foray. But he stood shoulders stiff, chest pushed out, tight lipped. He looked like a returning general fresh from the end of a victorious war...and yet truthfully...he felt like a murderer straight from the crime scene.

"Tell us Ender, how do you feel about the Formics?" came a question from the massed crowd...and they all shushed. Even Peter understood that this was a defining moment in history. He could not avert this question...his brother would have to answer it. And the question was easily met on even terms.

"When I was a little kid, before..." he paused to consider if he even wanted to talk about this...but he pressed on, "before I was ever sent to the Battle School. I was a third...a nobody. A kid with his machine still attached to him at six. The Buggers didn't matter to me...I was a child." He paused again to breathe...defining how one feels so young is difficult no doubt. "However...having done the battling I have done...and the...commands...I have given...I can say no more than I pity the Buggers." And he presses his own set of thorns into everyone side, "For if no other reason one could possibly imagine...then because their last moment...was defined in a surprise death...their atomic structures reverberating off each other and into complete annihilation."

The press was silenced. The very person who had done the deed...had denounced the finishing off of the Buggers. It was a bad thing to say...at least for the Space Fleet, and the Hegemony...not to mention the Warsaw Pact. Many might seriously question now if xenocide had been the answer. With such silence, Ender took it as his cue to walk off...and was escorted to transportation immediately.

Of course this would be a major change in opinion about Ender in the long run. He had of course in the normal time line been the best he could be...and not care for others opinion really. But it didn't change the fact that his name became taboo to people. Ender the Xenocide. Now...people might at least question it from his side of the story.

Peter stayed behind to give some good public optimism for the press and left son after as well. But the press...and therefore once presented to the masses...the masses themselves, could only wonder why two brothers would be leading their third world war. One who clearly denounced everything that dealt with war...and thus branded as a hypocrite by the masses, and one who was leading half of the world's major powers.

As it were however, the masses follow the heads. They may not agree with the head of their body, but they follow it none the less. Thus Ender had started the conditioned war movement. It was the atypical movement/radical group that divided itself on the halfway marker. No war unless it was absolutely needed. But the movement would be lost within the decade as a side note. It was lost when a historian pointed out a Union General by the name of McClellan...giving several points that war unless absolutely needed was the same as being too cautious.

However, coming back to Ender. He had done something unwittingly. He had usurped his brother's power in one blind moment of pity. The crowd didn't want war at this time...they wanted peace. And while the older brother instigated action...Ender instigated anything that wasn't war...but it wouldn't turn that way either way. Ender was within a few days placed as the Supreme Commander of the Hegemony forces.

A General to his Men. The leading Head to the Body. His thoughts, his opinions, his actions, and everything naught...are recorded in history, memory, mind and body. He is the person people follow for action. He is the person where they turn to for action. The person who is sought for when action presents itself. But he shows them a way of life. A General to his Men no longer becomes a person, wholesome and truly human. He becomes a symbol. A symbol to represent a way of life people can live themselves.

When a General falls...if he has left a legacy behind him...and it has a great enough mass...like a star that fades into a black hole...everything comes to it...and it becomes one of the great intangibles of life. No way of escaping the fact...no way of discerning it from thought. It becomes an unbridled thought...as the masses follow a different symbol in the meantime...even if they were themselves of a different symbol...a former symbol.