The next morning, after waking up precisely when he would have as a padawan, Jayce went shopping. The first item was clothing. He needed new, everyday wear that didn't mark him as affiliated with the temple, and he found it with a pair of rugged pants and a pocketed vest of the type spacers everywhere seemed to wear.

Then it was on to a weapon shop, where he ran into an unexpected difficulty.

"You got a license for a blaster, kid?" the rodian proprietor said.

"Uh... what?"

"What, are you just in from the Outer Rim?" The rodian grumbled something under his breath. "Look, on Coruscant, you can't buy a blaster unless you have a license."

"Okay. What does it take to get a license?"

"About three hundred credits and two weeks of bureaucracy."

The three hundred credits wasn't a problem, there was much more than that in the account Master Na-Meh had set up. But two weeks was.

"And if I need the blaster today?"

The rodian let out another quick stream of words. Alien languages was another area Jayce had struggled in more than his padawan peers, though he knew a bit of rodian. He thought he caught the word for "idiot" at least once.

"Then it will be five hundred credits, and you go see my cousin Holus." The rodian slid a holocard over the counter with an address several levels down. "Tell him his cousin Siero sent you, he'll take care of you."

Jayce eyed the card warily, then picked it up and pocketed it. "Thanks," he said, and left.

The few dozen layers of descent to the new location made for a major change. While the streets around the rodian's shop had been clean and bright, these streets were dimly lit and grungy. A rusty protocol droid squeaked its way along the road. Other sapients hurried along in small groups. A few smaller critters scurried about.

The shop the card led him to was not dedicated to anything in particular, it was full of bits and pieces of everything. Jayce had expected another rodian proprietor, that was usually what 'cousin' would imply. Definitely not the large klatooinian who seemed almost too wide to move between the cluttered shelves.

"Um... Holus?" Jayce asked nervously.

"Who wants ta know?" the klatooinian said in a growling, slurred common.

"Siero sent me."

The klatooinian's face brightened and he stood a little straighter behind his counter. "Oh, good ol' cousin Siero, how's he doin'?"

"He seemed fine." Jayce looked around, getting a lot more nervous about this whole thing. He wondered if he should just back out and try something else. But he was already here. "He said you could help me get a blaster license quickly."

"He did, did he? Funny thing about a license. It's all bureaucratic poodoo. You don't have to have one to own a blaster, just to buy one. Otherwise it'd be hell to enforce with all the spacers comin' in all the time. So how's this. I don't sell you a blaster, I give you one. Then you give me an extra five hundred credits over the askin' price. Sound good?"

Was it really that easy to circumvent the laws on Coruscant? That seemed strange. But everyone always said the Senate was slow and ineffective.

Jayce nodded. "Okay, I guess."

"Good! Now you got the credits on you? I don't do promises and I don't hold things for you."

"Yeah, I've got the credits," he said.

The klatooinian moved faster than Jayce would have thought possible. He grabbed Jayce's new shirt in one hand and pulled him close to the blade of the axe in his other.

"Then how bout you give it to me right now, or I cut your pretty little horns off?" With a ring of steel, Holus tapped the blade against one of Jayce's head horns.

Jayce was startled for a moment, and then more confused than anything else. This whole thing seemed so bizarre, he struggled to fully believe it was happening on Coruscant, the heart of the Republic, just a short trip from the steps of the Jedi Temple.

"Seriously?" he asked.

The klatooinian cocked his big head. "Yeah."

"A customer just comes in and you start threatening them? That's terrible customer service."

"What does it matter? I've got a blade to your throat!"

"I mean, seriously, how do you ever get repeat customers if this is how you treat walk-ins?"

"Shut up!" Holus shouted. "Shut up or I slit your throat!"

The blade didn't even look that sharp, though with enough muscle that might not matter. Still, Jayce wasn't about to lose his credits to an absurd bit of thuggery. A skilled jedi could have easily use the Force to convince this idiot to let him go. Jayce would have to do it the hard way.

"What would yo do with the body?" he asked.

Holus stared at him blankly. "What?"

"I mean, you slit my throat, I'm dead, fine. But a jugular bleeds pretty good. Now you've got blood all over your shop, and it'll be impossible to clean up before the authorities come here looking for me. And you've got to dispose of my body somehow. It's a real nightmare."

Holus paused. He seemed to be thinking it all over. And he seemed to be thinking slowly.

"Then I'll slice little bits off you 'till you give me the credits!"

"That doesn't help, I just go get the police and tell them what you did. Sure, it's not murder but you've still got a major problem on your hands."

"Ah! But if you do that, I'll tell them you tried to buy weapons off me illegally, and you'll be in trouble, too!"

"I suppose you could." Jayce couldn't fault his logic on that one. He was a bit surprised the klatooinian had thought of it.

"So give me your money!" Holus demanded.

Jayce just chuckled, still finding the whole thing completely absurd. "No. I'm not giving you anything."

"I mean it, I'll start chopping!"

Jayce sighed. Holus was serious, and even if his axe was old and dull it still probably packed a wallop in those muscled hands. He'd just hoped to get out of this without having to buy a new shirt.

Jayce fell back, kicking both legs up and into the klatooinian's chest. The shirt ripped free as Jayce propelled himself back into a cluttered shelf. Oddbits of tools and household nicknacks fell to the floor. Holus bellowed in anger and vaulted over the counter. Jayce rolled to the side, and the large axe cut through two shelves where he'd been. It probably would have been three or four if Holus had ever bothered to sharpen the thing.

Jayce grabbed handfuls of junk, a coffee maker, a holo projector, and a depleted fuel cell, and flung them at the advancing Holus. They hardly slowed him down. But they did clear enough of a gap on the shelf for Jayce to dive through. Then he was on his feet again and pushing hard against the overloaded shelf. It toppled to the ground, with Holus underneath.

Jayce stayed just long enough to make sure the proprietor wasn't permanently injured, then turned to go. He paused on his way out. On a shelf in a display by the front was a dark metallic blaster pistol with a molded grip, a heavy barrel, and cylindrical power pack. The display labeled it an R-66 blaster pistol.

Well, Jayce thought, he did try to steal from me.

He walked out of the store and hurried quickly back to the upper levels where things made sense. His shirt was ruined, but it was a small price to pay for a good blaster at his side.

With a new shirt and the rest of his shopping taken care of, Jayce headed for the spaceport. He'd left his useless lightsaber in a rented box at the bank. The rest of his possessions fit into a carry bag that slid easily beneath the seat in front of him on board the starliner. They lifted off, and Jayce was on his way to Ord Mantell. From there he would board another ship to Dantooine.

The task Master Na-Meh had given him was straightforward. Go to Dantooine and assess the strength of the Separatist forces in the system. On the trip, he studied up on his destination. Dantooine was a rather unimportant world in the Outer Rim, settled almost entirely by farmers. Jayce had to wonder why that system would be important enough to worry about when there were already battle lines being drawn through much more populous sectors. But food was important, especially in the middle of a war.

If the Separatists were there to gather grain, Jayce's job would be simple. Get off the ship, see the Separatists loading crops, count the Separatists, go home. He'd be back in a few days, and just maybe on his way back to being a Jedi.

Though he had bemoaned his window seat during the trip, he was glad of it as they arrived in Ord Mantell. Two Venator-class cruisers hung in orbit next to the station, with dozens of support craft going back and forth between them. It was the first time he'd seen the cruisers in person.

The ships were massive, bristling with guns, and ready for war. The teeth of the new Republic navy. As Jayce's starliner flew past those beasts, their size apparent even from a distance, Jayce was confident the war would be over within the month. Two at the most. Nothing the Separatists had could possibly stand up to that kind of firepower.

His starliner docked at the orbital station, and that was where his elegantly simple plan ran into its first hitch. His connecting flight to Dantooine had been canceled. Commercial flights connecting to flights to Dantooine had all been canceled. He was stuck.

As Jayce stood in the concourse looking up at the listings, each new cancelation bringing a moan of frustration and despair from the crowd around him, he realized he was watching in real time as battle lines were drawn. All those systems that were inaccessible were now Separatist systems. Onderon, Umbara, Raxus, Serenno, and on and on. There were hundreds. And the worlds they connected to numbered in the thousands. The scope of the conflict was just now dawning on him.

Maybe this war would last longer than a few months. But no more than a year, right? It couldn't last that long.

Focus on the here and now.

Jayce returned his mind to his current predicament. How to get to Dantooine. If he couldn't fly commercial, then he'd find a private pilot. It would be expensive, but Master Na-Meh had not been stingy with funds. He went off in search of the private docks.

And quickly discovered that every other traveler had the exact same idea. Tickets were going for several times the usual rates, and that was for standing room in the holds of beat-up starhoppers. Even so, there was nothing to Dantooine.

Jayce made multiple laps of the upper rings of the station, with no luck. He tried the middle rings, and was met with the same. So it was down to the lower rings, mostly occupied by mechanic bays and shipping containers. He'd been at it for hours and was starting to lose hope. Wasn't the Force supposed to step in, take the stick, and do a little guiding right about now? Or at least give him a little nudge?

Just as he was about to give up, the sounds of shouting and banging caught his attention. He rounded the bend and came upon a young human woman hammering her fists on a sealed door.

"Come on!" she shouted. "I'm missing the money-making opportunity of a lifetime! You can't take away my livelihood then expect me to be able to pay you back!"

There was no answer from the other side of the door. She gave the door one final kick, then turned away and spotted Jayce.

"What are you lookin' at, Horns?" she said.

"Apparently someone trying to beat a door down with their bare hands," Jayce replied.

She grimaced. "Huh. Funny. If you're looking for ship repairs, I'd go somewhere else. Ket Ka is a CHEATER and a SWINDLER!" she shouted the two words at the door.

Jayce's eyebrows shot up almost to his horns. "You have a ship?"

"Well, yeah, kinda hard to be a pilot without one. But I gave it to this bantha-dung-brained idiot," she flicked a thumb at the door, "for repairs, and now he won't give it back."

"I assume there's a money issue?"

She glared at him, then shook her head. "Why am I even talking to you, Horns? I got places to be." She turned and started to walk away.

"Maybe we can help each other," Jayce said quickly. Perhaps the Force had nudged after all. "I've got somewhere I need to be. If you take me there, perhaps I can get you the credits. How much do you owe?"

She stopped, looked back, and eyed him up and down. "You don't look like much."

Jayce shrugged in a casual gesture of "try me."

Her eyes narrowed. "Four thousand," she said at last.

Jayce's eyes went wide. That was a healthy chunk of the cost of a new ship, what had she done to her old one that it needed that kind of repairs?

"She's lying," a gruff voice said from the other side of the door. Apparently someone had been listening the whole time. The door slid open to reveal a surprisingly large sullustan in a mechanic's uniform with the traditional accenting of grease. "Can't trust a thing Val says. I'm a perfectly honest mechanic, and she only owes me two and a half thousand."

The young woman sneered at the Sullustan, then turned a smile on Jayce. "I was just quoting the full ticket price. Four thousand and I'll take you wherever you want to go in the fastest ship in the sector."

"It's pretty average, actually," the Sullustan put in.

"Shut up, Ket!" Back to Jayce. "So do we have a deal?"

As much as Jayce was enjoying watching the back and forth, the price was ridiculous. "Twenty-five hundred already seems a steep price for a ticket. That's more than ten times what it cost to get here."

"But if you came all the way down here," she said, "it means no one up there can help you. So it seems it's a seller's market."

"Seems more like a mechanic's market," Jayce countered. "You don't have a lot of options, either."

She glared at him. "Three five."

"Three." Then, a moment later added, "and I'll cover fuel."

"Deal!" She turned to the Sullustan. "Hear that, Ket? Get my ship ready!"

Ket growled something, then turned away into his shop.

"Okay, friend, what's your name? Or should I just call you Horns?" She was all smiles now, and flung one arm over his shoulder as if they'd been buddies for years.

"Jayce," Jayce said.

"Nice to meet you, Jayce. I'm Val, and I'll be your pilot for today. So where we goin', Jayce?"

"Dantooine."

She withdrew the arm. "Karabast, I should have asked for double."

"Why?"

"That's why you're down here," she said. "No one else was going there because that trip takes you through Muunilinst. And Muunilinst, in case you aren't keeping up with current events, is currently playing host to the fiercest space battle this sector has seen in a hundred years."

"But... you can get us past safely, right?"

She smirked. "Don't ask stupid questions."

"If I can't ask, how do I know it's a stupid question?"

"If it's questioning my skills as a pilot, it's a stupid question. Come on," she said, and started off after the Sullustan. "My ship is right through here. You first. A girl like me has got to keep an eye on a zabrak like you."

Jayce frowned. "What do you mean?"

Her grin somehow got even wider. "Well, you're all so horny!"

Jayce leaned over and let his head bang against the wall.

There is no emotion, there is peace.

"Aw, come on, it's funny!" she said. "And you can expect more of that, because your ticket comes with complementary in-flight entertainment!"

"How much for you to not?" Jayce groaned.

"More than you're worth, little man. Come on."