AN: First, I'd like to say thank you for the reviews. Second, I want to acknowledge that, yes, Jane is a bit of a Mary Sue. But I have my reasons for a lot of things, i.e. her age, her lightsaber skills, her genius, etc. Yes, some of it is trivial or unrealistic and could be left off and only a little bit is absolutely neccessary for the story. I hope when I do the eventual re-write, I will be able to improve Jane and leave out many of these details that hinder the process of the story. As the author, I like her the way she is, because this is how she came into my head, but I know that she is a more than a bit Barbie-like. I've also been taking this into account as I continue her tale in the stories following. Please keep reviewing, with both praise and criticism. While I would love to only take the former, I know I need both to be able to become a better writer, a goal I would like to achieve.

Thank you! :)

Chapter Seven: Mission Mishaps

It was an unusual mission, to say the least.

Their descent on Hapes had gone smoothly. However, their reception was… peculiar.

They were greeted by the diplomat who had requested their presence and her daughter (who was acting as her aide) who was around Obi-Wan's age. Once given a recap on the situation, the diplomat gave the Jedi their assignments: Qui-Gon was to work in the palace library, where the Prince consort spent most of his time during the day; Obi-Wan was to work in the kitchens, in case an assassin would try and poison the food; and Jane was given the details of her assignments and "background" for bodyguard training. The three would be able to reconvene several times a week in a secret location to discuss anything they found suspicious.

The diplomat was concerned about Jane and how young she was, especially when she learned that this was Jane's first mission, but her worries were put to ease when Jane was given an exam about different types of weapons and how to detect snipers. Her fears were further quelled when she watched Jane easily impress the seniority with her calm demeanor and how she handled herself with maturity around the diplomats, advisors and the Queen.

But Jane did have one worry that left her awake at night.

Though Queen Ni'Korish seemed to be cold and slightly harsh with everyone, she seemed to be even more so with Jane, even though Jane had done nothing wrong to offend or insult her. Jane began to worry that the Queen had begun to suspect that the new trainee was a Jedi, a fact that no one outside of the diplomat, her aide, the head guard and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan knew.

Fortunately, while Jane was fretting over this, there had only been two assassination attempt in the two weeks the Jedi were there.

The first attempt took place when Jane had been following the Queen and her fiancé as they took a walk in the gardens along with two preteen girls who were also in guard training. Jane had spotted a glint of metal from a sniper rifle and, after discretely motioning to the other girls what she saw, the sniper was taken care of. But not before a shot was fired.

Thinking it was going to hit one of the other guards, Jane redirected the bolt with the Force so that the bolt hit the ground a few inches from the guards feet. No one saw it. Except the Queen, who glared daggers at Jane.

Dun dun duh, I'm dead. Jane thought with a silent gulp, praying that the Queen would think that she had Force-sensitivity, but no training. After all, her records said she had been born in the Hapan countryside and been in bodyguard training since birth.

But thankfully the Queen asked no questions, but did start treating Jane a little more harshly than before. Unfortunately, the sniper they caught had taken a suicide pill before he could answer any questions, so the threat of assassination was still wide and prominent.

Throughout this time, Ni'Korish seemed on edge, and she insisted on her wedding preparations being rushed. Her advisors, the diplomats and even her fiancé assumed that she wanted the wedding to take place because of the assassination attempts, but Jane found out the true reason.

Jane was alone with Ni'Korish in the throne room while she looked over some documents. It was late evening and the other diplomats had gone to dinner and then to their quarters and Jane was waiting for her replacement so that she could get some dinner. She decided to stretch out with the Force to examine the room. What she found surprised her.

She and the Queen Mother were not the only presences in the room. There was a third person.

But this third person wasn't even born yet.

Does her fiancé know? Jane wondered, now knowing why Ni'Korish was constantly on edge. But if he knows, why doesn't she tell her advisors? Why push the wedding?

Then the reason why hit her:

The baby wasn't her fiancé's.

At this realization, Jane realized Ni'Korish was watching her. And just figured out both Jane's secret and that Jane had discovered hers.

Neither said a word, but just stared at each other. Jane was relieved when the senior guard came in.

"Jasmine, you are needed. There was another attempt on the Prince Consort's life. The cowards have escaped, heading for the nearby moon station. You are to go and track them. Meet your partners in the hanger."

Jane nodded and ran out of the room, not looking back once as she dashed towards the palace hanger, not wasting a second. The assassins already had a head start because it took a while to discover where they were going.

Though she had seen both Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan since the mission began, that didn't mean their appearances were any less surprising when she saw them. Obi-Wan's hair was out of his ponytail and Padawan braid and his hair hung loosely around his neck, held back with a thin leather band that went around his forehead, and Qui-Gon's hair was in a similar variation. They had both changed back into their Jedi beige, robes and boots instead of the plain white outfits they had worn as palace slaves, but hadn't managed to get their hair into their regular styles.

Jane raced up the gangway to join them on their ship and they began the short journey towards the moon.

"You have enough time to change clothes if you want to, Jane," Qui-Gon told her.

Jane looked down at her outfit: black leather pants and boots with a black padded tunic that was blaster-bolt proof, a belt full of weaponry (which she had just topped off with her lightsaber) and a tight braid one of the older trainees had done for her that morning.

"Nah, I'm good," Jane said.

"Suit yourself," Qui-Gon said with a shrug.

They arrived at the station a half-hour later. Unfortunately, this meant that their arrival was announced to all the public places on the moon's station, which gave the assassins enough time to hear the announcement and leave to hide on the moon's surface. Upon landing, the station commander informed them that three suits had been stolen and the airlock had been opened, a scenario that fit as there had been three assassins.

A few minutes later, Jane was looking around the moon station in awe of what the Hapans could build on the airless satellite moon. She knew the task of building a station as such was risky, heavy on labor and potentially hazardous, as many people could die if one thing went wrong.

"I hope we find our assassins quickly," Obi-Wan said. "I am not looking forward to the prospect of being out on the moon's surface for a long time."

"Nor am I," Qui-Gon said, every once in a while looking over at Jane to ensure that she was still there, even though he had a firm grip on her small hand. "Particularly if we have to fight them. If the suits get ripped, we could easily die from the lack of air."

"Well, then why don't we just use the Moon Ponies to track them down?" Jane asked.

Both Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon stopped dead in their tracks.

"Moon Ponies?" Obi-Wan asked hesitantly.

"Yeah. I read that this moon had a lot of mares." Jane said.

"Mares?" Qui-Gon repeated.

"Yeah. You know, girl ponies." Jane said matter-of-factly.

"Jane, the thing you read this from, it didn't have a pronunciation guide, did it?" Qui-Gon asked.

"Well, no, it didn't. Why?"

"Because, it's not pronounced mares. It's pronounced 'mah-ray'," Qui-Gon said patiently, ignoring the fact that Obi-Wan was standing behind him, his palm pressed against his forehead, muttering darkly to himself. "It means 'seas'."

"That's stupid. There's no water here," Jane pointed out.

"Mares are where there are smooth surfaces that haven't been hit by craters or asteroids." Qui-Gon said.

"But why are they called seas if there's no water?" Jane asked. "Why not just call them 'plains' or something like that?"

Neither Jedi had an argument for that, but now began to ponder Jane's question.

"Let's… just go find our assassins," Qui-Gon said.

The Jedi then went to become equipped with space-suits and breathing apparatus. Jane was thrilled when a suit was produced that was her size, thinking she would have to remain behind. Fortunately they had one member of the station that was a Gamgee, a short alien species that were the size of human toddlers from Meedle Orth, one of the sixty-three planets in the Hapes Cluster. Qui-Gon was, however, worried. He had never seen Jane duel someone who was intentionally trying to hurt her or take on multiple foes at once and he wasn't sure if she could handle it.

There's a first time for everything, I guess, Qui-Gon thought as he and his two Padawans headed out the airlock.

He soon found out how Jane handled herself in a fight. The assassins had practically left a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow.

"They aren't very good assassins, are they?" Jane asked as Obi-Wan picked up the credit chips, obviously from their payment, which led the Jedi right to the foes, who were in the midst of arguing over whose fault the loss of money was.

One of the assassins wasn't as brave as the other two, because they quickly engaged in shooting at Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, who easily deflected the bolts with their lightsabers. This poor soul took out a knife and hurled it towards Jane.

She saw him prepare to do so, but didn't move. Instead, she watched as the dagger landed on the rocky terrain at the assassin's feet, who stared at it in disbelief.

"Really?" Jane asked, an eyebrow cocked, though he couldn't see it. "I'm three and I knew that was going to happen. What part of 'airless moon' did you not get?"

This assassin just gave up and sat on the ground with his hands on his heads, and Jane quickly tied him up.

"So, you wanna go ahead and tell me who hired you bozos?" Jane asked as she took all the assassin's weapons.

"The Queen's first husband's family. They wanted her to marry her late husband's younger brother, to keep the power their family has. They were trying to kill the consort so that he would be her second choice." The assassin said.

Jane nodded. She wondered vaguely if this younger brother could be the father of the Queen's baby. She also wondered if she would ever find out.

Jane stood up and turned just in time to see Qui-Gon receive a blaster shot to the shoulder. Without a second though, Jane sealed Qui-Gon's suit with the Force so that, while he still had the blaster shot to deal with, he did not have to worry about losing oxygen. With Qui-Gon in pain and Obi-Wan occupied with tying up the other assassin, the one who injured Qui-Gon raised his blaster to shoot at Jane, but he stopped as they heard a strange sound in the distance.

They all turned and stared over the moon's curvature, which gave Jane enough time to call the remaining assassin's weapons to her and for Obi-Wan to finish tying up the remaining two.

"Uh, what was that?" The assassin at Jane's feet asked nervously.

"I… don't know," Qui-Gon said.

"Shh. Listen." Jane whispered.

"Is that… hoof-beats?" Obi-Wan asked.

Then a herd of strange horse-like creatures came over. They were many different shapes and sizes and colors. Some had unicorn horns while others didn't. And they all had a different mark on their hindquarters. They neighed and whinnied and ran up to the small group.

"I thought you said Moon Ponies didn't exist!" Jane said, throwing her arms around a light pink horse with a hot pink mane with images of balloons on her hindquarters.

Obi-Wan stood with his mouth agape, then he shook his head and pressed the palm of his hand to his forehead.

"I must be losing oxygen." Obi-Wan said in disbelief.

"Dude," One assassin whispered to his friend. "You see the ponies too?"

"Yeah." His friend responded.

"Oh, thank the Force," The first one said with a sigh of relief.

"They're so sweet!" Jane said as one pony licked her suit's helmet and she giggled. "Will you guys get us back to the station?"

"Jane, I highly doubt they understand-" But Obi-Wan was cut off as a dark green horse with a black mane motioned for Obi-Wan to get on his back. He was about to decline when he saw Qui-Gon climb onto a horse, favoring his left arm.

"Really, Master?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Eh. It may be a hallucination, but this one should get us back to safety. And our friends here to a prison block." Qui-Gon said, gesturing to the assassins, who were each hanging by their suits in the mouth of a strong buck.

"You're such a good Moon Pony," Jane said with a giggle as she wrapped her arms around her pony's neck. "I think I'll call you… Twinky Pie!"

"I must be losing oxygen," Obi-Wan said, resigning to climb on the back of the horse. "Dreaming. Hallucinating. Going crazy. Moon Ponies. Mares. Water on the moon. I'm going to wake up in a bacta tank and everything will be fine. I am never going to an airless moon again."