Unlike the Gungan’s submerged capital below Naboo, Jan-gwa rests partially underwater; the majority of the city remaining above the water’s surface. A waterfall runs along the cliffs behind Jan-gwa, creating a veil of mist around the base of the city’s rounded platforms. Nocturnally illuminated, domed structures encompass the center of each platform and are home to Jan-gwa’s Gungan inhabitants. Some of the these structures extend below the water’s surface, creating an anchor that keeps Jan-gwa from floating with the currents and provides shelter to hundreds of Gungans.

Etched into the cliff walls are several faces of unknown origin. Resembling a humanoid with unembellished features, these carvings are not reminiscent of the city’s Gungan inhabitants—perhaps an indication that some other civilization might have resided near the floating city.

Jon casually strolled along the fringes of Jang-wa city, very carefully not running back to his ship. He may not have had the Force, but the feeling at the back of his neck was a familiar one, and it told him to leave the city, the whole system ideally, as quick as he could without being noticed.

Why Imperial Command had chosen him for this task, as opposed to one of their Force-adept spies, he couldn’t fathom. He suspected it had something to do with his “gift” to the Empress at her last Life Day. Bloody Imperials never could take a joke.

Regardless, it was done, and the dock where he’d parked The Carnival was just around the corn-...oh blast it.

Jon was very careful to pretend he hadn’t noticed to spy droid hovering above him, and just kept strolling towards his ship….

….Which had the same Jedi he had come here to spy on leaning against it.

“I believe this is yours?” Creon said, holding up the tiny recording device Jon had planted on him hours earlier. “Think I didn’t notice you ‘accidentally’ bump into me in the street?”

“Was kind of hoping, yeah,” Jon said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “But!” he exclaimed cheerfully, “You found me out!” Jon carefully strolled up to the wary Jedi.

“Plans are foiled, good sir! So, I’ll just take my leave and inform my superiors that-”

“Yeah, no,” Creon said, grabbing Jon by the shoulder. “See, the chieftain I was speaking too, well, he wants to talk to you. He’d like to know why someone was spying on his private conversations. I convinced him to let me bring you in.” He quite visibly put his hand on his lightsaber at this point. “Figured there’d less violence than with an open firefight in the streets.”

Jon sighed. Great. It was gonna be that kind of a night. So be it.

Jon’s wrist blade shot out immediately, and he swiped it for Creon’s legs. It didn’t even come close to connecting, with the Force to let the Jedi dodge out of the way, but that was what Jon had hoped for.

The second Creon dodged out of the way of Jon’s blade, igniting his saber in the same movement, Jon got as much distance between himself and his opponent as he could. A close-quarters fight with a Jedi was plain suicidal, and Jon knew it first hand. Instead, he drew Kuro and Shiro from their holsters, and opened fire.

Hours Earlier

"Can he hear us now?" Chieftan Len Iode asked as he looked down at the recording probe sitting on his desk.

"Sort of. I had asked a friendly technician of mine, Jael Chi'ra, to alter it for me. He installed an AI scrambler. 'They should only hear comprehensible gibberish' were his exact words," Creon replied.

Elsewhere

"Aye aye. Porgs are like mushrooms, Lord Vader, I'm scared of toasters. Drink plenty of protein. 'Mowing is like shaving a planet's hair' was what my mother told me," Creon's voice relayed in an uploaded message from the probe to Jon's comlink.

The monitoring merc simply stared in a moment of silence, "The frak?"

"Negotiations with Jan-gwa's High Council can't be disrupted. If this affiliate is tied to whoever was behind the attempt on Empress Anasaye, then we can't let the opportunity slide. Bring him in. If you can't, at least get a lead."

"Roger," Creon replied, taking the recording device with him as he departed.

Now

Creon snapped the left side of his body to face Jon and brought his blade to sweep the incoming bolts. His opponent was accurate enough despite how rapid he was at drawing and firing the two pistols. However, Creon was granted enough foresight by the Force and let his hand be guided to deflect the rounds back towards Jon. The situation was already too loud for Creon's preference. With the civilian populus alerted by the conflict, it wouldn't be long before security forces would arrive to detain them both. It wouldn't bode well with the chief's meeting with the Gungan High Council either.

Jon continued his assault with his dual blasters, but after some shots nearly came back and hit him, he realized he needed a different approach. He had his knives, but that armor was too thick. He needed a way to escape, refocus his efforts and try again, or just hope the job was good enough with what he collected so far. Upon seeing Creon unexpectantly retract his saber, the mercenary brought his pistols to aim slowly and formed a look of confusion at the same speed. The Jedi also pressed a button on a device clipped on his utility belt that generated a bubble. Why would he do that? Jon thought to himself. He decided to remain cautions but wanted to test Creon's strategy by firing at him once again.

Creon quickly drew out his WESTAR-35 and aimed it with one arm. He took a deep breath and let the Force drown out his surroundings and center his focus. His other hand rested lightly on the deactivation switch on his shield generator. The shield was a two-way barrier, so he had to time deactivating just before taking the shot. The Force allowed him to ignore the constant ripples caused by the pistols and center himself on his breathing and aim with the pistol. When the moment came, Creon deactivated his shield and sent off two shots at Jon, both a direct hit on the upper torso causing him to fall. He looked to see that he too had been hit. His armor, however, seemed to take more damage than he did. He then looked to his opponent, brought up his pistol again to aim, and slowly approached his fallen target.

Jon groaned in pain from the hits on his collarbone and lower pectoral. He was thankful that nothing vital was struck, but the stinging burn hurt like crazy. He tried to bring himself up and scoot himself away with his legs when he saw Creon approach. There was no point in trying to take a shot, lest he take another hit he may not wake up from. Instead, as Creon was almost right over him, Jon primed his stun grenade, causing the soldier to stop in his tracks.

"Don't. There are civilians," Creon said, keeping tight aim with his pistol. There were some civilians still present. Most remained and stared in shock or slowly moved away to avoid danger. It wasn't a wide panic yet, which was something Creon wanted to avoid.

"You haven't given me much of a choice," Jon replied.

"I get it. You're just doing your job. Tell me who set you up to this, and why, and we can pretend this never happened," Creon offered.

"Tempting. Very, in this case. But selling out makes for bad rep, which won't get me more work in the future."

"Maybe not with your current employers, but Odan-Urr uses contractors."

"I like my work to not be regulated by Jedi morals, thank you," Jon answered. He knew not taking the Odanite's offer wasn't the best option, but he was a little limited on other choices. He could release the grenade and knock them both unconscious, then wake up somewhere in a gungan cell. The alternative could be to buy time until the security forces arrive anyway and try to look innocent and make a break for The Carnival.

"Too many people are using each other. Instead of friends we're made to be fighters, and look to expect the worst in people," Creon says with a sigh and reholstered his pistol. Is this guy nuts?! Jon thought. "Everyone thinks it's too hard to fight for good, so they learn to work with evil. Eventually... all the good people in the galaxy will be gone, and instead of happiness you'll only have havoc."

He leans over and holds his hand out for Jon to take, "Come talk to us for a bit, be honest, and I'll put in a good word for you."

Jon considered the offer, however briefly. He really did. This Creon guy...he really believed the things he was saying, and that was a rare thing. Jon knew how to spot liars, and this Jedi wasn’t one. But if he broke this contract with Scholae Palatinae, they’d hunt him til his last day. He’d seen how the Empire treated traitors, and he wasn’t popular with the higher ups as it stood. If that made him a coward… well, cowards lived longer.

Instead, Jon’s mind raced at lightspeed, trying to come up with a way out of this scenario. That was when the universe saw fit to give him one.

“Freeze! Don’t’a move!” came the heavily accented voices of the gungans security forces. They arrived in a large group, blasters all pointed at Jon...but clustered fairly close together. That was when Jon started to formulate a plan.

“Last chance,” Creon said, holding out his hand.

He looked Creon dead in the eye, saw his honesty, and buried his own guilt for lying through his teeth in return. He took the hand offered to him.

“What can I say,” Jon lied easily. “You’re pretty damn...convincing.” Creon smiled at him.

“He’s surrendering,” Creon called to the guards. “No need to fire, men.”

Jon waited for a moment, saw as the guards lowered the blasters they had trained on him, and threw his stun grenade into their mists. Creon, however, reacted far faster than on had hoped. Rather than being caught off guard, he reacted with the speed only a Force wielder could, and caught the grenade in midair, sending it flying up into the air.

Jon, by this point, was already making a break for The Carnival, pushing his way passed dazed civilians who still didn’t seem to understand what was happening in their streets. Thankfully, his pursuers were unwilling to fire into a crowd of innocent people. Jon stomped down on the guilt over that before it even really had a chance to form.

Instead, he ducked into an alley, and started frantically trying to get his comms to work, praying that he was out of range of the scrambling signal Creon had been transmitting.

“Come on, come on...Artemis?” he hissed, and felt a flood of relief at the astromech’s reply. “Can you hear me? Start the engines, we’re-”

“Not. Leaving,” said a voice behind him. Jon swore, and turned to see Creon standing in the alley’s entryway. His face had all the righteous indignation Jon had been expecting, but also...disappointment. Great. Add that to his guilty conscience for the day.

“That was a really messed up trick you pulled,” he said as he trained his blaster on Jon’s skull. “And that was a genuine offer.”

“I know,” Jon replied, glumly. “But friend, you’re preaching to the damned. I couldn’t take you up, even if I wanted to.”

“Drop your weapons on the ground, and put your hands up.”

Jon, slowly but surely, did as he requested, blasters and blades alike, and laid them on the ground. Creon, his blaster never wavering, slowly approached Jon, and took out a pair of cuffs, no doubt provided by the gungans for this particular pursuit.

Jon waited until he was close...and activated his magna gloves, pulling both their weapons, and every other piece of metal in the alley, creating a minor storm of flinging metal objects. Jon grabbed one his throwing knives out of the brief maelstrom, before everything fell back to the ground around them, and used Creon’s momentary distraction to hamstring his leg, sending the Jedi to the ground.

“Damn you, I-” Creon groaned.

“Yeah, you probably should,” was all Jon said before making his way out of the alley.

.............

About fifteen minutes of guard-dodging later, Jon finally managed to make it back onto The Carnival, and get Artemis to lift them both off.

He collapsed into his chair, utterly exhausted, and let out a weary sigh.

“So...that was a Jedi, huh?” Jon said to himself, thinking back to the man’s words about good and evil.

“....Interesting.”

Both men were just doing their jobs. Jon spying on Creon, and Creon bringing in Jon. It’s the very reason why Creon extended a friendly offer. He believed there would be a peaceful way to go about this since there weren’t any deeper motives involved.

But Jon was NOT about to be taken in a situation where he could easily become a prisoner. The best way he’s gotten out of sticky situations before is to trust no one, Jedi or not.

“Sure, man. I’ll go. I trust you,” He says as he leveraged his non-wounded hand to Creon to help pull him to his feet. He left the stun grenade inactive where he once sat, to show Creon he wasn’t trying to play any tricks. The soldier wrapped the unwounded arm around his shoulder and started to walk with Jon in a single human crutch carry.

Creon connected his helmet with a visual screen showing Len Iode. “I’ve got our guy,” Creon announced, “He’s coming in willingly, though he’ll need some medical attention.”

Jon looked to Creon with his peripherals as he reached for the EMP grenade at his side. He was careful to avoid using his shoulder to not trigger the wound, though small degrees of sharp pain would cause him to wince.

“Good work, I’m almost to-” Len Iode said until Creon’s helmet went completely black. He felt a push from his upper back that caused him to lean forward, then tripped over a sweeping leg from underneath. He fell head first on the ground with his helmet smashing into the floor. Jon ran over to where he sat down his stun grenade from before. He looked to see Creon get on all fours and remove his helmet. He activated, tossed the grenade, and created more distance between them for safe measure. The ring from the stun grenade expanded and hit Creon square on the side of his armored torso. The Jedi yelped in pain before sliding on his back and going nearly limp.

Jon let out a sigh of relief when he saw that Creon wasn’t moving. “You know,” he began with a slow approach, “I only did this because we both know you weren’t going to give an option that let me just walk away.”

Creon was still somewhat conscious after the hit, but he could barely move anything. His nervous system and motor functions were shot, so instead, he retreated his mind into the Force. He focused on the control over his nerves from his mind down along his spine.

“Sorry chap,” Jon said as he bent down to look for anything on Creon worth looting, “But you would have forced me anyway. Get it? Because you’re a Jedi... You probably can’t hear me.”

Once Creon could spread control back into his limbs, he curled his hand into a fist and delivered a hard hook to the mercenary’s jaw. Jon fumbled from the blow to Creon’s side and took a second to shake his head straight. Creon used the Force to open the stim kit on his belt and pull the syringe to his hand. He then injected it into his thigh and received a massive surge of adrenaline and energy, restoring complete control over his body.

“Oh come on, man!” Jon said taking a wide stance as Creon got up. From his wrist bracers came two vibroblades, and the scoundrel reared his arms back to prepare to strike like a serpent.

Creon pulled out his pistol from its holster with the Force, set it to stun, and fired a direct hit to Jon. His foe tried to spring out of the way, but the shot was just too quick and he fell to the ground with a groan. Creon shot another stun round but stopped after he realized he was being petty. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?” Creon said as he came to retrieve his target.

“No…” Jon managed to escape in a weak whining tone.

It gave Creon a chuckle as he rolled the man over and took out small handcuffs and zip ties from his utility belt. After retrieving all of the belongings from the battle scene, he lifted Jon over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Just as he was about to leave, six mounted Gungan guards came with electrically charged spear tips.

“Yousa! Stop right there!” one called.

It was better to cooperate than to cause any more of a scene. The guards didn’t know what occurred here, and he was sure Chief Len will get him out after his dispute with the Jan-gwa High Council. Jon will likely be imprisoned too, which will allow Len plenty of time to decide on what to do with him. The soldier set his captured foe back down and raised his hands up to willingly be arrested.