Would I be a killer if no one payed me to be?
This was the thought that sprang to Zala's mind as she was walking the back-alleys of Bilbousa.
Am I still a slave then, no longer to a fat slug but to credits?
No, her desire to kill came from something far more primitive than payment.
Some might call it a bloodlust, but it wasn't so much the blood of her victims that interested Zala Xan as it was their eyes. The look of a dying man is something truly ... invigorating Zala thought to herself and her mind drifted ...
She suddenly recalled the first time she looked into such eyes, and how those eyes looked at her in fear, terror actually and confusement; for how could such a frail, beautiful creature be so deadly?
What her victim didn't understand is that death often has delicate features, that is what makes it all the more cruel.
Zala hated her own beauty, because it was the reason her former master reserved his most tormenting pleasures for her.
“Leena! ” A name so familiar, yet at the same time so alien to Zala.
“Leeeenaaa!!”
:A distant woman's voice was shouting at the bounty hunter ... but she wasn't a bounty hunter, not yet.
She opened her eyes, quickly composing herself because a concubine should always be well groomed and at the ready in the house of Bnul.
“Leena, the master requests your presence now! He is entertaining foreign company, I think they're traders from the Colonies Regions, and they're a rowdy couple as well!”
Zala'Ora always had such an urgency to her words, even when she was speaking of the most mondain matters. Leena often wondered how Zala had remained so boisterous through all those years. The oldest concubine in the Bnul mansion she had been there years before Leenas arrival even.
“Look at you my little yot bean ...” why Zala had always called Leena this she never knew, but it comforted her nonetheless “... you're a mess.” and she gently wiped a smudge from the young Twi'leks lekku.
She stood up, fixing her outfit, which concealed only the tiniest details of her lean and muscular body, and cemented the required smile on her face. Although her eyes always betrayed how cold and empty the thoughts behind that seductive façade where.
As she strolled languidly towards the masters den she heard the rambunctious laughter of men mingled with the intoxicating music echo down the scarcely lit hallways of the mansion. A chill ran down her spine, although it's doubtful either of the guards, who were both watching her intently (one slightly drooling even), noticed.
The sound was almost delightful compared to the smell though.
It is hard to describe the smell of Bnul's den, but imagine a putrid swamp mixed with stale Dresellian beer and rotten arch grubs and you will get a notion of what Leena smelled pushing aside the curtains to those quarters for the very last time. Of course she didn't know that then.
The Hutt den was a sorry sight now, his days of glory and fortune behind him Bnul tried to fool his guests (and himself) that he was still a merchant to be reckoned with by telling wild stories of profit and smuggling on Nar Shaddaa. The truth was he couldn't even afford a Bith band to play, the music was crackling from worn out speakers, and his guests were seated on cushions most people wouldn't deem fit for a bantha. They didn't seem to mind though, already well into their second bottle of gardulla the traders looked as if they fit right in.
“Chik youngee hotsa whirlee ateema. Boska!”
:Bnul the Hutt belched at Leena, who understood he expected her to perform one of her more enticing dances for his guests.
Leena assumed them to be Neimoidians, though she'd never seen any before.
The loudest of the Neimoidians started to make sounds that made Leena think he might need medical assistance, but the ferocity with which he grabbed at her indicated otherwise. She evaded his greedy hands with grace only a Twi'lek could evoke in a dance.
Soon however his partner started pawing at her as well and even her feline dexterity was no match for 2 pairs of sweaty palms.
She toppled in between the 2 panting men, her master chortling in the background.
The middle aged traders groped at the sensuous Twi'lek with an urgency one would more easily associate with a teenager. It was not their clammy touch that revolted Leena the most though, but their perverted whisperings in her ear:
"Being a successful trader is so stressful, I'm sure your soft hands can rub that stress right out of me!"
Something flickered in her eyes, an ember of a fire that had been smouldering almost a lifetime now, and she felt her hands slip around the Neimoidian leaders neck.
Gripping him ever tighter his depraved panting turned a different tone; desperate. When his hooting and grunting partner noticed there was no pleasure any more in the old man's voice it was too late. He saw the slightest of smiles around the Twi'lek's lips as she just stared at his leaders face, her eyes blank, squeezing the last air out of his lungs.
The guest tried to jump up to scream at the guards (who were entertaining themselves with Zala and a recent addition to Bnul's harem), but before he could find his footing Leena's leg shot out breaking those of the Neimoidian, quickly muffling his screams in her bosom.
Bnul turned and laughed even harder seeing what he assumed to be the start of a very profitable trade-relation for him:
“Mwa tinka poonoo moulee-rah!”
What the Twi'lek thought at that moment? I can't tell you, but I doubt she thought much of anything, her actions only fuelled by a primal urge to see life extinguished.
When the last Neimoidian's body went limp beneath her, Leena's attention turned to the 2 guards at the far end of the room, both still enthralled by the Twi'leks enticing them to forget all about wife or family.
As she darted across the room, Bnul started to realise his guests might not prove to be as profitable to him as he had hoped, in fact it looked as if any hopes of credit where ready to be buried.
Opening his fat gullet of a mouth (Hutt were rarely known for their svelte physique, but even compared to most Bnul was an exceptionally obese creature) to alert his bodyguards, the Hutt saw in the distance how something that looked like his most beloved concubine moved with a speed and force he believed impossible for a mere female Twi'lek.
Leena arrived so suddenly neither of the weequays saw her before she was holding the vibrodagger.
The first guard quickly grabbed behind his back for his own dagger, but by the time he realised it wasn't there any more it was already sliding into his own gut.
One would think it isn't possible to smell much of anything in Bnul's den after the first 5 minutes, but even so Leena noticed the oddly sweet scent coming from the weequay filling her nostrils as he dropped to the ground.
A sound approached her from the back; a gulp of dismay.
“Don't worry bantha brain, you won't have to miss your companion for long!”
:Leena told the other guard quickly turning around ... but when she pushed the knife into the soft flesh she saw the blood dripping from her dagger wasn't red. When she looked up she didn't see the wrinkled skin and deep set eyes of a weequay but the soft purple skin and warm eyes of a Twi'lek, the last eyes she had looked upon every night for as long as she remembered.
With her last strength Zala'Ora touched her on the cheek, whispering only: “I still love you, my little yot bean”.
As sweet as the sound of a Twi'lek's voice can be, so deafening was the scream that roared through the Bnul mansion then.
Ferocious yet calculated Leena ran past the last bodyguard, as he turned to chase her he felt his body turn but his head did not. Moments later it dropped to the floor completely severed from his body by a single slice, he never even felt the blade.
At the other side of the room a fat olive coloured slug was trying to wiggle his way to safety, away from this she-devil that appeared to him in the form of his most prized slave.
Not even halfway there, destiny caught up with Bnul the Hutt, and all he could do was give a meek chortle as he was transfixed by terror upon seeing that blood spattered face, so serene and beautiful it almost appeased him.
The vibrodagger sliced through the thick hide of the Hutt, cutting him into such small pieces they could have served him as porridge at the Mos Eisley Cantina (had Hutts been edible) when Leena finally stepped out of that den, no longer Leena'Saren, but Zala Xan now. Assuming the name of the only person she would ever love, ensuring she would never forget why she was a killer now; not for money, but to see those eyes once again.
//---
Well that's the origin of my little bounty hunter, I always planned to have her start out a slave with a violent history (shoot first, think later).
I also wanted to introduce a sort of 'original sin', something to motivate why she is so twisted now, so she ends up killing her mentor/lover (not sure which, maybe both. She's a bit of a man-hater :p).
One of the things I'm a bit iffy about as far as cannon goes is the remark about 'the blood not being red', I assume there that Twi'lek blood isn't red, but couldn't find any solid evidence.
Also figuring out the Hutt-speak was kind of fun (< geek!
).
In the third (and last part to set up the character) I'm planning on having her escape Hutta to Nar Shaddaa. There she should finally be able to establish herself as a true bounty hunter and I'm hoping to tie her into the EPOCH lore after that (might give one of those nifty interactive story thingies a try).
E.P.O.C.H Wiki
HeroMachine 2.5
We're getting spoiled with all these stories, loads of you guys are at it! (Sure, I'm almost packed, can I go on holiday now?)
