Private 40 years and still going strong

[Rheyla Tann]

The sky over Nar Chunna always looked like it had a bad hangover—smog-stained clouds, blinking neon signs flickering through the haze, and heat bleeding off the duracrete in greasy waves. It smelled like old coolant and fried spiceworms. Charming.

Rheyla adjusted the wrap around her lekku and leaned against the rusted rail of a half-collapsed balcony, a few stories up from the market strip. Her goggles sat loose around her neck, and the faint glow of the lower city shimmered in their reflection. Below, the noise was constant—shouting, barking, haggling, a speeder’s engine choking on its own exhaust. She’d narrowed it to this quadrant. Didn’t know if the quarry was here, but the signs were stacking.

Someone matching that description had come through two days ago: tall woman, dark hair, dangerous edge, credits to burn and no concern about hiding her glow-eyed stare. Locals said she smelled like iron and laughed like it meant something. Could be a dozen people. Or it could be the one person worth breaking her usual rules for.

A 40-year-old bounty. Scherezade deWinter. Sith. Blood magic. Princess of Chaos. One-time agent of a faction that sounded more like a band name than a military movement. Unclaimed, unpaid, and radioactive.

Most bounty hunters would've looked at that name and kept walking. Too cold. Too buried. Too risky.

Rheyla had grinned when she saw it.

Was it reckless? Maybe. But kark it, something about chasing a ghost made her fingers itch. And if the ghost had teeth? Even better.

She palmed her datapad again, thumbing through fragments of old records—blurry holos, half-deleted chatter, one Hutt-issued bounty notice so ancient it might as well have been etched in stone. No updates. No cancellation. No expiration date either. Still valid. Still open. Probably never meant to be collected.

Which made it the perfect kind of stupid.

Her eyes drifted to the end of the block, where a shadow lingered too long near a vendor’s stall. Something about the posture—calm, like a person waiting for something, not buying.

She pushed off the railing.

One way or another, she was going to find out.

Scherezade deWinter​

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

Nar Chunna. A planet that someone like Scherezade could truly appreciate. Sometimes you needed a Big City™, but Coruscant was too volatile. Too many people interested in anything that might interest others first, too many eyes and ears even in the darkest and dankest spots. But here? Chunnah meh babeh. All the beauty of city sprawl with far fewer drawbacks.

Which was likely why she still had contacts there. Contacts that had managed to somehow already know we were keeping things more hush hush than usual, yet were still plugged into enough nets to pass the right kind of whispers. Her sister would've called it utterly stupid to use them. Her sister would have called it utter stupid to use them. Scherezade saw it more as a calculated risk. After all, what were the odds that someone would find her here of all places? It was one of the very few planets in the area that she had not terrorized in one way or another all those decades ago.

She wasn't even trying to cloak her presence. Instead she let the shadows to it for her in the city of smog, though even in them her eyes still glew their emerald green. Once, she had caught sight of what she looked like when that happened in a mirror, and it had made her laugh; like a potentially giant cat in the dark, ready to deliver glow in the dark wee.

Her gaze swept across the market. She was waiting for someone. Well, granted, she'd been waiting for them for the past three days and was close to being pretty much done, but still…

People moved around her like a river around a rock. Some gave her a wide berth, and others didn't notice her at all. The Sithling picked up a stick of roasted meat from a stand without asking and bit into it. Spices, char, maybe actual meat, tasted a lot better than it smelled. She'd always been a meat eater. With a flick of the wrist, Scherezade tossed a cred towards the stall owner and took a step.

And paused.

And then shrugged and it took another bite of her food. The 'verse was just throwing all those signs and warning! And watch out!'s at her these days that she simply didn't have the patience to sort them through. Still though. The meat wasn't as good as she thought it was a moment ago. She wasn't running away. If anyone wanted to have a little chat, they'd have to buy her another meal first.


Rheyla Tann