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capricornus-rex · 4 years

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Two Sides of the Coin (3)

Chapter 3: Picking Up A Lead | Jidné Sheedra x Cal Kestis

Summary: Hell-bent on exacting revenge and retrieving the Holocron, the dreaded Darth Vader is now on the hunt for the young Jedi Knight, Cal Kestis. Under the assumption that he still possessed the artifact, while fueled by the intrigue of the boy’s strength and skill with the Force, the dark lord hires the bounty hunter, Jidné Sheedra, to track him down and have him delivered alive. However, the task becomes a trial for young Jidné, as she faces a conflict that tests her beliefs of a scarred past she had hidden for so long.

Also in AO3

Tags: Fem OC, Jidné Sheedra, Force-Sensitive! Fem OC, Bounty Hunter! Fem OC, Jedi! Fem OC

Chapters: Part 1 | Previous: Part 2 | Next: Part 4 | Masterlist

3 of ?

As Jidné got out of the castle, her stomach plummeted to her feet and her legs transformed into limp noodles—barely doing their job and instead dragged her along in every step. It was gradually sinking into her that the person who gave her the job was one of the most feared figures among the Jedi. She clutched her abdomen, crumpling the center of her jacket while waiting for the entry ramp to unfurl.

Not wanting to look back over her shoulder, she knew that she’d have the safety and privacy she needs within her vessel: a Dynamic-class freighter that she personally retrofitted and anointed the Crescent Scarab. It was a fine work of art that she greatly took pride in, so much so, that she has modified everything to her liking. She darted to the lounge of the ship, lousily putting down the canister and then splaying herself over the sofa.

Coming from the cockpit, an ID seeker droid acknowledged her arrival and greeted her. Its multiple claws on its tentacles flowed and twitched as its single eye panned left and right, scanning its owner.

“Hey, Eye-Dee Three,” Jidné greeted back.

The droid named ID-3, formerly Imperial property of another probe droid variant, is the only other passenger in the Scarab besides the pilot, Jidné herself. The droid chittered in its raspy, monotonous string of notes as it hovered closer towards its owner.

“Yeah, I’m okay, just… felt like jelly is all,” she brings her hand on the top of the black droid’s flat dome for a head.

The young bounty hunter detached the holster from her belt and set it down on the table, right next to the canister of credits. She stared at both objects for a good long minute, contemplating and pondering her strategy on how she’ll begin with this contract. Jidné reached out for her weapon holster first, taking it with both hands and then unbuttoning the flap—a polished, silver emitter pokes out of the lining.

She gently tilted the holster downward until an enough length of the weapon inside slid out. She caught the shaft before it could completely fall off. She rolled the hilt across her hand, feeling and tracing for the etchings, curves, and dips of the design. She held it high and proud, in the same way as she finished constructing it, the tassel that she knotted around the ring of her pommel caught her eye. Two strands, unequal in length, dangling at the very end of the hilt. The longer strand had seven turquoise beads, at the end of its thread is a cluster of feathers—three to be precise—though the wear and tear was very obvious; the short one had four beads of the same color but lacks a feather.

“Feathers are almost gone,” she hummed, fiddling the remaining tufts.

Her heart skipped a beat—it always does, even though she has done this many times. In her hand, the cold metal of the lightsaber’s sleeve stung the nerves of her palm. A small, somewhat satisfied smile curled along her lips—the weapon had brought her good memories, but also nightmares—and that smile became fleeting like a comet. Her thumb ran across the metal finish of the body and found the switch, the idea of igniting it was seductive—a temptation that she has no strength to fight back.

The snarl of the ignition took her breath away. A vibrant purple blade bore out of the emitter, its glow colored the paleness of her cheeks and reflected against the gloss of her brown irises.

“Jedi, huh?” she muttered to herself.

“Beeee-deee, trill?”

“That’s right, ID, we’re after a Jedi,”

Jidné sighed, and then switched her saber off before tucking it back into the pouch.

When her legs finally regained their strength, she walked to the cockpit and beckoned her droid companion—who still hovered close to her side—and joined her in the seat. As she put herself into work mode, she recalled the very helpful detail that Darth Vader gave. She breathed out a resigned sigh that drowned in the hollow hum of the Scarab’s engine revving up.

In a galaxy that stretched a thousand times more than the eye could see, how is she going to narrow down to finding a single Jedi?

“Say, ID, how likely are we to stumble into a redheaded Jedi on the run?”

“Beee… chirp!”

Jidné chuckled at the response, “I figured as much.”

With little base information she has, she knew she had to be resourceful. Lately, she’s picked up murmurs from Baz’s stronghold—as well as the gossips in the cantinas she frequented in Modala—that bounty hunters were also after a Jedi, solely for the bounty on his head, not because Darth Vader had hired others behind Jidné’s back or the other way around.

While gossip wasn’t exactly the best source material, she had to make do. The young bounty hunter swallowed her pride and entered the coordinates of her first stop.

Upon seeing the coordinates on the computer, ID-3 erratically chittered in protest.

“We have no other choice, buddy. They’re the closest we can get to the target,”

ID-3 lowed in disagreement, submitting to Jidné’s decision and continued assisting her in the ship, much to his chagrin. His owner sensed the disdain and petted its flat dome again.

“Don’t worry, you’ll stay close to me, right?”

“Beeep!”

Jidné smiled and boosted the ship’s throttle, following their course to Ordo Eris.

——————————————————–

Jidné piloted the ship with great care, evading the rock debris and asteroids that floated within the orbit. Her destination was dead ahead: one of the biggest rocks in the field, a needle of the infrastructure built within, a fiery orange glow encircled the central crater’s inner rim.

“I really don’t like this place,” she complained to no one in particular—except herself.

She slowed down the speed of the freighter until she got close enough to the outpost. A red blip flashed on her screen and vanished seconds after spotting it. There was a noticeable gaping crack of the arena’s ray shield wall that protects the outpost from the elements outside the planetoid, the young hunter added that to her list of questions once she lands.

The Scarab docked on the empty arena. It wasn’t entirely new for her see it devoid of animals and sentient creatures fighting for dear life, though it was a better sight than the deafening chorus of wild cheers mingling with animal roars. The Scarab’s landing gears disturbed the floor of the arena, creating clouds of sand around its pads, the exit ramp unfurled for Jidné and ID-3 to alight the ship.

A trio of bounty hunters approached her, there were more standing by the arena’s walls as well. Shortly after, they gave way for their Umbaran boss clad in silken, luxurious violet robes—he stuck out like a sore thumb around the orange light that filled his colosseum. For someone with sallow, prominent cheekbones and paper-white skin, he moved quite flamboyantly—contrast to his sickly appearance—perfectly matching up to the vibrancy of his rich, violet robes.

“We need to talk, Sorc,” the bounty hunter abruptly began, not having time for the dilly-dallying.

“Well, well,” he spoke in a singsong manner. He rubbed his goatee as he swayed. “It’s been way too long, dove. Come, come!”

Jidné didn’t come closer, even though Sorc beckoned her with his fingers covered in rings, so much so that the fingernails were the only ones exposed.

“Oh come on now, little dove, you act like we didn’t have history together!”

The bounty hunter rolled her eyes and shook her head, “Don’t call me that. Plus, that history was basically me being your delivery girl of animals and captives. It’s no big contract, just a sideline.”

“Ah, but you gave me a lot of good stuff for my arena! When you worked for me back in the day, I never ran out of customers—always looking for some mauling, goring, and all that crazy stuff!”

Completely uninterested of Sorc’s rambling about his business of arena fights between humanoids, humans or sentient beings against wild, senseless animals, Jidné cut to the chase.

“I don’t have time for stories, Sorc,”

“Of course, you aren’t. But, you know, intel—”

“Isn’t your expertise,” Jidné finished the sentence, even though that wasn’t exactly what Sorc was going to say. She put her hands over her waist, “But you’re the only one I know who could give me just that. Think of it as a compliment.”

The Umbaran pursed his lips, he opened his palm right in front of her. Fishing two gold chips out of her pocket and then tossing them to the hand, his fingers greedily caged the money into his fist and hurriedly tucked them into his robes.

“Always so hasty,” he rolled his eyes and smacked his lips. “Alright, what do you wanna know?”

“A boy. Redheaded Jedi.”

Sorc Tormo purred a long “Ahh” and wagged his finger at the girl, a mischievous grin stretching ear-to-ear on his pale white face.

“Handsome?”

Jidné’s eyebrows pulled together, creasing her forehead.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant, but okay, I guess?”

A throaty snicker rumbled from the Umbaran, still wagging his finger at the girl in a more teasing manner—it was almost childlike.

The surrounding bounty hunters subtly showed signs of hostility towards Jidné, her eyes already caught their movements with the slightest of side-glances: the ones standing closest to them were tightening their grips around their blasters, the ones who were a little far away but still within earshot had their hands slowly wandering towards their holsters.

She got the hint. Apparently, the Jedi was a prize indeed.

“Now that is an interesting subject—even for you, sweetheart!” Sorc Tormo guffawed, leaning to his knees while keeping his eyes on her.

She pointed at the damage with her thumb over her shoulder, without needing any words to make out the question, Sorc Tormo immediately has the answer.

“Ah!” he clicked his tongue. “We got a little… caught by surprise.”

“One hell of a surprise, if you ask me,”

“Oh honey, you don’t even know the start of it!” he swatted the air with his hand.

“He did that, didn’t he?”

Sorc Tormo’s boisterous guffaw startled the young girl as she awkwardly watched him laugh straight at her face. When he still hasn’t gotten all of the laughter of his system, he’s still chortling as he swings his arm at the air.

“Aww, ya shoulda see the baby go! Slashing away and getting chocked up by my pets and men. Crowd was wild, I had a full box that day!”

“You don’t know where he is, but you’ve seen him,” she insinuated.

Sorc got carried away with the compulsive need to tell it all, a force of habit, from the way she picked up his words, it was clear as the eye-straining color of his gaudy robes—the redheaded Jedi has engaged with the Haxion Brood.

“And you’re after him, too?”

“Hey, it pays the bills, sweetie!” he throws his arms to his sides, solely focusing on the topic of money. “Honestly, I could care less about the kid, but knowing the price on that pretty head of his, you really can’t blame us tryna make honest work, eh?”

“He’s mine!” she snarled, taking two steps towards Sorc.

Immediately, his bounty hunters became defensive of him, stopping her in her path by pointing the barrels of their rifles at her. That didn’t scare her, though, she takes another step close to the point that the holes of the blaster press against her body. She shot a dirty look at the pair of bounty hunters.

“If there’s one thing I hate: it’s competition.” She added.

Sorc chuckled, unintimidated and kept up his lurid façade, he gestured his hand in a circular motion that covered Jidné’s front.

“From what I could read in all this defensiveness, I strongly deduce that you have a contract out to get him.”

“Good job, man, do you want a prize for that?” she sardonically rebutted, keeping up with the Umbaran’s sarcasm with her own flavor.

There was no constructive reply from Sorc, other than another throaty chuckle. The girl’s patience is being stretched thin by the minute, not until she’s satisfied of filling the gaps that Darth Vader left in the job description.

Her sarcasm was quickly replaced with an imposing snarl through the clench of her teeth, “What else do you know?”

“He travels with that little gray grub that owes me a shitton of money!”

“A lot of little grubs owe you a shit-wad of money, Tormo, you’re gonna have to be much more specific.”

The syndicate boss sighed, often forgetting that this little bounty hunter was a persistent one—too persistent for her age rather. He shooed away his bounty hunters from being human barricades between Jidné and himself. They eased up, leaving a gap for Sorc and Jidné to converse with less distractions, but they still kept an eye on the girl—wary of her movements as she’s already starting to be aggressive.

“Alright, alright, fine! Your redhead is with the ship called the Mantis—it’s an S-161, you’ve been a mechanic part-time, right? You should know what that looks like. Now, for the grub that baby boy drives around with—he’s a stubby, little guy. Kinda old, wiry hair, bald on the top.”

“The companion—is he human too?”

“No, that grub is a Lateron. Stout, little thing. Four arms.”

Jidné tossed one last golden chip at Sorc, to which he skillfully caught into his hand; he fluidly slipped it into the inside pocket of his robes, making a soundless clink with the others, as he watched Jidné turn her back at him and walk away.

“Pleasure doing business with you, dove! Don’t be a stranger!”

“I plan to be!” Jidné clapped back before fully disappearing into the ship.

Sorc Tormo watched Jidné prep up the freighter, he even giddily waved goodbye at her to which she repaid with a fed-up rolling of the eye; she ignored him after that, focusing on the dashboard monitors of her ship as she eagerly flies the ship out of the rock. The freighter’s throttle blew at the entire arena—everyone’s capes and coattails flapped and smacked against their legs wildly as Jidné maneuvered the ship to face the gaping crack of the outpost’s wall.

“Are we gunna go after ‘er, boss?” one of the bounty hunters asked.

“Sure. It might be fun to have the baby boy and the baby girl together—they either kill each other or save each other, whatever and whichever works,” Sorc thought out loud, he rubbed his goatee with his ring-covered fingers and a grin stretched across his wrinkled, sallow face. “A ransom… no, a fugitive’s bounty on her head too! Yes, that would be very delicious. Go on now, SHOO!”

All of the bounty hunters dispersed, whooping in glee and greed as they gathered into their crude ships, bringing along the HURID-class droids for added muscle and brawn. Sorc Tormo stood idly in the exact spot he’s been staying in ever since Jidné came until she left, he listened to the barbaric laughter and chatter among his men; that greedy, coy grin never melted in his face—the only thing that ran around his brain was the idea of having sacks upon sacks of credits delivered to his private chambers, rewarded for the joint bounties of the Jedi and Jidné.

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