Jaxxon's Twi'leks Ch 17-- Invisible (Quin POV) PG

FIC: Jaxxon's Twi'leks 17-- Invisible (Quin POV)  

Title: Jaxxon's Twi'leks 17 -- Invisible
author : helgaleena helgaleenas@yahoo.com
Series: post-TPM, pre Star Wars: Twilight
Rating: PG this segment
Category: slash implied
Warning: mild angst
Disclaimer: Lucas is god of Star wars and owns everything; I am nothing
Summary: the continuing story of Jaxxon and Quinlan Vos. Quin sticks his hands in things on Nar Shaddaa.  It's all part of the spy business.


previous episodes: http://www.livejournal.com/users/hlglne/5044.html

Nar Shadaa

Aayla and the ladies were shopping. He was skulking around the animal pens.

Skulking was not all that difficult, if you simply became what others expected to see in a place. For Quinlan Vos, his psychometric talents increased his skulking skill, as his former master, present boss, had suspected it would, when he took him on as a student. He simply thought deeply about the scenery he found beneath his hands,and stilled his mind to match. One moment one was as reflective as glazed brick, the next as resonant as timber, or as undulating as drapery.

Most beings were glad not to notice intruders, especially in places where they simply should not be. In some respects that made watchmen and sentries the easiest to evade, for their minds would not accept readily that they were seeing you, if you didn't intend them to. Once you were past, you simply couldn't be there; intruders only intruded from without. That was only logical, after all...

The same sources of exotic animals that he and Tholme had painstakingly linked to Ryloth over the years, he now lurked invisibly within, touching every surface and substance, searching for traces of the creatures who'd been meant to eat him and Aayla there, only weeks ago.

Roon, their previous port of call, though it was a known source of rancors, did not yield any trace of the giant arachnids they'd faced. Odds were greater, in a smuggling hub like Nar Shaddaa, of finding evidence of them, and the connection to Clan Secura.

At his last communication, Tholme had informed him that master Mace Windu, and his former padawan, Depa Billaba, were also on the Smuggler's Moon, on the trail of deadly aak dogs from Haruun Kal. He supposed they'd be by here soon-- the aak dogs were two aisles over. Around them, he'd wished he could make his scent as undetectable as his appearance. He had to settle for staying downwind.

Meanwhile, he was easing into the backstage of one of the big beast-match arenas, feeling in among the stocks of prey animals. There was a trace of something here, not from the nerfs themselves, but from their fodder. No, their fodder had something living in it besides the usual rodents and crawlers, nesting? --no, concealing--

An arm's length down, there was cargo netting under the dry vegetation, around huge globes, each easily as big as a Gamorrean's head. And they were alive, all right.

His lips curled at the message his fingers were receiving. These were the eggs of those creatures, that had haunted the old ryll mine under Ryloth, eating the drug-laced victims sent by clan Secura to feed them. The urge to become invisible, as he had to the monstrous adults, surged through Quin at their very touch. Absurd, he had to remind himself. Unhatched, embryonic beings were no threat in their present state; that was precisely why the clever dealers were transporting eggs, not spiders. He took his hands away, fighting down the instinctive reactions engendered. Now to find out whose fodder, and whose nerfs, these were.

"Ey! Ge' away fum our nerfs!"

Evidently the urge to be invisible had sprung from another source besides touch; someone had seen him. The shout had come from a kid, with a very full mouth, lounging by a tall stack of take-out containers. Human, dark haired, possibly Corellian. And he seemed to have some connection to the beasts in this pen. Quin straightened up, acting the local possibly up to no good, but possibly in charge.

"Your nerfs, eh? What's a little sprat like you doing owning a herd of nerfs?"

"Ha ha. The boss's nerfs, then." The kid wasn't giving any ground. Quin came out of the pen, wiping his hands with hay as if he'd touched something noisesome, but also demonstrating that he had nothing in his hands. What could be seen of him in the shadow of his hood he schooled into nonchalance. The boy watched him approach, and kept chewing. He looked about twelve standard, possibly less.

"And who's your boss, then?"

"Uh-uh, no way am I s'posed to tell some stranger, who's maybe trying to drug our nerfs, stuff like that." Quin couldn't help but grin at the kid's quick wit. He thought he could get a tip in exchange for not seeing some beast match being fixed!

"Well, why won't you tell me whose nerf-straw I was pissing in then?" He came to lean on the railing next to the boy, still mostly veiled by the hood of his cloak, but visibly friendly. Yeah, the kid was Corellian, all right. Heavy build, hair matted in places but naturally straight, eyes an indeterminate shade between green and brown. He was swallowing his food in a hurry, as if he weren't going to get more, or wasn't supposed to have it in the first place, before answering.

"Because if the boss found out it was me who blabbed who he was, I'd get it." Said as if this were a fact of life, like smog. Quin tried out a different angle. He stuck out his lower lip a bit too far, which he had been assured, by Aayla, made him look like an idiot.

"Wa-all, I don't see what sport there would be in nerf fights--"

"No, numb-nuts, these are to feed the rancors and nexus, so they ain't too hard to handle!" The kid actually giggled, despite the foul language that came far too naturally to his young lips. "We always have feed animals, and feed for the feed animals, along for the big guys. But if I was to tell you anything about where they were from, or where we're going to, or any stuff like that, I would be rancor chow myself. No kidding."

"Yeah, kid. I know how that is." Quin gave the boy a casual pat on the shoulder, brushing several fingers along his bare nape. And in a flash, knew what he needed to. "From" was Kessel. "To" was Kiffex. "The boss" was Garris Shrike. And the boy was--

"Han!"

A man's booming yell down the aisle made the urchin jump. He shook off Quin's touch, with a mutter of "Hands off, perv..." Grabbing up the stack of containers, he trotted off into a chorus of angry shouting.

"You piece of Selonian scat, what took you so long?"
"It's probably all stone cold by now, and the sauce gone all solid--"
"Yeh! We sit here starvin' while you are pussy-footing all over the avenues..."

The boy's rejoinder, if he had one, was swallowed up by distance. In case it included anything about someone among the nerfs, he left Shrike's pens behind.

In the staging area bustle, he almost instictively blended with the pace of activity around him, while sorting through everything he had gleaned from that split-second contact. It was a struggle to filter out what the unsuspecting child's skin had conveyed to him in terms of human misery. The kid was an orphan, this Shrike his only semblance of a father, a Wookiee his only mother, his only siblings other orphans, coming and going in tragic circumstances until their usefulness was over. And that word, "perv"-- the associations of that were chilling in the kid's mind, as ubiquitous as the other term he'd voiced, "I'd get it"-- and as inescapable.

He took a shuddering breath. The kid had taken him to be another perv, in a landscape of pervs. He exhibited tremendous stamina, just by staying alive and uncrushed in spirit. Force be with that one.

The main thing were the facts, on their cargo. The nerfs were from Nimban, and had been picked up directly after Kessel, and they and the beasts they fed were heading for Kiffex-- How much did the Sheyf know about all this? What use were these beasts, or their sale, to the Guardians?

Quin melted into the shadows of the alley once again, seemingly a part of them to passers-by, as he pondered the next move. Garris Shrike might not be transporting the eggs any farther, just handing them over to middlemen, or sending only some of them on to Kiffex. The boy Han had known nothing about the eggs in the straw. But he would likely mention the "perv" around the pens to someone else, which meant any attempt to track the eggs themselves, if he could even have come up with a way, was compromised. All he could do for now was report to Tholme, and proceed to Kiffex, to determine what beasts, including the spiders, funneled through there.

As he pondered, close to a meditative state, he abruptly noticed the Force signatures of fellow Jedi, approaching from the east. Hastily he searched for Aayla's padawan bond in his consciousness-- no, she was where she should be, among the market stalls. He opened his eyes to the outside world again.

The crowd of spectators pouring toward the arena contained many hooded and cloaked figures. Among them were the two Jedi. Neither Force signature was unintegrated enough to be a padawan; two knights or masters, then. He watched, wryly amused, as the ticket takers simply overlooked them, while deep in dispute with a party of Gran. Then they stopped, just beyond the entrance, to speak to one another. Light glanced off a deep red Chalactan jewel, set into a forehead between shapely brows--Depa Billaba? Her hood fell back-- yes, it was her.

It came rushing back to him, how he'd flirted with her on Coruscant as a padawan, even kissed the back of her elegant hand, until his lips had told him the story of her true affections. Chalactans were adept at sublimation. The only male she had time for was Mace, her master. Drat, he'd been steeped in sex on the Rabbit's Foot far too much, lately. That was years ago!

The set of the broad shoulders of her companion, still cloaked, looked right for Master Windu. In case they needed assistance with the aak dog business, it wouldn't hurt to monitor them from here. He was in no hurry to rejoin his shipmates, especially the Lepi who was such a strain on his composure. Jaxxon, pheromone ambassador to the galaxy at large. Far too attractive, for a furry green beanpole.

It had been far too long since he'd been with a woman-- a tall, slim, Force-sensitive woman, who could join her mind with his as their bodies twined, who would let him swim in the ocean of her sweetness, instead of pounding him into ever more thirst, like a man did. Even a Force-sensitive man. Graceful, satiny limbs stretched out along his-- too long since Shylar.

They had agreed, as padawans, not to become attached, to set their love aside, to be Jedi. Being around Jaxxon was a constant reminder of his body's needs; they had their place, it was true, but did it have to be such a large place? Force-- he didn't want to think about this now.

In the shadows, back to the arena wall, he pulled out the datapad he'd been using to keep track of where he'd searched. When Mace and Depa came back out, he'd give it to them. Tholme had the master copy, and he had no more use for it.

He brought out a second datapad, and transferred the Coruscant central data on Shrike and his vessels. He officially owned three, all registered out of Selonia, and none of them currently here in Hutt space. Yet here he was. The vessel reported to be at Bimmiel, which Han certainly thought he was living on, was here instead. Interesting. How much of the information Jaxxon had gotten out of Jabba's accountant, Mosep the Nimbanel, was going to be wrong like this? How much out of touch was Coruscant central shipping data?

Shrugging to himself, he relaxed, and touched the arena wall, merging with the ferrocrete that had minutely shaken under the feet of thousands-- no, millions-- of spectators since its construction. He went invisible, to wait until he was needed.

TBC
http://movies.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=544199104&chapter=17
 http://jedi-nights.livejournal.com/7753.html



part 18 Buck and Doe http://www.livejournal.com/community/swfanfic/34289.html



http://www.livejournal.com/users/hlglne helgaleena-slash