AN: Sorry I'm so slow on the updates right now-I'm also binge watching a bunch of the shows and such to refresh the memory and catch back up, some of which I'm trying to read/watch before I reach certain chapters for the fanfic so I have the right grasp of what's going on. Hence the slower pace. That and I'm currently only averaging about 1,500 words a day, roughly. Much less than I used to write, I'm still warming back up.
*Zelina's POV*
"If you keep this foolishness up, I'm going to have to hire a bouncer to save me the time throwing you out."
Zelina twirled her blaster with the safety on around one finger, gaze cold on the three slavers she'd just kicked out of her cantina. They were in various positions of sprawled in the dirt in front of her while she leaned in the doorway, making sure she made it clear that they were not coming back in by spinning the blaster around to point at them when one of them started to stand with a lean in her direction.
"You know, it's quite pathetic that none of you can take a hint. Or read, for that matter. The one big rule at the top of my list no one has gotten away with it and an entire planet of scum and villainy, yet you empty brained fools keep coming back to my establishment to do the one business I don't allow. If you keep this up, I'll have to update the rules—offenders of Rule Number One will be shot upon offense."
She could feel the hate radiating off them as they clambered back to their feet even with her senses in the Force muffled to the bare minimum—she'd probably be able to feel it even without the Force.
"Get out of here. Find somewhere else to pollute, before I decide your tenacious efforts are more annoying than amusing," She warned before they could say anything else.
There were the usual curses in a handful of languages besides Basic, dirty looks and a few obscene gestures and threats, but they left, allowing Zelina to step back into her cantina and slip her blaster-safety on once again-back into its holster.
The cantina had gone back to normal by the time she was back inside, Ameenah back in her usual perch where she could observe the entirety of the floor. Zelina headed to the counter to speak with Benon about where they were in supply for the day before she went back to working the floor, but Ameenah shifted from her usual place to stand beside Zelina.
"You should really be a bit more careful about how you handle those slavers. Keep it business, don't spend too much time insulting them," Ameenah suggested, tail flicking in agitation behind her. "I'm not saying they don't deserve it, just, some of them have powerful people they work for, and they could decide to get vengeful one day."
"I'm aware of the risks, Ameenah—and I appreciate the concern. But they've been persistent recently, trying more and more to get me to back down and let them do their business. If I give ground in any way, they'll take that as weakness. As foolish as such an assumption would be, I don't want to have to deal with emboldened attempts. I need to keep as hard on this point as I've been from the start."
There was a low growl of discontent in Ameenah's throat at her statement, and Benon shifted uncomfortably. "There's nothing wrong with having morals, Zel, as long as you don't get foolish enough about them to get yourself killed."
Zelina looked at Benon, who had a flash of dread in his eyes as if he wasn't particularly fond of the thought that she was turning her attention to him. "Benon—how often do you have to deal with slavers when I'm not here?"
Benon straightened as a customer down the bar held up a hand to get his attention, and Zelina waited patiently as Benon temporarily broke away from the conversation to serve the customer their requested drink. Ameenah's tail swished a bit more rapidly for a few seconds.
"I know what you're getting at, Zel, and it doesn't detract from my point."
"They wait until I'm here, Ameenah. This is a me verses them situation, and they're losing because I haven't given an inch of ground. They're testing me to see if they can make me back down and impose some measure of control over my establishment. They're not going to find a single flaw in my stance. I'll handle it as I've been doing, and if they're stupid enough to try something a bit more drastic, they'll learn the hard way not to get such a suicidal thought in their mind."
Ameenah was still rather firm in her stance on easing up a bit, but Zelina wasn't going to be swayed. She knew how to deal with these types, and she was better equipped than anyone knew to handle them if they crossed a line somewhere.
If that every happened, Zelina was also well versed enough in how Tatooine and its underbelly worked that she knew she would make a swift and brutal example to make sure the message got out to dissuade any repeat attempts.
Ameenah made a soft noise that sounded like one last, quieter displeased growl. "Just make sure you don't step too hard on the wrong tail, Zel."
"Mom! Mom!"
Zelina stuck her head outside the kitchen when she heard Luke calling for her, spotting the young boy running down the steps into the home almost two at a time and leaping the last four with an agile grace that would have been suspicious to any guests if they'd had them. He was breathless, but thrumming with an urgency that demanded her full attention before he could even start to voice what had him so alert.
"There's someone coming to the house real fast—more than just a couple someones!" he announced so quickly he almost stumbled over his own words.
Zelina felt the hair on the back of her neck raise, and she stepped out of the kitchen and quickly crossed the entry foyer to her bedroom. She only took enough time to equip some of her weapons onto her person and gestured for Luke to follow her out of the bedroom and into the living room.
"Stay out of sight. If something goes wrong, there's a hidden compartment here in the communications system—don't come out until you can't sense anyone else around, and then go straight to your aunt and uncle's, understand?"
Luke's eyes were wide, but he nodded at his mother's warning, starting to follow her back to the steps until she waved for him to not follow her and find somewhere else to lay low. Once she was certain he wasn't going to follow her up the steps, Zelina took them two at a time to make up for lost time and get back to the surface before whoever was coming reached their home.
Luke had been right—there were more than just a couple. One of the pitfalls of being known for being able to put up a fight with ease against more than one attacker. She counted at least five speeder bikes headed their way, and they weren't all single riders.
Zelina took up a position a few strides from her front door, making sure to plant herself so no one could get around her and into her home without a fight, subtly turning off her blaster's safety and making sure she had quick access to it and her vibroblades. She was anticipating a fight with how many people were here. She was just glad they weren't Imperial, based on the rag tag collection of different species and outfits. As long as she was careful, she could make sure this didn't attract the wrong attention.
She could live with getting local bad attention—Jabba, as much as she wanted to avoid him, she could deal with. It was the Imperials she wanted to avoid, which meant she had to be careful not to tempt anyone here into getting Imperials involved.
Thank the Force this was a planet of criminals and scoundrels that wanted the Empire far away from their business.
The speeder bikes kicked up a large plume of dust not only in their wake behind them, but into a roiling cloud around Zelina's home as they came to a skidding stop only a few paces in front of her, all of them armed. Some of them were armed in a way that suggested they were looking to deliver a beating rather than carry out a clean assassination. One by one, they all dismounted, Zelina's sharp eye taking in their weapons and watching for who seemed to be the ringleader as they all started to spread out to form something of a semi-circle around her.
Zelina ignored the ones that were trying to circle around her so long as they didn't get close enough to the front door she thought she might have trouble shooting them before they crossed the threshold, keeping her gaze instead on the one that was stepping towards her, a Rodian with sickly yellow green skin and a wrap around his head in place of a helmet, large black eyes fixated on her just as intently.
"You've been causing trouble for some powerful people, little girl," the Rodian warbled, already unholstering a blaster to aim at her. Zelina still didn't flinch at the obvious threat of imminent danger. "Jabba has sent us to remind you whose planet you're on—he will not have his associates be denied entry anywhere on his planet, and you're to learn what happens to those who cost Jabba business and product."
"You can tell Jabba he wouldn't be having a problem with business and product if some of his hired hands could read…or think, for that matter." She tilted her head to the side, regarding the Rodian. "You're not going to be more fools that have to go back to Jabba embarrassed from their own failure, are you?"
The Rodian laughed. "Your lacking slave education is showing, if you cannot do simple counting. You are painfully outnumbered—"
"And you are woefully outmatched," Zelina interrupted in a bored tone, hearing the whine of a thermal detonator being activated. She forced herself not to look—she knew where it was, that was the important part. "This many men to teach one single lowly former slave girl like me speaks to your pathetic inadequacy."
"You misunderstand," a Trandoshan snarled to her left. "Some of us are to teach you a lesson—some to seek compensation before making a colorful point, and the others, if you find the lesson difficult to grasp, will make it clearer to you once we retrieve the boy we are sure we'll find inside."
Zelina's gaze turned cold and calculating. How unlucky for them that they chose to cross her now instead of back when she still considered herself Jedi and lived by that code. And that they seemed to have it in their heads that targeting Luke, with everything he represented, would in some way make her cower.
"You have one chance to leave and tell Jabba to simply have his slaving business done elsewhere, or I will be making a much bloodier point to him in person."
The Rodian hefted his blaster higher to point at Zelina's chest, specifically, before he nodded to the Trandoshan. "Go get the boy."
The Rodian hadn't even finished the last word before Zelina had unholstered her blaster, spinning to the side to make the shot the Rodian could still take either miss or hit somewhere non-lethal, taking her own shot at the thermal detonator she'd heard arm. A chill down her spine in the Force had her lean a bit further back to avoid the Rodian's shot as the detonator erupted in a fiery plume, taking out its holder as well as a couple of the men that had been standing near them. She ducked low and attempted to ignore the burn of the blaze of the explosion, ears ringing but not flinching from the eruption after all her time around such events in the Clone Wars—this wasn't the first time a thermal detonator had gone off near her, either. As she ducked low, she turned towards the doorway, shooting another in the back of the neck as he tried to reach the doorway. The Trandoshan was also headed for the door, with Zelina firing a few more shots his way to make sure he went down as well before she spun back around to the attackers that were now charging her with close range melee weapons, believing it would give them the upper hand if they got in close.
Zelina fell back to the Force for support but was greatly challenged by the fact that she could not allow herself in a way that would tip any of these men off to the fact that she had some kind of preternatural or sixth sense.
The first one that got within range found a vibroblade sunk deep between his ribs before it was jammed upwards, blood quickly soaking through his clothes and starting to slicken on her hand as she yanked out the blade and shoved her opponent into two other attackers. She narrowly dodged a close-range blaster shot, feeling a burn at the edge of her ear as she swung around with an elbow to the offender's face, grunting when she felt a fist connect with her side. Taking advantage of some of the training she'd been doing with Luke, Zelina managed to spot someone's feet planted in a weak, vulnerable stance, and she swept their feet out from under them to knock them to the ground to take the pressure off as someone tried to hook their arms around hers to restrain her.
There was a much more immediate sense of warning in the Force, something more serious than a fist swinging in her direction as the current close quarters made it difficult to move—close quarters in the sense she was practically surrounded by people now that were all trying to restrain and injure her. She braced for some kind of pain since she couldn't currently step out of the way, but instead of pain, there was a small surge in the Force, and Zelina suddenly found half of her attackers had been thrown away.
She felt her blood run cold as she looked over to the doorway to see Luke standing there with a still-small hand outstretched, eyes wide at the scene in front of him. All the adults had gone still—the people he'd thrown hadn't even tried to stand up yet because of the shock.
"Luke, go inside. Go inside now," Zelina stressed, her voice breaking the spell as the others suddenly snapped to life. One was rushing to the door, another was rushing to get on a speeder bike, and the others were now in a flurry to try and get Zelina down while they thought they had her pinned.
Luke just changed the game, and not necessarily in a good way.
The several that had been on Zelina went flying from a more powerful and mature repulse through the Force, freeing Zelina up to take aim at the fuel tank on the speeder the one trying to run and inform others was going for.
She waited until he was close enough to be caught in the explosion to fire. The next second she grabbed the one trying to chase Luke into the home in the Force and threw him into the speeders before firing at another fuel source, causing another explosion.
Recognizing that their quarry was much more dangerous than they'd initially assumed and that she was taking out their transport out of the desert, the few who remained attacked more out of fear than any kind of strategy. That only made them easier pickings to quickly eliminate, Luke using the Force now forcing Zelina to have to kill every one of them in order to make sure there wasn't a single witness to what he could do, for both their sakes.
It was too easy to toss them aside in the Force, to fire the blaster with deadly precision again and again until no one moved. The harder part was keeping calm and centered and balanced while she did it, keeping to cold hard precision for survival and making sure the emotions didn't run wild with the moment.
After that, it was just a matter of going around and making sure each of them really was dead. She was careful to not have killed any of them with Force related means so even if their bodies were discovered, it was all still shrapnel, explosions, blaster bolts, and a vibroblade that killed them. No preternatural shows of strength, impacts, or a lightsaber blade.
She could deal with them—with this whole situation—in a moment. She had to take care of Luke, first.
Once she was sure none of them were going to be getting back up, Zelina wiped any blood off her hands and face that she could and hurried back down the steps. "Luke?"
Since she was calling for him as she came down the stairs, he knew that it was all right for him to come out of his hiding spot, his mess of blond hair appearing from around the living room corner to peer at her with wide eyes. She couldn't get rid of all the evidence of what had just happened, but it was better than him being directly exposed to it.
Once she was in front of the still fairly young boy, she knelt down in front of him, hands on his shoulders. "I want you to go to your room and pack an overnight bag. You're going to stay with your aunt and uncle for a little while, so I can get this sorted out, okay? Do it quickly, don't tell your aunt and uncle just how bad it was—we'll have a talk about your use of the Force when I get back. For now, once you're packed, go right to the garage and wait in the speeder until I come inside—do not go outside, do not leave that speeder. Understood?" Her eyes searched his, making sure that he understood the seriousness of what she was saying.
Luke nodded, gaze fixed to some of the smeared blood from where she'd wiped it on herself. Zelina tried to bury the flash of guilt for exposing him to something like this, even unintentionally, and instead gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze and sent him on his way to his bedroom to pack something quickly. While Luke started packing in his bedroom, Zelina set about looking for a container that was roughly the size of what she needed, a change of clothes, some carefully selected equipment…
She treated the entire process like a kind of moving meditation, taking the time to balance herself, settle down, sharpen her focus and make sure she felt secure in what she was about to do, not conflicted or unbalanced about some of the more brutal aspects in any way.
It was her new motto to try and adhere to. This world—this galaxy, really, but this world specifically—could be cruel and harsh and required some difficult choices. Especially while providing for and protecting Luke, especially with how tightly she clung to that last promise with the mindset that she could not fail in this one promise, this one task. She still knew the things she would not do, the lines she would not cross, the morals she held to. But there were more areas that were grey to her now that hadn't been before. Some more brutal things she was willing to do if she saw it necessary. She knew she flirted with the line between what was simply grey and what was darkness.
Her personal rule of thumb was if she could walk that line without being tempted to fall over it to a degree that was in any way concerning, than it was an action she was willing to take. She would flirt with the darkness, blur the line—she'd been learning more and more what her own inner darkness was like, and growing to accept it as a part of herself. But she was not going to let it control her, nor consume her. She'd seen what that had done to Anakin, and as Luke's guardian and teacher, she could not let that happen to herself.
Once she was certain she wasn't doing anything that violated her own unique set of self-imposed rules, that she wasn't going to be emotionally off balanced by this or tempted significantly in the dark side—or, for that matter, that she made sure this wasn't going to turn into the first step on a long line of excuses for darker and darker behavior, another thing she watched for—she gathered up what she needed and headed back outside. Once she was certain Luke wasn't going to break her rules and head outside, she started her gruesome work, dragging the bodies out of view behind the home's dome before she got to the more disturbing part.
She kept an eye on Luke's presence in the home the whole time, just to make sure he didn't become a witness to this part.
Once she had what she needed, Zelina brought her now heavier container back inside with her, made sure to wash up and change clothes, went back over everything to make sure she wasn't missing a single piece, and then headed to the garage with her container. Luke was sitting backwards in the seat up on his knees, clearly anxious as he watched her come inside and load the back of the speeder with the container of mysterious contents. He had a pack slung over his back, and he couldn't sit still the entire time she was getting her things situated and climbing into the driver's side.
"Sit down, Luke. There's no use in fretting, you're going to be at your aunt and uncle's house," Zelina soothed him as she guided them out of the garage and out into the open sands stretched in front of them.
"What if more of them come back?" Luke asked, squirming in his seat.
"I'm going to make sure that they don't. It might take me a while, though—time I won't be at the house to make sure you're okay in the meantime. That's why you're going to stay with your aunt and uncle. I'll settle this so that nothing like this happens again," Zelina returned calmly.
"What if you get even more hurt?"
"I'll be fine, Luke, I know what I'm doing."
"What are you doing?"
"I need to go do some negotiating. That's all you need to know, okay?"
"But—"
"Luke."
Silence.
Zelina waited a few more moments before she quietly spoke again. "Next time, listen to me. I told you to stay inside. You could have been hurt, or worse."
"You were in trouble," Luke said in a small, quiet voice.
"I'm glad you wanted to help. But using the Force like that made the situation a lot more dangerous. I only wanted to deal with some of them and scare the rest to make them messengers. Once they saw you had the Force, I couldn't let any of them leave with that information, especially since none of them were of good intentions. It was far more dangerous for them to know than anything that was happening up until that moment. Now I have to go negotiate with someone I briefly met once while I was a Jedi and try to get them to leave us alone without them recognizing me and alerting someone much more dangerous that we're here."
Zelina glanced over at Luke, who looked sick to his little stomach at what she was telling him—downright terrified. She left out the fact that she straight up killed those men, or the gristly details of how she planned on 'negotiating' with Jabba, and she would never say that it was his fault and put such a thing on his shoulders. But she needed him to understand how serious this was.
Zelina reached out to gently put one of her arms around his shoulders, hand giving his arm a small squeeze. "I love you, too, Luke, and I'm glad you wanted to help, and I understand you were worried. But next time, listen to me, trust what I have to tell you," she said softly.
"Yes, Mother."
Once Luke was safely with Beru and Owen, Zelina started to mentally prepare herself with what came next and started the somewhat long drive out to Jabba's Palace. She used that time to go over her plan in her mind over and over, to prepare herself mentally, and to make sure her precautions to protect her identity and her life were firmly in place long before she ever arrived at the building.
It was maddening to not have a lightsaber on hand just in case the situation went horribly south, but she couldn't afford to pull a lightsaber out no matter how bad the situation went. Not only did she not want to get searched at any point and be discovered with one, but if she activated a lightsaber and started wielding it, no matter how bad the situation, she would put her and Luke—or just Luke, if it didn't end well—in a situation much, much worse than what she was already walking into. She couldn't have the giveaway or the temptation anywhere near her.
Zelina took a longer, scenic route in order to give herself not only more time to prepare, but to attempt to arrive after the suns had risen and Jabba was already awake—she didn't want to put him in a bad mood by waking him up to her business. It would give him more time in the night to wonder where his precious hired hands were, but she felt it was a fair trade-off—it would help feed the anticipation and effect whenever she did arrive.
Once the suns were rising and she knew that Jabba's palace was near, Zelina momentarily stopped in order to start getting prepared. She took the long wrap she'd tied around herself and rearranged it as a face covering, making sure she carefully protected everything but her eyes and that it was securely in place before she added goggles over it for a little extra. She made sure each of her weapons were well hidden on her person, took the container out of the back of the speeder, and made sure the vehicle was well hidden elsewhere, so none of Jabba's lackeys could mess with it while she was inside. Hopefully she'd also hidden it well enough that no sand people or Tusken Raiders would find it.
Trekking through the sand to Jabba's palace carrying the container was not a fun task, but thankfully the suns had only just started to rise, so it wasn't as hot as it could have been. Still, by the time she finally slowed down near the large durasteel door to Jabba's palace, she was glad to finally get a few seconds to put the container down and breathe.
Propping a foot up on the box and trying to ignore the growing heat of the suns blaring down on Tatooine's sands, Zelina gave a sharp rap against the door and waited. She had to squash the nerves about pulling this off without being recognized or identified more often than she wanted to admit.
A mechanical appendage popped out of the door, it's odd eye opening to appraise her as it demanded in Huttese that she identify herself. Zelina ignored how deep into her personal space it had invaded and stared it down. She had to clear her throat before she attempted to pitch it lower than her usual speaking voice, replying in Huttese with a steady but firm tone.
"I've come to return some of Jabba's hired hands he sent my way—and to speak business to resolve a conflict we seem to have found ourselves in."
The eye angled itself to look at the container she had a foot on, seeming to scoff at her declaration of the objects within. It threw around a few terms like foolish and death, but after snickering to itself in a somewhat sinister sounding tone, it retreated back into the door. A few moments later, and there was the tell-tale rumble of the large durasteel door starting to lift.
Zelina picked the box off the ground with both hands, straightening up and running through her self-reassurance one more time as she started down the dark stone hall towards the inner chambers of Jabba's palace.
He only saw you once over twenty years ago, you were only referred to as Padawan Du'ahn, you looked different, wore your hair different, it wasn't so bleached back then, your clothes were different, you probably looked shorter than you actually are next to Anakin, you only said a few words at most in his presence and he wasn't paying attention to you at the time. You don't have a lightsaber, you won't be using the Force, you're going to speak lower and deeper, you've covered almost your entire face, you're going by the name of Zel Ahn—as long as you're not utterly stupid, you can get out of this just fine without tipping anyone off to your actual identity. Calm down, breathe, you need to be steady and firm for this. Strong and able to back up your words with substance from the start.
As she neared the main chamber, now flanked by Gamorrean guards she pretended not to notice, Bib Fortuna approached her. She did her best not to wrinkle her nose at the suddenly downright deplorable company she was finding herself in, especially knowing she had yet to come into Jabba's presence. She had to get past Fortuna, first.
"What do you think you're doing here?" Fortuna hissed in Huttese as she was brought to a stop just outside the descending staircase that would lead into the main room. She could hear the sounds of the morning affairs being carried out inside, the smoother music for the earlier hour wafting upwards towards her.
"I came to return something of Jabba's and do business, before things get unnecessarily messy."
More than they already are, anyway, Zelina added in her mind.
Fortuna didn't look like he was too inclined to let her enter, so she added on, "I'll also have answers for what happened to those low-rate thugs he sent out last evening that never came back."
Fortuna pointed a sharp nailed finger in her face that Zelina ignored, meeting his gaze steadily and without fear. "What do you know of that, girl?"
"What I'm here to tell Jabba, that's what," Zelina sneered back at him.
Fortuna's gaze dropped to the box she had both hands on, and she shook it, making him jump back from the sudden movement as she hit the bottom with her knee for good measure. "No explosives or anything nasty like that, see? Let me in," Zelina added sharply. If he didn't let her inside in the next few moments, she was going to start forcing her way in and start proving her strength early.
Fortuna was sneering at her but seemed to have decided that if she wanted to go annoy Jabba, it was her funeral.
Good. The annoying parts were over. Now it was just the hard part she had to get past.
Zelina made her way down the stairs, ignoring the various bounty hunters, assassins, dancers, and everything else that was crowded in here, muscling her way past when she needed to, keeping a firm grip on the box. Fortuna weaseled his way around her to hurry over to Jabba's stone slab of a 'throne' and try to give the giant slug a rundown of what she wanted before she could take her place and start speaking. Zelina made her way to the center of the room in front of Jabba's throne while Fortuna rushed his words to the Hutt and made most of the heads in the room turn and attention focus on her when she dropped the box to the floor with a resounding metal on stone clang that hushed a fair amount of the noise in the room.
"What is the meaning of this?" Jabba demanded in a rumbling tone. Zelina could see some of the weapons of those gathered starting to slowly, subtly raise to start pointing at her.
"Mighty Jabba," Zelina announced, still speaking in Huttese, and she did her utmost to keep her disdain from making the statement sound sarcastic or disrespectful. "I've come to return something of yours."
Zelina ripped the lid off the box, then kicked it forwards towards Jabba. The container tipped forwards, and out rolled four severed heads, including the Trandoshan and the leader of the group that had been sent to 'Teach her a lesson'. There were audible gasps, and Jabba leaned back, eyes wide and the sound coming out of his giant gullet sounding something akin to outrage.
Zelina's food was now resting on the edge of the box again, staring down the gangster, unafraid even as she saw sharper and more favored bounty hunters point their weapons more blatantly at her now. "I am the one you sent these fools after, and I have come with my response," she nodded to the heads that had come to a standstill somewhere near the front of Jabba's 'throne'. "As well as to speak business so we might avoid any more unpleasantness."
"I should kill you now for this insult!" Jabba bellowed, and Zelina felt and saw the crowd around her circle a bit closer to her. She only tsked in the face of his rage.
"Now, now, you're a businessman, and I'm a businesswoman. There's no point in wasting the chance for a more profitable resolution," Zelina responded smoothly, lifting the goggles over her eyes and setting them atop her wrapped head so she could look at Jabba directly. "This is not an insult, just a demonstration of my strength. I would have brought you all of their heads, but that felt a little unnecessary with the amount you sent to disturb my home. I did not come here to threaten or kill, but to make an agreement to settle this…dispute we seem to have found ourselves in."
Fortuna attempted to lean in to give Jabba some kind of wisdom or council, and Jabba's arm easily knocked him aside with the rage the giant slug was still in. "You disrupt my business on my planet, then have the gall to bring the head of the men I sent to settle the matter to my throne room and demand terms be made?"
"Disrupt your business?" Zelina echoed, hands resting on her hips as she returned her sharp gaze to Jabba. "I have done no such thing, and if the brain-dead lackeys you pay to carry out the deals in cantinas and such are telling you that, then they have less functionality in their heads than I initially gave them credit for."
Zelina gestured with one hand towards her own chest, then outwards to the rest of the room as she spoke. "I have no quarry with you, Great Jabba. I do not hunt your workers or go out of my way to sabotage your business. Your bounty hunters and businessmen are free to go about their business in my cantina, your contracts are posted in my bounty corner, and if someone seeks business that would fall under your jurisdiction, I send them your way. What I do not take kindly to are the rules I have laid out in my cantina being ignored by specific individuals who cross into my threshold. One of my few and my biggest rule is I do not allow slavery business under my roof. I ask that business be taken elsewhere and have a strict seizure consequence to dissuade the breaking of that rule. It is clearly posted; it has repeatedly been publicly established. I am not out to destroy the trade here on Tatooine, I am not targeting anyone's business—I simply ask it not be done in my cantina. There are plenty of other places to conduct such business, it does not need to happen under my roof. However, it seems some have decided to make it their mission in their insignificant lives to repeatedly break this rule no matter how many times they get thrown out and lose their product as a result. This has nothing to do with any qualms I have with you or your business, Mighty Jabba, and everything to do with some of your workers' inability to read or understand basic rules. They wouldn't have lost their product or been given a lashing and thrown out if they had simply taken their business to a different establishment."
Zelina looked around the room, having heard a few soft snickers at her insults towards the ones who had violated her rules, and knowing she had the floor, though mostly because the crowd wanted to see what Jabba would do in response.
"If the ones dealing in slavery can learn to stay out of my cantina when doing that business, then I won't be an annoyance for your business or your people. It will be like I don't even exist for you, and you won't continue to lose able workers and hires. But that's only going to happen if they stop harassing me and my family and learn to keep slavery—and just the slavery—out of my cantina. Considering I allow every other form of business in my cantina so long as it isn't costing me business, that seems like a reasonable understanding we can both come to, as businesspeople, yes?"
Jabba let out a low, rumbling laugh that seemed to slither through the room. "You talk too much. It would be much simpler for me to kill you now and seize all you have for myself. Including that boy I've heard you have."
Zelina's eyes went hard and cold when he threatened Luke, and she let him see it. "Counter point."
There was a high-pitched whine, and Zelina pulled, from in the many packs and pouches she had hooked to her belt and leg harness, a thermal detonator, now armed and ready to go off any moment. As they were processing the one, she pulled out another and armed it, as well, with her other hand, holding them far apart and ready to simply let go and let them blow the whole room right up to the suns of Tatooine.
And she would do it, too. She didn't explain that she knew she would survive, that she could survive, didn't say how, though in her mind she willed herself to believe she could absorb the worst of the explosion with her developing tutaminis skills and repel the worst of the rubble with the Force to prevent from being crushed in the immediate destruction. If they forced her to blow the whole place, it wouldn't matter if she used her Force Powers to escape, because there would be no witnesses left to speak of them.
And she willed Jabba to see it in the eyes locked on his bulbous orange ones, willed him to see that she would blow this whole place to nothing and end him now if he did not take her offer. The rest of the room tried to hide and cower, some straight up trying to run from the room as they saw the deadlock and the detonator continued to whine, getting closer and closer to detonation.
Jabba laughed again, and this time Zelina felt some reassurance in the fact that he did not sound so sinister this time. More impressed and amused.
"You are a fearless one. And you know how to drive a hard bargain. I can see how you have climbed so far so fast and managed to keep your hold on your business. Fine. I will expect a…monthly contribution for my generosity, and in exchange, I will ensure none of my slavery business makes it into your cantina. Mutual beneficial arrangement, yes?"
Zelina debated. As much as she hated funding him and knew it was still extortion, if it kept Jabba's men out of her hair, then she wouldn't have to worry about crossing anyone too important that would be trouble the next time she needed to kick a slaver out of her cantina. This was Hutt space, and it was Hutt business here—any other slavers in the area wouldn't have nearly as much pull. It would solve her current dilemma. And she was making more than she knew what to do with as the cantina grew more and more successful.
Besides, if she'd just threatened to blow up a room full of people, she could live with a little extortion for however long she stayed on this planet to keep from any nasty messes in the future. She didn't need strangers showing up at their home unannounced and potentially finding something that would be damning for her safety and Luke's.
With an audible click, the detonators stopped whining, and she put them away once more. Good—those might come in handy someday, no point in wasting them, now.
"That sounds like an arrangement I can agree to, yes."
She sure as hell wasn't going to stop being vigilant for trouble from Jabba, though. They may be coming to an arrangement, but that didn't mean it would hold. Jabba could still decide one day he didn't like the girl who'd threatened him and successfully cornered him into something of a peace treaty still breathing and going about life as normal and make a move on her, again.
She would have to make sure she kept one eye open. As for how she would handle it if that day ever came…well, she would cross that bridge when she got to it.