Rey for Rent: Chapter - 1

On Jakku, Unkar Plutt offers Rey a new way to earn portions when scavenging comes up light. Co-written with Shabby Blue.

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Several months before the death of Han Solo….

Rey walked out of the paupers' graveyard on the outskirts of Niima Outpost, trying not to cry. Her resistance to shedding the pearls of water only partly came because she knew the dangers of letting her tough façade crack even for a moment on Jakku – more so, it was because she knew she couldn't spare the water. On Jakku, water was worth more than its weight in hypermatter.

Rey was leaving the graveyard with a few other scavengers and longtime residents of Niima. There was Constable Zuvio and his deputies Streehn and Drego, the closest thing to honest law on the planet. The kind scavenger Ivano Troade, a rarity on Jakku – worth more than his weight in water even. The elderly traveler Bobbajo, and his constant companion J'Rrosch. The Blarina friends, Ohn Gos the merchant and Naka Iit the scavenger – one of the few decent-hearted beings Rey encountered in that profession. Then there was the old vicar of the Church of the Force who had settled in the sacred village of Tuanul not too long ago. He was full of legends of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi, and it was he who had spoken a few words on life, death, and the Living Force from his tattered uneti-paper copy of The Jedi Path at what had passed for the funeral service just now concluded.

Rey and her fellow mourners were just coming from the funeral of Mashra, an older female Aqualish scavenger who had taken Rey under her wing shortly after Rey was abandoned on Jakku as a child a few years ago. During all the time Rey had been waiting for her parents to return and reclaim her, Mashra had served as something close to a mother figure, while Trelo – an Ithorian who had once been Unkar Plutt's head scavenger – had been close to a father figure for her.

Both of the old-timers had served as mentors as well as parental surrogates for Rey, helping her to pass the time and loneliness with fantastic stories of the beyond. One of Rey's favorite memories of Trelo was him telling her about Leia Organa after she had found a recorded holomessage of her in a crashed New Republic Corellian corvette. Mashra in turn had told young Rey fantastic stories about her youth on the water world Ando, and how she had once even seen a Jedi Master at a distance, sent by the Republic Senate to mediate an end to the Andoan Wars.

Several lunar cycles back, Trelo had been killed during a solo scavenging trip to the Starship Graveyard, an offworld scav from the Zendiat Guild named Jak Sazz beating him to death over a salvaged interlift. Mashra had been hit hard, the loss of her long-term companion exacerbating her own frailties of age. Rey soon realized that Mashra was suffering from the debilitating mental disease called the Bitter Winter. Several nuns from the local Church of the Force sacred village in Tuanul had helped tend to Mashra, but there was nothing much to be done, and now Mashra was gone too.

Mashra now lay in the dirt next to Trelo, their names etched into burnished durasteel plates which Rey had salvaged from the Starship Graveyard for their new purpose – from one graveyard to another, she reflected. Trelo and Mashra had always told her that the paupers' graveyard was where the Outpost's true despicables were buried – the scavengers who not only drank themselves to death, but were willing to sell their own children into slavery in order to buy the drinks that killed them. Rey had always felt a sense of coldness passing such a depressing place. And now the sense of depression and abandonment were all the stronger for her own parental figures being interred there, with the scum.

Her head down, Rey's left hand grasped hard around the quarterstaff, using it as a walking stick more than for a warning sign against potential pickpockets. She felt more than anything like returning to her makeshift Hellhound Two home… but Jakku was not a place where the luxury of mourning could be indulged. So it was back to the Concession Stand and her rented stall there, where she could work hard to earn a few more portions from Unkar today despite the time spent at the funeral service.

Rey was a petite, young girl, but her reputation was such that most older, larger Niima residents knew to stay out of her way. As crowded as the route was, therefore, it was a slight surprise to see an arrogant-looking Dug blocking her way.

"Tugi, Rey-sulta," he said in Huttese, greeting the scav girl with his so-called charms.

This pleasant sentient was Ryabo, a Dug thug who worked for Unkar as his chief 'accountant' – charged with keeping track of how to fleece offworld customers and the local scavengers alike. Ryabo had risen to that exalted position in return for having helped Unkar carry off a big theft against his rivals, the Irving Boys – even though it seemed like a loss to Rey, given the garbage ship Unkar had acquired from that heist was largely patchwork and hadn't flown in years. Ryabo was as much a second-in-command to Unkar, always cautious against upstarts, would allow – or could actually exist in the largely-personalist structure of Unkar's business.

"What do you want, Ryabo?" she asked, her grip tightening on her quarterstaff, just in case her tone didn't make it clear she wasn't in the mood for him or his boss today.

"So touchy!" Ryabo responded, switching from Huttese to Basic. The Dug claimed to be related to the erstwhile Doge of Malastare, having learned Basic while majoring in accounting at the famous Theed School of Diplomacy on Naboo. Yet most agreed that he had probably grown up working for the population of humans the Empire had settled on Malastare, before falling in with one of the Hutt syndicates, defecting to the Red Key Raiders, and ultimately shifting to Jakku to cool his heels -- or wrists, as it were.

"You'll get a touch of my staff in a second, you little--" Rey began to respond, before Ryabo held up a foot to her in a placating manner.

"Nuh uh, little spita," he chastised her. "Not stopping you for me. For the bossban! For Mister Plutt! He wants to see you. I know he wouldn't be very happy if I had to tell him you were injurious to me when fetching you for him! Reflects bad on him if his deputy is assaulted – deep lack of respect for Mister Plutt! So see?" he added with a typically-snide Dug smirk. "Am being good to you, little miss! Am looking out for you!"

Rey felt a wave of indignation wash over her as she recalled the last time she had been specifically summoned to the Blobfish, Unkar Plutt for reasons unknown. It had been one night after a challenging week in the desert, when Rey had failed to salvage enough junk to trade to the Crolute in exchange for food.

During that unsavory evening, he had pressured her into fellating him in trade for some 'extra portions' that would feed her starving mouth. Reluctantly, she sucked off his fishy knob as Plutt chortled about 'testing her worth', leaning back in his seat and grunting pleasurable noises while the young Human scav slobbered and drooled all over his fat, blubbery cock.

After awhile, young Rey had begun squirming over Unkar's leg, grinding her exposed sex against his knee as if it was the saddle-seat of her speeder, with the rough material of Plutt's pants, unclean as they were, rubbing against her tender womanhood and stimulating it into shameful arousal. Rey felt so embarrassed by her body's natural response to the stimulation when Unkar teased her about how she was getting his clothes all wet, like he was back home swimming in the warm, salty seas of Crul.

His fat, rigidly-textured cock had seemed so bizarre to her, beginning as a piteous shriveled sack before inflating with his body's internal saline reserves, the shape of water within it forming a pressurized phallus almost as large as her arm and hard as the durasteel in the wrecked AT-AT she had repurposed as her home in the Jakku desert. Unkar's sex organ was even oily like she imagined the Imperial war machine had been in its prime; from the holos, Rey knew that many in the Core Worlds thought aquatic animal oils had important nutrients, but she doubted any of them had had to go down on Unkar Plutt for their fish vitamins. The lumpish Crolute was as muscular as a gundark, though whatever physique he might have possessed was hidden beneath layers of blubber and folds of thick, rubbery skin. It was an appropriate metaphor for how not to take Unkar at his blobby surface value – a lesson Rey had learned in the most humiliating way possible, slobbering over his organ until it finally blasted her with its salty discharge, filling her mouth and splattering her face with his 'extra portions', as he jokingly noted.

As starved as she was that night after going at least three days with barely anything to eat in her rusty AT-AT hovel, Rey gobbled up the creamy concoction erupting into her mouth and swallowed as much as she could.

Her humiliation hadn't ended there, however. With remnants his seed still dripping down her disgusted face, Rey had been made to get on her back in the Concession Stand floor for a second round of debauchery with the junk peddler. From her understanding, most mammalian men would have needed some time to recharge their blasters, but Crolutes apparently had a different evolutionary advantage. The round, bloated crown of his penis had made its way down to the tight little rosebud of her anus… and begun to push inside. The feeling had been one of incredibly tightness, but no pain… not until his internal water reserves had started to expand his cock once it was already inside her asshole. For a moment, Rey nervously worried she would cause it to grow to its full size, fearing the pain from it splitting her pelvis, if not her entire body.

Nevertheless, it was still an extremely tight fit at first, made even tighter when he stuck one of his pudgy fingers into her quivering cunt as well, double-stuffing her for the first time in her young, inexperienced life. His digits, she quickly learned, could also be inflated from his water reservoirs. It reminded her of a dark take on the legends of the magical fingers of the Brodo Asogians. At least this time Rey had been grateful for the oily nature of his skin – without it, she doubted it would have been as tolerable as it had been.

After a good twenty minutes of stretching and plundering Rey's virginal asshole while fingering her creaming cunt to an explosive orgasm, Unkar reached his own second climax, giving the Human girl a fully-organic fish oil enema of the type rich women would probably pay thousands of credits for in the spas of Canto Bight.

Struggling to stand up soon afterward on shaky legs, Rey carefully dressed after wiping between her sore holes with a nanoweave absorbent wipe. The Crolute cretin had chuckled, congratulating her for 'proving her real worth' to him that evening. Rey had chosen not to respond to that last degrading remark, grabbing the pile of polystarch packets he had offered and slowly staggering away to her speeder – even as he had called after her to suggest that fish sauce would go well with the polystarch bread. Her stomach – already full of the 'sauce,' from both ends – had unpleasantly roiled at the words.

Unkar's twisted notion of testing Rey's skills before his explosive climax had all but assured the girl that she had the dubious honor of 'passing his test', and that as a result she might eventually find herself in that position again – on her knees or on her back, to be precise – anytime she was desperate and hungry enough to earn food the hard way from Unkar when her salvage haul was too meager to trade to him.

There weren't many pretty girls in Niima Outpost, and most either didn't stay on Jakku for long, or didn't remain pretty long either due to the harsh climate. Yet, in that small span of time, all usually found themselves working for Unkar or others of his profession to earn their 'extra portions' in order to survive.

Now, at the summons Ryabo had just delivered, Rey sighed in resigned acceptance of the way things were on this planet, suspecting Unkar was eager to defile her again so soon after their last time together. It had been only three weeks since that fateful evening, and Plutt had admittedly not brought up the vile experience again whenever she visited him to trade more junk, but an unusual summons like this could only be for something more than typical scavenger business.

"Alright," she spat at Ryabo – only verbally, as even he wasn't worth the moisture. "I'll go see Unkar. Don't bother, I know the way," she said, cutting him off when the Dug began to propose an all-too-gentlemanly escort of her to their mutual employer.

"Be seeing you," Ryabo chortled, raising a foot to tilt his sun-blocking flopbrim hat towards her as she walked by. Rey knew all too well how he was imagining seeing her, sensing his lustful gaze from behind.

It was only a few minutes' walk to Unkar's office; Niima Outpost was easily traversable, which could be either a blessing or a curse. Finding the door open when she arrived, Rey let herself in. The interior of Unkar's office was just as ramshackle and muggy as she remembered. She suspected he kept it so humid to remind him of his tropical homeworld. Normally, Rey would enjoy the lavish use of water in the atmosphere, but when it was paired with a temperature higher than that of the Goazon Badlands, it was interminable. She had often fantasized about one day visiting a world rich with water, but Unkar's homeworld Crul was one she would gladly avoid.

The Blobfish himself was sitting on his threadbare chair, flipping through a stack of somewhat-serviceable electromagnetic discharge filters a scavenger must have just bartered away. Probably a week's worth of dangerous spelunking in the holds of old Imperial wrecks, casually pawned off for a few packets of disgusting instant bread.

"Ah, Rey, my girlie!" he said, looking up and letting the filters drop to the sandy ground. Rey could only think of how much effort the scavenger must have put into extracting them and polishing them for Unkar to let them get so scuffed up. How much surplus labor had she herself put into her products for him, to ultimately be meaningless in Unkar's own accumulation of wealth compared to what he doled out to her?

"Constable Zuvio told me that old Mashra's funeral was being held today in the paupers' graveyard," he continued, his voice oozing sincerity more than his blubbery skin secreted oil. "You were close to her, were you not, girlie? My condolences. She was a hard worker, she always paid her tribute to me, always got parts in on time, always showed respect and dedication. She was a fine woman in that way, a true role model for you."

Rey ground her teeth, not knowing how to respond in a way that wouldn't cause him to send his thugs after her five minutes after she left his office. She didn't know if there was something about her that made Unkar like to toy with her this way, but she suspected he didn't behave this ways with the various male scavengers. It might be something to do with his own evolutionary biology. Crolutes were an all-male species who shared their homeworld with an all-female species, the Gilliands. Reproduction resulted only in male Crolutes and female Gilliands. Rey wondered if because of this, all Crolutes might tend to be misogynists and all Gilliands might be misandrists. Well, another reason to avoid Crul in the future… if her family ever returned to take her away from Jakku.

Thankfully, Unkar didn't expect Rey to say much of anything, apparently preferring hearing himself ruminate instead. "Yes, Mashra was a hard worker. Always made me a good profit in the trade… until, of course, her wasting illness the last few lunar cycles. With her memory deteriorating, being unable to remember to pay… sad, quite sad. But of course, I had to look after such a good worker, didn't I? Not even a good worker, but a good friend, I would say – a very good friend indeed, a friendship that went beyond employer and contractor. So I sent a few donations over to the Tuanul, for the Church of the Force there to send their nuns over, the Sisters of Mercy to tend to her. And of course the fee I paid to the Office of the Constable for the funeral permit – oh yes, you didn't think of that, did you, girlie? I run a civilized outpost here, we can't just bury whoever we like wherever we like. I was proud to do this for my dearly departed friend."

"However, I am a businessman," Unkar continued. "These debts of Mashra's, they added up fast. Now, if it were only a few credits here and there, a few New Republic dataries or old Imperial credits, well, I could look the other way. But, girlie, these are serious debts I have incurred on poor old Mashra's behalf. "And…." Now the real Unkar emerged, a rapacious smile that wiped away all pretense of concern or altruism in favor of the joy of pure fiscal accumulation. "It is sacred Crolute custom for debts to be held at high interest rates. You can't go against tradition, Rey. The words of sacred texts must be preserved and respected. I know you agree with that in your heart, girlie."

"Of course…" Rey began hesitantly. "I know what's important. Mashra meant a lot to me, and I'm willing to help pay her remaining debt. It's the least I can do for her now…" She leaned her quarterstaff against the wall of the Concession Stand, reaching down to pull up her Govath-wool tunic. Her mind still lingered on the last time she had been pressured into a fuck session by Unkar, the memory of his thick blubbering digit probing her ku'nee bubbling up to the top of her mind.

"I know what you're wanting of me, Unkar… but I'm just warning you," she said, as her tunic went up over her head, revealing her paler torso with simple bindings over her tiny buds. "After you plundered my ass last time, I couldn't walk for three days. No movement means no scavenging, which means no portions for me and no parts to sell to you." Maintaining the stern tone in her voice and the focus on the business aspect of this 'transaction' helped Rey keep her focus away from the feeling of revulsion in having to let Unkar defile her body again. Once she let it happen again, she knew it would become routine – just another necessity of survival in Niima Outpost.

"Oh no, girlie, you misunderstand!" Unkar protested, his voice dripping with saccharine shock. "Unless, of course, you are in heat? I know Human girlies sometime get desperate, need to be… smashed, hmm? Smashed in their pazi?" he said, using a Crolute word whose meaning was all too clear.

"Not even close," she grimaced, unsure why he was telling her to stop now that she was already standing half naked before him. Not waiting for an excuse to pull her simple shift back down over her exposed body, Rey asked, "What do you want from me, then? I'm already one of the most productive scavengers around here. You know it won't be easy for me to increase my output."

"Indeed not," he readily agreed. Despite their situation, Rey's pride felt stung from him agreeing with that assessment so quickly without dispute.

"After giving it some thought these last three weeks, I've determined that you are wasting your time scavenging junk to make ends meet," Plutt began to explain, then bluntly stated, "You're a good fuck, girlie – one of the best fresh tastes I've had in Niima in years. There's an eagerness to you just below the surface. But I'm not interested in having you again today – at least, not to earn more food rations or a few paltry credits," he added, that ugly sneering smile returning. "Fucking you would not earn me anything, would it? I told you, girlie, I am a businessman. As they say on Jakku… 'Nothing for nothing' – that's the planet's motto, you know…"

"What are you after then, Unkar?" Rey demanded impatiently, his brazenness and the sudden turn of the conversation tilting her off balance mentally.

"You could make a lot more money than scavenging by renting your body to offworld visitors," Unkar clarified. "Or, more accurately, having your body rented to offworld visitors by someone who can look after you. Someone like me," he added with a sly grin.

Rey was appalled by the realization of what he was proposing. This was shameless and blatant, even for Unkar, and especially given her recent rescuing of him from Zool Zendiat and his star-hopping guild of thieves when they had tried to kidnap the junk peddler. There had always been rumors that Unkar had once worked as a bouncer at a strip club or prostitution den on Tatooine many years ago. Rey hadn't had any trouble believing that, but she never thought that the Crolute would have taken to the other aspects of that sleazy line of work.

One of the constant worries of Rey's life was that some slaver crew working for the Hutts or Zygerrians might snatch her up, as happened to attractive humanoid girls on lawless worlds across the galaxy. Even the New Republic Senate on Hosnian Prime constantly debated the threat to humanoid females from alien slavers, though such debates – even as heard from across the galaxy in snatches of sliced HoloNet signals – tended to devolve more into Populist claims of Centrist species-baiting.

For all that even the mighty Republic feared human slavery, Rey had never seriously expected to face the possibility of sexual servitude here on Jakku. Ironically, its own lawlessness, distance from centers of authority – criminal as much as political or economic – and expansive wastelands provided its own protection from the type of involuntary chattel slavery that existed on worlds even slightly closer to the levers of power, like Mimban, Vaygis with its flesh markets serving as a haven for bounty hunters, or even Tatooine with its proximity to the Hutts that still dominated the criminal underworld.

If Unkar noticed her shock and dismay, he didn't show any indication, and he certainly did not let it give him pause. "You really should be thanking me, girlie. If you recall when I had the pleasure of your mouth and body last time, I was testing your limits to see how well you'd manage taking on a man of my size. You wouldn't want a painful first time experience, would you, now? After all, I'd like to think that I've helped mold you into the woman you are now," he mused with a sickly grin, recalling how limber and loose she was after he had withdrawn his cum-glistening shaft from her well-used body that last night.

Rey looked back at the opening of the Concession Stand, to where Ryabo and two hooded humanoid thugs were now standing. They weren't blocking the exit, but the threat of their presence was clear.

This time, at least, Unkar noted her response – possibly because an escape attempt from her would likely result in personal injury to his person and, almost as bad, humiliation before his subordinates. "Now, girlie, you know I am a good person. I'm not some vile gangster Hutt who wouldn't give you a choice! Not all men are like that, you know, just because we're in the business of business! No, no, I won't force you, girlie… but if you do not agree to this, I will have no choice but to raise your weekly quota of salvage for portions."

"I already told you that I can't reasonably scavenge more than I already do, at least not by myself!" Rey exclaimed. This, more than anything, made her actually angry in its utter impossibility of expectations.

"Well then, I suppose you will not be responsible for this on your own," Unkar retorted, his voice sounding imminently reasonable. "I will just have to ask your friend Ivano Troade to help make up the difference."

Despite the humid heat of Unkar's office, Rey felt an icy, hard coldness flow through her veins. A sequence of fear, anger, and hate shifting and growing with every heartbeat as Unkar sat there, smiling. Ivano was one of the only kind people left in Niima now that their mutual friends Trelo and Mashra were gone, and like them, he had taught Rey how to scavenge and helped look after the young girl as she had learned how to survive on this planet. Like her other two mentors, Ivano was getting older now as well – and Rey wouldn't allow him to fall victim to Unkar's thirst for credits. She hadn't, in the end, been strong enough to save Mashra; she hadn't been there for Trelo – but she could at least be here for Ivano.

Especially as he likely wouldn't be extended the same 'courtesy' as Unkar was giving her.

"Fine, Unkar… I'll do whatever you want," she slowly acquiesced in defeat, closing her eyes and letting a feeling of strange serenity wash over her as she accepted his proposal. "But," she added, opening her eyes and fixating them on Unkar with a lingering surge of powerful certitude. "My condition is to do this for one night only. After that, my debts – and Mashra's, Trelo's, Ivano's, whoever else you might want to pin this on – all those debts are erased. Whatever I make, you get – but I do this for you, just one night only."

"One night only," Unkar repeated calmly, then nodded more animatedly. "One night only!" he practically shouted again with enthusiasm. "I can agree to that, because I know you, Rey. A tasty girlie like you? Getting treated to the fine life in a pillow house instead of scrambling across the desert fighting off Teedo in the sun? You say one night only, but I know you, girlie… you'll find this life suits you, and when you do, I'll be happy to expand my protection to you!"

For all the tension thickening the air even more than the humidity, Rey had to laugh at that. "Unkar… I'll never join you. The day I need your protection is the day that I'll stop believing my parents will return."

"Bah! Keep your daytime beliefs, girlie," Unkar dismissively responded with another smirk and a wave of his hand, licking his blubbery lips as he watched Rey pick up her quarterstaff and walk out of the office, brushing past Ryabo and the two hoodlums. "All I'm interested in is your night-time activities from now on..."

* * * * *

Rey sighed to herself again as she looked out at the desert landscape speeding past. It was high noon on Jakku, prime scavenging time, but she was not on her way to the Starship Graveyard, or even better, returning from it to Niima Outpost with bags full of newfound loot. Nor was she even straddling her own beloved speeder, left in the care of Constable Zuvio. Instead, she was in a decrepit old XP-38 landspeeder that she was surprised still even flew.

Rey was certain the rough saddle of her speeder had given her more enjoyment and pleasure than she was going to get tonight. Even with the knowledge of what she was going to do this evening, whoring herself to random strangers, she didn't feel dread or fear or loathing. Only a grinding resentment at being forced into this situation, paying for her departed friend's remaining debts.

Ryabo and the pair of Unkar's hooded humanoid thugs were escorting Rey down the Pilgrim's Road, the path through the Goazon Badlands that led from Niima Outpost to the Sacred Villages. The 'Sacred Villages' was the collective term for the scattering of religious sanctuaries established by pilgrims and refugees on Jakku following the battle there at the end of the Galactic Civil War, these sanctuaries still drew their fair share of visitors to the world, especially with the expansion of the First Order throughout the Outer Rim, displacing a number of sects there that challenged the rule of Supreme Leader Snoke or the Force-supremacy of his subordinate, the mysterious Kylo Ren.

The most notable Sacred Village was Tuanul, the village composed of the followers of the Church of the Force, the sect who had preserved Jedi lore and fanned the spark of their legend after the fall of the Old Republic. The missionaries of the Church provided what little education and health care the residents of Niima, including Rey when she was a youngling, ever received. Many, like the old vicar, were respected by even the shadiest of Niima denizens, but often only by suspicion and fear over the belief they themselves harbored some wizard power of the old Jedi. Prior to his funeral oration for Mashra, Rey had last seen the vicar speaking to cantina owner Redge Moonhopper, condemning two anti-Skywalker works – The God that Failed and The Villain with a Thousand Faces – circulated on the HoloNet by First Order sympathizers after the massacre of the new Jedi Order.

Further along the Kelvin Ravine, the merry band's XP-38 passed Refractory Orenth, a Lens of the Central Isopter. Many of the death-worshipping cult had died in the destruction of the Holy City of Jedha during the Galactic Civil War, but the group still lingered on in an appropriate revenant status. Some of those survivors had joined the Guavian Death Gang, the distinctive Isopter face masks forming the basis for the red helmets of the Guavian security soldiers. Even the cults Guavian relatives tended to avoid Jakku – for there just wasn't enough to merit galactic crime here.

Next along the Pilgrim's Road was A'Yark'OuoUr'H'OuR, a camp of the Grave Tuskens, a group of Tusken Raiders recruited by an Inquisitor during the time of the Empire to serve as mercenaries off-world from Tatooine. After many of them were massacred on a moon of Sullust, their Inquisitor employer killed, and the Empire felled, the surviving Grave Tuskens made their way to Jakku, establishing A'Yark'OuoUr'H'OuR around a ruined shrine they claimed had been built by an ancient alien deity named Tul'kar, allegedly mirroring a similar shrine to the being in the Eastern Dune Sea back on Tatooine. They believed that Tul'kar was the deity who had caused the desertification of both Tatooine and Jakku thousands of years in the past, as punishment of the natives' sins. The fact that the alleged Jakku natives had not survived the desertification meant that the planet had been divinely-intended as a new Promised Land for the Tuskens – just one where they tended to ride happabores instead of the few banthas they managed to purchase from the Circus Horrificus.

The Grave Tuskens were odds with the Church due to some bad encounter with a Jedi Knight on Tatooine that their ancestors had experienced around the start of the Clone Wars. But – like the Niima residents – they feared the possibility of the Churchgoers having Jedi powers, and so kept an uneasy distance from Tuanul. Instead, they occasionally hired their services out to Zuvio, or as protection for offworld scavengers and merchants buying artifacts or making their way to and from the Starship Graveyard, helping drive away even-worse raiders, like Dokar Venas and his bandits of the Strus Clan.

The offerings of the Pilgrim's Road were growing scanter now; Rey could make out one vendor on the side toasting Blue Puff Cubes over a fire stoked in the torso of a long-deactivated R2 astromech, a sign in scribbled Corellian script offering them for sale to hungry travelers. A few hundred meters beyond the food stand, several members of the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Lasersword, identified by their distinctive chest tattoos and red headpieces, filtered out of their sandstone library, rumored to house relics from a Knight of the Jedi Crusaders. Nearby was an anchorite habit house dedicated to their Consecrated Eremite – hard to determine whether it was abandoned or not – and a shrine to the Teedo deity R'iia. An aviary had been built from steelpecker nests, used to house a shrine to the egg of the Great Bird of the Galaxy worshipped by the Crèche Cult of Ovanis.

Then there was the chapterhouse of the water-worshipping Cult of Varn. The Varnites spread their faith primarily through showing the holodocumentary Varn, World of Water; and they made their money for upkeep by occasionally showing more popular holofilms in the chapterhouse. Once in a while, they would play Luke Skywalker and the Dragons of Tatooine; it was one of the only holofilms Rey had ever seen, but Garik Loran, the actor who played the title role, had been in enough of her dreams that she was confident few other holofilms in the wider galaxy could compete with it.

Maybe she would pretend that one of the men she would lay with was Loran. She could only hope one might be close to comparing to him.

Finally, they came to their ultimate destination – the Sacred Village of New Reslia. The village had originally been established by the Lortans, a cult who believed that someday a 'Man-Hutt' would return to sweep evil from the galaxy. They had been decimated by an elite Imperial fleet, but due to their own general zealotry and unpleasantness, the surviving refugees had found it difficult to locate a suitable world that was willing to allow them to settle on. Following the Battle of Jakku, the Lortans had found their new world – not only was Jakku lawless and virtually uninhabited, and not only was it the site of their hated Imperial oppressors' final destruction, it also was home to one of the most prominent Hutts of the era.

Niima the Hutt had established her namesake Niima Outpost just after the Battle of Jakku, seizing on the chance to make money from the scavengers flocking across the galaxy to scrounge from the still-smoldering Starship Graveyard. New Republic partisans were interested in getting access to Imperial records from the ships' databanks; neo-Imperials wanted clues as to where the Imperial fleet had vanished to into the Unknown Regions; gangsters and warlords wanted to get weapons they could get the old Separatist foundry-worlds to cheaply replicate; and independent scavengers wanted to make a few credits by getting those items first and selling them at marked-up prices to the offworlders.

At that time, Hutt Space and other traditional Hutt holdings were being consumed by internecine strife; the murder of Jabba on Tatooine had led to the 'Will Disagreement' that tore his own kajidic clan apart on Nal Hutta, while Huttese slaves were taking advantage of that weakness by arming themselves and murdering their owners in what would become known as the Kanji Revolt, whose victors would go on to establish Kanjiklub. Niima was one of the few Hutts to prosper during that time of Hutt strife, thanks to her being outside of Hutt Space geographically and the Hutt Cartel organization institutionally. However, that independence not only meant that she had been spared the internal fighting; it meant that she had already been forced to forge her own path to success on her own.

Welcoming the Lortans was the latest step in that process; already, her unique status – not to mention the fact that she had also been injured fighting Imperials during the battle on Jakku – led to some believing her to be their promised messiah, and quickly began worshipping the Hutt as a living goddess. The Lortans had grafted to their worship elements of religions as diverse as the many Nikto cults and the T'landa Til Exultation of Ylesia; in turn, Niima had sent out her own Lortan 'missionaries' to the Hutt worlds after the demise of the Kanji Revolt, the new religion helping keep the Hutts' servant species docile with religious fervor -- not to mention the promise of attention from her nubile slave 'priestesses' in return for good behavior.

The use of 'priestesses' had led to a new innovation. With the uprising and gang war among the Hutt worlds, maximizing revenue was extremely important – and so Niima used the cover of the Lortan religion to create a new source of credits. Bringing in slave girls from Tatooine, Ylesia, Nal Hutta, Nar Shaddaa, and Sleheyron, Niima created the first dedicated brothel on Jakku, posing the prostitution as a 'sacred rite' and making a killing off of the lonely prospectors and scavengers drawn to the Starship Graveyard from across the galaxy.

Rey had once been scouted out to 'convert' to the Lortan 'worship,' but had refused, and thankfully Constable Zuvio's militia had ensured that the Hutt cult would not forcibly 'proselytize' to the Outpost's women. The Church of the Force missionaries from Tuanul opposed New Reslia's status as a red light sector, but were powerless to do anything about it. From her own rather direct observations, Rey suspected even if the Churchgoers did have the powers of a Jedi, no amount of mind tricks could overcome the lustful desires of the average scavenger.

With those gates opened by Niima, others followed, and New Reslia became the unofficial – but very real – red light sector of Niima Outpost. From New Alderaan came 'priestesses' claiming to preserve the worship of the Alderaanian goddess of love Aria, a religion where sacred temple prostitution had, at least at one point in that world's now-vanished history, been a real and important religious duty. From Naboo came geishas devoted to the goddess Shiraya. An old Toydarian club owner from Talanc City on Nal Hutta's fourth moon of Naj Varla had decided to graduate from owning a strip club to a brothel, partly due, it was whispered, to a disagreement with the Black Sun. Then there were the independents – going down the Pilgrim's Road that served as the main street in New Reslia, Rey saw a Lortan prostitute wearing a traditional golden bikini taking a Diollan client into a hut.

Finally they reached their destination – Old Meru's.

This structure consisted of a series of luggabeast-hide tents pitched together, with open windows that could be rolled down at night or in the case of sandstorms; two flagpoles came from the central tent, with pennants that Rey wasn't sure of flying from them. It was a heavier version of the urtya tents that the Grave Tuskens had brought to Jakku from Tatooine, expanded to consist of a number of rooms rather than a single tent with a single space in it.

In front of the tent was a public water trough for the travelers on the Pilgrim's Road, supported by a few moisture farmers who had been retired junk dealers and had worked a deal with the titular owner of Old Meru's, one of the de facto 'civic officials' of New Reslia. Ryabo parked the XP-38 next to some happabores drinking from the trough. Rey exited the speeder and warily headed into the tent. Ryabo quickly followed, while Unkar's two thugs stayed behind to watch over the speeder.

Old Meru was not only the owner of the watering hole, she was the madame of the brothel as well – a tough-looking woman with a cybernetic arm and Huttese tattoos across her face and surviving arm. Some believed she had been a former Hutt slave girl herself, a long time ago on a planet far, far away; others that she had been a majordomo to a Hutt palace on Nal Hutta, or a mercenary for a Hutt clan during the Kanji Revolt, or even one of the Imperial soldiers in the battle here who had simply decided to stay after the final death of the Empire.

No one knew for sure, though, because none were brave enough to ask. Rey had stopped at Meru's a few times before, while going to a few more-scattered wreckage sites; she had paid for water and nothing else, and has surreptitiously sketched some of Meru's more interesting tattoos in her personal survival guide. She had been careful doing so, though. Rey knew not to mess with Meru – the last time someone made that mistake, she came out of her shack with the biggest blaster rifle Rey had ever seen. Even without the informal protection of the Lortan fanatics – who played the same peacekeeping role here as Zuvio's militia in Niima Outpost – Rey easily believed that Meru would hold her own.

As they went inside, passing a lurking Lasat bouncer, Rey could hear that an old Pekkie Blue and the Starboys album was playing on the dilapidated sound system; "I'm Afraid of Corellians" was just ending, and "Separatist City" had just begun playing. The interior of the main tent was subdivided by hanging partitions of the same tough material as the tent's exterior; the entrance led into the main room, which functioned as a saloon. Meru herself, scowling as usual, came out from a back room, her graying hair barely moving as the leather flap brushed it, old servos in her cyber-arm faintly whirring.

"Ryabo," she said, her eyes, as usual, fixing on what was important. "I got the message from Unkar. Here's my terms. Your boss gets two-thirds. I get one third and I'll spread the word 'round here to make sure the usual lot know we got a fresh new girl -- a Human, even. Your boss better let the off-worlders in Niima know to come to Old Meru's and Old Meru's only."

"Excuse me, but don't I have any say?" Rey interjected, balking at being talked about like she was not even present – not to mention, that the terms of her labor, which she usually fought so hard for when it came to scavenging, was being decided for her by her two employers.

"No," Meru and Ryabo both spat back at her, before each gave their own expansion.

"Do you actually want to pay off Mashra's debt or not?" Ryabo asked sarcastically. Meru, however, just grunted and spat a wad of chewing rankweed into a bronzium spittoon at the end of the bar.

Rey winced in disgust, her eyes fixed on the spittoon. She took a deep breath of the dusty, dry air, and then sighed. "Well, I guess I have no more challenges to the contract."

"Oh, it's all verbal here, honey," Meru said with a wry laugh. "This ain't the Core Worlds. It ain't even Niima. Normally I'd say to shake on it, but I ain't got no foot fetish."

"Handsome as I am, no doubt," the Dug Ryabo replied, wriggling one of his elevated toes towards the old madame. When the cyborg procuress simply kept staring down at him with no change of expression, it was time for the Dug to sigh. "In that case, I believe our word is our bond." He turned to Rey. "You will be staying here until dawn. It's not safe to travel at night, and we want to make sure that you earn as much money as possible, don't we? Meru will provide you a bunk once your shift is over tonight. The gentlemen and I will return tomorrow morning, to collect you – as well as Mr. Plutt's cut of the earnings – and then bring you back to Niima, safe and sound… until next time, of course, heh heh heh," he finished with a typical Dug chortle.

Rey was frustrated that not only would today be a waste of her scavenging skills, but she would now also be missing the prime early daylight hours on scavenging tomorrow morning. There was no way around it, apparently, not with her speeder back in Niima. "I'll see you tomorrow, then," she agreed, mentally adding, and if I never see you again, it will be too soon.

With that, Ryabo nodded his head towards Meru, and then walked out. Rey heard him shout to the two thugs, and a few seconds later, the sound of the XP-38's repulsorlifts powered up to take it and its passengers back along the Pilgrim's Road, leaving Rey behind, in the heart of Jakku's second-most profitable industry.

Meru too listened to the outsiders depart, and as soon as the sound of the XP-38 faded into the desert wind, ensuring her newest girl was good and truly in her charge for the night, she turned her head to one of the entrances of the secondary tents that budded off the main 'hall,' such as it was. "Ikana! Get your butt in here, and make it faster'n a Corellian been in space six cycles, before I whup it even more red than it already is!"

"Coming, Madame Meru!" came a chipper voice, and in a few seconds, a young girl came bounding into the main hall. She – Ikana, going by Meru's call – looked to be about Rey's own age, but appeared even younger – the effects of living and working in a brothel, she supposed, rather than working out in the scorching sun and sand and wind and prying durasteel parts of starships since as long as Rey could remember. Ikana did indeed have red skin, spattered with freckles around her blue eyes – eyes whose color was a good counterpart to the pale green shift that, along with simple sandals, seemed to be the only item of clothing she was wearing.

It was Ikana's head that drew the most attention from Rey. For one, she had no makeup on; combined with her cheerful attitude and… well, young and fresh demeanor, the girl was very different from the image Rey had of what a typical brothel whore should look like, recalling the occasional run-in with streetwalkers around the landing field at Niima Outpost. It was also Ikana's physiognomy that drew Rey's interest. The girl had striped white and blue montrals and lekku, but shorter and stubbier than on most Togruta. Along with her skin tone and lack of their typical facial coloration patches, it seemed to Rey that Ikana was some hybrid mix of Human and Togruta – maybe a Human grandparent. Those kinds of cross-species mixes were common in the galaxy's fringe worlds.

"Ikana, take our new girl back and get her set for the opening," Meru said. "She's green, so show her the ropes. Outfit, hair, makeup – she don't know what she don't know in that department, so you're in charge of all of it. Flap's up in two hours, so you got that long to pretend you're Pior Talbor over there. You know what we aim for."

"Yes, Madame Meru," Ikana replied in the same chipper tone, but the old madame was already returning to her back room. As the flap that worked as a door came down, Rey thought she could hear the sound of a cork coming out of the top of a bottle.

"Green?" Rey scoffed, once the madame was safely away and occupied. "I didn't think there was any green in the whole planet. Certainly not someone who's survived as long as I have, in conditions a lot worse than a pillow house – no offense," she quickly added to her new friend.

"None taken, and the Madame didn't mean none either," Ikana added. "Just that, well, you don't seem the type to take to this kind of work – and I assume I don't need to say no offense, since you don't seem like the kind who'd take that as an insult. You really a scav?"

"For as long as I can remember," Rey said with a nod. "Probably spent more time in the Starship Graveyard than my own home. It's just temporary, though – my parents left me here on Jakku, but once they come back, we'll head off world again together."

"Been waiting for them long?" Ikana asked.

"Not too long," Rey deflected, after a momentary pause, one which Ikana seemed to pick up on.

"That's impressive," the hybrid girl said, her eyes wide at the thought of ekeing a living out in the Goazan Badlands, with no Madame Meru or Grave Tuskens or Lortan fanatics for protection. "Got a name you go by?"

"Rey… just Rey."

"I'm Ikana… Ikana Mafeen. You're real pretty, Rey – let's get you all cleaned up and looking like a million credits." Reaching out, Ikana grabbed Rey's hand, and pulled her back into one of the other tents connected to the central bar area.

They entered a room whose sides, save for a single full-length mirror, were entirely full of dressers, nightstands, and frame-racks holding what seemed like every variety of clothing, footwear, lingerie, makeup, and accessories that a woman of the galaxy could need. It reminded Rey of stories Trelo had told her about the legendary wardrobes of the senators of Naboo, or the famous Fred'rix of Bespin chain of luxury lingerie that would occasionally get mentioned on the sparse holos she'd pick up in her AT-AT home.

Some of the short nightstands scattered about the room, holding jewelry and perfume also had copies of various holomags, mostly fashion, lingerie, or straight-up porn, obviously intended to be inspirational for the girls when they were styling their exotic appearances. There was an old issue of Coruscant Cosmos with redheaded holostar Moli Ringworld, and an issue of Galactic Sporting Illustrated featuring swimsuits on the exotic water world of Mon Cala she had long been interested in. The Galactic Enquirer seemed to be from a few years ago, featuring scandalous sludgenews spy-holos of the blonde Senator Fatil of Orinda at an Imperial-themed bondage party for Centrist politicians. And, of course, a number of copies of Flyboy, Podracing Quarterly, and the Fred'rix catalogue, long-time staples for the galaxy's perverts going back to the time before the Clone Wars. One copy of Podracing Quarterly had a cover featuring as its 'Podracer Pets' two blue-skinned Twi'leks named Ann and Tann Gella; and one of the Fred'rix catalogues featured another Twi'lek, Daesha, voicing her support of the Populist Party.

Ikana opened one set of doors in a cheap plastex prefab dresser, lightly sealed from the planet's ever-present dust, and began looking through the dresses held up on the hangars.

"So… you got a working name yet?" Ikana inquired.

"A what?" Rey asked, still trying to figure out how to navigate the brothel – both metaphorically, as well as literally, in case she needed a quick escape.

"You know, a professional name, so no one can connect the dots if they see you out in some crashed star destroyer's hanger when you're out scavenging in a few lunar cycles."

"I didn't even think of that," Rey admitted. She felt embarrassed at that fact – that seemed like a key aspect of self-preservation for this career, and she knew from experience that if you didn't know how to survive on Jakku, you didn't. Mashra, Ivano, and Trelo had helped teach her how to survive as a scav when so many other newcomers died – but now it seemed like Old Meru was right and she really didn't know what she didn't know. "I guess that means I don't have a… professional name yet."

"Oh, good!" Ikana said, dropping Rey's hand to clap her own excitedly. "In that case, you can call yourself Varina!" She pronounced the name Va-rey-na. "It's perfect – even kind of has your own name hidden in plain sight within it… and you're almost the spitting image of her when she was younger!"

"Who was Varina?" Rey asked.

"Varina Kaadara! You never heard of her? She's kind of a role model for me. She was a human holoporn starlet at the end of the Old Republic and the start of the Empire. She was famous for her ultraporn. Madame Meru sometimes plays it on occasion to set the mood for the antilles – that's what we call our customers, 'cause they're always anonymous – or just to pass the time. The Varnites played some of her stuff a year or so back with a deal with Meru to split the profits, though I think it's only because Meru promised them that she'd choose ones where Varina squirts a lot. Uri gets a few Varnites from time to time. You'd think the Varnites would be into watersports, but if they are, I guess they get their kicks somewhere other than here…."

Having a holoporn starlet be a hero was a difficult concept for Rey to wrap her head around. While Ikana was rooting around for the right change of clothes, Rey asked gently, "So, have you always been here with Old Meru? That is, was it hard to be… raised by her?" For all her toughness, Rey didn't know how to ask if this togruta hybrid with a heart of aurodium was a slave – and, more importantly, also a girl who had been separated from her parents. Or was Old Meru her mother? Rey suddenly regretted opening her big mouth.

Thankfully for Rey's sociability, if not her quest for comradeship, Ikana just laughed. "Oh, Maker no, I wasn't raised by Madame Meru! I've only worked here the last two years or so. My grandparents were colonists on the Kiros colony who were enslaved by the Zygerrians during the Clone Wars. After their escape from Kadavo, my grandmother received a parting 'gift' left behind from one of the clone troopers she had shown her gratitude for rescue to – the kind of gift that doesn't make itself known until a few months after the Republic forces had departed, if you know what I mean?"

"I think so," Rey said, her hands unconsciously going down to rub her stomach. She was suddenly worried whether humans and Crolutes were genetically compatible. The thought of her belly swelling with a baby blobfish swimming around inside her almost made her as queasy as the taste of Unkar's spunk. Now she was glad the junk boss had so far finished on her face or up her ass. It was the best argument for a blowjob Rey had heard yet.

"Well, you won't have to worry about that here, at least," Ikana said in a comforting tone, misinterpreting Rey's rubbing of her admirably-flat tummy. "Not like with my granny. That's how my dad was conceived. After he was born and the war ended, they were shunned from the Togruta worlds 'cause of the biological shame he represented, kind of a living memory of the Kiros mass-enslavement, and they got pushed to the fringes of the galaxy under the Empire due to their racial purity laws punishing Human-alien miscegenation. So my parents eventually wound up here on Jakku. My parents still live over in Reestkii, and I was born there. We're one of the few these days who could trace their ancestry on the world to before the battle here," she said proudly.

Rey couldn't imagine why someone would be proud of being born on Jakku. Truth be told, Ikana was one of the only native Jakkuvians Rey had actually met. Niima Outpost and the Sacred Villages tended to be populated by outlanders who came to Jakku to make money or escape religious – or criminal – persecution. The natives who predated the battle tended to remain in the villages – Reestkii, Cratertown, Blowback Town, Sietch Anthea – that were smaller and more distant from the battle's wreckage zone or the older Imperial installations from the time of Palpatine. Ikana's hometown of Reestkii was a poor agri-combine settlement four hundred kilometers away that supplied what little fresh produce it could to Niima; even on the planetary scale it wasn't too far, but with the types of transportation and the hazardous environment of Jakku, Rey had never made the journey herself. What would be the point?

"My parents probably suspect how I make the remittances I send back to them every lunar cycle," Ikana admitted. "But they don't ask whenever I go home to see them, and I don't tell. We're just too happy to see each other whenever we can."

"It must be nice to have parents who accept their daughter for doing whatever she needs to do to survive," Rey said wistfully.

"Do you not--" Ikana began, then thankfully interrupted herself with a high-pitched squealed. "This is it! Oh, I found it!" She spun around to look at Rey, hiding her discovery behind her back. "Clothes off now, Rey! I found exactly the outfit for you – you're gonna look wizard in it! Now… do you trust me?"

"That would depend," Rey said – truthfully, but with a tone that was soft enough to mask the blow for the girl. "Trust you to do what?"

"Make you look like your namesake!" Ikana said, her enthusiasm almost making it across to Rey, it flared so nova-hot. "Outfit, hair, makeup – we're gonna make you look as close as possible to prime-era classic Varina!"

"By the Maker," Rey grumbled, noncommittally.

Ikana, however, could only impart her own slant to the blank canvas of her subject. "I know! I'm as excited as you are! Now – out of those dusty rags! We're gonna make you glam, Rey! You're gonna love it! And no peeking in the mirror – not until I'm done, at least!"

In a few minutes, Rey had divested herself of her worn, drab boots, tunic, leggings, and arm bindings, and had even let her hair down… at least in the literal sense. It was hard not to want to cover herself – she wasn't shy, but she also was not used to standing naked in front of others, especially when her more recent memories of nudity involved a leering Unkar. Ikana was at least a girl of her own age, which made it easier on one level… but also led to something that Rey was unused to feeling: inadequacy in comparison to the cute, exotic, well-groomed, and… well, clean Ikana.

Just as Rey was not shy at heart, neither was she a coward – and she was certain that she would be forced to disrobe before far more critical, and far less appealing, audiences before the night was done. And so, Rey soon found herself standing completely naked before another sentient being for one of the first times in her life.

She did not remain naked for long, however, as Ikana took to her task admirably quickly, apparently enjoying the chance to have a living doll to dress like her heroine. As she worked, seemingly able to handle clothes and makeup with the dexterity of a multi-limbed Xexto, Ikana talked some more about her life – and more importantly, about the life of a prostitute at Old Meru's.

"The customers here generally consist of the merchants passing through Niima Outpost – junk traders with their own ships and prospectors making a last stop before heading out into the Unknown Regions… though those are less common now that the First Order is on the rise. Some of the other cathouses here in New Res have other clients, especially the more religious ones, you'd be surprised how often we get visitors from the Sacred Villages. I guess even priests have needs. Once in a while a migrant family of prospectors will come in off the Pilgrim's Road and think we're just a watering hole or inn, and be a bit shocked at what they find." Ikana laughed at the memory of one such encounter. "But me and some of the other girls will help look out for them, and they'll be back on towards the Graveyard or the ruins of the old Imperial bases. As shocking as they find it, almost none choose to head back out into space."

"Jakku has a habit of making people quickly grow inured to life," Rey mused, as she unsuccessfully tried to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror as Ikana sprayed the contents of a pressurized can into her hair, before she had to close her eyes as Ikana began to apply makeup with a heavy-duty Thakwaash-hair brush. The girl's story made Rey wonder if her own family had once been one of those prospectors. Perhaps her parents had been the rare ones shocked into fleeing. Maybe they had come to Jakku to hide from something even worse than Teedos with no respect, and them leaving her here had been an act of love….

"I suppose," Ikana replied blithely. "Guess I don't know a whole lot of the rest of the galaxy for comparison. Though I don't think nicer planets make for nicer people. More than once, a snooty scavenger from one of the Core Worlds will buy my time for a bit, and they love to dangle the chance to go with them back into the wider galaxy in front of me. I'm always tempted, I admit, but common sense wins out. Even so, it's fun to indulge in the dream while they fuck me." She laughed, a bit self-consciously. "I guess a scavenger like you probably doesn't get the appeal of being offered a trip off-world, or getting it yanked out from under you."

"Oh, I understand all too well," Rey replied, her voice not quite breaking. It wasn't just the yearning to escape Jakku contrasting with her need to remain so that her parents could someday find her when they eventually returned. More recently, she had found a largely-intact Ghtroc 690 light freighter in the Graveyard; two of her fellow scavs, Devi and Strunk, had helped her to repair it to flight status – only to then steal it out from under her, fleeing Jakku without her. The betrayal of her act of kindness and solidarity still stung Rey's good nature.

Ikana seemed comforted by Rey's unspoken sympathy, and rubbed the girl's bare back with a hand briefly. Rey was struck by the display of physical comfort, something she hadn't experienced since the passing of Mashra and Trelo, but Ikana continued before Rey could make anything of it.