The Hundred-Humiliation Dash

Fennec sat there, naked as a newborn nerf, the cold from the duracrete soaking into her bare butt as she watched her only clothing fly away. She sighed. Of course it flew away; she hadn't kept a stitch on her for more than a few minutes all night.

The whistle made her jump.

It wasn't the whistle one gets for a job well done. No. This was the slow, lascivious kind, dragged out like synth-jazz. Fennec’s head whipped around. Somewhere on the upper catwalk of the spaceport perimeter, an old dockhand leaned on the railing, bushy eyebrows practically climbing off his face.

Against every shred of logic and dignity in her trained assassin brain, Fennec gave the dockhand a wink.

Candy would’ve winked, she told herself. And Candy doesn't get embarrassed. She stood slowly and intentionally, chin held high.

He waggled a finger her way and shouted, “Now THAT is a Corellian sunrise!”

Then came the "Hoo-hoo," of a dapple-scaled Rodian on another catwalk, waggling his sucker-tipped fingers at her. A maintenance worker froze mid rewire to give a long whistle. Then another. And another. Someone shouted, ‘Now she knows how to travel light!’ and the laughter rolled in. Word of a streaker in the starport was spreading like wildfire and a crowd was gathering nearly as quick.

Candy may not get embarrassed, but Fennec? Fennec most certainly did. She was mortified, actually. She’d survived ambushes, betrayals, backstabs, and one Hutt’s very peculiar breakfast habits, but standing butt-naked in the starport of a major city turned out to be a humiliation all its own.

Fennec’s face went hot. Her first instinct involved a blaster. Her second was to crawl into a trash chute. But neither was available, so instead she slapped hands over herself. One pressed between her legs as the other cradled her modest breasts.

Her head swiveled. She had to find... There! Just over a hundred meters away was dock 188 where her starship and clothes sat waiting.

One hundred meters was nothing for distance... unless you're blushing naked under a rain of sexual come-ons and whistles thick enough to need a deflector field. Right now, it felt like one hundred parsecs.

"Dank ferric!" Fennec clenched her jaw and took the only option left. She broke into a sprint.

Don’t trip, she told herself. Don’t think! Just run!

Her bare feet slapped the durasteel. Her pigtails bounced with every stride. The arm across her chest pressed hard to control the sway of her breasts, but there was nothing she could do to stop the jiggle in her bare backside. Cargo loaders paused mid-haul. Pilots stopped mid-convo. One old Twi’lek dropped his caf. A roving protocol droid scolded, "That is not an approved uniform!"

Her one saving grace was how the heavy make-up covering her face made her unrecognizable. The face of Candy's bimbo persona was the only thing covering the dignity of Fennec Shand's name.The worst part? A tiny part of her liked it.

Liked the way heads turned. Liked the gasps, the looks, the way people suddenly forgot where they were going. Liked the way her cheeks burned in humiliation, knowing she would be an object in their fantasies. The part that was Candy Sparkles fed on that attention like a glitter-covered parasite.

She hated how good it felt.

The last hundred meters felt like it lasted a hundred years.

Up ahead, her ship gleamed in the docking bay like a promised land.

She dashed to the ship, jiggling all the way, and froze. Slowly, key by key, she typed in the access code. Her impractically long nails got the blame the third time she had to start over, but deep down she knew some part of her was dragging this out on purpose. Fennec shifted her weight, hips swaying in a deliberate, almost theatrical wiggle. Too deliberate.

Why was she wiggling them so much?

Someone hooted. Another whistle. And somewhere inside her, a silky inner voice that didn’t sound like Fennec at all purred, Good.

With a hiss, the ramp came down. She sprinted into the ship, sealed the hatch behind her, and leaned back against the durasteel, face buried in her hand. Her cheeks were on fire. Fennec stumbled to the cockpit., dropping her bare bottom into the pilot's seat. She didn't even remember what she said to flight control, didn't listen for their reply as she lifted off, atmosphere zooming past.

Fennec could still hear the whistles and come-ons echoing in her memory all the way up in orbit. She told herself, the smile pulling at her lips was just the adrenaline, as she punched in coordinates for the first system she could think of. Fennec Shand jumped to hyperspace, winking out of Corellia's sky in a poof of humiliation.

A lone starship drifted in orbit above a barren world. Inside, Fennec Shand stepped out of the refresher, a towel wrapped tight around her body, as steam curled about her feet. Once-bouncy pigtails now hung loose and heavy down her back, softening the sharp lines of her face. A pair of oversized hoop earrings caught the light on a nearby shelf. Dark, menacing armor hung on the wall behind her, next to a rack of blasters for every possible occasion.

Oh, how she’d missed that pinchy old armor! Once she was zipped back into it, she’d keep her helmet on until she had black dye to cover up her freshly neon-pink hair. A mercenary has a reputation to uphold, after all.

Amazing what a hot shower and a few thousand parsecs of distance could do to make a woman feel like a steel-souled killer again.

As she dried off, she was already scrolling the Bounty Hunter’s Guild holo-net. Not many jobs out there. The only one worth a damn was at some tropical resort on the planet Niamos, over half a galaxy away. Still… it was a resort planet and she could use a vacation after this.

Fennec looked back at the armor hanging on the wall. It was a dozen jumps away, and she wouldn't need it until she was on Niamos. Right?

The towel slipped to the floor as she slid into the pilot’s seat, cool leather kissing bare skin. In a few minutes the navicomputer had the numbers crunched for the first jump. She’d be passing plenty of ships along the way.

Would any of them guess what she wasn't wearing?

A slow, wicked smile spread across Fennec Shand’s face as she wiggled her bare ass deeper into the seat. She tapped the hyperdrive controls with a lazy flick of her fingers. One dozen jumps to go!