I know her.

It's not the familiarity that surprises Hondo. Not exactly. He learned long ago that the galaxy isn't quite so big as it thinks it is. No, it's that for some reason he can't pull his eyes away, and in his experience this instinct of his always leads to trouble or payout. Predator or prey. An opportunity to conduct business or to avoid becoming someone else's.

And he trusts his sixth sense. Hasn't led him astray since, what? The Rishi debacle? And that wasn't close to his fault. Not even forty percent. Definitely less than fifty.

The girl's bony, short, gaunt. Coral-brown skin stretched taut over sharp corners. Hair so blue that it's almost black, tangled in tight curls and shorn ragged above the nape of her neck.

He watches as she trudges through the crowded alley. Unlikely to be a previous business partner given that she looks to be a teenager. At least a decade younger than anyone he'd even consider sharing a bed or a cargo bay or an after-hours sabacc table with. Okay, not ten. Seven or eight years younger. And skinny.

Payout, then.

But kids usually aren't worth the bother. Bounties on kids are...there's no official rule against it, but truly it separates the businessmen from the scum, in his opinion. Profitable exceptions aside.

Then she lifts her head and stares right at him, and in her own recognition it suddenly clicks.

He remembers her big blue eyes being light and liquid, not two degrees below freezing. He remembers a Tholothian headdress. But it's the same girl, no doubt about it, even six years after Florrum. (Stars does he miss that base. Ord Mantell is a joke by comparison, though a paradise compared to the Hutt stench he's walking through now.) Even without hearing her earnest, filled-sinus voice, he knows it's her. And -

Oh.

Ah. Right.

Every ounce of self-control he possesses clamps down on his expression. Wouldn't do to scare her off. Not when her stance is that of a gizka about to bolt.

He's impressed that she's made it this long. More impressed that she seems to have made the leap from Jedi brat and beacon of innocence to someone who can walk ten feet without being accosted. Hondo Ohnaka is no amateur hunter, but even he had been about to walk right past her without another look.

One point six alive, nine hundred dead, or any non-credit equivalent at market price. Empire must have a way to detect their "Force", or something, because no bureaucracy has records good enough to allow for bounties like that. Seven hundred dropped from both for children, presumably because the adults have training to make acquisition...difficult. Even though he personally knows Jedi children can fight. Not all that well, but, if he's to be fair, neither could most of the grown ones, or they'd still be here.

To have made it this far...alas, poor Jedi.

The Jedi are gone, the survivors hunted. The Tholothian girl wouldn't be wandering the swampy surface of Nal Hutta if she had any other choice. Out of place, out of help, out of food. Not a good time to be a child in this part of the galaxy, either; many of the more sordid underworld types don't worry whether the young soon-to-be corpse they stalk is a Jedi or not. The possibility of walking away with two hundred thousand credits, even weighed against the strict penalties of such a scam, is simply too enticing.

But Hondo is not those beings. He does not kill children.

He turns from her and leaves without a backward glance.


A/N: guess I'm committed to writing this now