Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or settings to be found herein.

A/N: I already appended the first part of this fic to the end of 'One Bounty Hunter, Lightly Singed'. However, I couldn't resist the urge to continue with the storyline (silly as it is), so I though I better give it its own post.

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It was fair to say that Hondo Ohnaka was not having the best of days.

It had started badly, with him awakening to the sound of one of his men inadvertently taking out an entire munitions store in an ill-advised thermal detonator juggling accident.

Then, as was the way of these things, events had proceeded to get progressively worse: with the crash of the compound's inventory system, the destruction of one of his favourite antique blasters, Pilf Mukmuk developing a rather messy case of food poisoning, his least favourite aunt holo-communicating her intention to come a visit and the discovery that his entire personal stash of spice-adulterated Twi'lek liquor had been infested with some unfamiliar strain of ugly, green maggot-like creature.

Therefore, it didn't entirely surprise him to find, on returning to Florrum after a blessedly straightforward excursion to helpfully free an off-course Mon Calamari merchant carrier of its cargo, that something was very wrong.

He did not, on stepping off the cruiser immediately know what it was, but he knew the warning signs. The sudden quiet of the pirates who'd remained on-world, as he and the other returnees disembarked from the ship. The side-long glances. Those quiet, almost inaudible, mutterings that all had that same distinct, agitated undertone of 'the boss is not going to be pleased'.

He was about to accost one of them at random and demand to know what was going on when he spotted a group of Weequay standing around what seemed to be some kind of open-topped crate. Guessing that the contents must be the cause of the present disquiet from the way all but one of them fled (in as nonchalant a manner as they could) as he looked in their direction, he turned and strode on over.

Then his eyes widened as he saw that the crate was not so much a crate as a bassinette.

A bassinette containing a small infant whose features strongly hinted at Weequay parentage, but whose paleness and tuft of auburn hair suggested some kind of hybridisation.

As he stared, it looked back, its green eyes somehow managing to convey extreme disgruntlement.

The remaining Weequay, a pirate by the name of Sholto who was one of the younger and more hapless members of the gang, looked at Hondo with a stricken expression.

"She just turned up, handed it to me and left," he said, as if protesting his innocence in the whole affair. "I tried to get her to wait until you were back, but she said that there was a note in the cot and that she was on a tight schedule and... and then it started screaming and didn't stop until it saw one of the Monkey Lizards jumping around."

Hondo didn't bother to ask who the 'she' in question was. He was a quick thinker and the pieces were already falling into place and forming a terrible, awful picture in his mind. Instead he tentatively reached down into the bassinette, picked up the datapad at the foot and tried to digest the unencrypted contents.

Hondo,

Remember how 'friendly' things got between us last time I was here? You know, before I realised that you were planning to keep the ship. Well, this is the result.

Yes, she is yours!

Yes, I am sure! What kind of woman do you think I am?

Her name is Ruby. She's three standard months old. She's at least half your fault.

Anyway, I've got a job lined up with Bane and the nanny droid broke yesterday (cheap Trade Federation crap), so I thought that it was time you took some responsibility.

Feed her a mixture of Nerf blood and Standardised Baby Formula No. 5288 and make sure she's kept clean. I'll be back for her in ten days. Let any Jedi near her and I'll castrate you. Let them take a blood sample for Midichlorian testing and I'll use a blunt dagger to do it.

Love,
Aurra.

Cursing, he wondered what he could have possibly done to deserve this. All right, he lived a life of shameless piracy, but surely he wasn't, in the grand scheme of things, all that bad and... and everybody knew that Humans and Weequay couldn't interbreed. Okay, fair enough, Aurra was half-human and half-other, but it should stand to reason that if the other, whatever that was (another thing she'd never told him), could successfully interbreed with humans it ought to be incompatible with Weequay.

He looked at Sholto.

"When did she leave?"

"Two hours ago."

He cursed again, this time a small, treacherous part of his mind (that sounded suspiciously like his least favourite aunt) berated him for using such language in front of a child. If Aurra had departed that long ago, there was no way that he'd be able to track her down and make her take his— her child back.

Turning his gaze back to the baby, he scrutinised her some more. She was a tiny, little thing. Far more fragile and helpless looking than anything containing half of his and half of Aurra's DNA really had a right to be.

Sholto took this switch in his boss's attention as a cue that it was permissible for him to leave. Something he did at a speed that would have done him great credit had he ever seen fit to use it during the few raids he'd participated in thus far in his pirating career.

Hondo knelt down and continued to stare at the child, who was still looking back, disgruntlement replace with a gaze of intent curiosity. Not entirely cognizant of what he was doing, he reached out to the infant, who proceeded to curl her hand around his little finger.

He groaned and fought back the urge to curse. "Fine," he said to the child, trying to sound as displeased as he could without actually being threatening. "You can stay here for ten days. Just ten. After that you're going back to your mother. And if she doesn't come here and collect you I'll find out where she is and send you back to her on a third class courier ship."

As if on cue the child intensified its grip on his finger and made a small whimpering noise.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, groaning. "This is Aurra's fault, not mine."

It continued to look.

"I said, don't do that," he reiterated. It was no good though, he could already feel himself weakening. There was just something in that curious little gaze.