Carteri presented Mako a datapad which was lined with encryption that was hard for her to crack. Confronting the man, Mako learned that she had an identical sister named Coral, on the Republic SIS watch list. Eventually, she learned that someone named Carteri was poking around Nar Shaddaa asking about her. Throughout their travels together, Mako began wondering about her cranial implant and her family. They managed to succeed, though they suffered constant interference from Blood. Without Braden to negotiate with Suudaa Nem'ro the Hutt for Great Hunt sponsorship, Mako had to call in every favor to get her partner into the Great Hunt. Reviewing her holorecordings, they discovered that the perpetrator was Tarro Blood, a cunning Mandalorian who allowed an accomplice to murder Mako's adopted family. Mako first assumed that the Hunter was the one responsible, but realized that it couldn't be true. But while the Hunter and Mako were out, they returned to discover Braden and Jory murdered. In 3643 BBY, Braden had recruited an impressive crew, composed of himself, Mako, a Kadas'sa'Nikto named Jory, and an talented new protégé, to compete in the Great Hunt, a competition held for hunters across the galaxy. For a short time, the Trandoshan hunter Qyzen Fess was a bounty hunter who worked for Braden and Mako.
She soon came to see Braden's crew as her first real family and grew to love the code of honor and underground culture of the bounty hunting world. Braden required a tech specialist for his crew and offered her the job, which she accepted, wanting to leave the moon and let the failed job fade from the Hutt's memories. Mako was in some way partially blamed for the incident and ended up wounded in an alley where she was found by a bounty hunter named Braden. 7 years after her escape, at the age of 15, several of Mako's friends disastrously messed up a job given to them by a Hutt Cartel. After escaping the orphanage with a large amount of credits from their account, she found herself working with several of Nar Shaddaa's most notorious slicer gangs. Her skills were such that she managed to teach herself every known programming language, and at the age of eight, managed to crash the bank account of a red light district orphanage in which she lived, which had attempted to sell her. By the age of 7, Mako was an orphan living on Nar Shaddaa and already had earned a reputation for having an unnatural affiliation to all things computer related, including slicing.