Star Wars: A Thing Of Beauty

Something in the Way

On the way to Umbara, the Harrowers stopped in an asteroid belt where there is a very obscure, random fueling station, where they will of course, refuel, but also ditch all of the captive Republic agents that got left behind after the destruction of the K9-Base. But before leaving the captives at the fueling station, Jinang needed to confront his sister one more time. As they will likely never meet again... But he isn't going there with hate or rage in his heart, but with the two precious heirlooms from their mother. Jinang's got his mother's helmet upside down with her shoulder pad inside, planning to give it back to Wenja. Unfortunately, he couldn't get a hold of her other pieces of beskar armor, getting the tech helmet and shoulder pad was hard enough, with the other Harrowers not wanting him to give the solid beskar heirlooms back. So Jinang went into the cargo hold, which has been cleaned up from all of the carnage, with bloodstains still all over. He finds his twin pretty easily because they're the shortest people in the room by far, and approaches her with the helmet, getting a surprised look.
"These belong to you." Jinang says, getting straight to the point and holding out the helmet for Wenja.

She doesn't hesitate and and she snatches her precious heirlooms quickly, still looking surprised.
"I betrayed you..." Wenja says, looking at her brother with a shameful look on her face.

"I don't care about that..." Jinang answered, exhaling. "No... I do care. I'm angry - furious... But I'll forgive... In time."

"Thank you, brother..." Wenja says, looking away and holding back tears. "I thought... I thought I'd never see mom's helmet again..."

"That's why I'm giving it back." Jinang says genuinely. "It wouldn't be right letting it end up smelted into ingots on the black market. I couldn't let that happen."

Before she started crying, Wenja put her helmet on to hide, and Jinang just grabbed her shoulder, squeezing it gently, "This is goodbye..." He said sady before walking off. Despite the possibility that he'll never see Wenja ever again, he is feeling a lot better, all things considered. For once Jinang feels like he handled something right...
After fueling up the Venator, the Harrowers ditched the captives in the station and left for Umbara in the mid rim. The Harrowers landed their new cruiser by an abandoned quarry, where they're going hide out for just a little bit. They still have a lot of money and they can buy property somewhere in the outer rim when they're ready to settle down somewhere else. For now though, Urowen is expecting them, as well as Takemura Izanami... It is at the Qoirriar estate that they are supposed to deliver the data into the hands of the Izanami corporation, surrounded by his security and Crimson Dawn agents. And Ahsoka and Jinang will confront Mr. Izanami himself, seeing him for the very first time. The high security isn't anything to worry about, however. The Harrowers are easily superior to all of these forces, even combined. And that's only if the situation turns violent. The last thing that Takemura and Urowen want is to put their own lives in danger, especially since they certainly know their side would lose any violent confrontation started during a simple trade meeting. Even with Ryu Izanami there. The plan is to just show up empty-handed and set it straight to Takemura Izanami himself, that they're done, and won't be working for him anymore. This is very bold and even risky, but it's a power move to preserve integrity, and it will demand respect from Takemura.

Only a few of them are expected, and they were supposed to be Bender, Gyara and Zorsia, but seeing as that definitely won't work out now, Zorsia will go in with Jinang and Ahsoka to face Takemura, with Onyudo and many others hiding out beyond the estate's security to stand by in case things go south.
As the three ride a small shuttle controlled by a droid towards the estate, the tension grows so thick, Zorsia could cut it with a knife. All three of them can sense that something isn't right... Ahsoka has been trying to stop Mr. Izanami for so long, and Jinang just realized that the man completely destroyed his life with that neural stabilizer, so seeing him face to face for the very first time is going to be surreal for both of them... As for Zorsia, she is essentially the acting leader of the Harrowers right now, and that puts a lot of stressful weight on her shoulders that she doesn't want. She's normally so confident and smooth, but Jinang and Ahsoka can see how anxious the Chiss is, and it's hard to see her that way. Especially since so many people look up to Zorsia for strength.
They arrive at the estate on the dark planet under purple skies and black clouds, and Zorsia takes a deep breath before stepping off of the shuttle. Crimson Dawn guards and their full body-covering black armor are stationed everywhere, but none of the Izanami or Qoirriar security agents... And when they enter the meeting room, it was completely empty... No Urowen, no Takemura. Not even more security guards... But a holoprojector on the floor suddenly produces an image of Urowen Qoirriar, startling the three slightly.
"It's a shame it had to end this way." Urowen says coldly, not really caring. "But, someone had to take the fall for me and the Crimson Dawn after the Felucia incident, and since you mercenary lowlifes decided to betray Mr. Izanami, it made the choice of scapegoats easy."

"What?!" Zorsia exclaimed angrily. "But... You..."

"Don't stammer, dear." Urowen interrupted spitefully. "Its unbecoming. If you can't say anything, just stay quiet and look pretty. It's what you did best for me."

Then, the transmission ends. Ahsoka and Jinang are shocked, and then panicked, while Zorsia is literally fuming spirit ichor energy with rage... The Crimson Dawn agents don't attack, but quickly escape. None of them were in the building, and Jinang suddenly hears on the comms that no guards were anywhere else in the estate, meaning just a handful of agents were there to lure the Harrowers into the building. And that's when the building was suddenly lit up with explosions - the Separatists are attacking the estate with an aerial strike! It seems that to cover himself from responsibility of the Felucia incident, Urowen sold the Harrowers out so he wouldn't have to look over his shoulder for Confederacy assassins. But how he knew that they were going to betray them is completely unknown - they decided to do that only a few hours before arriving at the estate, so the only possibility is that a Harrower sold them out, and did so immediately...
The vulture droid assault was not enough to completely take out the Harrowers, but they set the forest around the estate ablaze and flattened the mansion and killed a whole lot of them... Pong Krell was there, with a Sith apprentice no one's ever seen or heard of before, and he brought a fully fledged, heavily armed attack force with him. They were obviously tipped off, and the new dark lord of the Sith wants to send a strong message about the Felucia incident. Given the situation, the Harrowers do not have a good chance at winning this fight. They could kill Krell and his apprentice and take out a nice chunk of their army, but they would most likely all die. They're tired and low on all resources, they were ambushed and they are outnumbered 30 to 1. So they just focus on trying to survive and escape. Zorsia was unhinged by the betrayal, and unleashed frightening destruction upon the battle droids, ripping them apart with her lightsaber and blowing them to bits with lightning. They keep their distance from Krell, get into three groups and make their way to their three shuttles to try and reach the Venator which is on its way. One thing everyone must have noticed quickly is that Onyudo is nowhere to be found. It's not remotely possible that he was killed quietly or quickly, and if he were even here, the fight would be much more destructive. So while they don't have time to even think about it, the Harrowers know that he sold them out... Suddenly, in a massive propulsive force of wind, the fires of the battlefield were all extinguished, and everyone was knocked over. Ahsoka stands up to her feet, and after a brief shock, a smile stretched across her face as she realized the source of that earth shaking blast was the Harrowers' Venator cruiser appearing right there in the middle of the forest, blocking the Separatist cruiser. The Harrowers don't stop to cheer, though they want to, and they get to the shuttles, hearing Dekker over the comms. Meanwhile, the mercenaries in the cruiser are able to man some of the cannons and drop some bombs onto the Separatist assault force, providing the perfect opening to fly the shuttles into the escape ship's hangar. However, right before entering the cruiser from the side, two of the shuttles were stopped suddenly, grabbed by Krell using the force to stop them. And while he held two, the third one was shot down by anti-aerial tanks, paired with droid gunships... Jinang opens up the loading door from his shuttle, and takes aim at the Sith with his blaster pistol while getting shot at. Ahsoka lends her hand, deflecting the blasts away from Jinang with the force, having to really focus in order to do so. Because she can't get in his way or accidentally cut off his arm with a lightsaber. Jinang uses the force to aim right at Krell's head, but moves lower to aim at his chest because it's a bigger target. He fires multiple shots, missing the first few, but ended up hitting Krell, stopping the Sith's hold on the shuttle with a third successful blast to the chest. After letting go, the ships fly towards the hangar, but Jinang sees the other shuttle get rammed directly by dive bombing vulture droids, and that shuttle was knocked out of the sky... The inhabitants were telling Dekker to leave, but were interrupted when Separatist tanks on the ground finished them off... But, the rest of the Harrowers were able to escape into the cruiser. And less than a minute later, they hyperjump right off of the planet - the thrusters incinerating hundreds of trees and destroying even more battle droids. They wanted to party over yet another daring Harrowers' escape, but they are just totally demoralized at this point... They came to Umbara with 118 mercenaries, and after Krell's short, but extremely devastating assault, they left the planet with only 42...

Dekker had no idea where to go, so he found the uncolonized planet in the outer rim nearest to Umbara and jumped there. Just like when the Harrowers escaped Gaole, they plummet from the sky on a random planet and crash landed. This time, falling into an ocean - the Venator hits the sea hard, taking obsessive damage upon a very rough impact. These Venators are meant to be able to float on water, but this ship has taken so much damage that it is sort of pointless to try and save it... The Harrowers leave the ship on the Myrewig, and let the Venator sink into the ocean, taking with it everything they had left...