Something Dark This Way Comes...

[Gamov]

Med Bay: Gladius

"There is no medically feasible treatment for this... thing." Lexi said, her shimmering blue form perched on a nearby holotable.

"There has to be something," Decon commented, looking over the scar on his chest in the mirror. He traced the incision mark with a finger, grimacing slightly at the touch. "Run your scans again."

"I've already run five scans." Lexi said, a hint of irritation in her words. "The best place for you to be right now is..."

"The Jedi aren't going to be of any more help." The Jedi snapped, a momentary lapse of frustration seeping through his normally cool demeanor.

"You didn't even give them a chance. You just grabbed that little Torgruta tart and flew off to play hero."

Decon sighed, slipping his shirt back over his shoulders and fastening the buttons. "Lexi, we're not going over this again. I have a plan."

"A bad one." She chided, crossing her arms.

"Look, we... I have no options here."

"And this is the best you can do?" Something akin to an expression of concern washed over the A.I.'s features. "Decon, I'm normally behind you with whatever insane plan you throw at me. But this time... you could die out there."

"And I could have died a hundred times over in that Sith's custody. But I didn't." The Lorrdian collected his lightsabers from the nearby counter and fastened them in place on his belt. "She'll soon learn that leaving me alive was the worst mistake she could have ever made."

Lexi shook her head in protest, "I don't like it. You don't even know what that thing inside of you is capable of. She could kill you with a snap of her fingers for all you know. Or worse."

Decon sidled over to the holotable, crouching down in front of it to bring himself down to eye level with Lexi's form. "I'll be perfectly fine." He said, flashing her a reassuring grin.

"You really can't promise that." She said in return, far from buying into the Lorrdian's false show of confidence.

The two shared a pensive gaze for a second, neither entirely certain what to say next. Decon knew he couldn't promise his safety, and Lexi knew that there was no way of talking him out of this. He had always been stubborn that way. After a few seconds though, Lexi received a proximity alert over her systems, shunting her attention away from Decon momentarily.

"We've arrived..." She said, glancing back to Decon. There was an almost pleading look in her tiny electric blue eyes. "Why can't you just leave well enough alone? Just turn back while you have the chance."

Decon pushed himself back to his feet with a heavy sigh. "If not me, then who? And if not now, when?" His tone sharpened some, "Lexi, we can't just walk away here. We have a chance to stop Nisha before she ever has the chance to harm another soul."

"Decon, there's a whole order of Jedi and an army of Republic soldiers who can do this. It doesn't always have to be you."

The Lorrdian seemed to disregard her words as he walked over to his locker and pulled his long overcaot out, sliding it on and adjusting the collar. "She's coming for me though. And when she does... we'll be ready."

"There really is no talking you out of this, is there?" Lexi was all but resigned to the fact by now. She just wanted to hear him say it.

Decon shook his head. "No, there isn't. That witch's life ends here today. You just be ready."

With a grudging nod, Lexi agreed. "Alright..." She spared a lingering look on Decon before her form flickered and vanished.

[Roku]

Tess watched Sable curiously as the newly appointed Knight tinkered with Nisha's old droid. Sigma's crimson specs looked back coldly at Sable, fully aware of her presence as she finished installing a new chest plate that was the same size and roughly the same color as the last one he had. Sigma looked like he was right out of the shop now, and Sable had personally painted each of his parts herself to give him an intimidating and overbearing presence.

"Nisha owes me big time for this..." Sable joked with Tess.

"Some people, like your brother, say that droid was her only friend before she met me..." Tess told her. "Well, besides her dogs I guess..."

"Well, I have to say finders keepers... you don't get to invade the Jedi temple and leave your crap there without paying a storage and repair fee... This droid looks better now than when it landed...trust me, I saw part of the fight..."

-Does Miss Sable have orders?- The droid asked in it's monotonous tone.

"I do in fact... be careful with your new paint job, and make sure no one can sneak up behind me..." She told him, before sparing Tess a mild but playful glare. Tess could only laugh, after dispatching the Jedi with a large wrench back in Ilum.

[Gamov]

Decon was given a second of pause as he entered the room and locked eyes with Sigma for a second. The droid's cold, lifeless gaze and menacing form made him uneasy, and he had to actively repress a cringe at seeing it again.

"That thing still creeps me out," he commented offhandedly. "Just make sure it doesn't start shoot up the place, or it's on your shoulders." He added, pointing a finger at Sable as he gave her a mildly stern frown.

The girl might have claimed herself as some kind of savant when it came to computers and hacking, but Decon wasn't going to trust a Sith assassin droid. No matter who programmed it. If he had it his way, they would have scrapped the damned thing and spaced its parts to every known corner of the galaxy.

Turning his attentions to Tess, the Lorrdian's demeanor softened as he spoke to her. "Are you sure you want to be here?" He asked, a genuine sense of concern for her well-being edging in his tone. "You've been through enough already, I wouldn't consider it wise to jump right back in. At least not yet. Not until you've had time to decompress."

Of course, the irony of the fact that he was two-timing her and using the poor girl as bait to draw out her former master was not lost on Decon. In fact, he felt pretty horrible about it. But he couldn't just stand back and do nothing. The Republic would get itself too caught up bureaucracy and procedure to be effective, while the Jedi would no doubt take their time to "meditate on it". Action was what the Sith understood. And he aimed to meet them step by step.

[Roku]

Sable chuckled at his thoughts about the droid. But it was perfectly safe. It would have been safe when it first landed on Ilum too, if Tess hadn't knocked her out before she could give it orders. But there was no point in directing fingers at anyone now. "It's a tool... your lightsaber can also be pretty menacing if its pointed the right way when you activate it..." She told him. "You know, I could make the droid have a more feminine look and put the Lexi AI in it if you like." She told him jokingly.

Sable was just as awful as her brother when it came to one liners, although to her credit, she wasn't a sociopath like Aura. "Sorry, I'll behave... I'm just here to observe you guys on behalf of the Jedi and do my own thing... this is my current project... and his trial mission... So how's that sketchy wound doing?"

Tess shook her head. "We already looked at it, Sable... it's clearly something secretive... As for my personal feelings, ask me after the Togruta are liberated. Then I'll tell you if my time as a slave was worth it... This isn't something I have a choice in... whether it was you or Nisha, I was going to come here and fix this...You're a Lorrdian, so surely you of all people understand slavery."

[Gamov]

When Sable made the comment about putting Lexi's programming in Sigma, she piqued the A.I.'s interest.

"Oh, I don't think so. I wouldn't be caught dead in that thing." Her voice said over the ship's comm system. "You just put that idea out of your mind."

"Lexi, play nice." Decon interrupted, "she was only joking after all."

"Joke or not, that's just... no. No to the millionth power."

"Shouldn't you be landing the ship?" Decon said, reminding Lexi of her duties. He could have swore he heard her let out an agitated sigh over the comm.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm on it."

As Lexi's voice faded from the room, Decon rolled his eyes. The A.I. had certainly developed her own quirks over the years. "The wound is fine, by the way." He said, addressing Sable's earlier question.

When Tess made mention of her devotion to clearing up the problems on Shili though, her remarks landed flat with Decon. Unlike most Lorrdians, he was lucky enough to have been born outside the Redoubt. He never questioned how his family managed to escape, but he figured that he would just take the blessing as it was and not tarnish it by digging any deeper.

"Actually, I was fortunate enough to live a normal life." He said, "my parents managed to make it out of the Redoubt and I was actually born on Eriadu. It wasn't the friendliest place, but we made due." Decon turned a thoughtful look to the Torgruta. "But I do understand what it's like to want to help those in need."

[Roku]

She nodded. "Sorry for the assumption then. In any case, I know what its like to be a slave, and I know what it's like to be free... and I think I prefer free..." She told him, with a bit of a sarcastic edge on the end of that. Of course she preferred free.

"At least you're not an assassin droid..." Sable interjected. "This big fella has to do whatever I tell him to do, and I guarantee he's smarter than all of us." She told them with a chuckle. "I mean, can you calculate pi in a context sensitive manner in less than a second regardless of the situation? Didn't think so..."

Tess stared back at Sable blankly. "I think I like Lexi more... she doesn't talk like she has a stick up her ass..."

[Gamov]

Decon gave Tess' response a calm nod. It was good to hear her admit that she preferred her freedom compared to slavery. Maybe spending some time around the Jedi would help to dispel the mistrust she had in them, and ultimately show her that life beneath a Sith master was really no life at all. Regardless of whatever feelings she may have once harbored towards the notion.

"At least you're not an assassin droid... this big fella has to do whatever I tell him to do, and I guarantee he's smarter than all of us."

Decon's attention drifted to Sable briefly as Lexi's voice chimed in over the comm again.

"Please, that thing is just an assassin droid." She said with a hint of derision. "It's limited purely by the programming the user installs on it. It's capable of acting within a set of given parameters, but it doesn't possess the capacity to actively learn from its experiences. The very notion that a simple droid could be considered..."

"Lexi, you're boring us with exposition again." Decon cut in.

"I'm just saying that that thing can't even come close to matching the raw computing power of a fully developed, and self aware, A.I."

Decon shook his head at Lexi's attitude. He could almost see the smirk on her face as he considered the superiority complex she had developed. "Alright, we'll just agree to disagree for the time being. Okay?"

The A.I. didn't immediately reply, prompting Decon to reissue his statement with a little more force.

"Okay?"

"Fine." Lexi half scoffed with her response.

Decon nodded, "good. Now..."

He hardly got a word into his next sentence when a searing pain shot through his chest. Decon clutched uselessly at the pain as he collapsed against the bulkhead and slumped to the floor. He grit his teeth in agony, letting out a strained groan as the sensation rose to a crushing knot in his rib cage.

"Decon!" Lexi's biometric sensors pinged off the charts as they registered his pain. "Decon, say something!"

But he could hardly breathe to choke out any kind of response as his lungs felt like they were filled with burning cinders. Another jolt of pain wracked his body the instant before an image materialized in his mind's eye. Focusing all of his strength on maintaining his consciousness, Decon drew the Force around him as a sinister visage leered back at him.

"It's so nice to see you again, my little pet."

The voice echoed in his mind, but he could still sense that the physical presence was a ways off yet. "Nisha..."

"I trust you have what I've come here for."

Decon nodded meekly. To everyone else in the room, his actions would seem strange, but it would be more than obvious that something was beyond wrong. "I won't allow you to just..."

A flood of anger streamed through Nisha's mental connection with the Jedi, eliciting another sharp moan from him as she plied her dark powers against his body. "Now, now, there's no need to be rude. Just play nice like a good boy and no one will get hurt. Well... not too badly anyway."

The pain rippling through his body was nearly unbearable as Decon visibly cringed. "You're not getting away with this." He managed wearily, even his mental resolve was beginning to waver. But he didn't want to give her the satisfaction of breaking that easily and willed himself to stay calm.

Nisha chuckled at Decon's sad attempt to remain stoic in the face of her manipulations. "We'll see. I'll be seeing you again very soon."

As her presence evaporated from his mind, Decon sucked in a deep breath as he snapped back to reality. A few retching coughs rattled from his chest as he stumbled back to his feet.

"Decon!" Lexi's voice blurted in his ears, imploring him for some kind of response. "Come on, please say something."

"I... I'm fine."

"Like hell you are. You flat lined!" The A.I.'s anger was as plain as the room they were in. "You were clinically dead for a moment. Now listen to me damn you! Turn around and leave. Leave while we still have the chance. I can alert the Republic, they can..."

"This isn't up for debate, Lexi!" Decon snapped.

"You stubborn bastard. You won't be happy until you're dead, will you?!"

"Lexi!" The tension between the two was nearly palpable as the A.I. offered no reply to his stern tone. Decon let a few more seconds pass before he finished gathering his senses again. He turned his attentions to Sable and Tess, shaking off his experience as if nothing had happened. "Gather your things, both of you. We're off as soon as we land."

[Roku]

Sable just stared at Decon with a look of "WTF Dude" as he outbursted and yelled at his AI, and ordered the girls to gather their things for some mission. Sigma twitched for a second. A slight calculation differential was the only thing between him lunging at Decon and strangling him, or continuing to sit and just watch him.

"This human is irrational. Stress is causing him to lose logical processing power..." Sigma told her, after a quick scan. "Physical restraint recommended..."

"Do it..." She ordered.

Sigma moved as fast as lightning, tackling Decon and trying to pin his arms down with his unbelievable strength.

[Gamov]

Decon barely got two steps towards the door when he heard the droid share its appraisal of his mental stability. Then he heard the words "physical restraint" and that set him on edge as a mix of surprise and irritation shot through him.

In an instant, the obnoxious clanking of the droid's feet crossing the floor echoed in the room and Decon spun as fast as he could, a hand snapping up one of his lightsabers and seating it firmly in the palm of his hand as he whirled out of the droid's path. But he was a few seconds too slow and the air was forced out of his lungs as Sigma plowed right into his chest with a tackle, throwing him off of his feet and to the floor.

Its pincer like hands lashed out for his arms, attempting to pin him in place. But Decon reacted on instinct, activating his lightsaber with a quick twitch of his thumb before drawing the blade upward towards the droid's left shoulder. It was either going to pull back, or he was going to turn the thing into a pile of scrap.

[Roku]

"Everybody STOP!" Tess growled loudly. Sigma's scanner went haywire for a second as it picked up the Togruta behind him, and he delayed long enough that if Decon continued, he would get slashed.

Tess was breathing heavily as she glared down at the pair of them. "Nisha has a tracking bug of sithly origins inside your body, Decon... and it seems you only brought me here so that you could get to her..." She snapped at him.

"How do you know that?" Wingston asked her.

"Because I know Nisha and I know how to intercept her telepathy... this time it happened without even trying... Decon's device must have amplified it... In any case, you two need to get up off of the floor. And you need to stay out of my personal business..." She growled, pointing at Decon.

"I already saved your life once... if you go off barging around like a reckless moron, I can't promise I can save you again..."

Tess was almost sure Nisha only spared him because she had requested it.