"Oh heck not these guys again!"
Creed's words were delivered quickly as the lights simmered down to almost inpenetrable darkness. Using what little vision he did have left he jumped sideways into a nearby table, firing at the source of the blaster fire as he skidded along it's surface on his side. Time seemed to slow down as he made his daring move across to the other side of the room. Reaching it's end he realised he wasn't alone. A slim tall female was taking cover and firing in what appeared to be the same direction as him.
"Hi" he spoke with a nervous boyish charm, not knowing what to expect from this new encounter.

In the chaos he could hear Nex calling out to him to check if he was still alive.
"I'm doing just great pal.....I think"
He checked to see if this mysterious female was comfortable with his last statement before taking another shot.

Shortly after things had gone dark, the room was semi-illuminated in an eerie red glow as the emergency lighting initiated, bathing the room in a blood-like ambiance.

As the Talortai and Wookie exchanged mêlée strikes Nex found himself sensing something peculiar yet elusive coming from his opponent, familiar yet somehow unknown. He fought with the ferociousness that all Wookies possessed but seemed somehow less guarded, almost as if the creature was not registering getting harmed. As they clashed a blaster bolt struck the Wookie from across the room, the beam cutting straight through the left shoulder and clean out the other side.
Immediately Nex knew something was wrong when his opponent not only ignored the shot and continued to fight without slowing, but that the hole left by the attack did not begin to bleed. In fact he could see no blood at all initially, but noticed as he changed his stance that congealed blood could be seen inside and around the wound, not consistent with a quarterized injury.

“I hit him!” came a shout from the other side of the room as the Wookie snarled and began to charge his opponent.

As the two other Humans fanned out around the side of the room, one taking one wall each in an attempt to box the others in, Forge struggled to get up after being hit by blaster fire.

“This is not right....malfunction....” it was saying to itself as it used the wall to prop its frame up. Glancing around, it saw the only sentient within earshot: the Human woman who had joined them on Coruscant.

“Miss, I seem to be malfunctioning...” it said as the redhead flung the droid a look but not engaging in conversation as she ducked down, dodging blaster fire.

Convinced that the mistress must be misinterpreting the communication as a complaint or request for help, it continued:

“Miss...either my sensors are malfunctioning or something is very wrong indeed. I am picking up the presence of only four life-forms in this room.”

The fight continued and blaster bolts rang loud in the enclosed space. Lilin wanted to stay where she was and hoped to remain hidden but the damned droid had betrayed her position.
     She looked towards Forge leaning shakily on the wall. “What the hell are you talking about, robot?” From under her table she quickly counted bodies in the dim red gloaming. One had locked arms with the bird-man and two were circling the perimeter. “I can see at least three hostiles! Are they droids, you’re saying?”
     She was thinking quickly now. The robot had probably done her a favour. It was important she gained Creed’s trust and proving she was useful in a tight spot was a good start. Spying a blaster on the canteen floor between herself and the droid she weighed up the odds. The lighting was poor and everyone’s eyes were hopefully locked on their attackers. It was still a small ways off from her trajectory but she could risk it in the confusion.
     Darting out from beneath the table directly at Forge, Lilin launched herself into a tight roll. Gaining her feet – weapon now in hand - blaster-fire surrounded her as she ploughed into the droid and dragged him back into the corridor from which they had entered, firing off some shots behind her to cover their retreat.
    She rammed the droid unceremoniously in the small area near the door which was screened from gunfire. ”Stay here!” she admonished before dashing to the corresponding corner opposite.
    Catching her breath in the cover, Lilin gritted her teeth, took aim and began blasting shots into the room.

The bolt smashed into the wall were the human had been standing, him and his partner had begun to fan out boxing her and the newcomers in and firing at them for both directions, Ril took cover again as bolts flew over her head, even with the lights out these humans could see unaided.

She turned to observe human that had just initiated contact with her, wearing googles and his face was covered in his long purple hair he looked distinctly unlike what she had expected to be guarding a weapons development site, neither did his comrades who looked equally inept, his cocky entrance at least had set her at ease, he was no threat.... well not yet,“Hi”, she offered him rather icily before firing off some more rounds.
The human absorbed them like a corpse the flesh flew apart in a distinctly odd way and he was seemingly unharmed, if she'd come prepared for a battle she could have blasted him apart with a small armament of weapons but as it was she was going have to try something else...
Ril turned to the human to her right, “Look I'm going to need a distraction......”

In one powerful motion, Nex threw his hand out and launched the wookie into the wall and onto the floor behind him.

With a short grunt Nex turned to see how the others were doing. “One near the door and two in the….” Nex’s concentration was broken as a pair of blaster bolts slammed into his chest.

Nex gasped for air as he dropped to his knees and pulled himself back together. The three were difficult to sense when not grouped together.

“Abominations.” Nex thought to himself as he made his way to the kitchen and leapt over he counter only to once again fall to his knees and collect himself due to his recent injuries. After spitting up a small amout of blood onto the floor next to him, he looked up to see Creed and a female exchanging words.

“They got lucky, it won’t happen again.” Nex said and coughed a couple more times as his implants and natural talent at healing tried to repair the damage.

“I believe these things have lived long enough.” He mumbled as he picked up a small piece of the debris that had been blasted out of the wall with one hand, and removed his lightsaber with the other.

“Keep your heads down…” He continued, hovering the debris in the air and sending it into the next room where it ignited shaking the room and devastating everything in its small blast radius. The power it took to form the blast fatigued Nex more than he thought but after a few moments he focused himself once more.

“Your turn.” Nex was refering to the pistol in Creed’s hands. He ignited his lightsaber with his right hand covering the nearby area with a blue glow and leapt back over the counter. Focusing on the blaster fire rather than the three figures now spread throughout the room.

“Keep your heads down…”, the Talortai exclaimed matter-of-factly before the spinning debris he'd use his Force powers to levitate suddenly exploded in a violent eruption of shrapnel and force. As Nex, Creed, Lilin and Rin all ducked down at their respective positions and shielded their eyes from the blast radius, none were fully prepared for the sight that awaited them when they once again dared to look.

The Wookie was no more, caught in the largest concentration of the blast radius he was little more than clumps of fur and gore splattered about the room. The two Humans who had not caught as much of the blast as their furred counterpart were still active, though it defied all the laws of nature that they should be so.
The Human who had been making his way around the left side of the room to where Lilin was and Forge had previously been was doing so with a considerable limp, not only in part due to the fact that his left foot was utterly missing and the man was seemingly ignoring the bone-crunching impact of his full body weight upon the stump as he walked, but also from the fact that a goodly portion of the left side of his torso was gone; parts of organs could be seen among shattered bone, large clumps of fleshly globules dropped from the hole and left a gruesome trail behind him. Still armed with his blaster pistol, he seemed utterly unaware of the injuries he had sustained and raised his pistol as he shambled, training it with difficulty upon the red-head who was mostly concealed behind furniture.
The second Human was similarly injured well beyond the point the human body could handle as he made his way toward the Human, Umbaran and Talortai. He did so from the floor, as his legs and much of his spinal column had been destroyed in the blast. Dragging himself across the floor using just his hands and upper-body strength, he had his vision fixed upon the three with a look of murder in his eyes. What was left of his face was a mess of lacerations and fractures, much of his lower jaw was simply falling away but none of this stopped him from dragging himself toward the three, intent on tearing them apart.

As with the Wookie before them, neither of the Humans seemed to bleed freely, their blood was not flowing out of their wounds but more oozed as if congealed, the colour a deep crimson, almost brown in its hue as if escaped their bodies from the exertion of movement.
Though slowed by the injuries, neither surviving assailants seemed in any way perturbed by the turn of events, they seemed almost mechanical in their relentlessness.

It was in the aftermath of the explosion that Nex and Lilin both simultaneously had the revelation of the eerie feeling they had sensed when the three newcomers first entered the room, and realised the form it took: None of the combatants could be sensed through the Force, as if they were disconnected from it. A disquieting concept to them both as all living things can be sensed through the Force, it flows through all life and permeates it and one never exists without the other. Such a lack of force sensitivity could normally only be equated with soulless things such as machines, so to have a sentient life-form with no connection to the force was disturbing and alien.

This realisation came from the fact that what was left of the Wookie seemed no different to these two attackers when examined by the Force. They felt nothing stopping them from sensing these beings using the Force, nothing blocking their talents, rather their was a simple absence of the Force, it simply wasn't there to begin with.

The three strangers were dead, and had been long before they even entered the room....

The beam of light emmiting from Nex's lightsaber added a much needed visibilty to the gloomy red room. Creed turned to woman by his side who although appeared to be cold at first still came across as friendly enough...for now. Realising that whatever his team was dealing with wasn't 'natural' he quickly devised a plan.

"We need to stop these 'things' in their tracks! Hey Cherry Red, on my command fire at the head!"

It had occured to him that at least one of these monstrosities was still moving upright toward Forge and Lilin with blaster in hand. Activating his stealth belt he ducked and rolled under the nearby table out of sight from approaching menace. Slowly he flanked the 'human' heading to the redheads position until he found himself completely behind it. Removing two small vibroblades from his jacket he jabbed as furiously as he could at both of it's knee pits in the hope that his actions would tear the limbs clean from their sockets. If his plan was to work he needed those head shots to be precise....

Taking her cue from Creed, Lilin took aim on the limping human’s head but held off pulling the trigger for his command; the goggle-wearing man-in-charge obviously had a plan. To anyone observing her it would seem she had somehow anticipated Creed’s optically camouflaged movements, that or perhaps she had incredibly acute eyesight and detected in the red gloom the almost imperceptible distortions generated by a stealth field. No sign of surprise registered on her face when the oozing enemy suddenly collapsed in front of her. She tracked her target on his way down and immediately upon his hitting the floor fired a shot which at such close range, and due probably to the man’s bizarre physiology, decimated the aberrant’s entire brainpan. Globs of sticky gore spattered around the corpse from the killing shot, confusingly inconsistent with the usually cauterised wound of a particle beam weapon.
     Bereft of her usual focus, Lilin, blaster still raised, looked quickly round the room for the locations of any other attackers.

As the still upright human took many well-placed slices to the backs of its knees from the unseen Agent, it began to collapse despite its will to continue on its current course of action. Its murderous intent was halted when the woman with flame-red hair put an end to its existence with a skilful blaster shot to the head and caused massive internal damage as it exited the back of his skull, narrowly missing Creed in the process. A less trained individual might have caught the residue of the shot at such close range but he was no amateur; the stealthed human moved in anticipation of the shot and was unharmed.
As the once-human assailant collapsed to the ground it did not spasm or show any other signs of such a violent and sudden disconnection from life, it simply stopped.

Across the hall however, the final combatant was far from still. Dragging itself across the floor using just its arms, it was moving at a steady pace but had seemed easily the least dangerous of the two remaining assailants. A tactical decision on the battlefield would be to take down the least injured party first, the individual or group most likely to cause immediate damage. A tried and tested tactic which had worked in wars and skirmishes since time immemorial. Sadly, such tactics were useless against such an unpredictable opponent.

With an incredible and unforeseeable burst of strength the remaining crawling enemy sprung from the floor and cleared the eight feet between itself and the Umbaran and Talortai. In a different situation it could have have been worth the noting that the strength needed to perform such a task was well above the human norm, but the situation did not allow for contemplation as the thing hurtled through the air and found its quarry: Nex Deus.

Slamming the injured Talortai to the floor the thing began pinning his windpipe with the palm of its hand while the other began to claw at his wounds which were currently trying to heal themselves. Caught unprepared for such an onslaught coupled with his recent injuries, the large jedi struggled under the fierce attack and a sudden oppressive wave of nausea from the thing being so close to him: dark side energies were emanating from it and it took all of his concentration to coordinate his force-abilities into blocking out the corruption while fending the thing off physically.

Ril slammed to the floor as a mass of foul smelling flesh pushed past her and collided with the Talortai in front of her, she had had no time to decide whether the large bird like being was friend or foe as it dropped down beside her before it had so dramatically taking events into its own.... hands.

Landing hard and heavily upon a number of metal utensils which now littered the floor she sat in shock at the sight before her, half a man lay across the large bird clawing ferociously at it, its body had been shredded its legs no more then a few tassels of soggy flesh with its spinal cord sickeningly jutting out.
Ril could only watch mesmerised at the sheer horror of the situation as it unfolded in front of her but at the same time was in awe of the sight, she never seen such technology before but knew what it must be, nanotechnology had always been impossible to perfect and incredibly dangerous to implement but here it was on a desolate world ready for the taking, so much more than what she was expecting.

The Talortai let out a roar as it tried to protect its wounds and fend off the creature at the same time, obviously this other group weren't part of the staff and this planet was too far out of the way for a Jedi and a group of Mercs to have stumbled across,....if she let this one die it'd certainly be easier to pick the other 3 off later on an exclusive on this technology would be priceless, sounds of damp flesh being torn filled the air and the Talortai let out another roar, Ril looked at it and made a decision.

She pulled her bulk out of the debris and strode towards the tussle, her stealth suit made her cumbersome and slow but it also gave her extra mass, not stopping she put her full weight into a powerful kick in the shattered man's ribs sending him sprawling in the centre of the floor.
It looked pitiful flailing its arms around searching for a grasp to right it self and make another attack, So rill aimed at its head and made it quick....

Nex stood up slowly, bleeding and furious. How this “corpse” could overtake him so easily troubled him greatly. He considered himself a warrior and this last scrap struck his pride deeper than any blade possibly could. All the energy and focus that Nex used to keep the “thing” off of him was now used to keep himself together. His wounds would heal but that didn’t make them any less painful.

Nex watched as the now permanently dead abomination sat lifeless at the feet of the Umbaran. Reaching out his arm towards the ground his lightsaber flew back to his palm. His eyes remained focused on the body as he connected it to his belt. The pain of his wounds seemed to melt away as his anger grew.

The jedi at the temple taught him that anger was an emotion that would lead him to the “dark” side, but he welcomed the feelings with open arms as they slowly ate away at him. No doubt everyone was busy trying to understand what these things were and what exactly just happened but Nex wasn’t concerned about that. They were dead, problem solved.

Finally fed up with looking at the body, Nex walked up and grabed it by the throat and lifted it into the air completely ignoring the Umbaran. Disgusting, he thought as his grip tightened and made his way towards the corridor they first came through. He stopped at the doorway and released his hold, levitating it with the force. Nex’s hands dropped to his sides then in a few quick motions he activated his lightsaber severing its arms and head. Connecting his weapon back onto his belt he gave the corpse one last lookover. With a low growl, Nex moved his hand forward sending it into the corridor past Forge. Focusing his energy one more time the body combusted sending the remains all over the walls, floor, and ceiling.

Nex moved up against the wall now concentrating on the newly met Umbaran. He was in no mood for idle conversation and decided to let Creed and Lilin do the talking for now.

"Easy big fella" Creed's words of comfort to Nex were lost in a void of rage. He'd never seen his friend this upset before, something was clearly wrong and he could tell that the ex-Jedi sensed that all was not well. Creed too had some questions that needed answering....
"Would someone like to tell me what in fraks name they were?"
Turning his attention to the Umbarran he noticed that she seemed less than shocked about their recent encounter.
"Thanks for your help stranger, the names Creed and this here is Nex, Forge and .... Cherry?" The redheads name had either escaped him or she was being reluctant to tell him any details.

He lent down on one knee and using his vibro-shivs he started inspecting the mangled corpse at his feet.
"Forge, I need you to do an analysis of this body. I wanna know what we're up against before we continue. I don't like surprises".

Blessed with the ability to feel no fear, Forge trotted over to Creed following his instruction, and looked down at the remains of the human corpse that had been shot through the cranium.

"Of course, Sir" It said as it leaned over the body and started producing several small bits of surgical apparatus and other, more non-descript items from various compartments about itself. "I will run a full spectrum analysis but it will take some time. Might I suggest you and the other organics look into defending yourselves while I undertake this task? I would suspect it will take between seven and fourteen standard moments to complete."

As the Droid went about its business and the group managed to take a breath at last, the Force-Users among them were able to notice, with quietened minds, that the nausea they felt from such overwhelming Dark Side energies had subsided somewhat. It was still there, still painfully apparent, but it was as if a wound in the Force had begun to heal with the destruction of the three abominations.

A few seconds into its investigation Forge suddenly shot out its hand in which was clenched some sort of I.D. "You might find this of use, Masters." It said, not turning round nor slowing its investigation.

Ril watched as the Talortai lift the corpse of the ground with one arm and take it to the corridor severing its limbs,”not so much a Jedi after all...” she pondered.

"Thanks for your help stranger, the names Creed and this here is Nex, Forge and .... Cherry?"

“You can call me Es'pel for now”, she replied matter of factly moving over to him “I'm not sure what your doing here but I estimate your presence is wanted as much as my own” she stoop down next to Creed as he was examining the corpse making sure not catch any part of her coat on the rotting flesh of the liquid that now seeped from it.
It was still a horror to behold just now a less mobile one, she turned to Creed and smiled “I think its nanotechnology” she said enthusiastically pulling a knife from some compartment on her suit, she looked down at it ready to take a sample and then recoiled.
“I wouldn't touch them if you can avoid it” she said to the group trying to avoid looking at the bird who had had one all over his open wounds, “If it's what I think it is, you might end up like them nanites can spread from person to person” she sheathed her knife looked around and moved over to the kitchen and began searching, she returned with a airtight food container and a pronged cooking instrument, she bent down again and stabbed the instrument into the hole left by the baster bolt and rummaged around.
I emerged triumphantly with piece of uncharred brain matter which she plopped into the food container and sealed, throwing the knife across the floor she turned back to the group, “Pay Dirt”.

Poking her head round the door opening to check for any more levitating torsos she called out lightly "Am I safe to come out? Or should I keep the doorway clear for any more Jedi tantrums?" This last was said with a note of disapproval.
     Frowning darkly Lilin brusquely began walking towards the group "And as for you, it's not 'Cherry'!" Her angry advance was thwarted as she slipped on the sheen of gore covering the room's floor. A scintillating wobble and a flailing of arms (and blaster) kept her remaining upright and after a brief toss of adjustment for her hair, she resumed her walk in a slower and more composed manner. As she passed the droid she adroitly plucked the I.D. from it's fingers.
     Coming to a stop she looked at the Bird-man and calmly informed him "And that wasn't a tantrum"
     She turned a beaming smile upon the strangely garbed newcomer "Don't mind them Es'pel," she began "In fact I'm surprised this one," she pointed at Creed with the I.D. "Even thought to thank you for your help with these things – thanks by the way. I mean he all but kidnapped me, held me under gunpoint, brought me to the *rse end of the galaxy, dragged me with no 'by your leave' into this hell hole putting my life in danger and abandoning me in the middle of a gun fight to fend for myself - where I was bloody amazing, killing one of those things aaand saving the droid in the process..." She paused not for breath but to level at Creed an icy stare "You're welcome, by the way. And noooobody has even bothered to ask me my name!" Smile back in place Lilin returned her attention to Es'pel "I'm Dee, pleased to meet you"
     Lilin had been gesticulating throughout her tirade, punctuating each point with the I.D. card. She held out her hand to shake the other woman's but found she was holding something with it. "What's this?"