Cerberus Rising
Stage One: Hounds Of The Illusive
Chapter Two: Red X Revamped
Red X was gasping for breath when the room returned to its familiar shade of black, the star fluctuated from a swampy green color to a striking yellow. As calm as ever, the Illusive Man took a sip of the expensive liquid and waited patently for X to gather himself.
"Knowing what others don't is often a burden, it'll take for you to adjust, but your eyes have now been opened to the truth" he said, sparing the thief the insult of appearing smug.
"What…was that?" X hyperventilated, trying to catch his breath, unable to take the image of that man's death out of his mind.
"That, was one of Cerberus's most valuable pieces of information, a warning sent by one of the last remaining Time Lords, I assume you're familiar with species" he asked.
X gave a slow nod, trying and failing to regain his composure. He managed to stand back up and stare into the Illusive Man's eyes, knowing he knew what he had just seen, and probably how it was affecting his ideals.
"They disappeared tens of thousands of years ago, gave mankind the technology to colonize in space" X slowly spoke out, trying to slow down his out of control heart rate.
"Wiped out as opposed to extinct, all the work of the Daleks" Illusive Man stated, zero hesitation or doubt in his voice.
X remained silent.
"I can understand this might be hard for you to except, after all a few hours ago you woke up after being dead for half a decade, how are you feeling" he asked, breaking of the end of his cigarette in a nearby ashtray.
"You need to earn the right to ask me those kind of questions" X snapped back.
"Cerberus isn't as evil as you believe; you and I are quite similar in some ways, we both believe in going outside the law to do what needs to be done" Illusive Man queried, rubbing the outside of his glass with his thumb.
"Cut to the chase, why did you decide to bring me back?" X demanded, growing tired of being kept in the dark.
"We're at war" the Illusive Man responded almost instantly, putting down his glass and standing up, walking over towards the holographic representation of the thief.
"No one wants to admit it but humanity is under attack" he said, his voice deep and serious, enough to even unnerve the thief. However the concept was far more unsettling.
"While you've been sleeping, entire colonies have been disappearing. Human colonies" he explained.
The very idea that an entire settlement of people could disappear was more than enough to earn the thief's attention, though he had always insisted his concern was to himself alone, this was enough to cause even him to worry.
"We believe it's someone working for the Daleks, just as Aizen and the Cybermen aided Emperor, you've seen it all form the sidelines, but now we want you're help to stop what could be an even greater threat" Illusive Man explained.
"From what I've heard about you guys, this doesn't seem like the sort of thing you would get involved in. Why is Cerberus so interested?" X asked.
"We're committed to the advancement and preservation of humanity. If the Daleks are targeting us and wiping us out, Cerberus will stop them" he said with determination, unlike the kind the thief had ever heard of before.
"If we wait for the politicians or the DWMA to act…then they'll be no human colonies left" he said, the outcome appearing very likely.
"You seemed pretty convinced that I believe in the Daleks" X glared, folding his arms almost like a defense.
"If my word has no effect, I trust that the warning did its job, you tell me if you believe in them" Illusive Man replied, redirecting the question to X.
"It…" the thief trailed off, his mind tried to block out that horrible image, but it ultimately crawled into his mind like a virus, the blood and fire just as vibrant mentally.
"It seemed…too realistic for it to be fake" the thief finally submitted, inside there was a growing belief in the nightmare he had witnessed while awake.
"The Time Lords wanted to warn other species so that same fate wouldn't befall them, their technology was still far more advanced than ours, they were able to show their end as a way to prevent any more deaths, now people like you and I know the truth, they won't have died for nothing" Illusive Man explained, lifting the thief's spirits, slightly.
"How do you know this is the work of the Daleks?" X asked.
"The Daleks destroy entire species at a time; I'd say the harvesting of hundreds of thousands of colonies filled that definition. Nobody is paying attention to attacks because they're random and in remote locations" he explained.
"I don't know why they have suddenly attacked humanity, maybe because we fought back and ended up killing one of them" he added.
"You could have trained an entire army for what you spent to bring me back, so why bring me back?" X asked, hopefully getting the answer that had weighed on his mind for so long.
"You're unique, not because of your skill as a thief, or your ability to use the suit, but in what you represent" Illusive Man explained.
"You are the grey area, you undermine the law and the underworld, and you have escaped death and authority all your life. Yet you still aid the helpless and have saved lives on countless occasions. In short, you are, as a human, the perfect weapon" he summarized.
The comment caught X completely off guard, he had always thought that he was an outsider, outcast, exile, living on the edge of adrenaline and life, but always looked down upon by others for his selfish deed. But now he was being referred to as the perfect weapon, he wasn't sure how to deal with that, especially if someone as influential as the Illusive Man thought so.
"If what you say is true, and the Daleks do exist, why would you expect me to help you?" X asked.
"I would be disappointed if I could persuade you so easily, and without seeing any of it for yourself" Illusive Man responded, obviously anticipating the thief's lack of trust, he stepped back made himself comfortable in his chair once again.
"I have a shuttle ready to take you to Freedom's Progress, the latest colony to be abducted, Seras and Kid will brief you" he explained.
"Am I volunteering, or being volunteered?" X asked in spite.
"It's your choice X, go to Freedom's Progress and find any clues you can about the abductions. Who was behind it? How are they connected to the Daleks? Anything at all" he explained, lighting up another cigarette.
"And then?" the thief insisted.
"If your search proves to be inconclusive, then you and I can part ways, though I have feeling that even you can't ignore something like this" Illusive Man responded, inhaling the grey whips of smoke.
"…Alright, we'll play it your way for now" X agreed reluctantly, glad he had at least one way out.
"Glad to hear it, there's just one last thing before you go" the Cerberus leader explained, exhaling a cloud of grey air.
"What's that?" X asked.
"Be sure to equip your new suit, I may have spent nearly all my resources trying to bring you back, but that doesn't mean I didn't have enough time and money to afford an upgrade" he said, voice the same as ever.
"I brought you back X, it's up to you to do the rest" Illusive Man concluded, typing away at a few buttons on his console, and before long the connection ended, and X was left in the solitary room once again.
As he headed to turn out of the room, he looked to see a small compartment on the right wall that he hadn't noticed before. He walked towards it, the Illusive Man's words buzzing inside his head like a hornet. He pressed the key the central holographic key, and it slowly opened up to reveal something that made the corners of his mouth curve into a smirk.
Seras was busy downloading and exporting information on her console, hands moving quickly along the console as if it were a piano. The information was important to Cerberus, and she really shouldn't have been distracted, but even she had to turn her head up and looks as the sounds of footsteps reached her. It was who she was expecting, just not the same appearance.
Red X's new suit was a work of mechanical genius, it had been a small fortune in itself, though it pale din comparison to what was spent to bring the thief himself back from the grave.
The suit itself was the same size and was tailored perfectly to X's height and width. The cloth had been replaced by extremely flexible yet dense material, so no speed was lost, yet by itself it was sturdy enough to be considered armour. It was black, as it had always been; only some parts like the torso were a lighter grey colour, giving off a more phantom image. The mask was a bleach white around the face, while the rest of the remained black, the eye slots were a blood red colour and the 'x' pattern which retained its position over the left eye, thought larger than before and was fused into the mask itself instead of stitched on.
The cape was longer but tattered in five different places, and could have easily concealed his entire figure, but also made it easier to run with, making sure that no one could grab it during a fight. The traditional 'x' pattern was visible, thought it now covered three-quarters of his chest. His belt had been replaced by a smaller white-coloured metal band with two large oval devices alongside his hip. It could no longer be used to store weapons, but still held its job by powering the suit. Leading on from the belt were four wires that were integrated into the suit in order to charge all available weapon systems, but close enough to the material that it couldn't be target by any weapon. The arms were the most different; the grey gloves were replaced by metallic bands that fitted over the black material. Three jagged metal plates covered the lower arm, each a few centimetres apart form one another, while the hand and fingers where covered by smaller, closer metal plates.
X remained silent as he walked onto the bridge, but he could stop himself smiling, he had always hated that his original suit was Robin's creation, now he had his own, and god did he love it.
"It's official, I'm a badass!" he thought to himself.
He walked up towards Seras, who had a less than pleased expression on her face, and continued to type away, trying to ignore the thief's presence.
"The Illusive Man is very impressed with you, I'm eager to see if you can live up to expectation on this mission" Seras said, eyes not drifting up to look at X, who could she wasn't at all happy with him being there
"I came over to say thanks for bringing me back with the Nero Project" X shot back at her.
"I hope it was worth it, a lot of people lost their lives in that station" Seras responded, looking up at him with doubtful eyes.
"Are you always this bitchy? Or did I catch you on a bad day?" X snapped back at her, the aggressive tension building between them.
"I believe in what Cerberus stands for, time will tell whether you will become an asset or a liability, I don't want to see all the good we have done be ruined by a thief" Seras spat, venom in her voice.
"Well, you know an awful lot about me, maybe it's time you told me about you" X asked, trying to ease off, somehow the idea of her going feral on him wasn't that appealing.
"Worried about my qualifications? I shoot a mech's head form a hundred yards away or crush it with my vampirism" she replied sternly, tightening her fist.
"Wait a sec, vampire?" X asked, shocked by the word.
"Oh of course, you aren't Cerberus so you wouldn't know, at my birth I was genetically altered, my strength, speed and senses were greatly enhanced, my power resembles that of vampires and I'm very good with it" Seras warned, smirking in confidence.
"Don't feel upset if I'm not convinced" X shot back, obviously in doubt.
"Really? See that crate over there" she said, directing the thief's attention to a storage crate located in the corner of the room.
The thief was going to ask what the big deal was, before a tendril made of a blood-red aura shot out and cut in half, breaking most of the floor beneath it. X whirled around to see Seras, her left arm consumed by an orb of red energy, tendrils formed of energy sprouting out of it. Within seconds however the energy died down and her regular arm came back into view.
"I'll be honest X, I'm not looking for a friend; if had been running the show I would have brought you back with a control chip in your brain, but the Illusive Man wouldn't allow it" she glared, she was niches form the thief and he knew full well should could have taken his head off.
"Then I'm glad he's in charge" X responded, standing his ground and refusing to back down.
"The Illusive Man is taking an incredible risk with you, I just hope his gamble pays off" Seras snarled, ending the conversation.
X remained quit, and instead headed over, near to the exit of the station where the shuttle laid waiting. He headed towards the end of the railings where Kid was standing, he'd been watching the confrontation and was extremely glad to see that the two hadn't ripped each others heads off. He turned and smiled at the thief's arrival, smirking as he looked at his new appearance.
"Amazing, that suit is a work of art, flawless symmetry!" Kid marveled, X scratched the back of his neck, doing the best to contain his pride.
"Pretty cool isn't it; I hope it's got enough xynothuim to last the trip to the colony" X shrugged.
"The suit doesn't actually run on xynothium, it was too unstable and didn't have enough durability to withstand the test runs we performed with it" Kid explained, catching the thief's attention.
"So what's powering this thing? The Illusive Man's ego?" X asked.
"What you're wearing is known as the X-Suit Ver. Vongola, and I can tell you it's the only one if it's kind" Kid explained.
X had to make sure he had processed what Kid had just said right, and waited for him to say that it was a very unfunny joke, but when his stern expression remained; the thief felt like he would pass out form sheer shock.
"Did you say Vongola?" he nearly shouted out, unable to control his nerves.
"Ah, so you've heard of them" Kid said, leaning his back against the metal railing.
"No shit! They basically controlled the Terminus Systems from nearly two centuries, you crossed them and you were dead!" X spluttered.
"Vongola…the most powerful mafia group the underworld had even seen, they actually were a key contributor to the creation of Cerberus" Kid mused, staring into space.
"The Illusive Man had contact with one of the Vongola Bosses?" X asked, still struggling to take the information in, knowing he wearing something that belonged to the Vongola was almost as hard to digest as knowing the Daleks could be out there.
"I'm still a little hazy on the details, but during the time of the Ninth Vongola Boss, the Illusive Man apparently helped them take out a threat that could have ended their empire. In return, they helped to establish Cerberus, and apparently out of the goodness of his heart, the Ninth gave the blueprints for some of their most powerful weapons"
"Which were?" X asked.
"I'm not sure, all I know is that the Illusive Man spent a pretty penny creating that suit, rumor has it that he spent three years implanting all the Vongola's key technology and weapons into that suit" Kid explained.
"…All of their weapons?" X asked, nearly choking on his own breath.
"In answer to your original question, that suit runs on a substance that the Vongola referred to as 'Dying Will', some sort of super-condensed flame that could be split into a number of elements. The Illusive Man, out of genius or out of luck, managed to integrate them all into the core of the suit itself"
X looked down, marveling what he was wearing yet again, only in a new light. He was basically a walking weapon.
"In short, you're wearing the embodiment of the galaxy's greatest weapons" Kid smiled, easily seeing through the mask and imagined the look on the thief's face.
"Can't wait to take this thing for a spin" X thought to himself.
"I see you and Seras didn't get off to the bests of starts" Kid said through his teeth, looking over to his superior, whose eyes were strictly focused on her work.
"She's all bark and no bite" X remarked.
"Believe it or not, she's actually a nice person, takes her job rather seriously but she's got good intentions" Kid defended.
"She intended to have a control chip put in my brain" X said blankly.
"Yeah, like I said, takes her job seriously, won't trick anything that will bring harm to Cerberus, I'm the same, what we don't agree on is how valuable an asset you are here" Kid stated, shrugging his shoulders.
"Why are you so nice to me?" X asked.
Kid a small laugh before peering over the railing and into the window above, the shields of the station reflected the starlight in, if someone stopped and stood there for a while, they could see a beautiful sight.
"I actually had heard of you before joining Cerberus, I was telling the truth when I said I was a soldier for the DWMA, my family had helped found it in the early days after the First Contact War with the Shinigami" Kid admitted.
"I enjoyed it, it felt good to serve, but after the attack on the Citadel I lost faith in the DWMA, and soon after that, the Council. I tried to move on with my life by joining the Meisters" he explained.
"Meisters?" X asked.
"We were an elite group, humanity's answer to the Shadowstep program; we stopped a Devil Fruit Pirates here and there. But I still felt useless, a puppet ordered around by a group of morons who thought that arguing of politics was more important than saving a colony" Kid continued, agitated by the mere memory of it.
"That's how you made your way to Cerberus?" X asked.
"I had heard about the Noveria Incident, how you actually managed to expose it's corrupt central company, saving a lot of good people from going out of business, however, the DWMA regarded it as a crime. I left the military and ended up meeting the Illusive Man, and here I am today" Kid concluded.
"You both seem to be really passionate about Cerberus; I think you trust this Illusive Man a little too much" X replied.
"I see, so you don't completely trust us yet, understandable" Kid said with a hint of disappointment.
"You seem like an okay guy Kid, I just think you might be working for the wrong people" X explained, allowing himself to be friendly towards the Cerberus operative.
"Noted" Kid said with a nod.
X then headed out towards the doors of the shuttle, typing in a few codes, the doors swung open, revealing a newer, and sleeker, shuttle, all prepped to take them to their destination. Seras and Kid raised their heads to see X, new suit and all, standing by it.
"Alright, let's head to Freedom's Progress"