Episode 2: The deagleless life of X lord.
A/N: if you're reading this and it's been awhile since I last updated, don't worry, I'm going to finish this, it's just taking awhile.
Rust Lord felt alone in this white void.
"So what are we going to do about him?" A faint voice asked
"Ehhh, erase most of his memories and we can just tell him something different happened," a deeper faint voice said, "also, put in some martial arts knowledge."
"But why?"
"Because, if I'm going to get some use out of him, I might as well make him as cool as possible…"
Where was he? What was going on? Was that the boss speaking?
"ALARM NOISE ALARM NOISE ALARM NOISE!!"
"Holy (bleep)!" X lord woke up and punched the alarm clock, sending it flying across the room.
"(BLEEEEP)," he went, "I really gotta ask the boss to replace that clock."
X lord sat up on his bed and just stared blankly at the wall in front of him. His mind thought of nothing but tv static and Christmas music as it gradually started to wake up. He always felt cozy in the calm of these morning moments. It reminded him of life before the apocalypse, before the bunker… before the betra-
KNOCKKNOCKKNOCK*
"Huh! Um, one second!"
X lord rushed around his room, putting on all his gear before running up to his door and yanking it open.
"Yes?"
Infront of him was a snow husk.
"Oh, hey Artyom."
"Rahhhh! Rah rh rh rh rh!"
"What does he want with me? I did well on our last mission, he should be pissed with Frozen Knight."
"Rh rah rah rh."
"Fine, I'll be there immediately."
X lord exited his room and walked down the icey hallway and towards the throne room. He was at the entrance when he heard the Boss yell something.
"JUST- *sigh* just think next time. And please know, that I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed…"
Soon Frozen Knight exited the throne room with her shoulders slumped.
"NEXT!"
X lord entered the throne room. It was huge, big and foreboding, and was probably compensating for something…
Ice King sat next to Ice Queen on their thrones
"AH!!! X lord, just the man I wanted to see!"
"Hey boss. Mrs. Boss. What'd y'all need."
"Well first," Ice King said, "I just wanted to say, thanks for keeping Ice Knight from doing something stupid. Only god knows how screwed we'd be right now had she infected the girl right then and there!"
"Thank's boss. Um, Artyom told me you had something to show me?"
"I do!" Ice King cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted "BRING IN THE GUEST!!"
X heard the footsteps coming from just over his shoulder. He looked to see Ice Raven and Ice Love Ranger escorting… Omega?!
"I'm pretty sure you've met Omega before. He was at the villain base when you and your totally traitorous friends raided it. I was about to kill him for all the stuff he put me through, however he said you could vouch for him because, quote "you and him go way back!""
"Yeah," X responded, "that much is true."
Rust stared deeply into Omega's visor.
…
"Hey X," Ice King snapped his fingers at X, "you there? You're zoning out right now."
"Oh (bleep) sorry, I was just going into a flashback, but since the narrator didn't narrate the flashback, I guess that means I'm going to have to explain it to you," X responded, "way back when, before the apocalypse, I was a bit of a free freelancer. That meant that I would do anything for you, as long as you paid me enough. One day this old lady living in Pleasant Park paid me to investigate these strange noises coming from the villain base on the mountain.
"I agreed and snuck my way up there. Once I was in I started taking note of everything around me, and after a few minutes, I stumbled upon Omega on call with the visitor. They were saying some weird stuff, some stuff that foretold of this apocalypse that would happen when a meteorite came crashing down upon the earth. It scared the crap outta me so the moment their called ended I made a run for it, however I accidentally tripped over a barrel of chemicals, alerting Omega. He shot at me, and I ran away and managed to escape. I started the bunker shortly afterwards and I guess he never told the visitor about it considering he was surprised when we raided his base. The one thing I never really got was why didn't you tell him?"
"I assumed if you were stupid enough to break in, that you would be too stupid to be a problem," Omega said.
X got out his Six Shooter and pointed it at Omega's head, "you wanna run that back for me?"
"WOAH! Dude, put the (bleepen) gun down!" Ice King said, "listen, overnight we got a message from your old friends daughter. She gave us the location of their base, Lonely Lodge, and told us that she mostly wiped it out, with some push back from people whom she didn't expect to be there. She told us she's currently chasing after some escapees. That was a few hours ago, and she hasn't reported back. I need you two to go there and sweep the area and make sure our new weapon is safe. Am I understood?"
"What? Why do I have to take him with me?"
"Because I've had a change of heart. I could use another henchmen right about now; However, he looks to be one of them Shang Tsung types, right when we accept him, he'll betray us. So I want you to take him and ensure that he'll be loyal to us."
"Ugh, fine! Come on dude let's go."
And just like that, they were off to their first landmark "Titled Towers."
"So why do you do this whole checkpoint system when traveling? why not just go straight there?" Omega asked.
"Because…" X started, "well back in the day, I used to have all my supply runners do this all the time, just as like, a precautionary measure, make sure we know where the husks are and aren't right? It was short lived back then tho, because after sending out the 3rd runner, the bunker was destroyed by some (bleep)hat."
"Geeze us man, you don't have be mean."
"And you didn't have to destroy my one million V Buck baby."
They walked the rest of the way to tilted in silence.
4 hours earlier*
Cobalt woke up to the startling crack of lightening. He stumbled out of his bunk and hit the floor with a loud *SMACK!*
"Oh thank Epic" he heard ND#1 say, "get up and grab your gun, there are husks everywhere."
"(Bleeping) what?!" Cobalt said.
"Dude, just get up, grab your gun, and I'll show you," ND#1 said.
So he did that, and when they opened the door, they saw countless snow husks out roaming around the base.
"What the (bleep) happened?" Cobalt asked.
"I don't know, but I heard your mom yelling profanities at the husks over at her cabin," ND#1 said, "I don't know how long she can hold out for, so we need to move, now!"
They out towards Ghouls location, murdering any husks along the way.
When they made it they saw Ghoul and 2 other defaults murdering people.
"Go to (bleep)," Ghoul yelled out.
Cobalt and ND#1 helped the team clear everything out.
Once they were done, Cobalt asked "alright mom, your the army leader for a reason, what's the move now?"
"We'll, the lightening seems to be coming from over there," Ghoul pointed towards where the watch tower was, "Grills in danger right now, and we need to move in and see which one of the two lighting users is attacking us. Let's move!"
present*
"Eyyyy!" X and Omega heard a girl yell, "Someone go tell Dad that Uncle X showed up today!"
X looked up to see Ice Ace (iace?) on top of a building with a sniper rifle.
"Eyyy, iace! How've you been?" X asked.
"I've been doing fine," she replied, "I saw some weird shapes running by a few days ago, but I just assumed it was a husk."
"Welp, if anything goes wrong, you know to call me right?"
"Of course uncle X."
Just then an Icey man with a suit and mask approached X and Omega.
"Eyyy!" Ice Broker and X said in unison.
"What are you doing here?" Broker asked.
"The boss sent me on a mission to go scout out my old crew's base."
"Oh crap they found it?"
"Yeah with a little help from me!"
"That's dope man! You think he'll finally give you powers for that?"
"I don't know man. The Boss is actin' like he still doesn't trust me after all I did for him."
"Ey, don't take it personally. Remember, Ice King is stubborn and takes a while to do anything. Anyway, how's everything else?"
And they kept talking for 30 long (bleeping) minutes. Atleast that's what it felt like to Omega. During it he walked around tilted, examine the once great city. He entered a diner when he heard "so, I hear you started all this." It shook him up. He turned around and saw that it was that iace girl.
"Oh, it's you."
"Yeah, it's me," she said, "so what happened? How'd you start it?"
"I worked for this (bleep)hole alien who tasked me to take over the world," Omega said, "I found this guy,ice king, who could turn people into zombies. I kidnapped him, harnessed his power and gave it to my boss. I'm pretty sure you know the rest at this point."
"So why'd you do it?" iace asked him. He just stared at her. He remembers vividly why he did it. He remembers that when he was on his knees and the Alliance just left him for dead. He remembers…
"Ey iace!" X came around the corner fast, "Your dad's been telling me you have your eye on this one girl walking around tilted."
"Oh no he told you that?" She covered her face with her hands, "yeah it's true."
"Girl! you didn't think to tell me about it?" X said, "so, what's her name?"
"Crystal…" she said.
"Oh you mean that one girl with the glasses?" X said.
"Yeah," iace said.
X just stared at her blankly before saying, "damn, um. What do you see in her?"
"She's such a badass. Those glasses that she wears gives her some sort of super sight cause I saw her hit a shot on some sucka that was trying to sneak in," iace said in a fast manner, "her voice is like the most soothing I've ever heard. I could listen to it for hours! She's super (bleeping) funny and…"
As she went on gushing about this girl, X couldn't help but smile. He might not've been able to have this with Cobalt, but he was glad to have something like this.
"So," X said, "you want some advice?" iace nodded her head excitedly. "Well, go in with confidence. Can't believe I have to tell you this considering you are one, but girls like confidence. And if she rejects you, be polite and respectful about it, that stuff sticks out in folks minds and who knows, she might give you a chance because of it."
X started looking away from iace and more towards the ground. "That's how I got with ghoul infact. Shot my shot with her in a bar over at Retail Row, she said she no, I respected that. Kept coming back to that bar and minding my own business and she asked me out. She later told me it was because I wasn't acting like an insistent douche like the rest of the men at those bars."
iace looked at X, "uncle X, are you alright?"
X looked up, "uh yeah. Just listen to that advice I gave you and you should be square…" he turned to Omega, "it's time to go dude."
And so they walked out of titled and went towards Dusty Divot.
3 hours earlier*
Cobalt and the rest of Ghouls platoon ran towards where the watchtower was. It took them about an hour because there were a (bleep) ton of husks When they got there they saw Brite on the ground, Caralyst standing over the bruised body of Grill, and drift standing with his fists up.
"Catalyst, please stop, I don't wanna hurt you!" Drift say.
"You've always under estimated my power dad!" Catalyst said, "now you'll learn."
"I've never underestimated you," Drift said, "literally all I said was that we couldn't fight Ice King on our own! Were you not listening?"
"(Bleep) you dad!" She came at him with a hard right, sending him flying into a tree.
While they were fighting, the platoon rushed to Grills aid.
"Uncle Grill!" Cobalt called out as he rushed to him, "are you ok?"
"uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, (bleep) that hurts," Grill said.
"Can you stand?" Ghoul asked.
"*sigh* yeah I can." He said.
"Good, we need to figure out how to subdue catalyst," Ghoul said.
"We can't subdue her, she's one of the henchmen now…" Grill said, "we can only do this one way, we have to kill her."
"Dude I've knocked out Drift at full power before, we don't need to kill her," Ghoul said.
"No-no I've seen this before, we need to kill her."
"No we don't, there is another way."
"We need to kill her."
"There's no way we're killing her man!"
"We have to its the only way."
"NO ITS NOT! STOP SAYING WE HAVE TO KI-"
POW! Drift came crashing back into the center. He struggled to get back up, and just when he was in semi-push-up position, Catalyst stepped on his back.
"I have proven that I am more powerful than you," she said.
"N-n-never said you weren't," he replied.
"Now to defeat the rest of you," she stepped off of Drifts back and walked towards the crew. They readied their weapons and were close to firing when,
CRACK!* a mysterious figure rushed in and punched Catalyst across the jaw, dropping her to the ground.
The figure looked behind her.
"Valor?" Ghoul asked, "y'all are real?"
"NOW!" Valor yelled as she started punching at Catalyst while she was on the ground.
All of a sudden, 3 other people popped out of the shadows and grabbed the crew.
"We need to get out of here," the one dressed in white said.
"Y'all are real?" Ghoul asked again.
"Yes we are," the orange one said, "now we need to move, NOW!"
Everyone got up and made a mad dash for the end of the base.
present*
"Ground zero," X said, "what's it like to be back?"
The last time Omega was here, he was doing field research. Wondering where the perfect place to land would be, the place that would spread the infection the furthest. He remembered that fateful day vividly. Seeing the visitor exit out of it, watching all the Husks rise and roam around.
"iace asked you a question," X said, "and I didn't give you time to answer it. Probably cause I didn't want to hear the answer at the time, but it's been bothering me sense we left Tilted, so I'll ask for her: why did you do it?"
There was silence
"Because…" Omega swallowed a lump in his throat, "some friends of mine had recently betrayed me. I felt hurt, I had no one to turn to. Then I got this strange signal from a man calling himself the visitor. He promised me power and revenge against those people if I just helped him out, so I did. Then he ended up being an (bleep)hole, so it's sort of like I have no one now."
"I get it," X said.
"You do?"
"Yeah. After my friends left me for dead with the boss, and the boss brought me back, I felt alone too. I felt angry. I helped those guys survive the apocalypse, and yet they had the audacity to leave me behind? I felt I had no one except for the boss. Then I met Ice Broker and his daughter, and helped him raise that kid. They were like a second family to me. That's why I fight against my old friends now, you know, to protect this new family that I have. However, I've always had this thought in the back of my mind that I'm doing the wrong thing, you know. And ever since I met up with them again at retail, the thought has been getting louder."
"But Ice King did-" Omega stopped himself. He wanted to tell him what he saw, however it was as if some other worldly force took over his mind and stopped him, "he um, he did provide you a family didn't he? I find that to be great. Thanks for sharing this with me X."
"Your welcome man… anyway let's keep going, last stop is Lonely, it shouldn't be far from here."
1 hour ago*
The crew entered the Mansion just outside of Lonley frantically. Once the dust settled, Ghoul spoke out, "you guys are real?"
"Yeah we're real,"The white one spoke.
"Wait wait wait, who exactly are y'all?" Cobalt asked.
"We're what's left of the Super Squad," the white one said as he led the group down to their basement, "I'm Venturion."
"I'm Vertex," the orange one said,
"And I'm Criterion," the woman said.
When they got to the basement there was one more skin down there.
"And that," Venturion said, "is Eon."
"Say," Ghoul said, "including Valor, I only count 5 of y'all. Where's Carbide."
"Oh, Carbide," Venturion said, "he… died at the beginning of this, the chemicals in the meteor didn't turn him, they instead killed him from the inside out."
"Now it's just us left," Criterion said.
"Wait wait wait…" Cobalt said, "You're telling me there was a group of super heroes out there this entire time, right?" Everyone nodded, "then why didn't y'all help us out? There were people in danger, living in fear that the ice king, heck, go even further than that, that the Husks would kill us. You guys could've saved us all! Why didn't you?"
"Because Valor told us not to," Venturion said, "when Carbide died, we all realized that we were this islands last hope, and that if we died, that hope would go with us. So she told us to hide ourselves and form plan on how to take the island back. We were about to enact the first plan when the Ice King came into power, throwing it out the window. From then on we've had many plans against ice king, but most of them looked as though they were going to fail, until we got to the last plan. Form an army powerful enough to take him down."
"Really?" Grill grunted out, "it took y'all that long to realize it? We came up with that plan on day one of Ice Kings reign."
"Valor had many other plans to just kill Ice King outright"
"Speaking of Valor, where is she?" Eon asked.
"She was the distraction," Venturion said, "she's probably on her way to The Peak right now."
"You let them take Valor?!" Eon asked, "crap. This moves phase two up to right now then!"
"What's phase 2?" Cobalt asked.
"After we formed the Army we had a plan to invade and capture Tilted from the Ice King," Eon said, "afterwards we'd enact phase 3, make a move on Polar Peak; however, with the loss of Valor, they'll potentially be able to brainwash her and turn her into one of the many mindless henchmen they've got on their side, and I don't know if you know this or not, but a super powered henchman is bad!"
"Do you think we're enough of a force to take Tilted from the kings people," Cobalt asked.
"Do you think we have much of a choice?" Eon responded.
Before Cobalt could say anything a voice boomed out, "ALRIGHT YOU MOTHA(BLEEPERS)!" It was Catalyst "I'VE GONE THROUGH A LOT OF TROUBLE TO GET HERE, SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL GIVE UP NOW!"
"(Bleep)!" Ghoul said, "she's here!"
"Who's that?" Eon asked.
"That's my daughter," Drift said, "Don't worry guys, I'll distract her while you guys ru-" drift fell to his knees.
"Yeah you're in no condition to do anything," Brite said.
"Agreed," Ghoul said, "hey cobalt, you remember how I managed to knock drift out that one time?"
"Yeah," Cobalt answered.
"I'm going to need you to help me do that again, but with Catalyst," Ghoul started rummaging through the basement, "distract her while I try to concoct a stink bomb. Eon! Do you have any grenades in here?" Eon rushed to Ghoul's side to try and help her.
"Alright! You all heard her!" Cobalt said, "Defaults on me! We're going to form a firing squad. Supes! I want y'all to sneak around the back. When you hear us firing upon her for 5 seconds, you jump out from behind her and tackle her. We'll improvise as needed from there! Got it?!"
They all nodded, "break!" They all rushed upstairs to take on Catalyst.
When X lord and Omega approached Lonely Lodge, they saw that it was broken down, and on fire for the most part.
"Heh, I guess we know the real reason why Ice King the regular folks, right?" X said, "let's go."
They went into Lonely Lodge and headed for where the watchtower was supposed to be. When they got closer they heard a grunt. They moved closer to the grunt and found woman handcuffed and on the floor. Omega recognized the woman.
"Now just who are you?" X asked.
"Valor," Omega said in a monotone voice "one of those friends I told you about."
"Dang man," X said, "sorry about that. Anyway, she'll make a good witness and once we get her back to ice kwing. Skep doo didalbopop, qwerty?
There was a large ringing in Omegas head. He could hear X anymore. All he knew was that he wanted revenge. He wanted to get back at everyone. He thought he did with blast. He knew for sure he killed Carbide with the formula he gave the Visitor. The meteor probably wasn't enough to kill all of them though. Oh well, he'd just have to finish the Job.
Omega got out a pistol and fired a shot into Valors head. "Guerp cuap lapadoodle!" He then shot her 10 more times.
"(Blurp!) GUAM CUBA PHILIPPINES AND GALAPAGOS!" he shot her 3 more times.
He went to reload his gun when X grabbed it.
"HDJSOAKAJRJEIEHDJSIEJDJ"
Omega snapped out of it, "um what happened?"
"Dude you killed probably the most valuable asset we could've had!"
"S-sorry, I don't know what got into me…" Omega said.
X looked like he was going to yell something else, the he took a deep breath, "listen, I get that need for revenge right?" Rust said, "However I don't let it affect the missions I'm on. If you're going to work with us, you need to understand that, got it?"
Omega looked at him for a second, "yeah."
"So, Valor's off the table, I guess the move now is to spread out and look for clues to where they could've gone… (bleep) man this really puts a damper on everything."
Just then they heard a "grrrrr," come from the bushes. They aimed their guns at it.
"I think I know who this is," X said.
A pair of yellow eyes appeared from the rubble. A huge wolf jumped at them, however X shot it in the side just as quickly as it had jumped. The wolf writhed in pain for a few seconds before morphing into a human.
"Agh!!!" He said.
"Well well well," X said, "if it ain't the squealer himself, Dire!"
"Oh crap!" Omega said, "I remember this guy!"
"Hey," Dire said somberly.
"What are you doing here, out in the (bleep) and the nowhere?" X said.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Dire said.
X pointed his Six Shooter at dire, "yes I would like to know."
"Oh (bleep)! Alright, fine, listen. Everyone ran, right? And I thought about running too until I realized that the ice king was probably going to send reinforcements, so I decided to stay behind to distract whoever he sent."
"Never thought he would've sent and exprotagonist though, did you?" X said. Dire remained silent, "where are they now?"
"Psshhh, I'm not telling you…"
"That's cool," X said, "we'll make you talk then," he motioned to Omega, "and seeing as we have an expert here, it'll be easy"
a few hours later*
X lord and Omega rushed towards the mansion. "This is it!" X lord said, "I can't believe that we're actually about to get them!"
Soon the mansion was just within eye sight and what they saw was actually kinda bad(bleep). They saw Catalyst getting her (bleep) handed to her. The "heroes" were all attacking her at once while a bunch of defaults and Cobalt were firing upon her, however she was managing to hold her own.
"Come on let's move up and help her," X said.
They took a few steps when Catalyst made an explosive shockwave removing all the "heroes," that were around her. She got into an attack position when *clish* *ssssssss* a brownish greenish fog formed around her. She looked to be getting week. That was when at super sonic speeds Venturion rushed in and hit her in the head so hard that she flew back in a wall.
"Oh (bleep)," X lord said.
They ran next to her unconscious body, and Omega felt her pulse. "She's still alive," he said.
"Thank Epic," X lord said.
"R-R-Rusty?" A voice called out. They both turned to see that it was Grill Sargent.
"Grill," X said in a more monotone voice.
Omega heard X's tone of voice. He was about to do something he was going to regret, so he whispered, "X, we're out numbered here, we've gotta retreat." X lord didn't respond, he just took out his gun. "Nonononono. X we need to retreat." He aimed it at Grill. "(bleep)!" Omega rushed towards X and moved his arm just enough out of the way before *BANG!* luckily X hit nothing.
"X listen to me!" Omega said, "we need to go! We can get them next time!"
"Uh, I-I-I-I-I," X was clearly distraught, so Omega walked X back to Catalyst and the three of them rifted back to Polar Peak.
They stood in front of the castle for a second. "I-I-I-I Almost- I almost killed him."
"But you didn't."
"I almost killed-"
"You didn't though."
"I almost killed him!"
Omega started snapping at X, "Rusty, Rusty, snap out of it."
"I almost killed my best friend man!"
"He almost killed me…"
That was the first thing anyone said after the whole thing.
"Was that Omega?" Criterion said.
"Wait, y'all know who that is?" Cobalt said.
"Yeah we do," Eon said, "he used to be an ally back in the day. Then he got too aggressive with his methods, so we kicked him out. I guess he's out for revenge."
"That's one hell of a revenge scheme, starting the apocalypse," Grill said.
"What do you mean starting the apocalypse?" Criterion asked.
"You didn't know? He helped start this entire thing."
"No!" Venturion said, "but that puts everything into perspective, how carbide died, everything."
"Well, that doesn't matter now," Eon said, "right now what we need to do is get ready to take Tilted, alright."
There was an assortment of sighs and head nods. They were dreading what came next, but what other choice did they have?