In the Extended continuity, Numair restored and reverse-engineered Cruise Chaser, having purchased the wreckage from Garlond Ironworks. It took him about a year to fully decrypt and analyze its operating system, and a number of months to rebuild and modify its frame. He added more melee weapons, particularly its twin drills. Numair also added a stealth feature, though it cannot be used in combat.
The largest modification Numair made was the addition of a two-person cockpit, central to its conversion to being a dual pilot system. Though Cruise Chaser can be operated in single pilot mode, its full potential is realized if two people are piloting. When explained why he went with a dual pilot arrangement, Numair merely answered that it was more fun with two.
Cruise Chaser is first summoned during “Headshots and Headfire” in Patch 5.4, during a training and scavenging mission in Northern Thanalan. When Numair and Kiros are ambushed by scores of Magitek enemies bearing the number < 0 >, Numair asked Kiros to buy him a few minutes while he prepares a countermeasure, running off with tomephone in hand. He called Cruise Chaser from the Skysteel Manufactory’s warehouse in Ishgard, and after taking Kiros inside the cockpit, proceeded to demolish all of the enemy Magitek. When infiltrating Castrum Meridianum (once thought to have been abandoned after Operation Archon), Numair summoned Cruise Chaser again when the Nul Legion’s leader Ralse quo Herdin boards his Pyracantha Magitek. The Immortal Flames soldiers that arrived shortly after the battle think that Ishgard had suddenly developed a fleet of combat machina, but Numair assured them that Cruise Chaser is merely a personal project and not associated with the Temple Knights.
In Endwalker‘s “Here Be Lions,” Numair and Kiros collected a number of unusual and exotic materials to use in further development of Cruise Chaser. However, a Nul Legion operative posing as a Skysteel Manufactory employee kidnapped Numair, taking him to Castrum Solus in Azys Lla. Ralse and his engineer/tactician Zeirkain interrogated Numair, wanting to learn Cruise Chaser’s inner workings for purposes of augmenting their own machina. Kiros used Cruise Chaser to stage a rescue, blasting a hole through Castrum Solus’ hangar walls and interrupting Ralse’s attempt to put Numair on an airship to Garlemald. When Ralse and Zeirkain boarded the Crataegus, Kiros and Numair fought them using Cruise Chaser.
When recruited in Patch 6.4, Numair brought Cruise Chaser with him, and is able to summon it in battle through the use of his Eternal Darkness Limit Break. He used Cruise Chaser to survey the Thirteenth’s Red Moon and during the Golbez battle. In Patch 6.5, Numair reinstated Cruise Chaser’s autonomous operations mode, deploying it to assist the Scions before he and the rest of the party jumped into the rift to confront Zeromus.
In Dawntrail, Numair brought Cruise Chaser with him to Tural, though he neglected to activate its stealth when parking it near the inn in Tuliyollal, causing a mild commotion. It is how he met Koana, who recalled hearing stories of an engineer who somehow managed to crack the secrets of Goblin engineering and reverse-engineered a Goblin-made machina. Word of Numair’s development of Cruise Chaser had apparently made its way to the Studium in Sharlayan, which Koana had attended for a time.
Cruise Chaser is damaged during the Shaaloani train operation, while defending the Dawnbreaker from enemy interference. The Vanguard soldiers’ electrope-augmented guns warped Cruise Chaser’s armor frame, taking it out of operation until Numair could repair and reinforce it. During the foray into Origenics, while disabling its security systems, Numair discovers the data for Ark, a machina that Zoraal Ja had suspended development on in favor of reallocating resources to soul harvesting. Ark’s schematics have a lot in common with Cruise Chaser’s, suggesting that it might have been the Ninth shard counterpart. Numair downloaded Ark’s data into his tomephone, with plans to analyze it and possibly use it for future Cruise Chaser development.
Just before the start of Dawntrail postgame, Numair unveils Cruise Chaser MK-3, featuring a new black and silver frame and integrating electrope-based hardware. He also implemented some of Ark’s software, whose programming language is identical to the Goblin-based version used in Cruise Chaser’s operating system.