Template:Featured Articles/41-2020

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Moment of Awesome - Arthur Centino/Longshot: Things go badly wrong during an X-Factor stakeout of a church and Arthur's optimistic view on life takes a beating.


The entire room had gone very, very still as the echo of gunshots in the small area faded away. Alex had frozen, club still out, as he tried to process what the hell had just happened. The parishioners who hadn't yet been taken out by Alex or Arthur or ran away were staring, wide-eyed, at the man they had been following. Alex slowly let his arm drop to his side and turned; the first thing he saw was the gun, and he didn't hesitate to slam a glowing fist into priest's arm. He howled, dropping the gun as he went down - it was entirely possible Alex had broken more than his arm. He didn't care. He kicked the gun away, just to be safe. It slid across the floor, stopping near another pool of blood. He walked slowly toward it, his heart jumping into his throat. It was Anne's mother - the one who had started all this. The bigot who had abandoned her own daughter and willingly brought her into this room to be tortured. He looked at the table and saw Anne, in a similar state as her mother. Then looked around the room, seeing the one or two people who had been to scared to run, in addition to the unconscious bodies on the floor.

"Tie 'em up," he muttered, hooking his club back onto his belt and looking down at the sniveling priest on the floor. "And what do we do with you?"

"No, no, no," the other blonde man seemed to have missed Alex's directive, and instead was scrambling over the body of the mother, with his eyes darting frantically between the fallen woman and her daughter. It had been very unlucky for that wild one shot to hit and kill two people: the kid through the neck, the mother into the heart. Luck. Arthur's lip quibbled at that thought, as he looked desperately for any signs of life. Maybe they weren't dead. This wasn't how this was supposed to go down. This wasn't what he did.

Hope had taken the moment to carefully close Anne's eyes, carefully locking down her emotions one by one. Her eyes were ice cold when she approached approached the priest. "I guess we have to let the authorities deal with him, but how about we call QQ beforehand? He'd have some idea's on what to do with this piece of scum before we hand him over." Her voice was even colder than her eyes.

Tempting. Oh, it was tempting. "If I thought he could get here in time... too bad we don't have any teleporters on hand." Alex shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. "We should look around before the police get here. And not take too long to call."

His eyes fell on the bodies again, and he gritted his teeth. No love lost for the woman who had abandoned her daughter and then wormed her way back into her life just to hand her over to a cult. But Anne... she'd deserved better. Better than this.

It took a second for Arthur, still bent over near the mother, to realize that the others were talking. He blinked up at them, his eyes scanning the room in its aftermath. Two casualties. One injured priest. Seven unconscious or subdued extremists, with another five or so who had ran. They were on a timer. Still... "No. That's not what we do. We," and he paused here to look at the girl, "Help people. Let the police handle this."

He got up, brushing himself off in an attempt to collect his cool and what had to come next. "All we can do now is let her dad know."