LONGSHOT: Page 2 of 5

Publication Date: 28th Sep 2020
Written By: Monolith, Peter Luzifer and Gremlin.
Image Work: sixhoursoflucy.
Biography

BIOGRAPHY - Page 2

Longshot was allowed to stay on at the X-Mansion as a guest, and soon ended up joining the team on a full-time basis once half the group was taken out of action, thanks to the Mutant Massacre. Storm and Wolverine sent Rogue off to Muir Isle with the injured X-Men and the new members like Longshot or Dazzler, so that they could train to work together as a team like the X-Men before them had. And for a few weeks that's what they did, with the retired X-Man Banshee overseeing Longshot, Rogue, Psylocke and Dazzler as they drilled and learned to operate as a unit. They certainly got their trial by fire when the Juggernaut showed up in nearby Scotland. Working together, these four X-Men managed to slow the Juggernaut down, remove his protective helmet, and finally lay him out cold. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #215-218]

At some point, the X-Men were abducted by an alien who blackmailed them into retrieving a special crystal for him from the Citadel of Light and Shadow. Longshot was scared to enter the structure, but accompanied the X-Men anyway. One by one, the teammates were faced with their heart’s desires, making them abandon their mission. However, because of his naiveté and innocence, the Citadel had nothing to offer to Longshot, other than becoming one with it. Before his confused teammates’ eyes, Longshot grew larger and dematerialized. In the end, Wolverine reached the crystal, and everyone was returned home unchanged and unharmed. [Uncanny X-Men Annual (1st series) #11]

 

 

 

 

As Longshot came to know the X-Men, his mind seemed to be even more blank than it was when he first came to Earth - he experienced no flashes of memory and remained completely unaware to the situation his people were in back on Mojoworld. Longshot was like a newborn child with the mind and body of an adult, mesmerized by concepts like "water" or "snow," while utterly oblivious to the women both on and off the team who frequently threw themselves at him. He didn't recognize himself when he saw the movie for which he and Rita did stuntwork months previously, nor did he even fully remember Spiral when she and the rest of Freedom Force tried to arrest the X-Men for being outlaws.

 

 

 

 

As Longshot and the X-Men confronted the chaos-entity known as the Adversary, they sacrificed their lives to be converted into pure energy by the shaman Forge, and cast as a spiritual weapon to banish the Adversary from Earth. The world was left believing the X-Men dead legends, heroes who had died to save all of existence. In truth, they were resurrected by Roma and cast back into physical forms, with a newfound invisibility to electronic detection to help sustain the myth of their deaths. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #224-227]

They were transported to Australia to begin their new lives, and started by disabling a group of cyborg thieves and murderers known as the Reavers, who were using an abandoned ghost town in the Outback as their base of operations. After winning the battle, the X-Men claimed the spoils and adopted the town as their own. When Longshot uncovered the Reavers' treasure room, he was inundated with psychometric impressions that put him in a state of shock for three days. After awakening, Longshot's simple innocence convinced him the X-Men had a duty to ensure all the misbegotten gains were returned to their rightful owners. Using his psychometric powers to learn all the items’ pasts, the Reavers' computer system to pinpoint the respective owners, and a newfound ally named Gateway to teleport them where they needed to go, the X-Men traveled the world on Christmas Eve to give back all the stolen goods. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #229-230]

As time passed, his teammate, Dazzler, developed stronger and stronger feelings towards Longshot, and in his own way he reciprocated, with the two of them spending a lot of time together and taking road trips into the nearest inhabited town. There Dazzler would get on stage and sing, and Longshot admired the way she entertained the audience and shared a passionate kiss with her after the show. The problem was, Longshot was totally unaware of the "rules" of dating and couldn't understand why Alison was getting upset when he spent time with Rogue as well. In fact, he felt that Alison claiming him for herself and treating him like private property made him some sort of slave. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #239-240]

During Inferno, Longshot was corrupted by the demonic bite of N’astirh, an attack which intensified all of his selfish and greedy urges. Dazzler was similarly affected by the demonic energies all over the New York, and the two of them became unreliable during the chaos, contributing to small squabbles among the X-Men and X-Factor and running off on their own at times instead of helping their friends. Even worse was that Madelyne Pryor used her powers as the Goblyn Queen to bend them to her will, giving them spotlights and calling them "stars" in exchange for them siding with her. However, without purity of motive, Longshot's luck drained away from him and he eventually collapsed into despair.

Only when Psylocke came to him and gave him a selfless deed on which to focus (saving the innocent babes the Goblyn Queen was trying to sacrifice) was Longshot able to cast off the vileness of Inferno and use his luck to help the assembled heroes save the children and win out in the end. This single act could not fully restore Longshot's confidence, however – when, following Madelyne’s death the X-Men and X-Factor first became aware of Mr. Sinister and went to confront him, Longshot stayed behind, uncertain that he could trust his luck or that the demon's touch was truly gone. Eventually, he swallowed his fear in the end, and traveled to the remains of Xavier’s mansion to save his friends and confront Sinister and Malice alone after the others were all defeated. He managed to stall the villains until his friends could be revived. [Inferno]

Not long after that, however, Longshot questioned his use to the team when he couldn’t do anything to help during their fight with the Super-Sentinel Master Mold. Dazzler’s attempts to cheer him up provided only some temporary comfort, because he also found himself plagued by nightmares of Spiral, Rita and himself being unable to save the people he loved. Lacking any true sense of self or identity, Longshot finally began to question his amnesia instead of just "living for the moment" as he had been ever since he joined the X-Men. Bidding his good-byes to Storm, Longshot left the team in order to search out some clue to his true origins. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #247-248]