Template:Featured Articles/24-2024

Moment of Awesome - Quentin Quire/Kid Omega: In the astral plane, Quentin explains to Radha that despite their shared goals he couldn't adhere to her future, before giving her exactly what she wanted. Good luck. Still struggling to breathe after suffering death and rebirth second-hand, Quentin turned his full attention to Radha Dastoor. She could unmake him in a second, just like Josie, but without an audience to impress by putting him back together. He had to make this quick. He was already psychically reaching for the moorings as he began to speak. "I wanted to believe you, Radha," he repeated with the same gentle, earnest tone he'd used when he'd first ingratiated himself to Haven. Then, it was an act to get on this good side. But there was no insincerity now. "And some part of me still does. I think you can help save the world. But not like this. Bringing about the Mahapralaya yourself and damning eight billion people to an ugly end is vulgar. This can't be how mutants win." “It’s not how we win, you fool,” Radha hissed, all charm gone. “It’s how we survive. I thought you understood that. It’s why I need you, to make Haven strong. If Haven dies, if I don’t live, then no mutant does!” "See, that kind of threat is why as hard as I tried, my own cynicism ultimately won out. I hope you didn't think I'd bolster your power without having a way to take it all back. So, Haven will survive, safely ensconced within the astral plane, but there's no road back.” The telepath opened himself to the limitless power of the astral plane to become its living conduit. His eyes blazed with brilliant pink energy again as he directed that potential to shatter the scaffolding he had so carefully built over the last month. All that work so easily undone. “The Mahapralaya will not come because you will not be there to bring it about. You wanted to rule what's left of a broken world? Well, here you go. What you ordered versus what you received. Bon appetit." With a snap of his fingers, a tear in the lush scenery opened up behind Quentin, which instantly mended itself as he stepped back through it to take his own route home. The final scaffolding that bridged the real world to Radha's heart collapsed in his wake. The road back was gone by the time he passed the threshold to reality as if it had never been there, leaving Haven alone, lost forever in the sea of psychic aether that was the astral plane.