Marksmanship-522
Marksmanship-522 was a Clockwork Cherub, a Senior Agent of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' elite taskforce the Scarlet Wings.
Description
Personality
Marksmanship was known for relative candour, as evidenced by his straightforward choice of a name. (PROSE: Marksmanship-522 and the Multi-Dimensional Race) He enjoyed his rest in-between stressful missions, and collected stamps to calm himself, a hobby he shared with Philatel-426. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
Powers & abilities
Marksmanship was considered one of the best bowmen in the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids. (PROSE: Marksmanship-522 and the Multi-Dimensional Race)
Biography
Early adventures
Marksmanship-522 participated in a number of noteworthy Cupid endeavours. He notably “led the team that romanticised the Zyargaff Beast in Dimension 42µ” and fired the first shot in the Second Great Spaghetti War. (PROSE: Marksmanship-522 and the Multi-Dimensional Race)
Involvement in the Cross-Dimensional Grand Prix
On one occasion, Marksmanship was sent to an alien planet in the Prime Universe to romanticise a mere two people, Lilathia and Brutus. When he first arrived, he was surprised he had been assigned to something this easy and low-key. However, it soon became clear that the two were the last remaining warriors of two feuding species. He first visited the house of Lilathia, who took him to be an assassin sent by Brutus, capturing him in a burlap sack.
Even after Marksmanship managed to clear up the confusion, his troubles were far from over, as Lilathia and Brutus, overjoyed at finally having a neutral party to fill the position, forced him to act as referee for a Cross-Dimensional Grand Prix that would allow them to finally determine a victor to their conflict. To prevent him from chickening out, Lilathia crashed her Void Ship into Marksmanship's Fog Ship. He was then made to ride along on Lilathia's ship throughout the faster-than-light, interdimensional race.
When the two ships completed their run and returned to Lilathia and Brutus's home planet, Marksmanship was barely coherent, completely dazed by the trying experience of high-speed interdimensional flight. He confessed that he had been unable to determine whether either ship had got back before the other, and declared the Prix a tie. To his surprise, Lilathia and Brutus were pleased by this development, as, they explained, they wouldn't have known what to do with themselves if they'd had to stop feuding. Content that they were “happy” doing something they “loved” doing, Marksmanship returned to the Cupid Homeworld with no further attempts to romanticise the pair, aboard Lilathia's speedster, which she gifted to him as reparation for destroying his Fog Ship. (PROSE: Marksmanship-522 and the Multi-Dimensional Race)
Back in the Homeworld
Once he arrived back in the Cupid Homeworld, Marksmanship gave Lilathia's pan-dimensional speedster away to the Department of Transportation and typed up a report which he handed in to the Department of Completed Assignments, containing an exhaustive list of all the new universes he'd briefly passed through on the Cross-Dimensional Grand Prix. (PROSE: Marksmanship-522 and the Multi-Dimensional Race)
Thereafter, he greatly enjoyed his rest day on April 29th, 2019. He dropped by the Cupid Post Office trade some stamps with his fellow collector Philatel-426, but did not find him in his office and returned to his home, where he tried to take a nap. Before long, however, his house was broken into by the Blue Feather, who were investigating the theft of a mailbag from the Post Office and had become momentarily convinced that Marksmanship was the culprit. He was able to convince them otherwise, though not before he found himself once again captured in a burlap sack. His testimony that Philatel had been missing from his office at the time the crime was committed was ultimately instrumental to Acquaintanceship-982's solving of the mystery. (PROSE: Acquaintanceship-982 and the Missing Mail Mystery)
As one of the senior operatives of the Scarlet Wings, Marksmanship had the right to attend Cupid Parliament sections. He was present for the ninth day of debate about Stenographer-123's typewriter, on the day of the faceless magician incident. When the argument started to devolve into a fistfight, he tried to wrestle Foreman-964 off of Taskmaster-523, but was unable to do much, although the fight was soon broken up by the onslaught of magic rabbits. (PROSE: Magic Trick)
During the Rifts Crisis
Marksmanship-522, Bibliophile-962 and Tracker-764 were among the few Cupids trapped outside of the Cupid Homeworld during the height of the Rifts Crisis. Travelling together with the Hound, they eventually found the home base of the Consistency Imperium, who had been unintentionally accelerating the spread of the Rifts due to the deceitful advice of the alchemist Mandragora-257.
After they were returned to the Homeworld by the Faction of the Fooling Fish aboard their tachyonic sailing ship, Marksmanship recommended Tracker for a position in the Scarlet Wings. Interviewed for comment by The Cupid Courier, he stated: “I feel that Tracker is just the person we need with us if we’re going to be tracking down rifts and getting rid of them. His unique approach to dangerous situations (and his famous resolve to never give up any task) makes him particularly well-suited to this sort of thing. Besides, there’s no Cupid I’d rather have by my side in a tricky spot”. (PROSE: Rifts Crisis Officially Over!)
