The X-men run missions and work together with the NYPD, striving to maintain a peaceful balance between humans and mutants. When it comes to a fight, they won't back down from protecting those who need their help.
Haven presents itself as a humanitarian organization for activists, leaders, and high society, yet mutants are the secret leaders working to protect and serve their kind. Behind the scenes they bring their goals into reality.
From the time when mutants became known to the world, SUPER was founded as a black-ops division of the CIA in an attempt to classify, observe, and learn more about this new and rising threat.
The Syndicate works to help bring mutantkind to the forefront of the world. They work from the shadows, a beacon of hope for mutants, but a bane to mankind. With their guiding hand, humanity will finally find extinction.
Since the existence of mutants was first revealed in the nineties, the world has become a changed place. Whether they're genetic misfits or the next stage in humanity's evolution, there's no denying their growing numbers, especially in hubs like New York City. The NYPD has a division devoted to mutant related crimes. Super-powered vigilantes help to maintain the peace. Those who style themselves as Homo Superior work to tear society apart for rebuilding in their own image.
MRO is an intermediate to advanced writing level original character, original plot X-Men RPG. We've been open and active since October of 2005. You can play as a mutant, human, or Adapted— one of the rare humans who nullify mutant powers by their very existence. Goodies, baddies, and neutrals are all welcome.
Short Term Plots:Are They Coming for You?
There have been whispers on the streets lately of a boogeyman... mutant and humans, young and old, all have been targets of trafficking.
The Fountain of Youth
A chemical serum has been released that's shaving a few years off of the population. In some cases, found to be temporary, and in others...?
MRO MOVES WITH CURRENT TIME: What month and year it is now in real life, it's the same for MRO, too.
Fuegogrande: "Fuegogrande" player of The Ranger, Ion, Rhia, and Null
Neopolitan: "Aly" player of Rebecca Grey, Stephanie Graves, Marisol Cervantes, Vanessa Bookman, Chrysanthemum Van Hart, Sabine Sang, Eupraxia
Ongoing Plots
Magic and Mystics
After the events of the 2020 Harvest Moon and the following Winter Solstice, magic has started manifesting in the MROvere! With the efforts of the Welldrinker Cult, people are being converted into Mystics, a species of people genetically disposed to be great conduits for magical energy.
The Welldrinker Cult
A shadowy group is gaining power, drawing in people who are curious, vulnerable, or malicious, and turning them into Mystics. They are recruiting people into their ranks to spread the influence of magic in the world, but for what end goal?
Are They Coming for You?
There have been whispers on the streets lately of a boogeyman... mutant and humans, young and old, all have been targets of trafficking.
Adapteds
What if the human race began to adapt to the mutant threat? What if the human race changed ever so subtly... without the x-gene.
Atlanteans
The lost city of Atlantis has been found! Refugees from this undersea mutant dystopia have started to filter in to New York as citizens and businessfolk. You may make one as a player character of run into one on the street.
Got a plot in mind?
MRO plots are player-created the Mods facilitate and organize the big ones, but we get the ideas from you. Do you have a plot in mind, and want to know whether it needs Mod approval? Check out our plot guidelines.
Sound, loud sound, very loud sound, music even. At that point punk-rock music. One could say deafening music. Music that thanks to some homemade ingenuity, was louder than a certain metal manipulator could ever have hoped. There was no doubt in some way this would come back to haunt him in his old age. Well, maybe, given the amount of healing mutants he knew, there was some hope. At least in the short term the ringing would last a day or two. Leads ran everywhere, devices jacked into other devices, speakers, high quality speakers, at all four corners of the room. The amplifier really had worked a treat. In the centre of the speaker array, sitting, book resting on a wooden board, pen held in the other, was one Cafas Johnson. On the page, data, numbers, various tables, some calculations, next to that book a smaller notebooks filled to the brim with raw information. So much raw information. For what seemed like the hundredth time the metal manipulator violently scribbled out one thing, drew an arrow from another and tried to re work it all. He'd been at it for hours, but the music seemed to be accelerating the process. More notes and numbers joined the mix in the larger book, different results found homes under problems. It would have looked truly to be a serious matter, because it was a serious matter.
Carry the one, and that means...
Finally triumph, a result reached, joyous success, Cafas had his answer, he felt like dancing. He had conclusively, mathematically, logically figured out, that, based on the statistics and evidence presented, a chocolate sundae with waffles was in fact a better breakfast than cereal. He SO knew what he was having the next day. Work completed he proceeded to simply 'rock out' to his music. It was good to be twenty on a day without serious crime. He was midway through air-drumming to a song when he remembered he had roughly a kilogram of lollies and a few litres of soda under his bed. They were therefore broken out and started upon while the young mutant danced. He knew two things, first, he needed a life, and second, given the volume of the music, SOMEONE would certainly come see him, for positive or negative reasons, though he saw no reason he couldn't play his music that loud, it was 11am on a Saturday after all.
It was 11 AM on a Saturday, and Calley approved of obnoxious noises vibrating the Mansion from attic to war room. What he approved of less was this sound coming from his room.
One of his rooms. One of his rooms where he was not in the strictest sense listed as being a resident, and had not actually inhabited since February. A mere technicality. A bit of scent marking on the baby blue walls and on the pink-haired inhabitant, and he’d be home again.
...Did he just...? With the thinking that...?
No. And never mind.
A very well-tanned twenty-something leaned against the door. The closed door. So nice of Mr. Johnson to be considerate of his fellow residents like that. He crossed his arms, smirked, and sent a mouse scurrying out of his pants.
That’s where mice lived, you know.
The mouse wiggled and twisted in the gap between door and carpet. On the other side, round gray ears popped up, and little black eyes looked up and up (and up). There: at the center of the acoustic jungle. Past the wiring vines. The flamingo was at roost. The mission was a go. Go, go, go!
A gray blur dashed from cover to cover: an empty box of waffles walled it off from sight here; a pair of boxers briefly wriggled there. A pair of paws landed on the primary objective: the red LED switch of a surge protector. It got ready to throw its full twenty grams behind a single silencing shutoff—
But wait, there’s more.
The power strip was full. But that didn’t mean that all wires were accounted for. Requesting backup, ASAP.
The mouse became a mouse. And a toad. The toad hopped onwards, searching the perimeter. Under a bed (where, should it have faltered and died, it would not have been the first small animal to do so), over something that once was an bowl of cereal and was now simply a science experiment, to the outlet by the table. Target achieved. Mouse and toad both readied themselves for the simultaneous kill switch—
One more thing.
That red cable. That red cable over there. It wasn’t leading to either of their strips.
Mother. Ducker.
Behind the flamingo’s head, a sparrow fluttered up from the toad’s back, and took an aerial view of things. If Cafas had looked up just then, he would have gotten an eye full of white target paint, if you catch the irked birdie’s drift. There: way over there. The third and final strip. The sparrow quietly perched on its target. All three found their respective buttons, and—
—And birdie’s strip didn’t have a button. It was a gray boxy monstrosity. It had been used in the original Frankenstein resurrection. Or in the eighties: whichever was older. It plugged into the wall with a two-prong connector and a slight smell of burning. It required less subtle means.
At precisely 11:06 AM, five things happened. Simultaneously.
The mouse leapt up, and landed with a force of twenty-five grams. Click.
The toad lumbered up and sat down. Click.
The sparrow shifted to a Rottweiler. The Rottweiler looked ticked. The ticked Rottweiler yanked the third plug from the wall. Sizzle.
And, of course, Calley swung into the room on the back of the opening door, his grin preceding him. Dead silence made for quite an entrance.
Cafas was quite enjoying himself, eating, drinking, and being merry. Then, very suddenly, his music stopped. He opened his eyes and looked up at the door, which had just opened. His face momentarily went from rocking out to stunned, to a state of what could only be described as euphoric. His eyes were practically gold. In fact, they were gold.
In the doorway stood his favourite person ever. He forced himself to calm down a little, controlling his face and forcing it into a slightly less obnoxiously happy expression so that his grin didn't actually split his face in two. "Honey, I'm home." Cafas contained the urge to squeal and bone crushingly hug Calley. Wait, was that a Rottweiler? How... odd. Regardless Cafas stood, possibly a bit too quickly for his head.
If I'm dreaming, my subconscious is so dead.
C.J. took a step forward, before reconsidering the action, given his proximity to a large and miffed looking dog. "Calley, where the hell have you been! Months without contact!” Cafas’ face fell slightly, as did his volume and tone “I missed you...” It felt stupid to say, especially given previous reactions to similar comments, but there it was, out in the open. Better to say it really. ”Not that it’s the first time or anything, but you can’t go doing that to me.”
Cafas stared awkwardly at his feet for a moment before perking up slightly and returning his gaze to those eyes that just so wonderfully matched the paint. ”Guess what I figured out though! Check it out!” He grabbed his book off the bed and tossed it to the newly returned object of Cafas’ affection. ”Check it out, Chocolate sundae with waffles, way better breakfast than a bowl of cereal! Pretty cool huh? Which reminds me I gotta clean this place up again...” The excitement had gotten the better of him, Cafas was running his mouth practically nonstop from pure joy. He threw himself backward onto his bed where he bounced once before propping himself up on his elbows.
Oh god please don’t just turn around and leave.
In high spirits for the first time in quite a while Cafas bounced anticipating at least a cool story to explain Calley’s sudden departure, although if previous experience was anything to go by he may just be disappointed. The room really was a bit of a mess; at least it didn’t smell too bad, though that may have been purely due to the wide open window. The silence rang serenely in Cafas’ ears after their exposure to the previous barrage of sound that had been emanating from his speakers. He really was too excited for his own good by the return of Calley. Maybe the shifter had some form of change of heart while he was away? Who knew? Maybe? Cafas didn’t think it would be wise to hold his breath however.
“Check it out, Chocolate sundae with waffles, way better breakfast than a bowl of cereal! Pretty cool huh? Which reminds me I gotta clean this place up again...”
This is what Calley heard:
“CHECK IT OUT! CHOCOLATE SUNDAE WITH! WAFFLES! WAY-BETTER-BREAKFAST-THAN-A-BOWL-OF-CEREAL! PRETTY COOL HUH? WHICH REMINDS ME IGOTTACLEANTHISPLACE UP! AGAIN!”
Which he heard through four sets of ears. The Rottweiler looked more miffed. Calley just grinned a lop-sided, non-committal grin and watched as Cafas leapt bounce-bounced onto the bed. The bed with the science experiment under it. Which, to the part of him that was currently a toad, actually smelled pretty good—mostly for the bugs it was attracting.
“Hold that thought,” Calley said politely, holding up a ‘just a sec’ finger in case Cafas might, perchance, be having hearing troubles. The tanned young man went over to the Rottweiler (aka, the one with the best hearing), and patted him on the head first and foremost. The nice doggie disappeared. Calley walked over to the bed, scooped up the toad (now you see it, now you don’t), and sat down. On the other bed. Not the one that Cafas was modeling himself on. Why was he...? With the back, sunny side up? Not that Calley was looking. Neither was the little gray mouse who’d just scrambled up Cafas’ headboard. It took to washing its face inconspicuously.
Two perspectives was much better for his ears than four.
“I’ve been here and there,” he answered casually. “Mostly there. My passport’s got a few new stamps.” Not that is was technically his passport. And that’s all there was to say about that.
“Yourself? You look good.”
‘Good’ could be misconstrued. Edit. Now.
“I mean, not—” Editing made it sounds like he had meant something. Nevermind. Carry on, quickly. Look at the paper he gave you.
“You, ah. Carried the one here. Twice.”
The dead silence. In retrospect, it was a little awkward.
Calley’s answer left a lot to be desired, as did his habit of being in several places at once. Well, at least he’d avoided the top drawer. With the Rottweiler and toad gone however Cafas felt a little better. Back to the more pressing matters, Calley, seated as he was on his own bed, was speaking; though Cafas could barely hear it over his own ear ringing. Yup, it was gonna stay like that for quite a while he feared. Oh well. In response to this new discovery the metal manipulator made a mental note to speak WAY more softly.
’Kay maybe I had that a bit too loud.
Cafas caught a question, he assumed it to be about what he’d been up to the past few months, although he couldn’t quite tell. Then Calley looked awkward and pointed to something in his book. Cafas couldn’t tell why that sudden change in mood had occurred, so chose to ignore it. Moving to inspect the book Cafas sat himself next to Calley, barely avoiding being ON Calley. Leaning over to inspect the point his part time roommate had pointed to Cafas resisted the urge to sigh in pleasure at the smell of said roommate. Instead he focused entirely on the point where he had... carried the one twice. Oh... Well...
This could throw everything out...
Looking up from the book Cafas noticed Calley awkwardly cringing away from him, polite smile still tacked in place. He saw through the smile though, what sort of roommate would he be if he couldn’t tell Calley was uncomfortable. He shifted away himself, taking the book back and quickly re doing all his calculation past that point with a pen procured from his top pocket. A quick scurrying of pen on paper and his new results were in place and hopefully correct this time. ”Thanks for that. Conclusion remains the same, however now by a greater margin, excellent news.” Forcing his voice down he could barely hear himself now so he had to assume he was at a normalish, potentially bearable level.
So, as for what I’ve been doing.
”So yeah spent the first couple of months, you know, just doing normal stuff, trying to stay out of any major trouble and avoid getting myself killed, and then I wanted to test this theory out so that’s been a couple of months. You would not believe some of the chemicals in cereal by the way, got a bowl under there that’s been there since the second of March, no milk, that’d just be gross, barely changed until late last month and even then I think it’s only the fruit in it.” He smiled once more. He was in his element with the whole random science experiment thing. Although he had to admit it had left his room slightly less than clean, and by slightly, he meant a lot.
Okay time for the hard part.
He looked back at Calley and decided to open with more random useless information. ”The sound system there, took a few days. You’re replacing that power board by the way because the cord is useless now. Did it as a distraction. To be honest I’ve been kinda bummed ever since you left. Not really sure what to add to that. I just. I really missed having you around, as infrequent as it was. I know you don’t like hearing this Calley but you mean a lot to me and I hate it when you just don’t show up for months at a time.” end vent.
Cafas moved back to his own bed, briefly studying the mouse that was on it. Despite the time that had passed he was fairly sure he recognised that mouse. He smiled and let it stay, even if it wasn’t the mouse he assumed it to be, or rather, the splinter of Calley he assumed it to be, it was cute, and would with all likelihood leave when the room was clean again. Cafas slumped onto the mattress and sat, slouched in a kind of sad way, with his feet on the carpet, staring at the space occupied by Calley’s shins. He assumed the space would be vacant soon, it tended to be after he said crap like he just had.
The space occupied by Calley’s shins was soon occupied by his butt. And the rest of him. Old habit: Calley tended to do his talking from a lower elevation than the person he was talking to. At least, when he was expecting a bad reaction, he did. Also, the floor was comfortable. His feet were bare, the carpet was... unusually granular...
...Sitting on the floor was habit. Staying there was animal experimentation. Calley shuffled his bum wall-wards, trying to find a cleaner spot. He ended up with his back to Cafas’ bed. Which completely and utterly ruled out the prospect of eye contact. That was okay, actually. The sometimes-cat stretched out his legs in front of himself, and leaned back.
“I know, Cafas. I know you love me, I know I keep hurting you, and I know I’m going to do it again. I think there’s something wrong with me, that I can know that and not stop doing it.” He was quite certain of the fact, actually.
The Italian’s hand bumped against something. He brought the cereal bowl out from under the bed, and spent a quiet moment of contemplation in its presence. It didn’t look nearly as appealing to his human senses.
“...And I know you don’t do any cleaning unless I’m around. Where do you keep the trash bags? I’ll help.”
Cafas resisted the urge to move down next to Calley as he resisted the urge to tell him he couldn’t find fault in him, no matter how hard he had tried. It would be a waste of breath in the end, because it would likely only make him sadder. Still, he thought it really hard. Perhaps under different circumstances he might have told him, perhaps if he hadn’t previously resigned himself to the pain that was to be his love life, but not now. Still, he hadn’t run away yet, so that was a bonus. He’d even said the L word while apparently sane, although the fact he was touching that cereal stood as evidence to the contrary. Now he was volunteering to stay longer? Cafas could only call that progress. ”laundry cupboard, second shelf from the bottom. Might wanna grab the disinfectant while you’re in there, same shelf. And Calley, thanks...” Cafas stood up and began grabbing clothes off the floor, not that those two concepts were easily distinguishable any more, more than one shirt had a boot print on it, and he hadn’t had mud on his boots for quite some time.
Man, how do I live like this?
A he threw clothes into the basket he had designated as being for laundry Cafas pondered why he hadn’t already broken down. He guessed it was something to do with acceptance. He’d tried denial, depression, anger and a certain amount of bargaining, hell, it was about time for acceptance. He knew he’d never be happy with the circumstances, but they were what they were, and it didn’t seem like he could change them. While he pondered his own apparent wisdom (which in all honesty could just be shock, or perhaps just being used to the feeling by that stage) another thought crossed his mind that he really did want to know about. ”Hey, you know that night you like, totally ripped my chest apart? What was up, why were you so upset? I mean before our... chat, I guess you could call it, not after.” The question had been bothering him pretty much since the night.
Got a feeling the answer isn’t going to be any better than the mystery for some reason.
The laundry cupboard. They had a laundry cupboard? Calley hadn’t been aware of this. With a bit of poking around, he did find it. It was perhaps the cleanest place in the room. No cereal, no questionable clothing items, just a fine layer of the dust of disuse. Calley blew, sneezed, and excavated: trash bag, get.
From there, pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately recognizable as fabric (and some stuff that was) ended up in a bulgy black grave. Unmentionable item by unmentionable item, the floor began to peer out once more.
Cafas asked his question, and Calley tripped backwards over a cable, landing between a speaker and something that might have been dinner at some point. These two events were unrelated. Just... for the record. While he was down there, he packed dinner away, fork and all. Then he answered.
“How about this,” the sometimes-cat quirked an eyebrow upwards in dare. “I’ll answer one question honestly. Mostly honestly. Do you want it to be that?”
One whole question, Cafas. And mostly honestly. That, honey, was as good as it got.
Cafas was caught off-guard. One question? One? What was he supposed to ask? What was there to ask? What would he not regret asking? Out of those which was the most important to know the answer to? It required him to think, and as such, he was silent, simply cleaning. Cleaning was apparently the only way for him to suppress his emotions, and the overwhelming urge to cry and scream that tended to accompany these visits from Calley, though so far he didn't quite feel that urge.
Cafas picked up what he could only assume had once been a piece of metal that he'd either lost control of his emotions while touching or fallen asleep holding. From look of the metal he had to assume it was steel. Taking the opportunity to practise old tricks C.J. first formed it into a sphere, then, focusing really hard, started strategically lowering the boiling point of the metal in places. After a minute of total concentration on the image in his head Cafas opened his eyes and pulled the two hales of the sphere apart to reveal the finished product. There, all of an inch tall, stood a model of Calley. Sure, it was a bit creepy and stalkerish, but he had no image better engraved into his mind than Calley, and so, it was the natural choice. The pose was at least natural looking; he'd been a bit worried it would turn out looking odd.
I'd say that's almost perfect.
Placing the model on the newly re found top of his bedside table Cafas turned, sure of what he wanted to -mostly- know. Mostly. He knew he could live to regret the question he asked in that moment, and so hesitated again. The hesitation however did not lead to a change of mind. he had to ask what he had to ask. "Why do you keep coming back? It never ends any better for you than it does for me really."
Posted by Cheshire on Jun 13, 2011 17:45:58 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
Why did he keep coming back?
Certainly not for the artwork. Maybe Cold Steel would make for a good action figure, but Calley squiggled a little on the inside when Cafas opened his hands and ta-da'ed a miniature clone of his human form upon the world. This, friends, was creepy.
So why...?
His human form. Of all things, why had Cafas just immortalized his human form, 'til rust do them part? Anyone who knew the first thing about Calley would know this: he wasn't too much a fan of himself, when he was a human. It was kind of a fact, as these things went. He was a brown-haired twenty-something Italian boy in New York. That's about as nondescript as you could get. And this, friends, he did not mind. Now his Kitten form--the little white cat with black spots here and there? That would have made for a cute figurine. He could have stolen it some night, and left it on Issie's pillow. Or, possibly, in her underwear drawer. The resultant stabbing would have been well worth it. Or his Sinatra form: the proud ginger tom to whom Ghost was a First Retainer. Even a heartworm would have been better than this.
Why had Cafas picked...?
And another thing. What was so special about his coming back? He did that for everyone who let him. He did it for Katrina, he did it for Ghost and her small french progeny--for them, he did it in three places! He even did it for Kealey, and she knew the answer to Cafas' first question. Though she seemed to have moved, judging by the stale scent at her Mansion room. Some tracking down was clearly in order, to acquire himself his rightful place on her windowsill.
The only people he didn't do it for were the people who'd kicked him out. Like Issie, who he'd told the truth about her Kitten to. And his dad, who he'd told the truth about being a mutant to.
Everything was always fine until he told the truth.
Calley picked up the little figure of his own fine human self, and grew cat ears in laid-back defiance. Cafas. Didn't know a thing about him. And this was the proof.
"I keep coming back," he answered, tossing the figurine into his trash bag with everything else that belonged there, "because it does end better for me than it does for you."
It was an honest answer. Mostly. And that was all he'd promised: it wasn't like he owed his pink-haired stalker anything more.
"...And you seem to want me back. So."
Yeah. But the figurine was staying in the trash, and that was final.
Cafas took the hint about the metal figure. Though the waste of perfectly good stainless steel sort of pained him. The cat ears though, he didn't quite get... He shrugged it off as boredom, or perhaps as a display of powers to counter his own, or just a hint that he was being just that little bit too creepy. This didn't really bother him; it really wasn't like Calley could do much more to him that hadn't already been done, short of actually killing him.
Not wasting my metal though...
Cafas reached warily into the trash bag, grabbed the metal figure, and retrieved it. By the time it was out of the bag, it was a pool of steely liquid in his hand. By this stage Calley had finished his promised at least mostly honest answer. It made little sense but if he was honest Cafas had come to expect that from others.
Coming back... because he thinks it ends better for him than it does for me... despite ending badly regardless... Well, ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.
Placing the liquid metal on his bedside table, in the spot the figurine had previously occupied, Cafas turned a quizzical gaze to his casual roommate. "I seem to recall something about what seemed like a complete mental breakdown and prior to that you ran out terrified. I mean, I get a clean room out of it every time." He let that one hang a second before starting on the second part of the answer. During this time he checked on some of his audio equipment. Everything except the old power board seemed fine. Happy with his inspection he sat on a newly cleared piece of carpet. "Now, as for wanting you back, that one is true, I like having you around as a general rule."
...Kills me inside though.
From his sitting vantage point he grabbed at what he could reach and threw it either to the laundry or the trash bag, depending on its state of salvagability. Grabbing what looked to have been a sock, cautious in case it had become sentient in the time it had been there, Cafas managed to cut his hand, a rare treat for a metal manipulator. He pulled the sock and its contents closer for inspection, which revealed the culprit to be a shard of glass, which was distressing considering he couldn't remember having any glass broken in his room.
"Well, bugger, that's not gonna clean out easily." He was of course referring to the blood dripping from his hand on to his pants. The cut didn't look very deep to him, though he was no expert. He doubted he needed much more than to bandage the wound and look forward to a few weeks of pain whenever he tried to use his right hand. He made a mental note of this as he considered how his training would be affected. "I'm definitely washing this wound though... That sock is NOT sanitary." He through the offending item of clothing, as well as its glass contents, into the trash bag on his way to the bathroom.
Some water, betadine and bandaging later he returned to the main room. "Feel free to have some of those lollies by the way, I've got stacks."
Posted by Cheshire on Jun 14, 2011 16:54:15 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
Calley seemed to recall that statements weren’t questions. And only questions needed answers. And Cafas had used up his honest answer for the day.
Also, it hadn’t been a complete mental breakdown, and terrified was a very strong word. So that was another thing: in addition to basic grammatical constructions, Cafas really had to work on his word choices.
They were good at this cleaning thing, though.
>> "Well, bugger, that's not gonna clean out easily."
Calley glanced over briefly, expecting to see a plate face-down on the carpeting and colonizing the room with mold. Instead, Cafas was dripping. One of Calley’s ears gave an amiable twitch. Right, then.
...Wait, what?
Calley got a sudden urge to make it better, followed very closely by the desire to not touch it. Never mind the sock. You know what else was unsanitary? Nonchalantly bleeding all over.
The smell of disinfectant wafted companionably from the bathroom as Calley stood, mouth slightly ajar.
And then. Yes, folks. And then.
Cafas returned, with a fresh white bandage, and offers of lollies.
“Okay. Okay, just—okay.” Calley crossed the room in long strides. He set his hands on Cafas’ shoulders. And he gave the pink-haired young man a firm push down to the bed. “Sit. And listen.”
Calley was being serious. It was a rare occurrence. Therefore, it was important that the pink haired young man listen at full attention. The Italians leaned in, his knees touching the bed between Cafas’ legs, his face close.
“You asked why I keep coming back. Here’s a better question, and I’ll even give you an answer, free of charge: why do I keep running away?
“You. Express your love for me. Like a candy-van stalker. Allow me to give you some pointers.”
“Telling a straight boy that you love him, right after drowning him? Not the best timing.
“Beating up girls to defend my honor? Not cool.
“Making figurines of someone that I hate? Not a turn on.”
“Painting the room... the color of my eyes...”
Something about that paint had been bugging him since the first time he saw it. Yes, he’d just figured that one out. Baby blue eyes focused past Cafas, to baby blue walls that suddenly seemed to stare back at him.
“...Not. Okay.”
With a blink, he refocused on the topic at hand.
“One last tip. Offering me lollies after bleeding all over yourself? Not sexy. Eww. And now I’m bloody, too.”
His poor, poor jeans. These ones even fit him, mostly. Rubbing knees with the other boy’s blood splatters had just ruined that blossoming relationship. Calley took his hands off of Cafas’ shoulders, flopped down on the bed next to him, and started wiggling out of his pants.
“Tell me you have something clean I can change into.”
Cafas blinked at the rough handling of his body but complied regardless. For one, at that size, Calley had little to no hope of actually doing it himself, and Cafas didn't really feel like fighting. Next he knew he was on a bed, with Calley very close to him. Had his torso been capable, it would have winced and backed away. Instead he just tensed up, which he knew would just make it worse, but instincts and stuff.
...the heck?
However he was not torn limb from limb, which was an improvement on what he thought may happen. He got the very distinct feeling these tips were not meant to be responded to. He was in fact certain that he shouldn't. On the upside Calley was telling him stuff of his own accord, so, yeah.
“Telling a straight boy that you love him, right after drowning him? Not the best timing."
Timing? Mate, you're the idiot who asked.
That was true, Calley had asked, and while Cafas had to admit there was likely a better way of handling the answer he still had no idea what that way was. How the hell else is someone meant to answer the question of why he didn't mind Calley kissing him? In retrospect Cafas felt preeeeetty stupid, which had become a familiar feeling lately.
“Beating up girls to defend my honor? Not cool."
Yeah okay no that's fair.
Yeah he hadn't done spectacularly at handling that situation either; he blamed hormones, adrenaline and stuff. He had actually managed to forget about that little occasion (with a great deal of difficulty) over time. Thanks for reminding him boycat, now he felt crappy again.
“Making figurines of someone that I hate? Not a turn on.”
Wait what? He hates who? That has to mean... oh.
On a list of things he knew about Calley he quickly mentally jotted down 'Doesn't like his human form' then continued on with trying to think of any reasons that explained why. By the fiftieth he had given up, there was no way he could narrow that down to one. It was around that point that Calley clearly became a love guru interior designer cross.
“Painting the room... the color of my eyes...Not.Okay.”
Yeah I wasn't in much of a mindset to be making those sort of decisions...
His defence would forever remain that he had just done something very, very, stupid when in no fit state to be making a decision of that magnitude, and also that he felt no inclination to repaint it, because he was somewhat certain that after any more exposure to those sorts of fumes he was likely to die on the spot.
“One last tip. Offering me lollies after bleeding all over yourself? Not sexy. Eww. And now I’m bloody, too.”
Protip, wasn't trying to be sexy, just friendly.
He guessed it definitely came across incorrectly though, which he wasn't at all surprised by. Still. Calley had by this time placed himself on the bed next to C.J. and had begun removing his pants. This was truly going to just be one of those days apparently. Bloody jeans were discarded, and in response to Calley's question Cafas leant across to a drawer and pulled out a pair of neatly folded pants. They were neatly folded because they went with the rest of his black 'casual' suit. What could he say, it had cost him money, it got respect.
I'm gonna venture a guess at we're done with that little outburst.
Cafas lay on the bed in a horizontal fashion and sighed. He really had never been the socially apt one. That had always been Sophie's gig, his had been being the funny smart one. They had worked well together. He was lost without her socially. He'd picked some stuff up, but not how to handle THIS. She would have known, she could have told him how to go about it, yeah, she would have known.
God I miss her. If anyone in the world could tell what I was thinking better than I could it was her. She could have told me how to do this.
It was the first time he'd really thought about Sophie in a very long time. Pretty much the first since he got to New York. It was a mark, he felt, of how far he'd come from the boy running from his problems, that he wasn't already packing his bags at the very first sign that something might remind him of her. It didn't help him with the Calley issue, but Sophie would have been proud of him for it. She’d always said one had to accept the bad things, to really appreciate the good. A smile crept across his face, slight and nostalgic, his eyes a very nice shade of parchment.
Cafas 1, inner demons 0
”This might not interest you much, but I lied that night. About the worst thing I’d ever done. Not to say that I didn’t do that stuff, I did, all that was true, but it wasn’t the worst.” He paused and took a deep breath, let it out, took another and continued. ”It wasn’t an intentional lie, but the worst thing I’ve ever done, I hate myself for, and have no excuse for. I couldn’t bring myself to think about it, or those involved, ever.” Yeah, the link would likely never make sense to Calley, between what had just happened and what he was saying. That he would have to live with. ”I’ll tell you now though. Her name was Sophie Stevens. She was my best friend. Still is. I met Sophie when I was 7, at school. She was my friend in a place where no one else would be. We were near inseparable. Years flew by, she was the social one who made friends easily but chose them carefully, and I was the guy you know a girl likes, like, LIKE likes, but who is god damned oblivious to it.”
He shifted onto his stomach to better stare out the window. ”She was the only person I ever told I was a mutant while at school. I don’t think she cared that much. Actually I’m fairly certain it made no difference to her at all, because, as she insisted on saying, I was still Cafas.” He knew his story had to lead up to his point sometime in the immediate future, he figured it may as well be there. ”Well, anyway, it was a few days before her birthday, and I’d saved everything I could for a gift, which I bought. Driving home from the shop I entered an intersection. I had a green light; the truck driver had a red. He tried to run through that red. I swerved, trying to avoid him. In doing so, I ran head first into a car driving the opposite direction.” He figured at this point it was obvious where this was going. ”My powers, airbags and seatbelt saved my life. No such luck for the person in the other car. I woke up on a stretcher being carried by a bunch of guys in suits. I didn’t so much trust them as you might understand. I took off, lost them on foot and went home."
Cafas prepared for the next part of the tale. He didn’t care if Calley wanted to know, he had to tell someone, and Calley was closest, literally and figuratively. ”I got home, parents didn’t seem to care much that the car wasn’t there. I locked myself in my room for a while. When I went back down, the news was on. I watched the story from the stairway. My parents saw my car; they didn’t notice me behind them. They said it had been fatal. I assumed they were trying to cover up the mutant thing, until they mentioned the victim’s name, and the familiarity with the other vehicle became all too clear. It was Sophie. That moment, that single moment, nothing has ever come close to the pain I felt then. Sophie was dead, and it was my fault.” He held back tears. With difficulty, till he finished his story little story. ”So Calley, in answer to your question. The worst thing I’ve ever done was,” Damn that sob, damn it right to hell, “the worst thing I ever did was save my own life.” Story over, curtains please. He didn’t feel too inclined to explain exactly why he was telling Calley, so he didn’t, he’d leave it for Calley to ask if he wanted. ” I know I can probably add this to the list of what not to do, but I feel much better for having done it.”
Posted by Cheshire on Jun 14, 2011 19:35:05 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
“I killed someone. That night. Maybe an hour, two before I came to you? It was a girl. She was our age. I planned it for about a week. I used a kitten splinter to trick her into coming to me. Then I chloroformed her, brought her into the sewers, and tortured her for a few hours. Do you know Katrina? She showed me how, with one of her illusions. A guy did it to her. So I did it to this girl. She kept begging me to stop, but she had something I needed.”
Except she hadn’t. Everything would have been okay if she’d just told him what he needed to know. If she knew, she’d have deserved to die.
“I killed her. I cut up the body some, to try and stop the cops from identifying her. Took some stuff off. I dumped her into the sewer. Then I came home, showered, and went to you.”
Because Cafas wanted him. But that night, he hadn’t.
“I should have just run away. Spent some more time as a cat, maybe. Another year or two wouldn’t have killed me.”
And he wouldn't have had to kill her.
“The worst thing I've ever done was try to save everyone.”
To stop his former employer. To stop Kat from being deceived by him again; to stop Cafas and Mirror and Ghost and Cold Steel from having to fight him, when the time came. Or from being recruited by him. To stop anyone else from ending up like him. He’d been too weak to stop things, when he was seventeen. He was older now, but that’s all he was. He was still just that scrawny Italian boy who’d gotten his tail ripped off for being a smartass.
Give me another flippant answer and I’ll break one of your fingers. Lie to me, and I’ll put out an eye.
“Do me a favor. Don’t ever, ever try to sculpt me again.”
Calley hadn’t put on the pants yet. He’d forgotten them, maybe.
Cafas had suspected that for quite some time. It did something to people, killing someone, something irreversible, and at the time, so absolutely devastating. He sat up and stared at Calley for a while, not in a creepy way, not in any negative way, but with the look one gives when they understand exactly what the other had to have gone through, from experience. It was after watching him that Cafas was finally put in a situation where he recognised the importance of not being a smart ass. Moving closer he wrapped an arm around his roommate's shoulders. Cafas stared at the ceiling for a while before deciding on what to say. He decided on nothing for the moment, he had a strange feeling there was nothing he could say that would be right for the situation. Social ineptitude strikes again. He barely remembered the arm he had slung around a boy with no pants.
What CAN someone say to that?
Cafas finally broke his silence, if only to put rest to the request. "You got it, no more figurines." The fact he had nothing to say about Calley's big reveal was unsurprising really, he reasoned that the moment they had just shared spoke for itself. He had told someone about Sophie, for the first time in the nearly four years since it had happened, and Calley told Cafas about killing a girl in the sewers. Nothing more needed to be added to that conversation. To Cafas at least, the fact someone else knew Sophie made it at least marginally better. It was a relief. He let go of Calley after a while, rolled to the end of the bed, reached to the floor, reached under the bed and found his pack, the one he had lived out of for those years in Sydney, the one still kept packed, in case he ever needed to get away. From it he pulled a photo of a girl in her mid teens, in a thin edged silver frame. He rolled as close to the bedside table as he could and sat it there, pushing off what looked to once have been a functional watch. The picture hadn't seen light of day in a very long time indeed, kept at the very bottom of his bag, under everything he needed, and even under the stuff he didn't.
This place is still a total dump...
Cafas stood, fell back onto the bed with a whump for the sheer fun and turned his head to look at Calley yet again. "Calley... If you ever need to talk, ever, I'm here. I know what it's like to need a friend, just know that no matter what, no matter when, no matter why, I will listen. I am at least good at THAT."
