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.
Posted by Cheshire on Feb 19, 2012 14:45:33 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
Sunday
High of 41° Fahrenheit. Clear skies; sunny. Winds at 4 miles per hour out of the North. Humidity 45%. Time: 11:56 AM on Sunday morning. Calley pulled the sheet more snuggly over his head, and sprawled on his stomach for five more minutes. He refused to be awake before noon.
12:01 PM.
His mouth tasted like cotton. No, like sweater. Like... rat sweater. The shifter swung his legs out from under his cozy cocoon, one foot landing on top of the cardboard box just peeking out from under his bed. He was in his own room for once: as in, the one he didn't share with Cafas or anyone else. There were some things he didn't want to explain at four in the morning. The box shook angrily, with the sounds of a half-dozen throats raw from squeaking and twice as many claws trying to scrabble their way out.
Yeah, good luck with that. The cardboard box was just so that people didn't see him carrying around a wire cage full of rats.
...What had he been up to last night? Last night was... Saturday. Right.
Oh. Right.
No time for bed, no need for a shower: he'd just give himself a tongue bath later. Pants, though. He should wear those. One leg, two leg, hup! By 12:04, a young Italian in a smart red coat and baggy blue jeans was sprightly walking down the Mansion halls, box carelessly balanced on one shoulder.
Box of rats, box of rats I got a big ol' box of rats
Some of them were even wearing the most adorable little hand-knit sweaters. He sauntered up to the New Guidance Counselor's door, and gave it a one-two knock before letting himself in. Counselor, check: student with her, check. Box of rats: still a box of rats, even within an Adapted's aura. No sudden changes back to human, or tormented squeaks turning to 'help me, help me!'
"Sorry, my mistake," the shifter said brightly, backing out without really giving a chance for either of the room's occupants to respond. He politely shut the door behind himself, and hummed a jaunty tune all the way down the stairs.
Box of rats, box of rats...
"Lupe!" He called, unceremoniously dropping said box on the ground outside of the Mansion's friendly backyard hedge maze. "Breakfast!"
One hundred percent certified non-rat-shifter breakfast. A little preternaturally intelligent, but that just added to the flavor. The black wolf seemed a bit suspicious at first, but she warmed up to the idea a lot quicker than she'd warmed up to dog food.
I had a big ol' box of rats. Now it's gone, now it's gone...
He made sure to wash up real nice, and he made sure the Sanctuary resident did, too. Honestly, canines: they just weren't a naturally fastidious lot. Not like cats.
Ate it up, ate it up...
He'd gotten the wolf form a few weeks ago. Hadn't taken long to break it in. It was all Lupe's idea, really: after the Kaitlyn Dr. Lewis interview, they'd agreed that slightly better disguises might be in order the next time they went Detecting. Calley had a whole arsenal to choose from; Lupe... had wondered if the arsenal might extend to her. He could shift others, after all. And shift himself into hybrids. Why not try shifting someone else like that? It would make a great disguise: the sort of thing the police could never really prove, as long as they were careful.
They were making progress towards a stately wolf woman form. Sort of. Lupe-wolf had creepy furry human-hands to eat her rats with, this time. That was... new.
...Yeah. There was a reason they were keeping her in the hedge maze until they sorted this out. The Mansion kids had enough nightmare fodder in their lives.
Morally, morally, Might be a little bit question-a-ble...
"You'll probably be shifting back around lunchtime, if this is anything like the last time." People-who-slept-till-noon lunchtime. Two or three or four o'clock-ish. "Got your clothes still, right? Didn't chew at them to make them cozier to sleep on? All right. See you then."
Whistling, he headed off for his day. So. What next?
Right! The church. It was Sunday, after all. He'd be just in time for after-service snacking. That soup kitchen slop was almost as good as rat meat.
The ride over was done at ten miles below the speed limit. Which was a very reasonable pace, he thought: very safe, very crash-avoidant. He didn't know what the other drivers' problems were. There was a whole 'nother lane of traffic they could pass him in if they were in that much of a hurry. And the honking, and the digit-impaired waving...
"Same to you," Calley waved cheerfully back, as he pulled up in front of the church. Parallel parking: Calley could handle parallel parking. It was very slow, and none of the other cars involved were moving. And look, there was a Boss Man all nice and out on the stairs already, being social with the parishioners. Quaint. The Italian hopped out with a slam of door, and bounded up the steps.
"Hey, Sebastian. Hand." Put it out. Good. The young immortal dropped in his first present.
"Here's the keys to your car. It's a mustang. Drive it." No more public transportation. Seriously.
Second key.
"Your apartment is three blocks that way; you can walk to church." There was only one key; if the guy really wanted to get Noel a copy, he could do so on his own good time. Calley was a busy minion.
The flyer was last.
"You're hosting a charity romance tournament. For the soup kitchen." That summed it up. Flowers, love, etc: a city-wide competition for one girl's kiss. It was just a rough draft, of course; he needed something a little more polished before he sent them out of the media.
Someone had to keep Katrina busy. She'd clearly had too much time on her hands lately, with the amount of her scent that had been around Sebastian's haunts. Hers, and many other Oracle kids thank-you-Lupe's-nose. He had a lot of baby sitting to set up after this.
Deliveries complete, Calley stepped back, eying the unicorn critically. Yeah. Yeah, that would do for now.
"Right. See you at sword practice tomorrow."
He waved a hand over his shoulder as he trotted back down the steps.
Calley Swartz didn't work for just any old Boss Man: he definitely did not work for a guy who lived with a cat hater in a cramped one bedroom dump, and took the city bus. Calley had standards.
That's why yesterday, Calley had visited Noin Mortman for a few tips. She'd even showed him how to write the mustang off as a tax deduction. Donation to the Church of Sebiroth, anyone?
And that had just been in the morning. He'd had quite the busy day, really, and today was shaping up to be another one.
Funny. Now that he had all the time in the world, there was just so much to do.
It was dark under the bed, and a bit cramped, and rather dusty. The black box was in about the same place as last time; the tape lines had even overlapped their predecessor's. Like someone was shoving it right in his face.
A quick claw-surgery had seen to the tape; a claw-and-tooth intervention made quick popping sounds of the casing. Which left Calley holding on to a piece of paper. No electric jolt, no high tech innards: just a strip of white printer paper.
The shifter shimmied back out, polishing up the floor as he went. From there... he just sort of lay around for a moment, staring at the mess that was Noel's life and his Boss Man's temporary residence. A bed that took up most of the room; clothes and lamps and the signs of a normal existence crammed in on all its edges.
...Yeah. Yeah, this wasn't worth it. It was time for him to call in some professional help. He picked up Lupe from his room in the Sanctuary; the short-nosed manx wolf had his lobster cornered under the dresser. After a stern look and a distracting toss of his lime green squeaky hedgehog, he was able to pry her away from it long enough to get the crustacean king back into the water and the wolf's food bowl filled.
Dog food: not a hit, apparently. He'd even got the generic stuff, from the same store brand as he bought for himself. What, wasn't it as good to dogs as it was for cats? Lupe stern looked him, picked up the bowl between pearly human teeth, and carried it over to the trash.
Fine. They'd try something else, for her next meal.
After that, it was just a matter of waiting until she shifted back so he could hitch a lift to the Labs on the back of her bike. The police insignia was long gone: a nice red Order logo had replaced it long ago. It still ran like a dream, though.
Whoot.
Two hours later, the bike was parked on the grounds of Mondragon Labs while Noin Mortman poured them both something to drink.
Calley was flopped on her couch. "How do you guys keep bugs out of the Labs? No, water's fine—caffeine messes with my shifting."
"The techies could go over the big-budget side of things," the head secretary said, handing the glass to him. "The simplest way, however: know your environment. Be able to spot when something's out of place, and you'll have a much easier time of sniffing out anything suspicious."
Over at the table, Lupe sneezed. Side-effect of the sinus shifting?
Know the environment. He couldn't do that at Noel's place. It was... very much Noel's place. And before her, some other girl who'd been even more of a girl. He needed a blank slate; somewhere he could control more closely. Preferably someplace bigger than a broom closet, while he was at it. Boss Men weren't allowed to live like that; it reflected poorly on their minions.
"Oh, do you like it?" Noin said, replying to something Lupe had asked. "It's just off of Central Park—the price is ridiculous, but it's not like we don't have money to spend. The Columbia business... Calley, how much does she know about Columbia?"
"How much does she know about what now?"
"...Oh, right. Well, we've got some tidy investments between us. The girls and I will be setting up a dojo there. We'll be putting in our two weeks notice, just as soon as the lease is signed. It was already a dojo before, so the renovations will be minimal. It was called Spiritual Balance—"
Calley's water tried to kill him. Violently. With sporfling. Noin cast a look his way, a sedate smile on her lips.
"Exactly," she said, and went back to her conversation with Lupe. "We're calling it the Secretaries Club—"
Girlie chatting aside, it was quite the productive afternoon. By dinner time, the mechanics had vouched for a car dealer in the Bronx, and Calley had a list of apartment managers to call. Also, tax forms. He'd... never filled out a tax form. Much less for a nonprofit organization. Did this make him a law-abiding citizen?
He scrubbed the thought from his mind with a nice extermination campaign. At the church, at the gym—
At nine o'clock, a boy ran down the old wooden stairs, across the gym floor; past leg lifts, over a bench press, as muscled men turned their heads to mutely stare. The boy was yelling. The boy was naked.
On his heels, in sleek pursuit, a little white cat with black spots here and there.
The yell turned into a scream outside the doors. A black wolf with human hands raised her head as he dodged around her and out into the evening traffic. Car brakes squealed like terrified rats as the white cat paused in the doorway, licking an errant patch of fur back into place. The rat shifter made it to the other side of the street, and kept running. The wolf looked at the cat. The cat did not look at the wolf.
What?
Okay. So maybe he needed to check on those other rodents, before he did anything hasty. So much for dinner: hope she liked that dog food.
He didn't make it out of bed until 12:45 PM, thank you very much. And then, it was with an exaggerated yawn.
He didn't make it to the Sanctuary until well after lunch time. And then, it was with a box. Sans rats.
"Hey, Lisa. Make sure Kaitlyn gets this for me, would you? It's some stuff she needs, for her spy game. Tell her that some of it's for that shop she hangs around, too."
Why would the Sanctuary's owner pay for somebody's gym subscription at another place, when the Sanctuary itself had perfectly good exercise equipment? Why would the boss-lady's daughter insist on being able to go there with him? What was the deal with the fake names? Why wasn't she at the Sanctuary as often as she used to be?1
Calley knew. But no one ever asked Calley, did they?
Inside the box she would find this, and this, and this, easily sniffed out with the assistance of a certain wolf. Their gutted casings were wrapped up like birthday presents in various clothing pieces. One, a tiny sweater, with some claw holes through it; another, a pair of socks, one from a boy and one from a man. The last, a pair of dinosaur boxers. On top of it all was the remains of the black box, with a piece of paper tucked inside. Just a piece of white printer paper.
Return to Sender.
With a lazy yawn, Calley walked back out of the golden doors. Outside waited a black wolf woman in baggy donation bin clothes, who was practicing the joys of balancing on her own two feet. Her snout still made her whole head a little cumbersome, her forepaws might still be a bit forepawish, but they were making clear progress.
"So," he said, with a lazy roll of his shoulders. "Sushi for lunch?"
Still raw, but even tastier than rats in sweaters. Took less peeling, too.
