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.
The limo pulled up outside his apartment block and Hunter got out. Without stopping to talk to anyone he went inside the luxurious building, ignoring all the glamour of his surroundings as he headed straight for the lift. Inside he pushed the button for his floor and stood in the centre of the lift, feet shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind his back, head held high.
He remained motionless as the lift climbed to the third floor, his head assimilating all the information he had gained. While he had learnt much, there was still much more he didn’t know.
The lift chimed and the doors opened. Hunter stepped out and went straight to his apartment and went inside. It was a spacious apartment, and once inside Hunter immediately discarded his jacket and began to undo his tie. He walked through the large living room heading for the bathroom for a shower.
Casting aside the tie he pulled off his shirt and went into the bathroom. Undressing he stepped into the shower and switched it on, still mulling over what he had learned.
Okay, so Calley had nearly had a heart-attack when the door opened. That was fine. The guy had gone to the shower—didn’t suspect a thing. There was no reason Calley couldn’t abort mission. ...Then again, there was no reason he couldn’t proceed as planned. The guy was in the shower: that was a good ten minute window. There was no reason he couldn’t get in and out in, say, two minutes.
Currently, Calley was huddled inside the wall of the man’s bedroom, holding his breath. To be more specific: he was in an air vent. To be more descriptive: he was a monkey in an air vent. A Red-Handed Tamarin. He’d seen them at the zoo once, and liked the name. When he thought “monkey”, his body had decided on this form for him. He wasn’t complaining. Actually, he was pretty amused. And to think that just this morning he’d been thinking of heading back to the Sanctuary to confess his knowledge of the Order’s dastardly schemes and to ask to humbly join them.
Change of plans. He’d made a solid five hundred bucks from pawning off that lawyer’s stuff at various shops around town. It felt good to have money again, not to mention pants. And it had been so easy.
So, out of curiosity, he’d put his newly acquired wardrobe in a safe spot, and started catting again. He’d visited a few more of his former meal tickets, and reveled at how easy it was to purr his way back into their homes. Then, just to see what would happen, he’d tried getting into the homes of total strangers. Not as easy. And then he’d spotted the air vents.
He had to hand it to Santa Abyss back at the Sanctuary, really—the big red guy’s wonderful monkey tail deserved all the credit for inspiration. And really, it was killing two birds with one stone. ‘Cause why did he have to tell those Sanctuary people anything? They didn’t know Kitten and/or Checkers and/or whatever name they had for the little white and black kitty was him. And they didn’t need to know. They especially didn’t need to know what he knew about them. He was planning to head back there later, and claim that his power was turning into a monkey. Not multi-shifting. And definitely not turning into a cat. That was the first bird. The other bird was just...
...This was just too easy. He had to see how far his luck would take him. He’d picked a building at random, and broken in. You would never get him to admit it, but a monkey was much better at the whole “breaking in” business than a cat—he particularly enjoyed how easy it was to decimate screws with his li’l bitty hands. Tremble, ye vents of the world: Calley was on the prowl.
This was the second building he'd gotten into. He hadn’t actually stolen anything from this one. Which was to say, he hadn’t taken anything out of the building. The first building had quite gotten him his fill of that—actually, he’d dumped most of the loot in dumpsters, too afraid he'd get caught selling it off. He needed to find something better than pawn shops to convert his liberated items to cash if he was going to keep this up. But breaking in was fun, and he'd had the whole day ahead of him. And it was a crying shame to break into an apartment and not do anything, so he’d been innocuously moving things around. For instance, he had a lovely little ship-in-a-bottle right now that he thought would look great in this guy’s kitchen cupboards, next to his cereal and canned soup, or whatever the guy was storing. And that gold clock he could see on the guy’s nightstand would look wonderful sitting on the pillow in 201A, next to the mint he’d taken from 107C.
He couldn’t help himself. This was just too funny. Calley had always known he’d liked sneaking around, but today had escalated things to whole new heights. Seriously, though, he promised himself, this is the last thing. I’m stopping after this. Right? Right. At least for today.
Calley set to work on the air vent’s screws. They tinked against the floor as they fell out, but he could have cared less. A guy would have to have super-human senses to hear that over a shower. He was a little more careful with the grating—he made sure to lower it down gently. And then he was in the apartment. Two minutes, he repeated to himself. And then, bottle carried in his ridiculously long tail, he skittered out of the bedroom towards the kitchen. Thirty seconds later the ship-in-a-bottle was sitting on top of Mister Showering Man’s plates in his cupboard. Sixty seconds later he was safely back in the vent with a surprisingly heavy little clock curled in his tail.
...Seventy-three seconds later, he was back in the apartment, rummaging through the man’s jacket pockets, clock still in tail (mostly ‘cause he’d forgotten he was carrying it). The jacket was just sitting right there. He could hardly be expected to resist. And besides, unless Shower Man had super hearing or super smell or super something, there was no way he’d know Calley was here. And Calley was pretty confident that the odds were on his side here. So confident, in fact, that he had his back to the door as he rummaged. When you were the size of a squirrel, a jacket was a surprisingly large space to search. Wallet, wallet, come to me, wallet...
Hunter heard a faint tink while showering, but ignored it. Then he heard another faint sound, like glass on china. Stepping out of the shower, but leaving it running he wrapped a towel round his waist and secured, leaving his hands free. Sniffing the air he could smell something in his apartment.
Moving silently he peered into the living room and saw a monkey with a large gold clock held in its tail rummaging through his jacket. Impressive, a monkey trained to steal. He silently crept up behind it, then in one swift motion seized it by the arms and pulled it up of the ground.
“I don’t know who sent you, but they just lost their monkey,” he said with a smile. Not the smiles he had used on Fiona, but his true smile. A terrify thing to behold.
The one thing he never, ever wanted to hear again: “I don’t know who sent you, but they just lost their monkey.” It was a funny line, actually. He might have laughed if he wasn’t the monkey. And if his arms weren’t officially being held in the Most Impressive Grip Ever.
And if the man wasn’t smiling.
Calley suddenly felt the urge to repent of all of his sins and beg for divine protection. There was something behind that smile that made him think of grown men screaming and women and children huddling behind barred doors to ward off the night.
He wasn’t panicking. Panicking required more thought than this. All he could think was get to safety, and for the last two years safety had meant cat. Calley shifted.
Bad. Idea. The guy was holding his arms above his head. Shifting wasn’t enough to break that grip. Cats’ limbs do not bend that way. Pain shot through his shoulders, and his body had another brilliant idea: cats’ limbs don’t bend that way, but human arms do.
For the second time in a row, he shifted. This time, the man’s grip broke. Not that it did him a fat lot of good. All he did was crumple to the floor, feeling like a sledgehammer had just hit him between the eyes. He’d never shifted twice in a row before. Apparently it wasn’t a good idea. There were black spots floating across his vision, and all he wanted to do was sleep. But that didn’t sound like a good idea, either. He couldn’t focus on why, but that was the one thought that was clear in his muggy mind: do not go to sleep. He saw a pair of legs past the black spots. A towel. His gaze slowly trekked upwards, until he reached the man’s face. The thought instantly clarified itself. Do not go to sleep, or you are going to die.
Run. He had to run. His legs weren’t listening to him and his right shoulder hurt almost as much as his head—So that’s what dislocation feels like, he thought disjointly—but running was very important.
“...Shouldn’t ‘ave come back for the wallet...” He muttered, entranced by the man’s face. There wasn’t anything particularly scary about it. Except for that smile. That smile had made him think that the police getting called weren’t the worst of his worries.
When the monkey suddenly became a cat Hunter almost let go in surprise, but his grip held firm. Then it shifted again into a human, a boy at that. A mutant, and one with a talent that he might find very useful. The kid didn’t look do god, his shoulder was busted and he seemed groggy, but that didn’t change the fact that he had broken into Hunter’s home.
Seizing the boy by the throat Hunter hauled him to his feet. “Who the hell are you?” he practically growled at him. His grip was lose enough for the kid to breath, but would tighten if he moved so much an a fraction backward. If the boy tried to fight he’d break both his legs, if the boy had any brains he’d stop struggling and answer all of Hunters questions.
And he had quite a few, such as why are you in my home? How many creatures can you shift to? Who do you work for? Do you want to keep breathing? Because if the kid did he’d do everything that Hunter said. This boy could be the perfect spy, and exactly what he needed to gather more information on the Xavier Institute.
If he could get the boy to prowl the place, bringing back not only information, but possibly items as well, it could greatly accelerate his plans. If the boy would help him not only would he spare his life, but make it worth his while.
Fiona’s comment on mutant powers developing had him thinking, what if he trained the boy, developed his powers? Under his tutelage this scrawny boy before he could become an excellent spy, possibly even assassin. However, that all depended on what the boy said in the next few minutes.
Oh, throat grip—throat grip not good. It was getting a little easier to think, but his body felt just about useless. And that grip was a little too tight to be considered friendly. He could still breathe. Somehow, though, he didn’t think struggling would be a good idea; especially not the feeble little struggles he’d be pulling off. So instead he tried his best to stand very, very still. This was hard: his legs were still convinced that the floor was the best place for him.
“Who the hell are you?” The man growled.
Calley managed a small smile. Probably not the wisest thing, but smiling was his default expression. “Just call me harmless,” he tiredly answered. And then he gulped convulsively under the man’s gaze. “Or Calley. Caleb Swartz,” he further corrected himself. It probably wasn’t a good idea to antagonize the man who looked like he was ready and willing to crush Calley’s windpipe.
“Well let me tell you Calley, I am far from harmless, and you’ve given me one flippant answer. Give me another and I will break one of your fingers. Now, second question, what are you doing here? If you lie to me I will put out one of your eyes, so think very carefully about your answer.”
Hunter meant every word. He had a fair idea of why this Calley was here, but he wanted to hear the boy admit it himself. While he intended to recruit the boy, he also wanted to make it very clear to him that he was by no means invaluable, and if he didn’t play by the rules he would be punished, severely.
Now see, this was tricky: the man wanted a non-flippant answer for why Calley was here, and he wanted a true answer, too, but the truest answers racing through Calley’s head sounded alarmingly flippant. Because I had this ship-in-a-bottle, you see... Because I was bored and breaking into your apartment really passes the time, now doesn’t it? Because I had no clue a scary man lived here.
He settled on something that he really, really—for the sake of his poor fingers (and he wasn’t even going to think about his eyes)—sounded sincere and non-flippant enough for this man: “I was stealing your wallet. And your clock. Sir.” He never for a second doubted that the man meant his threats. It didn't even occur to him.
“Good, we have now established that you can tell the truth without pissing around.” Hunter led him by the throat to a chair and forced him into it. “Now, questions three, and the same rules apply. If you’re flippant I break a finger, if you lie I put out an eye. Were you sent by anyone or come here on a whim?”
Hunter was impressed, the kid still had some form of composure. He also had a good sense of self preservation, which could prove very useful if Hunter ever sent him into a dangerous situation where he needed him to come back with something vital. However, there were still more questions that needed to be asked first.
“On a whim.” Calley picked, eternally grateful to be sitting down. He really wasn’t sure how much longer he would have been able to stay standing. At least he seemed able to think again, and he certainly wasn’t tempted to go to sleep anymore. Funny how adrenaline worked. He thought about adding “Sir” again—that last one was definitely sincere—but he was suddenly afraid it would be counted as flippant. Best to stick to minimal words. Minimal words and prompt answers.
On a whim, the answer he had hoped for, this would make things easier. “Question four, what animals can you change into?” He’d need to know the boy’s repertoire to get a better judge of his capabilities. Even if he could only do monkey and cat he would still be useful, but if he could do more than the possibilities were vast.
The kid looked a lot better for sitting down. He guesses changing quickly took it out of him, but would find out with the next question.
Calley was definitely thinking again. Unfortunately, that meant he was thinking about how much his shoulder hurt and how very much he wanted pants. It was sort of funny—he normally ran around naked all day. But it felt different when he had a nice fur coat. He cradled his right arm; that felt a little better; and answered: “I usually turn into a cat. The monkey is new. I’ve been other things before, too—I could give you a list, if you really want. I think I can turn into anything. I just... haven’t really tried.”
He could turn into anything, perfect. “Final question, do you want to live? If the answer is yes then you now work for me. I kill people who break into my home on sight, the only reason you’re still breathing is because you have unique talents, talents I want to put to use.”
Hunter walked over to one of his wardrobes and took out a pair of his tracksuit bottoms and threw them to Calley. “Put those on.” Walking back to Calley he sat down in a chair opposite. “I am about to tell you something that should you repeat to anyone I will kill you so slowly you’ll be cursing you mother for ever giving birth to you, is that clear?”
Settling back in the chair he continued, “My name is Hunter Antonescu. I am in need of a spy. You are a perfect spy. My current aim, for reasons that do not concern you, is obtaining samples of mutant blood. Your blood is unnecessary, again for reasons that do not concern you, and so I won’t have to extract any. There is a facility know as the Xavier Institute that I want you to enter and gather all the information on it you can, the report back to me, not however before we take a trip to one of my labs.”
He rose from the chair and fixed Calley with a stare that would have humbled a tiger. “I am going to get dressed. If you attempt to escape, I’ll kill you. Slowly and painfully.” With out waiting for the boys response he went to his bedroom to get dressed.
Posted by Cheshire on Jun 30, 2007 10:28:09 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
Did he want to live? “Yes,” Calley answered promptly. So now he worked for the scary man. Okay... okay. He could handle that. He could handle it a lot better than having his fingers broken, actually. Or his eyes jabbed out.
When the pants got tossed his way, he only waited for the order to put them on because he was pretty sure he wanted to obey this guy’s orders to the letter just now. No order to put on the pants: he’d just hold them dumbly. Order to put them on? Scary Man didn’t have to tell him twice. It was a little tricky with just one arm, but he was still in them in a flash.
“I am about to tell you something that should you repeat to anyone I will kill you so slowly you’ll be cursing you mother for ever giving birth to you, is that clear?”
He nodded. And he listened. And what he heard wasn’t nearly as terrible as what he’d been expecting. Actually, he didn’t know what he’d been expecting—but this wasn’t all that bad. Spying? He could spy. He liked to spy. He’d been planning to spy for the Order. Suffice it to say that Scary Boss Man had given him a better offer.
When the man left the room, Calley had to admit it to himself: he was very tempted to bolt. But the open vent was in the man’s bedroom, he didn’t think he could shift, anyways, and his legs were still feeling like limp spaghetti. On top of the slow-and-painful death threat, and the adrenaline draining from his system now that he was no longer in mortal fear for his life, he had several excellent reasons to stay seated. And not move at all until the man came back.
The guy wanted mutant blood? Weird. But as long as he didn’t want Calley’s, Calley couldn’t see a problem with it.
Xavier... Xavier... why did that name sound familiar? It clicked as the man walked back into the room, fully clothed this time. Xavier’s Institute. He’d heard that name around the Sanctuary. He’d heard other names, too, ones that being a cat hadn’t allowed him to ask more questions about. Calley was blurting out the question before he could stop himself:
“Is Xavier’s Institute the mansion where the X-Men live?” Belatedly, he asked: “Do I have permission to speak, Sir?” It was possibly the dumbest question he’d ever asked.
Walking back into the living room he listened to the boy speak, smiling slightly when he asked for permission. “I’ve never heard of these ‘X-men’. Tell me everything you know about them.” Rather than take a seat he went and got a shirt tossing it to Calley.
X-men, he had a feeling that they might pose a problem, but would reserved judgment until Calley told him what he knew. He was secretly very glad the little fool had bungled into his apartment.
