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.
Site adaptation by Sen, Lix, and Tempest. <3
Bet Against the House [Vegas!Haven Mission, Agnes]
>> ”Aww, her kiss is lingering on your lips? How romantic…Seriously though, sorry, but cinnamon whiskey stays with you til morning.”
Eyes narrowed, fist tightened, Agnes was ready to deck Nate but thankfully it didn’t get to that level. The man quickly redeemed himself by stating that the particular drink which Gabby had been enjoying all evening was going to have a lingering aftertaste. It wasn’t that long that they had kissed but there was just enough of it for Agnes’ sensitive nose to catch it. She really hoped that he was wrong and that it was dissipate soon enough but there were worse smells to live with; she just really didn’t want to have any lingering memory of the woman’s lips upon her.
”Well, I guess I’m burning my mouth off after this…” She sighed as she glanced to Nate. The two of them shared a small smile and a chuckle before the elevator doors closed and they were on their way. A shaky breath and she nodded to him, they needed to plan for the next round.
>> ”So ideally, Delaney is on the fourth or fifth floor. The rooms in these hallways seem like a logical place to start looking. Watch out, though; we’re in enemy territory with no excuses to explain this away.”
Again she nodded. He was right. There wouldn’t be a way to explain themselves if they were found on this floor. They were supposed to be civilians and their room was nowhere near this floor and their keys in no way resembled the ones required to access this area. If found, words weren’t going to aid them – she only hoped that it wouldn’t get to that.
As Nate began to strip off his fine tux, Agnes politely turned away. He had only clothing underneath but still it was only proper until he was done. When she turned back he was dressed in a rather form fitting suit, apparently it helped when he was traveling as a shadow. She nodded but then stopped when she caught him looking. She snapped her fingers for his attention and made the gesture for him to turn around; only when he did, did she turned around and unzip the back of her dress.
It didn’t take her as long to switch into her own form-fitting bodysuit. This one was deep black and line with green. Her dress piled on the floor, Agnes body suit clung to her curves. The back of it was opened and cut low, allowing room for her wings when she had them. At the moment it had been perfect to blend in with the ornate lace that was on the back of her dress. Free of the elegant gown, Agnes turned back around to face Nate. She had to pause for a second and smirk – this was something she never thought she would find herself doing.
As the elevator doors opened, Nate signaled for them to get started and stepped back, melding into the wall. It was astonishing to way, to see what was once physically present become nothing more than an opaque silhouette of darkness on the wall. She gave him a thumbs up as he slipped away and began to inspect the rooms. Agnes waited outside the finely decorated hall, bouncing between legs in anticipation. They had walked through this, they knew most of what was awaiting them but there could still be surprises.
When she got the gesture from Nate, Agnes nodded held out her hands and watched as the nearly invisible barbs grew from her pores. Touching the wall lightly, Agnes hefted herself up and started to crawl on the seemingly smooth surface. Similar barbs appeared from the toes of her bare feet, allowing her to scale the smooth surface as freely as if she were walking on the ground. Very carefully she squeezed through the open door and immediately began to skitter up the side of the all under she was on the ceiling. There were two guards in the room, both of them seemingly bored by the surveillance work they were doing.
Nate’s shadow crept across the ground and Agnes took to the ceiling, crawling and silently and stealthily as an insect. As he moved closer, she awaited the appropriate time which came when Nate suddenly moved in on the first man. He pulled him into a choking hold, to knock him out. Agnes would do the same – only her version would be just a bit more painful.
When she was in position above the other guard, Agnes suddenly dropped down of the ceiling, the heels of her feet colliding with the guard’s shoulder. He hissed in absolute pain as she dislocated his arm. She had been aiming for his head so that he could be knocked out – she had to think fast. Remembering her training, Agnes suddenly lunged at the guard’s back as he was struggling to get up. Her legs wrapped firmly around his waist, one arm around his neck and the other wrapped around it to keep the pressure tight. The guard was much bigger and managed to stand up, but Agnes’ grip was vice-like and she wasn’t relenting. As he coughed, choked, and sputtered, Agnes tightened her grip until she started to feeling him falter. Once he was on his knees, ready to keel over, the insect queen finally let go and let his slumbering body fall on his side.
Breathing heavily, Agnes sighed, straightening herself up and placed her hands on her hips. She looked over to Nate, whom she found staring and arched her brow. ”What?” she asked with a heavy breath.
Being able to silently crawl along walls and ceilings was a great stealth ability, almost on the level of being a living shadow. Agnes was able to remain out of sight as she made her approach on one of the security guards until she was looming over him. The issue, it turned out, was that her power did not grant the same stealthy knockout talents being a living shadow gave Nate, but the insect girl made due.
Nate watched, (while stifling the last throws of his guard’s consciousness,) as Agnes dropped feet-first onto the man’s shoulder. If he had to guess, that was not the exact plan, because the guard’s pain, while funny, was not a quick dispatching of their problem. Nate was ready to intervene, but the scrappy young woman was quick on her feet when it came to adjusting. She wrapped herself around the man like a human backpack, putting as much pressure as she could on his windpipe.
The man was larger than Agnes, (as were most people, really,) but her technique was strong, and after plenty of coughing and struggling, the man went limp and dropped to the ground like a felled titan. Agnes got to her feet and regained her composure, all the while Nate was giving her a blank stare, folding his shadowy arms. She questioned him, and if she could clearly make out his face, she would have seen him smirking. ”Nothing, I’m just admiring your flawless technique.” Really though, it was not clean, but Agnes got the job done. The coughing was not ideal, but it was slight enough that Nate barely picked up on it with his limited hearing in shadowform. For someone who was infiltrating a secure building for likely the first time, she was impressing her senior.
Nate shifted his attention to the screens previously being watched by the guards that now provided the intruders with some new insight. Right away, Nate noted that the system was only visual, so the elevator was indeed a safe space to speak without concern. It would have been good to know in hindsight, or if Nate ever planned on stealing from the Casino in the future.
…Which he obviously wouldn’t, but that was what it was usually good for.
The screens displayed labels for the areas they covered, including “elevator,” which was self-explanatory, as well as several hallways marked by the rooms they covered, such as “401-408,” looking over the hallway outside of the room they were in. Cameras kept an eye on plenty of the space in the two hallways, but it was not all-encompassing, with plenty of corners hiding out of frame. ”Hmm… More information was always good, but Nate was looking for…
”There,” Nate said confidently, pressing a shadowy finger against a screen marked “417.” It was the odd-man out of all the cameras, pointed at a bed in one of the hotel rooms. ”It’s the only camera in a room that isn’t some meeting space or office, and the hallway camera in that area is pointed directly at the door to Room four-seventeen.” Even if Delaney could not be seen on the camera with the angle it had, it was the logical assumption that her room would be the only place worth all this extra security.
The lighting in the office was bright, adding plenty of strength to Nate’s body. With the cameras outliving their purpose, it would now be a liability to leave them available if someone reentered the space. He expanded his fists with additional shadowmass stolen from the rest of his body, and with three massive punches, shattered all the television screens.
Returning to his typical size, he gestured toward the door. ”Ladies first.” The hallways were currently clear, but they still had to turn the corner between rooms four-oh-eight and four-oh-nine, and if a problem did arise on the way to the room, he wanted to be able to have Agnes’s back.
Agnes was not the most proficient of fighters but she was scrappy enough to make do. Her life on the streets, a some combat classes at the mansion, and some self-defense courses she took with River, the young woman had at least enough skill to be able to put up some kind of defense. Again, it wasn’t perfect and if she came across anyone who was stronger or more skilled they would easily be able to fell her, but it would do in a pinch. With her guard incapacitated for the time-being Agnes breathed a sigh of relief (especially since she wasn’t dead) and turned her eyes to Nate.
To watch the living shadow move with such ease, without a physical body to produce it was, for lack of a better term, a bit frightening. Agnes still had to get used to the older man’s abilities but she assumed that it was much the same as him witnessing her own. While his powers could probably make someone’s skin crawl, Agnes’ would make their stomach do somersaults. But at least she could say that she that she was on his side.
But, when he was looking at her rather blanket, the young woman crossed her arms over her chest, jutting out her hip with just a tad bit of attitude and inquired what was wrong?
>> ”Nothing, I’m just admiring your flawless technique.”
That earned him a half-joking one-fingered salute. It was all in good teasing but at least she had gotten the job done. With a sighed she walked up to the monitors as Nate began to look at them, looking for their next destination. So far all the monitors seemed pretty basic, looking over empty hallways filled with rooms. Considering that they were on a timetable here, Agnes knew that they didn’t have time to carefully inspect each room on this floor – they needed a clue.
>> ”417…”
Agnes perked up. As Nate explained why that was the best guess at their current destination, Agnes could only agree. His reasoning was sound that this would be it. With as much security as there was being displayed and the almost intrusive nature of the surveillance it was being subjected to, what else could possibly be in there? Agnes quietly nodded as she turned away from the screens. Having outlived their usefulness, Nate was quick to smash them. Though she could have done without incurring more attention-causing noise, she really wasn’t one to talk considering how she dispatched her guard.
With a nod, Agnes moved towards the door that Nate opened for her. ”Such a gentleman,” she teased. ”Almost hides the fact that your tried to pimp me out to Gabby.” She winked and then took a run forward, leaping out the door and immediately clinging onto the opposite wall with a soundless thud. Skittering up to the ceiling, Agnes took the high road while Nate blended in with the shadows that ran rampant. While the cameras showed that there didn’t seemed to be a lot of security in sight, there were enough blind spots that security could be just about anywhere. They weren’t out of this hotel yet and they needed to be careful.
Taking to the ceiling, Agnes moved swiftly, crawling along silently but with speed so that they didn’t waste time creeping around too slowly. As she moved herself through the halls, Agnes kept her eyes opening, aiming for room 417 but being careful to not draw too much noise. If there were more guards, they shouldn’t see her right away but she would only have a small window to act. The ceiling wasn’t enormously high but it was enough to give her the element of surprise. She only hoped that she wouldn’t have to fall on any more shoulders…
Before they made their way out of the surveillance room, Agnes made one final remark reminding Nate that he had used her as bait for a sexually-ravenous lesbian criminal. Amused, he muttered, ”You’re just never going to let that one go, huh?” He had never seen someone so averse to an old-fashioned honeypot. Still, Nate let the subject go as he merged into the ground and they moved into the hallway.
His ability to see as a shadow was heavily limited, but he could tell based on the blurry movements on the ceiling that Agnes had been paying attention. She moved along a particular path, sticking to blind spots in the cameras. Even if Nate destroyed the monitors in the previous room, there was no guarantee the feed was not delivered anywhere else. She was smart and cautious; Nate could get used to a partner like her.
For missions and definitely not crime. Worth clarifying.
Nate peeked around the corner, expecting to find a line of guards standing at attention in front of room four-seventeen. What he saw instead… was an empty hallway. It was perplexing; he was so certain he had been right. All the evidence pointed to that room, but if that was true, why would the Santiagos leave their goose with the golden eggs unattended?
The silhouette of the ex-con ran along the wall, with his hand forming from the surface, regaining mass so he could tip the cameras upward. With the watchful eyes facing the ceiling, the cameras were rendered completely useless, allowing Nate to emerge from the wall and stand in front of the door. ”This… this doesn’t make sense. I’m missing something…” Taking a metaphorical deep breath (since shadows did not breathe,) Nate pooled back into the ground and slid under the door into room four-seventeen.
He definitely had the right room. Items on the nightstand were golden, along with two books on the ground, and even the vanity mirror near the bed. Delaney must have been the one to live in this room, which begged the question: where was she?
Nate opened the door, allowing Agnes to follow him into the room, where she could see the evidence for herself. He needed her help to piece together the puzzle so he could figure out what was missing in the grand picture. ”So do you see any mutants being held against their will in here?”
In an effort to find some evidence to make sense of everything, Nate peeked into a closet, wondering if he might see Delaney cowering in the corner, scare of her family returning to exploit her. Instead, he found clothes of a style he found oddly reminiscent of…
Voices could be heard just outside the door, freezing Nate in his tracks. Had they been discovered already? He considered melding into the ground, but Agnes would not be able to get to the ceiling fast enough, and Nate was not going to leave her as a sitting duck. He braced himself as the door knob turned.
“Yeah, yeah, stand there all you want, weirdo,” called out a familiar voice, as Gabby Santiago walked into the room and closed the door, leaving three security guards on the other side. When Gabby turned around, she saw the woman she had been flirting with in the casino along with a man made of darkness. “What the **** are you doing in my room?”
For what was supposed to be a highly important mutant to the family, a mutant that basically gave the Santiago family their wealth and prestige in the city, the security was surprisingly lacking. Aside from the duo of guards and the control panel that Nate had smashed, there really was not a lot of opposition ahead of them. As Nate took to the shadows and Agnes to the ceiling, the pair of them carefully maneuvered through the halls in search of their hostage but seemingly all was quiet on the floor; it was a bit unnerving considering what this area was dedicated to.
Upon approaching the door, Agnes held her breath as she clung to the ceiling and watched Nate slipped out of the shadows and stared at the door in befuddlement. He lamented about how something was wrong, that they must have missed a clue or some aspect that was needed to make sense of this strangeness. Agnes merely shrugged her shoulders as she listened to the man comment to himself before he returned to shadows and slipped beneath the door. As it swung open, unlocked from the inside thanks to Nate, Agnes detached herself from the ceiling and fell soundlessly to the ground.
Once inside, she stood marveling at the interior of the room. With the door closed behind her, she stepped in, her sapphire eyes sweeping over the scene, taking in all the details. For the most part it looked almost like any other room except that there was an added level of opulence here. The furniture was some of the best and the gilded, everyday items that were strewn about was proof of wealth and mutant occupancy. Their target was here…but where?
Agnes began to investigate the room, peeking inside the restroom, the closet, and under the furniture in hopes of finding their shackled mutant comrade. However, the more the both of them looked, the more they began to notice that something was indeed off about the whole situation. Why was security so light and why was their supposed target not locked away as reports suggested? Agnes turned her gaze to Nate as the man inquired about the very same subject on her mind.
>> ”So do you see any mutants being held against their will in here?”
She shook her head, bewildered. ”No…” she said softly as she made her way to the vanity. She picked up the golden handled hairbrush, peered at the make-up, all of it high end even before it had been encased in gold. ”Something is wrong.” she added. ”All this stuff, none of it points to someone being kept against their wi—“
Voices. Both she and Nate could hear the faintest sound of voices in the hallway just outside the door. It came so fast and sudden that neither of them really had time to react once the knob on the door began to turn and an all-too familiar voice sounding through the crack.
>> “Yeah, yeah, stand there all you want, weirdo…What the **** are you doing in my room?”
Agnes stood stock still as Gabby Santiago waltzed into the room. She had been in the middle of chastising one of her guards when she caught sight of Agnes standing there, staring at her, a bit too dumbfounded for words. Nate was little more than a mass of living shadows, a disturbing sight for anyone to bear witness to. An accusing glance was thrown her way and a question as to what she was doing flew through the air. She would have dipped back into the sexy stranger who had shaken her husband and wanted her night away with Gabby; but Nate kind of ruined that by standing there in all his dark glory.
Gulping, Agnes glanced between the shadowform, and back to Gabby. Straightening up her back she tried to look a bit more commanding, as a hero would, and locked eyes with Gabby.
”We’re here to rescue…Delaney Santiago.” However, as soon as the words left her mouth, the realization of what Gabby had said about this being her room immediately sunk in like a weighted stone. The lack of security, the gold strewn about, it could only lead to one conclusion. She shook her head as she stared at the newcomer. ”You’re Delaney…aren’t you?”
Nate actually processed what was happening when Gabby—or rather, Delaney, accused them of being out of place in her room. This was Delaney’s room; the signs were all so obvious, the worst detective could figure that out. If “Gabby” was claiming ownership of the place, it stood to reason that they had been wrong about Gabby’s identity from the start. Maybe his intel was bad, or maybe they had Delaney posing as someone else in public.
It was just a lot to process that their mission could have been infinitely easier had one of them thought to make the simple decision to ask a girl’s name. Occam’s Razor. Dammit.
The ex-thief was not the only one putting all the puzzle pieces together, as Agnes put into words what they were both thinking. Delaney looked at them blankly, still unclear of what she had stumbled into. “Yes… me… Delaney. I’m… Oh, my God. I didn’t think my call for help got anywhere!” she said excitedly before Nate shushed her, reminding her there were still guards on the other side of the door. “Sorry,” she apologized before questioning things further, turning slowly to Agnes. “Wait, if you’re here to save me… why the **** were you just flirting with me downstairs?”
Nate gave Agnes an opportunity to defend herself before chiming in with, ”We needed your keycard.”
“****ing why?”
Nate sighed. ”To break into this room.”
“Why?”
The line of questioning was less than appreciated since it forced Nate to review and accept their poor execution. ”Because we didn’t realize you were Delaney,” he admitted, rubbing his temples and trying to keep his voice down.
There was a pause, as Delaney processed the reality of her escape.
“…This rescue’s off to a pretty ****ty start. You know that, right?”
”Can we just go?” Nate started to move toward the door, trying to figure out how they would take out the guards and smuggle out a delinquent without creating a scene.
“No, wait,” Delaney replied, sounding more nervous than excited to escape her imprisonment. “I can’t leave yet.” She tugged very carefully on the leather choker around her neck. “This thing is a tracker. My parents said if I leave the casino or cut this thing off, it’ll explode.” The way Delaney said the word “parents” made it clear there was no love lost within her family. “They’re not particularly bright, so it could be a bluff, but they kinda have infinite money, so I’m not looking to call that bluff.”
Looking closely at the choker, it did seem thicker than he originally estimated. It was feasible that wires could be under the leather, but any gaps between pieces were tiny, and Nate was also not ready to gamble with cutting the band in half.
Nate eyed his partner and asked, ”Any ideas?” He had an idea, and she probably had the same creepy crawly idea, but he doubted Delaney was going to be as on board with what might have to be done for the sake of her freedom.
This was really getting way out of hand. Standing off to the side, the dawn of illumination crossing over her head, she had to stand there, dumbfounded as the woman whom she had just been flirting hard with turned out to be the woman that they had been sent to rescue. Her gaze had shifted to Nate, trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong. Was there even supposed to be an older sister who was helping to keep the family’s golden goose from escaping? It seemed, though, that Delaney had sent out the message and was momentary ecstatic to hear that she was being rescued but the holes in their plan was quickly becoming apparent to her.
When her attention shifted back, she found herself having to answer for her behavior down on the casino floor.
>> “Wait, if you’re here to save me… why the **** were you just flirting with me downstairs?”
”Ummm…” Agnes gulped before she tried to come up with a logical reason. ”We were trying to get…to you...?” It sounded much more plausible in her head but logical was quickly out the door at this point.
Agnes shook her head, listening as Nate and the young woman argued about the things that had obviously gone very wrong. They were under the assumption that Delaney was Gabby, a sister whom was helping to keep her imprisoned. On paper the plan seemed sound, to steal an access card and get back to the woman’s room where she was supposedly supposed to be locked up. But it seemed that misinformation and confusion had doomed them.
The violinist winced a little when she found herself internally agreeing that this was a pretty sh***y start to a rescue. She wanted to voice that they were actually doing the best that they could, especially since this was the first time that Nate and Agnes worked together on a mission, but figured that wouldn’t do their case any good. Opting to keep her mouth shut, she sighed and shook her head, hands on her hips. They could argue and clear things up later, it was time to go.
But, of course, there was a problem.
Delaney pointed to her choker and went on about how her parents had told her that there was an explosive device in it. While it seemed a little unlikely given the background of these people, the fact that they had so much money meant that they could just hire someone who actually did have the smarts. They couldn’t take the risk of getting her out of the building only to have her head explode.
Both she and Nate stepped close, Agnes peering at it but not really seeing anything except for a few, minute openings in the choker. This was probably going to be Nate’s time to shine as she didn’t really have experience with wire cutting, but a glance at him proved that he was clearly at a loss for words too. Not letting Delaney see, Agnes wordless responded to his ”Any ideas?” by mouthing “Are you ****ing serious?” and shook her head. She sighed as she stepped back. The only idea that even somewhat formed in her head was a bad one. A very, very bad one.
She gulped, eyed Nate, and rolled her eyes. They didn’t have time to sugar coat it so she stepped up to Delaney and looked her square in the eye. ”I’m going to have to risk shorting it. Close your eyes and whatever you feel, don’t squirm and don’t scream, got it?” She didn’t wait for much of an answer. Instead she turned to Nate. ”Hold her, cover her mouth, and make sure she doesn’t move too much. Could agitate them.”
Once Delaney was secured, Agnes gulped and closed her eyes. The slits in her calves opened and a veritable army of ants began to march up her body. It was a squeamish sight for anyone to behold, which was why she ordered Delaney to shut her eyes. If Nate looked, well, she hoped he would have closed his eyes too. So, summoning her ants to gather on her arm, she stepped closer to Delaney, reached out, and carefully placed her hand upon her shoulder. A small regiment of ants bravely marched off of her hand, onto Delaney’s shoulder, along her neck and into the inner workings of the necklace. They wouldn’t all be coming back from this, but, she hoped, that their sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain.
As the most tenured member of his “breaking and entering” party, Nate was disappointed with himself for his lack of due diligence. He wanted to believe six years earlier, when he was still in the thieving business, he never would have been so sloppy. Jail made him sloppy, and if he was going to take part in another mission like this, he could not afford to half-ass things. As it stood, he put Agnes in two needlessly uncomfortable positions: flirting with a stranger, and then explaining to that stranger why she was flirting and not helping her run from captivity.
There would be plenty of time to review the successes and (many) failures of their trip when they were twenty-five-thousand miles from Las Vegas. The trio of mutants still had to find a way out of the casino, and the preliminary step in their escape involved disarming a choker-slash-tracker-slash-potential-explosive. Nate was well-versed in the limitations of his own power, and his shadowy tendrils had a minimum width. He could fit it into spaces as small as a keyhole, but the neckwear needed something even more miniscule.
Enter his partner, who knew she had a way to take care of their issue, and knew they had to take precautions to avoid drawing unnecessary attention. Nate nodded, letting Agnes take the lead and direct him to keep Delaney under control.
”I’m sorry about this, but like she said, stay still for your own good.” He would have added his own good as another interest, since Nate was going to be in the vicinity of the choker, but he doubted she cared as much about his personal safety. Delaney was going to protest, but Nate placed a firm hand over her mouth first, preventing any questioning. His other arm wrapped around her arms and body from behind, because he knew there was a good chance her instincts were going to kick in and she was going to want to flail.
Delaney followed their advice and closed her eyes, which was a wise choice. Even Nate flinched as he watched an army of ants gather in ranks on Agnes’s arm. He took a calming breath just before the ants moved onto Delaney’s shoulder, and he was prepared when her body tried to shake. Nate held her in place, and muffled the sound she tried to reply with. To Delaney’s credit, it was not a yell; if he had to guess, he had stifled a panicked whimper.
The punk girl’s neck was obscured by the moving horde of black covering the choker. Delaney was either in shock or acceptance of what she was dealing with, because she was silent and frozen. All three of the room’s occupants watched in suspense, wondering what would come next. Nate was wondering what hint they would receive to know if—
“MW!” The exclamation was supposed to be “Ow,” if not for the intervention of Nate’s palm. Delaney was reacting to a visible spark from the choker, zapping her. Her eyes opened and she could see the ants crawling on her shoulder, prompting her to (attempt to) shout, “Get those ****ing things off of me.”
Nate watched and held his hand firmly as the ants that survived the mission returned to Agnes. When Delaney was clean, Nate released her, feeling his stress levels momentarily drop. “Dude. ****ing. Not. Okay.”
All he could do was roll his eyes and focus on the device around her neck. Nothing visibly was different, but to be fair, there were no visible signs of the tracker in the first place. ”So… do we think it worked?”
Before anyone could answer, Nate heard the unsettling rattling of a doorknob. Knowing there was no time to think or hide, he began his shift into Shadowform.
“Miss, your signal seems to have been dis—OOF!”
The first guard attempting to enter the room was interrupted verbally and physically, as Nate, more a wave of darkness than a human shape, came crashing into him and the guard behind him, pushing them until they collided with the door across the hall.
They were not the only guards, and if the signal from Delaney’s tracker was malfunctioning, more would be on their way. Time was now a very real factor. ”We have to MOVE!” he shouted, despite his current form not having a well-defined mouth.
Agnes watched as Nate took hold of their rescuee. For a second she feared that maybe Delaney would start freaking out over being held down in such a way, but Agnes was glad to see that she surprisingly remained calm. She twitched and she squirmed but she firmly kept her eyes closed as Agnes’ ants marched across her shoulder and around the woman’s neck. From the look on Nate’s face, it was probably a disgusting sight but it was something that Agnes had grown used to over the years. Insects marching all over her body just came with the territory of being her. Honestly she couldn’t imagine how River got passed it.
Agnes concentrated, trying to impose her will on the ants to keep them focus on entering the choker around the woman’s neck. Clearly it was asking a lot because she was pretty much forcing a small group of them to march to their deaths but she was rewarded with the sight of sparks issuing from the choker. Add to that that Delaney was squirming and squeaking in pain, Agnes could only assume that they were successful. After all, the woman’s head didn’t explode so it must have worked, right?
Unfortunately the sparks and the pain had caused Delaney to open her eyes and her reaction to what she saw was…less than ideal.
>> “Get those ****ing things off of me.”
Nate was quick to cover her mouth as she squirmed but she could still hear some of the muffled sentence as it squeezed out through his fingers. As the woman squirmed, Agnes waited long enough to ensure that the ants had done their job and summoned them back to her. They crept along her shoulder, onto her arm, and back down to her legs. They disappeared into the slits on the back of her calves and sighed as she stepped away, removing her hand from Delaney and allowing Nate to let her go.
>> “Dude. ****ing. Not. Okay.”
Both Agnes and Nate rolled their eyes at the woman’s reaction. How did she think a rescue was going to go?
>> ”So… do we think it worked?”
Agnes opened her mouth to say something but paused when there seemed to be a voice coming from the door. Another man moved into the room, one of the guards, and was cautiously asking for her.
>> “Miss, your signal seems to have been dis—OOF!”
Agnes instinctively pulled Delaney behind her as Nate immediately moved in to silence the man. The blow came hard but it was all the shadowmancer needed to silence the guard and knock him down on his butt. The guard stated that it seemed it had been a successful attempt. The tracking system was on the blink but that didn’t mean it was one hundred percent effective. If there was a bomb in there, there was no way to tell if it was deactivated. As a matter of fact, there was no way to tell just how “deactivated” the tracking system was too. Now wasn’t the time to test it.
>> ”We have to MOVE!”
Agnes turned to look back to Delaney, eyed her closely, then the choker, before she sighed; they couldn’t risk them getting the tracking system back up. So, with an ”I’m sorry,” Agnes suddenly reached out, wrapped her fingers around the choker and pulled it off roughly.
The leather piece snapped at the cheap buckle as she pulled it free from the woman and hurled it across the room. Stepping in front of Delaney, she shielded her as she placed her back against the spot she threw the choker to and waited – no explosion. She sighed and nodded her head, offering the woman a small, encouraging smile before she turned back to the matter at hand – escape. Her eyes darted to Nate and then around the room. They would lock down the elevators so escape through there would be impossible, at least for herself and Delaney; Nate could at least shadowform around the dangers.
As her eyes drifted back, she found a large set of glass doors that lead out to the balcony. Oh how she wished she could just fly out of here with Delaney in tow but she didn’t have that attribute right now. All she had were the damn centipede grip to allow her to grip to the wa—
She paused. She glanced to Nate, to Delaney, and sighed. Really this mission was going to absolute hell but this was their only option. She turned back to Delaney, took her hands and made her look her into her crystal blue eyes.
”Listen. We’re going to get out of here but I need you to relax and take a breath.” she then sighed. ”How good are you with heights?”
That would be the plan. Agnes could climb down the side of the hotel with her insect-like grip but Delaney would have to hold onto her. Nate could move through his shadow form so he could easily meet them down a few floors to let them in through another room, but right now her immediate concern was Delaney and keeping the woman calm for a change. That was the only way they were getting out of this.
Nate’s warning to Agnes and Delaney was urgent, but that did not mean he was expecting how his partner was going to react to their situation. At a distance, he watched as Agnes tore the choker from Delaney’s neck, and his shadow body winced. They were assuming the ant parade had done their duty, and they clearly knew the tracker was malfunctioning, but there was still room for doubt about whether they disabled the explosive components of the accessory. Agnes was thinking on her feet and acting boldly, but if she was unlucky, she was at risk of losing a hand, and Delaney, a head.
Going forward, if Nate ever found himself in Las Vegas for recreational purposes, he wanted to return with Agnes, because luck was on her side, and the choker was thrown harmlessly across the room. It was one major obstacle taken care of, leaving them with the daunting task of mounting an escape. Nate was not alone in the hallway, as there were still two conscious guards adjusting to what they were seeing. The surprise factor of a shifting shadow body gave a second or two of reprieve, but they would begin to attack. It was on Nate to deal with them so the others could get into the hallway and—
Or maybe not! Agnes proved once again to be a quick thinker, leading Delaney out to the balcony. He realized her plan immediately, remembering how Agnes climbed the flat surfaces of walls and ceilings during their mission. It was brilliant; the easiest way out that should go undefended. ”You’ve got this wall-crawler,” he muttered. ”I’ll stall.”
Nate’s job was not twice as important, because letting a guard into the room would lead them to the balcony where they could shoot at Agnes at their leisure. The two guards were already shooting at Nate, which passed through his chest like he was made of liquid. Shadows had no organs, and by conservative estimates, he had to still have well over an hour of time left to maintain his impervious form. The key was attentiveness; he could not let anyone get by him.
Realizing bullets were not proving to be effective, one of the guards charged Nate, who had reformed into a more human shape. Shifting some of his mass into his right arm, the shadow man hit his opponent with a punch using twice the size and force of a normal fist. The man was knocked off his feet.
The second man was already making his move, learning from his friend’s mistakes and trying to move past Nate rather than through him. Nate was still finishing the motion of his punch when the quicker guard was trying to step by him. Had the ex-con been a normal man, the guard would have made it by.
Thankfully, Nate was the kind of man who could turn his foot into a puddle of shadow, widening until another foot stepped in it. The shadow enveloped the foot, snaring it and forcing the man to trip and fall hard on the ground. Turning to his prey, Nate crouched and wrapped his shadowy arms around the man’s head until they formed into one cohesive barrier. The shadow was not a firm solid, but it restricted the flow of oxygen enough to incapacitate the man soon enough.
Standing up, Nate barely heard the ding of an elevator arriving on the floor due to his muted senses. It was not until three new guards came around the corner that he knew his work was not done. Hurry up, Agnes…
Agnes was not in the mood for any arguing. She needed to get this woman out of here and her and Nate needed to escape and get back to New York. Already things were going way off base from where they were supposed to. When she had arrived here, there was a clear plan in mind and now it was just all thrown out the window. Their mark turned out to be lesbian, a criminal they were after turned out to actually be the victim, and now they were staring down the barrel of a floor of guards getting ready to do whatever it would take to bring Delaney back into the fold; needless to say, Agnes was ready for her first trip to Vegas to be over.
It was this willingness for everything to be done that had made the young woman grow a little bolder. She snapped the necklace off of Delaney and tossed it aside and proceeded to move out of the room when Nate had announced that the guards were here. As he busied himself with occupying them, the violinist’s eyes snapped back to the window; she would have to take a different route.
With a roll of her neck, she walked over to it and attempted to push it open; it resisted, because clearly the Santiago family couldn’t risk Delaney signaling for help outside her window. Leaning against the flimsy doors, Agnes shoved and pushed and finally slammed her shoulder against the doors, causing them to crack and pop open. With the balcony doors, open, she grabbed Delaney by the hand and pulled her out into the cool balcony.
“Whoa! Wait! I-Is this why you asked if I was good with heightts?”
”…basically.” Agnes said with a shrug. She glanced back into the room and found Nate standing in the doorway to the hall. He gave one look at her and shouted.
>> ”You’ve got this wall-crawler…I’ll stall.”
Agnes nodded her head and turned her eyes back to Delaney who was staring over the edge of the building, shaking her head. “N-Nu-uh. Just…you know…go get help or something. I’ll wait for your husband.”
Agnes sighed. Reaching over, she took the young woman’s hand in her own and stared at her again. ”Listen, there won’t be another opportunity after this. We have to do it now. I need you to trust me. Understand?”
Delaney gulped. Her usual brand of piss and vinegar and sarcasm seemed to be gone as she looked at Agnes closely. Her dark eyes followed the pale-skinned woman up and down before settling on the crystalline eyes. With a shaky breath she meekly nodded her head and tried to skew up her courage. However, before she commit, she suddenly stepped in and planted a hard kiss on Agnes’ lips, sighing a bit before she recoiled and gulped.
“For luck?”
Agnes blinked. Sighed and tried to fight off a blush before she turned around, offering the woman her back. ”Just…wrap your arms around me and hold tight.”
Delaney stepped up, wrapped her arms around Agnes’ neck and held tight. With a nod of her head, the young woman held out her hands and sighed as she started to push the invisible to the eye spines that crept out of her pores. Feeling them extended, she grabbed onto the railing, swung her leg over and did her best to move with a whole extra person on her back. Already she could hear Delaney squeaking and whimpering as the wind whipped around them but she did her best to drown her out. Before she lowered herself down, Agnes shouted when she caught Nate’s eyes.
”Three floors down!” she said. She would need him to make his way down, three floors, and let them in through the balcony she could find herself in. She only hoped she could get there.
Hands and toes pressed against the balcony, Agnes slowly lowered herself down, feeling the weight of Delaney trying to aid gravity in pulling her down to the earth. But she was persistent, limbs shaking as she clung to the concrete between windows and lowered herself down, slowly but surely, to the balcony that was three floors down. God, she only hoped that Nate could get there in time or this would be a short rescue.
Nate was too far away to hear Agnes consoling Delaney before their descent down the side of a building. It was the best thing for Agnes, whose kiss with the misfit went unnoticed by her partner, who would have talked about nothing else on the flight home had he seen it. His priority was to handle the security, and that was where his focus remained. He did catch Agnes’s shouted instruction, letting him know to meet them on the third floor to get back into the casino.
Handle the security, make it the third floor balcony. It sounded simple enough.
As the newest guards took stock of what they were dealing with, adjusting to a reality where they had to accept shadowy shapeshifting people, Nate took action. He slipped into the ground, prompting two bullet shots that passed over his head as he vanished. Two guards charged forward, hoping to understand what happened to their intruder, not realizing they were stepping into the space his two-dimensional form occupied. Arms shot up from the ground, wrapping around both men, stretching unnaturally until they were wrapped around their waists. With a jerk, both men collided headfirst into one another, until they were both unconscious on the ground.
Nate had to hurry; leaving Agnes and Delaney on the balcony only made them more vulnerable. From around the corner, he could barely make out the sounds of a deep voice and the electronic sounds of a radio. They were officially past the point of stealth and being careful, and the casino was going to be swarming with security. Getting to the third floor would be easy, but getting from the third floor to the ground floor on the inside would be dangerous. Agnes was surely making progress, but with the burden of Delaney, trying to crawl all the way to the ground level would be a challenge.
Maybe he could offer a faster way. Instead of running toward the extra guards, Nate returned to Delaney’s room and slammed the door. Looking for the heaviest available object, he grabbed a dresser and pulled it in front of the door, aided by the bright lighting of the room increasing his strength. He needed a time stall, and he was already about to save time by doing something stupid.
Nate had always wondered how much his resistance to impact as a shadow he could handle. Bullets were small and passed through him, but jumping off a third story balcony was the true test.
Plummeting, Nate realized he was fortunate Las Vegas was a city of lights, because falling to the sidewalk would be a problem if he passed through a dark spot and was forced out of shadowform. Luckily, when Nate hit the ground, (accompanied by the “ooos” of onlookers,) his malleable body flattened out before reforming like a well composed ball of Jell-O. As a shadow, Nate felt pressure rather than pain, but the sheer amount of pressure from the fall was certainly reminiscent of pain.
Finally, on his feet, Nate quickly left shadowform, still wearing a full bodysuit to obscure his face and features to the people around him. Transformed, his reach was limited, and each floor of casino had high ceilings, leading to large floors. Agnes was still high on the wall, and if Nate wanted to give her a shortcut, he needed the reach of his actual shadow.
A pillar of darkness emerged in front of Nate’s feet, climbing into the sky until it was close enough to Agnes’s level that she should be able to reach out and cling to it. If her abilities let her cling to solid surfaces, his shadows should have been no problem. ”How about a ride?” she shouted up to the sky.
The guards were looking for them in the building, dragging security that was outside into the casino. There were gawkers, but for the next precious moments, they were clear of actual threats.
They had to move fast while they had a window. It was long past time to get out of Vegas.
Agnes still couldn’t believe that she was doing this. Clinging onto the flat side of a building in Last Vegas, the wind whipping around her, the added weight of a passenger with her arms wrapped around her neck choking her, it was just all a bit too difficult to wrap her head around. Really, what was she doing out here. This was not the person that she was. She had always been timid, quiet, and ran away from all this danger stuff. It was precisely the reason why she never went full out for the X-Men because she really had doubt that she could handle this kind of life style.
And yet, still, there was an almost pleasurable racing in her heart. She could feel the responsibility weighing her down, but she also knew that it was something that she couldn’t very well give up either. A person’s life was in the balance, a person that she wanted to protect, and when she got out of this (which she was) she knew that all was going to work out well. She wasn’t here to be a hero or to look for danger, she was here because she wanted to help people; she wanted to help those who had been exploited, much like herself.
Deep down, maybe that was what she always wanted and just recently found.
Delaney was heavy, but any additional person would be heavy clinging onto Agnes’ back. It wasn’t exactly an added weight that she was used to feeling. Agnes was smaller, slimmer, and compared to the busty, curvaceous-ness of the woman clinging to her, it was expected to feel just a bit different. Still, Agnes pressed on, clinging to the side of the building and hoping against hope that she didn’t do something that would jeopardize the both of them. Thankfully it seemed that her gripping abilities were far stronger than she could have hoped for.
Slowly Agnes made her way down, wincing under the wind that buffeted the side of her face, trying to focus on lowering the both of them as carefully as possible. She could feel her rescuee cringing, trembling as she held onto her back. Clearly this was not something that she had ever gone through before but no one ever said that the price of freedom was cheap. For the most part, at least Delaney wasn’t screaming that thrashing around wildly – at most she heard the faintest whispers of a prayer muttered over and over again.
Prayer. That was something that Agnes had not taken part in in a very, very long time – and now was not going to be the time to start. However, as she got lower, towards the balcony she had shouted over to Nate, Agnes found herself in the midst of a new miracle –
>> ”How about a ride?”
The voice shouted up from the street and Agnes turned her head to eye that pillar of darkness that shadow that had suddenly erupted next to her. A smile pulled at her lips, genuine and thankful. ”Hold on, Delaney. Tight.” She felt arms squeeze around her neck and Agnes reached over, testing the pillar with her hand. When she found she could gain a strong grip, she sighed in relief and carefully clung onto it.
From there it was a combination of Nate lowering them and Agnes climbing downward. Her arms shook and burned but still she persisted and would not stop until she felt the weight from her back suddenly lift and Delaney had touched the ground. With a sigh, she stepped away from the woman and turned back to Nate, her faux-husband, a smile on her lips. She felt an overwhelming urge to just wrap her arms around him and give him a kiss – but someone had other ideas.
“Oh my god, thank you!” Delaney suddenly squealed as she danced on the solid concrete. Suddenly she rushed over, wrapped her arms around Agnes’ neck and gave her the firmest and least subtle of kisses. Agnes gasped, feeling her breath be taken away, her eyes wide, glancing at Nate and his damned smirk, before closing for half a moment longer than they should have. When Delaney finally broke the kiss and stepped back, she sighed happily. “Jesus…wow…” she muttered, chewing on her bottom lip in a sultry manner as she locked eyes with Agnes. “There is SO much more where that came from. I don’t even care if you’re married.”
Agnes, gulped, and muttered a most intelligible ”Uuuhh…”
“You’re still cool with this, right?” Delaney turned, asking Nate.
Agnes regained some thought process and sighed. ”Maybe let’s get away from the crime-family run hotel filled with panicking, paid underlings first?” With that she turned and started to usher them both away. Vegas needed to be a memory now.