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 Pharoah Dynasty
An ancient sorceress is on a quest to bring her long-lost warrior-king to the modern era in a bid for global domination. Can the heroes of the modern world stop her before all is lost?
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.
(( OOC: modified 3/27/08 to reflect power enhancements, character changes, and make easier to follow.))
General note: The character's actual identity is complex. Its primary persona (for now) is Sonya Defaz, a teenaged Hispanic girl from the Bronx. It maintains a secondary persona, Teresa Wilingscote, which Sonya uses in public. Its original persona is a mysterious figure that refers to itself in its own mind as "Eight." For simplicity, each of these is described separately.
Sonya
Character's “real” name: Sonya Luisa Defaz Codename/Alias: She doesn't really use one. But if she ever did, it would be "Template" Age: 19 (born September 12 1989) Gender: Female. Nationality/Ethnicity: American, Hispanic Birthplace: The Bronx, New York Personality: Sonya is subject to a kind of severe mood swing similar to bipolar affective disorder (aka manic-depression). In her case this is not a symptom of mental illness per se, but rather a consequence of having multiple distinct personas occupying her brain.
Loosely speaking, she tends to swing between the "original Sonya" (a fairly typical lower-class Bronx girl not in the least bit comfortable with, or equipped for, her new mutant-adventurer lifestyle) and "improved Sonya" (significantly more aggressive, independent, fierce, and self-centered). These are not distinct personas -- she still thinks of herself as one person throughout -- just different moods.
She is very smart and proud of it. She gets annoyed by stupid people, but also by people who try to show off how smart they are. She has little tolerance for authority figures, especially when she doesn't agree with their decisions. She enjoys intellectual play (debate, wordplay, puns, that sort of thing), especially in "improved" mode.
"Original Sonya" shares the ordinary teenager's desire for close friends she can trust and talk to, and is relatively easy to trick into treating you as a friend. She's cautious about trusting people, but once she decides to trust someone she tends to trust them completely. She is also prone to bouts of homesickness and depression when she feels betrayed. "Improved Sonya" is much more resigned to the fact that she is not going to make close friends in this life, and that's OK.
"Original Sonya" feels passionately about a lot of things, and her mouth tends to run away with her, often causing her to say more than she meant to about those subjects. "Improved Sonya" feels things less strongly, and is better about controlling her mouth.
"Original Sonya" has a strong phobia about touching animals, or anything else of less-than-human intelligence. "Improved Sonya" is cautious about this for practical reasons, but not phobic.
Sonya is cautious about new experiences, but once she decides to do something she tends to commit to it all the way. She is a voracious reader and enjoys pretty much all kinds of music (her favorites are classical pieces, though). She enjoys playing guitar and sketching, though she's not very good at either.
Allegiance:
"Original Sonya" wants to think of herself as a good person, though she's far from being a moral paragon. In other words, she's pretty much like most people... she'll do bad things, but she feels bad about it when she does and tries to justify it or to not think about it. Call her Neutral.
"Improved Sonya" is much more conscience-free, willing to do whatever the situation requires. She's not actively sadistic, but she borders on sociopathic in her lack of concern for others. (In this she resembles the majority of characters on-site.)
She is an active member of the Order. She joined them during the MRA period, when the government was interring mutants in concentration camps; she thought of the Order as a mutant resistance force. Since then, she's become more acquainted with their darker aspects, but has come to care less and less about it.
Hair color and style: Black hair, kept short and spiked. Eye color: Dark brown Skin color: Light brown Height: 5’3” Build: Slight Scars, Tattoos, Piercings: None Everyday clothing: Sonya rarely wears her own form, but when she does she tends towards dark, loose-fitting clothes. Pajamas: Sweatsuit, or similar-but-lighter garment when it's warm. Uniform:: Sonya wears a garment that resembles an elastic black bodysuit, but is in fact a relatively high-tech piece of equipment that can change its appearance in response to her cybernetic commands, both conscious and unconscious. She has no idea where it comes from.
Description of ability(ies):
Can perceive the genetic structure of organic material by touching it. This provides the same raw data as a genetic lab analysis, though she lacks formal training to interpret most of it. For example, she can tell someone's a mutant, and roughly categorize them -- shapeshifters "feel" one way, telepaths "feel" a different way, etc. -- but not determine their exact powers. She can tell how closely people are related; she can tell what animal a cut of meat came from; she can match a sample of hair or blood or skin to its owner; that sort of thing.
Can "imprint" a living thing by touching it. This stores both genetic and aquired characteristics of her target, physical and mental, in a form she can use later (a "template"). This does not affect the target itself at all; it's a perceptual process only. Her brain and nervous system change slightly when she does this, which allows her to subconsciously access template personalities even without adopting their form. Unless she reinforces them, templates fade away after a day or two. She can maintain multiple templates "live" at one time; her upper limit is not known.
Can shapeshift into a perfect copy of anything she has imprinted. When she does this, she adopts inherited and acquired characteristics (hairstyles, tattoos, build, etc.), though not completely artificial ones (prosthetic arms, for example). Her brain and nervous system change significantly when she does this:
This gives her access to memories, skills, and personality traits of the individual she copied, although her own personality remains dominant.
The skills she picks up are most likely to be deep-seated instinctive things, the sorts of things people don’t think about when they use them. For example, languages, navigating a well-known city, how to do a forward roll, remembering your daughter’s birthday.
She can also pick up recently memorized items reasonably effectively – passwords, combinations, that sort of thing. Things in between, that have to be searched for – your third-grade teacher’s name, who won the 1993 World Series, etc. – are less likely to be picked up.
The more time she spends in a form, and the more time she spends acquiring it, the more reliably she will pick up memories, skills, and attitudes.
Interference among the various templates in her brain make her mind difficult to read/influence via telepathy. Relatedly, to a minimal extent she can "amplify" a given template if she knows (or suspects) her mind is being read. While this increases the template's autonomy and is therefore risky, it also increases the odds that a telepathic scan will "confirm" her false identity.
Healing When she changes form, injuries to her body are healed, although toxins in her body remain unaffected. She can "reset" her current form, thereby healing it without changing form.
Enhanced strength, speed, and senses Sonya herself is not quite clear on how she obtained these abilities; all she knows is she gained them permanently after cloning Werecat's template.
Weaknesses/limitations of ability(ies):
She cannot necessarily control her templates, once she imprints on them. Usually, this is not a problem... the templates in her mind tend to lack much in the way autonomy, focus, or ambition. However, there are exceptions: imprinting on extreme personalities can unconsciously change her habits and attitudes, and strong-willed personalities can deliberately influence her behavior for their own ends. She doesn't even necessarily notice when it happens. This is even more a possibility when she actually clones a template, or artificially amplifies it. On several occasions, her templates have literally taken over her body, requiring intervention from "Eight" to eliminate them. The more time she spends in a form the more likely this is.
The worst case of this is when she clones templates that lack human intelligence, like animals. She becomes equally mindless, herself. She did this ONCE, with a stray dog, and woke up days time later with no memory of what happened, naked, filthy, with bite wounds all over her. She will NEVER do that again, and still has nightmares about it. (( OOC: This is essentially a genre limitation. She's a human-shifter, not an animal-shifter. ))
A related problem is that she can't partially adopt a template, or "peek" into it to determine its nature, etc. This can be a problem if a template has unpleasant properties (like blindness) especially if they affect her consciousness (like narcolepsy or autism).
Although she can usually control her imprinting and her cloning so it only happens when she wants it to, it can sometimes go off uncontrolled. (Her genetic perception happens with everything she touches, uncontrolled. This can be unappetizing, but doesn't cause her serious problems.)
She does not pick up superhuman mutant abilities from her templates unless they are purely innate physical abilities with no “paranormal” component, like superstrength or agility. So, no psychic powers, no telekinesis, no energy projection, no mysterious space-warping abilities, etc. Put another way: the less sense a mutant power makes from a real-world biology perspective, the less able she is to pick it up.
She cannot mix-and-match attributes... each template exists in isolation. (However, the native personality, "Eight", that resides in her body is capable of doing so, and has done so on a few occasions.)
Her enhanced senses can become a weakness -- for example, she is more vulnerable to noxious fumes and sonic attacks.
Fighting style (if any): Offensively, Sonya has minimal fighting "style" -- she prefers to use guns. She does have some minor martial-arts training (actually, it was Teresa's), but nothing significant. Defensively, she has the reflexes of a highly trained martial artist. She has absolutely no idea where this comes from.
History: Sonya DeFaz was born in 1989 to Andrea Defaz, a single mother and schoolteacher in the Bronx, and lived 18 years in a small apartment with her mother and two sisters fairly uneventfully. She dated a couple of guys, including one fairly active drug user who she dumped because of it.
On June 12th 2007 she found a hairless white-skinned humanoid figure in a black bodysuit lying unconscious in an alley. When she touched the figure, it immediately awoke and turned into a copy of her. She fled in terror and hasn't told anyone the story since then, for fear they'd think she was crazy or on drugs or something.
Meanwhile, the body she touched (which had absorbed her personalities and memories) went to Manhattan, believing itself to be the real Sonya (or, at least, trying hard to ignore the alternatives). Since then she has joined the Resistance and the Order (see thread logs below for details).
Teresa Character's “real” name: Teresa Willingscote Age: 24 (born February 12, 1984) Gender: Female. Nationality/Ethnicity: Canadian, Eastern European Birthplace: Toronto Personality: Teresa -- or, rather, the template of Teresa in Sonya's mind -- is not an autonomous personality. Rather, she is a template which has become unusually entangled with Sonya's own by virtue of frequent use. It is theoretically possible to interact with "Teresa" as a separate persona via telepathy, etc.
Teresa is far more adventurous than Sonya, and is enjoying the “mutant adventurer” lifestyle tremendously. She’s a physical-fitness buff, though she really likes good coffee and has learned to indulge more frequently in junk food, since Sonya can restore the Teresa body to its previous state once all the food is metabolized.
Allegiance: Teresa's allegiances are, de-facto, the same as Sonya's.
Hair color and style: Blond, long, usually ponytailed. Eye color: Blue Skin color: Tanned, Caucasian Height: 5’9” Build: Medium, athletic. Scars, Tattoos, Piercings: None
Description of ability(ies): Teresa has the same abilities as Sonya. Fighting style: Same as Sonya
History: Teresa Willingscote lived with her family in Toronto until moving away for college; she got her undergraduate pre-med degree at Harvard University and got her medical degree at Columbia University Medical Center, and is now serving her internship at Lenox Hill Hospital. Somewhere in there, she stopped for a cup of coffee in mid-Manhattan somewhere and shook hands with Sonya, who adopted her body (and, to some extent, her psyche).
Eight
Very little is known about Eight:
Neither Sonya, nor Teresa, nor really anybody is aware of his… um, its… existence; it has never spoken to anyone outside of her own brain and has edited out Sonya/Teresa’s memories of its existence.
It thinks of itself as “Eight” and as male, although its body is neuter.
It is humanoid, but completely hairless and white-skinned (not Caucasian, literally white).
It appears to be the original personality associated with Template’s body.
When it emerges, it describes itself as incomplete and in need of further repair.
It seems capable of taking over the body whenever it wishes, even more so than Sonya can, but thus far has only emerged when Sonya’s control over the body is challenged.
It has significantly more skill with manipulating templates than Sonya does. It has successfully edited templates to transfer physical capabilities and edit out mental ones, and it has manipulated the perceptions and thoughts of templates even while they were primary, for example.
Posted by Cheshire on Sept 29, 2007 10:20:32 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
Very nice, Sonya, and very well written--I can tell how much thought you've put into your chara's depth. I look forward to RPing with you. Especially in one of my multiple sub-human-intelligence forms.
Oh, and you may wish to PM Fade/Computer Nerd about the change in your profile--she might be to busy too read this profile section for a few days, but she always checks her PMs fairly quickly.
And it all hits the fan... (meets Amp/Vibe and some nameless other mutants as Sonny; runs away from Stalkers and cops; tranks Stanley the Cop and takes both his body and his clothes)
This has come up a few times, and I realize Sonya is a little on the confusing side, so I figure it'd be helpful for me to clarify this a bit.
When Sonya shifts, her body changes all the way down to the cellular level... she becomes a perfect physical/genetic copy of her template. So her imposture is pretty much undetectable by physical tools... even a detailed medical checkup would notice no difference. This also means she gets physical flaws of her template -- allergies, handicaps, etc.
Her brain also changes, but she retains Sonya's consciousness. This works a lot like telepathic possession. So any physical test that can recognize a possessing telepath -- say, a very very sophisticated PET scan -- could recognize Sonya. Sonya can access knowledge and skills and habits from the physical brain, though she can't do so deliberately at the moment. (She will get better at this as time goes on.)
Because her consciousness is in charge, her surface thoughts are hers, which means a telepath reading her surface thoughts would likely get clues about what's going on.
A telepath who digs deeper into her mind will pick up a combination of Sonya's thoughts, her template's memories, and (if they dig deep enough) fragments of the psyche of the original owner of Sonya's body (which Sonya herself is completely unaware of). Whether they can distinguish among these threads depends on how sophisticated they are at analysis. (Think of it like listening to three radio stations at once. It's _possible_ to follow all three, but it's hard.)
Other kinds of mental senses -- e.g., "detect minds" and things like that -- will get something similar... there are usually three minds collocated (her own, her template's, and her body's), with her own being the most active. I imagine this would resemble multiple personality disorder more than anything else.
So, summarizing: * physical senses are completely fooled * surface-thoughts telepathy detects Sonya's surface thoughts * deep telepathy and other mental senses detect multiple personalities, with Sonya's being active.
(( OOC: modified 1/27/08 to reflect changes in play )) Character's “real” name: Sonya Luisa Defaz Codename/Alias: Template
Gender: Female Age: 18 (born September 12 1989) Nationality/Ethnicity: American, Hispanic Birthplace: The Bronx, New York
Personality: Sonya's personality is somewhat variable, depending on what templates she is currently carrying around with her. In general, she tends to keep her thoughts to herself, although she is sometimes prone to losing her temper or her patience and delivering extended tirades about things she feels strongly about. She also enjoys bantering with people who are good at it.
She is very smart and she's proud of it, but she's not snooty about it; she gets annoyed by people who try to show off how much smarter they are than everyone else.
She's cautious about trusting people, but once she decides to trust someone she tends to trust them completely. Similarly, she is cautious about new experiences but when she decides to do something she tends to go all out.
Notes (Hobbies, Phobias, Worries, ect.): Sonya enjoys reading (pretty much anything), listening to music (pretty much anything, though her favorite is classical), playing guitar (which she does fairly decently), and drawing (which she does badly, but nevertheless enjoys).
She misses her family and friends back home enormously, and fantasizes from time to time about returning and taking the real Sonya's place (see history for explanation). While she is horrified by the fact that she'd even fantasize about something like that, it's an increasingly tempting idea.
She is obsessed with finding out more about her history, though at the same time worried about what she might find.
She likes animals of all kinds, but is scared to death of touching anything of less-than-human intelligence. This is an entirely practical fear (again, see history) but it's also become a conditioned phobic response for her, which she finds annoying but can't seem to do anything about. She's slowly getting it under control.
Allegiance (Good, Bad, or Neutral):
Sonya considers herself a good person: she’s nice to her friends, feels bad when innocent people get hurt, likes kittens and puppies (from a distance), that sort of thing.
On the other hand, she's no moral paragon -- she's not above lying, stealing, cheating, etc. if it gets her something she needs... she might feel guilty about it, but that doesn't necessarily stop her from doing it. And her current "underground" lifestyle has been causing her to do a lot of that sort of thing.
So, on balance, Neutral. The time she's been spending with the Order and with Calley is slowly leading her down the path to selfishness and bigotry, though.
Everyday clothing: As Teresa (the body she spends most of her time in), she favors a bright blue jogging suit and, more generally, athletic clothes. As Sonya (a body she doesn't wear very often), she tends towards darker colors. In other forms, whatever makes the most sense.
Uniform: Sonya wears a garment that resembles an elastic black bodysuit, but is in fact a relatively high-tech piece of equipment that can change its appearance in response to her cybernetic commands, both conscious and unconscious. She has no idea where it comes from.
Pajamas: Sweatsuit, or similar-but-lighter garment when it's warm.
As Sonya: Hair color and style: Black hair, kept short and spiked. Eye color: Dark brown Skin color: Light brown Height: 5’3” Build: Slight Scars, Tattoos, Piercings: None
As Teresa: Hair color and style: Blond, long, usually ponytailed. Eye color: Blue Skin color: Tanned, Caucasian Height: 5’9” Build: Medium, athletic. Scars, Tattoos, Piercings: None
Description of ability(ies):
Template has two related mutant abilities.
The first is the ability to perceive the genetic structure of organic material by touching it. Her ability gives her the same raw data that a genetic lab analysis would, but since she's had no formal training in genetics she can't really make sense of most of it. On the other hand, there are some things she can determine intuitively... for example, she can tell whether two people are related, and how closely; she can tell what animal a cut of meat came from; she can match a sample of hair or blood or skin to its owner; that sort of thing. She can detect genetic anomalies -- congenital diseases, mutations, etc. -- but she can't usually discern details (although if she's previously scanned someone with a similar mutation, it will feel similar).
The second, and more interesting, is the ability to "imprint" on a living thing (her "template") and adopt its genetic structure -- essentially becoming a clone of her template. This includes acquired characteristics (hairstyles, tattoos, build, etc.) though not completely artificial ones (prosthetic arms, for example).
This includes genetically based psychological traits... basic personality, mood, orientation, temper, that sort of thing. For example, if she “clones” a naturally angry or shy or sociopathic template, she adopts those traits as well... When she adopts a form, her brain and nervous system also change. This gives him access to the memories, skills, and personality traits of the individual she copied, although her own personality remains dominant. The skills she picks up are most likely to be deep-seated instinctive things, the sorts of things people don’t think about when they use them. For example, languages, navigating a well-known city, how to do a forward roll, remembering your daughter’s birthday. She can also pick up recently memorized items reasonably effectively – passwords, combinations, that sort of thing. Things in between, that have to be searched for – your third-grade teacher’s name, who won the 1993 World Series, etc. – are less likely to be picked up. The more time she spends in a form, and the more time she spends acquiring it, the more reliably she will pick up memories, skills, and attitudes.
When she changes form, injuries to her body are healed, although toxins in her body remain unaffected.
Weaknesses/limitations of ability(ies):
Template cannot control her genetic perception at all; it happens with everything she touches.
She can control her imprinting and her cloning so it only happens when she wants it to -- usually -- but it can go off uncontrolled when she's under emotional stress or distracted or under similar circumstances.
She has no way of "testing" a template, unless she can learn something useful from her genetic perception. She either imprints/clones it or she doesn't, and the result is all-or-nothing. This can be a real problem in some cases, if a template has unpleasant properties – for example, autism.
She does not pick up superhuman mutant abilities from her templates unless they are purely innate physical abilities with no “paranormal” component, like superstrength or agility, and not reliably even then.
She cannot mix-and-match attributes. In particular, if she clones something that does not have human-level intelligence, she loses her intelligence. She did this ONCE, with a stray dog, and woke up days time later with no memory of what happened, naked, filthy, with bite wounds all over her. She will NEVER do that again, and still has nightmares about it that leave her terrified of even touching an animal.
The more time she spends in a form, and the more time she spends acquiring it, the more powerful the copy of its psyche in her mind is. Sometimes this is an advantage -- she can access memories and skills more easily this way -- but sometimes it isn't, as the psyches start to alter her own attitudes and patterns of thought.
Originally, she could only hold one template at a time, and only for a couple of days. Over months of practicing with her powers, she's grown more versatile, able to keep several templates "live" indefinitely and shift among them at will. Still, any template she ignores for too long will simply fade away.
Fighting style (if any): Sonya has had no combat training. Teresa has had minor "self-defense" martial-arts training. Nevertheless, Template has discovered (quite by accident) that she has the reflexes of a trained martial artist that come into play when she is attacked. She's VERY good (though not superhumanly so). She has absolutely no idea where this comes from.
History of your character:
The earliest memory Template has that she knows is hers is from July 12th, 2007.
She remembers things before that, but those memories belong to Sonya DeFaz. Sonya was born in 1989 to Andrea Defaz, a single mother and schoolteacher in the Bronx, and lived 18 years in a small apartment with her mother and two sisters and lived a fairly uneventful life until June 12th 2007, when she encountered a hairless white-skinned humanoid figure in a black bodysuit lying unconscious in an alley. When Sonya touched the figure, it immediately awoke and turned into a copy of her, with all her memories.
The original Sonya fled in terror while the new Sonya stayed behind to make sense of the situation. Her bodysuit had no distinguishing marks, no ID, nothing. After a while, she decided to go home and explain the situation, but on her way home she was grabbed by a mugger. Without thinking, she imprinted on him and, suddenly violently aggressive, beat him senseless. That was when she realized there was no way she was going to go home again… she was too dangerous.
She took her would-be mugger’s clothes and wallet and took the train into Manhattan to start a new life. Since then she’s been living in cheap hotels and using her powers to commit a series of petty thefts to support herself as she tries to figure out what to do next.
She has no memory at all of her life before being found in that alley, and has tried and failed to adopt the white, hairless form she remembers seeing. (This is mostly a plot-hook to be used some day, but I figure Template used to be a mutant thief/infiltrator type who was defeated telepathically by some enemy; his/her original identity was wiped/submerged, which is why s/he copied Sonya so completely.)
Sample RP (from a few hours after her “origin”):
“Penn Station… laaast stop!”
Sonya – or whatever she is, now, but she still thinks of herself as Sonya – is aware of the train pulling in to the station, but she continues to look out the window at the dingy platform, unwilling to leave her seat. She’s been to the city plenty of times, of course, but this time is different… she knows it’s not for a visit, knows she’s never going home again.
She could, of course. Simplest thing in the world to surprise herself in some dark alley, take her clothes and keys and wallet, go home as if nothing had happened. Some part of her mind is tempted… but the fact she’s even thinking about it makes her want to throw up.
“Hey, buddy… last stop!” The conductor is looking at her suspiciously, warily; Sonya’s surprised by the attitude until she realizes she’s still wearing the body of that mugger… which almost sets her to shrieking hysterically. This isn’t something she’s supposed to have to deal with, her life isn’t supposed to be going this way.
But it is.
The conductor is tapping his foot impatiently, and Sonya nods her – no, his, now – head slowly. “OK, OK. I’m going.” He slides out into the aisle and through the sliding doors as the conductor hovers behind him, and he’s suddenly angry. For a moment he wants to turn around and punch the guy’s lights out, but instead he shoves his hands in his pants pockets and walks away… up the stairs, up the escalators, across the street to the vast Post Office steps.
“Dios mia*,” he mutters quietly, “what am I going to do now?”
* “My God”
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