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.
First rule of zombie warfare: when you're the last humans alive, you make a stand. The zombies will win. That's what zombies do. But hot damn, you can blow so many holes in them that when they finally get to you, you become the prettiest zombie. With the most limbs and least holes through your skull, even.
Or, in this case, the least pink splatters.
Calley was sitting on an entire box of ammunition. So help him, by the time that the first wave of zombies finally reached him, he was on the last clip. "Nom!"
It was a good night to die.
Calley turned with B-rated slowness towards Isabel. His arms outstretched; the gun, with three unused paint bullets left, clattered to the rooftop. The fiendish light of the un-afterlife sparkled in his eyes as he joined the surge of the moaning hordes in their circle around the surviving humans'--scratch that, human's--position.
"Brainnnsss..." He grinned, with a hearty shuffle. Whatcha gonna do when they come for you, Issie?
The zombies had managed to advance a little more quickly than she'd initially anticipated. She'd been hoping that the first wave that had been splattered in pink would get in the way of their companions and slow them down for a long enough amount of time to at least allow a few more zombie deaths. But of course the sneaky little brain munchers moved aside for their companions as discreetly as possible with an air of utmost undead innocence. The grins worn on a few of their faces were the only thing breaking down their act.
Calley's mortality also remained intact for a lesser amount of time than she'd expected. She'd assumed he'd weasel himself out of death's grasp somehow, but it was also very like him to admit defeat and turn against her. She simply quirked an eyebrow in his direction and gave a small smirk as he did his best zombie impression.
There was no way she'd be able to get out of this situation now. There was no time to reload her gun, which was also low on ammo, and she could see the hoard shuffling into a loose circle around her. In one last act of defiance, she took aim at Calley and popped off two rounds of paint filled bullets, one aimed at splattering across his chest, and the other meant to knock his crown from his head.
As much as she would have liked to go down in a more dignified manner, it just didn't seem to be working. The sight of the bad zombie impressions mixed with the pink paint platters made her dissolve into giggles. Letting her gun drop, she raised her hands in a surrendering gesture before allowing her brain to be nommed by the first taker.
I’m just a well-adjusted gal who likes to leave a serious amount of mayhem in her wake.
Posted by Cheshire on Feb 27, 2009 23:08:36 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
((ooc: Annnd, fast forward!))
...The Prince of Shifters readjusted his newly pinked crown atop his head. The utmost of dignity went into the motion: both hands were used, but only the tips of the fingers; it was put on perfectly straight, shifted, and straightened again, much like a dog circling its bed. His hands, as they made their way back down, made sure to likewise straighten out the collar of his red shirt.
It was a few shades lighter, now.
Ahem.
Behind them, black and pink cowled individuals, cosplayers, LARPers, and a man in pink-splattered camouflage continued milling about, with a few waves and fist shakes towards the royal pair's retreating backs.
They were just jealous that they didn't look this cool. And that they hadn't thought to backstab all the remaining humans, themselves.
Heh.
"So," Calley asked simply, as they walked away from the warehouse grounds, "how are you enjoying your happily ever unafterlife?"
Perhaps it wasn't wise to ask her a question. Questions were questioning, and might remind her of a fact: clocks all over the city read 12:45 AM. The zombification process hadn't exactly honed Calley's survival instincts to a bone white point.
Isabel had managed to come away as the last human alive, but she had not managed to do so unscathed. She could have sworn that in the last little rush at her, some of the zombies had rubbed paint on her on purpose. But, thus was the sacrifice for joining the moaning horde of brain nomming awesomeness. The waves were returned as her and her Prince retreated, and the fist shaking was simply grinned at if she happened to see the gesture before letting her attention gradually shift its entire focus onto what was ahead of them.
"Thus far my unafterlife is looking quite colorful," she offered as a reply to Calley's question, absentmindedly brushing her fingers against a smear of pink on her sleeve. It wasn't completely lost on her that Calley was asking his own questions, though their game being over and the two of them being by themselves again didn't hurt in reminding her of the agreement she'd made with him. Speaking of which, had she actually heard a bell chiming earlier, or had she been a little too caught up in the perils of mortality in some way? Pulling out her phone, she checked the time for herself and then turned the lit up screen displaying the numbers 12:46 to her companion, a smug little smirk accompanying the action.
"And how has your life been treating you, my dear Prince?" she returned, casting a sidelong glance in his direction. "I don't think I've seen you since before the Raid at the Sanctuary, and I know you weren't an inmate in the following months, or I would have run into you at some point. So what have you been up to?"
I’m just a well-adjusted gal who likes to leave a serious amount of mayhem in her wake.
Posted by Cheshire on Feb 28, 2009 19:53:25 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
Colorful was certainly a word for it. Calley was grinning down at his own fantastic color slosh when a rectangle of light foreboded into his face. A cell phone clock.
12:46. The smug smirk on Issie's face read "AM" more clearly than the screen itself.
>> "And how has your life been treating you, my dear Prince? I don't think I've seen you since before the Raid at the Sanctuary, and I know you weren't an inmate in the following months, or I would have run into you at some point. So what have you been up to?"
He restrained his sigh of relief, turning it into a light hearted little grin. As first questions went, those weren't too bad. He could be completely and almost-entirely honest with these ones. "Well," he started, "that's where things get interesting. I kinda... well, I kinda joined the X-Men. It was a little bit after our last date. I was getting up the nerve to tell you when the Registration Law passed."
He took a deep breath there, because mental trauma was standard in relation to the raids; most people hadn't been birding around, safely munching pigeons like popcorn as they watched their girlfriends getting hauled off. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't so cool of him. Huh.
"I dodged the Mansion raid, and ended up working with the Resistance. 'Fraid I missed the actual break out, though: I was protecting two ladies from a vampire, at the time. And not the fun kind of vampire, that would go well with our zombification--more like the real, mutant kind of vamp."
Question round one: answered! Ding ding ding! And there was the bell.
Isabel's smug little smirk didn't last too long into Calley's explanation. They were acceptable enough reasons for his having been gone, however, that didn't mean she cared any more for them. Like his becoming and X-Nerd. She did not like the X-Fools. She hadn't thought she'd ever go as far as to just making friends with any of them, and now it turned out that she was dating one of them. It was like the beginning of a teen tragedy, with two members on opposite sides of a feud deciding to ignore the tension and be with one another. She never had been a fan of tragedies.
A slight shiver passed down her spine at the mention of the Registration Act. She still avoided talking about the Act and especially the Camps whenever she could help it. For the most part she just shoved the memories way down deep in the back of her mind and refused herself any time to dwell on them when the subject was mentioned in passing. Like now. She could focus on other parts of his story. The part about defending a pair of young women from a vampire did earn him a few points. And despite his warning that it was not a good kind of vampire, she couldn't help but thinking a vampiric mutant was pretty cool. Vampires were one of her favorite reading subjects, after all.
"Alright, so thus far you're a vampire fighting X-Nerd," she summed up, more to put the idea into simple terms for her head to wrap around than to confirm anything. The alliance with the Mansion was still the main issue in her mind. She could maybe learn to deal with it. Or try to ignore it. Maybe attempt to recruit him over time. X-Nerds had been known to defect, after all. She'd worry about it later. She still had at least a few more questions to ask. "Okay. So what about the horse you showed up with? The one that disappeared once we got here? I am seriously doubting your just-a-tiger-shifter description of your mutation that you gave the first night we met." She assumed the episode involving her Kitten fell into the mix on that one, but she could press more questions about that in a few minutes. One or two questions at a time seemed like a wiser course of action.
I’m just a well-adjusted gal who likes to leave a serious amount of mayhem in her wake.
Posted by Cheshire on Feb 28, 2009 21:07:36 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
>> "Alright, so thus far you're a vampire fighting X-Nerd."
The only correct reply to that was a grin. "It sounds cool, when you put it that way." They continued to walk, without aim; the questions kept coming.
>> "Okay. So what about the horse you showed up with? The one that disappeared once we got here? I am seriously doubting your just-a-tiger-shifter description of your mutation that you gave the first night we met."
An arm reached up and scratched the back of his head, accidentally snowing drying flecks of pink onto the back of his shirt. "Yeeeah..." he began; "About that..."
"So. I'm not technically a tiger shifter. I mean, I am a tiger shifter, but I'm also a horse shifter, and a dog shifter, and a few other shifty-shifters. Pretty much anything besides human. It's kind of something I've been keeping on the down low, for reasons of paranoia." He shot a loose, apologetic grin her way. "If it helps, I told the X's the same thing; 'Just a tigger shifter; yep, that's me!' "
"The making splinters thing is new. Err, that's what I call it when I make an animal pop out of nowhere. See, I can copy any animal I see, pretty much, and I remember the forms--and I figured out how to be more than one thing at once. So, err, that wasn't actually a horse, just now, and it wasn't actually your Kitten. It was just little ol' me, times two." He gave a shrug of sorry-to-get-your-hopes-up.
Not to imply that her Kitten and little ol' him where separate entities to begin with. Why, that would be just plain dishonest of him.
More than one question answered at once was nice in the time saving way. It wasn't so nice in the trying-to-overload-your-brain kind of way. Isabel kept quiet as Calley spoke, letting her gaze drift down to the pavement as she listened and tried to let it all sink in. So he hadn't been completely dishonest when he'd told her he was a tiger shifter. He'd just left out a lot of information in doing so. A lot of information about how his animal shifting wasn't in any way as restricted as she'd been lead to believe. If she hadn't been trying to decide on what emotion she should be directing toward finding this out, she may have been impressed with his abilities.
The splintering, as he called it, was also overlooked on the 'hey, that's cool' wave of thinking. That bit of his mutation took just a little more effort in allowing it to sink into her mind. It was somewhat confusing, especially where her Kitten was involved. "Okay, so I can get that the horse was just another splinter. That one doesn't really concern me so much, though I will so get you back for teasing me when I was trying to keep my balance on that thing," she commented, letting her gaze shift back over to Calley. But where did her Kitten come into play? He hadn't been anywhere in sight when she'd brought Calley back to the Sanctuary with her after their first date, though the feline had certainly been there much longer than the boy had.
That's when the information that she was taking in started to click into place. He'd said that the splinters weren't really separate creatures, but were instead parts of himself split off from his original person, hadn't he? "You copy forms, but you never saw my Kitten while you were with me, because he disappeared a while before you ever showed up," she said, speaking her thoughts aloud. "The Kitten from earlier wasn't the actual Kitten, but was a broken off piece of you. You can also shift into more things than a tiger," she continued, working through the steps of her thoughts as she went. "If you never saw my Kitten, then how could you have made a copy of him?" she finally inquired, eying her companion suspiciously. He was slowly giving her the pieces of the puzzle that she was looking for, but there were still large gaps missing, some of which she was trying to fill in herself.
I’m just a well-adjusted gal who likes to leave a serious amount of mayhem in her wake.
Posted by Cheshire on Feb 28, 2009 22:21:38 GMT -6
Mutant God
3,233
18
Sept 24, 2018 19:41:05 GMT -6
Calley
Issie was down to the last few puzzle pieces in the box. The gears were turning. The clogs were moving. And all that jazz.
He listened to her working it through out loud. Just one small step of logic was left before she'd know everything. Moment of truth: did he deflect, or did he fess up?
A year ago, he'd been in this same position with Abyss. The man had put it almost all together, and he'd tried to talk his way out of it. It had been a logical nightmare, and it hadn't worked.
With Isabel? Well, it would be awfully boring to repeat the same mistake twice.
>> "If you never saw my Kitten, then how could you have made a copy of him?"
"Well, Issie," Calley began, with a thoroughly unrepentant grin underneath his pinked crown, "there's a reason I was afraid to admit to the multi-shifting." He crossed his arms confidentially behind his head, eyes innocently rising to the stars above. "The penguin panties were cute, by the way."
Everything from his walk to this gaze to his small smile radiated innocence like a nightlight. He did everything but whistle... or purr.
Isabel listened intently for what Calley had to offer, truly curious as to how he and her Kitten were connected. The grin was a little unnerving, though. Good things rarely ever came about once Calley was grinning, especially when it was aimed at her. With the first half of his short explanation, she'd expected the finishing statement to be something like a straight spoken reason as to why he'd been afraid. Yet again she was taken off guard by her companion.
Once that last sentence was understood and clicked into place, she stopped dead in her tracks, her previous look of curiosity wiped away into an expression of shock. It was only further accentuated by the rapid rate at which her face darkened to a nice deep red. Calley didn't have to have seen her Kitten at the Sanctuary for him to know what he looked like. However, he had apparently seen plenty of other things.
"You didn't!" she blurted, looking absolutely horrified. It was no wonder that cat seemed perfectly content to follow her whenever she was headed back to her room. Or anywhere else for that matter. Like the War Room meetings that were not meant to be visited by non-Order members. Suddenly finding that wallet and having a cat successfully follow her back to the Sanctuary didn't seem so lucky and unplanned as it had before.
Slowly she was letting her attention shift from her memories back to the current time and the grinning boy playing the innocent act. Much more rapidly her surprise was being swallowed up by severe embarrassment and seething anger. Not only had she unknowingly allowed a peeping Tomcat to sleep in her room for months, she'd also jeopardized the Order's past plans as well as their identity for allowing her 'pet' to follow her wherever it pleased. She could have killed him. She had murdered people for far less reasons. Another shiver chased up and down her spine, though this time rather than the feeling being caused by upset nerves, it was the actual bones shifting subconsciously in her mind's demand for payback.
For a moment she simply stood in place fuming, her whole face burning as the color only seemed to darken with each renewed memory and the recent discoveries. She really could have killed him. But, fortunately for the boy, something in her didn't really want to see him dead. Not yet, at least. Taking just enough steps toward her companion to put him in arm's reach, she brought her fist back and then threw it forward, putting most of her weight into a punch aimed at his grinning jaw. "I would think twice before you try showing up at the Sanctuary again, kid. In any skin," she spat, glaring murderously at the young man she'd been having a great time with only a short while earlier. Turning on her heel, her fists still clenched, she started walking. She didn't care if she was headed the right way to get back to her home. She'd worry about directions later. She just wanted to get away from Calley.
I’m just a well-adjusted gal who likes to leave a serious amount of mayhem in her wake.
So. Maybe he could have found a more tactful way to mention that he'd lived in her bedroom for a few weeks. Possibly.
>> "You didn't!"
He cringed internally at that horrified blurt, but kept up his smiling appearances. Now was the time when he found out just how badly she was going to hurt him over this. Like a small animal next to a very large predator, he was going to keep his movements to a minimum. Until it was time to bolt.
Step. Step. Step.
SWACK.
He saw the fist coming. But was it wise to dodge? No. No, he really didn't think so. Dodging might trigger a game of cat and mouse that he wasn't prepared to lose. He let the punch land uncontested, and reeled backwards. Okaaay... that had been a littler harder than he'd been expecting.
Consider his grin gone. ...Had that tooth been loose before?
>> "I would think twice before you try showing up at the Sanctuary again, kid. In any skin."
He blinked after her for a moment, one hand rubbing at his jaw. The murder glare should have been his warning. Should have been, but then, no one had ever accused him of being the brightest crayon in the light bulb box. The Prince of Shifters ran to catch up.
"Hey! Okay, so that was really insensitive. Sorry. But you're not giving me a chance to explain, here," he unwisely protested. "You found me in the park as a cat, remember? I'd been that way for two years. Since I was fifteen; I shifted to cat my first day in New York. That's how I'd been living: as a cat. When we met, I wasn't planning to change back any time soon. I was sick of being a human, and I hadn't met many other mutants until I followed you home. I didn't know that there were places where we could be safe. I didn't know there were people we could be safe with. You're the reason I finally shifted to human again."
"The reason I didn't tell you was, well," he rubbed at his jaw; "I kinda of thought you might do worse than just sock me. I was there for those Order meetings, and all. And I know I'm not good Order material: I don't do the violent thing. I'm pretty crappy X-Men material, too, to be honest. And hey--I never told them about you guys. Nothing. Only the Assistant Headmistress even knows that we're dating. None of that stuff I overheard, none of the stuff I saw--I haven't told them any of that." He may have told Hunter some of it, but no, he had not told the X-Men.
"We have fun together. And I'm being honest now. Doesn't that count for something?" Because, honestly-honestly, he could have kept hiding the whole 'Im in ur room, being ur Kitten' thing.
He also could have told her a whole lot sooner. But hey, there was no need to get nit-picky, here.
Calley was following her. She shouldn't have expected anything less, really, but aside from the partial satisfaction it brought her, she'd thought that the punch to his face would have at least discouraged him a little. She really didn't want to argue with him anymore. She didn't even want to hear the excuses he was trying to offer. She had always been better with actions than words, and negotiating when she was ready to kill something was usually never an issue. She could feel her fingernails biting into her palms as her fists only clenched tighter when Calley fell into step with her. She neither stopped nor sped up, she just kept going. She needed to be doing something if her companion was going to try to talk his way out of the mess he made. She'd more than likely pop him again if she tried sitting still.
She only bothered to give a huff at his admittance to the insensitivity of his latest statement as well as his protests that she'd taken off too soon. She considered him to be very fortunate that she'd decided to leave. He was seriously jeopardizing the state of health he was in when for some reason she'd been considerate enough to try and do the least fatal amount of damage that had come to mind. He also wasn't impressing her much with his offered explanation as to why he'd been pretending to be a cat and taking advantage to her hospitality.
She stayed silent as he worked through is reasoning, though she had to bite her tongue to do it, just as she had to fight to keep herself moving. Letting some of her mind focus on the motion helped a little when it came to not completely exploding. "I don't care if you were a cat for ten years before I found you," she finally replied, trying to keep her voice even, but not succeeding very well. "Just because you pretend to be a cat, or any other animal for that matter, it doesn't mean you are one. Like it or not, you're still a human, and you knew exactly what you were doing." She wasn't the one that had done anything wrong. It was perfectly acceptable to change in your own room. It was equally as harmless to do so in the company of pets. Normal pets who were not mutants in disguise.
"You're lucky all you've gotten is a punch in the jaw," she continued, shooting another venomous look at him. "And you're doubly as lucky that for the most part you've kept your mouth shut. Since you've taken the liberty of getting to know my friends, I'm sure you know they're more likely to side with me than they are to defend you, and you'll be damn lucky if I don't tell them anything about you," she concluded, momentarily pointing a bloodied fingernail in his direction. Because, of course, she didn't know that Abyss already knew about Calley. It was probably good that she didn't. She'd rather not hold a grudge against the Big Guy, and it wouldn't help Calley's case if he let slip that he'd told someone else about his escapades before she'd ever had a clue.
It was true they'd had fun. She'd loved the movie theater they'd visited the first time they'd met. In human form, anyhow. She'd had and absolute blast playing zombie tag and betraying her fellow humans to increase the length of survival for herself and her date. However, at the moment her anger easily overpowered her better feelings. This little revelation kind of soured her pleasant memories. "Right now all that counts toward is you keeping your skin in one piece."
I’m just a well-adjusted gal who likes to leave a serious amount of mayhem in her wake.
Calley was following her. Nope, she shouldn't have been surprised that Calley was following her. Calley was a little surprised, though. His 'I'm not suicidal' refrain seemed to get a little more hollow with each step him matched with the irate young woman next to him
He'd had an idea this bad, once. It had ended up with him dropping a whale on a vampire. Somehow, he didn't think raining large mammals from the sky was the key to Issie's heart.
Did he even want her heart? There was no question about it: he hadn't fallen madly deeply and irrevocably in love. But she was fun to hang out with. And the whole 'dating' thing itself was fun. And the ribboned girl and the habitually grinning boy got along really well, when he wasn't admitting to panty spying.
Those penguins had been cute. Multi-colored. Just so you know. For a long time, he'd been tempted to buy her a ribbon to match. But, to repeat that refrain one more time: he was not suicidal.
>> "I don't care if you were a cat for ten years before I found you. Just because you pretend to be a cat, or any other animal for that matter, it doesn't mean you are one. Like it or not, you're still a human, and you knew exactly what you were doing."
That kind of boggled his mind a little, actually, that middle sentence there. Who was pretending? He had been a cat. A very catty cat. He'd been a human before that and a human after, but he'd been a cat in the middle. Looking at it from that perspective had never occurred to him before. Sure, he'd been a cat that knew it could be human, but he'd still... been a cat. Cats, like girls, were allowed to be in rooms where girls were changing. She wasn't exactly the first female he'd peeping tommed. To do otherwise was to show a modesty quite distinctly un-cattish.
>> "You're lucky all you've gotten is a punch in the jaw."
And he appreciated that. He really did. Even if Slate could heal him, the bleeding, the pain, and the bleeding did not really appeal to him.
>> "And you're doubly as lucky that for the most part you've kept your mouth shut. Since you've taken the liberty of getting to know my friends, I'm sure you know they're more likely to side with me than they are to defend you, and you'll be damn lucky if I don't tell them anything about you."
Calley did not think that mentioning Abyss' knowledge of all this would be wise. He was right on that account. Quite right.
>> "Right now all that counts toward is you keeping your skin in one piece."
For a long few steps, the multi-shifter didn't have his usual comebacks. Finally, he settled on stubborn simplicity:
"Yeah," he gave broad-range agreement, to everything she'd just said, "but I still want to see you again. I mean, you still have some serious payback to get in, especially in the form of returned embarrassment. How could you do that if we didn't see each other again?" Spoken with the deadpan reasoning of true logic.
For one stretched moment after her last statement Isabel didn't hear anything from Calley. It was a wonderful moment, but it didn't last nearly as long as she would have liked. The eloquently summed up response he gave in saying 'yeah' did nothing to improve her mood. Irritably she shifted her fingers, relieving the pressure against her palms for a moment before her hands once again curled into fists, her fingernails finding new patches of flesh to dig themselves into. Better her skin than his for now, though she still couldn't for the life of her figure out why her train of thought was running in that direction.
"You're a smartass," she stated simply in reply, keeping her gaze ahead of her this time, rather than allowing it to dart back over to her companion for another moment. It was for his own safety, really. Should he end up wearing another one of his grins, it was probably best that she didn't see it until he'd had enough of a chance to rethink the expression and change it. Otherwise, it might very well be his nose that was the next target. It was easier to break than the jaw, and it usually bled quite nicely.
She wasn't positively moved by the logic he tried to present her with. Quite the opposite, it was beginning to work on her nerves a little. She had walked away from him in order to get away from him and to blow off some steam, either back at the Sanctuary or before she got there. The population of New York would probably benefit most from the former. "You are a smartass that's either too stubborn or too stupid to figure out when he should back down," she continued, expanding upon her previous observation. "And if you told me the truth when you said you were an X-Nerd, I'm sure I'll be seeing you soon enough. Maybe on several occasions, if you can manage to keep yourself alive. After all, The Order and the X-Nerds are such great friends." One was bound to get in the other's way at some point. Most likely the X's in the way of the O's. It had happened on two occasions already, so she had little doubt it would happen again in the future. "You should probably let me go home. By myself. Before you get any more bruises, or worse."
I’m just a well-adjusted gal who likes to leave a serious amount of mayhem in her wake.
It was finally occurring to Calley that maybe--just maybe--it wasn't a good idea to follow Isabel alllll the way back to the Sanctuary. And maybe--potentially--giving her time to cool off might be more beneficial than poking her into losing her head. And then his head. In that order.
Maybe.
These growing revelations did not stop him from smirking reflexively at her smartassery comment. Being a true statement, it was really the only thing he could do, as a smartass. This is why some part of him was eternally grateful that she did not turn to look at him again until after he had wrestled his face back under sincere and regretful control.
>> "And if you told me the truth when you said you were an X-Nerd, I'm sure I'll be seeing you soon enough. Maybe on several occasions, if you can manage to keep yourself alive. After all, The Order and the X-Nerds are such great friends."
Calley gave a slow nod, an inkling of an insipid plan already growing in his head. They said that the only thing better than a good friend was a great rival. Isabel and he hadn't really seen each other for months--a lot had changed in that time. He'd changed, a little. Maybe.
Maybe it was time to show her what a multishifter's got. And bring flowers, too. To impress and annoy a ribboned stabby girl in equal measures was an idea he could find no flaw with.
"I'll see you at the next Battle Royale, then," Calley said, with a growing grin that could mean no good. "First, though--let me pay for your cab back to the Sanctuary. Somehow, I don't think you're game on hoofing it." Reference to his earlier noble steed form, or bad pun about her walking? You decide.