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.
It would have been an amazing insight to Tris, had she been in the mood to be introspective, the sheer amount of satisfaction one could gain from such simple sounds. Some relevant and very recent examples of this phenomenon might be; the grin inducing moment of vindictive glee as the freshly unfrozen Slate had tumbled widely out of control now there was no target for him to crash into, and hurtle instead into a wall with a very satisfying ‘thump,’ and then to truly top things off, the small and pitiful groan from the pile of limbs lying limply on the floor, twas pure and sweet music to the ears of those currently on this vengeful path.
….however, so like the cat that came back the very next day, Slate too just didn’t know when to stay down. Here he was again, pulling himself up and together, the fastidious child still grating on Tris’s very limited supply of composure with his whole ‘you cannot win here’ attitude- which to be fair, was highly annoying, especially since Tris was holding all the aces in this here situation, the kid should at least have the decency to realize this look defeated but no… Grrrrrr. The grin was wiped from Tris’s face and she was left staring daggers at the newly arisen boy.
It was at this point Slate chose to interject with one of his particular brand of comments, which, while sounding all bland and logical, only helped to infuse more painful events into the teens immediate future- and unsurprisingly, such was the case now.
"This is quickly becoming silly, Miss Evans."
Tris raised an eyebrow in disdain- oh he was calling her actions silly was he? Well that was rich coming from a little boy claiming to have usurped a super powered immortals throne.
"Would you care to talk reasonably about this yet? Or are you not quite done blowing my possessions apart?"
Tris’s eyes flicked around the room to verify this statement and she laughed shortly as she realized yes- the table, the plant, most of the chairs, Slates notes, stationary and clothes, the lights, and the super tech super expensive computer stuff could all be put down to victims of Tris’s emotional climate, or instruments of her wrath. It was true that for now, the main elements in the room apart from herself and the object of her objection were broken or overturned furniture and a lot of debris……still, that didn’t exactly mean an imaginative girl like Tris was left completely without options.
She cocked her head to the side for a moment, considering Slate with an expression akin to someone looking at some unpleasant stains their dog had just walked in to the house.
“Ummm…..no, I do not think I am quite ‘done’ yet Mister Swartz- infact, I think you’ll find I’ve been going easy on you.” Tris’s threat laden tone stated calmly with a smile, taking the question away from its rhetorical originals and answering as if he’d being truly asking her opinion on whether this had gone far enough. And the truth was no, no it hadn’t, nor would it ever be enough till the little brat had rescinded his supposed claim on her mentors entitlements and made her and Hunter a big and heartfelt apology.
She, seeing through the red veil of her imprint twisted mind, brought her hands up again and aimed, letting her power fly- the intention being to fling boiling air at Slate as she had before to toss the boy to the ground… hard if she had anything to say about it. But somehow there was a glitch, she, the girl who had mastered her aim of her exploding power at the tender age of 7, so as not to hurt her family….. had missed. Her command on disintegrating molecules still active and working, yet her control of direction just alittle off, the end result of this being a large portion of Slate’s left arm being the focus of her considerable dissolving abilities. Was this chance- no, twas rather the imprint getting stronger and directing the actions of an un realizing Tris….but she didn’t know that.
Now, at this point it should probably be mentioned that one of Trista Evans most deep and secret fears that she had been living with every day since her powers had manifested themselves, was the gnaw biting terror that she would accidentally blow someone up. This absolute fear had driven her mastery of her gifts as much as anything had, and it must be noted that her complete lack of guilt or sympathy was very telling on just how much her mind was not her own right now.
Instead of revolution and disgust at her own actions, there was merely the slight disappointment of a craftsman who has found a minor imperfection in their otherwise perfect work. And she, basking in an internal world of hazy red, merely laughed the embarrassed laugh of someone whom has made a slight faux pas in polite society at her mistaken direction and muttered. “Ooops.”
Yes. That really did sum things up, for both of them.
“Ooops.”
She was laughing—a light little laugh, best served with a white cheese and a novel variety of wine.
“Ooops.”
Her claim that she had been going easy on him was, perhaps, worthy of some consideration.
“Ooops.”
His left arm was gone.
From just above the elbow to… to nothingness. His left arm was gone. His brain sent delirious commands to his fingers, and he felt them move in response; yet he could see, quite distinctly, that his left arm was gone. The teenager’s blue eyes looked impassively down at the charred fragment of bone that was rather too prominent in his vision, and found that his most coherent thought was this: At least the blood is not ruining my shirt. No. Because his shirt was gone; he seemed to remember that, though his mind was oddly numb. Was this shock?
The arm was bleeding less than he would have thought. Some of the arteries had been cauterized by the same burning force that had—had done this. But his heart rate seemed oddly loud and fast in his ears, and not all of those black patch jobs had held.
Huh.
His arm was gone.
His arm was gone, but he was a healer. This fact occurred to him. He had never tried to heal… having an arm gone before. A shift later, a somewhat mismatched appendage claimed its rightful place. His brain sent delirious signals to his fingers to move; from a very great distance, he was fairly sure he did indeed feel them move. He could see them moving. The skin of his arm was the white-pink of a newborn; it did not match the light golden tan of the rest of his flesh.
Curious. It appeared that shock was largely psychological. Slate turned a slow gaze back to the red headed young woman, blinking dully.
“You are quite ill-tempered,” Slate stated, somewhat unsteady on his feet, “even for a woman.”
Really- Tris, even in the mental hazy red land of rightful vengeance she was occupying right now, could admire the stoic way the youth reacted to the loss of his limb; no crying, no yelling, no screaming, nothing- so from a professional stand point she had to give the kid his props…..
But seriously, come on- even though she hadn’t consciously been aiming for him, it had happened, there was suddenly no longer half an arm where half an arm should be, and when you lose half an arm, you should at least have the good grace to surrender unequivocally- it was like in the rules of combat or something…..besides it was the polite thing to do.
It was the only thing to do- yet the kid just wouldn’t not admit this simple fact. And Tris was fast growing bored of this little game.
….Maybe that was the problem, she ponder idly as she eyed her limbless victim, maybe the kid was mentally defective- his thinking clouded with delusions of grandeur or something, making him fantasize the ludicrous story that he had taken Hunters position as head of the Kabal, and if in truth that was all this was and the kid was just a confused little boy, Tris would be merciful and not kill him……but that heartfelt apology, information and the appearance of one mentor were still needing to be produced if this child wanted to continue to exist after this eventful meeting.
Again there was a complete absence of Tris’s usual moral code, the imprint controlled Tris had simply made up her mind to get the information she needed in any way necessary- without any of those pesky compassionate emotions that one would usually have to consider, getting in the way. All she knew was that the course of action she was currently engaged in was absolutely and indisputably the right thing to do.
Tris’s slightly preoccupied expression turned into a scowly frown, as the talented little freak produced his next pallor trick and……..grew his arm back.
Tris swore- D@#n healers and their d@&n powers of regeneration!
This situation was strongly reminding Tris of a chess game she’d once played against her brother when she was little- she had slaughtered every other opponent player on the board apart from the enemy king, and true to form went after that piece next; she had won this game, she knew it, her brother knew it, and it was just a matter of time, but though she held all the power in the game, the opponent king somehow just kept being able to slip out of her attempts on his life, again and again, not able to win but not letting her either…..that game had been aggravating, and so was this. Slate was prolonging a game that was long since ended and that, on top of everything was pushing her to new heights of pissed off.
Tris was, it was true, somewhat petulant to discover the kid was finding yet another way to prolong a fight she had clearly already won…..but she was consoling herself with the fact that tidy, perfectionist Slate’s new arm was blindingly white into comparison to his normal skin tone.
“Cute trick.” She commented, nodding towards the arm, her tone clearly doing that faux nice thing that neither nice or kind in any particular. “But you might need some fake tanning lotion before too long, you know, to match up again- would you like to borrow some?” She could not but help taunting alittle. Slate’s only reply was to redirect the conversation- not that this new direction would do him any good.
“You are quite ill-tempered, even for a woman.”
Tris smiled slightly, but it was the dangerous smile with the narrowed gaze that Slate really should have learned to avoid by now- it ment bad things were coming very, very soon. She laughed in a harsh way. “Ha- this isn’t ‘ill-tempered’.” Tris replied in a control tone, perfectly mimicking Slate’s speech pattern and intonation. “This is me standing up for a dear friend.” Unwittingly giving away more information of her relationship with her mentor than she might otherwise have told. “…….But hey, you claim to be the boss man now- If you want ill-tempered, I’m sure I can oblige.” She ended in a dangerously agreeable tone.
With no pause whatsoever, Tris waved a hand at Slate and focused- this time having the desired effect of boiling air steam rolling into the offending body, throwing the teen tumbling through the air to land with a dull thump some meters away.
“Oh little man, you are making this way too easy.” Tris chuckled quietly as she picked a delicate path through dusty debris to Slate’s unmoving side. A sharp-heeled booted foot was applied, non-to gently to Slate’s body to allow the barely clothed teen to be pushed onto his back.
Now he could look up into the face of the avenging goddess that was Trista Evans. “Ill tempered enough for you?” She muttered- a question but not a question.
The aforementioned foot raised to rest, almost as if absentmindedly, on the bare flesh of Slate’s stomach. “Listen up, you insipid little worm.” Tris hissed, allowing a hint of her agitation to seep through into her controlled voice as she allowed the heel of her boot to press down- grinding into Slate’s stomach. “You have no more cards to play here, and I grow weary of this little game.” The foot released its spiky pressure from Slate’s stomach suddenly- leaving a bruising dent. The boot moved to take up residence on the other side of Slate’s body, the repositioned Tris now straddling the boy’s limp form.
She glared down at him with all the hatred the imprint twisted mind had for the person who was standing in the way of her knowledge about her beloved mentor and father figure. Her fingers itched to just blow him up and be done with it- lets see him try to heal himself when he was scattered across the room, and the walls, and the ceiling, but even through the wrathful vengeance, Tris knew the information on Hunter’s safe whereabouts was more important than her gratification right now. So the focus was torture, not killing….she could do that. But still, if Slate wouldn’t talk this time- well, she’d tried, and there was sure to be some other people here abouts to interrogate.
“Tell me about Hunter…” “ Where is he?” “What have you done with him?” “ Is he safe?” “ Does he know of your treachery?” She fired off the staccato questions clear, quick and fast- her impatience for answers worming its way through her resolve. The answers weren’t appearing quickly enough for Tris. Considering this issue, a possible solution stole into her imprint ravaged mind.
Hmmm, maybe a personal touch would help.
Tris’s knees bent automatically, taking her down until she was kneeling on Slate’s un clothed chest with her knees applying firm pressure to the youths upper arms, disallowing any movement from that quarter - she wasn’t completely heavy, but still, she wouldn’t be the most comfortable weight on someone’s chest.
“Last chance,” She whispered enticingly, “Tell me what I want to know or you will die.” This comment was very serious and very final, as her hands slipped around Slate’s throat and began to squeeze.
PS to our readers: Lots of God Modding of each other's characters has been blatantly going on in this thread. We've been trading Cbox and PMed permissions for it, though, and semi-planned things out. Remember, kids--always talk to your RP partner before you pwn them!))
Tolerance.
>> “Listen up, you insipid little worm.”
It was probably not quite what the fire-headed young woman wanted to see on his face, but really, what was a boy with any dignity to do? One of them had to be the bigger person in this situation. He started to push himself off of the floor.
>> “You have no more cards to play here, and I grow weary of this little game.”
That spiked heel was entirely unnecessary and momentarily quite distract--
To put it concisely: wince.
>> “Tell me about Hunter…”
She was talking still. Good.
>> “ Where is he?”
He had needed her to be close: that had been his aim from the beginning of the fight.
>> “What have you done with him?”
How pleasant of her to oblige.
>> “ Is he safe?”
Granted, he did not quite know if this would work.
>> “ Does he know of your treachery?”
And should anyone ask him whether he'd honestly been thinking of this since the beginning, he would reply with simple silence. Now he just needed physical contact; skin-to-skin. He'd lost his chance to grab her heel; she'd been rather quick about the straddling. On the issue of the straddling: once he had taken over her mind, they would have to discuss that. He could not have his female employees--or his male ones, for that matter--straddling him without his permission.
>> “Last chance.”
Indeed.
>> “Tell me what I want to know or you will die.”
Her hands slipped around his bare throat. The last thing she would see on his face would be a small smirk; then she would not be seeing much at all, until he was quite ready for her to do so.
Slate required permission to enter minds. There was no such limitation to his touching them. To surrounding them with his own will, and walling them into his own gray world. He had done this many hundreds of times with Calley. He was somehow surprised at how easily the cage slipped around another's mind, as well; yet it came so easily, there was no hesitation.
Her hands would stop their immature attempts at bruising his pale skin. In her mind, all she would see was gray. All she would taste, touch, feel, hear was gray, until he decided otherwise, or the contact between them was broken.
Things seemed to slow down for Slate, as he took a moment to gloat in immense satisfaction. That had worked. Not that he had ever held any doubts that it would, nor had that simply been a last-ditch effort born of desperation. The Kabal's blue-eyed young leader had clearly been in command of this situation from the beginning. Clearly.
He did not suspect that anything was wrong until he saw the guard coming in. This was technically against his orders, though he could understand how 'being strangled' could qualify as a call for help. Nevertheless, since he had already put the little girl into her time-out pen, help was not something he needed.
"Stop," he ordered simply, as the guard rushed into the room. But the words came out as slowly as his thoughts. It was as if he was using far too much of his mind to contain Miss Evans, and there was precious little left for anything else. This was slightly different than the times he had caged Calley. His order did not actually leave his mouth until the guard was already standing over them, moving to jerk Miss Evans off of him.
And that, of course, would have been very bad.
It took him far longer than usual to think of his next action; longer still to complete it. Over the course of the next minute, he managed to wrap his hand around Miss Evans' bare wrist and--with a bit of help from the very confused guard--get himself free of her unwanted legs. After an irritatingly long delay, he was standing just to her left side, holding her wrist as firmly as he could. It would not do for that grip to be broken. Then, he suspected, they would be back to her explosive games.
The guard, on the other hand--after some laboriously spoken directions--was standing directly in front of her. The gun between her eyes was, Slate was pleased to know, angled so that any upcoming spray would not hit his own self. He'd had quite enough of that today.
That was the scene she would wake up to, as he dropped the cage away from her mind: the nearly naked blue-eyed boy gripping her wrist, and a gun quite ineloquently pressed to her forehead.
"Miss Evans," Slate came to the point quickly, one key irritation leaving his life as time returned to its normal rate for him. "I require permission to enter your mind. You will be alive after I am done; I am sure we can continue this discussion then. Or, you can refuse me permission." The gun was truly enough said on that point. "Saying 'okay' will suffice. Doing anything else might be quite unwise."
Not to accuse Miss Evans of wisdom, but he clung to a small hope that she would see the light on this issue. It was, after all, glinting quite blatantly off of the gun's barrel.
Squeezing the life out of someone should not be quite so satisfying, but Tris was actually quite looking forward to it. She watched Slate’s face carefully as her grip tightened upon his pale and oh so fragile neck, her hands beginning to block the precious air’s path to his lungs. She expected to see fear on the dirt smudged face, but what she got from the irritating little blue eyed freak was just a tiny little smile, smug really - reading impossibly as triumph rather than fear….. Well whatever, just cause the kid would not react right to even the most basic situation, did not mean even a healer could save themselves from a very uncomfortable time. Tris sighed happily as she pondered how long and in how many painful ways could she try and kill the healer brat, and what was the probability he would actually stay dead. Slate had worn a triumphant little smile for no obvious reason and Tris’s imprint-clouded mind didn’t even pause to consider what that reason could be, she was too far-gone to care. …. She should have cared- the absence of self preservation was a bitch sometimes.
….
There was no wrench of agony or bright flash of light to signal Tris’s change in fortune.
There was just nothing- and that was the problem.
There was no sound to warn her, there were no feelings to reassure her. Quite the opposite actually, suddenly there was a lack of light and sight and sound and touch and even smell where the perception of these senses would usually be.
The absence of these perceptions was as shocking as they were overwhelming. The slightly not so sane, imprint saturated Tris was, most unfairly, left completely alone with her thoughts- that’s all she seemed to have here. The imprint was not happy and neither was Tris.
Tris gasped, or would have gasped if the oxygen needing, lungs part of her that reacted with an intake of breath to things that inspired surprise or shock had currently been the ‘her’ that was here at the present time, but she couldn’t, because apparently the place she had been mysteriously transported too, didn’t exactly allow bodies and bodily functions to come as well.
Given that and this current situation, at the moment, all Tris could manage for the enormity of this new and unpleasant circumstance was a big, soundless, shocked, silent, string of swearwords. !…………………………………………………………..!
So far, Tris’s confused thoughts had atleast worked out this much- Slate was somehow responsible for her predicament. Her imprint infused mind gave a mindless howl of fury at this- they had been too close to avenging Hunter’s honor to be thwarted now. SLATE WOULD PAY….He had to.
Where once existed the reality of Tris in all her vengeful glory and Tris’s ultimate victory, there was now just nothing, nothingness- a complete void of vast barrenness that was more truly frightening than anything any horror movie could come up with. She couldn’t feel her body, she couldn’t feel at all. She was completely disconnected and if she let herself, her racing thoughts would sink into the ‘completely scared’ version of what the hell was going on here that Tris really didn’t want to dwell on right now.
So Tris decided to deal with this new state of affairs in which she found herself in typical Tris fashion. ……She focused on just how pissed off she was. So screw this place. Screw her lack of senses. That wasn’t the issue here. What she should be more bothered about was the lack of Slate to pound into dreary, ‘I want my mummy’ submission. So what exactly had happened? The sudden turn of the tables had been dizzying- she had been about to win hadn’t she? So why was she suddenly here, and Slate suddenly out of range? She had no answers for herself and it was all most vexing to say the least.
Tris concentrated hard on the simmering rage that had buoyed her through her meeting with Slate, using the condensed hatred she felt for the boy to center herself here against the stray unwelcome thoughts that were trying to tackle her attention in this weird arse mental place. Thoughts like ‘what if I’m stuck here forever?”, and ‘What the hell am I goanna do?’
She again worked to deafen herself to this negative self talk- it didn’t help. So again in typical Tris fashion, she decided to deal with this problem directly. She called upon her explosive powers to try blast her way out of here, wherever ‘here’ was, by force. …It didn’t work, her power wouldn’t come. She tried again. Still nothing- the anger was there but nothing else. Whether this being because she didn’t have a body through which to direct her combustive gift or because there was nothing to ‘officially’ blow up here, other then herself of course, of whether this was some weird safety glitch so she wouldn’t blow her own thoughts to pieces and became a vegetable for the rest of her life she did not know. Tris mentally sighed. So no powers huh……but that didn’t mean she was completely without an arsenal. After all, if only thoughts existed here, Tris still had her sparkling and tenacious personality to draw on- a force in itself.
Pure, violent thoughts shouted at and against the empty space that surrounded Tris’s mind, undiluted force of will rushing the dull, nothing walls again and again, trying to break through or out, or somewhere other than here. But it was like fighting a mirage- the closer she tried to get to the ‘walls’ of her prison, the further out of reach they became. It was disorientating, irritating and unnerving. The only colour, if colour it was, that was discernible here in this ominous, endless environment was the dull, slate gray of non identity.
There was only gray.
Endless, silent gray in this strange monotonous place, as far as the mind’s eye could see. The negative thoughts were back, pressing down and in on Tris’s core self, forcing her toward terror and panic. They shouted. Suddenly and unexplainably, Tris was alone- completely alone, and completely cut off from the world, her body and her powers. Served from everything she’d ever known. The corrupt thoughts were wining. Tris, or the ‘self’ that Tris was without all the extra accessories that usually came with the Tris package, like powers and a body and a voice, was freaking out as she vainly tried not to give in to claustrophobic panic of the timeless, endless gray.
So it was clear- beneath the sizzling resentment she felt at her hated blue eyed enemy, below the wrath she was itching to dish out, the powerless Tris was wholly alone, totally vulnerable, and very very scared, trying not to realize just how terrified she could let herself become of this strange sensory deprivation that she was somehow trapped in.
Tris was cut off, from her body, from her life, and from her powers.
She was disconnected.
Empty and alone….. Tris had always secretly been scared of being alone, being vulnerable, and being powerless, and now she was all three. Tris was stuck inside her own personal worst nightmare.
She was being crushed by her own fear and she didn’t know how much longer she could last…
...
Until the world somehow finally came flooding back.
It was another shock, but she welcomed it gladly.
The audience of a newly together Tris might be startled by her somewhat violent reaction in returning to the land of the living and feeling.
Her head reeling, the statue that had been Tris abruptly came to life, chest heaving as she gasped for breath, filling her lungs to the maximum over and again the moment she was reconnected to her body with wonderful, amazing, life-giving air as her blood thundered through her veins. Not, because in that hellish gray place she had been, she had been suffocating; with no need for oxygen, there had been nothing to suffocate, but simply for the blissful chance of being able to feel again, breathe again and being able to experience that process- God it was wonderful.
But, as her breaths quietened, her recently reacquired senses began to send in their information, and she began to be reacquainted with the fact she was not alone.
Even without the blessing of vision, she could feel the cool pressure of a hand, Slate’s hand, gripping her wrist in a firm grasp for some reason. What, did the little boy want to make sure she couldn’t get away? She thought with derision. As if he could stop her. But the main focus of her attention was focused on the cold touch of metal against her forehead, her motivation clear as she looked up the long cylindrical tube at the hulking security guard who was holding a gun to her forehead. …..Oh, that was a lovely surprise to wake up too. Back in her body and back on form, a internally sarcastic Tris wondering if that why Slate was watching from the side, was he wanting to observe a real man at work? She shifted in her seat- the gun’s barrel was pressed more firmly against the thin layer of skin and bone between her brain and a potential bullet. Okay, so it seemed the guard ment business. Tris’s hand twitched. She longed to blow Slate and his big friend up in a storm of pink mist. She needed to hurt the boy. Her imprint ravaged mind craving pain for Hunter’s usurper and anybody who was working with him. ……but with the gun that close to her cerebral cortex, the question became, was she that good, that fast, that she could blast them before Mister Hulk looming over her could pull the trigger? Normally she would say yes…..but now? After the place she’d just been? Knowing who had sent her, but not how…..she was, for the first time in months, doubting herself.
No, she fooled herself, not doubting, just being cautious, just waiting till the right moment to take back the upper hand. She would be smart about this.
It was this doubt slash caution that allowed Slate the attention he required.
"Miss Evans," “…….I loath you.” Tris hissed the interruption, the venom in her voice clear as she glared at him from the corner of her eye. …...okay, okay, interruptions were not smart, showing her true feelings was not smart at this point, but still, Tris felt it needed to be said…. Smart starting from now then.
"I require permission to enter your mind. You will be alive after I am done; I am sure we can continue this discussion then. Or, you can refuse me permission. Saying 'okay' will suffice. Doing anything else might be quite unwise."
Tris was……was….she was repulsed, disgusted, appalled, and horrified by the implications of what Slate just told her. Apparently Slate was a psychic or hyno mutant of some sort, and Slate wanted in on Tris’s mind. Though it was pretty hard to tell the different between the imprint and Tris’s original mind self right now, they were both in agreement about how sickened by this idea they were. It was a violation of the deepest kind, mental rape if the participant was under duress as Tris was- true Hunter had done something similar awhile ago, but that wasn’t duress and he was Hunter, Tris would trust him with her life. This was different She felt like throwing up. The gun was the only thing that kept the whitely, greenish girl from hurling all over the guard’s shiny shoes. The repellent enemy, the odious fool that was the little blue-eyed git whose very existence was an abomination, wanted her permission to get inside her head.
Not bloody likely! What the hell did he wanna do in there anyway, the sick, twisted little freak?
…But the gun was a reminder that she did have to play it smart here. She barely kept herself under control, only some of the emotion she felt flickering across her face. Tris shuddered at the idea of giving in, of saying yes to such a detestable order. ….But on the other hand, she was trying to be smart here, looking for opportunities, and if she atleast looked like she had given in, maybe Slate would slip, she sorta knew what he could do now, so maybe she would be ready for him next time. …Or maybe, with Slate traipsing down the walkways of Tris’s private thoughts, she could focus on the guard alone. It could work. Tris was desperate enough to do this- she would not go back to that gray hell and she would avenge the honor of her beloved mentor no matter the cost. This plan would work- it had to.
“Fine.” She spat between her teeth. “Whatever gets your rocks off you little freak. …..Again, not smart calling the person who was the boss of the person holding a gun to your head names, but Tris didn’t seem to be able to manage politeness to the teenager that she hated with so much fiery passion. Although she knew she had to do this, she still wasn’t looking forward to it. Tris cringed back against the seat and tensed, trying to prepare herself for the unwelcome intrusion into her mind, getting ready to use the slightest opportunity to turn the odds again to her favor.
>> “Fine. Whatever gets your rocks off you little freak.”
What a charming specimen of feminine grace, Miss Evans was. The teenager stood in his battle-worn boxers with his miss-matched arms, and stared at her one more moment with cold blue eyes.
I loathe you, too, Slate said, unaware that he’d projected the thought; she would hear it, as well. Leaving little room for reply, he entered her mind.
The disorientation was immediate, but familiar. Images raced; memories of a couch turning into so much debris, and the fear of her brothers and sisters; meditating in her room; a fight in a warehouse district with a cocky elemental who hadn’t deserved such a nice bike, anyway. The memories made no difference; he would not remember them after he had left her mind, anyway. He had to push himself through them to find what he was looking for. The proper place to set the loyalty command; the very same location Hunter was so fond of. It was a good place; deep enough to make the command instinctual, but high enough that it readily influenced rational thought.
He found the place, just past an image of one of Abyss’ clones wearing something he did not care to closely scrutinize. He found the place, and found it... already occupied. Antonescu’s command sat furiously in the Kabal member’s mind, with the same strength as it sat in the minds of lower Lab employees. This... was unexpected.
...Ah. This might, perhaps, explain her desire to explode his arm. And the rest of him, for that matter. He puzzled over it for a moment. He could change it, as he had changed so many others; simply switch that fanatical loyalty so that it targeted himself, and not Antonescu. What would that do to the woman’s mind, however? The command was meant for subtlety. What would a switch from this current rage to complete obedience do to her? She seemed unstable enough already. And if the other Kabal members learned that he was forcing mutants to do his will? Humans were one thing; most mutants acknowledged that point. But mutants, and members of his own team? That would hit rather close to home, for all of them. He could not allow such a thing to be discovered.
The barrier he had encased her in, moments before, had been a first attempt. He had never done it to someone other than Calley. Now, he attempted something else that was entirely new to him: with delicate precision, he attempted to encase only that foreign element of her mind into the gray world. When he was done, he pulled back out. It had taken bare seconds to do, all said, but there was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. There had been altogether too many ‘firsts’ in the past half hour. He had mentioned that she had blown off his arm, had he not?
...Baby blue eyes did their best not to frown at the woman whose arm he still gripped. He most certainly did not order the guard to stand down. But, perhaps, she deserved a fresh start to this conversation in light of recent discoveries.
He started with this: “Are you aware that your loyalty to Hunter Antonescu was something he forced into your mind?” It was, perhaps, a more irritable question that she deserved. She had, however, exploded his arm.
Still cringing back as far as the chair at her back and gun at her head would allow, the last thing the flinching red head heard before Slate started mining her brain was as unexpected as it was unnerving.
I loathe you, too…
Slates voice arrived in her head, not even via the ears as was the normal process, but arriving directly in her mind via the express lane so to speak.
Charming message too, and especially not comforting coming for the guy who was about to dig into her memories. Considering their relationship to date, Tris wouldn’t put it past the admittedly powerful looking psychic to ‘accidentally’ erase her memories and personality, thereby erasing one potentially costly problem with very limited effort. Despite herself, Tris couldn’t help but wonder if she was gonna ‘wake up’ from this procedure at all?….
…
Apparently oblivion was not on the menu today, as Tris’s memories and personality continued to exist… -She still felt like herself atleast.
Despite her hyperawareness and readiness to jump into desperate, revenge seeking, life saving (hers, not theirs) action the moment she was able, it was only a matter of seconds before Slate was back to talking to her again, apparently having done what he had desired to do, with only a slightly sweaty forehead to prove any effort at all. Tris had missed her chance for escape; she hadn’t even felt a thing.
….She blinked. But she was being to feel something now. ….Tris blinked again. For a certain blissful moment, Tris felt she might have escaped Slate’s mental mind probe relatively unscathed (apart from some acute humiliation), but now she was feeling feelings that weren’t very pleasant. She was beginning to feel weirdly empty and even lost, like all the drive and passion she was known for was slowly seeping from her mind, and she couldn’t seem to stop it. It was indeed strange, like nothing she’d ever felt before, but if pressed, Tris might have described the emotion being similar to waking up from the most wonderful dream, knowing you had a story and a purpose that had been amazing, but not quite being able to remember what that purpose was.
Slate’s irritated monotone voice again addressed her attention, the contents taking a rather surprising turn.
“Are you aware that your loyalty to Hunter Antonescu was something he forced into your mind?”
Tris blinked again, shaking her head slightly to try (but with limited avail) to clear the muzzy feeling clogging up her noggin. She was then heard to mutter one of her more eloquent phrases that day;
“I…..ummmm……no way……he wouldn't.... Wait, what? And what, what did you do to me?” Her words unsure and scattered.
((OOC: Color doesn't want to work for me and my computer right now, will fix it up later))
((ooc: Nice post, Tris. <3 your description of the sudden lack of Hunter-commands.))
>> “I…..ummmm……no way……he wouldn't.... Wait, what? And what, what did you do to me?”
Unintentionally impacted her intelligence, apparently. Slate used his spare arm—no pun intended—to rub a bead of sweat away from his eye.
“I put you back in control of your own mind,” the teenager deadpanned. “By all means, thank me later. For now: there is still the matter of your employment. Will you work for me?”
There was still the matter of the gun to her head, as well, but that was hardly up for discussion.
Slate's vague and bland words didn't leave Tris's muzzy mind feeling that well informed.
"I was always in charge on my own mind, thank you very much." Denied the snappish and fuzzy headed red hair vixen, the reply a reflex, a hope that Slate didn't know what he was talking about.
Tris's thoughts were scattering to the four corners of her mind, refusing to come togeather with much coherency to deal with the situation at hand- perhaps because a baser instinct was subtly broadcasting that hint that when they did come togeather and to deal with the consequences of today's fascinating meeting, things were going to be bad. Yep, not dealing was so much easier. ... Still, the sight of Slate's illuminated hand wiping the sweat from his brow had set a hollow, anxious feeling in Tris's stomach for reasons she was so not yet ready to face, so she tried valiantly to ignore the discomfort.
The teenager continued his deadpanned zombie audition voice; “By all means, thank me later. For now: there is still the matter of your employment. Will you work for me?”
A low strangled squawk escaped from the red heads lips that sounded like a half escaped laugh being swallowed back into the throat before it could fully get out into the open air. "Do I have a choice?" Was Tris's daring counter question, survival instincts lending the sentence the coherence Tris craved. Her daring remark was immediately understood as a remark directed at the pink elephant in the room so to speak, as she nodded to the metallic barrel inches from her delicate forehead.
Ordinarily, the answer would be ‘yes’. For example, it had been ‘yes’ when she’d first walked into this room, a small eternity ago. It had been ‘yes’ even after she’d destroyed his table. Chairs. His potted plant. The structural integrity of the room.
She had crossed a line, however, when she had blown off his shirt. And, also, his left arm.
“I suggest you make your decision quickly, Ms. Evans,” the Kabal’s largely clothesless Leader advised. It was still more of a choice than Hunter had given her.
“I suggest you make your decision quickly, Ms. Evans,”
Tris had asked if she had a choice but Slate hadn't answered her question, merely pushing her towards a final answer. It didn't matter though, Slate didn't have to point out the perfectly obvious truth of the situation, which was she did have a kind of choice- as insufferable as Slate seemed to be, taking orders from the annoying child was still mildly preferable to a bullet or three in the cerebral cortex. Still, in Tris's muddled, off balance brain pan, despite the gun to her forehead, that didn't mean she had to be gracious about that fact.
In tones of extreme and icily polite sarcasm, her eyes narrowed with contempt, Tris voiced a small amount of her considerable opinion on the subject even as she accepted the inevitable; "Well sure thing Mister Slate sir, after having seen your amazing negotiating skills in action today, I'm dead set against turning down so stable a job opportunity. I'm sure we will have a long and loyal relationship after this slightly rough start- maybe even come to be BFF's. And now that's over with and we're all friends here, could you tell your expert marksman to aim his weapon in a slightly less life threatening direction? Anyone would think he didn't like me."
Facial. Twitch. There was a small headache starting at the back of his mind; at the front was the overwhelming desire to shower, acquire non-demolished clothing, and nap. Preferably under several layers of blankets, with the lights turned out, and orders not to bother him.
Unfortunately, here sat Ms. Evans, still letting her mouth hang open. She should be more careful of that: he was fairly certain that those sounds coming out were her intelligence escaping.
“Mr. Carlson,” Slate said, cold blue eyes on the woman, “you may lower your weapon.”
By all means, feel free to shoot her if she acts up again.
“Yes, Sir.” The guard said, taking his gun away from her head. It didn’t go ‘away’ very far.