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.
She closed her eyes and closed the door softly behind her and let her head fall against it, forehead first. The food smelled wonderful. And she wasn't sure if she should feel guilty or not. Lori got creative with her mental cursing.
She couldn't tell him that she spent the cash paying rent on the trailer she no longer called home.
So she didn't say anything at first. She stopped to scratch Flipsy while her brain worked in overdrive.
"I'm going to replace it. Soon as I get my next paycheck."
Flipsy understood. The little fluffball licked her hand.
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Dec 24, 2011 21:21:05 GMT -6
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“I didn’t ask when you were going to replace it,” the cop said, softly. “I asked, what did you do with it?”
He got up, and joined her by the door. Stood close. Joined in her petting the damn poodle, so his face would be right next to hers.
“You give it to that father of yours?” He asked. “Did daddy need a new bottle of liquor? Some more cheap purses to hawk on the streets?” Flipsy was in puppy heaven: she flopped on her belly and squiggled around, feet kicking and jaws open. Rupert didn’t look at the dog. He looked at Lori, and held her eyes with his.
If he thought she would just roll over and take it like Flispy was, he was so wrong.
"It doesn't matter where your money went so long as it gets put back." Or at least it shouldn't have mattered. The fact that it did matter to him just made her draw her next words out like a strip tease.
"I. paid. his. rent."
What was he gonna do about it? It was already done. There was not taking it back now.
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Dec 26, 2011 10:59:11 GMT -6
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The cop’s face darkened. He grabbed her arm; grabbed it hard, to make sure he had her attention. “It damn well matters to me what my money pays for.”
She drew her words out. Each single one, like she was mocking him. Mocking him for thinking he could make her happy here; like he could give her what she needed, what her daddy couldn’t.
His hand moved, and he did nothing to stop it. Flipsy yelped and leapt back to her feet, looking around: it had been so loud, so close. The puppy had never heard a sound like that before.
“If you need a man to hit you, Lori, I can do it just as well as your daddy.”
As soon as he had left in his self-righteous huff, she put Rupert's pillow in the poodle's crate and did not take Flipsy out for one last bathroom break.
And of course, it rained. When times were tough, it rained without fail. Like when she was hauling her luggage in and out of their his apartment building. The stairs were indoors but the building was one of those newer old ones. Not old enough to sport a gothic gargoyle spillway, not new enough to warrant a gutter.
Every trip out the front door was a trip through a power wash.
By the time she got to Jess' the thunder started. Another hallmark of just how fantastic today was going. She left a final love note for Rupert on the bathroom mirror in the shade of lipstick he had liked best: "SCREW YOU."
After three years, she had come to expect something different from Rupert. They had some serious ups and downs. They'd broken up and made up. They'd broken each other, but somehow before this, the pieces had always fit back together.
This— this was somehow different.
He hit her and it broke something deep down inside. Maybe because this time, he hadn't stopped. Her eye, her arms, her lip, her back, her throat, pretty much everything hurt. He made it sound like her fault. She had never shouted so much in her life.
Her dad didn't mean it. Rupert had. Rupert always did.
That's why she decided from this point on, nobody was ever going to hit her again. Maybe she would buy a gun. Or date a bodyguard. Yeah. That would really piss him off. She would find one with really big, oily muscles. A real man's man.
For the rest of the cab ride, Lori imagined her various rebounds. And then she imagined how those rebounds might break Rupert's face.
---
"Didn't you ever stop to think that there were signs? I mean, what kind of guy picks you up when you're dressed like a playboy bunny?"
"Oh and like Marcus is much better. He saw you jogging from his car, slowed down and leaned out the window to compliment your—"
"This is not about me and Marcus. It's about you and Rupert."
Since Lori was already drenched and Jess got equally soaked helping to cart Lori's crap in, it seemed logical to just walk the block and a half to get that much needed ice cream. Ice cream was exactly what was called for at the end of a long and rocky relationship that ended in hard feelings. It would help Lori feel better about everything. But not as good as stealing his favorite shirt had felt.
They carried an umbrella out of habit. Their clothes were beyond help, but the ice cream wouldn't be any good watered down.
"We're not getting back together this time. No amount of puppies or apartment keys or diamonds will change my mind."
"He bought you a diamond?"
"No! But if he is gonna step up the apology level each time he screws up, this time he would have to propose. I'm not ever getting married. Especially not to him."
"I. Don't. Knoo~ooow."
"Who's side are you on?"
She was entirely too angry to be having this conversation right now. They settled on Rocky Road ice cream for the appropriateness. Jess carried the bag, Lori the umbrella. Clearly, this was a fight they weren't going to settle tonight.
---
It happened so fast. And everything was so bright.
She thought for a moment that she was dead. When her vision came back, she realized that she was shaking. Her hands just wouldn’t hold still no matter how she tried. When that much electricity hits a body, it does weird stuff.
She didn’t expect it to do this.
In fact, she wasn’t even entirely sure what this was.
Lori had never been struck by lightning before, but she was pretty sure that other lightning strike survivors didn’t usually come out more… aware. She was suddenly very aware of metallic objects, particularly the umbrella held in her shaky hand. All the lightning left was the metal skeleton and she could feel it. She could feel that it was better somehow. And also, what made it better was slipping.
She frowned and the movement felt very slow and deliberate. It was then that she became aware of the person speaking to her.
“...ear me? Lori. Lori!” Jessica, a classmate, was shaking her by the shoulders. Oh. That explained why she couldn't hold her hands still. It seemed to take the blonde's eyes a very long time to change focus from the object in her hand to her friend’s face.
“Jesus!” Jess brought her hands back and to her mouth before brushing the damp hair out of her eyes. “What happened? I mean, are you okay?”
Lori tried to speak, but it didn’t come out like words the first time. She cleared her throat and tried again. “...an’t believe it.”
Did this mean... she didn't want it to mean that she was... but she wasn't. People as old as her didn't... did they?
Time was catching up with her now. She could feel the fat, wet droplets and… her cell phone… and now that she thought about it she could feel the car keys in her bag, Jessica’s cell, a round metal tin container in her purse, both Jess’ earrings, pipes beneath the wet grass, the soccer goal some yards away…
Jess snapped in front of Lori's face and the blonde stopped confirming her worst fears. "Ice cream's melting and do you need, like, a hospital or something?"
Lori needed a lot of things. A hospital was not one of them. She glanced at Jess and then up at the sky. She didn’t even have to fake the worried tone in her voice, “This is... bizarre. Let’s get out of here.”
She dropped the umbrella skeleton on the damp grass and the metal frame skittered along behind the pair until it lost its magnetic charge.
---
"I think she needs help but she's not going to admit it."
Lori wanted to shut Jess up, but she was busy. She was busy trying to relax. Every muscle had seized up, she couldn't even unclench her teeth. Jess had helped her pour hydrogen peroxide over the burn on the palm that had been holding the umbrella and put band-aids on her Rupert-caused owies. She was perfectly fine... except that she wasn't.
She'd taken a seat in front of the TV. The lightning continued and every strike made her tense up. The lights flickered all the while. She couldn't even remember the name of the chick flick playing in front of her.
Jess made the call. Not to the hospital, to her ex-boyfriend.
The blonde felt feverish and half crazy: empowered, like she'd watched a chick flick and cried and shouted and punched things. And yet somehow, she felt broken even worse than before. She'd really done it this time. There was no going back to Rupert. There might not be any going back to anywhere.
"No, it sizzled the umbrella right out of her hand. She's been weird ever since. Twitchy. And now she's— look, are you coming over or not?"
It had better be not. Lori did not want Rupert here. Not now. He might try make this better. This was not okay. Jess needed to shut up. Jess needed to shut up now.
"Geez, the lights just flickered again. I'd better go before the power goes down. Just. Think about it, okay?"
'There's nothing to think about.' That's what she imagined him saying. That's what she deserved now that she was...
She didn't want to even think it.
But she couldn't escape the word forever.
Mutant.
She, Lori Faust, was a mutant.
It started as a giggle, a little bubble of sound, and evolved into rolling laughter. The lights burned brighter before the breaker popped and all the lights in the building went out.
---
It wasn't so bad, really. Well, she hadn't quite figured out the washing hands and taking a shower bit, but beyond the stink... maybe Rupert had been right. Maybe mutants weren't the threat she had always perceived them to be. Maybe they, like her, just had a mutation that was hard to handle.
She'd skipped classes the first week. Until Lori figured out a way to keep stray strands of electricity from jumping around in a visible way, she stayed well out of human contact, locked in the spare bedroom that used to be Jessica's.
"It's not that bad, sweety. I promise. There are other fish in the sea."
Jessica still had no clue. Lori didn't want her to. She didn't want anyone to know. She had to get her sh** together. Her life was over. She had to figure out what to do about it.
Well, the first step was to go to class. She had eventually. The homework was piling up and the excuses were falling on teacher's ears that grew more callused with each explanation. She started by going to class. In and out without talking to anyone. She couldn't let her grades slip. That was all she had left.
The next step was to beg forgiveness at work. She covered anytime anyone wanted off and tried her damnedest not to spill a single drop. Liquids still made her break out into little lightning strikes. A couple double shifts and a few fat paychecks later, she had her grades and her work.
She moved out. Got her own place. It was easier to hide that way. Easier to bathe too. The better groomed she was, the better her tips were at work.
It all felt just a little bit empty.
Three years, all over a little misunderstanding. The bruises had faded. She could forgive that if he could forgive her... being like this...
She decided maybe it was time to check up on Rupert. Even if they weren't ever going to get back together... there wasn't anything to keep them from being friends...
---
What possessed Rupert to imitate Lori's decision to start pouring her power into the bridge? Did he think she needed his help? Did he really, honestly, think she had waited around for him after all these years? He hated her. He drove her away. He never looked for her or loved her or any of the things he'd whispered hotly against her ear when they were alone.
He didn't care.
Granted, twice the power meant twice the power… she wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth and she was determined. Bridge. Railgun. This was happening. Only now, they were going to get twice the distance.
Take that Jacobs & Jacobs Tower.
The blonde directed the power, down the length of her beam and for Rupert's down his own. When the power met in the middle… it was pure magic.
It was a lot like a bomb going off in the middle of the bridge. One moment the magnetic field was budding and growing, the next it was strong enough to not only move vehicles but to shove them with great force.
"I HATE YOU!" He probably wouldn't hear that. He maybe never had. Love and hate were separated sometimes only by the barest hairline.
There were only two ways to go. Half the bridge was cleared with cars flung toward Manhattan, the other half of the vehicles were flung back toward Brooklyn. The magnetic field had to follow the path they had created down the long lines of the bridge rails.
She had to pack the power back down not to mention the hurt and the hate and feelings he'd dredged up. She had to make sure that she would have something left of herself. Make sure that she could still stand on her own two feet.
Lori let go of her railing and wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks.
It was a monument to mutant power, an achievement, and everything she had hoped it would be. She felt both vindicated and cleansed as well as tired.
Car alarms and breaking glass sounded elsewhere in the city. Crunching, debris and screams. For now. Right here. Right now. There was only silence.
"How could you be a mutant now? After everything that happened?" Talk about your late bloomer.
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Dec 29, 2011 19:29:55 GMT -6
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"It's a little thing called 'M,' Lori. Heard of it? It really helps level the playing field."
She sounded tired; possibly in shock. Who wouldn't be, after that? She couldn't have possibly known what their powers would do—not his Lori. She wasn't afraid of flirting with the legal line, and her morals weren't always the social standard, but she wasn't—she couldn't— People didn't just become killers. That's what they'd just done, though: killed people. A lot of people. And sure, it had been... been a rush, a shock of power through his veins; but those cars didn't exactly have parachutes equipped. He just felt drained now. The stars over Manhattan and Brooklyn where already starting to be obscured; dust clouds rising from the twin impact areas. It was an accident. It had to be.
His hands clenched on the railing, without a trace of passing through; the phaser's power was out of his system. He was running entirely on Lori's genes now.
Rupert straightened up; adjusted the set of his suit coat with a practiced shrug.
"You were right, Lori. Mutants are dangerous. Someone has to put the bad ones down."
She wouldn't be one of those, now would she? Not his Lori. She was always such a fine, upstanding citizen.
God, he felt tired. Of all this mutant bull. She hated him? Join the club.
Lori's face settled somewhere between amused and horrified.
Had she heard of it? If she weren't so emotional and tired, Lori would have laughed. Rupert. On M. That was funny. She wanted to ask him why, but when she thought about it, he'd already answered her.
Revenge.
Not on her. Surely not. Lori imagined she'd been as a big a blip on his radar as he'd been on hers. He wanted to put the bad guys "down," as in, 6 feet under.
Sirens joined an off-beat doppler chorus that edged its way closer to the epicenter with every new crash discovery. There was only so much time left in the artificial silence on the bridge. The traffic must have been fantastic to keep the cars off the bridge for even this long.
"Are you here to put me down?" Her question came from a deep seated insecurity. It was about time someone did, but… Rupert? That was a low blow considering how they'd left things.
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Jan 15, 2012 13:03:24 GMT -6
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Get Well Soon. There were obnoxious yellow smiling faces and generic flower backgrounds; one with a clown that creeped him out, and one with a coffee cup and a grumpy teddy bear that didn’t. The backs were mostly silver, though one was gold. The same message was plastered over every single one.
Get Well Soon. He hadn’t been in here long enough for any of them to die, but a few were looking less perky than they had been; they didn’t need their plastic weights to keep them off the ceiling anymore. They were on that slow deflation towards death. Who the hell had thought that symbolism through? Deflating balloons were not what a guy with a lung injury wanted to stare at all day.
Get Well Soon. Besides, the damn things were blocking the TV. General Hospital was on.
“Mr. Kelley?” A nurse said, brown head peering in. When she saw he was alert enough to be wrestling with the remote, she smiled. “You have a visitor. Should I send her in?”
Should he send her in? Lori huffed and used her elbows like any self-respecting New Yorker would. As if he had a choice. "S***, Rupert you look like hell." The nurse reached after Lori, but hesitated and glanced at Rupert. Was it okay? Obviously Lori had made an impression out there and it wasn't a good one.
Her hair was stringy like she was on the verge of needing a shower or had been up for a very long time and she'd lost weight or maybe just lost muscle. She managed to look both tired, hungry, peeved and relieved all at once. Clearly, she knew a thing or two about hell and being there.
"I came as soon as I heard. Jerkwads made it clear you weren't up to having visitors." Lori shot a glare at the nurses' retreating heels and closing door and the florescent lights flickered. "I set 'em straight."
Lori produced a flask from somewhere on her person and passed to to Rupert. It had a thick covering of irreverent bumper stickers layered around the container, the most recent addition being a manically happy smile flipping the bird. "Flipsy's got enough food and water for a week, took out the trash and you were right."
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Jan 15, 2012 14:12:17 GMT -6
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Rupert tried to laugh; but that hurt; tried to talk, but that hurt, too. He gave her a smile instead, and stretched out his hand towards her.
“...Took...” He tried again at a wheezy whisper, stopping for a careful breath between words. “Took my breath away.” He grinned wider at this own lame joke. “Missed you,” he said.
She looked like crap. Scraggly hair; thinner even than she’d been when her pops was leeching off of her. But she walked the way he remembered, and she brought him booze in bed. Rupert gratefully accepted. She might look like crap, but she was his crap. And she’d come back.
He sounded like crap too. Lori supplied first her cheek to his callused hand and then the flask. Priorities. "I missed you too." Didn't he want to know why he was right? Lori didn't quite have the guts to meet his eyes yet. Instead she picked through the paper well wishes.
She had left his pillow in crapping range of Flipsy among other things. Her bruises were long gone. She'd lived on her own, well survived at least. Would he really just let her pretend nothing had happened?
"So still harboring a soft spot for mutants...?" She tried not to sound hopeful so that she wouldn't give anything away.
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Jan 15, 2012 14:17:39 GMT -6
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She’d come back. Just like he’d known she would. It had taken her longer than he’d thought—taken more days with no one in his apartment but a cookapoo he’d never even wanted, taken more nights parked outside the apartment he knew she was saying, squad car fuming, fingers tapping on the wheel before he finally lost his nerve and drove off. But she’d come back.
“Soft...?” He coughed. It was a laugh; of course it was a laugh. “...Could say that.”
He sure had a soft spot for them now, under the bandages. God, she always had such a—such a sense of humor. He smiled, to show he got the joke; let it fill up his eyes, to show her all was forgiven. He’d get better; she’d move back in. Everything would go back to the way it was. It was so hard to stay angry with her, when she came back.
She glanced over the top of one card. Lori had read the inside maybe seven times, but not made sense of a single word. When he smiled like that... she just couldn't help but smile back.
"Good 'cause I was worried you wouldn't want me anymore." She folded the card and tried to breathe through her anxiety. If she didn't keep her cool, more than just the TV behind her would go rainbow.
Posted by Rupert Kelley on Jan 15, 2012 14:21:02 GMT -6
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That had been subtle. Rupert didn’t do subtle. Subtle left him with a queasy feeling in his stomach that wasn’t just a side effect of the meds, and a feeling like he’d missed something that he didn’t want to get.
The television flickered and rolled, the pictures turned into anxious waves of color.
“What’s wrong,” Rupert managed, “with the TV?”
Bad reception. Nasty weather. Solar flare.
There were plenty of good excuses. He waited for hers.
The TV? Lori twisted in her seat and looked at it. The rainbow shifted when she did.
"That always happens." She stood and went to hit the power button. The set popped and fizzled before she actually got there. Oops? "It... I'm getter better at it." Really. She was.
Lori went to sit on his bed. The TV was done for anyway.