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.
Sonya/Teresa isn’t at all sure how long she spent in Calley’s shower, washing off the blood and other stuff. It had been tricky sneaking into the apartment without anybody seeing her, but easier than sneaking into a hotel room would have been… and the last thing she wanted was to hang around the Labs after that fiasco of an extraction operation… so it was the best alternative she had.
It had almost surprised her how easily her bodysuit came clean… though really, nothing about that garment surprised her anymore. Not even the way bullet-holes in it knitted themselves shut. Still, she had no desire to put the damned thing back on afterwards, so she left it to drip-dry in the shower while she got down to the important business of drinking heavily to forget the events of the day.
There isn’t a scar. There’s no evidence at all that she was shot. She isn’t even sore where the bullet ripped through her chest. That feels wrong, somehow… like she’s been cheated. There ought to be some sort of sign, she thinks vaguely. But there isn’t, so the next best thing is for her to make the memory go away, too.
Which is why, as the sun rises over Central Park, Sonya is sitting a little uncertainly, at the kitchen table, wearing a bathrobe she bought a few weeks ago, eating salami and gherkins, and approximately a third of the way through a fifth of vodka she’d bought yesterday. When she’d bought it, she’d had some vague plan in mind of getting Calley drunk one of these evenings and seeing if she could pull any information out of him about what he’s been up to at the Labs… but right now, she has a much better use for it.
My nose hurts. Calley sniffled, as they slid the key into the doorknob.
No, it does not.
But it should. He pushed the door open with his back, and came inside, carrying an empty twenty gallon fish tank with a bag of brightly colored gravel inside. He kicked the door closed behind him. His big plan for the day: buy a goldfish. Calley was going to learn to swim or sink to the bottom and flop uselessly around trying. Incidentally, he was going to learn if the collar was water proof at around the same time. He might or might not explode his fish tank, the apartment, and a significant portion of this building while he figured that out.
No, it should not. Our nose is perfectly healed.
Calley sniffed again, and set the fish tank onto the counter. There was a bubbler inside of the tank, too. He wasn’t sure if he should use the bubbler. He had visions of swirling around the tank at the mercy of a heartless bubble flow in his head...
“Hey, Teresa,” he said simply. She was sitting at the table. He honestly didn’t care that she was sitting at the table. He wasn’t sure that he cared whether he exploded or not, or drowned or not, or starved to death or not, either. What sounded really fun right now: going up to Hunter, smiling, and taking off this stupid necklace right next to the man. Let’s see Speedy McViolence out-run or out-hit that.
Since Calley thought he might regret dying in the morning, and since he didn't actually know where Hunter was lately, he’d decided that learning to swim was the lesser of two evils. Two big, looming evils. Oh, and for the record: trying to switch out your internal olfactory organs with a housecats’ hurt, and kept hurting, no matter what Slate said.
...Was that a third-empty bottle of vodka? Calley backed up from the counter and the fish tank, and looked at Teresa. Really looked.
I believe it is two-thirds full.[/color]
“Umm... is that a jar of gherkins and a bathrobe, or are you just happy to see me?” He rather lamely asked, with a blink. Not that he was opposed to having naked, drunken women in his apartment, eating salami... but... this was rather out of character for Teresa. Had she finally found the dissected remains of that Blackberry she’d given Slate for Christmas? Slate had found putting it back together far more ‘intriguing’ than taking it apart. Calley stood awkwardly in the kitchen, fairly certain that he should attempt to figure out what was wrong and console her, and having a slight panic attack at the idea of doing it. That socially skilled, he was not.
> “Umm... is that a jar of gherkins and a bathrobe, or are you just happy to see me?”
“Calley!” Sonya/Teresa actually squeals when she notices him, which only happens after he speaks to her, she not having bothered to turn around when the door opened. “Welcome home!” She stands up carefully, pleased to note that she doesn’t actually fall over. “Yeah! Gherkins! Bathrobe! And happy t’see you.” Which was true. The apartment was a lot more fun with other people in it.
“Can’t give you the bathrobe… but you can have a gherkin!” She turns back to the table, picking up a gherkin, and tries to pick up the vodka bottle as well, before realizing she hasn’t put it down. Which, after a moment’s careful thought, she decides is OK. “See? A gherkin for you!” she adds, waving it vaguely in his general direction. “And vodka! I’m gonna get you drunk and then tell you all my secrets! No… wait. That’s not right. I’m gonna tell you all your secrets!”
She actually makes it most of the way to him, gherkin and bottle in hands, before she notices the fishbowl. She has to stare at it for a while before convincing herself that she’s not imagining it, but ultimately convinces herself at least well enough to seek verification.
“That…” she points in the general direction of the offending fishbowl with the gherkin in her fingers, somewhat uncertain. “That looks like a fishbowl. Except without no fish.” She looks at him skeptically and adds “That’s stupid.”
Calley had to admit, he was a little hurt by her appraisal of his fish tank. “Well, it’s just... hard to carry fishbowl and fish, and I was going to go shopping later, and...” He took the gherkin she kept waving around out of her hand, and used it to point accusingly at her. “And you’re drunk! And... it’s not a fishbowl, it’s a fish tank. Fishbowls are... smaller. This is like the Prince of Fishbowls.” He used the gherkin to gesture unconvincingly at his empty tank. Fish tanks were expensive. And he’d gotten the most expensive one he could find, on the combined theories that the more expensive something is, the higher quality it is, and if he was going to be swimming around as a goldfish, he’d like to be quality swimming. Around. As a goldfish. Yeah...
“Drunks don’t get to comment about the fish—! Umm,” He took a contemplative bite of the gherkin, tilting his head, with a little eyebrow-scrunching-together action over his baby blue eyes. “So, what secrets would those be? The ones you were definitely getting drunk to tell me about.”
Calley was quite up for taking advantage of loose drunk women. Information-gatheringly speaking, of course. Besides, she’d just as good as almost-said that she’d been planning to get him drunk and take advantage of him. ...Also information-gatheringly speaking.
Calley took this moment to feel a little violated.
> “Well, it’s just... hard to carry fishbowl and fish, and I was going to go shopping later, and...”
Sonya/Teresa waves away Calley’s explanation with a suddenly-no-longer-gherkin-bearing hand, which she glares at suspiciously for a moment before making the connection to Calley’s suddenly-gherkin-bearing hand. He stole my gherkin! she thinks, outraged, and is about to explain to Calley the error of his gherkin-stealing ways before she reminds herself that she’d said he could have one. Oh yeah. Forgot.
> “And you’re drunk! And... it’s not a fishbowl, it’s a fish tank. Fishbowls are... smaller. This is like the Prince of Fishbowls.”
Sonya frowns skeptically at the fish-thing, then nods.
" You’re right. Fishbowls are bowl-shaped. That’s a fish-cube. Or… hm. Not cube. Um… whatcha call it when it’s like a cube, except not all the sides are the same size? " Rectangular parallelepiped, floats an answer from the back of her mind, and also Cuboid and Brick. She has absolutely no idea what the first two even mean, so she dismisses them.
"Right, it’s a fish-brick!" she adds triumphantly.
> “So, what secrets would those be? The ones you were definitely getting drunk to tell me about.”
Sonya leans forward fascinated as Calley’s eyebrows scrunch together, and carefully reaches out with her non-vodka-bottle-holding hand to pinch them closer together.
" You… " she replies distractedly, "…are awfully cute for a scrawny-ass white boy."
“It’s not a fish-brick! It’s—” There was a hand coming towards his face. “It’s... what are you...?” There was a hand doing something to his eyebrows. He wasn’t quite sure what. He stood quite still, and smiled uncertainly while Teresa... Teresaed his eyebrows. With her fingers. While her vodka bottle watched.
" You… are awfully cute for a scrawny-ass white boy."
“Umm, thank you for your kind and considerate opinion, ma’am?” He volunteered, taking a very small, hardly noticeable, don’t-want-to-attract-the-T-Rex’s-attention step back towards the counter. There wasn’t much fleeing room in that direction. “Umm, would asking what’s going on help, or would it just lead to more poking of my face? Err, you’re very pretty for a girl who buys me stuffed tigers and, ah, does things to my eyebrows when she gets tipsy-drunk.”
Sonya/Teresa giggles at the expression on Calley’s face as he kinda-sorta backs away… or, well, tries to.
> “Umm, would asking what’s going on help, or would it just lead to > more poking of my face? Err, you’re very pretty for a girl who > buys me stuffed tigers and, ah, does things to my eyebrows when > she gets tipsy-drunk.”
"I am pretty! And drunk! Both! And: nope, wouldn’t help. Might not poke your face, though." She leans forward to poke Calley in the chest and adds "But I’ll tell you what’s going on, my fine frolicsome furred furtively feline friend…" she stops at that and smiles proudly, impressed that all those words came out correctly, before continuing "what’s going on is I’m not dead! And neither are you! That deserves a celebration!"
She pokes Calley in the chest again to emphasize that he’s the specific not-dead “you” to which she’s referring, then reaches over his head to get a coffee cup from a shelf, into which she pours a couple of inches of vodka from the bottle, which she attempts to hand to Calley before realizing his hands are still full.
"Will you put down that silly fish-brick-without-any-fish-in-it? You’re not dead!"
Chest poke. Calley felt the small of his back exchange evening pleasantries with the counter edge as he tried to lean as far away from chest poking as possible. Then came the alliteration. The drunken alliteration. It was like watching a verbal car skid across an icy street and just barely miss hitting that enunciated school bus of screaming children. She got all of the words out. But it was this close.
Calley smiled.
"What’s going on is I’m not dead! And neither are you! That deserves a celebration!"
Calley smiled some more.
chest poke!
And yet more. With the smiling, that is.
"Will you put down that silly fish-brick-without-any-fish-in-it? You’re not dead!"
“No... no, I’m not. Umm, and yeah... neither are you!” He tried to sound enthusiastic about it. He even set down the fish tank on the counter, and accepted the cup she was flailing around.
Pleasant day isn’t it, Sharp Counter Edge grinding in-between my vertebra?
Oh, quite!
...Calley. Please do not narrate the conversation between your back and the counter. I am trying to refine our olfactory shifting process.
“Umm,” Calley tried scooting a little to the right, and further into the kitchen, in a very experimental manner. “So. That not-dying. How’s that treating you? Did you, err, take your healing for a test-drive earlier, or something?”
> “Umm, So. That not-dying. How’s that treating you? > Did you, err, take your healing for a test-drive earlier, or something?”
Sonya nods emphatically, walking into the living-room with her bottle. "I did! Someone shot me in the chest!" She seems oddly cheery about it. "Right in the chest! BLAM! And there’s Teresa, lying on the ground. Is dead. Very sad. Did you know you really do see your life flash before your eyes when you die? I always thought that was a stupid myth, because really, how would you know? But it’s true. I got better! Not dead. Ta-daa! Not even a scar. See?"
She turns back toward the kitchen and opens her bathrobe to show Calley where the scar isn’t, then closes her robe quickly. "Oops. Not supposed to show my boobies. Anyway, the point is, there was blood EVERYWHERE! Mine, I mean. The kid’s, too, and the father’s, but that came later."
After a moment, she adds in a conspiratorial whisper, " I didn’t do that part. But even the dead guys bleed so much. Well, the father did. And the kid. Except he wasn’t dead. But the other dead guys, they didn’t bleed so much." She turns back around to the living room, a little too quickly for her inebriated condition, which she demonstrates by her tripping over her own feet.
It takes a little under a second for her body to cover most of the distance to the carpeted floor, and a little less than that for her to roll, smoothly and instinctively, to her feet. She’s still holding the vodka bottle, which somehow has not spilled a drop during this process, and appears completely unaware of anything odd in that maneuver.
Calley watched Teresa’s drunken one-woman one-bathrobe less-than-one-bottle parade into his living room, only turning his head. The rest of him stayed nice and secure next to the counter. “Umm, if I may ask, who shot—”
Boobies!
“—hurk.”
"Oops. Not supposed to show my boobies. Anyway, the point is, there was boobies EVERYWHERE! Mine, I mean. The kid’s, too, and the father’s, but that came later. Blah blah. Blah blah blah! Burn bathrobes!”
Slate...
...Please do not bother me.
...Slate, I think she broke me.
...
As Teresa fell, he had to admit, his startled rush forward wasn’t so much concerned as... hopeful. Bathrobes. Heh! Truly great and noble inventions. “Are you—?”
Ninja roll! "Oops!"
Calley felt like he’d been splashed in the face with a bowl of ice water. He stopped his rush forward at the edge where kitchen tiling met living room carpet. Teresa had moved a lot like Hunter had moved, that time he’d tried to show Calley how to fall properly. Except with a slight bit less intent. He swallowed convulsively. Then he asked a question that he’d been ignoring for quite some time now: “Umm, Teresa, why are you still staying here? I mean, it’s not that I mind, it’s just...” You just pulled a crazy stealth ninja move and you’re scary now and Syn has boobies too, so they can work for the Dark Side of the Force, and... “You don’t seem really hard-pressed for cash, anymore. You’re buying groceries... and Blackberries... and... and...” And pulling crazy I-have-training-I-haven’t-mentioned moves while under the influence of vodka. I think. Maybe you’re not. That’d be a head trip. The thought that she could be a fellow spy brightened him up considerably for a moment, before the thought that she might be a crazy ninja vodka bathrobe assassin crashed him right back down. Calley was standing very still. He’d found it to be a wise thing to do, when he had no clue what he was dealing with.
> “Umm, Sonya, why are you still staying here? I mean, it’s not that I mind, > it’s just... you don’t seem really hard-pressed for cash, anymore. You’re > buying groceries... and Blackberries... and... and...”
Sonya blinks at the question, feeling a little hurt. "I... I guess, I just... you invited me, and it's a great apartment, and you're fun... but, you're right, I'm doing OK on cash." She sits down quickly, feeling suddenly a lot less celebratory than she had mere seconds earlier. "I can afford a hotel, or I could stay at the Labs... I'm kinda recruiting for the Resistance now, I guess you could say. Not very good at it, though, I mean what with the angry dope dealers... even the flowers got mad at me. Rescued the kid, though! Anyway, they still pay me."
She knows she's babbling, and she knows it's because she doesn't want to deal with the implications of Calley's question, or of the way he's looking at her. "I even did a training exercise with them. Some of them. Kaz an' Hades an' all of them. It was kinda fun... like, I dunno, Hide and Seek in Disneyworld, or something." She listens to herself with a certain amount of disgust... it's like she's trying to justify her own existence, or something. Pathetic.
Why's he looking at me like that? Maybe she's just being paranoid, she thinks. Don't be stupid. You've obviously overstayed your welcome, and this little drunken episode of yours is the straw that broke the camels back.
"Anyway... sorry. I mean, I can find somewhere else, get out of your hair." She carefully levers herself up to her feet and pads carefully toward the bathroom door. "Just lemme get changed, and I'll go."
Calley skittered for a bathroom door interception, sliding himself rather neatly between her and her target. “Umm, no! No, no, not what I meant. It’s just, umm, well, you just mentioned buying vodka to get me drunk and drag out my secrets, or something, and I didn’t know you knew martial artsie stuff, and most nice normal Resistance members haven’t gotten fatally shot recently, and, and—drug dealers?—and... ah...
“I mean, you’re really pretty and you’re fun to have around and you buy good food so that it’s like it mysteriously appears in the refrigerator while I’m gone which is so cool, not to mention the stuffed tiger and you smell good, but...
“I guess I was asking, is there a reason you’re still staying here? Like, you-have-an-evil-agenda or something?” Calley had just voluntarily put himself between an exitless door and a potential evil-agenda vodka-ninja. This fact caught up to him as his little improvised speech wound down. The result: Calley felt that now was an excellent time to freeze in place again.
(( OOC: Oh, dear… we’ve gotten all tangled up in Sonya’s names again. Sonya was referring to herself in the third person (as “Teresa”, of course) for the cuteness factor. Ignoring that whole mess and plunging on… ))
Sonya/Teresa stops short as Calley intercepts her, and listens carefully to his explanation. She’s a little puzzled by some of it… martial-artsy stuff? smell good?… but the rest of it is coherent enough.
The proper thing to do, of course, would be to sit down and discuss the matter sensibly... so of course, in her current highly improper state, that’s precisely what she doesn’t do.
"Aaaaaah… I see." She nods cheerfully. "Yup… full of evil agendas, that’s me! If I ever have to pick a goofy nickname like those guys at the Labs, I’d pick “Evil Agenda Girl”. But I can’t tell you them, ‘cuz they’re secrets. (giggle) Like how I’m really from Alpha Centauri on a mission to observe Earthlings, and (snort) havta drag you up to my spaceship so we can investigate you with, y’know, (giggle) anal probes and putting chips in your neck an’ all that stuff… can’t tell you about that. But don’t worry, you won’t (sporfle) remember a thing…"
At about this point, the expression on Calley’s face gets through to her somewhat muddled consciousness, and she can no longer keep from bursting out laughing. She sits down on most of a chair until she can get her breathing back under control and gasps out "Jesus, Calley! Kidding! Far as I know I’m an Earthling." It’s not quite as convincing as it could be, as the memory of something not-quite-human-looking lying in an alley filters its way through her habitual attempts not to think about it, and she hurries on.
"OK. Seriously…" though she can’t help but giggle, anyway, as she puts a single finger up. "Drug dealers. Twins. Mutants. Control plants. Tried to recruit ‘em for the Resistance. They got mad at me. Dunno why. Plants got mad at me, too." She puts up a second finger. "Shot at. Bodyguards. Mutant kid, his Dad landed him in Intensive Care, came back to finish the job. I stopped ‘em. Well, I had help. But got shot. That sucked. Threw up after. Rescued the kid, though. He's at the Labs now." She puts up a third finger, but is now having trouble remembering exactly what Calley said.
"Oh! Right. Vodka. Secrets. Yeah. You’re full of ‘em. What’s your last name? What kind of red-blooded American boy invites a pretty girl to sleep in his bed and then sleeps on the floor for TWO WHOLE MONTHS without making a move? Are you still dating Isabel and howcum you never talk about her? Howcum there’s two of you in there and why is Slate such a nimrod sometimes? Howcum you never get any mail? Who made that funky shape-shifting necklacy thing? " She realizes she’s shouting, and stops, and realizes she hasn’t actually stopped for breath during her whole rambling rant, and takes a deep breath which triggers a coughing fit, from which she recovers.
She looks a little uncertainly at her hands, and finally puts up five fingers. "Martial artsie! That’s fun to say! Right. Ya got me there, Calley; it’s such a good secret I don’t even know how I learned t’fight like that. Maybe the martial arts fairies came to visit. It comes and goes, though. I actually fought one of those bodyguard goons! Like, like, Bruce Lee or something! Course, then the other one shot me. You ever died, Calley? It’s no fun. All kinds of stuff y’can’t do anymore. And stuff y’regret not having done. Oh! That reminds me…" she attempts to put up a sixth finger, but the vodka bottle is in the other hand. After a moment she decides that she can count vodka bottles too. "Decided while I was dead that virginity sucks! So I'm gonna get rid of it. Wanna help?"
There was the Earthling rant and the drug dealer explanation. Just when he thought she couldn’t make his facial expressions do anything more interesting, she got to the best part: “Oh! Right. Vodka. Secrets. Yeah. You’re full of ‘em.” He actually tried to answer her questions as they came. About half-way through, he realized that was probably sounding as stupid as he thought it sounded.
“What’s your last name?”
“What’s yours?”
“What kind of red-blooded American boy invites a pretty girl to sleep in his bed and then sleeps on the floor for TWO WHOLE MONTHS without making a move?”
“Err, the gentlemanly kind that sleeps as a tiger and isn’t into bestiality...?”
“Are you still dating Isabel and howcum you never talk about her?”
“Yes, I guess, after a manner of speaking, and, ah—”
“Howcum there’s two of you in there and why is Slate such a nimrod sometimes?”
“I suggest asking him—”
“Howcum you never get any mail?”
“I do. I just eat it, so you never see it.”
“Who made that funky shape-shifting necklacy thing?”
“Why are you shouting?” And then she was coughing, and Calley was left standing next to the bathroom door, smiling his usual habitual smile as she straightened up and started counting on her fingers.
"...Decided while I was dead that virginity sucks! So I'm gonna get rid of it. Wanna help?"
His eyes flicked to the left, to the right, then back to Teresa. His little smile remained fixed in place. Now that was a trick question, if he’d ever heard one. Women liked those. On the off-chance she really had just propositioned him (and the boobie flashing seemed to support this, though the mention of anal probes was a pretty strong counter against it), he straightened up a little and declared with bold and manly hesitance: “Err... yes?” The cup of vodka was still in his hand. He thought this was an excellent cue to up-end it down his throat.
The Q&A shouting match was actually kind of fun, Sonya decides, though she wasn’t quite quick enough to keep it going back and forth while coming up with more questions. So she catches up at the end.
" Willingscote! Either that or you’re gay! Right, that’s what I thought! Hey Slate, howcum there’s two of you in there and why are you such a nimrod sometimes? Why do you eat your mail, and besides I don’t believe you, and I’m NOT shouting!!! " She laughs at that and adds "Well, OK, yeah I am. ‘cuz I’m drunk! Besides which, I’m mad ‘cuz you think I’m an evil agender. I mean agendress. Agenderix? Anyway that wasn’t nice to say."
> “Err... yes?”
"Cool. So what is your last name, anyway? And, seriously – why no mail?"