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 thought about what he said. A few more days? How long had she already been there?
"Wasn't really thinking about it. I haven't decided if I can even feel my legs yet." She wasn't lying, either. She hadn't bothered trying to move yet and whatever painkiller they had her on was working wonderfully. She was sure if she tried to get up and run she'd end up flat on her face just outside the bed.
As to how she was feeling? "Physically... like a truck hit me." She wiggled the one arm that wasn't hooked up to a thousand tube out from under the blanket on her.
Mentally? Man, Mentally she was a mess.
Saph caught her attention again with his warning about them needing to talk. She winced, but... well, it wasn't like she had much fight in her left.
"I promise." She wasn't about to get up, but she moved to try and sit herself up a little higher in bed. The strain she could feel in her body, even with pain meds, earned a hiss and a grimace.
"I wouldn't run from you, you know that."
Laying back in the pillows and angling her face at him, Juniper frowned and got settled in for story time. Which story was it gonna be, though?
A soft beeping filtered in, and that was the moment she realized she was awake. With her eyes still closed she groggily came back to the world of the living. With a groan, she dared to crack an eye open and look at whatever was directly in front of her.
White, stiff sheets. Metal guard rails up on either side of the bed, and generic hospital furniture beyond that.
... damnit.
"...Not dead yet..." She groused to herself, voice scratchy and soft from the abuse that had been dealt to her neck. Really, she thought she wouldn't have woken up this time. When that cowl-faced bastard had ahold of her, she'd figured that was it. Donesies.
She was aware of how tired she felt like she hadn't slept in a long long time... but otherwise couldn't feel any pain. Her gaze sought out the host of IV's and wires connected to her in various places. Ah. Well, drugs explained that.
Oh, hey, she wasn't alone. She was too tired to flinch or jump and took a few seconds longer than normal just figuring out that the person beside her bed wasn't just a figment of her imagination.
His hand closed around her throat and her face twisted into an ugly grimace of pain. It was still swollen and sore from before. It didn't take much pressure to cause her whole system to fly into a blind panic. She tried to flare her power to yank herself away, but it seemed to be broken again. Wouldn't respond to her at all. All that left was for her to drop the belt in her hand and try to dig her small fingers around his bigger ones in an attempt at prying them away.
The voice that came out of that mask of his was... sure creepy as all hell. Distorted to a point it was hard to even see it as human. He seemed to be talking more to himself than her, maybe? Pondering on her name. She couldn't have given it to him even if she had tried. All she could really do was keep tugging at his fingers and glare back as harshly as she could.
He growled out something about her burning, and then released her throat. Trying to call her power to her again failed, and she had barely a second to try and brace herself for a coming fist.
@#$% this was gonna--
In her condition, she wasn't fast enough to dodge or get her arms up in time and took the punch in the face. Impact. She blacked out the second it hit and wasn't conscious by the time she ended up on the ground a moment later freshly bleeding from a split upper lip and dead to the world.
What in the seven hells kind of a nickname was that? Sounded like something out of one of the Manga's she had been reading.
Thoroughly annoyed that she hadn't been able to trap the both of them and be done with the fight, she pushed past that annoyance a little bit and listened to him as he explained that he hadn't actually killed the guy. The guy behind had.
Juniper's expression deadpanned and she slumped a little. All of that time and effort wasted on some guy who wasn't even the murderer? How @#$%ing annoying!
Sword dude did some kind of fancy footwork that lifted him off of the ground and rushed at her with an exclamation and that nickname again, and her patience snapped like a dry stick of spaghetti. Huh. So he'd figured that out pretty quick. This guy was like a real professional fighter then?
"THAT ISN'T MY NAME!" Rage in such a small form rarely ever elicited fear in anyone taller than her, or anyone who knew her. She didn't often go around intending to hurt someone unless they really deserved it in her mind. This guy, even though he was attacking her, hadn't made that list yet. He was annoying, but not a murderer.
"If you didn't murder him, then why-"
He swung his sword in a graceful arch that flew right through her phase upper body. She wasted no time in darting forward and reaching for him. Her fingers finally found purchase around the expensive-looking belt holding his pants up. She felt his skin against her knuckles and knew she finally had him.
"-Am I even wasting my time on you!?"
She phased him completely, lifted him up in once quick smooth motion, turned, and chucked him as hard as she could into the air. She was aiming to throw him as far away as possible from the alley, past the body on the sidewalk, to put distance between him and her while she took care of the other one.
Her shoulder throbbed in pain again after she'd let off him, and she watched him sail off for just a moment before deciding to turn back to face the other guy. Oddly enough, when she glanced down at her hand she found his belt still clasped in it..... oops!
Her full weight hit her all of a sudden, mid-turn, and every sore muscle in her body protested all at once.
He neatly dodged her attack. Her side and shoulder winced from the action. The weapon went willingly out of her hands with his fancy sword work or whatever and he was suddenly in her space. She was anticipating an attack, braced for it and phased everything but her toes.
...only for him to drop an innuendo and wink at her, before deftly dancing back.
She blinked, stunned for a moment. This dude wasn't taking her seriously at all, like-
"Ah, @#$%." Her wounds panged and she leaned over for a moment to support herself on her knees. Goddamn @#%$in' James and his stupid mutation. He'd really worked her over already, and then she'd had to suffer through days of punishment even after all that.
He didn't seem like he was going to attack her again right that moment, so she gave herself a tiny rest. Really, she wasn't sure how much actual fighting she could handle in her current condition. It felt like a strong wind could knock her over.
"Empty words, pretty boy. Gotta back up a declaration like that with proof or you're just bluffin'."
Straightening and gripping her ribs on the left side with one hand, she kicked her shoes off and sighed.
"I think I'm done playing, though."
Her toes gripped the rough, charred concrete. This must have been where the guy had initially been attacked. "... I'm pretty curious as to why someone who can fight like you would resort to barbequing someone. Seems kinda lazy."
She spotted the cloaked figure behind him trying to make an exit, and her expression darkened.
The ground directly in front of Raijin suddenly phased. The pipe she had used as a weapon dropped, as well as anything else lingering on the ground in the area around him. He'd just managed to step within the range of Tash's aura.
Juniper, noticing that he wasn't falling in to get trapped with everything else, pulled her power back and looked really, really confused.
"...Huh?" Was her power glitching again? Crap! She needed to end this soon, or maybe make a run for it.
He nimbly kept out of her reach, which pissed her off even more. A swing at her indeed went right through her. She barely even tracked it before deciding it wasn't important. A strike that would have carved half or whole way through her body passed harmlessly through without even slowing own.
And then he had the audacity of demanding to see more of her?
"I am not taking my shirt off just because you abandoned yours."
She ended up on the other side of him for a moment, before chasing after him. As she passed by an old metal drainage pile attached to the brick wall of one building, she reached out to snag it and phased a fairly long section of it right through the straps keeping it bolted on.
If he was gonna play hard to get, she was going to have to lengthen her reach, wasn't she?
"Mine's bigger!" She couldn't help but joke while hefting the long pipe aloft and swinging it down at him. At maximum arch she let its weight come back to it and waited to see what he would do. If this didn't work...
Electricity? Electric swords? Was he gonna fight with samurai-style bug zappers?
"No thanks, I'll pass. I've lost too much blood already."
He did the wiggle sword thing again and she squinted at him, slowing a bit as she closed in. She didn't want to get hit with his zappy sticks, but with her power glitching like it was she couldn't be sure her usual method of running in head-on would work. SHe'd just try and avoid them for the most part.
He had both of the weapons out and it looked like she had a pretty clean route right into his bubble.
Phasing away everything from the ankles up, she relished in the slight boost in speed it gave her and the weightless sensation- at least she knew it was working for now. She'd run right on in, nothing physical for his swords to hit, and aim to punch him in the nose or something. Might have to get a foot in his knee as leverage due to the height difference.
One, in a white suit, turned around and started animatedly talking.
She blinked. "...This is an alley? Like, public space. Do your shitty dirty work somewhere private if you don't want people like me being nosey!"
He drew swords and did some weird wiggling air motions with them. Her face screwed up as she tried to make sense of it all, but... eh, didn't really matter.
"That's dumb." She started walking again, only to stop above a round metal sewer cover. With her foot and entirely too much effort, she managed to phase it and get enough force into it that it jumped up like a bounced skateboard with a few flips. She caught it with a hand easily.
"Nobody should just go into a fight ready to die."
Her arm arched back and she flung it at the sword-wielding man like a frisbee, with the same speed as a thrown baseball. She lost her shoes while barreling into a full sprint right behind it. If the metal disk didn't take him out, she was going to have to get hands on about it, and quickly. She really couldn't risk her power shorting out now.
The shrill whistle was alarming, but a quick glanced showed that it was just some goof across the street jogging toward a crosswalk with a little stopping in hand. Uck. Another X type? Maybe his helpful, kill them with kindness attitude was infecting the city.
... She tried not to dwell on that, or the fact that she hadn't seen or heard from him since she had dropped him into the ground. Didn't even know if he was alive, or-
She pushed the thought away.
... right in time for a large, moving ball of fire to burst out of the alley, she had thought about using and collapse onto the pavement in a heap.
"OHSH-"
She started ripping off her coat, not even thinking of possible consequences later, and jumped on the person. The flames bit at her as she desperately tried to smother him as quickly as possible. The heat was so intense that she tried to phase away important parts of herself, like her whole damn face. She'd deal with the rest of the burns later.
Once she had him not on fire anymore, the charred and blackened coat was discarded and she got a look at him. "Hey, Hang on okay? Just-"
...he didn't have a face.
Juniper had never seen someone so horribly burnt before. She'd smelled it... it was kinda hard to ignore, but she'd never actually looked.
It was horrible. Indescribable in terms of just how graphic whats she was seeing was.
She couldn't tell if he was alive or dead, and honestly, she was a little afraid to touch him. Would it hurt? With how what was left of his skin looked?
She jerked her eyes away hurry, toward where he had come from, and spotted two figures moving away. There was no way they didn't know what happened. Normal people would be running or screaming at the sight of a burning man.
"HEY!"
She flew back onto her feet and briefly thought about charging after them. But... they were already halfway down the alley and she was out by the street. She glanced off to the side at a small, red parked car.
"..."
A moment later the metal body of said car would come flying down that alley in an overhead arch. She'd aimed a little too high when she'd awkwardly thrown it, so it landed with a loud, metallic crunch a handful of feet in front of them and effectively blocked off that exit.
"Which one of you sick @#%&'s murdered that guy?"
Her foul mood from before had tripled at the very least, and losing her coat only made things worse. She knew she shouldn't be doing this... Blue would murder her for her stupidity here... but...
"Actually, screw it, I don't even care. I'm going to kick both of your asses."
Sometimes it was hard to get over her temper.
She started down the alley toward them, reaching up to tear the singed beanie from her head and tossing it angrily off to the side.
Azar, who was newly out on bail and not at all happy about it, had more or less gone back to his usual ways the moment he was let out of the jail cell. Women, booze, Money. In that order exactly. He was still sore about his recent defeat and capture, both physically and emotionally. That tall guy had a really solid punch. His jaw still ached with the memory of it.
He was also not super happy about how his carefully cultivated image had been marred. Taken down by three twerps, one of them who he'd been set to bang before the other two bursts in. All of his 'buddies' in the bar had seen it happen. Even if he had managed to burn the place down in the midst of the fight, it still didn't make him look like the cold hard killer he'd set him self up as.
Well, there was always time to fix that, right? Only this time he'd have to do it for real. Get himself a reputation that no one could mar.
He was stalking down a sidewalk in a generally pretty populated part of town, looking for easy people to frighten and rob. Maybe some hot chick to smooth talk. Or, heck, maybe just drag one into a dark corner. What did it matter anymore? His fists clenched in the pockets of his studded skinny jeans, and he ground his teeth together. Man, what a pain! He'd had to get his vengence on those three wannabe heroes in the future, mark his words he'd-
"Huh?" Azar had turned down a little side road that usually had less foot traffic. It was a bit darker in there, even during the day, because of the shadows from the taller buildings. There were two figures ahead... just... waiting? Loitering?
....PFFT! What did he care? He was the baddest mother@#$%er on the block right now! Puffing himself up physically as big as he could get and slapping the meanest, craziest glare on his face he could muster, he stalked toward them with a cocky gait. All the while he was pumping out excessive amounts of oxygen around himself, pumping his blood full of it. Some sith-lord looking b*tch and white suite wearing cool-guy weren't about to-
Hold up, were those swords?
~~
Eisley was picking apart this person before her with those expressive eyes she had, a polite smile fixed on her face. The stranger's face was shadowed, but she could see the telltale signs of bruising and barely healed cuts here and there. It might had disturbed her before she had known that this was a demon in human skin, but... now? Now she was simply curious about the power. Only time would tell what kind of demon it was.
"Oh, sorry. That must have come across as kind of intrusive! I apologize. I've just never seen someone who could walk through someone else like that." She clutched her papers to her chest, "You must be able to do all sorts of neat things with it!"
Juniper faltered and sighed. This girl was definitely giving her X vibes. Cute and doe-eyed and full of curiosity. Juniper just didn't have time for it.
"Look... maybe some other time, okay? I'm kinda in a hurry right now."
"Because of the wounds? How did you get them? Are you on your way to a doctor?"
The phaser flinched back a little and grimaced enough to pull at various wounds. Jesus Christ, the questions. "Er...."
Her patience was drawing thin, though. She shouldn't stay out long or she risked being spotted.
"Really gotta go, okay?" She moved to side-step her, and the girl mimicked the movement. Juniper repeated it; the same result.
With her power still on the fritz and all she was trying not to use it when possible. Apparently, that was more than she'd thought. With the most exaggerated sigh she could muster, she walked right through the girl and was pleased that it went smoothly again. She took off in a jog before she could get roped back into a one-sided conversation again. There was a path up ahead to her right, from what she could see... she'd take that to make sure she lost the two of them.
Behind her, Eisley watched her go. Gradually, she frowned. That one might make an issue if they happened onto the scene. Not for her Father, no. But for the plan. Walking back to her spot on the corner with her partner, she turned to face one of the other canvassers on the road and lifted a hand in a non-verbal signal. That person started walking and lifted a whistle to their lips, blowing three times in long breaths, one after another.
Juniper was in a pretty foul mood. Everything hurt, her cheek kept weeping blood when she moved her mouth, and her throat felt bruised, among other things. Couple that with just being super freakin' tried and that left a major rift between her and her usual carefree attitude.
She was heading for a corner store to get a bag of foodstuff. Bread and @#$% to keep them afloat for a bit while she figured things out. There was stolen money in the back pocket of her stolen clothes, which she had picked up upon returning from... wherever they had been.
With a beanie on and the hood of her jacket pulled up, she was more than happy to hide her face in the shadows and just look like a mopey teenage boy for a bit. She didn't feel like explaining to anyone how she had gotten all the wounds and bruises. The few people who'd asked had assumed she was a boy who'd gotten jumped by other boys. She was fine with that. Suited the wounds just fine.
Licking at the small scabbed-over cut on her bottom lip, she moved to skirt around a pedestrian holdup on the sidewalk up ahead. Three people just standing around blocking traffic like no one else existed.
As she approached one of the guys seemed to notice her. His gaze zipped over to her like he was waiting for her to show up, and he stepped away from the other two to block her path.
"Excuse me, sir!" He had thick glasses and some sort of flier in his hands. "Do you have a moment to spare for-"
"No thanks."
He didn't move. She didn't move either. Juniper walked right through him like he wasn't even there, and the reaction that elicited was... hilarious?
"GAH?!" He jumped out of the way like she'd burned him. Juniper turned to look, raised eyebrows hidden by her hat.
The girl who was with him broke off and full-on sprinted at her. "W-wait! Miss-" Juniper's path was blocked a second time, and this time she actually stopped. She wasn't observant enough to notice that the expression on the girl's face had shifted a little.
"Can I ask how you did that? That was so interesting!"
....Oh, god... another Xavier type? She didn't know if she could handle that right now. She wasn't even supposed to be talking to anyone. Just in and out and back to the temporary hideout.
"You can, but I'm not gonna tell you." She was too tired to slip into flirtation, even though that's naturally where she would have gone with this. The girl was pretty, with big expressive eyes.
"Oh god, Spoilers! I've barely even started that anime!" She panicked, like a good little growing weeb. Shikamaru did what?! But he was the lazy know it all!
From her position, she couldn't really see what Elliot had planned, and what with all of Flanders' flailing around right at first it was hard to see what anyone else was doing for that matter.
Then there was an impact, which jolted the body she was currently half-inhabiting, and Smither's much taller frame bent back a little. Her head and upper shoulders were still poked out of his back, which mean she had a perfect viewing of Elliot landing and turning back, and if he had gone with the gesture and catchphrase it would have been pretty hilarious, even if she didn't know what he was referencing.
"Oh hey, you-"
She looked up. Smithers was looking down at her, and boy did he look just so done with them.
"EWWW."
She'd seen Zek twist his neck more than a normal person could, but not like... to that degree, or with that wrong looking angle. Also, was this dude dead now? Was she wearing a corpse? Gross!
He started moving again before she could yank herself out, and she re-solidified herself inside of him at the key points. She was anticipating a new attack or something, not.. uh.... him throwing in the towel?
".... That sounds like a trap," Juniper replied helpfully, "I vote we fuse him to a tree and leave him. Or splash him with holy water. Oh! Anyone a priest? Can we like, bless the pool and push him in?"
Posted by Juniper on Mar 5, 2021 22:55:54 GMT -6
Zek likes this
Beta Mutant
Aromantic Omnisexual
Tacos
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16
Jul 1, 2021 12:02:49 GMT -6
Mouse
The trance broke and Smithers was suddenly replaced with a chandelier in front of her. She jerked as her senses came back to her fully.
"Whuthuh?"
She didn't know what had happened, or that she'd missed a small sassy conversation about Naruto... which she had only just started to get into like the week before.
Elliott shouted at her. She spun on her heels dizzily. Oh... there was Smithy. Was Bella trying to attack Zek?
"Wha-"
GO LEFT.
She went left. Avoid his eyes? Huh?
She started sprinting but wasn't nearly as fast as Elliott even with most of her weight gone. It came back to her in chunks, then.
Smithers. She'd looked at him while going over there to like, punch him or something, and then she'd blanked out. It was all fuzzy. Had he pointed his gun at her? She could swear he'd-
Elliott was going to get to him first, so Smithers turned to face him. Alongside his ability to turn into bats and control people via his eyes, he was also ridiculously strong for an old man. A super buff mummy, without the physique or the wrappings.
He went to engage with Elliot, maybe throw some super-powered hits of his own.
He took his eyes off of her. Bad move.
Juniper kept running at him, straight for his back. He clearly didn't think very much of her because he didn't even turn to look as she got close.
Can you imagine his surprise when she ran into him?
She turned and fused her butt into his middle, and then took her sweet time getting her feet into his feet like weird boots, her hands into his arms, and then sliding them up as best she could like human gloves.
Oh, smithers didn't like that.
"Will you stop- urk- WIGGLING?! You're making this super hard!"
He tried turning into a flurry of bats, but parts of him were fused with her and he got pulled back like a stretched rubber band. All he could do was struggle with the various parts of him she'd left whole, which wasn't much. A lot of it was shoved over in Limbo where it couldn't do much harm.
"Can you get some- Ack! I don't bend that way!- Get a good angle on him, Elliott?!" Smithers was trying to wrench one of his arms away, and pulling hers awkwardly back in doing so. With her stuck inside of him, he couldn't really do much to defend himself.
She was trapped in a metaphorical sense between the disco king over there and someone who didn't seem terribly enthused about the shenanigans still. Juniper watched Zek and his fancy footwork, before turning and looking at Carrick. He wanted to leave?
"At this point, I wouldn't even say it was a party. Kinda like being promised professional fireworks and then being handed lame sparklers." She poked a toe into the side of one passed-out guy, who groaned and snored at the same time. She pulled a face and retracted the toe.
"Oh, sure." She accepted whatever Carrick was handing her without even questioning it. Turned out to be a robe. Why was she holding a robe?
Oh, Zek was closer now.
"Nice sta-AHHH?!"
What in God's name was happening to Carrick?!
The phaser went to step through Zek to hide behind him, but her power inexplicably shorted out and she went barreling toward in instead on accident.
"He's dying! Why's he dying!? They're killing him somehow aren't they!?"
She was a flail of limbs, and didn't do a very good job of holding onto his robe as she freaked out... as anyone who had never seen Carrick shift rightly would!
He reached down and snagged one of her ankles. Standing back up without a care for how uncomfortable it might be for her, he started dragging her from within the large pieces of the broken pool table into a clear area of the floor.
”You know, you remind me a bit of my ex. She was short and had an attitude problem too.”
Being dragged at a weird angle like that made her realize how much her back and side hurt now.
She didn’t get to focus on it for long, though.
”You know I’ve won championships? I was on top of the world-” He dropped her ankle as soon as she was in an open stretch of floor, and the straddled her so that his feet were tucked neatly on either side of her ribs. ”...but then that #$%&@ had to go and croak on me, and I lost everything. Everything! If you think, for one second, that I am going to let you ruin this second chance for me…”
He squatted on top of her, looming over her with her trapped between his shoes. She was panic trying to phase the floor under him… but no dice again.
”...Where are the diamonds, Juniper?”
She didn’t respond immediately, so- just like her uncle was prone to doing- he reacted instantly. He slapped her, hard, with his full hand. The sound of it filled the room for a moment. It was hard enough that it cranked her head to the side and her vision glitched for a second.
”It’s gonna get worse the longer you drag this out.”[/color] With the same hand, he backhanded her with his knuckles on the way past. The ring on that hand left a long, even welt across her cheekbone and temple.
”Where are my @#$%ing diamonds, Juniper?!” Keith cut in, raging at the top of his lungs from his chair.
She clamped her jaw shut and curled in on herself as much as she could. Fear was telling her to spill what she knew… that maybe if she did this would all stop and they’d leave her alone… but she knew better deep inside. Keith had been planning on killing her from the very start more than likely, and snitching on Simon would do nothing to save her own skin. She’d just be putting someone else in harm's way.
James pried one of her arms away from her head far enough that he could get an actual punch in, and the force of it knocked all the sense and fight right out of her.
She could taste blood on her tongue and her vision kept fading in and out of black. She could barely hear Keith as he started rambling and stood, staggering over to them so that he could loom over her as well.
”@#$&. ...This was either Eli or Simon’s plan… goddamn two-timing son of a-”
“.. So what now then? We track them down? Who do you think has the diamonds?”
“..S’gotta be Eli. He texted just before this… he must have sent her here to off us so he could have the diamonds all to himself.”
They muttered a bit and tried to hash out what most likely happened, while Juniper slowly came back to her senses and resumed trying to phase herself out of danger. It was even harder trying to get a grip on her wiley power with her brain being rattled from the punch.
”-gotta get rid of her, still. I have some contacts that might be able to find the others.” He kept hissing through his teeth and muttered about needing to get to the hospital soon.
James turned back to Juniper, and she locked eyes with him. Hers were welling up with tears despite herself. His large hands wrapped around her throat and squeezed... just the same way he had done to his Ex all those years ago. He just needed to focus on keeping her from trying to scratch his eyes out, like the last one had done, which Juniper immediately started to do.
