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.
The street was rapidly emptying out, as people fled or escaped into flanking buildings. They were New Yorkers, they’d seen a lot of stuff and weirdness was part of their daily commute, but they weren’t Canadians! The cold was far too fierce and quick, as snow was already dusting the ground and metal became risky to touch with a bare hand.
The neo-neanderthal howled with laughter and waved his spear in the direction of a group of stragglers. The frigid winds focused on the group and sleet and hail rushed at them. Needles of ice stabbed exposed skin and patches of ice began forming on them. Some stumbled and fell, others cried out as blood specs emerged. Their screams pierced through the roaring winds.
Yet the man in the loincloth couldn’t focus long on them. “Is that really the best you’ve got?” he jeered as the spear of ice flew at him. He shook his own spear and the icy projectile shattered into a dozen razor-sharp icicles. He laughed as they flew past him in a tight current of freezing wind, whipping around him in a personal cyclone only to fly out the other end in a shotgun salvo of glacial shards at the one-eyed man.
“It’s a good start!” he yelled playfully. “Maybe one day you would actually pose a threat to me! If you live that long! Megafauna, smash his ‘friends’ for me, please?”
The mammoth swung its massive head and a car went flying down the sidewalk at the ice clones and the wall of ice.
Meanwhile, Rex managed to get the wounded man into a building just around the corner. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. “Call 911!“ he yelled at the lobby’s receptionist. This man needs an ambulance, and several others will be needed! Mutants are tearing up the next street! Now!”
The receptionist’s jaw dropped open but as Rex yelled again, he started to pick up the phone and dial. Seeing that, Rex nodded and plunged back out into the streets. It was cold there still, but in comparison to where the fighting was, it was practically a summer day. There were still people running away from the action, ahead of the lethal cold front, but Rex had a horrible feeling in his stomach that not everyone would be able to run away.
Rex charged back from where he’d come, clearing a way through the crowd. He turned the corner and the cold nearly stole his breath away. The street was rapidly on its way to freezing over, buildings included. Rex saw a wall of ice protecting part of one side of the street, but he saw a bunch of unprotected people on the other side. He started running toward them, for once thankful that the traffic was at a standstill, meaning he was actually safer than usual in crossing the street.
“Don’t worry about me, just go!” Rex shouted back as the icy armor formed around the mutant. Rex didn’t bother watching the other man in action - he had other responsibilities. He might’ve been on sabbatical and he might not have any resources around him, but he still had his hands, his strength, and his faith.
“Blessed Redeemer, watch over us,” he said, the words carried away on steam as he altered course and beelined straight for the man Sam’s ice had caught. He fell into a crouch by the man and immediately went for the man’s pulse. “Sir, sir, are you okay?” he barked. There was a pulse. Good. The man coughed and wheezed, but Rex saw his eyes flicker open.
Rex nodded. “You need to get out of here.” It usually wasn’t a good idea to move someone after a collision like that. Any number of injuries could be worsened. However, this wasn’t the scene of an accident, this was more like a warzone. Leaving anyone here only increased their odds of dying. Besides, the temperature kept dropping. That alone could prove fatal.
The firefighter managed to pull the man up and then ducked just enough to hoist him over his shoulder as he tried to backtrack. “Leave your vehicles!” he shouted over the chaos. “Run! Help people around you! But get out of here!”
Meanwhile, the nearly naked man on mammoth was cackling with insane glee.
“A champion!” he crowed. “And one of ice and snow! How splendid!” With the spear still clenched in his fist, he beat his chest twice and gave an elaborate bow. The mammoth stopped short for just a moment. “You are exactly the worst person they could have possibly sent! So why don’t you join us instead, m’kay? We can remake this city in our image and we can rule it together!”
He howled into the wind and showers of hail fell. “Or don’t!” he shrugged. “I don’t care! But you’re not going to stop me! Megafauna! Attack!”
The mammoth immediately stomped down on a car and crushed the hood nearly flat. Then it slid its tusks under another and with a mighty toss of its head, flipped the car into the air back toward some other cars, mere seconds after its passenger vacated it. “That’s right! Run! RUN! You foolish humans! You’re an evolutionary dead end! And soon you’ll all be dead too!”
The temperature plummeted further and hoarfrost erupted over everything within thirty feet of the man and his mammoth.
Rex knew that sigh intimately. The sigh of a man who believed in the righteousness of what he did and picked up his burden day after day because it needed to be done. He’d seen many men, normally firefighters and emergency responders, sigh that sigh as once more they rushed into fire. Rex didn’t say anything. He didn’t think he needed to. He nodded solemnly.
“Carlos and Calixto,” Rex said, offering the names of his sons, if stiffly. There was a noticeable pause before he’d spoken anything, a pause where he weighed the prospect of letting Sam in or shoring up his walls. Baby steps, then. This was a new thing Rex had to do.
Rex sipped again at his chilling coffee and winced. This was not meant to be a cold brew. It tasted like it had been sitting out for hours, a far cry from its prior scalding heat. Rex shook his head and scowled before chucking the cardboard cup into a nearby trash can. Snow was already accumulating on the trash can’s edges.
“Guess you’re not doing this then, either,” he remarked as the flurries grew thicker and fat snowflakes began falling. Mere minutes before, it had been a clear, if cold, evening. This snowstorm was whipping up out of nowhere.
He saw Sam accelerate and Rex instinctively moved with him. The exertion actually felt good, making his blood run hot and staving off some of the cold, even as he could feel the temperature dropping quickly. His breath was constantly steaming around him now.
He leaned against a pool briefly to catch his balance after nearly lsiding on a sudden patch of ice when he heard Sam’s confusion. He glanced up and the curtain of snow parted long enough for Rex to see something he couldn’t have guessed.
A massive wooly mammoth burst onto the street and with a braying trumpet it barreled into a semi truck and knocked it on its size. It blasted a wild klarion call of defiance and anger and trampled over a taxi that had been gridlocked on the suddenly treacherous streets. Every step of the massive creature shook the ground and were accompanied by loud gunshot sounds of splitting ice.
A high-pitched ululation pierced the whitening sky and a streetlight glinted off of a form perched precariously on the mammoth’s back, just barely able to be seen from Rex’s viewpoint. It looked like a man with wild hair and wearing nothing but a loincloth was standing on the mammoth’s shoulder hump, loosely clinging to some of the mammoth’s hair in one hand and holding up a very primitive-looking spear in the other hand.
“Pray to your gods, you cowards!” the man yelled amid the mammoth’s trumpeting. “But it won’t do you any good! The age of man is ending and now begins a new ICE AGE!”
He waved his spear and a blast of wind-driven snow swept down and hurled a fleeing pedestrian into the side of a building. He slashed in the opposite direction and a fan of icicles flew out like knives into the sides of some of the other traffic-stopped cars on the street. The mammoth began moving toward the cars.
“Teacher, huh?” Rex said after he sipped his coffee. “Wouldn’t have figured it.” The hot brew gently scalded his tongue. “Guess self defense makes sense.” He figured an X-Man could teach kids a lot about how to defend themselves. Although, weren’t martial arts for self defense? Those same martial arts that turned people into living weapons? As if mutations weren’t dangerous enough.
The paperwork thing was also something that made sense. “I get that,” he said. Rex never actually avoided his paperwork - no matter how much of it there was - but he’d fantasized about it many times. Often when he’d been drunk.
Rex covertly stole a glance at his walking partner. “Your hobby is same as one of your jobs?” he asked. He realized it might’ve sounded a bit judgemental so he backtracked. “Not that it’s bad, but…do you ever feel like you just want out some times?”
The group facilitator had been right on the money, Rex had to admit. In the brief time they’d been talking, there were certainly commonalities between the men. Enough that Rex was slowly warming up to the mutant. “Felicitaciones,” he congratulated the man. “I’ve got two kids myself. Perfect angels, when they’re not perfect devils.” Like me. The faint smile that had started forming died as Rex’s mind went to a dark place, a place it dwelled so frequently.
He shrugged. “Not much of an outdoors guy myself. Why I tend to find myself wandering the streets at night. Clear my head,” he said. He was born in the city. He put his life on the line for the city. Everything he knew was in the city. Since going on sabbatical, those ties had only grown closer because in absence of his family, he’d given everything to the city.
Rex took another sip and frowned. He glanced at Sam. “Huh. Coffee’s getting cold. You doing that?” he said. Either the ice mutant was messing with him or the coffee machine at the coffee shop was busted. His hands were getting a little cold too, much colder than expected. That, at least, was something he could deal with.
“Father, warm my hands,” he said in a barely audible tone. Immediately the chill vanished and the faint blue tinge began to be replaced by the warmth of the godforsaken magic that Rex pulled around him. It wasn’t much at all. It was barely even a spell. But even that was more than what he’d thought was possible until that event at the clinic with Dr. Cama.
His breath still plumed out in a fog. Then came the flurries, almost out of nowhere. A faint vibration ran through the ground. Then another.
Rex acknowledged the joke with a faint smile, but he didn’t feel any of the humor himself. He knew many people who fought the darkness within them by making light of it. Rex had never been one of those people, not even as a kid. He appreciated when others made the effort though, and sometimes he admired them for it. It must make things so much easier to let it roll off your back. Instead, Rex had always stood strong under everything. Never bending.
Which meant the only option when the weight became too much was to break.
“Agreed,” Rex said, mirroring Sam with a drink of his own coffee. “Nevertheless, the consequences of our actions continue to shape us and cannot always be so readily ignored.” He didn’t try to make eye contact. He wasn’t trying to score a moral point, or even proselytize. Maybe he was defending himself? Justifying his actions? Rex didn’t know. It was just what he felt.
Rex took his eyes off the sidewalk in front of him and looked around at other pedestrians, most of them wearing heavy clothes and rushing through the rapidly increasing cold, intent on being somewhere. A green-scaled man looked particularly focused as he nearly ran past, his tie and briefcase flapping in the wind. They all had places to go, places to be, things to do. Rex wasn’t walking nearly as fast and he was rather directionless.
“What are your, uh, hobbies?” Rex said after realizing he’d been silent too long. Conversations were about listening and speaking. He did well with the former but sometimes forgot the latter.
Rex visibly relaxed as they left the shop, which meant he no longer held his coffee in a death grip and his shoulders relaxed a hair. As far as things went, it was about as relaxed as Rex ever really got these days. He just added the feeling of being in the coffee shop to the list of demons he needed to exorcise. That list was already horrifically long.
Memories bubbled up and Rex didn’t realize he’d just picked a random direction to walk in and had slid into silence. Two things that had also been happening to him a lot lately. “Sorry,” he said swiftly in response to the throat-clearing. “I get stuck in my head lately,” he added.
“I volunteer,” Rex said after a moment of processing the man’s question. “Through my church. Community outreach. Local neighborhood aid. Soup kitchens, food deliveries. Helping people get resources they need. That kind of thing.” Rex flushed a bit, unused to detailed the things he did at such length. He took a draw from his coffee and savored the scalding heat. At least it would give an excuse why his own face was heating up.
“I agree. Better to stay busy,” Rex said after he recovered his composure. “Doesn’t make up for what I did, but it helps.” Not once did his priest suggest Rex take these activities on as penance. Oh, he’d given Rex opportunities and suggested it could be good for him to get back to helping people, but Rex hadn’t been able to avoid the guilt. This helped somewhat.
Once again, there was a commonality between the men. Rex shot a furtive glance at Sam as he mentioned people with problems with abilities. Heat briefly rose in Rex’s cheeks in a small surge of shame. He was one of those people - both sides, actually. A person with abilities and one who had problems with other people with abilities. He stifled the expression - there was no way Sam could be referencing Rex, could he? Nobody could know about the Welldrinkers or Rex’s dabblings with them.
“They don’t always understand that abilities can be their own cross to bear,” Rex said, devoid of inflection. It was something that Rex was learning on a far more intimate level nowadays. Before, he had decried mutants for the damage they caused, for the lives they took. Now he was something far worse than a mutant, and his magic the exact thing he’d deplored in others.
Rex took his coffee stiffly. “Thank you,”he said with a sharp nod at Kelly and then Sam. There seemed to be some interplay between Sam and the baristas, apparently over muffins, but Rex didn’t intrude. As it was, his own thoughts were enough to continuously drag him into internal gloom. He one-handedly withdrew a few bills from his own wallet and added them to the tip jar before surveying the coffee shop again.
“Why don’t we take this outside?” he said. “I could use some fresh air.” He liked the warmth. He liked the quiet nature of the place. He didn’t like the haunted feeling he got from being inside of it. His grip tightened on his cup and he quickly took a sip, ignoring the scalding touch on his tongue. This was his version of being antsy. He made his way back to the door.
Rex nodded grimly as Sam carried on the next thought. “Yes, it always did,” he agreed. Nothing ever took that pain away, it just made him temporarily unable to feel anything. Anything besides guilt and shame, that is.
He forced a small smile at the man’s joke. It was difficult. Rex wasn’t sure what he was doing. He wasn’t going to let that stop him. He was used to doing hard, difficult things. His livelihood revolved around throwing himself into burning buildings, for Heaven’s sake. Being vulnerable, sharing his feelings? That couldn’t be as hard.
Right?
The firefighter followed the coldbringer out into the chill air. Rex stuffed his hands into his pockets and took a single look at Sam before grunting. Of course the man didn’t need a jacket. This probably felt like a summer’s day to him. Rex supposed that was one advantage to his job - it was great for keeping people warm.
Fortunately, it wasn’t far to the coffee shop. As the men entered, the warmth and the coffee smells infused him and he closed his eyes momentarily. It was nearly a mistake.
The last coffee shop Rex had been too, that man Raijin had tried forcing him into burning the place down, simply because it was owned by mutants. The memories of that encounter were scorch marks in Rex’s mind and he shuddered involuntarily. Phantom pain laced up his back from where the man’s sword had laid him open.
He mumbled part of a Hail Mary prayer and pulled himself together only when he was asked for his order. “Uh,” he said, quickly looking over the menu and then the face of the barista at the register. “Coffee. Black.” Nothing beat the basics and Rex needed something strong. This would have to do.
As the girl…Kelly?...drifted over to make their orders, Rex spoke in a low voice. The coffee shop was indeed not very populated, but Rex still didn’t want other people overhearing. It was bad enough he was saying anything out loud in the first place. “I’ve been to a few other groups,” he said with only a faint grimace. “A few meetings each. See how things went. One was like a book club, one was basically a golf club. None of them…felt right.”
He paused for a moment and chewed a lip. “This one does feel right, so far.”
Sam did get it. Rex relaxed a smidgen as Sam gave a glimpse of his own inner thoughts. Rex had had a good feeling about this group, that they’d be a better fit for him. So far he had been right. The prior groups just made him feel like an outsider, like he was still alone with his woes, but this group? As other people had spoken before, and with Sam now, this was a group that could get him.
“I never bothered bargaining,” Rex admitted with no small amount of shame. “I just wanted whatever it took to drown out the pain. That’s what I did almost every single night until I just snapped.” Rex didn’t have years and years worth of experiences drinking, but he’d been doing his best to make up for them by cramming all of it into those long months, the months he couldn't remember well, until he saw them in his nightmares.
Rex nodded solemnly. So far Sam’s story wasn’t anything Rex hadn’t heard so many times before, but it was no less terrible for it. Many of the people Rex had been working with while on sabbatical had similar backgrounds, but few were able to gain any success in pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
“If only more people thought like that,” Rex said in stoic musing. Regarding the talk about power or just self-determination, it didn’t matter. Both applied. How many mutants just wasted their power on sin and excess, doing nothing to help out their fellow man?
He forced a smile himself. “I absolutely do not want to continue this conversation,” Rex said quite bluntly. “But I think we need to. Coffee sounds good - I could use a drink right now.” His eyelid moved. Maybe it was a nerve misfiring and causing a random twitch. Maybe it was a wink. Maybe it didn’t even happen and you just thought you saw it. He slung on his jacket and made to follow Sam out.
Great. It hadn’t been a minute and Rex had already neatly severed the throat of the conversation. He could tell Sam felt awkward, or at least Rex did, especially because he could tell Sam’s smile was fake. This is why he didn’t do small talk and why he avoided such interactions in the first place - he didn’t tend to make a sparkling first impression.
“Yes,” Rex agreed, latching onto Sam’s effort to end the awkwardness. “The healing is slow, but it’s there. Priest and shrink are helping me out a lot.” There were still many dark days, many tears in the night, but he was coming through each one of them stronger than the time before. Having a purpose to cling to helped, even if the purpose was just simply “help others.” It helped fill that hole in him with something positive and substantial.
The firefighter shifted his weight onto one leg. “Ah, makes sense,” he said politely. He still didn’t think it was a good idea to own a bar, but that wasn’t his cross to bear. Yet even he had to admit he wasn’t perfect. Neither was Sam. Rex knew that feeling all too well, in some of those dark days when he was just too weak and had relapsed. “Been there. It’s….really bad sometimes.” Again, that faint look of hauntedness.
“Thanks,” Rex grunted, accepting the handshake and giving it a few firm pumps. It always felt weird being called a hero for what he did. It wasn’t wrong, it just never felt right. Then again, Rex wasn’t one to handle compliments of any sort well. He frowned slightly and searched Sam’s expression for any trace of mockery or condescension, but he couldn't find any. Seemed to actually mean it.
As far as mutants went, the icemaker was on the better end of the scale. “You’ve done some good work yourself.” He knew several firefighters who owed their lives to the man, or had stories where the man had helped stabilize a building’s structure long enough to get everyone out, or a handful of other ways of helping.
Rex nodded in acknowledgement. Indeed, it seemed as though Hercules didn’t exactly have anything on him at the moment, but Rex would have to content himself with the promise. Again, Hercules seemed to be a man of his word - even when Rex doubted the man’s authenticity, he didn’t doubt his sincerity, if that made any sense. Rex wasn’t sure it did but few things made sense in his life at the moment.
“Very well,” he said simply and walked to the front of the alley. A small part of him was relieved Hercules was staying. It meant another witness to the events and unlike the other victims, Hercules still seemed level headed at the moment. He also worked well in crises. It was also a relief that the man did not flee such crime scenes, either. That was a start.
“Everyone, let’s get to the other side of the street,” he commanded in his authoritative voice, the one trained to carry over burning buildings and chaos. “We need to give room for emergency services to work and we need to get away from the fire. Make your way across the street. If someone by you is having problems, help them. If you need assistance, let someone know. It’s almost over, people. It’s going to be okay.”
Just like that, things started to become normal, at least for Rex. The fire engines arrived, followed by ambulances. As firefighting efforts began, Rex worked with Hercules to get all the patients taken care of by EMTs and finally give their statements to the police.
Rex figuratively hemmed and hawed for a moment, screwing up his nose for a moment before finally nodding. “I guess you could say that,” he said. He did spend most of his life helping other people, when he wasn’t hurting them through his own actions, that is. “I’ve been working with a lot of local outreach groups while on sabbatical, some through my church. Working with underprivileged people and helping out in some of the bad areas.” It was a place where Rex was constantly reminded there were people who had far less than he.
Melissa seemed a little peppier though. Well, at least he wasn’t boring her. Rex had found that people liked talking about themselves, even if they had nothing to say or nothing worth talking about. It made them feel good. Rex didn’t understand it himself - he hated talking about himself - but it worked. It also helped him out when he didn’t know what to say, because a person talking about themself could easily carry an entire conversation. He just had to say the right filler words at the appropriate moments.
“Cheers to that,” Rex said, lifting his glass of water. His ring glinted momentarily. “I imagine there’s got to be a lot of work to go into something like that.” He didn’t have the faintest clue, really. He had rarely ever consumed liquor before his spiral and even during it, he hadn’t exactly made a study of it or the culture surrounding it. He’d only focused on that next burning, numbing feeling. “What kind of liquor?”
Rex frowned slightly. First responder was a category though, not an actual job. Rex was a first responder himself so what Sam did was a mystery.
The firefighter didn’t see a point in pushing, though. That was part of what these meetings were about - you opened up at your own pace, in your own timing. Rex could respect that. He erased his frown and nodded.
“No,” Rex said, a faint look of haunting entering his eyes. He stared off into the distance. It had been nearly a year since he had been active on his job. That was meant to be ending soon though. In that time, however, Rex had only started fires, or had been unable to do anything more than rescue a couple of people from them. This magic in his soul could only fan flames.
“I’ve been on sabbatical. For trauma and counseling,” he said. “Part of why I’m here.” The things he’d seen and done…
Rex took the card and frowned down at it before looking back up at Sam. Code name? What was he, some kind of agent? Then a nagging sense of familiarity dawned on him as he placed the address on the card. “Ah. One of the X-Men,” he said in flat tones. His feelings about that team were mixed at best. Yet there was one of them that had a position of no small amount of respect from the fire department.
Rex squinted as Sam mentioned his bar. That sounded familiar too. It was the last piece he needed. “Cold Steel?” he asked. That would make sense. “Think I’ve been to your bar. Must be hard to run one with…well…” He broke off and waved a hand loosely around him at the other people at the meeting. An alcoholic with a bar had to be its own source of torment indeed.
The firefighter grimaced as the man’s behemoth of a hand slammed into his back, but he took the unintentional blow without a sound. It wasn’t the first time Hercules had done so - the man could hardly be expected to always know his own strength - but when the arm wrapped around him, Rex thanked God that Hercules hadn’t opted for a bear hug. As it was, his ribs groaned a little bit.
He grunted when he was released and immediately stepped away, to avoid another display of emotion and to prevent any future grappling. Rex was a wrestler but Hercules was a weight class all of his own.
Rex didn’t exactly return the chest thump, but he did nod in acknowledgment. “Very well,” he said, fishing in his back pocket for his wallet. He pulled a simple, plain business card out of it and handed it to Hercules. It had his name, number, and email address on it. Times New Roman, 12 point font, black text on a white card, all centered. No frills whatsoever. “My card.”
The sirens were even closer now and Rex could tell they were almost there. “If you’re going to leave, this is the time to do it,” he told the other man.
Rex spent the rest of the meeting trying to calm down. He focused on his breathing and retreated into himself, away from his thoughts on whatever anyone might possibly be thinking about him. The meeting was mostly a blur to him. Between that and trying not to dwell on his memories, he had no attention left to give the other speakers.
He was startled when the host approached him afterward, asking him to follow him. Rex complied, albeit confused. Then as the man began talking to…Sam, was it?...understanding soon followed.
Rex accepted the handshake firmly and solidly with just the right amount of pressure. He nodded minutely in return and then mirrored the other man’s eyebrows as he too, looked back at the host. Paired sponsors? He wasn’t quite used to this method. Each of the groups had leniency in how they went about doing things though so maybe this was just this group’s style?
“Uh, sure,” Rex said a bit owlishly as he tried keeping up with the host’s line of thought. He could be a sponsor for Sam. Probably.
Then….Rex floundered.
“Yes,” he said as Sam confirmed his occupation. He grimaced. “Uh, no, can’t say you look familiar. Paramedic? Cop?” Rex looked the man over in assessment. Good physique, seemed to move well and with assurety. Combined with the host’s all-too-brief introduction, some kind of emergency services seemed in order. “It’s…Sam, right?”
