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.
If you want to fight crime, why not just join the X-men? That's what they do. If they aren't currently doing it, doesn't mean that it can't be in the job description.
I'm currently in transition between the apartment I lived this school year and my house. There have been lots and lots of boxes. I've also been applying for art teaching jobs for next year; it's the right time of year for that sort of thing. Filling in and checking boxes, emptying boxes, carrying boxes... and interviews! I've had a few of those as well lately. Anyway, all of that has left me with little time and energy the past week or so. It may continue to do so for awhile, or I may get fed up and seek refuge from boxes here. We'll see what happens.
I agree with Calley/Slate on the not creating separate profiles thing. That was a lot of work. You think writing a profile is time consuming, try approving thirty or so of them.
I have mixed feelings about time travel. We kind of just did it and it didn't necessarily work out all that well. Maybe we could try it again sometime, but not right away. I'd like to stick with things that happen in the real world for awhile, like small scale plots and missions.
Using ideas from the comic books is fine with me- I'm just not that familiar with them. Chances are if we ended up running something that was based on a comic idea, it would end up very different in the MRO universe. I don't think we have to worry too much about being strictly original. With all our original characters it happens pretty much automatically anyway.
I'd really like to try something more simple than the previous two plots. Registration and the Future Plot were cool, but they didn't always run smoothly. It seems to be that the more complex we make things, the harder it is to actually RP. If we don't have a great idea for a really long plot, there is nothing wrong with shorter plots. The shorter ones might even be a blessing. We've got a lot of missions in the works for the factions, it might be kind of nice to just see how those run.
Don't forget the stuff we do already have planned:
Katrina kept her shiny red cell phone on her dresser when she was in her bedroom. When she went out and about, she clipped it to her belt loop or to her purse or backpack if she had one with her. The phone had once belonged to Mars, but Abyss had said she could keep it so she could contact her seven big red brothers any time she wanted. He even promised to let her stay on their family plan, since they got such a good discount for having such a big family.
It had taken her about a week to remember that people wouldn't call her if she didn't give them her phone number. It had taken another fifteen minutes to find the menu and folder in which the phone number was stored. Then she had spent a very enjoyable weekend running around the mansion giving the number to everyone she knew and getting their numbers in exchange if they had a phone too. Then she had assigned everyone their own ring tone. She had also taken pictures so everyone had a picture appear when their phone called hers.
She still hadn't received any phone calls. Until today.
On this fine morning she had been laying on the ground outside underneath a flowering crabapple tree and enjoying the outdoors despite the math textbook that weighed heavily in her lap. She still had one last math test before summer vacation officially started. In 47.75 hours she would be free. She converted the minutes to a percentage of an hour in her head. She was feeling pretty ready for that particular part of the test.
She had been staring at the clouds, drawing triangles on them with her mind, when her thoughts were interrupted by a tinny music. “I'm a Believer” from the Shrek soundtrack started playing from somewhere. It took her a couple of seconds of looking around for the source before she realized it was her phone clipped to her backpack. She pounced on it and barely glanced at the picture of a glass of ice it displayed before she snapped it open and brought it to her ear.
This was the first call on her new phone! Clearly this was the best day ever.
It was about to get even better.
The call was from Sam. He said it was finally time for his pack of dogs to go on to new homes. That saddened Katrina at first, for while they could be noisy and occasionally got into trouble, she liked all of Sam's dogs. He went on to tell her that if she liked, MacKenzie could be hers. Her jaw had hit the grass when he said that. Oh course she would love to take care of her! She just... she'd better ask her mother first.
She scampered toward the kitchen, got about half way before she realized she had left all her things on the lawn and scampered back to get them. Twenty minutes later she had thoroughly convinced her mother that she was responsible enough to care for a dog, since she was already helping with many of the mansion pets. It was almost too good to be true. She scampered a little more (since that seemed to be her default mode of transportation today) right up the stairs and into Sam's room where there was already quite the crowd of animals, people, and animal-people.
She plopped right on the floor with a goofy grin and a wave to everyone. She scratched all ears that came within her range and let any of the dogs that wanted to sniff her do so. “Hi Shin, hi Sam! Hello...” Katrina remembered seeing the golden puma faced woman at Christmas time, but she couldn't remember her name. So, she just left a blank to be filled in. “Hi Cammie and Thor and Kenzie and Bruno and Roxie.”
(Anyone who participated in the Future Plot is welcome to post one final scene wrapping up their FP story. One post per person.)
--
Katrina stood on the hill overlooking Prague, or Praha as the locals called it. Sebastian stood behind her, quietly contemplating his own thoughts as the early morning sunlight glinted off off the rooftops and the steeples that gave the city its' moniker the “City of a Thousand Spires”. A gentle breeze still carried with it a slight chill, but it also bore the smell of fresh blossoms. Katrina couldn't distinguish which type of blossoms they were. The similar scents of cherry, crab apple and lilac came to mind.
This hill was as close as she could get to the building where the world leaders were supposed to be negotiating some sort of armistice. The city was crawling with guards that made it nearly impossible to navigate the narrow cobblestone streets and completely impossible to approach the government building, even for a girl who could turn herself invisible. The illusionist hoped her spot in the quiet little churchyard on the hill would be close enough.
One by one, the church bells began to clang, clamor, and chime all across the city in a chorus of consecrated tintinnabulation. It was nearly time for the meeting to commence. Based on what she knew about the personalities of the leaders involved, particularly the Chinese leader, Katrina suspected that the meeting would not go well. The whispered rumor that the Chinese president had originally decided to attend the meeting only because he figured no one would want to bomb Praha when their own leaders were residing there did nothing to sway her prediction of the meetings' outcome toward a more optimistic view. The stories also claimed he didn't want to give the other leaders a chance to plan his assassination, or possibly even the bombing of his entire home city, while his back was turned. Katrina knew the man better than she would like, and both rumors reason seemed perfectly in line with his way of thinking.
With the exception of the American president, Katrina didn't know as much about the other politician involved in today's meeting. What she did know was that there was a lot of bad blood between the two sides at this point. A couple of warheads detonated over one's cities or a plague released into one's rivers tended to break trusts like that. It would take a lot more than a meeting room filled with uninvolved whining foreign dignitaries to convince many of the world leaders involved in the conflict that it was time to make peace.
Katrina hoped that her efforts today would open their eyes, so they could truly see what this war was costing them. The future was at stake, for her students, for her friends and loved ones, for all the people trying to live out their little lives all around the world, and even for herself. She didn't usually spend much time considering what she wanted for her own future, when she was so wrapped up in teaching students and trying to save the world. When she had sat down to make the preparations for today's message to the world's politicians it became clear to her what she wanted to do if she did finally manage to save the world.
Slate? If we live through all this, we should get married.
She didn't wait for a telepathic response to her statement. She closed her eyes and began to concentrate, clearing all thoughts from her mind. She had never tried anything this big before. Since she didn't know enough about the leaders to be able to send her message to only them, she would be broadcasting to everyone in the city. It would take all the concentration she had to pull it off.
The last thing she felt before slipping into the pool of images was a pair of cool hands on her shoulders. Sebastian was here with her, ready to heal any adverse affects the illusions had on her body. She would be stretching her ability farther than she had ever attempted before. It was comforting to know she wasn't alone.
Flame.
A shield of flames wasn't enough to stop the barrage of bullets. “Sorry bud,” choked a young man with flame colored hair and scarlet eyes. “No biggie,” came the response from his perfectly human looking comrade in arms. Both collapsed, their breath laboring for a few moments before ceasing one after the other.
A fire burned in the hearth. A fist rapped at the door. A thin woman with a Russian nose and a swollen belly pushed open the door to see a strange man in a military uniform standing there. She already knew what he was going to tell her, but it didn't stop the tears that were coursing down her cheeks.
The village was still burning, and there was no one left to try putting out the flames. A wiry grey Schnauzer blinked his intelligent eyes, searching through the wreckage. He whined involuntarily as the smoke burned his nose and throat. His home had been attacked, the people killed and burned solely because they had food that someone else wanted. A lifeless hand protruded out from under a pile of broken timbers and debris. The smell that accompanied it was not a healthy one. His stomach growled.
Cloud.
A small for his age Chinese boy replaced the pillow under his sister's head as she lay spasming on her bed. He thought they had survived; they had lived to hug each other and cry with relief that they were still alive after the blast tore their neighborhood apart. Twenty four hours later, seizures tore through his sister's slight frame, radiation poisoning shaking the life out of her from the inside.
Black clouds rolled upwards. Too close. The man's dark hands, toughened by years of hard work and creased with old age, were bloody from his desperate attempts at digging through the rubble. “Please,” he prayed as he attempted to lift and move the debris. If he couldn't reach his wife buried beneath the remains of the the house they had built fifty years ago before the flames did, he would stay here with her until the end.
It was a beautiful day for a wedding. The sky was a clear blue with only a few wispy puffs of white. A plane roared overhead as the minister asked, “Til death do you part?” There was a flash of light, a blast of air and heat, and brief but intense pain that dissolved into white.
Snow.
A small infant cried weakly, too hungry to make any more noise than a whimper. His mother's arms around him were cold and stiff, offering little comfort. She had already given up everything and had nothing left to give him.
White flakes fell over a field. Corn stalks lay limp, dead before they even had a chance to fully ripen. A farmer with threadbare mittens cracked icicles off of an ear of corn as he pulled back the husk to reveal a frost covered mushy cob. Maybe this one was still edible; he plucked it off the ruined stalk and put it in the basket he was carrying.
Tattered boots marched over muddy ground. A cold wind blew and a man pulled his scarf tighter around his face and adjusted his meager pack of belongings on his back. Something silver glinted on the path: a red stained dog tag. Next to it, gazing up at the sky with unseeing eyes was a man whose face, at least what was left of it, made him look like he had been even younger than himself. The young man stooped over the corpse and pocketed the dog tag. The scrap metal might be worth something.
Faster and faster the images changed. Katrina stopped trying to control the illusions and let them come as they wished. Scraps of old memories from her childhood, more recent scenes of the horrors and joys she had encountered during her travels, news and rumors brought to life, scenes of horror showing her fears for what the world might become, scenes of hope and love and peace that could be, the past, the present, and two possible futures: like colorful jewels and jagged pieces of broken glass the images slid and blended one into the next in a design that made more sense when viewed from a distance.
Then, the kaleidoscope broke, shattering into a thousand tiny fragments so small they blew away on the late spring breeze, carried with the pollen and the petals from the trees growing in little churchyard on the hill. The visions faded from the senses of those in the city. People who hadn't realized they had been holding their breath inhaled deeply, tasting the air with renewed appreciation after all they had seen. Soon the city stirred, coming to life once more. A young illusionist collapsed into the arms of an ancient healer, completely spent.
The largest paved public gathering space in the world, the wide expanse was broken only by a large obelisk commemorating the People's Heroes and the mausoleum where the country's nefariously iconic chairman rested.
Named after the Gate of Heavenly Peace, it was the historical site of numerous proclamations, peaceful protests, and not-so-peaceful massacres of protesters.
During the day, the square was usually filled with people, from tourists trying to catch the camera shy green-uniformed Chinese soldiers in their panorama shots to vendors hawking Mao Zedong watches that stopped running almost as soon as you looked at them, while the vendors themselves started running at the slightest telltale flashing light of a motorcycle cop.
At night there were hardly any people at all. Especially on cold rainy nights like this one.
Numerous lights ensured that areas of the square remained as brightly lit as an American high school football stadium on a Friday night in autumn. The lights also ensured that there were deep shadows that cut across many parts of the square. One can't have decent shadows without bright lights, after all.
Rows of giant red flags snapped ominously, and wetly, in the wind.
Invisible to every sense she could imagine, Katrina watched the square from her vantage point on the steps of the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. The misty raindrops seemed to pass right through the spot where she was standing as she scanned the area.
Clear, went her silent message to the party waiting to depart inside one of the doors of the Hall of the People where the Chinese government did its business both monstrous and mundane. A few moments later five Chinese men, each wearing a charm dangling from a chain around their necks and a carrying a taser, started making their way across the square.
Thanks to the charms, the men were invisible to all five senses. Doors were silent and appeared to have never opened when they walked through them. Mist seemed to fall through them as easily as it fell through ghosts. Even the ripples they caused when they stepped through puddles were smoothed over by the charms.
The charms had one other effect. If anyone stepped within ten feet of the person wearing one, their sense of balance would be thrown completely off kilter and their stomach would revolt with the most debilitating nausea a twenty-three year old illusionist could imagine: hangover plus influenza spun in a blender on liquefy for five minutes times a hundred.
Decoys wearing similar invisibility charms had passed through the square along a somewhat different route twenty minutes earlier. Each night the schedule was chosen randomly. Some nights thirty minutes elapsed between the decoy and the authentic entourage, other nights only five minutes elapsed. Sometimes the decoy crossed the square second, a few minutes after the real group was safely on their way. On still other nights, three groups emerged from the hall and none of them contained the illustrious Zhang Xiao.
In case the reader hasn't already figured it out, the tasers are important. Or rather, the lack of projectile shooting weapons is important. When one's allies were running around completely invisible it would never do to start shooting bullets into the shadows.
Well, it's Memorial weekend this weekend. I have a feeling it might be a little quieter than normal here on MRO. I'll be up at the cabin Friday through Monday with family. Have a good weekend everyone!
The government was trying to hush up the story before the media got a hold of it. They couldn't even hush the whispers and rumors that spread instantly through the Great Hall of the People. A platoon of Chinese soldiers was heading towards a small village near the border between China and Russia to pick up emergency supplies. The town had a small store house where they had perhaps enough to see them through the rest of the winter.
When the army arrived, they found the village slaughtered.
No one knew who had done it for certain. Either army could have ransacked the town for its food. With both sides starving, either army could have been responsible for the theft of the stores, but only monsters could have been responsible for the rape, the massacre, the pillaging, the burning. Innocent people who wanted nothing more than to survive suffered because of the actions of politicians thousands of miles away.
Food made villages a target and hunger made armies into mobs. Were there other villages where this had happened? Likely. Would it happen again? No one wanted to answer that question.
“At least the women of the village got to see some action one last time before they died,” Chaing Sui rasped at her under his breath in poorly enunciated Mandarin.
Katrina had enough experience deciphering his pronunciation that she could now understand his words when he spoke to her. She also had enough experience to refuse to acknowledge her understanding of his words. The vice president was possibly the slimiest most lecherous man to ever have walked the planet.
“What's the matter? Not feeling talkative today? It's okay, you don't need to talk to be entertaining.” His mustache twitched licentiously.
Katrina continued to ignore him, keeping her body still and her eyes busy. Her gaze darted professionally around the room as she watched for any signs of threats to the supreme leader on China. The president was across the chamber, at least three other guards were in the room and she was in charge of keeping unwanted people out of the room. It was a pity that Katrina couldn't move any names from the acceptable list to the undesirable list.
“It's nice that Zhang finally chose some attractive guards. Some of them are real monsters, you know.” His hand was twitching toward her chest. The closer it got, the hotter it felt. A few inches away and he felt like he was reaching into a blacksmith's fire to grab a red hot poker with his bare hand.
“Gong gong qi che!” He slapped her across the face. He felt like he had slapped the very wall. Now both of his hands hurt.
“Wangbadan! Huli jing! Sanba!” The young blonde guard was standing behind the president now, across the chamber. She wasn't looking at him, but the president was.
Zhang Xiao was staring questioningly at his second in command as he shouted repeated insults at the pillar next to the door. Perhaps the man was not the best choice to be his successor. Though, he didn't plan on dying any time soon, so it probably made little difference.
Katrina hoped he'd pick someone else sooner rather than later.
Famine ran rampant across the entire world. Children starved on the streets of New York City just as they did on the streets of Amsterdam, New Delhi, and Beijing. In the Great Hall of the People, the government building where Zhang Xiao and his entourage of advisors, officials, and body guards worked each day, no one went hungry.
Katrina couldn't stand to finish her hearty dinners when she knew that just outside the doors were people starving to death on the streets. There wasn't enough food for the soldiers. There wasn't enough food for the citizens of any country. Yet somehow there was enough food that rich and powerful Chinese politicians could hoard it away and eat their fill three times a day. It made her sick to her stomach each time she saw a plate of food.
Koga held out his hands, and Katrina stepped between them. This is where she was supposed to be, right? She put her own hands on his shoulders and looked around at what the other dancers were doing. A white haired couple swept around them, and Katrina watched to see what they were doing with their hands. She left one hand on Koga's shoulder, and adjusted the other one so she could hold his hand off to the side. Like this?
Slowly she began to step back and forth, trying to imitate the older dancers and ending up with something like a back and forth sway. Now could she talk and dance at the same time? They would have to see.
“You're welcome,” she responded to Ryuichi's thanks. “It was no problem.” She had failed that quiz, but any questions she had answered correctly were probably thanks to his help with studying that night. She shouldn't have put it off until the last minute and he probably had saved her a few points at least. Enough that if she did well on the next one, at least the average score wouldn't be a fail.
>>>“Are you ok? That Planet guy and you seemed pretty intense and then , well and you looked a little sssstressssed. After talking to that guy, did he do sssomthing out of line?”
Katrina frowned thoughtfully, trying to imagine her face as “intense” when she had been talking to Saturn. She tried not to step on Koga's toes.
>>>“ I would be willing to ssstraiten sssomeone out if you needed me to.”
Koga added an offer to protect her onto the end of his question, in a shy voice. Katrina shook her head.
“No, no one did anything wrong. Except maybe me. The big red guy is one of the Abyss brothers. They're all friends from way back. I was just, I dunno, being crabby at him I suppose. I didn't mean to be, but... yeah.” She shook her head again.
“I think, or rather, I don't know. I might have said the wrong thing. To Fausto, I mean. I think I hurt his feelings, but there wasn't any other way to answer. I was trying not to hurt him but I think I accidentally did anyway. Now he's going out of the country and I won't even get to talk to him for a couple months. I don't know what to do.” Her words were only semi coherent, and they probably didn't make much sense to someone who hadn't overheard the earlier conversation. Katrina was distracted by her troubled thoughts, though, and they just tumbled out in whatever order they felt like.
She swallowed hard, and glanced back up from Ryuichi's tie to his face for just a moment, before turning her gaze away again with a look of guilt on her face, “Sorry, I don't mean to ramble. You probably don't want to hear about all that.”
Even in the late winter weather, the smell that rolled into the cabin of the jet was nearly unbearable. Even Katrina, who did not have the experienced nose that Sara had could instinctively recognize the smell of rotting meat. She'd created an illusion of that smell to go along with her seemingly ineffective warning to the Chinese government at their announcement of hostilities against the Russians at the beginning of the fall. The smell of death that overcame their nostrils now was no illusion, this was the real thing. What hell had they landed in?
Katrina pushed her way out of the small door behind her two companions, she didn't need their protection, she needed to see. She had to make sure.
It was a grave; not the usual kind seven by three and six feet deep. The measurements of the size of the pit they had landed in didn't register in Katrina's mind as cubic feet or meters. It registered in bodies. More bodies than Katrina could count filled the giant pit tucked in between two mountains, freshest on top, their weight crushing those down below.
Oh God.
How could something this horrifying exist? It was too real. These people were sleeping, but this was no place to sleep. Some were twisted in horror, as if they were dreaming a nightmare even more terrifying than the one Katrina was trapped in. Other faces were impossibly serene, as if they had escaped into a realm more peaceful than this one.
She was drowning in a sea of faces. They were all around her, dragging her down with them. Each face demanded her attention, begged to be seen one last time before they disappeared into oblivion. Faces that were strange, faces that almost seemed familiar, each demanded their turn in her ashen gaze. Faster, then faster she scanned the faces.
No.
Here in a country half way around the world she actually knew a few of these people. This was a woman that had escaped during the night, leaving her human husband behind, but hoping to meet with him again once she reached Europe. There was a girl, no older than twelve, who had escaped and followed the second underground railroad over fifty miles all by herself before being found by the bloodhound of the Pax senior class. There was the woman who had flapped her crow-like arms and told stories that entranced a class of seven students from a foreign country then helped them organize an escape route that would eventually lead refugees out of the country.
No, no, no.
She had known these people. Just a month or two ago, they had traveled together through the mountains. She had left them on what she had thought would be a safe path with guides she thought would be able to lead them to safety. She had abandoned them. She had failed them.
Katrina was shaking. Her entire body was shaking as she ran. She had to make sure, she had to know. The Russian soldiers that had crossed the border in the incident that sparked this war. No one had mentioned what happened to the refugees that had been involved, because the Chinese government didn't want anyone to know they had ended up here. Unless they had escaped, this is where her students would be. Unless he had escaped, this is where Slate would be.
She couldn't find them. Her heart was beating in her throat.
Slate?
She listened as hard as she could for any whisper of a response. Her breath was catching, but she still ran.
SLAAATE!!
If he was still in the country, her call would leave his ears ringing from the illusionary yell. If he was listening, it would also be shouted psychically in his mind. Her mind was swimming with images of the faces, and it was possible he could see those, too.
She stopped, bent doubled over, unable to catch her breath in the befouled Himalayan air. She couldn't breathe in this air any longer. She couldn't survive with this much death suffocating her.
Katrina. You have a job to do in Beijing. Searching for us is not what is most important at this time. Go do what you need to do.
Katrina jerked when she heard the voice in her head. What about you? I've got Cold Steel here, we can pick you up and I can still go to Beijing after that. Where are you?
There was no further response. Had she imagined his voice? No. She couldn't have. She of all people knew what was real and what was illusion. If that was really what he wanted her to do, she really had no choice in the matter. There was no way she could find them if they didn't want to be found. After all these months, they knew how to hide in these mountains. They wouldn't let themselves be found again.
She had no other option. She started quickly back towards the plane, trying to avoid thinking about what she was stepping on. Even throwing her shoes away, burning her clothes, and boiling herself in hot water would never make her feel clean again.
“Sam! Sara! We need to get to Beijing. Slate will take care of the students.” At least she thought he would. So help him if he didn't.
“Sam, get us out of here please. I'll make sure no one sees us. We don't want to get caught here.” Katrina started to try and calm herself down. Slate was alive and she had a job to do. What she had to do now was keep their plane invisible enough that they could escape this hell hole. Though she would never escape the memories of the faces of the victims here. This never should have happened, and yet someone had let it happen, even caused it to happen. And she was going to go see that person. He would pay.
For her question about Zephyr's origins, Katrina earned at wink from Ghost and a compliment from Zephyr. At least, it sounded kind of like a compliment.
>>>“Very astute.”
She hadn't realized she was being “astute”, nor had she realized he was trying to hide his original accent. If it had some Boston mixed in with the England, it just made it sound like he had spent a couple years there, too. Was there more England or more Boston right now? What had the ratio been when he'd though she was his sister back in the library of Mondragon Labs or when he had let his expressionless mask fall and had shown all of the emotions that were tangled up behind it or afterwards when had read some of the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to her? One didn't worry about accents in those situations, most likely.
She munched her pretzels while Zephyr gave his abbreviated life story. She wrinkled her nose at the part about the altercation with his father. She wasn't familiar with the word, but understood based on context. She'd had one of those with her father, too. She didn't dwell on it too long, though, as Zephyr decided that now would be an appropriate time to completely sidetrack her with his floating pretzel tricks.
“Woah! Cool! Is that they same thing you did outside?” Katrina waved her hand between the bowl and Zephyr's palm to see if she could detect a breeze. The small amounts of pretzel that had been crushed seemed to indicate that what he did this time was more like the second version of flying, the more pleasant of the two, in which he had used air that squeezed in order to hang onto someone, or something as was the case with the pretzels.
“Oh, my turn?” Katrina's glance met her mother's as the older woman was putting finished folding up grocery bags and stored them in one of the cupboards for recycling. The older woman nodded subtly at her daughter and began to take out the ingredients for that evening's dinner.
“It was about a year ago, right after the school year started that my powers first appeared. This school seemed like the best place for someone to learn about their powers, though I didn't want to come here at first. Then the school was raided during the Registration stuff, and I ended up taking shelter with the Resistance for until Spring. After everything died down again, everyone came back here.” She shrugged. The rest was pretty much history.
Bad taste in tattoos? Katrina had difficulty even imagining what would be a bad enough tattoo that she wasn't even allowed to see it. The fact that he wouldn't even tell her what they depicted made her all the more curious. A tentative plot to wait until all seven of them were asleep was forming in her devious little head. What could possibly be so bad that a tattoo would have a worse than PG-13 rating, honestly?
As Mars pushed his brother for 'trying to convince her drinking was a good thing', Katrina wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you. Beer smells almost as bad as cigarettes.”
>>>“ Aren’t you the one always going on about antidisestablishmentarianism?”
Katrina blinked at Pluto. Blinked twice.
>>>Mars shook his head. “ No, I am not and you don’t even know what that means. Antidisestablishmentarianism is a political party formed to remove the Church of England as the state church of Ireland and Wales In nineteenth century Britain.”
As Mars gave his exasperated sigh, Katrina recovered. “Yeah. I can't believe you didn't know that. Gosh,” she added to the end of Mars' statement. Was she teasing Pluto or Mars there? The answer, my friends: both.
>>>“Sleep over!”
Sleep over, indeed. Katrina grinned at Pluto's excitement, it was contagious. He must be thirteen on the inside, too. He certainly didn't make her feel like she had to try and act all grown up when she didn't feel like it.
The rec room. That would be... that-a-way. Somewhere. Katrina glanced down the hall the way the big red guy pointed. Mostly there were dorm looking rooms, and the entrance to the rec room would probably look a bit different from the average bedroom door. She'd find it, no problem. After getting lost a hundred times in Mondragon Labs, this should be a breeze. Besides, getting lost wasn't so bad, it was kind of like an adventure.
An adventure that would be made all the more awesome by the shiny red cell phone she had just been handed. Wicked. Katrina took the phone with both hands, graciously accepting the gadget, her face filled with wonder. When she got a cell phone, she was getting one like this.
“Thanks, I'll take good care of it.”
Katrina turned and started down the hall, cell phone still cupped in her hands. Was the inside just as cool as the outside, she wondered as she turned the corner. The little blue screen illuminated itself as she opened it up. Now, where would the games menu be? The curious teen pressed a button. Nope, that was contacts. A quick scroll through the list showed each of the clones' names, plus a “Lori” and an “Isabel” and a bunch of other names she didn't recognize. Ooh! There was Syn's number. Katrina remembered her from the resistance. “Geo's garage” was on there, too. She hadn't known he had a garage, but it made sense with how he liked cars, especially of the sleek and fast variety. Etcetera etcetera, and on it went. Katrina pressed another button; old pictures of the inside of a pocket. Another button; camera! Another button; there were the games. She chose 'Snake' and was soon twisting and turning through a maze just like she was doing in real life. Before she knew it, she had walked right past the rec room and had to turn around when she ran into a dead end hallway. Oops!
Syn was just as nice as Katrina had remembered her being, and even invited her to stay the evening. Truthfully, Abyss had already invited her, but it was good to know that the other residents didn't mind.
“Thanks,” she responded with a pleasant smile, “I might have to borrow some pajamas, since I forgot to bring any. I guess I didn't pack very carefully.”
The girl with the green bow in her hair, Isabel she called herself, also liked to remain barefoot it seemed. She could totally understand that. She was a little sensitive about things that were uncomfortable and shoes tended to be the worst. She could go a whole summer without wearing them. She tried to go the whole winter, too, but if she went outside at all it meant shoes were necessary for avoiding cold toes and frost bite. Katrina snuggled her own toes under the blanket Garrett had brought over. “Nice to meet you Isabel. I'm Katrina. If your toes get cold too, I've got some extra blanket here by the way.” Garrett had moved over to start setting up the pool table for a game, so there was also an open spot on the couch next to her, or in front since she was sitting sideways.
“Nope, I don't live here, I'm just visiting because Abyss is here. I think he went in search of pajamas or pillows or something. I live at Xavier's. It's convenient for going to school there. My parents pretty much signed me up the moment they realized I was a mutant, or rather my mom realized. My dad was clueless for a long time. Then I pretty much ended up at the resistance then next day, with Syn and Abyss and a bunch of other people for the whole school year.”
During the pink aura demonstration, she watched curiously to see what the older girl was doing. It seemed like the aura was a soft pink light that she could make solid, like a handy fork if she forgot to pack one with her lunch or a knife to trim annoying strands of hair.
“That's cool! What does it feel like? Does it have to be attached to you? If you make it solid around yourself can you still breathe? Does it stretch, or maybe bounce? How far does it reach?” Katrina stopped just short of adding a request to feel it for herself, deciding at the last moment that it might be weird to ask a person you just met if you could touch their aura. Maybe it was a little like personal space that shouldn't be crossed over. The young girl closed her mouth before that last question escaped, but it was probably obvious that she had been about to say something and had changed her mind. Her curiosity tended to do that to her; once she thought of a question about a hundred more instantly spawned like question zombies.
One more zombie made it through her defenses, “So, this is a random question, but why does the Sanctuary have golden doors?”