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.
Jacen had chuckled at her question. Okay, so it had been a little random, she supposed. Or rather, it was concretely connected in her own thought process, but she hadn't bothered to explain how her train of thought had been running. He did answer the question, though, after he got over his surprise at the sudden subject change.
>>>"I'm afraid you're asking someone with absolutely no experience in genetics."
“This is the first time I've ever learned about it,” Katrina replied with an honest nod. She was no expert either.
>>>"To me... I don't know that I'd call them a different species any more than I'd call an African American or Oriental a different species from a Caucasian. Are mutant different? Sure, but I'm not sure it makes them a different species."
“Hmm,” Katrina pondered while Jacen gave his view on the subject. Claire listened attentively as well, but with fewer sound effects and more unloading onto the conveyor belt. His explanation about some humans being evil not making every human evil was quite logical.
>>>"What do your teachers say at school? What's their opinion?"
“Well,” Katrina started, “everyone at school seems to have different opinions. So far the teacher hasn't said what she believes, because I think she wants us to figure it out for ourselves first. I still don't know. I think it is kind of like the difference between wolves and dogs. They are technically the same species, because otherwise they couldn't have puppies, but they each have their different sub species. But there are a lot of kids at school who say humans and mutants are completely different,” Katrina shrugged.
She wanted to believe that there were ties between the two groups, because it seemed like if they were all the same deep down inside there would be hope for everyone getting along eventually. If they were really so different as some of her classmates claimed, it seemed like it would be easier to just separate everyone to their own hemispheres. The teen illusionist didn't want to be influenced by everyone else's way of thinking, but aside from the technical biological differences, some of the other students were pretty convincing when they claimed that they were definitely not human. After all, could humans turn invisible, or shoot flames from their hands, or send out weird sonar rays? No. They were just humans.
Katrina accepted the compliment as a compliment with a quiet, “thank you,” but when Fausto wouldn't meet her eyes and started turning red she realized he meant it as perhaps more than a compliment. Her eyes widened and a faint tinge of pink crept into her cheeks as well. Boys had never blushed when they gave her compliments before. Was she supposed to do something different when they did that?
“Oh, umm. Thanks. Maybe I will just streak it with something that will wash out eventually and skip the hair cut. It takes kind of a long time to grow out.” Didn't he know that blushing was contagious? She was red faced by now.
It was an awkward eternity before Fausto spoke again, and in the interim, Katrina anxiously stared at the blank paper in front of her. They were supposed to be drawing something, but she'd missed the direction about what it was supposed to be. She twirled the pencil, stole a glance at Fausto, who still was looking away, then she put the graphite to the paper and drew a line. Pretty soon the line became a pointed shape, and she added a long face below it. A mane followed, then a tail until she had the barest outline of a unicorn. She doodled almost on autopilot, really just trying to fill the silence with something, but it failed to really distract her. She was about ready to resort back to mentioning the weather, when Fausto spoke again, probably just a few seconds after he had first looked away, no matter how long that pause had seemed.
“I think bright red or orange would draw the most attention, but it might be kind of hard to dye, since your hair is so dark. It would look good, though. Not that it doesn't already look good.” Now it was Katrina's turn to blush again. She didn't leave any awkward silences after her compliment, she just kept drawing her unicorn and quickly switched to another subject as if her face weren't crimson by this point.
“So tell me about the band you are in.” Surely that would give him something to talk about, and give her time to recover her pale faced composure.
She was completely unskilled at talking to boys when they started out conversations by blushing. She could talk about world politics or ethical dilemmas, but give her a compliment and she was completely at a loss for how to respond. She had seen one of the Abyss clones flirt with one of the resistance girls at a meeting, had even taken mental notes, but even that didn't help her now. Apparently there was more to it than just saying the right things, because she couldn't think of the right things to say!
If the professor didn't notice that two of his students were as red faced as stop lights, matching beacons that screamed for unwanted attention, he must have have been very distracted indeed.
Valentine's Day had finally finally arrived. With two “finally”s. Katrina had been looking forward to it for weeks. After Calley had asked her to go with him, it had taken the first week to get up her courage to ask for permission. It took another two days to convince her mother, Claire, that Calley was a valid chaperone, since he was eighteen and no, it wasn't a date so being eighteen didn't count against him either. It took another week to find the perfect dress, which had led to some quality mother-daughter bonding time in dressing rooms where they tried on every thing in the store with a sequence or a ruffle from skimpy to frumpy and hideous to elegant. In the end Katrina had fallen in love with a ruffled pink dress with a ribbon tied around the waist; it was the perfect color for a Valentine's outing. Then there was two weeks of crossing days off the calendar.
Of course, once the day actually arrived, there was more preparations. Hair had to be done, nails painted to match her dress, and makeup applied so subtly Katrina could have sworn her mom hadn't actually put any on her. Then there were pictures to commemorate her first ball. By the time Claire was finished fussing and photographing, Katrina had begun to wonder if the ball would be worth it.
One taxicab ride later, she knew it was.
She let Calley steer her up towards a balcony, presumably so they could gawk at people as they walked through the doorway below. Katrina got an early start on the gawking as he pulled her hand, twining them through the crowds as effortlessly as a cat. Here there was a woman with hair that actually looked like it was on fire. There was a man with three fox tails poking out beneath the twin black tails of his tuxedo. Up on the balcony was a young woman, elegantly dressed in a teal dress that matched the teal flecks in her almond shaped green eyes and complimented her flaming (but not literally) hair. Her dress was cut perfectly to show off the spots on her arms and back.
The thirteen year old took a spot next to the elegant lady and leaned over the banister to get a better look at the people below. She wondered if she would recognize anyone down there. Perhaps a politician that had visited her previous home when she lived with her Senator father, or maybe a mutant friend from the Resistance she hadn't seen in forever.
“It's so cool,” she breathed. “A year ago, this never would have been possible.”
>>>"I should not even be here."
Katrina looked over to the woman who shared their balcony, who was sighing wistfully. Her face was visible now with elegant spots sprinkled across it to match the ones on her back. They were pretty, Katrina decided. Maybe the woman was just feeling lonely, since she didn't appear to have come with anyone else.
“It's okay, you can hang out with us,” the teen illusionist offered. “We probably don't belong at such a fancy place either. I'm Katrina, nice to meet you!”
Don't worry about wrapping up his threads. They can wait until he is able to come back, if he is able to come back. Give him all of our well wishes for a speedy recovery!
(Posted with permission from Dryad. Her character is still unconscious.)
Katrina let her eyes close and her thoughts drift. The thoughts weren't really coherent ones, just random flashes of memories that were as kaleidoscopic as her vision had been just a few moments ago. She remembered a tiger with blue eyes, she remembered yelling, but couldn't remember why she was so angry. There were triangles written on notebook paper, their sides labeled with letters of the alphabet. If a tiger is angry and chases the triangles, how long is the hypotenuse? She tried to watch the tiger darting back and forth, her eyes flickering under her eyelids, but he was too fast. Eventually the tiger got dizzy from running in circles and fell over. Katrina laughed. Silly tiger.
>>>"I believe she was poisoned."
Haha! No, that's not it. He just fell over. He'll be good as new after a short rest.
The doctor finished his examination of the thirteen year old with a deep frown on his face, “Belladonna. How much did she eat? Never mind, with the amount her eyes are dilated, it must have been a sufficient amount to cause her serious harm. We're going to have to pump her stomach.”
Now, what good would that do? The tiger hadn't even eaten anything.
Door number three was asking for it. It guarded the final dungeon, home of the final boss. Katrina had tried this challenge before, but had failed. It hadn't even been an Epic Fail. Just a fail, lacking in both epic and capital letters. Katrina had vowed to get her revenge on door number three. It had taken some leveling up, and even a restructuring of her party, but with the additional people, she was ready.
Katrina was the thief of the party, in charge of stealth. It was her job to make sure no one saw them sneaking down toward the dungeon, even though invisibility wasn't quite as necessary when the lights were so dim. An illusion of silence stood by at the ready to hush any alarms they might inadvertently trigger.
Ghost, was their mage. She came packed with spells to squeeze them through tight places and blow away any enemies.
Calley, was the main character, as was clearly indicated by his aviator goggles and messy brown hair. He was in charge of looking like a bad ass (even when he was invisible).
The heroes regarded door number three. Door number three regarded Ghost's chest with a blue light. The fingerprint scanner or retinal scanner or boob scanner or whatever it was gave a buzz of protest that Katrina made inaudible to anyone within twenty yards in any direction. Access denied, that little buzz was trying to tell them.
That was fine, because they didn't need the special scanner to get in. They had a Ghostcaster of Awesomeness ready to slip the whole group under the door. All they had to do was hold hands and not let go, with special emphasis on not letting go.
Ghosting was similar to being in the void, but not the same. The nothingness was almost complete: as they vanished, she lost her senses. She couldn't feel her body any more, couldn't see, couldn't hear. She was surrounded in a gray fog and was also a part of the fog. Formless shadows drifted somewhere, but she couldn't tell if they were part of the real world or part of the fog world. There were no other thoughts to keep her company here, and not even her own thoughts were entirely clear. She was faintly aware of a swirling sensation, as if the gaseous molecules that made up her body were bending and shifting into different shapes, then reforming. Perhaps it should have been uncomfortable, but in her fuzzy state, it seemed as if it was happening to someone else.
The next thing she knew, she felt solid ground under her feet again. She could feel her feet again! They were on the other side! Door number three had met its match.
Her senses returned all at once. Every sense seemed magnified. Her clothes felt heavier and scratchier, her eyes seemed to pick up every glint in the darkness. Did Calley realize he was breathing so loudly? At least there were no alarms blaring. It was a bit of a rush to experience all at once, and the excessive sensations overloading her nerves left her feeling a little dizzy. At least she didn't feel like she had to puke. She put one hand against the cold metal wall to support herself, and the other on her forehead, trying to still the spinning.
There was something there that didn't belong to her.
“Err,” she felt the rest of her body, but it seemed that the rest of her clothing seemed normal. She looked up. Calley was missing something. A certain pair of aviator goggles seemed to have relocated themselves.
>>>“If I recall correctly you were practically begging to be let down not 30 seconds ago. Are you always so fickle?”
Katrina sensed that the brown haired air elemental's question was a rhetorical one. She pretended to give it serious thought by tilting her head to one side, pinching her chin with one hand, and looking upwards as if the answer to his question was written in the clouds or floating past on the wind that had so recently been suspending her in the air.
“Hmm. I suppose I have been known to change my mind from time to time. If I never did, I think I would get stuck in one way of thinking forever. My opinions wouldn't be able to keep up with the changes in the world around me if they weren't also somewhat flexible.” She had intended to give a smart alack response, but it ended up sounding kind of serious instead. That was no way to get back at him for teasing her, so she added, “As for you, are you always so sarcastic?” There. That would put him in his place. Or earn her another whirlwind ride through the air above the mansion as punishment for her impudence.
>>>"Would you like to come in for something to drink, Mister Zephyr? ... Or, I guess you've never been here... Kat would you like to help me show Mister Zephyr around?"
Dio had never been to the mansion before? There were so many cool things to see here. The mansion was perhaps less of a labyrinth than Mondragon Labs, but the twists and turns and nooks and crannies within the school had infinitely more character than the monotonous hallways of the former home of the Resistance. Katrina was already planning where she would lead the tour first.
“I'd love to! Let's start in the kitchen, because then we can get snacks on the way. My mom works in the kitchen now, so sometimes I get to help plan what everyone gets to eat for dinners.”
"I'll just be a moment."
They all paused a moment and waited for Ghost to turn solid again. To Katrina's perception, which was limited to visuals of the event, it merely looked like Ghost slowly turned from half invisible to fully visible again. The more visible she became, the lower she sank toward the ground until her feet touched gently down to the earth. Zephyr seemed to find it more interesting than she did, but he probably was paying attention to how the wind currents were affecting Ghost's transformation, or something like that.
>>>"Shall we?" Ghost asked once she had finished pulling herself back together again.
>>>“By all means, lead the way.” Zephyr waved them onward.
Katrina obliged. She grabbed the hazel haired aeromancer's hand as soon as he was done waving it and pulled him eagerly toward the side door of the mansion that led directly to the kitchen.
“That's the wall that Garrett and Ghost built,” the thirteen year old used her free hand to point out the handiwork of the snow haired air elemental and the mansion's resident Tao master and sometimes lawn chair occupant.
“That was during the reconstruction. I helped, too. One of the things I did was clean out the refrigerator. It was totally disgusting smelling! Anyway, this is the secret door to the kitchen. It makes a really good shortcut out to the pool so you don't have to walk all the way around the house. It probably would also be useful in sneaking around the house for hide and seek, too. I haven't had a chance to play yet, but I already know about twenty good hiding places, but I'm not going to tell you where all those are, just in case.”
Katrina pushed the light cart into line behind the heavy one, even though it wasn't the shortest line. It would simplify things if they all stuck together in the lines.
>>>"So Katrina, how's school going? Got any big plans for your upcoming Spring Break?"
“Spring break?” Katrina shrugged, “ I don't have any plans yet. Just hanging out with friends, I guess. It seems so far away, I must have a million tests and projects between now and then.”
There was a quiz on genetics tomorrow, for example. She had already been studying for several days and was pretty sure she had the concept of punnett squares down, so it should be a pretty easy quiz. It was the accompanying project that had her more concerned: a poster based on the genetic differences between humans and mutants and then a class debate on whether mutation made them a different species, a different breed, a different race, or just a different version of the same thing. Katrina had looked at so many sources on the subject and heard so many different opinions she wasn't even sure she knew which side of the debate she would be supporting.
The thought about supporting a side made Katrina wonder what Mister Mysterious Marketplace Man thought about the topic. It never hurt to hear other opinions on the subject, and so far the only opinions she had heard were from people who lived at the mansion, which was a very narrow sampling of opinions. I t would also be good to know, both for her and for her mother, what this man thought about mutants. Not that Katrina wanted to test him or anything.
Katrina looked her mother's date in the face, pushing her hair out of her face and discarding her shy demeanor. “So, we have a class debate coming up. It's about whether humans and mutants are the same species or not. What do you think?”
Claire looked up at her daughter with an eyebrow raised from the other side of the overloaded cart she was emptying onto the conveyor belt. It seemed like a random subject to be bringing up at the grocery store, unless there was some ulterior motive. Was her daughter testing Jacen, or was she really curious because of some class project? She wasn't really sure. A year and a half ago, she never would have thought her daughter capable of duplicity, but she was growing up and had been forced to live in the adult world for an entire nine months without the protection of parents, in the mutant resistance against the Registration Act. Who knew what kinds of things she had picked up while she was there?
Claire didn't respond out loud to her daughter's query, though. She simply waited to hear what Jacen would say. Whether or not her daughter had carefully planted that question, she too was interested to hear his response.
>>>¨I can do it alone... but I would like to do uit with you this time. you always helped me when i was in trouble. it seems that i only used you to solve my problems in a easy way and isnt like that , you are my friend . I would like at least once to do something fun with you , like try to make a song or go to a hairdresser to change our looks. i dont want to have friends only to take them to funerals¨
Katrina remembered the funeral well, it was the funeral of the man who had killed Fausto's parents. The funeral of the man Fausto had killed for revenge. Katrina hadn't asked for the details of his death. She had gone with to the funeral to support her friend, not because she believed that what he had done was right, but because it seemed right to take Fausto there, to see what had become of the people who had lost their husband, father, brother, and son.
It was vary strange to be friends with a murderer. She still thought killing was wrong, but she knew that Fausto was a good person. She didn't usually think about it, but when she did, it was hard to wrap her mind around a murderer being a good person. Murder was evil, but her friend Fausto was not evil. So, what was evil, then? Was there such a thing as pure evil, or were some mixture of good and evil present in each person? Did that mean Katrina had some evil in her as well? She didn't think so, but she supposed it was possible.
But he had asked her about doing something fun, and she was brooding about good and evil.
“A new look would be fun. I've been thinking it might be fun to dye my hair or something.”
The teacher had either finished or given up on his lecture and was passing out art materials so the students could sketch for the last fifteen minutes of class. Amidst the chaos of handing things out, it was now safe to talk in a normal voice.
“Maybe some colored streaks or something. I haven't asked my mother yet though. I don't know if she would approve. I could also cut my hair short. It's been long forever. Maybe short and spiky would be cool for a change. How about you? What would you do differently?”
>>>¨As i was saying ... I have some ideas for a song.i wrote a few lines but it doesnt convince me at all, it's as if i am missing something. I would like you to help me, not to take advantage of your creativity, but for have fun together.¨
She hadn't written lyrics before, but she was willing to try it.
Katrina just pouted in return. She hadn't meant to sound like a nagging mother.
>>>”Let me answer that question with another question. what are you doing in a class when outside the sun shines bright ? isnt better to go outside and enjoy the beautiful day?
Katrina hadn't realized it was nice outside. It was still winter in her mind, so she had been avoiding the outdoors. Winter was cold and she didn't like cold very much. She didn't respond to his question other than a shrug. She was still sort of trying to pay attention to the professor, or at least look like she was trying. It was rather hard to hear over all the babble.
>>>“if you dont want me to stay delayed while all the class finish the painting you have to help me ... but I didnt came here to ask you about my delayed homework.”
Oh, then what had he come to class for? Katrina raised an eyebrow questioningly in Fausto's direction.
>>>¨Kat I'm thinking of a change of image. what do you think?¨ He asked, but then immediately shook his head, as if that wasn't really what he had wanted to say. Katrina waited, and when Fausto spoke again his voice sounded a little nervous, but it was hard to tell when he was speaking so quietly to avoid the teacher's attention.
>>>¨Kat that wasnt what i really wanted to tell you. I'm in a rock band, really we are beginning it . I only have a few ideas for a song but we dont have enough for the first show. I would like you to help me with the songs, what do you you think?¨
Was that what he meant by a new image, too? Maybe he was going to dye his hair or dress in some really strange clothes or something. Was that why he had been missing so much class?
Now it was Katrina's turn to whisper under her breath, trying to talk without moving her lips. “I can help, I suppose. What do you need me to do?”
>>>"I'll give you a call tonight or tomorrow then. But here, let me help you with your groceries. It's the least I can do for the trouble I caused."
He was helping her. Smiling at her even. Katrina couldn't help but look up at his kind looking smile and give a small smile back, before realizing what an awkward thing it was to smile at your mother's date for Saturday. Unless maybe it wasn't so awkward. Katrina dropped her gaze again. She was so confused. How was she supposed to feel about her mother dating? How was she supposed to feel about the guy her mother was dating? He seemed so genuinely nice, it was hard to dislike him. At least, she had certainly thought he was nice before she had gone to get the eggs and tomatoes.
>>>"I never would have thought that my day at the grocery store would end up with my actually crashing into you two ladies."
He even kind of had a sense of humor. That was a good thing right? Katrina's lip twitched to the side just a little.
Claire couldn't figure out why her daughter was suddenly acting so shy suddenly. She was usually so friendly towards people. She tilted her head, but didn't say anything to her young offspring. She did laugh lightly at Jacen's comment about crashing into them.
“It does make a good story,” she admitted with a smile, then checked her rather long grocery list. She had been crossing thing off as they went, “I think that soup was the last thing on our list, so we should be ready to check out.”
Katrina let Mr. King take the heavy cart, and followed up behind with the lighter one as they all traipsed toward the check out. Jacen's cart probably had few enough items that he could make it through the express lane if the check out person didn't count too carefully.
She followed along quietly, trying to sort out the situation in her head. She hadn't heard from her father in slightly over a year, and at that time he hadn't been exactly happy to hear that she was a mutant. Deep down, she wanted to believe that he still could still change his mind. She didn't think that even in the most idealist of worlds that her parents would ever get back together. So maybe dating someone else was a good thing for her mother. It would give her something to do besides hovering all the time, as if she was constantly afraid Katrina would be snatched out from under her nose. Not a likely scenario. Katrina just wished she could find out more about this Jacen King fellow.
Sam's blow made Geo lose his balance on the ice and he fell over. Sam kept racing straight toward her, but at the last moment, something blocked the way. Giant pillars of rock and earth shot up out of the ground, like narrow bars of a cage all around Katrina, then they widened and widened until she was completely enclosed, except for a circle of starlight high above her head. If she hadn't known it was Geo who was doing it, she would have been terrified.
There was no breeze inside the enclosure, and the earth made a very good sound barrier. It must have been very thick, because the sounds of the battle seemed very quiet and very far away now. It was like being in her own little world at the bottom of a well and somehow it was calming. It gave her time to think, and unbeknown to the mirageling, the breezes carrying the terror pheremones couldn't reach her here.
She considered her situation (and didn't realize someone was screaming her name at that very moment). She was in the middle of a battle, trapped in a pillar of rock. Her friend was helping the side that was attacking the mansion, but she didn't know why. Her fellow mansion resident and all around nice person was fighting him and apparently trying to save her own innocent and helpless self from the clutches of her own evil friend he didn't realize was her friend. If she could get them both to shut up and listen instead of just bashing each other... but she couldn't do anything until she got out of the pillar.
Katrina ran her hands over the walls of her enclosure. They were fairly smooth, with no obvious hand holds. It was a fairly narrow space, though. She put a hand out to each side and placed them against the walls as she spread out her feet. Maybe she could walk up the space one hand or foot at a time, keeping enough tension in her other three limbs to keep crawling upwards.
Or not. She wasn't strong enough for such a feat, and the walls were slippery besides. Katrina sighed and leaned against the wall, sliding down until she was sitting. She would just have to wait then and stare at the wall like some pathetic damsel in distress. *le sigh*
When her mother replied, “Seven sounds great!” Katrina couldn't take it anymore. As nonchalantly as she could, she walked around the corner from thirteen to twelve just in time to see her mother folding up a piece of paper and sticking it inside the flip shut cell phone.
>>>"If anything comes up, or you need to reschedule just give me a call. Maybe... um... well... never mind."
Never mind is right. “Sorry it took so long,” Katrina set the breakable groceries carefully on top of the cart in the least precarious place she could find as if she had heard nothing, “there weren't any good tomatoes left.” Oops. It probably would have been more tactful to not complain about the quality of the replacement groceries, but she had been trying so hard to avoid other even more awkward subjects. Like her mother going on a date with the tomato squasher on Saturday at seven.
Her mother was giving her an odd look with one eyebrow slightly raised. Was she trying to tell her that she had been rude or was that a guilty look? Katrina had no idea, she was too busy rearranging the groceries to make sure the eggs wouldn't fall to look either of the adults in the face.
Claire stopped trying to analyze her daughter's strange response and just shrugged at Jacen, admitting that she didn't understand the teenage brain whatsoever, “Anyway, you should call so we can arrange a meeting place, too.”
Katrina was fairly certain her ears were looking more and more like the tomatoes. Why was her mom still talking about it? She was right here, now. How was Mr. King feeling about that? Katrina didn't dare look at him. She just stood by the cart, ready to push it toward the checkout whenever her mother was ready to stop talking to the random guy from aisle twelve. Whom she was planning to go out with on Saturday. Saturday!
The winter days seemed to stretch on endlessly bleary. Each day seemed colder than the last, as if winter would spiral downwards forever and spring would arrive too late to pull it back out of the depths to which it had sunk. It had been days since Katrina had seen the sun. They sky remained a dismal color too ugly to even be called grey for days. Even the snow was ugly, spattered with dirt and trampled into mud. Even a fresh snowfall would have been a welcome sight, but the weather seemed to want to remain stagnant at bitterly putrid.
Katrina's mood, if anything, was more dismal than the weather. The geography teacher had handed back their tests and Katrina had failed, or rather nearly failed. She'd only managed to get about sixty percent of the stupid country capitals right, and the maps had gotten all confused in her head. Her studying plan hadn't worked out as well as she had hoped, ad during the test she had been really preoccupied worrying about a certain tiger mauling a certain lizard.
Math wasn't going well either. She had gotten ahead of her grade level in some areas during her studies with Slate, but in other areas she felt even more lost than before. She did really well when problems were like logic puzzles or when real life problems had to be solved, but with theoretical things like multiplying matrices, she was hopelessly behind. She could not wrap her head around something like multiplying an entire grid by another one and getting a whole new grid as a result. Everyone else had picked it up and even figured out how to do it in their calculators to solve word problems really fast. She didn't trust the calculator though, because she didn't understand how the function worked. She was beginning to think it had been a mistake for the teacher to try and move her ahead of her grade. Every day was a complete mystery as to whether she would breeze through or stumble around completely lost, and lately there had been a lot more stumbling than anything else.
She really needed someone to talk to about it. Someone who wouldn't scold her or tell her she should have studied harder. Someone who could make everything make sense again, albeit in a round about and illogical way.
Calley and Slate had been gone for over a week now. The last time that happened, Neena had the police out looking for him and everyone was worried. Calley had come home in the foulest mood Katrina could have imagined was even possible and had admitted that he hadn't thought he would be home at all. He'd thought he was leaving to die last time and he hadn't even said good bye.
He hadn't said good bye this time either. He did make vague excuses over the phone about an illness to try and explain his absence, apparently. Katrina had heard about it second hand that he was sick. It was a stupid excuse, though. If he was really sick, he should be in the infirmary or tucked safely into his own bed. How did he expect to get without anyone taking care of him? If he really was sick, that is.
Katrina sat slumped on Calley's bed. She wanted peace and quiet, and no one would come looking in here. No one would be checking to see if she was making progress with her studying. Her math book, notebook, and calculator were spread out in front of her amidst the folds and billows of the unruly comforter that may or may not have been lying more smoothly before the saturnine thirteen year old had gotten to it. It was a good bed for sulking, though she had to dig pillows out of the closet for leaning against the headboard studying purposes. She alternated glaring at the textbook and glaring out the window. The sun refused to come out, and her text book refused to shed any light on the subject of matrices. It was all stupidly hopeless.
Katrina tore out the notebook page and crumpled it up with a growl and threw it to the bottom of the bed. She'd already spent an hour on it and still had no correct answers as far as she could tell. After another five minutes of glaring out the window, she crawled to the bottom of the bed to retrieve it. She sat back against her pillow and smoothed it out again. Numbers one through seventeen were no clearer than they had been before she crumpled it. She sighed and folded the paper. Then in half again. Unfold. Fold diagonally. She reached for a pair of scissors from her backpack and trimmed off extra fringe and an unused three inches at the bottom. The folds came automatically without Katrina having to think about them. A moment later a paper crane sat on top of her notebook. Majestic white with light blue stripes, the scribbles and eraser marks had all ended up on the inside.
He was a lonely looking little crane, his face downcast and sad.
Katrina reached for her notebook, displacing the crane slightly to ponder the mystery of matrices. She tore out a clean page. The folds of this crane were much crisper and more exact than those of the first. They would be brothers, these two cranes with their matching blue pinstripes; one a little rumpled, with a lot of mixed up thoughts inside, the other well groomed and perfectly postured. Katrina frowned at them sitting next to each other on her math book.
“Why don't you ever say good bye?”
The cranes didn't answer, so Katrina left them to keep each others' silent company on Calley's bed when she left for her own room.
