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.
Turning her chin, she glanced at him and nodded. "Y-yeah."
She allowed him to remove the painting from her hands, but tracked it with her eyes. Then her vision was flooded with his chest and she leaned into him. She nodded mutely to his confirmation of her own thoughts. There really wasn't much she could say.
"Don't worry... We'll get him, and now that we know, we can stop this."
She nodded again but wrapped her arms around him and lifted her head. Small, frustrated tears were gathered in her eyes and she had a frown pressed on her lips. "I know. I believe that." She couldn't stop the crushing feeling of defeat that came along with the news, though. It felt like she had taken one giant step forward, slipped, and then careened all the way back down to the bottom.
She struggled with what to say for a moment, glancing around her room. It didn't feel safe anymore. For the last week she had been there she had felt safe. Like nothing could get her. Now, because of the spy, parts of that safety net had holes in it. It... angered her. It pi#$%ed her off that Roach could just wiggle into her life whenever he felt like it and break all of the things she loved.
It felt like he was trying to destroy her, body and soul.
Her brow creased. "It doesn't matter if he knows, he can't stop this." She couldn't let herself start to slide into depression. She couldn't give up. "I refuse to let him win." She dropped her head back onto his chest, forehead pressed into his collar bone. An angry tear escaped and made a break for it down her cheek.
"That's pretty normal. Kinda feels like taking the plunge, huh?" She smiled shakily and scratched the back of her head.
"I've been messing with my hair since Junior high." She fiddled with her own hair, glancing at the slightly frizzy ends. "Started with the ends, then went full color the next year. I started with a really deep red."
She paused, and then added in, "I went to black after that, and then Orange." She'd been orange for a few years, too. Bright, fruity orange. It had been her favorite until pink. "And now pink!"
The bus rumbled to a stop and she waited for Zinnia to get up first before un-wedging herself from her corner. Once they were on the street she promptly deposited the ruined basket and cookies into the nearest trash can, and pointed across the street to where the store was. "That's it right over there."
She sidled up to a cross walk and waited, glancing at Zinnia as she tugged her bag back up onto her shoulder. "It's not terribly bad, though, the hair dye. If you end up hating it there are plenty of ways to remove the color and go back to normal."
She started across the street when the light changed. "And as long as you don't try to bleach it too often, the color doesn't do a whole lot of damage to your hair." Someone bumped into her as she moved past, checking her shoulder lightly. She turned to look as she walked.
"Dang, Girl! Do the drapes match the carpet?"
Rolling her eyes and ignoring the comment, and turned back around to keep walking. "You also have to grow a second skin to comments pretty quickly."
This time, with a fresh canvas before her, she set about sketching out two figures. One, a larger form that took up quite a bit of the upper canvas, was tipped over with its arms splayed out to the sides. She sketched in thin wires to hold it aloft. It was to be a puppet... a being not in charge of its own body. Perhaps there was a mind, even, but no control over its physical form left it a prisoner within its own flesh.
From a compartment within the chest of the puppet, from behind two panels that popped open and hung limply on the sides, another figure was suspended below. She gave this one a more realistic shape. Where there were wires attached the skin puckered and pinched. The form, strangely lacking any definite gender cues, was wrapped around the joints and middle by wire, which shot up into the cavity of the larger puppet.
She set her pencil down, drumming her fingers on her legs as she eyed the drawing skeptically. What was the message behind it? What was the feeling?
Confined. Snared. The feeling of being trapped within your own skin, while outside influences urged you to act against the grain.
She nodded, and started to set up her color scheme.
She watched as Saph jumped up and scrambled around the room with wide eyes. The possibility that there had been one of the little Roaches watching the whole time was certainly not what she had been wanting to hear.
When he found a small hole in the ceiling, her worries were confirmed and she hurried to the door. If there was one in his room, then there was an obvious possibility that there was one in her room as well.
She needed to get to her room as fast as possible, ignoring the fact that she was bolting down the hallway sans pants. Modesty came second on the importance list as far as she was concerned.
Bursting in through her door she set about dragging the only chair in her room toward the overhead light fixture and removed the glass dome. There wasn't a hole to be seen. She dropped from the chair, abandoning the glass dome on her bed, and set about removing paintings from her walls.
Three paintings in and she found it. Behind a large painting of sunflowers with smiling skeletal faces was a hole dug through the wall. She glanced behind herself and noted that it was the wall that faced her desk. Above her bed. Anything that might have snuck in from that hole would have been behind her and out of sight as she was scouring the internet for clues on the giant cockroach of her nightmares.
She dropped onto her knees on her mattress, settling on her tush with the painting leaning against her lap. He knew... he most definitely knew what she had been up to the last few days. If not from Eric, then from one of the other thousands of roaches out there. The color drained from her face as she thought of possible consequences.
Had she put everyone in danger? Had she put herself in moredanger? What did all of this mean for the investigation? The future?
She sat up fully at the tone in Saph's voice. "S$%#." This was bad, very bad. Her gaze unfocused and she caught a knuckle between her teeth.
"so, hypothetically there are thousands of these bugs out there." She didn't like the odds. She also didn't like the fact that he basically made it out to seem like a good job that he was more than willing to work.
"Does that mean someone will replace you? If you are unionized and only work 8 hours... does that mean that you aren't here all the time? Do you work in shifts?"
She started, and her voice trembled slightly. Would that mean that Eric would be replaced? Did that mean that Roach would just send another in his place in order to keep tabs on her again? She cursed under her breath.
"Maybe we should take him to the precinct that is dealing with this case. Maybe with his help we can get a definite location for Roach." She was thinking out loud, her hands clenched into the blankets in her lap. She was worried, and rightly so.
She flopped over exhausted and snuggled into the blankets on the bed. Saph got up and headed on over to their captive. She was more than content to simply lay there in her t-shirt and bury herself in blankets.
Meanwhile the little roach had scurried back to the decoder and was busy spelling out a message.
"T-H-O-U-S-A-N-D-S"
From her spot over on the bed, she wriggled around so she could face them. "What did he say?"
She hummed along, fiddling with the pen in her hand as Saph spoke. She was envisioning some kind of miniature torture chamber with a tiny stretching rack, iron maiden, and stock. The image made her chuckle. "Bug physiology actually makes it quite easy to survive without all six legs." She glanced at the tank with a half lidded gaze. Saph seemed to have a better head when it came with this type of thing, so she chose to follow along with his lead.
"So... I mean... What doesn't he like? We could always cover him up again?"
She couldn't stop the heated flush that decorated her face, and grinned shyly back at him. It was probably a little too late for 'shy' now, but she was also now aware that there was another being in the room who knew what they were doing. She swallowed thickly, and set the pen down.
"Yeah?"
She edged closer to Saph, tucking strands of vibrant pink out of her face as she moved. "I wouldn't be opposed to it, I guess." She grinned back, and side-eye glanced at the fish tank. She wasn't terribly far away from the x-man, so it didn't take her long to maneuver her way into his lap with her arms looped around his shoulders.
When she focused on Saph again, the grin melted into a content smile and she leaned in toward him...
Her voice dropped and octave and she clenched the note pad in her hands. "Why the %$#& does he need to know what i'm up to?"
Okay, maybe she had some justifiably unresolved anger issues about the whole mess. Saph stepped out of the room and she leaned in really close to the glass to get a look at Eric on a more equal level. "Seriously, why does he even care? He ruined my life already. He got his pictures. He got his sick joy. Why is he still coming after me?"
She wondered, somewhere in the back of her mind if it had anything to do with the research she had been doing. Had he been keeping tabs on her because he knew she would investigate?
"How many more of you does he have? How many more cockroaches?" Saph joined her again and she shot him a glance. "Not yet... I don't know if he will have answers to all of my questions."
The small bug had moved to the decoder again, and she jotted down what it wrote.
"He said, 'I dunno. He doesn't tell me stuff, I just do my job." She paused as he continued, trying to break apart the answers into separate blocks. Then, "There are a lot of us."
That caught her attention, and she turned to look at Saph fully. "He doesn't seem to have a lot of answers... what should we do now?"
She jotted down the letters quickly, compiling a short narrative of sorts on paper.
"He said Roach is just his boss." She tapped the pen against her chin and frowned. "Eric, you said you just work for him, but he must have given you some sort of instructions. What does he have you specifically looking for?" She really wanted to know why it was her he seemed to have fixated on. Why he had chosen an insignificant little human to torment instead of someone more worthy. Maybe it was a power thing?
She glanced at Saph, satisfied that he was happy with the food. She felt accomplished even though she hadn't really cooked anything for herself, or anyone else, for many months.
Eric set about spelling out another message, which she jotted down quickly.
She blinked as he took the plates from her and hurried back into the room. She followed after with a chuckle and shut the door behind her on the way in. She plopped down next to him and grabbed her water bottle as he started to ramble on about all the things he'd explained.
The little guy had a name apparently, and it was Eric. She nodded, slowly unscrewing the cap from her bottle. She started to take a slow sip as the bug started messing with the ring, watching with obvious curiosity as he spelled out a message.
"P-L-E-A-S-E got it. please. D-O-N-T.. Don't.... H-A-V-E .... Have what? S-E-X A-G-A-I-N..."
She promptly spit her water out and choked. Red flushed into her face and she sputtered incoherently for a moment.
"We are totally not!"
She turned her attention back to the bug, bending down to his level a bit. "Why are you following me?"
She found her way into the kitchen and spent a few moments digging for a pan and spatula. Once she found her tools she turned to the fridge and procured the foods. The bacon itself she instantly regretted offering to make... but forced herself to push through it. She could deal with the mild nausea from the sight and smell. As long as she didn't try to eat any of it she was sure she would be good.
A few minutes later she had a plate loaded up with a few eggs and a pile of bacon. She figured that he could use the protein after the night that they had had.
Her cheeks flushed and she deposited the dirty dishes in the sink before snatching up the food and drinks. For herself she'd procured a little bowl of plain oats and a bottle of water. She really still couldn't stomach much else, no matter how hard she tried.
Making her way back up to the room, she found quite a dilemma when she realized that she couldn't get the door open with her hands full. With her bare feet, she attempted to knock for entrance.
She returned quickly from her room with her most recent painting, closed Saph's door and plopped down in front of the tank. "Okay... I don't normally show these kinda things to anyone save for the potential buyer." She paused, dragging the canvas in front of her and rested her chin on the top.
"But I guess I can make an exception in this case." The painting, which she had taken to calling 'Heart'. It was the blue form piece with the skeletal flower she had finished a day ago. In some places where the paint was especially thick she had to use caution, but most of it had dried already.
"So, what do you think?"
The roach seemed to stare at it for quite a while before his antenna twitched and he moved back to the pad.
'Bold. Strong image. Like a lot.'
She smiled, a small one, and drummed her fingers on the edge of the canvas. "Hmm.. well, if you like this one i'll bet you'll like a few of the other ones too!"
Staggering to her feet she headed for the door, intent on dragging a few more paintings into show him. It might had just been her ego, but she rather liked the positive attention. Even if it was coming from a cockroach.
When she came back in she had a small tablet in her hands. She was in the process of fiddling with the touch settings to make it easy for Eric to use. Before she put it in his tank, though, she turned on the kids mode. He would have a hard time trying anything funny without access to her password.
"Okay, here. This will make it easier for you." She waited for him to move to the allocated spot, then cracked the lid a little and eased the tablet inside. She fixed the lid back in place and sat back on her haunches.
The roach quickly went to work finding an app on the program that would allow him to type, or draw. He ended up settling on a draw option and started to used his antenna to write a message. Shelby was pleased to see it working well.
"Do I have hobbies?" She blinked at the message and then the little bug beside the tablet. It almost looked like he nodded at her. She made herself comfortable and pondered the question. It was a little personal, and they had agreed early on in negotiations that personal facts about her were off the table.
..but, it was also something she wasn't terribly concerned about him knowing. "Okay, i'll give you this one. I'm pretty heavily into art." Supporting herself on her arms, which were tucked behind her, she watched the little bug watch her.
"Mostly abstract stuff. Variety of colors, loose shapes, more or less free form."
Eric erased his previous message quickly, and started another. 'Favorite type?'
She chuckled, "Skeletons, really. All different types too. I think they are all really fascinating to study."
She chuckled, further burrito-ing into his arms and the blankets. "No kidding." She hadn't exactly planned on jumping into someones bed today, but she regretted nothing. The quick peck to the lips brought warmth to her cheeks and she giggled, ducking her face out of sight.
At his comment about the time she hummed in response. "I dunno. We could just go with really late, and then we won't have to get up until tomorrow morning." Her smile shifted into a grin.
"You hungry?" She shifted then, escaping her blanket cocoon in order to lean over him with one arm supporting her on the other side. Her hair framed her face like a pink halo and she angled a sh-- eating grin down at him. "I thought you'd never ask!" Then she grabbed the edge of the blanket, hauled it back over them, and attacked!
[Fade to black]
****
A bit later she was wriggling her jeans back on and stuffing her hair into a messy ponytail. She'd managed to track down her glasses and t-shirt, although she had been tempted just to keep his. "You want eggs and bacon?" She was planning on heading down to the kitchen to grab breakfast, even though it was close to midnight. What did that make it? Midfest? She mentally shrugged. "I can grab OJ too, unless you want something else?"
She turned, smiling at him, and pecked him on the cheek. When she had her answer she let herself out and hurried toward the kitchen. It would be the first time she had actually used the space, since she had just chosen to stock up on crackers and plain instant oat meal packets for her daily meals. But, she was in a generous mood and willing to try for Saph.
"Hah! Check!" She moved her queen into check territory triumphantly. "I've got you this time, Eric!"
She waited expectantly as he moved around, getting a view of the board from one angle and then another. Then he moved back to the decoder and she nervously jotted down what he was spelling out. "Knight.. to king? Whaaaat." She followed his direction and panicked. "$%@&!" He'd snuck the damn thing in right through her defenses and under her nose.
"Okay, I give up. You've beaten me soundly five times. I bow to your obvious superiority in all things chess related." With a sigh she started to pack up the board. She paused when she saw him moving to the decoder again and grabbed her pad.
"Better... communicate...method..." She blinked again, pursed her lips and squinted at him. He wanted an easier way to communicate. How, she was't exactly sure. After a few moments of quiet contemplation she grabbed the chess board and pieces, "Hold on one sec, okay?"
