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.
Some time later Shelby sat up, wearing a shirt that wasn't hers and rubbing her eyes with the back of one hand. What time was it? She shrugged off a familiar sense of deja vu and glanced over at the man snoozing beside her. It brought a smile to her face.
Running a hand through her hair, which at this point had given up at looking at all presentable, she scooted towards the end of the bed to drape her legs over. His blanket was wrapped around her waist snug and warm. She really didn't want to get up, but she needed to pee and her bladder would protest against her if she held it in any longer. Gingerly she slid out from covers, tugging the end of the shirt down to cover her tush and padded across the room to his bathroom.
A few minutes later she exited, looking a bit more awake. Climbing just as gingerly back into the bed she slithered under the covers and snuggled up into Saph's warmth. She knew she couldn't sleep for the rest of the day... night... whatever, but that didn't mean she wasn't allowed to steal a few more pleasant moments for herself before it was back to normal.
Smiling with the blanket drawn up to frame her face, she wriggled closer to him and closed her eyes. She didn't know where her glasses had gone, and didn't care for the moment.
She had earned points in how she had approached him, however. She'd sat down cross legged in front of his prison and introduced herself. She had explained that she thought they had started off on the wrong foot, oddly, and had offered to put the decoder ring in the glass tank so he could more easily communicate with them.
She'd asked him his name, treated him like more than a simple bug. He would remember it, not that it would really help her case at all. Then she'd asked him if he would like to play a game. That she thought he might be bored just sitting in there. She had agreed to play whatever game he had wanted, hence how Chess had come to be.
To her credit, even though she lost terribly every time she was a pretty good sport. She didn't get angry and throw the board, or shake him again. She didn't dwell on it for long, either. Just huffed and started to set the board back up.
He did have a question that had been bugging him, though. Pun intended. He caught her attention and started spelling something out.
"...W... h...y. Why?" She blinked at him. His antenna bounced up and down like a nod. "As in, why am I doing this?" Another bob. She pursed her lips and dropped her chin into her hands, still lazily kicking her feet in the air.
"I dunno Eric, I guess it's because you don't deserve to just sit there and rot like a criminal. Innocent until proven guilty and all, right?" She had caught him spying on her, but spying by itself wasn't exactly a major offense. "I hate being cooped up in this building. Can't leave by myself." She was careful with her words, even if they had captured him. There was no telling how exactly Roach got his information from them.
"I didn't want to just shove you in a little prison and strip away all of your basic rights with it. You deserve the same rights as me." Speaking of...
She wiggled to the left, toward a small plate of food. It had a few grapes and crackers on it, as well as some cheese. She wasn't an expert on what bugs normally ate so she had just grabbed a few random things.
"Are you hungry? It's been a while since you last ate anything."
The cockroach moved to the decoder and spelled out a simple 'yes'. With a smile and grabbed a cracker and a grape and crawled to the tank. There was a little opening on the lid that popped on and off with some force. It was where you were supposed to be able to easily feed the fish through. In this case it made the task of feeding her prisoner much easier. She simply had to pop the top off and drop the food in real quick. Eric and her had established rules of trust, so when she was getting him water and food he was to stay put on the other side of the tank by the decoder ring.
"There." She sat back on her haunches. Eric skittered over to nibble on the grape.
Shelby wrinkled her nose, but moved the chess piece anyway. "Drat... that left me open."
She was on her third game of chess. She'd lost the two previous games so far. She kind of sucked at it. Scoping out the pieces on the board in front of her, while her legs kicked lazily through the air behind her, she decided to move her queen out of the way again. He was going to win, and she couldn't really see a way out of it.
Who was she playing with that kept so thoroughly whooping her a%$? The captive cockroach she had found spying on her in the danger room.
As she waited for him to scope out the board and make a decision on his next move, she primed her note pad. They'd been communicating via a little decoder ring that Saph had found in his room. She didn't know where he'd found it, it looked like it had fallen directly out of the 60's.
She saw the little bug scurry to the ring and set about jotting down the letters he chose as he turned the dial to and fro. "c-h-e-c-k-m-a-t-e." She paused. "Checkmate? What? Where?!" Peering at the board in scrutiny, she finally spotted it. Rook to her king. She couldn't move him, either. How had she missed that?
Groaning, she flopped over half on the board and knocked all of the pieces to the side. "uuugh.... I knew I should have picked checkers and ignored you." If cockroaches could laugh, he would have.
Shelby was an interesting human, to say the least. If a little bit on the dumb side. After all, he had beaten her at chess three times in a row. Still, he hadn't expected her to approach him at all, let alone with the offer to play a game and an apology about all of that vigorous cup shaking she had done.
He pressed back, reciprocating. She smiled slightly against his lips. When he pulled away it was still present on her mouth. She dropped her eyes to her hand, freshly bandaged in clean white. She flexed it for good measure. "Seems fine."
She caught him seemingly off in his own little word out of the corner of her eye and briefly wondered if the kiss had been a bad decision. Maybe she should have asked first? But that just felt so... proper. So formal, and she was as far from formal as she could get. She shifted slightly on the bed, weighing words in her head.
Then he moved and she looked toward him. Their lips locked again and all thoughts that she'd been too forward flew right out the window. She lifted a hand to his jaw, gently touching him, and rested the other on his shoulder. It felt nice, and if it was selfish of her to want it then she was more than happy to be greedy in that moment. She'd had a few awkward flings here or there with college boys from parties... nothing stable or satisfying. She hadn't really tried anything like that since moving away from Seattle. She'd been far to busy to invest any time in anything other than studying.
Shifting slightly, she moved forward into the kiss. Raising herself off of the bed in order to meet him on even ground so he wouldn't have to lean down into her. In doing so the hand on his shoulder shifted to lazily drape around his neck and her hair shifted forward around their faces.
Eric has been forgotten for the moment. Eric could hold his f%$in' horses.
She didn't actually react to the peroxide, but appreciated the comfort all the same. Her hand certainly hurt, but not enough for her to hiss and sputter over it. She did quirk a sideways smile at Saph, though, while she watched him work from the corner of her eyes.
"Who you? Get beat up? Never." Never mind that the first time she'd really met him he'd been a literal walking map of bruises. She could have traversed her way to Alaska only using his face as guidance.
It was kinda cute how he was fretting over her. The hand on her shoulder was large and warm. She glanced at it a moment before she dropped her gaze back down to where he was cleaning her wound. The interaction almost seemed familiar. Like something close friends or lovers would do... Soft warmth filled her cheeks and she looked away to the tank situated across the room on his desk. She could see the little bug scurrying around inside of it. What was it doing?
A sharp stinging sensation brought her back to her hand and she glanced at him again. It looked like he was fully concentrating on her. Like he was playing nursemaid and she was the patient. A most abstract feeling overcame her, and she licked her lips. She wondered, maybe just slightly, if he...
Her eyes slid closed as she leaned in and pressed her lips hesitantly to his own.
Then came the pink. She switched back to using a fine pointed brush for that one. She wanted the flower to contrast with the texture and style of the body. She wanted it to be pristine and perfect in comparison. The type of flower really dictated why, in her opinion. Stargazer Lilies were a very special flower to her, and she tended to use them a lot in the majority of her work. To her they looked like a beautiful kind of wound. Pinks signifying trauma, white edges where the flesh had rolled away. Morbid? Yes, to most other than Shelby.
Humming, she started to work in the lightest pink, careful to leave a crisp white edge. Then she mixed a little of the light and dark together to get a nice medium tone. That would blend the light outside of the petals into the dark center. She touched it up with while spots and a clean border, and moved on to adding in the stamen with white and a tiny bit of yellow.
Once she was done with that, she took a bit of a break to run down to the kitchen and fetch herself some water.
---
A few hours later, she was done. She sat before her easel with paint smeared on her in various places, tucking her hair up in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. The picture was finished, or at least finished for now. She had a habit of fretting over her work for a few days before finally calling it 'done'.
The finishing touches on this particular piece had been the addition of dark blue cascading hair that framed the figure, a border of very light blue, and of course the grinning Cheshire in the center of the flower. She smiled, exhausted after sitting rigid on her stool for so long.
The paint, being oil based would take a few days to completely dry. She would hang it on her wall in the meantime, away from any heavily trafficked areas. (haha!) She also contemplated dragging up Saph, or Zinnia... or Jack for that matter to show it off. Ultimately after a few moments of thinking it over, she trashed the idea. She wasn't sure if they knew her well enough not to be disturbed by her favorite hobby.
Instead, she turned to her laptop and camera. It was time to set up a new profile on the website she used to sell her work. She would certainly be needing the extra income now that she had been ultimately forced to resign from her job.
Eventually she knew she would have to take the brush back up, and with feeling. She'd put it off as long as she could by meddling with other styles and color patterns. She'd tried figures in the most elaborate hues, flowers mingled together in different spectrum's. She'd even fallen back into still life as a last resort.
Unfortunately, none of those styles were really her.
Shelby had her own eye when it came to art. She tended to see things through different kind of lenses than the normal rose tint. Give her flowers? She'd morph them into an eerie garden graveyard. Bones fascinated her. Anatomy in all stages, complete, half, or lack-thereof. She wasn't terribly shy about it. One book case in her room, though small in size, was dedicated solely to various tomes on human, mutant, and animal anatomy. Cross sections, Dissections, skeletal and muscular structure. While she wasn't really able to look at such things in real life, she had endless books on them. Drawings she could deal with.
An image had been haunting her for the last few days. A female form in shades of blue, skeletal hands clutched around the edges of a blooming, vibrant pink flower where the heart would be. Inside, in place of the pistil would be located normally, a white washed skull grinning. She started by outlining where she wanted the figure to be, and began to paint in the first highlight of blue.
This was a side of her that she generally didn't show many people. She had a morbid curiosity when it came to death, and most things associated with death. She was also fond of life, but mostly when it concerned what made things tick. Most of the people she had showed paintings of hers to didn't get the subject matter. She'd had one teacher among all her classes that really encouraged her to go for it if that was what interested her. Most others had tried to steer her toward other facets: Abstract, life paintings, figure drawing, impressionism. For the sake of her grades she had obliged, but this.... this was where her heart lay.
Time passed quietly while she was in her own little world. She had earbuds in, streaming her favorite songs as she worked. It was calming. Relaxing, even. So long as she stayed away from the red's for now...
Gathering some dark blue paint onto her finger tips, she forsook her brushes in favor of slathering some of the darker paint on in heavier layers for the shadows. She liked having extra texture in her stuff... not just a flat canvas. She liked to imagine that if you closed your eyes and ran your fingers over it you would get an entirely different image in your minds eye. She liked things that weren't simply one dimensional.
Pushing shadows into spaces previously empty, she started to map out a more defined body pattern. Exaggerated hips and ribs. Arms that looked thin and knotted; like tree branches. Fingers that curled like spider legs. She wedge the same blue into the outline for the lips; full and plump. Then, wiping off her fingers, she reached for a different color. Next was a middle tone blue, bordering on soft steel. This color she would use for the actual skin. Pale like a corpse, or a ghost.
It took a while to smear it in properly and smooth it all out. What she was left with was a slightly of kilter form that looked like it had just come from a coroners freezer. She paused to wipe her hands clean and observe her work so far.
She stood before him, showcasing her ultimate trick. Something that not even he, an x-man of renown, could do.....!
She booped herself on the nose with her own tongue.
Not waiting for a grand standing of cheer and applause, the pink haired woman also moved onto her second most popular party trick.
She stuck the tip of her tongue up into one of her nostrils.
"Taa-daa!" Then she grinned like an idiot, but had the decency to at least flush a little in the cheeks.
The walk from the danger room back to his room hadn't taken all that long, specially with her asking about all of the things he had done inside, and him explaining to some degree. Now that she wasn't n the moment, a lot of it had been pretty spectacular. Just the fact that he had fought and beaten a giant evil rainbow manatee was pretty neat! He had mentioned a video of it at one point. She demanded excitedly to see it again, as she had missed the flashy ending.
When they were safely back in his room she took a seat at the end of his bed and let him take over with what to do about the insect trapped in the cup. She watched as he fished out the tank he had mentioned, which still had rocks and little plastic plants inside, and as he got it set up for their six legged captive.
It was around that point that she was praying that the roach was actually a spy an that she hadn't hallucinated the weird bits and gone on a rampage in the danger room for nothing. What was she gonna do if it was really just a regular roach?
Die of embarrassment, that's what.
While he got the thing ready, she glanced back down at her hand and sighed. It wasn't a big wound... hardly even a little gouge in her palm... but it was kinda deep. The bug had certainly been intent at getting her to let it go, that much was for sure. She was morbidly reminded of that mafia torture technique with rats and buckets... Bleh. Not a thought for someone with a sensitive stomach to linger on.
"Yeah... Not really. Probably coulda died in there! I think the safety settings were turned off. Eh... Don't worry about it, though! I'm pretty hard to kill!"
She sputtered uselessly at him for a moment before deflating. She was sure anything she said would just bounce off of him like those bullets he was pretty good at deflecting.
"You sure this is that? Not just some bug?"
"I saw it do a ninja flip off of the ceiling onto the table, and then it screwed with a bunch of buttons." She deadpanned, fully willing to let him take the cup from her. "Meh, don't worry about the computer. Some nerd'll fix it. You, on the other hand, we gotta patch up. There's a med kit in my bathroom, too. Let's head there."
She sputtered at him again, but consented when he tugged her away. His casual attitude about the whole thing was really throwing her off. How much did all of that equipment in there cost, anyway! What kind of school had a simulation room that had a #%$&in safety switch!?
She let him pull her along back toward his room, all while processing fully the whole fiasco that had just happened. She supposed in some senses that it wasn't so bad, really. He was OK, she had found the bug, and they were going to figure things out from there... right?
She smiled a little, staring at the back of his head. "That one move you did... with the crowbar-boomerang?" She chuckled, "That was really cool."
She was oblivious to the showing over on the screen. Instead, she was trying to kick in the wall and failing miserably.
[SIMULATION OVER. RE-INITIALIZING USER ACCESS.]
Then it slid open all on its own and she stumbled slightly. There Saph was. She kinda wanted to punch him. Instead, she trembled slightly and huffed. She was also relieved.
"God, I thought something had happened. I'm really glad that was just a stupid simulation and that it couldn't actually have harmed you." The cup moved slightly as the roach tried once again to break out of the top of the cup, maybe with a little more desperation now that the x-man was back in the picture. She shook it violently again, and then shoved it out toward him.
"I tried to tell you through the microphone, but it stopped working. I found my 'bug.'" She glanced at the hand he was holding, "Caught him in the empty cup, and he damn near chewed a hole through my hand to escape before I got the lid on."
The console behind her popped and fizzed again. [SYSTEM ERROR. MAINTENANCE REQUIRED BEFORE NEXT USE.] She winced, glancing at it quickly and then back to Saph.
"It was was an accident, I swear." The roach in the cup started moving again.
She flinched, turning her eyes from the blast and consequently had to shake the cup again. When she looked back she was able to see the manatee and a few of it's spaw left over floating around, but.... no Saph. She tucked the cup between her legs and hunched over the control to zoom and move the camera. She spanned the camera left and right, up and down. She didn't see him. She hit the com button again in a panic.
"Saph?!"
Nothing. It crackled at her. She pressed it harder. "Saph!!"
Fed up with the silence, and more than a little freaked out she stood and hauled herself and her cargo to where she'd seen the door appear for him. It didn't appear for her, but that didn't stop her from slamming a fist on the wall where it was supposed to be good and soundly a few times.
"Open! Open godda*&%t!"
Within the simulation the large Mammal was slowly turning its head, beady eyes trying to spot its foe. The smaller ones were floating in lazy circled around where the blast had occurred, as the dust started to clear.
Man, it was an intense looking battle. The manatees were one thing, but the fact that they could also shoot rainbow beams that exploded? Well S&%$. She was also entirely sure that a few animal rights groups out there would have an absolute conniption fit if they ever got word that such a program existed. The speaker crackled a few more times, and she got a few broken words from Saph. Nothing that really made any sense. She eyeballed the controls again, but wasn't brave enough to try and mess with them. What if she made it worse?
It was a simulation anyway, right? It's not like he could actually get hurt, right? He just had to defeat the thing and it would end, and then she could show him the bug and justify all of her paranoid feelings at the same time. Happy ending.
Geez, some of the action looked really realistic though. She cringed a few times, even having to turn away from the screen occasionally. When she looked back, Saph had pretty much reached the boss. She attempted to zoom in and found that at least that function was still working properly.
The Giant mammal was slowly turning to look at Saph, and just as slowly opening it's mouth again. This time though, there was a gradual buildup of light instead of a hoard of more mammals. It looked as if it had the same ability to fire those rainbow lasers that the smaller ones did. Fortunately it seemed much, much slower than its spawn. The light continued to build and build in intensity until it was blinding, and when it fired the beam it shot out like a laser. He would have to dodge it if he could.
She blanched. "What? No, five minutes?" She watched him on the screen, squinting at it as it flickered again. "I don't know if i've got five minutes." The cup wriggled again, she she could see the roach on the lid where the straw was pushed through, trying to chew through the plastic. She shook the cup again to knock it back to the bottom. Then she hit the com button again. "Is there anything I can do to speed this up? Can you walk me through how to shut it down from this side?" Something sparked next to her hand and shocked her, she yelped.
"%$&#!" Rubbing the hand on her jeans, which left a smear of red as well, she shook the cup again and looked around. She didn't have anything to soak up the spilled ginger water that was all over the equipment. All she had on her person was a t-shirt and jeans... and she was definitely not disrobing for this.
Instead, she hit the button again. "Okay, so you need to beat that thing, right? Then kick it's a@$ and get out here before I try to come in there! Remember the bug spies I told you about? I f%*#in caught one!"
The speaker crackled... she hoped that the message had gotten through to him. Sitting down and fixating on the screen, she watched the fight while shaking the cup every few moments or so. It at least seemed to give the Roach pause for a bit.
Inside the room, the large colorful Manatee was slowly changing. As Saph neared it, it began to open its mouth. Due to the sheer size difference it almost seemed like slow motion. From the depths of that cavernous place out flew a squadron of smaller manatees, each a perfect duplicate of the gigantic beast that had spewed them. With a bellowing war-groan they floundered through the open space in graceful arches toward him, around the debris that was falling.
When they neared, a few cranked their mouths open and a bright, intense light sprang to life. A few seconds later rainbow hued beams arched the heroes way.
"Shanks, No oss-ense taken. Es'ecially iss I look like sun-one who hurt you 'e-sore. I nean, to dis day, I still has trou'le wiss... cots. You know, law en-source-nent? Dey scare nee e'en doh I has stayed outta trou'le sore a long tine."
She smiled, and let out a tired chuckle. It looked liked she truly hadn't offended the woman. That was good, she generally tried her best not to be a jerk without reason. Then jack started to fill her in on why she was used to it, a little bit of back story for her. Shelby listened quietly, her eyes focused on Jack. Considering her own background, she couldn't necessarily identify with most of the story. She did understand it, though. It was startlingly common for parents to kick out children who suddenly developed mutations one day. So much so that many orphanages around the states were over full of them vs kids who lacked the gene. Her gaze softened, but she tried not to let her empathy show to much. Many misidentified it as pity... herself included.
She also noticed how there were similarities between Jack's story and Saph. Mostly terminology. The whole 'had to do it so I wouldn't die' thing. That was what Shelby struggled to understand. It was foreign to her. She had been raised by pretty well off parents, and even after a messy divorce it was unheard of for her or her siblings to really want for anything. She had never been forced to scavenge for food (well, aside from her first year in college while she was still figuring things out) and had never had to worry about having someone to look out for her until... well, until very recently.
"I suppose your right, but... at the same time it's who I am as a person. I hate feeling like i've judged someone before I really get to know them." She paused, adjusting her bag strap once and for all. "Heck, one of my best friends wasn't the easiest person to get along with as a "human"," She used air quotes, since she hardly ever used that word to define the differences between mutants and non-mutants. A quirky smile appeared on her face, "Back where I come from there's a girl who strikingly resembles a parrot. The first time I ever met her I just could not stop staring, and she got fed up with me and got up in my face about it."
It had been intimidating, sure. Having a very ticked off girl with feathers all standing on end literally scream in your face wasn't the easiest thing to deal with for anyone, let alone a school hermit who didn't have many friends.
"She wanted to know what was wrong with me, called me a buncha names... and I told her that I thought she was really beautiful. I'm an art junkie, so she looked like someone I really wanted to paint." She patted her easel, "You should have seen her deflate. I just took the wind right out of her sails. We were really good friends after that." Ahem...Friends.
.... She couldn't remember why she'd gotten into the story. What had been her point? Blushing, she pushed on. "Anyway... yeah, I agree with you. But it still would have felt wrong to me if I hadn't have clarified it."
The cockroach skittered to the left, she followed it with her eyes. It skittered to the right, she repeated her previous action. She held her ground, protecting the only escape route she could visibly see. The bug seemed to take a moment to think on things, before he turned to look down at the fizzing console. Then, like some kind of insect-ninja, it flipped itself off of the ceiling and landed gracefully on the table below. It proceeded to skitter across the keyboard and around dials, making sure to press and turn as many of them as it could.
"HEY!" Gasping, Shelby abandoned her post to run toward it. She slapped the cup down in an attempt to capture the bug, but missed. It zipped around it, hopping off the table and made a beeline for the vent.
In a desperate moment she lunged for it, hitting the floor on her belly and skipped a foot. The cup slapped down against the floor and she peered at it. A soft tak tak came from inside the cup, as the bug threw itself desperately against the plastic walls. She'd caught it! And only a few inches from the vent, to boot. She heaved a sigh of relief.
"The... Hell... Shelby, you see anything weird on the monitor up there?. . . Shelby?"
She heard a crackle come from behind her, and Saph's voice was mixed in with it. "Ah, s%&t!" Slowly, she started to get up. The lid to the cup was still on the console, so she couldn't very well lift it up without losing the precious hostage inside. Instead, she was forced to quickly slip her hand under to form a lid.
She instantly regretted that choice. Eric started biting into her, desperate to escape, and he had no reservations about trying to chew a hole through her hand to do it. "OW! OWOWOW!"
Quickly she made it back to the table. To dislodge the bug from her hand she shook the whole cup violently, and them quickly slapped on the lid -straw included- back onto the cup. She had to ignore the wound that had been bitten into the palm of her hand in order to scramble back to the monitor, with the wiggling cup still gripped in her hands. Man, the little insect was putting up one helluva fight!
She pressed her elbow into the com button. "Saph?" On the flickering monitor, she could see him.... kinda. It was mostly black, except for.... was... was that a manatee?
She blinked. "Saph! I've got a problem here!" She eyeballed the many buttons and keyboard.
