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.
She listened intently, even though she might not have looked like it. This was probably one of the more interesting conversations she'd ever had, right up there with Parrot girls and dragon gods. She tried to imagine it as he described it, how it would work and feel. She failed miserably, of course.
At some point she dropped to an elbow, and then flat on her back during his explanation. One hand flat on her stomach, legs dangling over the side of the bed. She draped the other hand over her forehead and fiddled with her hair tie. She'd long since forgotten that she had intended to put her hair back up. "So you amplified it?" That must have been pretty extreme. Hitting someone hard enough to knock them through a building. She'd fully call bulls%$ on him, save for the fact that her own experiences were pretty weird too.
"Can you feel me moving right now? Does it bother you?" She was still fiddling with the hair tie, and didn't think to stop until after she'd asked. Would that feel weird? Constantly feeling everything? She envisioned it feeling weird. Really weird.
Lapsing into a silence, she thought about the many differences between them. All of his strengths, that he had explained, and other general facts.
"Sure. That's pretty normal, I'd say. Don't let it get to you, though. Be aware, not paranoid. Keep an eye out for your own safety, but don't lose sight of it by jumping at every noise in the dark. And you know... If there's anything I can do to help you feel safe. You let me know, okay?
Shelby slipped her glassed off so she could rub one eye with the back of her hand, attempting to watch him with the other. Her eyes were itchy and no matter what she did it wouldn't stop. Probably lack of sleep.
The yawn that escaped her a moment later confirmed that theory. "I'll try to manage that." She was still gonna check the showers top to bottom every time. "And I'll let you know if I need anything." A pause, "Though just having someone to talk to helps... and having you physically be here." She'd already gotten a hold of her family in Seattle, or rather the police had, to inform them of her current in-protective-custody status... so she wasn't allowed to call them. She didn't have a wide branch of friends in the city, because school, and she wouldn't have been able to talk to them either. She was more or less stranded and alone, so she would willingly latch onto whoever made themselves available.
"Maybe they are a part of his ability; that's why we haven't seen them til now. One thing I've noticed is that... I dunno. Over time, our abilities... Change, I guess? Grow. Maybe it's a new thing for him. Maybe his 'little friends' will lead us right to him?"
"Really?" She blinked, tugging her hair out of it's mess of a bun to try and re-do it. Her arm flopped into her lap as he caught her attention. "I always just kinda figured you, ya know... were born with it. Current levels and all." That was an interesting concept. Born with one ability, but able to mature into it and grow it as you developed?
"... What did you start off being able to do? Are your powers any different now from before?"
It was kinda shitty hearing that all of the things she managed to dig up probably weren't worth their weight in salt, but... meh. She was feeling another tired spell coming on. She leaned back on her other arm, lazily watching the man.
"I guess it is possible. I'm not saying it's not... An important part of these kinda things is not jumping to conclusions. Keep your mind open, but don't be easily distracted from what's important. If it's true, the evidence will form a sorta... consensus."
"I understand... I just," She took a breath, collecting her thoughts. "I just don't want to miss anything, you know? I don't want it to happen again. I haven't torn my room up or anything or put any holes in the walls looking for secret agent bugs... but i'd rather be cautious." She paused again, shifting. "It's kinda like when your a kid and you're afraid of the dark. You want someone to check all of the places a monster could hide, even if there has never been one there before, just because of the off chance that there might be one there now."
Not that she was afraid of the dark or anything. Nope. Definitely had never run from a dark room before like something was gonna grab her.
Her brows furrowed and she nodded slowly. "They spoke, those smaller bugs. Broken sentences... but they definitely showed some intelligence. Probably around the same as a kid would have." She tried to think back. Had she seen any other bugs? Did the message sender mean the big Roaches, or smaller ones?
God, this was frustrating. "I didn't really see them mentioned at all in any of the stories."
She reflected back on the abduction, before everything had spiraled out of control. "...He did mention that he had given them an order... what... what was it?" She turned away slightly, scratching at her head as she puzzled over her own question.
Her eyes closed and she adopted the sternest, most serious expression. Brows pinched together, lips drawn tight. "He said that he had given them an order to grab my camera, but that they were stupid... which was why they grabbed me instead." Maybe it would help, or maybe it was nothing. Either way it couldn't hurt to tell him.
Her brows pinched, but she breathed in deeply to try and calm herself when he helped to assure her. She hadn't seen anything in his expression that screamed doubts. Or that she had lost her mind somewhere within the last three days. That was something, at the very least.
"...No." She started, pointing back to the paper she had fished out. "It was under an anonymous name, on a freshly made account. I tried to get more out of whoever it was, but they never answered me back. They deleted their own profile after sending me that message, too." Which led her to a dead end. Another one.
"It's possible for the Admins or moderators of the site to track the IP address of the sender, at least for when the created the account." Her frown deepened, "I was told that they couldn't give that information out to me. Internet safety 101."
She turned again, shifting a leg under her. "But, if what they said was true, as there is really a bug following me around reporting on my activities..." Well, she didn't want to think about that really. Sure, the school was a safe place and they would protect her from the giant homicidal insect man, but what about an actual insect? Did they have some special contract with an exterminator to take care of them?
"He had those smaller versions of himself in the truck, remember?" She had told him about the smaller insect people who had talked casually about eating her for dinner. "What if they aren't the only size of them out there?"
Nodding mutely in response, she silently promised that she would. She needed to do this right. She didn't want to drag it out any longer and cause herself any more stress.
"Oh, this?" She tucked the business card into her bag, and motioned at her hair. "I did this myself. Couldn't really afford to get it done by a professional when the roots started to grow out, so I got decent at fixing it myself." She wondered what she looked like right then. Were said roots already growing out? Was the ginger showing through? Suddenly self conscious, she shifted in her seat. "I tend to get bored with it and change the color really often. It's either a dye job, or a haircut... and i'be been trying to grow it out for the last year or so."
It was shoulder length, or a little longer, and she was proud of it. Around year two she'd gone and gotten a trim and ended up with hair much shorted than she'd intended. "I just grab a box of pink from the closest drugstore, they usually come with bleach for the roots, and dye it all back into submission." She'd been thinking about going blue, or purple next, but had gotten side tracked by life before she could invest in the thought.
"I'm no expert, but if you ever want to add a little color in i'd be willing to help." She grinned a little, twirling a pink bang strand between her fingers. Jen had wanted her to help her dye her hair vibrant green before the end of the year.
'Go out with a bang', she'd said, 'end the year in style'. Shelby didn't allow the pain that thought caused her to show. She just buried it under a smile.
"Tell me everything, then. We'll see what we can do."
She gave him a look from the sides of her eyes, not bothering to turn her head. Her expression didn't budge.
"You need food, or something before we go any further? You look... Well, like sh@%, a bit. Like, not bad like you are a bad lookin person. You aren't. You look good, but like, in a bad state."
Her lips twitched a little. On the cusp of a small smile.
"Sleep or something might help. Or... Or we can just jump into it. That's fine too, I guess."
Then it was gone. Back to an blank stare down at her feet, which bounced ever so slightly over the lip of the bed. Not intentionally this time, but because she just didn't have the energy anymore.
"I can't sleep." She breathed out from her nose slowly, and her fingers flexed on the paper in her hands. "All I hear is that laugh." And food? She didn't even want to get into that. He didn't need to know that even thinking about eating made her feel sick to her stomach. At least it had stopped growling a few hours ago.
"I had hoped that maybe if I found something it would help, you know?" Help the investigation, and help herself. How he took it, she wouldn't know. "And when I first started looking there wasn't much. No one was talking about it. But..." She turned slightly, gathering some or the documents around her into her hands. She half held the stack towards him, "... then I started to find things. Little things at first like people posting rumors and junk, but then they all started to have little similar details. An accent. Hats. Unpredictability. I started piling them all together and they made a big picture... like a puzzle."
She looked over at him fully, then, and exhaustion was plain on her features. "It's like he's everywhere, but no one wants to talk about him. Most of the posts are anonymous. The papers who wrote stories about him passed them off like jokes; it's bizarre." She glanced down and spotted a paper next to her, and carefully picked it up. It was the printed form from the message she had gotten.
"I joined a forum where someone had mentioned a mutant that fit his description. It was a rubbish story, but I figured, hell, why not? Posted my own question asking for help. Got a few replies last night, but...." She held that page out to him as well. "I got one good reply."
And here was the crazy part. The part she had been worried about. "He's got to have some way of keeping tabs on things all the time, right? How else would he have known about the gig at the mall and then the..." She paused, gathering the strength she would need to say it. "... the dinner."
She pressed on before she could really think on it too much, lest she make herself sick again. "Well, as it turns out he does. I got a message from someone about my question. When I contacted them, that person informed me that he does indeed have a way of keeping tabs on people or things without being there himself. He uses Cockroaches."
She stared at him pointedly, eyes locked on his. She was waiting to see any sign that he didn't believe her. Any inkling of doubt, or disbelief. "He's got me under watch. Must have had one of them following me somehow even before he... he attacked..." She couldn't finish the sentence. It was too hard, and too soon. She removed her eyes from him, not wanting him to catch right of the glimmer of moisture that suddenly appeared and clenched her hands in her lap.
To her credit, she quietly attempted to gain control back over herself while Jack was contacting someone else. When the tissues were offered, she gladly accepted.
When Jack asked her for her name, she stumbled. "She-" She coughed. "Shy... I'm really shy." She paused, attempting to school her expression into a not-nervous-normal mask. "...i'm Heidi."
She'd almost blown the cover that Saph had given her! Cursing herself silently, she packed the tissue onto the small wound and averted her eyes. Her cover up had been bad. Cringe worthy. She really sucked at scrabble.
Posted by Shelby on Sept 12, 2016 19:29:44 GMT -6
Zinnia likes this
Beta Mutant
Pink
Bisexual
Crime and Gay stuff
698
14
Jul 19, 2021 16:10:52 GMT -6
Mouse
She smiled. That had been pretty darn reassuring. At least something she was doing was correct, even if not all of it was. "Thank you."
The she recalled the fact that her phone had been confiscated as evidence and she chuckled. "I will definitely take you up on that offer once I have a phone again. Mine unfortunately got snagged as evidence. Currently phone-less."
That was one of the things on her steadily growing list of things to buy, which she would need to find time to take care of soon. If she was going to try and survive on selling paintings alone, she would need an easily accessible way to take commissions and keep track of buyers.
"Thank you, though, Zinnia. Really." She smiled, a real smile and fixed her glasses again. "I'm glad you helped me... I totally would have just shut down if you hadn't. I feel... a little better."
Oof, that was... tough. It didn't matter how she currently felt, or what she had really gone through, Zinnia's short briefing about what she had been subjected to still earned all of Shelby's empathy. Her gaze softened, and she frowned. "...I.. I'm so sorry you had to go through that."
She didn't quite know how to talk about that. She had never been very good at the whole 'connecting with people' thing. She could feel empathy toward them, hell even share their pain sometimes, but that was about as far as she had ever gotten. She wasn't too good with words, or hugging. Never knew what was appropriate in which situation.
"I'll try." Was all she could offer right at first. "It's tough, because I've never been the type to talk about things happening to me, you know? Sh%t hits the fan and I just deal with it. I don't want to put what i'm going through on someone else... stupid, I know."
She sighed, plopping her chin in a hand on the table. "I've always struggled with anxiety and depression, so it's not really new. This time is just so..." Well, she didn't know if she had the words to express how bad the situation was. It just was.
"...bad. It's the first time in my life I've really felt entirely helpless."
She paused, un-focusing from her current train of thought in order to look at him. He looked tired.
"...What fuckin time is it?"
Her expression shifted. From one of utter concentration to one of confusion. The time? What did the time matter when something so important was right in front of them?
She glanced around her. Took in his room fully. A standard bachelors pad. Little messy. Nothing she wasn't used too, considering she was... had been... a poor college student.
"...uh..." She paused, uncertain about what to say. "I dunno."
She sat down, papers tucked over and under her, and fiddled with a page in her hands. Maybe this had been a bad idea after all. Maybe she should have chickened out when she was out in the hall. She stared off into space, not really looking at anything, and fell silent.
The more she looked, the more different they became. Especially when it became clear that he was really a she. Awkwardness started to set in. "Jack?" She swallowed, glancing at her hand again.
Then newly named Jack started to talk about how safe she was, and that there were a whole lot of other people watching over the mansion. She echoed Saph's words. Safe Why did she never feel safe, then? Particularly now that she was sure that she was being followed. How often she didn't know.. but whatever the case it didn't help her mental standing.
"You're a hot s-reaking ness, kid. Where'd you cut yoursell-s? Cut dee'? Need to see DocPro-ss?"
Really, she didn't understand half of that, but she got the message. She turned big, watery eyes back to Jack, bottom lip trembling despite her best efforts. "...I'm fine."
It came out like a squeak. She was ashamed. But, on the plus side, she also did't seem to be that injured. It was a good nick, but not nearly as bad as the blood would make it out to be. She shoved the injured area into her mouth on habit and sobbed.
She let out a weird lazy huff-chuckle. "Yeah, I suppose you could say that I will be." She wasn't exactly sure how yet, but hey.
"I haven't gotten all of the details figured out yet. I have to be able to get back up to the school to get the supplies I would need, and well that kinda depends on everyone else's schedules now." Her appetite vanished again, and with it her inclination to eat. She gave up on trying to force more of the stuff into her stomach.
"My current professors are all aware of my situation, " ...some of it, "so I at least have a grace period before I have to get things all figured out."
"Wow." She blinked, and spooned some more bland gruel into her mouth. "Was that when they first started going glitchy?" She'd read stories about them, little snippets from newspapers, magazines, and online. Apparently it was more common than people in charge let on. As a x-gene-less person, though, she rarely had to think about it.
At the mention of the the potential for a list somewhere, she nodded. "I had wondered about that." Dropping her spoon, she sipped her milk again. It was nearly gone. "I woulda thought that they would need permission for that, you know... Then again, you don't need it when out taking pictures on public property, so... maybe they just found a loophole."
She got it alright, and it really, really sucked. She didn't know a whole lot about it, though. She tended to avoid big depressing things that didn't involve her. She had that luxury, and willfully abused it in most cases.
"Really hope it doesn't turn out like that." Was all she could mutter, pushing her glasses back up her nose. "Not that I have any faith in some unknown company who makes glitchybots for the police... it would just be such a dickish move. Painting something as a blessing when it's not."
A grin caught somewhere between embarrassed and entertained slowly crept onto her lips. "Whenever I breath out I make the room slightly warmer."
She chuckled, "Not the most creative thing, but also pretty hard to disprove."
She cringed at the mention of the bots. "I've run into a few." Hadn't really been much of a help in retrospect. "Good intentions really, but I don't anything beats a good ol'fashion brain."
Not to mention the many cases of them malfunctioning, which it sounded like Zinnia had personal experience with. "Did a bot really try to arrest you for that?!"
Pain was what brought her back from panic. Well, mostly anyway. She had a small shallow cut in the Web of her hand between thumb and pointer finger. It also helped that she dropped her easel, and momentarily stopped to turn and look at it.
Then she heard the voice. Which caused her pause to linger as she really listened. That was not Roaches voice. Not the gleeful, accented atrocity that she was subjected to whenever she let her mind wander in that direction. Of course, she wasn't aware that the bug of her nightmares was entirely able to change his voice at will...but that was beside the point.
When jack rounded the corner, there Shelby stood. Hand gripped tightly in the other to stop the bleeding, wide eyes fully locked on her.
Shelby, though still quite terrified, took that precious moment to pick apart jack with her eyes, down to the finest detail. Sure... there were some very great similarities... but there were a lot of obvious differences too. Color aside.
"... y-you're really not him, are you?"
Jack surely didn't understand what the he'll she was talking about. Shelby sounded crazy even to her own ears of the late. But it didn't stop a sudden overwhelming relief from washing through her, and she staggered onto her knees.
