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.
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Posted by Ambrose Jaager on Aug 10, 2016 13:00:17 GMT -6
Delta Mutant
136
54
Dec 17, 2016 13:23:40 GMT -6
Coercion?
Um, no.
It looked like the pastor had the same idea Ambrose was, and was playing that game too. No one was "coerced" into being paid more than just a little for their services. No one was "coerced" into expanding and offering to launder money for other groups too. No one was "coerced" into threatening said groups with the wrath of Judgement Day when they weren't paid high enough. (That was how Ambrose had known to go to Mark Richardson, actually. Ambrose's true form wasn't quite fit for interrogation, considering he was more likely to kill the person he was interrogating by accident than he was to get useful information out of them, so the Carr twins had been the one to get the name. And interrogation hadn't even been involved - from what Romeo had reported, he'd literally just walked up to a member of another gang and asked if they knew any members of Judgement Day, and was treated to a tirade of innovative insults concerning Richardson's unconventional business practices without any more prompting. The hardened gang even bought them drinks when they realized that the brothers wanted the name as a target. Remy hadn't needed to do anything; he literally just stood to the side and drank whatever he was handed.) Ambrose didn't know what Joseph did about profit under coercion, especially since his morals weren't quite as elegant as the law. As far as he was concerned, Richardson was a bad man who had indirectly assisted in the killings of Ragnarök members. That was good enough for Ambrose.
He was impressed by the sweating, though. He'd never seen someone sweat on command. Although, that might be legitimate terror that now that he'd lost all leverage, and that Ragnarök finally had a finger on the people that'd been murdering its members, both Richardson and his family were all targets for possible revenge. From what he'd heard, Ambrose wouldn't even need to hurt the man's family. He was relatively certain there were plenty of people lining up to do it already.
Also, the guy needed to shut up, that begging for mercy was making Ambrose seem so sketchy. He could tell that Joseph suspected Ambrose wasn't as he seemed. Which, valid. But it was still unwanted suspicion.
On a totally separate note, Ambrose realized something as Joseph spoke. The pastor was a mutant, he knew that; the only non-conflicting information about Richardson that he had was that the man was a mutant and a horrible business partner. But he didn't know Richardson's mutation. That was somewhat worrying, because if Richardson got violent, who knew how powerful his mutation was?
...maybe, come to think of it, it was the ability to sweat on command.
No. That was stupid. Moving on.
Joseph had been speaking to him, but Ambrose had only been half paying attention. Apparently, he was going to have to work out the Thomas ruse a bit more, but that was easy deflection. In the meantime. The face that Ambrose had worn while he'd been lost in his own thoughts had been one of sympathetic apology, as if he believed Richardson's little lies too. It stayed on as he spoke.
"So if you could stay a while so we can get things sorted Mr Jaager, that would be wonderful," Joseph said.
"I'd be glad to," Ambrose said. "I'm afraid I won't be too much help with Thomas, however. His father was insistent that I not bring anyone else into it, for personal reasons." He was weaving a story even as he spoke - Thomas's mother, divorced, was on the police force, and the father had custody. If she heard about this, she'd surely use it against her former husband, and he'd lose Thomas.
Brilliant. Now just to hope he wouldn't have to use that story. The more he tacked on, the more likely it was that somebody would figure out that it was all a lie, and that was more questions than he needed so soon after his Utopia announcement.
Ambrose could tell when he was being sized up, and this was one of those times. A policeman wouldn't try anything, right? Not in public, and definitely not to a figure as public as Ambrose. Most people of Ambrose's stature could make sure that people like Joseph would lose their jobs with a snap of a finger - and even if Ambrose didn't necessarily have NYPD connections now, he would in the next twenty-four hours if it became necessary. Also, as rich as he was, he could just make a fuss about being attacked by a policeman and the commissioner would scramble to kow-tow, especially considering Ambrose's sizable donations to the police force over the years. (It was a one-sided sort of taunting - a "I literally help fund you but you still can't catch me" sort of thing, even if Ambrose was the only one privy to said taunting.) And really, though - Richardson thought a mere police officer would protect him? He probably understood that Ambrose wouldn't do anything to risk his reputation here, but Ambrose and the brothers could probably take out the entire congregation if Ambrose felt like it. Fortunately for Richardson, Ambrose didn't feel like doing anything too extreme yet.
If Ambrose had known about the measly body count of the mutants present, and how they viewed it as high, he would've scoffed. He'd probably killed more people in one night than the whole church combined had in all their lives. Hell, the Carr brothers had killed more people than there were in this church in one night. So no. He wasn't threatened, at all. There was a reason anti-Utopia extremists who wanted to take out Ambrose didn't really get far, and Ambrose's new bodyguards - the police commissioner himself had advised Ambrose to get bodyguards, ironically - were a large part of that reason.
"There's the office next door - it's a small room mind - only enough for about three people," the pastor said. Well. It looked as if Ambrose wasn't getting rid of Joseph just yet. It looked as if Romeo would have to wait outside, then. That wasn't a problem, considering Romeo's power. He'd be fine.
"Very well Mark, I'll make sure you two deal with each other... fairly," Joseph said, and Ambrose only then noticed his accent. Well, he was a long way from home. Interesting. Ambrose wondered if Joseph would eat his words when he found out Richardson's little side hobby.
Ambrose nodded, still smiling, and followed as the pastor led them to the office. Romeo planted himself by the doorway like a sentinel of sorts, crossing his arms to look even more intimidating. Well, he was succeeding. Granted, Romeo was scarier in his full exoskeleton, but there was no need for that just yet.
"Well then Mr Jaager, shall we go in?" the pastor said, holding the door open. Joseph went in first, taking a seat. Ambrose followed, giving the pastor a smile that showed just a little bit of fang now that the policeman's back was turned, and took a seat as well. The pastor came in last, settling in the only available chair.
"Well," Ambrose said briskly. "I trust you know why I'm here, Mr. Richardson. It's about Thomas."
He could see the pastor's eyebrow twitch, almost imperceptibly. Richardson had no idea who Thomas was, and neither did Ambrose, considering Thomas didn't exist. But he could exist, and that was what mattered.
"I'm here as a favor to his father, who works under me," Ambrose said. "I was hoping to not make that big of a deal about it, considering I'm only here about Thomas, but it was your choice to bring in the police."
Ambrose could see a look of horror dawning on the pastor's face, along with... realization? What? Apparently there was someone that the pastor felt guilty about, possibly inexplicably named Thomas, and Ambrose had hit the gold mine if that was true.
"Thomas has gotten mixed up with Judgement Day," Ambrose said, with finality. Judgement Day was the strangely long name of the gang the pastor laundered money for. They had a weird vendetta against Ragnarök - the reason why the pastor assumed Ambrose was here, of course - and had been rather public about it, too. Unfortunately, they'd also been very violent. Ambrose had lost four Rag members over the past month, each murdered in increasingly brutal ways, which the policeman would doubtless be aware of (considering the bodies always had the same message by them - Ragnarök's logo with "DEATH TO" spray painted above it, signed, conveniently, with "Judgement Day"). "His father, obviously, is worried about him. I asked around and was told that if I wanted to get in contact with Judgement Day, I was to reach out to you." Boom. Health bar hits zero - finish him. You win. Ambrose knew that Richardson knew, too. There was no way for him to defend himself from such an accusation. Denial, yes, but that rarely worked. He could tell the truth and say he only laundered money, but that was still a crime. And if he tried to tell the full truth - that Ambrose was a part of the very terrorist group that Judgement Day was against - he'd be laughed straight into jail. That theory - that Ambrose was Jörmungandr, one of the foremost lieutenants of Ragnarök - was out there already, and it was reserved for the deepest, most pathetic echelons of the Internet. It may not necessarily be exactly what the pastor believed Ambrose did - most just believed him to be a generic member, not the "Death Dragon" himself - that theory was what most jumped to when they heard accusations of Ambrose's Ragnarok involvement, and those accusations were therefore never believed. It definitely wouldn't be believed coming out of the mouth of an incriminated pastor.
Checkmate. Ambrose would preen if it wouldn't be too obvious. Instead, he kept looking at Richardson with an unreadable but undeniably serious expression on his face.
"Very well, Mr. Jaager," the pastor said, clearly wanting everything but. He looked at somebody else who Ambrose didn't recognize - a man who Ambrose could only described as "chiseled," really. "Joseph, you might want to be part of this discussion. Everyone else, I believe you were having coffee?"
The chatter started up again. But this time, Ambrose got looks. And they didn't know it, of course, but he could hear them all perfectly well when he tried, and they were rather deliberately talking about him. Oh well. No violence, then, though he could always send Remy back later to make it violent. What was irritating was the new information he gathered - Joseph, as it seemed, was a policeman. Clearly, Richardson was more willing to risk jail than Ambrose.
He was going to have to figure out a way to word his message that was a bit more... altruistic.
"We wait for Mr Jaager , Joseph...I feel safer with you nearby me, your police duties may be required here." Ambrose may have still been walking towards where the two stood in the center of the church, accompanied by the more intimidating Romeo, but he could hear them. Superhuman hearing had its perks. And yup, clearly the pastor was willing to risk arrest when it was that or bodily harm.
Ambrose had revised his plan. He was going to implicate the pastor to the policeman, that was for sure, but then he still needed to figure out how to send that clear message of "don't mess with Ragnarök." He could order a hit on Richardson, but that was too targeted. People would make the connection. Inciting a prison riot worked too, and having Richardson be one of the unfortunate casualties, but Remy would need to be physically present to do that - again, too risky, considering Remy and his unfortunately identical twin were also present. The most likely plan seemed to be to have Remy start a fight in the church later, considering then people would be too dead or traumatized to identify Remy's involvement. Richardson would stay safe, unfortunately, but he'd feel incredibly guilty when the news about the body count rolled in - and he'd know it was for him. Rumors abounded in the streets that the notorious Capitoline twins were in the employ of Ambrose Jaager now, and the scope of their powers was well-known. Yes, Richardson - and the entire gang - would understand that this was for them.
Good plan. Now to execute the first part.
"Mr Jaager, would you like some cake? Coffee perhaps?" the pastor said nervously, shooting his wife and child a look. They scrambled to offer Ambrose some coffee, with the little one bearing a tray of cake.
"It is really good Mr Jaager, I can vouch for it," Joseph said in a decidedly friendly manner. Ambrose smiled back. They needed to take this somewhere more private.
"Thank you, but I'll pass," he said politely, giving the boy specifically a smile. Richardson looked threatened by that. Good. He should be. "I'm afraid I don't have that much time, and I've come to talk to the good pastor about a..." He looked at Joseph - not deliberately, more offhandedly. "Personal matter." He turned back to the pastor. "Do you have a more private place we could talk in? I'm not sure you'd want this conversation heard by others." A few people standing nearby, clearly listening in, turned away guiltily at that remark, further serving to prove Ambrose's point. Ambrose didn't want to look like an asshole in public, which he would if he did all this in public. This way, he looked a bit more thoughtful when he was inevitably questioned about it.
Ambrose walked through the doors of the church, and almost immediately attempted to back right the f*ck out.
Unfortunately, he couldn't make a hasty exit anymore. Not with everyone in the damn building staring at him. He hadn't been paying attention, which was why his enhanced hearing hadn't picked up on the chatter inside, but he did recall hearing his name in connection to his little speech on Utopia. He'd just assumed it was from the general chatter of the streets around him. Apparently not.
And he really wasn't here for reasons that would be great to announce publicly. He surreptitiously glanced down at his watch, where the date showed as well as the time - and yup, it was Sunday. Church happened on Sunday. He was such an idiot.
Ambrose had never been a religious man, to be honest - his father had been a Dutch Protestant, and that was enough to turn Ambrose off religion forever, considering all the spew he got about being the Devil's minion or something. It helped that from his rather egocentric point of view, he was his own god, and so he needn't be bothered by any others. Unfortunately, that meant that the association between "Sunday" and "masses of people in a church" had been lost on Ambrose, which was why he'd showed up to a congregation flanked by both of his bodyguards, with the intention of strongarming the pastor into stopping his little side business where he laundered illegally-obtained money through his donation box - for a tidy cut of the profits, of course. Unfortunately, those funds went to a decidedly and violently anti-Ragnarok group, and Ambrose needed that to stop, ASAP. That group had been troublesome lately, and he'd hoped that making an example out of one of their members - the only one he could manage to identify, to be honest - would make a point.
Unsure of what else to do but still projecting a veneer of confidence, Ambrose gestured at Remy, in a hand motion that he meant to make say "wait outside." Unfortunately, some of that was lost in translation, and Remy went to lurk by the church's doors instead in a decidedly gatekeeper-ish way, even if Remy's face seemed always to be locked in perpetual confusion. Ambrose supposed that was so he could use his mutation if necessary, considering the hostile looks they were getting, and - ooh. He was briefly reminded of a movie he'd watched with a brilliant scene involving a massacre in a church. That might be some fun, if the pastor decided not to comply. Romeo had a gas mask for Ambrose tucked inside of his coat, while Romeo had his exoskeleton's helm, so they were certainly prepared, should Ambrose give the order. But not yet. Right now, he wanted to talk, because he'd come out all this way for a reason. And he was a busy man. He wasn't going to wait until everyone had gone, and he was here anyway, standing in the doorway with quite a few people watching him, and he had been for a solid but awkward ten seconds now.
Ambrose cleared his throat.
"Carry on," he said, with as much authority and pleasantness as he could muster, a smile settling on his features. "I'm just here to have a word with Pastor Richardson, if that's alright."
Hundreds of feet away, far away from Ambrose, the pastor paled. He knew why Ambrose was here, and - considering the fact that Ambrose could literally smell the man's fear from this distance - he didn't like it.
Ambrose suspected that this was an ice mutant's method of being passive-aggressive. He'd take a swat at the man if it weren't for the fact that the air temperature dropping actually meant that Sam was getting less visible by the second, and it'd probably be more humiliating to swing and miss than it would be to just stay quiet.
He really wanted to lash out, though. He could practically hear the smirk in Sam's voice, accompanied by the grinding of a brick being pushed out, as Sam spoke. "Unless you aren't in trouble. Then I have no business being here." There were a few moments of silence, as Sam clearly let the comment sit, and Ambrose didn't dignify him with a response. As much as Ambrose loathed to admit it, he'd need the ice mutant's help to get out of this room, and probably out of the sewer, too.
”Also if you threaten me again you’ll find out why I don’t have an issue talking to you like that.” The temperature rose again, and Sam's outline grew a little clearer - a slightly darker, human-shaped patch in what otherwise seemed like total darkness to Ambrose. "Now if your gonna be pissy be pissy towards the wall, like you just did with that tail then we can both be on our way yeah?”
What? Tail? Ambrose grew vaguely aware of a light sort of throbbing in, yup, his tail, and when he looked at the wall that Sam was working on, he realized that the pitch black of the ice stopped to make way for the greyish color of room-temperature air at some point. There was, in fact, a whole section of the iced-over bricks knocked out, in a shape that suspiciously resembled Ambrose's tail whacking through the wall. Huh. He hadn't expected that little resistance; that'd been why he hadn't noticed to begin with.
Ambrose turned and leaned his head closer to the wall, right above where Sam was working, stopping when he could feel the radiating cold of the ice against his muzzle. He didn't give any words of warning, then, just reared his head back a bit before headbutting the wall. An entire section of wall collapsed in a large pile of ice and smashed stone. This impressive yet sulky display of strength had technically been more thanks to a combination of ice making the bricks brittle, bad structural integrity, and Sam and Ambrose's prior work by tail and hand than it was to Ambrose's actual strength, but it looked impressive, and that was all Ambrose could ask for.
Would you look at that. Apparently, Ambrose wasn't in trouble, because -
Oh, shoot.
Only now did Ambrose really take a moment to think about Sam's words. Most people Ambrose knew didn't troll sewers for captive dragons because they felt like it. Sam also didn't know who Ambrose was, which, in addition to being insulting, indicated that this wasn't something Sam had been hired to do. And Ambrose knew of only one group of people who staged impromptu, drunk rescue missions to help get mutants out of trouble for purely altruistic purposes.
"Say," Ambrose said, carefully, "you're an X-Man, aren't you? I think I've seen you with that pink-haired guy. Haggis Johnson or something like that."
That was mostly a lie. Ambrose wouldn't be able to identify Sam from the president of the United States right now, but Sam didn't know that. The only true part was that Ambrose legitimately thought that the pink-haired X was called Haggis. Yes, like the food.
"I'm sorry," Devon whispered politely, taking Ambrose's hand. "You surprised me." As Ambrose had meant to, for dramatic effect. It'd worked, apparently, which was great. He hated it when people didn't understand dramatic effect when they saw it and ruined everything. "Yes, of course. Nice to meet you, Mr. Jaager."
Devon stepped out into the hallway, presumably so their whispering wouldn't interrupt Cail's speech. Wasn't that polite of him. Ambrose couldn't help but growl inwardly a bit at his lack of height - he was a good three or four inches shorter than the other man, even if he'd checked and so knew that he was just as many years older. But hey - he was only shorter in this stupid, limited human form. His true form was - he was getting hung up on size again. Last time that'd happened, he'd tried to attack an X-Man. Maybe he should start considering that a potential weakness on his part.
"I've heard and seen much of you, though I'm sure you're accustomed to that. I'm not so familiar with the feeling," Devon said, and Ambrose of course caught the glance and subsequent gesture to the bodyguard lurking down the hallway. "Can I get either of you anything? If you were hoping to talk, I'm happy to do so."
Ambrose was about to respond, but Devon looked like he had something he wanted to get out. So he waited instead. "I have to admit, I was surprised you came. Many were, but maybe it's good to get out?"
Well, first off. "We're fine, thank you," Ambrose responded courteously, before turning to look at Romeo. It only took a small gesture for him to send Romeo off, because it'd be difficult to talk with the large bodyguard looming at them like the Sword of Damocles from down the hall. The man nodded and dodged outside of the building entirely, presumably to check with the private security surrounding Sanctuary right now. They weren't immediately noticeable, but anyone who looked hard enough would see the glint of a sniper's scope on a nearby rooftop or someone loitering with a cigarette a bit too suspiciously. Better to be safe than sorry, after all - crashing a JW-hosted event in the notoriously mutant-friendly Sanctuary would be the magnum opus of any anti-mutant group, and while Ambrose was generally all for conflict, he preferred it when it didn't conflict with his own schedule.
"And you could say that," Ambrose said, friendly as ever. "It's nice to see the result of JW's efforts in person sometimes." That was a cookie-cutter line, force-fed to him by Madeline, who had outright refused to let him leave his office one day until he'd memorized the entire list she'd had typed up.
"This is more publicity than you've ever had," she'd growled, ignoring his protests that excuse her, but Ambrose was already quite famous, thank you very much. "You're good with facades. This is another. So don't ruin everything by saying something stupid."
He was relatively sure that she forgot sometimes that Ragnarok was his chaos baby. If there was one person who wouldn't ever mess up, it'd be Ambrose. (The lines had been helpful, though, but he'd never admit that to her.)
"But you should get used to being recognized, at this point - your good deeds here haven't gone unnoticed." Ambrose stepped in a bit closer, tamping down the part of him that seethed at having to look up to see Devon's face. "I'm sure you know of Sanctuary's history before you got here, hmm?" Ambrose's voice was even and just as polite, as if he hadn't just committed the most grievous social transgression of them all - randomly invading a total stranger's personal space.
But he'd needed to get close. It was a loaded question, because anyone could, and would, answer that it was a shelter meant for uprooted mutants. But the real answer - the one Ambrose was looking for - pertained to the Order. Devon could lie, of course, but Ambrose would know. Right now, Ambrose was listening to Devon's heartbeat, having managed to get close enough to hear. Faster probably meant that Devon knew what Ambrose was really asking, regardless of what he actually said, but if it stayed even, then Ambrose would know that the most disgustingly well-intentioned goody two-shoes really had just randomly stumbled into the city and decided to make Sanctuary his charity case.
There was a third possibility, of course - that Devon's heart rate would rise because Ambrose was really a lot closer than any sentient being should be comfortable with, to the point where Devon could probably feel Ambrose's noticeable lack of human-like body heat. But Ambrose neither realized nor even considered that, because he was an idiot sometimes, and this was one of those times. And probably also because he was too caught up in proactively planning what he'd do to Devon if the little unknown annoyance turned out to be a big known one instead.
Thump. A surprised yelp sounded from the direction of the courtyard. Ambrose peered around the corner again to see Noel backed up against the white van their attackers had presumably arrived in. The vehicle's side exploded in a hail of bullets and metal shards, and she ducked behind the van, to the side closer to Ambrose. He saw very clearly as the door flew open unexpectedly and a fist landed squarely in her eye.
Ambrose looked at his weapon, wondering if he should try to provide backup, because the chance of him hitting her was just as great as the chance that he'd hit the bad guy.
He gritted his teeth, swung the gun up, squinted, and fired.
The van window next to the two exploded in a burst of glass. On the bright side, he hadn't hit Noel. On the less bright side, he hadn't hit the other guy, either. In fact, he'd missed them both by, like, a solid two or three feet. That was terrible. He'd definitely have to ask somebody for help eventually, once he figured out how to word it in a way that made it seem like he was doing them the favor.
It seemed his help was unneeded, though, because she took him down and then used the body to hop into the van. Ambrose took aim again, squeezing off a few shots at the figure scrambling to get up. One of his shots got really lucky, because it actually managed to hit the enemy soldier in something that seemed to be vital, because the body jerked once, and then went limp. Was that... improvement? Maybe. He'd take that.
The van started, and Noel tore off, straight at Ambrose's general location. He didn't really want to call out to her, though. It seemed... sort of damsel-in-distress-y. Ambrose disliked the idea of being a damsel in distress, or even a dragon in distress. He didn't get distressed. He was the leader of a terrorist anarchy group, for Christ's sakes. He did the distressing.
But she looked like she was going to drive right past him, so he sucked it up and called out.
"Noel!" he half-snarled, half-hissed, but definitely did not call plaintively out. He was still leaning against the wall, doing his best to stay both conscious and upright. It was a struggle. As the van tore by, inches away from both the wall and Ambrose's face, he lunged forward and dug his claws into a bullet-ridden side. The wheels screeched as the van noticeably slowed, rubber spinning helplessly against asphalt for a moment, before the metal tore and Ambrose lost his grip, falling back onto the wall.
"You know, for someone who's getting rescued, you're big on the naysaying, Negative Nancy."
...who in the world spoke like that? Also, was he being talked down to for being practical? Well, excuse him. If Ambrose hadn't been annoyed before, he definitely was now.
"Not like they can chain you up in here again. They're broken and I'm here now. Stop being a baby."
What.
Ambrose was relatively confident that "taunting the person you're trying to rescue" was not a necessary part of a rescue. He also didn't ask for Sam to come down here and rescue him, thank you very much. He'd eventually have gotten himself out. Probably.
He didn't realize, but he was shifting around now. His claws were grating into the ground, making soft grinding noises as the stone was essentially shredded. Sam continued to shoot dark beams of ice at the wall.
"How about you help then? It's significantly weaker and if I can punch through the brick wall imagine what you could do."
Ambrose couldn't help it. He preened, just a little bit. When it came to Ambrose Jaager, flattery went a long way, because he believed he was the only important thing in this world and enjoyed hearing others validate that.
Except then Sam totally ruined the moment by saying, "I mean, all that size just for show or do you have some performance anxiety?"
What.
What.
Almost instantly, Ambrose had lunged at Sam. He didn't touch the other man - which was more of an accident than anything, because he missed a little bit, but of course he wasn't going to admit that - but his muzzle was rather close to the ice mutant's face as Ambrose loomed over the pitch black form below him. He didn't notice as his tail smashed into the wall mid-leap, not quite knocking it down, but smashing a rather linear patch of brick out.
"Do you know who I am?" Ambrose growled, no longer caring about civility. So what if this wasn't the proper way to treat a rescuer; he hadn't asked to be rescued, insulted, or anything of the sort. He would've escaped eventually, obviously - inevitably, someone would have noticed - and there were less unpleasant ways of doing so. "Because if you did, you wouldn't dare speak to me like that."
...only Kaz spoke to him like that. And that was just because Kaz could thrash Ambrose, no problem. Sam? Sam didn't look like that much of a threat. Frozen water wasn't the most intimidating thing out there, to be frank. And it definitely wasn't intimidating Ambrose into not moving in his own defense.
Ambrose fumbled at the waistband of his pants, only vaguely aware of the tingling sensation that was supposed to be the handle of a gun jabbing so hard into his lower back that it would definitely leave a bruise. He finally got it into his hands, and narrowed his eyes at it, glancing back and forth between the two guns he was now holding.
...they looked exactly the same, but when he tried to figure out how to reload the one he knew would shoot with the bullets from the other, he realized that the bullets looked totally different. Okay. That meant different ammo; he knew that much. So basically, he'd have to use two guns.
He tucked the fully loaded one in at his right hip for easier access.
He heard shots coming from a building across the square - the building Noel had been in, he was sure. The sounds of bullets hitting flesh were familiar, and as he peered around the corner, he watched as she smashed through a window after hopping off the roof. Nice. That had been smooth.
Unfortunately, the sounds that followed were a lot less smooth. Ambrose didn't speak Montenegrin - their language, a somewhat bastardized form of Serbian - fluently, but he could still understand their tone of voice, and that tone of voice sounded a whole lot like "holy crap you shot grandma." (He understood the Serbian for grandma. There was no specific tone of voice for "grandma.") The next three shots sounded different, as they punched through body armor instead of flesh. That must've been an enemy. He could see other armed soldiers on the roof still, now shouting about going down, and then Noel burst out of the house.
"Ambrose!" she shouted, and he briefly contemplated shouting back before realizing that he'd give his position away, and that he was not in a great position right now to be exposed to even more attackers.
But then she might not realize that he was still alive, and that was sub-optimal because he was kind of relying on her to get him out right now.
His right leg suddenly seized up with a burst of pain, and then he didn't really have a choice in that matter because he made a strangled sound so loud he was pretty sure the soldiers storming down the building's stairs were able to hear. He'd gotten a lot worse about quietly working his way through pain, lately - previously, he'd dislocated and relocated his shoulder without a sound - and now, something as pathetic as getting shot in a place that was immediately deadened to all feeling got a reaction out of him. He wasn't sure who to blame about this, but he was confident he'd find someone. He was good at finding people to blame.
To be fair, though, the pain in his leg was a lot worse than he'd expected it to be - and he had, in fact, expected no pain at all. That leg was supposed to be paralyzed. His left leg had decided to follow the laws of biology and was obediently numb, but his right leg throbbed with pain. It took him a moment before he figured out that it was the leg he'd gotten shot in, and he allowed himself another moment to wonder how in the world he could feel that leg. It was probably his healing factor - the only explanation that he could come up with was that the majority of the nerves had regenerated already, because the damage hadn't been so bad to begin with, before he decided that it was actually probably better this way and the how or why didn't really matter. He could at least move partially on his own, now; had he not had at least one working leg, Noel would've had to carry him, and he had no doubt that she wouldn't've been able to make all six hundred plus pounds of compressed dragon even budge.
...maybe budge, if he was being nice. But full-on movement would've been impossible.
He stood up. His right leg, as expected, held his weight, but just barely. His left leg was useless as ever, so maybe that wasn't too much of a difference from what he was used to.
He didn't bother calling out to her. He could hear their attackers coming out of the building she'd left from, so he didn't want to risk it. If she heard him, great; if she didn't, he was just gonna hole up here until it was a bit safer to inform her that he was still alive.
"Go there," the girl decided, pointing, and... ooh.
That looked like his building.
And, in fact, when he looked down, he could almost see the hazy white figures of people in Ragnarok's headquarters, milling around the barracks. Well, he couldn't say no now - that'd be bad form. And it was late at night, and the JW building was one of the tallest in the city, so he doubted they'd be spotted.
Anyway, she flew ahead of him confidently, so it wasn't like he could protest. But that was good. Arrogance was a brilliant trait in underlings, because then they made great diversions.
"What you do?" she called behind her in her stunted English. "You say you on news?"
Well, he couldn't reveal too much, obviously. Especially not the fact that he owned the building they were about to land on. "I build things," he said, simply and generically. "And when I said I was on the news, I meant while I looked like this." As a city-terrorizing monster, that was. "In fact, after that stunt at the courthouse, I'd say that we'll both be on the news sometime soon. New Yorkers are so very committed to filming at the most inappropriate times."
He landed on the roof, where he knew there would be open space thanks to the helipad. When he glanced down, he could see Madeline's figure in his office below him (the stairs didn't actually open into his office; there was a separate set that went straight from the ground to the top for emergency purposes only, and the inability to go from roof to his office was for security purposes), and she clearly knew he was there because he saw her bright outline flipping him off. Lovely as ever.
"And you?" Ambrose said, out of sheer politeness, even if his next words were less than that. "You can't spend all your time being a broody countercultural rebel."
"META bots are out," Madeline said offhandedly, peeking through the office door, as if she was informing him that lunch had arrived.
"Thank you," Ambrose said, politely, at the same time that the man sitting across from him said, "What?"
"Shut up," Ambrose said, more irritably. Chad Drumpf, the obnoxious-looking man sitting across the desk, gave Ambrose an offended look.
Ambrose didn't like Chad (god, who named their kid Chad) at all. In fact, if he wasn't in dire need of Chad's political leverage, Chad would probably be bleeding out, facedown in a ditch, right now. (He'd also be referring to him as anything other than Chad, but Chad insisted that he be called by his first name, and got even more annoying when he wasn't.) Unfortunately, Ambrose did need a politician who would do whatever he was told for money, and Chad was the only one disreputable enough (but not publicly so) to suffice.
His life sucked.
"Now," Ambrose said, gritting his teeth. "How much, you said?"
Still July 7th. 7:18 PM.
Well, he'd finally managed to settle the issue of bribing Chad into Ragnarok's service. It'd only taken a few million, but that was a few million more than he'd wanted. That was... annoying, to put it lightly.
The car pulled into the driveway of the mansion. He checked his phone - Panu's network showed clearly, so the boy was home. He wouldn't be for long, though - tonight, he was going on a mission with Romeo. It was about time Ragnarok got a bit more aggressive, and so they were going to be making some noise around Wall Street tonight.
As he stood in the spacious yard, staring critically at what seemed to be a cracked claw (but he couldn't really tell with heat vision, which was why he was trying so hard), he glanced over to see the glowing white of Panu's form inside the house. It looked a little... dim, though, and Ambrose realized upon closer inspection that the boy was shivering.
Uh.
He poked Romeo, who was standing by him in his full exoskeleton, and nearly toppled the man over in the process.
Romeo's face grew brighter as Ambrose heard the sound of the helm's faceplate retracting. "What," he said, unamused.
"Can you go turn off the air conditioning?" Ambrose said, and even if he couldn't see it, he could feel the incredulous look he was getting. "I can't fit into the house, so it's your job. Go."
Romeo seemed like he wanted to respond, but Ambrose turned around - pettily, he'd admit - and shut him off. He could hear the sounds of the armor clanking off towards the house behind him.
"Thermostat is on the second floor, by the stairs!" Ambrose called, before he forgot, and he could hear Romeo muttering under his breath about how he didn't expect to be doing domestic chores for the leader of an anarchic terrorist faction as he stomped off.
Ambrose Jaager stood at a podium in front of all of Sanctuary's occupants and wondered how exactly he'd gotten there.
It'd been his idea, of course, to come. He'd heard rumors about somebody trying to get Sanctuary up and running again - and considering how hard he'd worked to shut the Order down the first time (the META bot attack while Aura was there was satisfying, but nowhere near as fun as watching Faust get ruined was), he wasn't looking forward to having all of his progress shut down so quickly. And this Tempest guy seemed keen on doing that. Of course, there was no guarantee the man even knew what the Order was - from what Ambrose had learned, he was from out of town and had decided to help out at the Sanctuary immediately upon arrival - but if that wasn't suspicious, Ambrose didn't know what was.
Either way, he wasn't going to risk it. He'd been planning non-suspicious ways to get into Sanctuary for a while now, but there weren't that many, so he'd been almost glad to hear that Sanctuary had requested an informational session of sorts about Utopia. He'd immediately inserted himself as a guest speaker - a special guest speaker, thank you very much - and that was why he was delivering a speech about why Utopia was important to him with as much aplomb as was appropriate.
Someone was staring at him, from the audience. Most of Sanctuary's occupants were looking up at him with wonder in their eyes - amazement, no doubt, that they might not have to be scared of humans for once, and that he was providing such a safe haven. But one person caught Ambrose's eye - someone staring very deliberately at him in a way that definitely was not wonderment, and actually might have been perturbed. About what, Ambrose didn't know, but he suspected it was because of his presence.
He finished up the speech, having recited the same lines he'd been giving at similar JW-sponsored events about Utopia. He'd said them so often at this point that he didn't even have to think as he spoke - all he had to do was enunciate the right things and the right time and look suitably somber at other points. Easy.
"And now, it's my pleasure to introduce Commander Cail Rendfur, who will be speaking to you about..." Shoot. What was it? "Utopia's execution," he finished smoothly, not a single noticeable break as he spoke. That was... general, yes, and the double meaning was palpable, but he didn't think the Sanctuary's occupants would care. They looked too excited at the prospect of a safe haven, whispering among themselves, as Ambrose and Cail switched places at the podium.
As Cail started speaking about who-knows-what, Ambrose stepped out of the dining room through a doorway, out into the empty hall. Only Romeo was here today, and the bodyguard swept neatly through the door behind Ambrose. Remy was on yet another mission, but Ambrose sort of let him do his own thing at this point, because clearly the man knew what he was doing. And really, Ambrose didn't need a bodyguard, but it was nice to have someone with a more immediately intimidating mutation nearby. Also, Madeline had informed him of the rumors that he was having sex with one or both of the Carr twins, as they were publicly known to anyone who checked, and Ambrose wasn't going to go out of his way to discourage those rumors. (Romeo didn't know, and it was frankly hilarious to see his suspicious narrowing of eyebrows when random people on the street started to giggle and point at him almost as much as they did it to Ambrose.)
But because Romeo wasn't immediately necessary, he hung back as Ambrose walked purposefully to the dining room's other entrance. He knew exactly who he was looking for.
"Devon Hadden," he almost purred, appearing behind the man standing, in the most emo way possible, in the doorway. "I've heard a lot about you." He extended a hand. "Ambrose Jaager, though I'm sure you know that at this point."
There was a stunned silence in the office outside for a few moments, after Kaz had managed to pin Ambrose to the floor, and then promptly licked him.
Cail was standing at the desk, staring at the computer screen with an unreadable expression on his face. It would be his normal blankness if it didn't look so... traumatized. Specter spoke, but he didn't hear. He was furrowing his eyebrows at the scene in front of him. Cail was the sort of person who slowed on the highway to get a better look at a five-car pileup, and he was relatively sure this fell under that sort of disaster.
Madeline was pushing the "down" button by the elevator repeatedly. It wasn't lighting up, but that wasn't stopping her. "Please cease all attempts to keep us in this room," she said blankly, addressing Specter, but with the sort of disturbing vocal undertones that indicated evisceration would be imminent if she wasn't obeyed. (It was her Ambrose voice. She'd had a lot of practice.)
"And please give us our mutations back," the teleporter said weakly. Huh. Cail had forgotten - what was his name? Something weird and European, that he remembered - was even here. Unsurprising, considering the man had been receding ever-so-slowly towards the direction of the broom closet over the past few minutes.
"Absolutely not," Madeline snarled, honest-to-god snarled, and everyone flinched. There was quite a bit of jungle in her voice, and definite undertones of a disturbing sound that no human being should be able to produce. It took Cail a bit to process that if he was an empath whose power never turned off, he wouldn't want his power back either.
He sympathized, briefly, and then he just was glad it wasn't him.
She was still stabbing the elevator button, with increasing force. The glass cracked, loudly. Cail took a moment to respect that, because Madeline's mutation-enhanced strength was not on right now, but he was still pretty sure the button was sinking slowly into the wall with each jab.
He glanced down at the screen, took one look at the scene before him, and promptly decided he didn't want to watch anymore.
Ambrose had actually noticed Kaz licking his blood (which, in hindsight, ew, how did Kaz know that he didn't have an STD or something, what was it with him and meeting people who licked the weirdest things); he just hadn't been bothered enough to respond properly at the time. And now still wasn't the time to properly respond. Had Ambrose been in enough control of himself, or had he possessed knowledge of the specifics of Kaz's powers, he probably would've surrendered a while ago. (Which, yes, surrender was a viable option over dying. Humiliation could be forgotten, death... couldn't?) But as it was, Ambrose had neither control nor that knowledge, which meant that he would still stubbornly attempt to fight. Some part of him probably knew that he was definitely gonna lose if he stayed human, and that was the part that was all for going full jabberwocky. But another part wanted this building to stay intact, please, because he was very much attached to this building and Jabberwocky wasn't one to care about collateral damage.
Either way, his reflexes were too slow when it came to Kaz. It was surprising enough that he managed to nick Kaz's shin, though come to think of it, he was pretty sure Kaz had been patronizing him by handicapping himself just then. Okay, so skin density could change. That was... what made Ambrose actually start considering the scope of Kaz's power and maybe the idea that he wasn't going to win this fight. Well, he might be able to tolerate that. The animal inside was grudgingly respecting a show of physical superiority, which Kaz was definitely providing, but that was fighting pretty heavily with Ambrose's nausea at the idea of letting someone, with, inexplicably, an ego just as or even bigger than his, win. He didn't like that. The human part of him was "hell no-ing" that idea.
Yeah, the more he thought about it, the worse of an idea it seemed.
Unfortunately, he didn't really have a choice in the matter, because once again Kaz showed he was stronger. Ambrose was pretty much snatched midair, and he had a moment to feel slightly gleeful that he apparently weighed so much more than Kaz did, because when Kaz tried to pull him up he went down instead. (This was, very likely, the first time any sentient being had been gleeful over weighing more than someone else, but the rules changed when that weight wasn't from fat but instead stuffed-up dragon.) Ambrose was only able to take a moment to revel in that before he hit the ground and Kaz's still-considerable weight was pinning him down. His back arched up in a response to the pain when one of his wings crunched with an unpleasant noise - though, to Ambrose's credit, he didn't make a sound past a sharp hiss of air through his teeth - but he was vindictively pleased to find unfamiliarly warm blood tricking down his back. He kept trying to dig the sharp plates on his back into Kaz's stomach then, obviously, because apparently that worked if nothing else before had. That was what Cail had looked down to see - because, as it turned out, while Ambrose knew he was trying to move his back upwards, it looked an awful lot like something else was happening.
If it'd just been Kaz's weight, Ambrose would've been able to literally throw the other man off (and out the window, because wouldn't that have been satisfying), but Kaz was - wait a second, Kaz's hands weren't actually pinning him down so he could theoretically throw the man, but that was before he felt one hand wrap around his neck and another around his abdomen.
He went still.
That wasn't the instinctive reaction again - Ambrose had tamped that down when he felt the overwhelming urge to bare his neck even further, believe it or not, because his instincts were apparently conspiring against him. No, this was logic, because he'd seen that Kaz was faster, and judging by where those claws were positioned, he'd be dead in a pool of arterial spray before he even managed to move. (Also, in terms of sheer mechanics, he didn't think he could throw Kaz off without danger to his throat, even if Kaz hadn't had enhanced reflexes. One arm - the dislocated one - was also tucked and pinned under his chest, and the other splayed out in front of him in an attempt to break his fall previously, which didn't make the greatest leverage. He suspected that was why he was pinned in this position to begin with.)
He felt Kaz pull a little on his neck, and he had no choice but to go with the movement to avoid decapitation-by-claws. It had the added effect of allowing Ambrose to get in one more sharp dig with his back spines, and feeling more of Kaz's blood run down his back was a horribly pathetic yet ultimately satisfying (however minimal) form of revenge.
He could feel Kaz moving, to try and scoot upwards, apparently. Ambrose was feeling vindictive. He hoped to whatever deity was listening that Kaz managed to castrate himself on one of Ambrose's spines, because that would be the most hilarious form of cosmic payback ever.
Kaz's teeth were worryingly close to Ambrose's neck, now. And then the sprinklers went off. Ambrose had just a little bit of coherency to consider the fact that he'd heard the fire alarm a bit ago, and the sprinklers were going off rather belatedly, but that was overshadowed when he felt Kaz's fingers flexed. Kaz's claws dug into Ambrose's flesh, and -
Ewww.
Ambrose fought the urge to squirm away like an eight year old boy being confronted by an overly affectionate aunt. That was gross. Kaz had just licked him. Now was the time for Ambrose to process that Kaz had licked Ambrose's blood off his fingers not sixty seconds ago, and be even further grossed out by that. Because there was no situation where licking someone's face was considered appropriate. No matter what, it came off as creepy, and this time, it came off as mega-creepy. Disturbingly, Ambrose wasn't even that affected by the creepiness of it - it was how unsanitary it was that actually creeped him out. Seriously. If there was one thing he was learning that he thought was so gross (thanks Noel), it was licking. Period. Just - it's not attractive. Don't. (He felt very strongly on this topic. Why, he didn't know, but the last person who attempted licking as a seduction tactic on him got punched in the face.)
"Show and tell, Rose," Kaz growled into Ambrose's ear, so close that Ambrose could actually feel the other man's breath. It took a moment for him to figure out what Kaz meant. And then oh, come on, not even Ambrose would say or do that.
"I need brain bleach. You know there are things I can't unsee!"
"Nope," said Cail, having joined the teleporter by the broom closet. "Don't do that to yourself, mate. Just turn the bloody computer off."
"Stop. Whatever. The. F*ck. You're. Doing," Madeline said, her voice dangerously low and calm, in a way that suggested that if Specter didn't comply, she would find a way to remove all of his organs and display them outside of his body, lack of mutation be damned.
Nobody that knew her doubted this. At all.
Ambrose didn't say anything. He just lay there for a full minutes, going over his options, and eliminating them one by one. As satisfying as it would be to throw Kaz out the window, he wouldn't be able to enjoy it if he was bleeding out on the floor. Reverting to his true form was also out because there were ways to survive this that didn't end up with his building horribly disfigured. And so on and so forth, until he was left with one unpleasant option. He could still feel Kaz's claws digging into his neck and stomach - the two most vulnerable parts of the body, as he was sure Kaz knew - and his survival instinct was even telling him to breathe more shallowly, the claws were pressed so tightly.
"If you could get off of me," Ambrose said calmly, having regained some semblance of pride in those sixty seconds. He wasn't yet at a point where he would feel the urge to smash his face into something because thank you 20/20 hindsight, but he could think coherently and human-ly about the situation at hand, and not with aggressive, monstrous impulses. "That would be lovely." The words were typical Ambrose - pretentious, obnoxious, and precise - but the tone was different. And to make his point clear, he bared his neck a bit more and pressed it into Kaz's claws, drawing little beads of black blood. His point was clear - he wasn't going to fight back, just yet - but he'd done it with the least amount of verbal abuse to himself, in terms of humiliation, so it was the most dignified of a surrender he was going to get.
Also, "I've had a few questionable nights" - what in the world was that supposed to mean? Was Sam implying that they'd had sex? Because Ambrose knew he definitely would've remembered that.
"I have an eye patch. Usually gets me noticed."
...people actually wore eyepatches?
That was irrelevant, though, and Ambrose mentally growled at himself. Think. The idea of an ice mutant with an eyepatch didn't sit well with him, for some reason, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why.
Sam asked him if he'd be able to go through the wall. Obviously, Ambrose was going to say no.
"I don't think that's going to work," Ambrose said, dubiously and with surprising honesty. It was true, after all - the doorway was so small even a slightly large human would have trouble. Sam had gotten it to the point where Ambrose's head could fit, but it'd definitely get caught up on limbs or his stomach. "If we do try to get out this way, it'll take all night. And I don't know about you, but I'd like to get out as soon as possible."
Also, he was positively itching to destroy something. Preferably with a radius. The power plant would definitely be a good solution to that.
Ambrose listened. Well, he tried to. He got distracted seconds into their speech by the fact that his phone had lit up with a DragonVale notification. He glanced up to make sure Elliott's attention was focused elsewhere before silently collecting all his gold.
He fed his acid dragon. He'd named it Madeline. (The apocalypse dragon was named Ambrose. He'd paid real money to get that one.)
By the time he'd tucked his phone away, the woman on the other end was wrapping up, and he'd missed all of it. He did catch Elliott's words, though, and those were the ones he chose to acknowledge.
"Well," he said, sitting up straight again. "Your little courier has a point, you know; can't let the kids see mommy and daddy fighting, right? Elliott and I are going to have a little talk, and then we'll get back to you."
He was about to make a motion that would've obviously indicated to Elliott to hang up, but then he realized that there were no "hang up" motions for mobile phones (shame - that was the only reason he had a landline at home, because slamming the receiver down was so satisfying), and that gesticulating wildly would just make him look like an idiot.
He stood up, walked around to the other side of the desk, and ended the call.
"Right," he said brightly, vaguely realizing that he said that so very often. He should cut down on the "right"s. It made him sound... peppy. And/or British. "Clearly, you want to know what you're in for. That's great. I can do that."
He went back around his desk as he spoke, sitting back down by the time he'd finished. "Obviously, if it isn't yet clear, I have no use for your employers. Whether you have a use for them is a separate thing, although if you're really attached, I've got counsellors on hire to help you with that sort of thing." He gave an almost mocking sympathetic frown. "Stockholm Syndrome is so sad, isn't it? Anyway." He brightened up on the last word again. "You decide what happens with them, because I sure don't care. As for you! High pay, good benefits, whatever else you want because I don't know exactly what 'benefits' entails. Your cover will be as an intern, obviously, but you'll really be serving as a courier."
He got very serious, all of a sudden, even if very little changed visibly. But his demeanor was a bit... heavier, now. "Have you ever heard of Ragnarok?" he asked. His tone was lighthearted, still, but even a blind, deaf, and dumb person would've sensed a difference.
