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.
Out in the city, dark events transpired. Cosmic horrors were unleashed. People fought for their lives. People ran in fear. Ran for their lives. In opposition to all the terror of the night, nice things were happening, too. Children went door to door, begging candy from strangers. Parties were what's happenin', and adults costumed themselves in various stages of undress. The great Slutty Pumpkin rose. It was Halloween, Charlie Brown, and also. It was Elliott's birthday.
There isn't much excitement for age 22. It isn't a milestone like 18 or 21. You're already old enough to drink and vote and get drafted. It's just another year. Also, if your birthday is on Halloween, people don't really go out of their way to throw you a party, or even remember your birthday is that day. Like all holiday birthdays, the holiday tends to eclipse the day of birth. People can pretend, sure. Try and include you. But it's hardly the same.
Nobody had remembered his birthday. That was fine. He was a loner. It was Halloween, and he didn't need friends to have fun. Or maybe he did. Just, moreso like the Beatles song rather than the one from the movie about the spaceman and the cowboy. Less 'you got a friend in me', more about getting by. Elliott was drinking.
It isn't really worth bragging if you're out at eight on a Tuesday night, drinking alone while the whole world eats too much candy and parties with friends. He did it, though. He got in the birthday spirit, hey! His drink was some sort of chocolate shot, and he had a birthday cake flavored one lined up for next! It was the birthday spirit. Get it? The bartender certainly did, and he didn't approve.
"True enough." Muppets = cute. Kind of their MO. Save for certain Henson creations, like Jabba the Hutt, it was true. He smiled at the mental image of an attempt at a cute Hutt. Then, once he got done mentally scarring himself with that thought, he moved on.
"Yeah. Iced coffee is a big seller these days," Elliott agreed. "Unless you like your coffee in one form and one default color of black, with no additives like sugar or love." But most Americans vastly prefer too much sugar to the bitterness that is black coffee, plain. Most Americans like dental pain, too. And coronaries. That was a fact. Or at least, flagrantly obvious. Speaking of pain-- the injury didn't seem to be bothering her. But they'd still make sure she got the requisite Neosporin and a band aid. There was no telling where those street toughs had been.
Elliott held the door open for Celeste, then followed her into the shop. He flagged down the first waitress he saw. She looked a little like Celeste, if you swapped the blonde hair for brown... and she looked a bit put off by his bruise and the state of his clothing, too. Maybe being roughed up had made him look worse for the wear? He jerked a thumb Celeste's way.
"Some people just tried to mug her," he explained, with a well-placed lie. They'd be more likely to help if they figured she needed help more than him, and that he'd been acting as some form of noble hero. "I fought them off. Listen, do you have a first aid kit? I want to make sure she gets checked out. One of them got her with a knife."
"Where are they?" The waitress asked. She did the one thing he absolutely hadn't wanted. "We should report them to the police." She tried to involve cops.
His uh was internal. His silence lasted less than a second, while he doubled down on the lie. "I chased them off before they hurt her more than they already had... one of them might have hit me, but they ran. I know karate." Cough cough. Taekwondo, actually, but who says taekwondo? Karate is the popular martial art of America. Kind of like how Starbucks is the popular coffee shop of choice. Even if it isn't the best. "Don't know where they are now."
"Probably should still call 911, if she got stabbed-" the waitress trailed helpfully, eying Celeste like she had just walked in off the street with a banged up, mysterious, tall alien-looking green man, and needed help... and not just on account of having been cut.
Unsavory sounded, well, unsavory. He far preferred savory to unsavory (and sweet over both). The fact this Sanctuary was getting better under new management didn't really tell him much. One man's better is another man's minor improvement. There isn't much of a difference between getting stabbed and struggling murderer outright, aside from the heightened chance to survive.
Haven sounded much more likely... though rent was mentioned, and again, he was currently broke. Also, what was with these places and their foreboding descriptive names? Sanctuary, Haven... was there a place called Happy Home, or some sort of mansion that also took in troubled adults in addition to troubled youths? A School for Those In need (no we don't charge tuition because we're good), perhaps? The subtitle on the school was unnecessary and debatable. Benji scratched his cheek as he considered.
The Snake man's response to his last question, the one about vigilantes, cause Benji to tilt his head. Damn. There was a mansion. What was this, a comic book? Only in comic books would you find ridiculous foreshadowing and mysteriously good-sounding places like 'Sanctuary' and 'Haven.' In the real world, people just called the places shelters and were done with it.
Had he also said the xmen worked with police? Weird. Things really were different. Not vigilantes, then? Benji turned his rapidly whirling thoughts to food.
"Ah yeah?" He said. "You mind showing me?" Or was that asking too much? Directions are all well and good, but having someone show you around-- that was better. And if the weird person from the rip showed their face again, he could blend in with the crowd or point them out to the snake man. What that would end up achieving, he had no clue, but it was better knowing another person saw the shadowy mystery person, rather than thinking he was crazy all by his lonesome.
HThe snake man didn't think he'd be getting through the portal any time soon... and Benji suddenly felt suspicious. A guy, out of place on an alternate earth. He had a right to be. Why was he not going through the portal, huh? He had no reason to assume anything nefarious, but it would have been oh too simple for the snake man to follow up with some snazzy line like "Because I am going to eat you."
What? Is it rude to assume all snakes like to eat people, just because there isn't much else their size? Yeah, probably. And he didn't REALLY think this man wanted to devour him. Not on a real level. It had just been a passing thought. Please don't judge.
Benji quirked an eyebrow, and waited for an explanation. He didn't get one. Well, at least the follow up comment had been helpful rather than (again, don't judge) hungry. He wasn't usually like that, seriously.
"A place to stay, if you think it'll be too difficult getting back. And maybe a suggestion for a good restaurant... and." He glanced around and lowered his voice. "Hear anything about the x-men?"
In his reality, the organization was underground. This would be a surefire way to get himself into the thick of things, if that situation were the same here. He'd just have to see what it was like.
Language, language. The strange man inwardly tsk'd at the vulgarity. Such things were below addressing. He addressed the situation, instead.
The man didn't reply to him. Not to his question. Just to the obvious situation, as it was.
"Yeah," he smiled toothy. "Mirror walker." Why yes, he was. "Like yourself." He held a hand, palm up, as if to say 'As you can see.'
Outside the window, the boy in the helmet fought aimlessly against the being made of water. He ran. He dodged. He kept his distance. Slow and damp, he was. Wraith man returned his gaze to the man in the mirror world with him.
"Your friend seems to be fighting a losing battle." He commented cheerfully. "He doesn't really know what's going on, it seems."
Benji dodged another downward bash of an arm. God, this was getting tiresome. A real pain. He needed to score a direct hit to the walnut! But he kept hitting air. Well, water. But you get the idea.
Blue was getting tired, for an entirely different reason. This fight. Why. They needed to-- he caught the man with the pipe, and pulled him helmet-first into his watery chest. This should help solve matters, he thought. With the man's head in his body and the rest outside of him, Blue considered what to do. And then, the helmet was still in him, but judging from the blue blur of motion up and away, the body he'd held in place... was not. Is it possible for a being made out of water to sigh? Probably not. But if it were, it would probably sound like when you put your ear to a seashell.
Benji, bare-faced, heard the sea. Lines of rain trailed down his cheeks. That had been a close call. He'd had to wrench the helmet off at the last moment. It was lost now. He'd dropped the pipe, too.
"Do you-" the wraith man turned back to Mirage amiably. "Know what's going on now? On a separate note, can you get out of the mirror and help him out? Or are you trapped, like so many beings like us?" He drew the s sound out for a second longer than it should have been held.
There's such a thing as good luck. It had been good luck that they'd been on the same bus, and left at the same time. For the both of them. Though if he hadn't had someone to protect, maybe he wouldn't have let himself get drawn out into a fight. Things like fighting against uneven odds are to be avoided, when you can help it. Far better to fight unfair. He returned her smile at the sentiment, all friendly zipper-like teeth and all.
"Same," Elliott said. The feeling was mutual.
Her reaction to his comment, was cute. Of course.. How could he have expected anything else? His attempt at mitigating the flattery achieved the desired result; Celeste laughed.
Her comment brought about a good question. Should he share what he knew about his past, share what he thought he knew, or share what he'd recently learned, that had given him so many more questions than answers. He opted for a reply that wouldn't make him sound crazy, but was a little of all three.
"I'm not sure," Elliott said. "I never asked them." He'd been adopted. His real name, theoretically, could have been anything from Klick'tik'cthu-rekt 'ck to Bob. Or it could have been Elliott. There was no reason to assume he was extraterrestrial, just because of wild theories. A small smile tilted his mouth as he glanced at her. "Glad you approve."
He quickly moved on. "Reckon I'm glad I don't look like E.T.," Elliott said, stretching an arm over his head. The helmet dangled from the upright arm, and caught the sun. "Though as a muppet, he was kind of cute."
They passed a trash bin, and when she wasn't looking, Elliott casually dumped the ruined helmet into it without a word.
Was he leading, or was she? "Coffee place ahead," he commented. "Might have ice. First aid kit, too. For your cut." Yes, he had noticed her noticing it. It hadn't looked bad, but you never can tell.
Equal, huh? He smirked at her and went with the nudge, rather than away (so she wouldn't get shoved back, or meet a hard wall of resistance and get hurt). A martial artist is self aware about those sorts of things. The last thing they want is to hurt someone unintentionally.
She went on talking about them being a good fighting team, and her hitting him with his helmet. Elliott found himself laughing. A tiny laugh, but it ballooned out of his stomach in a good way. "That was you?" She'd hit him with the helmet? "I thought one of the guys had unleashed on me. That explains why his fists were so hard." Her interest in his black eye suddenly made a whole lot of sense. The fact that she was concerned about him because of something she potentially could have done didn't lessen the fact that she cared enough to care. ... In a way, that went back to martial artists and being responsible about how one acts. But only just.
He hadn't quite gotten to wondering if she blamed him for the whole debacle starting how it had, but her comments erased any thoughts before they could bloom. Nope, she didn't blame him for being green and then seeing a green man and suddenly seeing red. That was probably for the best. He wasn't sure what his reaction to that would have been.
He shared his name, and she shared hers.
"Celeste. That's a pretty name." He found himself saying. In a bout of self-awareness on how that just might have been construed as flirting, he attempted to remedy the whole situation with a joke. "Least with your name, you don't get people making jokes about the kid from that Spielberg movie, E.T." He held up a finger and imitated the muppet alien from the movie. "Ell-i-ott." He couldn't make his finger glow. Nor could he make candy levitate. "My parents," he explained with a cheesy smile. "Had a sense of humor."
He felt the absence of his signature motorcycle helmet like a lack of pants. Since he'd started the whole vigilante kick, he'd smuggled it with him to various locales. It, and the myriad other broadly-grinning helmets he'd painted. Wherever he could pass it off as normal to carry such a thing. It covered his secret identity... but he'd lost it in the fight that had lead to his arrival on Earth Two. He still didn't know if people had caught sight of his face. It was a silly thing to miss the presence of, on a new world where his identity hardly had any reason to be a secret... but he did. Maybe it had turned into a dumb security blanket.
What he really needed, Benji decided, was to start carrying more cash. That was far more useful than a helmet... unless you were trying to protect your head. Cash would have allowed him to buy a hot dog-- as opposed to being hungry and worried about trying credit, like he currently was.
Maybe he could head back to the portal. That woman might be gone, and--
A sudden voice made him realize that while he'd been casting around hopefully, looking for a friendly face and some help, he hadn't been really paying much attention. Space cadet, he mentally reprimanded himself. He'd gotten lost in thought. There was a mutant ahead of him that reminded him of a final fantasy monster. What? A Lamia? Though those were usually women...
"Yeah," Benji said. He awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "I am a big lost. Just came through that portal thing, see, and I'm not very familiar with this alternate version of the area... I also didn't think to bring cash to buy a map."
Well he certainly wasn't trying to play it off as a secret. By now, the rip had seemed less sensational, earth one side. Maybe it was commonplace here too?
Earth Two was worse than Benji had imagined. He got no cell signal, his credit cards didn't work, he couldn't ride the bus. He was stranded. He'd wanted to rush back through the portal as soon as he'd been pushed through it, but there had been extenuating circumstances that had given him cause to run into the city rather than stick around... and now, he was walking a few blocks from the scene of the portal, and considering what he would do.
They hadn't dug too much into all the details about Earth Two with the dinosaur girl. He'd learned there was an X-men team, and that things were different. But the attitude towards mutants was truly shocking. So, too, was the attitude of police. They had robots. They had weird "government types" that wanted to talk with you for coming out of a flipping portal.
He gawked at a billboard for some haircare product. The woman was either a mutant, or a smurf under the effects of a Harry Potter grade engorgement charm. Yeah, the attitude towards mutants certainly was different than on Earth One.
Benji tried his phone again, but it said it was out of service area still. Zero bars. Who would he call? Who could he contact? Where could he stay until the area around the portal got clear, and he could go back? Work wouldn't like his absence, but his projects had been finished. Any new customers would just leave him messages and move on. Freelance computer work has its merits. His only fear was that he'd miss an important call from an orchestra group or art dealer looking to showcase his work.
A long sigh escaped him as he walked past a hotdog stand. His stomach gurgled. Damn. Fighting thieves works up an appetite, and he was broke. Maybe he could bum a few dollars off someone? It was suboptimal, but... desperate times. Casting out good vibrations of positivity and hope, Benji looked around the crowd.
When she shot the man with the light flash, Elliott thought to himself 'Well then. Do not make waitress girl mad.' He didn't really get that it was radiation causing the reaction. All he got from it was that maybe, she caused physical pain or vomiting with her mutation. Hell of a mutation. If she were one of those x-men who use code names, they could call her... Ralph. Chuck was good, too. You could say "What's up, Chuck?" And then everyone would vomit at the pun. The girl did win points for the butt face comment, though.
His focus again dropped to the helmet, and how wrecked it was. He'd already dealt with that tangle of emotions, and she'd come out on top. Elliott opened his mouth to assure her he didn't hold anything against her, but then she winced at his bruises and got closer to him while talking about ice. And his eyes for a moment met hers.
It's nice, having no visible pupils. Just a sea of red. When you make eye contact, people don't really know if you're looking at their nose, or staring them in the eye. He looked away quickly, ducking his head to play it off as an embarrassed brown-against-green blush rather than something else. Why had he been counting things against her, earlier? That had been rather rude, hadn't it? She really had pretty eyes.
"Uhm, yeah." He grunted agreement to the girl in tippy toes. "Might be good." Ice. Coffee. Away. Shame on me. He was not using her saving his butt from those men just to ask her out to coffee, but suddenly it kind of felt that way to him. Even if he'd asked before she'd showed concern about his dumb bruised face.
He cast one final look at the men, before he joined her in exiting stage right. One of them let out a long groan that carried. At least they knew for certain that one wasn't dead. Elliott used that thought to drag him out of that awkwardly embarrassed hole he sometimes fell into when talking to a pretty girl. God, but he could be dumb. He had to wonder if adrenaline affected hormones on some level.
As they walked, he glanced at her. "So, hey. You just saved me. Thank you. I don't think I even know your name." Name tags exist at diners, certainly, but it's a little awkward checking them-- unless you've got no problems staring at random chests. He personally hadn't. He also wasn't certain if he'd introduced himself.
It isn't possible to undo strikes in baseball. You can't unwrite the past. The best you can do is work with the count. Maybe you get a base hit, maybe better. Maybe you get a few balls, and make it to first on a walk. As Celeste took down one, then another man, Elliott had to admit that the girl had a few balls. He hardly noticed the vomit on his shoes. He was impressed.
Elliott shifted, and tried to break the grasp as the man behind him altered his focus into her-- the helmet smacked him in the cheek. He closed his eyes and grunted. He'd already been hit once or twice while immobilized. A bruise was swelling in his eye from one of the knife guys punches. But being hit with his own helmet hurt in an entirely different way. He would have snapped at her about it, but when he opened his eyes again, he realized she had scored a good hit on the man. He was free. Elliott stared down at the guy on the ground behind him in disbelief.
"... Home run?" He asked.
The man had not expected her to bash them with a motorcycle helmet. Those helmets are made to protect heads-- irony was what that was. His eyes fell to the helmet in question, and narrowed. Elliott turned, and kicked the guy behind him in the stomach to let out the sudden annoyance on a much more appropriate target than the alleged damsel who had caused these men distress.
"You okay?" He said. His tone was one of concern. The annoyed look had vanished from his face. Before she could answer, he snapped at the nearest thug who was trying to get up. "Stay down! All of you." Voice back on the sincere setting, he turned back to waitress girl. "Let's get out of here. I think I owe you a cup of coffee."
If Elliott had chosen to pickpocket this woman, he would have been dumb. Real dumb. Like, certifiable. Dumber than a bag of rocks. The crystals were small, but they were visible, on her skin. She was a mutant. Clearly, female mutant. You don't pickpocket mutants. Not if you had a choice. You never know what they have, or what their mental state is. They could be good. They could be bad. They could be grayer than an elephant's behind. Nope, he hadn't chosen to pickpocket this woman. Unfortunately, someone had.
Now, he'd been watching this person beforehand. A good pickpocket notices when another pickpocket is operating in the area. That's a good cue to stand low. To make observations. To avoid getting caught and blamed for someone else's lousy work. He'd been trailing this person, hot in his hoodie. Just watching. Every few minutes, he'd glance at his phone. Check up on his dragons in his cellphone app game. It was the one good thing he'd learned about from tiger secretary and Jaager bomb. Now, he even had a smartphone to play it, too. It was a horrible waste of time. But it gave him a reason to be walking around dumbly on the streets of New York. And also, to occasionally snap photos of the guy in the act. What? They say there's honor among thieves, really? REALLY? The next cop he saw, he was going to show the photos to. Because why not? This guy needed to get a handle on his life. Pickpockets are just plain criminal.
Cough cough. Cough. Hopefully, he wasn't coming down with a cold. What with all this pot-calling-kettle-black nonsense that was going around.
He saw the moment when the pickpocket made his biggest mistake. He reached into crystal girl's purse to see what he could see. He bit off more than he could chew.
This had never been his intention. To fight in broad daylight against a mutant criminal he'd been tailing had been furthest from his desires. The man had been a trickster, prankmaster, using his powers to steal and inconvenience, and even kill. Gates, he called himself, and he could open portals between places wherever he wished.
Benji had first heard of him in the news. A daring daytime robbery in broad daylight. He'd walked into the bank, dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask and cloak, looked at the bankers, and asked them to please check the vault. Nobody had done anything, and he hadn't drawn a weapon. With security focused on him, he'd turned with flourish and tore a hole in reality. Then casually, he'd stepped through the orange hole in the air and vanished. A crappy magic trick. But while they'd been distracted, his subordinates had entered the vault through another portal he'd made, and spirited away gold bars and everything not bolted down.
He'd pulled similar tricks numerous times. And he was capricious. Sometimes, money appeared where poor families could use it... and sometimes, crooked slumlords and rich people above the law found themselves falling from blue holes in the sky. Still above the law, mind. But rapidly, beneath it.
He'd waged his war on the city for a week and Benji had pulled some amateur detective work to tail a member of his crew. Which had lead to a confrontation, now, on the streets in the middle of Times Square. Not of his volition, either. Stupid portal maker. Turning this into a spectacle on prime time for all the world to see. Cheshire was certainly a public vigilante, now. Though they'd probably nickname him something stupid without his guiding hand. Stupid fighting in the middle of Times Square, mumble grumble.
Their attacks clashed in what would have been a cool moment, if he hadn't been fuming about bum luck. Gates punched through an orange portal, and Benji's arm shot through the portal and out the portal's blue counterpart in a cross counter that put him two places at once, with a fist against the smile on his helmet, and his fist against the smile on the Guy Fawkes mask. Sudden inspiration hit him, and he put on a brief burst of speed to snatch at the mask and tear it off, revealing to the entire world... a blue portal sprang up, censoring the tricksters face in a whorl of aqua and robin's egg blue.
Well. You don't see that every day. A guy falling down, coughing and groaning. He hadn't caught sight of the cause, but it certainly hadn't been him. He also wasn't thinking too hard on it. If the guy was in pain, fine. That was one less person for him to deal with. One less person who had been holding a knife.
Part of him wanted to snatch the fallen knife up, and use it. That part of him knew that he'd mess up, and somehow this would wind up like the Triad hatchetman debacle. He wasn't quite ready to fall into that abyss just yet. Knives have such a great chance of actually killing people. Even accidentally. Elliott wasn't in the mood to get arrested for somebody else's dumb idea. Even in self defense, it didn't seem justifiable to him. It just seemed messy. Fights happen fairly fast, so he hadn't spared much time thinking on all of that stuff. His red eyes had settled on the two men coming straight at him. His mind worked, worked, as seconds passed.
>>"I hope your helmet isn't too messed up.." The girl whispered.
He wasn't in a state of mind for repartee. The green man grunted, and turned to quickly press the helmet into her hands. "Hold this, please." He said. Then, he snapped his focus back to the guy in front of him. For the moment, he ignored the threat from the side.
Elliott hadn't practiced aikido. Sparring and grappling were things of martial arts disciplines other than taekwondo. Taekwondo focused on striking with speed and force. It focused on kicks. So when the knife-wielding thug rushed him, he didn't step to the side and throw him out of the way. He took a few quick steps to close the distance, and aimed a quick low kick angled at the side of the man's right knee. It wasn't something the man had been expecting. He also hadn't been expecting Elliott to follow it up by hopping back and catching the other leg up in a lashing tongue whip that wrapped around it, and hauled it up and out from under the man. The thug fell. He never even got a chance to use that knife. Unfortunately for Elliott, the thug without the knife was still rushing him, and the other man was flanking him.
The first of the two men crashed into him in a full-body tackle, even as the friend who Elliott had just put on the ground groaned and rocked into a fetal position. Had bad baby hit his head? Aww, poor baby. Then, he wrestled with Elliott and forced himself behind the green man's back. He tried to position his arms up beneath Elliott's pits. So he could hold him in place while the other guy stabbed him. Well, spit. It hadn't even been a whole minute yet, since the groaning (and very irradiated) man had been put down. Elliott wasn't aware of any clock timer, and at that moment, really didn't care. He struggled against the grip, and tried to break it. Tried to move in such a way that any stabs the other guy tried would be more likely to hit his friend than to hit Elliott. And struggled to buy time for a lady he really hoped would back him up and start swinging heavy objects into the backs of annoying thug's heads.
"Bastard!" Elliott cursed. He tried to bring a kick up to create distance, but all it did was distract the man holding him so that he had to tighten his grip and shift his feet.
Posted by Elliott on Sept 30, 2017 21:51:09 GMT -6
Beta Mutant
621
48
Nov 27, 2024 10:41:57 GMT -6
Mugen
11:30. Light fought against shadow in the dimly lit alley. Wait. Pause that thought. That was horrendously over-dramatic. More accurately, the alley was poorly lit. Lights on the sides of the buildings cast shadows that stretched across, beyond dumpsters and crates. But a lot of the lights were burnt out. And a lot of the people in the alley were, too. It was a nice alley. It had a street to walk on, horrible-smelling trash, and it was behind a hole-in-the-wall Asian restaurant not too far from the bar scene. Prime territory for muggings. Hence, the shadow from the first sentence. Hence, the light fighting against it and the over-dramatic buildup to the backdrop of the fight.
She was 23, with long blonde hair and a fairly average appearance. Not too pretty. Not too tall. Little was memorable about the woman, other than the fact that she'd had a purse, and Elliott noticed these things. Of course, he wasn't the mugger in this scenario. He'd never been a mugger. But as a pickpocket, both past-tense and present, he knew a nice purse when he saw one. He knew enough about the world to note this, and note the time of night, to put two and two together and come to the conclusion that in this area, at this time... this woman would not be so safe walking home. So... he'd followed her, casually. In the background, in his hoodie, trying hard not to make it obvious. He hadn't been the only one.
Two men followed behind her. He watched them. Hands in their pockets. They were trying to keep a low profile, too. Little things add up, you notice them. Enough little things, and the conclusion becomes impossible to miss. Sure enough, after a few blocks, she noticed them. They noticed her, noticing them. Their hand was forced. And they forced her into the dimly-lit alley, with the threat of violence. Elliott ducked in after them, silently. He'd been working on his stalking. He was getting pretty good. They didn't notice the man following them until he interrupted their attempted mugging. He said something.
They were too dull to comprehend exactly what it was he was getting it. Something about stopping? Witty banter isn't so witty at 11:45 at night. He was still young enough it didn't feel like death, walking... but them. They were in their early 30s, and he could smell the reek of alcohol coming off them in waves. This mugging was an attack of opportunity done by inebriated individuals not thinking clearly. That was bad. It meant they wouldn't assess the situation and back down when a guy in a hoodie pulled back his concealing hood to reveal a white hockey mask on his face. He'd pulled it on as he'd entered the alley. He hadn't been wearing it under the hood the entire time. But they clearly thought he had. Made some drunk-ass comments about some cartoon character whose name sounded like one of the singers for the Monkees. Something Jones? Elliott had no idea.
"Back off," he'd told them. "Leave her alone. Go." They hadn't listened. Idiots. So, he'd fought them. Suffice it to say, it had been both violent and brief, with a lot of kicks and dodging and throwing. He'd tossed them out of the alley, dusted off the woman's purse, and returned it to her. 'Thanks' would have been a fantastic word for her to utter. But she didn't. Her eyes fell to his three-fingered grip on her purse, and she scampered off like a scared doe. Not even a thank you. Thankless work, vigilantism. Bad hours. No glory. Good karma. Breaking the law. He shook his head, and stopped his musing. What he really needed was a drink. He turned, and walked out the alley's entrance. Elliott stepped over the two unconscious men. He paused, turned, and flipped through their wallets to get himself some drink money. They owed him. He'd just given them a public service. The service of preventing them from committing a violent crime. They would have done something, gone overboard maybe, and gotten caught. Wound up in jail. Had to deal with the consequences. This way, he was the only one doing something bad. It didn't balance out. Karma was kind of crushing his scale of justice that moment. He didn't care. Elliott pocketed the cash, pocketed the hockey mask--- Made a beeline for the nearest bar.
---
This bar had live music going for it, most nights. That was something you couldn't say about every bar. Elliott scooted his green butt up onto a barstool next to a guy with a bass guitar case under a stool. He ordered a beer. Guiness, actually. Better than some lite beer. Less cheap. Then, he spared a red-eyed glance at the guy and his guitar.
"Playing, or played?" He asked casually. This wasn't a sports bar. That meant, if he wanted entertainment, he either had to keep drinking, or make conversation. With the quality of beer in this place, conversation seemed more than adequate. More appealing than adequate beer, that is. The bartender passed him a regular beer. "Out of guinness," the bartender grunted. Elliott smiled toothily at him.
