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.
So he'd taken several buses into the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan, to meet a guy in an old warehouse because a woman who was his potential employer had wanted him to come there, in order to start training so as better how to learn to fight. And if that didn't sound like some sort of convoluted comic book tripe given as an excuse for training the main character in some ridiculous form of martial arts so he could become more badass, then he was a mutant. He wasn't. Shut up. Stop looking at him like that. It was an awfully strange coincidence, though, that the whole thing reeked of 'bull' spit and a potential setup. His danger sense was screaming...
He stared at the metal doors for a good long minute, but nothing came screeching out of the darkness of the night to maul him. The moon was high. There was a light breeze coming in off the water. He pulled his jacket in tighter and blew warm breath onto his hands. Rubbed them. Did some mental math.
Did she want to kill him? Possibly. But as per the aforementioned reason of that being so simple beforehand, doing so now would be silly. Had he done anything to anger anyone else who could have set this elaborate ruse up? Sure! Lots of folks. But He didn't think this was that. Karma had a habit of screaming bloody murder at him before it jumped out and said boo! It didn't come out of nowhere, in the night. Except when it does... came the nasty thought.
It wasn't likely it was a trap, but as he pulled open the right side of the double doors, he kept his eyes peeled for trouble.
He stepped into the warehouse. It was dark. There wasn't a visible light switch on the wall by the entrance. The outside had at least had the decency to have some street lamps nearby. All the cloak and dagger of this meeting was funky, when they could have met at some gym in midtown and partied afterwards. Maybe that would have even been more discrete. But noooooooo-- and, what was that?!
There was a sound. There was a very audible metal screeching against metal sound, and the quick rap of feet on something. And then his eyes got a dose of a very sudden punch of bright light.
It was an old warehouse by the docks in Hell's Kitchen. It had been a long ride.
Elliott didn't have a car. He had a motorcycle. It would have been cooler if he'd run and leaped from car top to car top and traveled through the city that way. Cooler, still, if he'd found some way to travel around the skyscrapers in the air between them, or from rooftop to rooftop. A motorcycle had had to do. Those other things were just to ridiculous to mention, or contemplate.
Motor vehicles generally leave a paper trail. If you have a vehicle, you have a license plate. Plates require insurance as well as driver's licenses and other forms of ID. Elliott had long since ditched any ties to his past life. If he'd dug out his old social security card, or contacted people, he'd have been tagged as The Runaway, Elliott Thomas. Elliott Thomas had not done anything criminal, other than fleeing a foster home. Maybe getting in trouble at school for selling some stuff. Maybe some juvie? Who knew? He'd simply vanished. And he'd worked really hard keeping that past identity a secret. He'd even started using aliases. October. Ell. Eli. He'd even used his own first name. Elliott. If people asked, he could say he had a different last name. He could even say Elliott was his last name. October Elliott had a nice ring to it. But those were probably needless bits of cloak and dagger to hide a vanished child. Nobody was looking for him. People vanish all the time. But how did any of this help him get the documents required to drive his motorcycle around the city? Simple.
Here's where we dodge that question by choosing a new topic. He was supposed to meet a guy for some training. Meat-hands had said so, all the way back yesterday. Even though it felt like it had been months since that day. This warehouse was the place. It had been surrounded by rusty old barbed wire fences. He'd had to jump over the top of one. Just kidding. He'd walked through the open gate like a good little sheep. And then he'd approached the big metal doors at the front.
This could be a trap was a passing thought that went stray in his head. Another thought was yeah but if it was, this would be way too elaborate for what could have been a simple bullet to the head while I was unconscious yesterday after failing the job. That thought was far more sensible.
It really was unlikely that the clandestine meeting was a trap. But weirder things had happened in the world. Things like people lending other people motorcycles with tabs that won't get you pulled over for expired tags, and silly things like lack of insurance or driver's license. And also, people lying about anything related to driving motor vehicles in any state, whatsoever, due to some ridiculous amount of pride. It was a lie. He hadn't driven to the warehouse, dang it. He didn't have a driver's license, because he didn't have a birth certificate, or an ID, and definitely didn't have the license to ride a motorcycle. So he had taken a city bus or ten, and ran. He really needed to invest in some form of transportation that didn't involve public transportation modes like trains, buses, subway trains, and cabs. Luckily, New York didn't really require much beyond those things, what with traffic being a beast, and so--
Pink-hair had told him he had to hang around the mansion in November or he was gonna get him. He had waited until February to actually do something with that little detail. At the time, he hadn't even been focused on that detail. Getting in bike accidents tends to jar heads and makes memories foggy, so he had really more been focusing on helping out a potential friend. Popping in to the mansion to try and track him down, and maybe give him a lesson on meditation had been his only aim. The first time, he hadn't found him. Maybe the wolf had been out. But he'd actually looked around the mansion and taken some things in. He had learned a few things.
The mansion wasn't this lame den of super heroes. It was a school. It wasn't filled to the brim with cops. He hadn't actually seen any obvious X-men or police, other than teachers. Even then, that was only a suspicion. The X-men were this big pro-mutant face in the public, what amounted to a paramilitary group of mutants aimed at doing good. A bunch of leather-clad vigilantes, maybe? But he hadn't seen much of that. It made some sense, though, that in their off time they might have jobs. You don't get paid for wearing leather and punching people, right? ... Not in any usual job he could think of. So teachers, they could be. Of course, they could just have been regular old teachers hired to do a good job.
Elliott had seen a lot of the same guy. He had talked with the man, briefly. He'd had a few questions. The guy had fielded them beautifully. No, he didn't need to live there to take classes, but yes, he could if he wanted, and it was free. Sometimes, roommates were required. Sometimes, they weren't. It depended on age, and a variety of other factors. Food in the kitchens was covered, too. This whole operation was out of the goodness of some person's heart... and donors. Lots of monetary contributions from somewhere that kept it from going belly-up. Seemed suspicious. He hadn't asked. Loaded history, the mansion. Apparently, it had burned down a few times. He'd found that out in the brief google search he'd done on a computer about the whole deal.
There were classes on handling your mutations. Useless. Classes on fighting. More useful. Your average classes for school. Those, he wouldn't mind having. They apparently went all the way up to college? Maybe? Or at least high school? He didn't know. But he hadn't had the best high school education, so brushing up on some basic junk seemed... kind of like a waste of time, really. But valuable, if he got into that sort of thing.
He had been back a few times, since then. Some of the times had even been to look into moving some of his junk into a room. No roommate. He still had an apartment where he crashed. He wasn't interested in setting down roots. Elliott was still suspicious of some things. But so far, they seemed on the level.
Elliott went for a walk, okay. The mansion grounds were really nice, and it was very zen and good for meditation, and while he wasn't a mutant, there were some really cool ones, and interaction was a good thing. He hadn't even stolen anything yet. Those waffles in the kitchens were free, right? Yeah. So he'd been good.
Walking. Enjoying the breeze. Contemplating the future. All easy things. All good things. Not dastardly. Not heroic. Not business. No training with Kineta or running things for Cybele or Megara or other business interests involved. No escrima, taekwondo, or capoeira, which was kind of a bummer, but what could you do? As he walked, Elliott's mind wandered. It wandered about as much as him. So it only made sense that he nearly missed noticing the young girl until the last second. He nearly ran into her, but caught himself, jerking to a sudden halt.
"Uh. Hi there," he said sheepishly. She was young. Super young. Like pre-teen or something. Had weird hair. Was probably as busy thinking about useless garbage as him. He'd totally barged into her introspective while he was daydreaming. How awkward. "Sorry," he said. "Wasn't paying attention to where I was going."
His mouth had run enough already, so when the pink-haired man offered him an ultimatum, he simply nodded and took it.
Me at the mansion? Unlikely. But perhaps he'd stick his head in at some point. Take his time. As for clothes and repairs, well. He HAD said it. Except for clothes. And hell. Those clothes were likely expensive, if they were making such a huge deal. But-- it was an out that didn't involve fighting or handcuffs and red and blue lights. And that was a step up from where he'd been five minutes before.
Pink-hair wrapped up by saying if he understood everything, he'd be free to go. Now it was Elliott's turn to say something.
"Yeah," Elliott said. His tone was serious, jaw set. He was serious about what he was saying. And anything else that came later, he'd have to sell just as well. "I understand. I'll cover it. We should probably exchange names towards that end. And whenever he's cooled down, I still want to apologize to the other guy. I know I said that. But I'm serious. You're right. We're all lucky. If giving him money to get new clothes helps it so we don't wind up mortal enemies, I'll take it. Speaking terms is better than what we've got now." Even angry grunting is better than that. "I'm just glad he didn't get hurt. I'm," urp. Apologies tasted like bile. "Sorry," Elliott finished soberly. "Also." He paused. "Just so we are being honest, I don't live at the mansion yet. Sam gave me a card, and I looked into it. But I have an apartment in the city right now. I was thinking about taking a mansion class." Full disclosure hopefully helped call off that mercilessly bloody search sure to follow.
"Alright then, I'll see about stopping by the mansion soon. Until then, whenever you get nervous or upset, just try this."
He demonstrated a basic calming breathing technique. It wasn't meditation, perhaps, but it would help for a brief demonstration. Belly breathing. He placed one hand just above his belt line, and the other on his chest, right over the breastbone. Then, he opened his mouth and gently sighed. He let his shoulders and other muscles relax as he exhaled. That was one of the biggest problems when one has a panic attack. Their muscles tighten and they can't breathe because they forget to exhale. So breathing in, exhaling gently... pausing... and then breathing in slowly through the nostrils with your mouth closed... helps. The stomach goes out with the inhale, allowing more air in. Pause. Breathe slowly and exhale through the mouth, pulling your belly in. He paused. He continued the demonstration for another ten seconds, just pausing and breathing. Calming. He waited while Tyson took it in, eyes closed. And then he looked at him.
"There. That's one breathing technique some people use for dealing with panic attacks. That can help you, if you start getting stressed." He smiled slightly, and waited to hear what Tyson had to say.
A pipe clattered against concrete somewhere off to the panther woman's right. There was a sound of shoes scuffing street. A fence rattled. A cat hissed at the night. One of the thugs knocked over a trash can, and paused their beating to frown down at their brand new Pixies hoodie that had gotten covered in garbage. It could have been worse, he thought. It could have been a Garbage hoodie covered in pixies...
Aside from Mr. Introspective garbage hoodie, there were four other thugs. If there had been five, this might have been a challenge. It wasn't every day he went about in the night, breaking up muggings. It was actually a relatively new development. More of a whim than anything permanent. Spur of the moment vigilantism. But hell. If someone else wasn't standing literally a few feet away, contemplating helping the people, someone else really needed to. There was too much good money involved in the act.
His feet hit the pavement and he took the first guy in a blur of movement, metal sticks in his hands flashing as they struck knees, arms, and guts. The first guy didn't even get a chance to scream before he wound up in the gutter. Then, he screamed. Profanity erupted. The person curled in the fetal position on the ground looked up nervously to see what the hell was happening? She looked up just in time to see the second guy get hit on both sides of his head by dual escrima sticks. Introspective Hoodie turned towards the guy and pulled a gun.
"What the hell are you!?" He muttered. A really good question, actually. The guy beating up two of his friends was a tall green alien-looking man with red eyes and a unique amount of fingers on each hand, and He was wearing a lot of black. One of the sticks flew out to clatter against the guy's gun hand and knock the pistol out of his grip. The guys to his left and right drew knives. One knife lit up like it was covered in fire. That guy's eyes glowed orange. The other one's knife wasn't actually something he'd had on his person five seconds prior. It looked like he'd simply willed light into a form. The knife was green.
"What the hell!?" The long-haired blonde girl on the ground shouted. There were a lot of what the hells this evening, it seemed.
(( OOC: Hope that was alright! I wanted a cool entrance, and you gave me all those nice thugs to beat senseless. ))
So his knee was grabbed. Big whoop. Want to fight about it? That just put him in prime territory for more attacks. Round and round, they span. Slightly disorienting for anyone who had never done a 360 on a half pipe. Whatever he was doing to keep them airborne and disorient him, Elliott wasn't going to let him keep doing it. People that use their powers to do something vaguely specific usually have a plan. And this guy's plan just might have been to use Seismic Toss.
Normally in this situation, a witty quip would be perfect to fill the gap between actions. No such luck. Elliott reached forward to grab at Max's arms. Since they were so close, he caught them right around elbow level. Now came the fun part. Elliott drove his head up and forward, fighting gravity as best he could. It was like pulling teeth. The goal was simple. If Max wanted to use Seismic Toss, he would use Headbutt. And maybe Body Slam. He had already utilized High Jump Kick.
Elliott's skull came racing towards Max's forehead. Hopefully, he kept a good grip on that hat.
Lessons definitely worked best. Probably several. "You live at the mansion, right? I don't imagine you have a cellphone I could call you on to let you know I was coming?" With claws like that, the touch screen would be a wreck in a matter of moments. Big paws would make it hard to punch little keys on a phone keyboard. Did he have a phone? No? Okay, then. "Maybe we can set a day and time, and I can meet you there."
It wasn't opportune. He didn't really want to go to the mansion. The mansion had people like liked to think that they were cops. Cops were not his favorite people. But if he kept his head down, and focused on the one thing, he could probably avoid getting caught.
Even if he was caught, what was he doing that was illegal? Helping someone? And for the rest, you couldn't prove it. Not anything. Not unless you talked to Cafas. He wasn't sure how that entire thing had actually turned out. Guy could still be mad. Who cared?
The mansion was a place he'd been curious about for a while, ever since Sam had mentioned it. He had heard rumors. Lots of mutants. Grand convergence. People with powers. Maybe there'd be a poor schmuck who thought he was a mutant, but was actually an alien? Maybe he'd get to train with some UFC mutant, and make some friends. And at the very least, he could scope it out. Mansions usually had excess.
He was prepared for a lot of things. A running punch. A standing punch. More gravity junk. Even more gravity junk. Even more even more gravity junk. But there was one thing he hadn't been prepared for. Headphones and an iPod. Well, okay then. Kid was obviously in the moment. This had become a dance war.
The crowd was cheering now. The fight had started a bit goofy and slow, but it had heated up. One person in the distance had their arms crossed over their black silk shirt. They were watching the show smugly. Her circle-lens glasses catch the light as she watched.
The blow had been brutal. Certainly, he would get the kid while he was on the ground. No? Well, okay then. The man would obviously have to come to him. Something metallic and shaped like a spider crawled up her leg, and into her pocket. Her phone made a sudden sound. She pulled it out and read the screen, turning away from the fight.
"That's my jam," Max had grinned.
"You have a fanny pack," Elliott had shot back, under his breath. And then, the kid was running at him, light on his feet. Up and up he went, over his head. Elliott's head snapped up on a swivel to keep his eyes on the guy's progress and plot a counter for it. As he watched the move happen in its split second, a thought struck him. That's actually not a bad move... Maybe he would steal that at some point, replacing the sudden rain of change with something else... fighting dirty. Lot of options. Maybe a pocketful of sand.
With this gravity, what he wanted to do would likely be hard to pull off. Jumping upwards while Max was airborne, to drive a painful knee kick into the kids gut or groin. Gravity would weigh him down, and could put the whole plan in peril. And then there was the fact that he'd be leaping up into the path of coin shrapnel, but... pain would be fleeting. It wasn't an actual shotgun's blast. He had dealt with pain before. Putting himself in pain's path to hit with a strike would be par for the course from some of his battles. It'd put his clothes in the forefront of the battle, too. And that just wasn't fair. There was no way around it. He would just have to deal with replacing the suit when he was done claiming all the money he was going to win tonight. Elliott's feet left the ground after a split-second of crouching and gathering a jump, and he did just that, springing at Max and aiming for either one of those targets. His arms were crossed in front of his body, to block the majority of the damage to his upper body. The coins hurt like a dirty whore, but hell. A fierce grin hit him as the pain from the coins set his nerve endings on fire. "Make. It. Rain." He drove his knee into an attack.
Circular movements, people. Always circles. Use a circle right, and you can turn offense into defense and defense into offense. Aikido practitioners use cyclical movements to turn attacks aside, and turn an opponent's strength against them. And Elliott turned his body and did a side flip out of the way of the kick. It wasn't as fast as it could have been. Normally, he was faster. But his legs were strong enough that it was fast enough. As he flipped, one leg came up and around for balance.
The second the leg went past him, Elliott lashed the leg back in and around in an ax-heel kick aimed down and towards what he hoped was a dropped guard and a face. If he missed, he'd just continue and shuffle off onto the other foot to turn himself around and bring his guard back up. Both arms were ready as he moved. Ready to turn aside blows, or to catch himself if he had to go to the ground. Gravity was still affecting him more. If he started doing flips and stuff fast, he was sure to reach his limits. That was why he wanted to end this decisively, and fast.
"I have no witty comment to say here," he said, as his leg came down. He'd somehow found oxygen for the running commentary whilst doing something incredibly physical that would have used said oxygen, and it showed. The comment came out thready, on the exhale.
"A dance competition?" A smirk tugged at one side of Elliott's face. "Figures. Name's Elliott." One word about that awful Steven Spielberg movie, and this. Guy. Was Toast. "You seriously thought this was a dance competition?" He asked him. It was a pity he didn't have hairy caterpillar eyebrows. This seemed the perfect situation for one of them to get dangerously close to metamorphosing and fluttering off his face. In layman's terms, the brow over one eye was bald and arched. "In that case, let's dance."
The thing about capoeira is that it's a fighting style. It's a martial art. It's also a dance. And capoeirists often practice the dance against another person with the moves slowed down, so that it's just them balancing on arms and sweeping their legs through the air slowly, and the other person dodging and doing the same. Capoeierists... sorry, capoeiristas... fight gravity all the time. So Elliott moved out of the crouch by placing his palms on the floor, and rising to his feet. A shuffle left. A shuffle right. His body moved to get used to the weight. And then, he was ready to fight. It looked like he was dancing. To be more specific, it almost looked like he was about to start doing the Carlton dance from the show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air... this was a mistaken thought, obviously. What he was about to do was so much worse. And all he was waiting for was for Max to make his move.
The blow didn't hurt as much as it could have. It still HURT, though. It was a punch. The force from the punch was enough to nudge the remaining hand tongue loose from where it was gripping. That, combined with shock, combined with whatever heavy energy it was the guy sent his way, equaled a pretty painful fall. He bruised his butt with all the grace of a martial arts fighter that didn't have time to fall properly. He landed a second after the guy braced himself. The tongue that had lashed him whipped back into his arm with a sloppy 'schlup' sound. Elliott's breath escaped him in an almost slow motion 'whoof'. Maybe the counter-attack wouldn't come as soon as one might have expected.
Weight double that of the usual gravity pressed down. Elliott had not been trained by a little old man wearing weighted turtle shells. He had not trained with exercise weights on his wrists and ankles. After today, though, he'd give it some definite thought.
His whole body felt heavy. Gravity, he decided with a certainty. He pushed himself to a crouch with a single hand and an effort of will. Elliott faced the guy, still crouching. His eyes locked with his. "Name...?" He drawled. He wanted a name to go with the face of the guy who'd scuffed his suit.
It would have been the easiest thing in the world to dodge that punch... if not for the simple fact that something on the ceiling had been sticky, and he'd also gotten a little tongue-tied. He tried to let go, and his eyes widened as he realized this fact. A nice quip along the lines of 'how's it hanging' would have been most opportune right at that moment, but thankfully nobody was in his head to have heard the situation and had the thought. Badly. It was hanging badly right this second. Or in other words, 'too well'. Side note: Ceiling tasted dusty, and sticky, and stinky, and old. Like ancient sprinkler system water, dust, and mold. With a coppery metal aftertaste that said "You're licking metal, dumb ass."
Wriggle, wriggle. Vague wriggling didn't work. He wasn't loosening. Since his eyes were focused upwards, he didn't notice the guy coming at him until it was almost too late. At the last moment, one hand tongue slipped free of a metal beam. It whipped through the air with a sloppy slapping sound as it retracted back towards his palm, and then-- Right before it hit, he swung a little backwards with the give from a free arm, and shot the hand tongue straight at the guy's face. It wouldn't injure him. It wasn't going to be a hard slap. Probably like your average face slap. But that sort of thing normally made people pause and stop punching through value of sheer 'what the hell', and by blocking their view. The punch still had forward momentum, however. If that didn't work, he'd get hit.
Elliott swung back and forth a little more urgently as he focused on all those things at once.
The kick hit with a satisfying sound, and he fully expected to be able to follow it up with another when the guy hit the ground. Such things were but dreams, it seemed. Instead of falling, he levitated, and put that idea in the ground. The guy moved around the area, levitating like a paper clip in a magnetic field. Elliott didn't drop his guard, just because something ridiculous had happened. Who would?
The kick came towards his left. It came fast enough that he probably couldn't have easily dodged it with a backwards leap or a side step. So he did neither. As the kick came in on the horizontal, he moved vertically up into the air in a standing jump to let the kick fly past. As he did, a pair of hand tongues shot out upwards to catch on some metal fixtures on the ceiling. Then, he swung a power kick at the guy's center of mass.
The guy could fly or something. Maybe gravity? Maybe magnetism? He wasn't sure yet. There were a lot of possibilities. All of them could be dangerous. But then, so could he.
