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.
He really needed to focus more on walking thoughts and less on thinking thoughts like about what he was searching for, and what he’d be doing later and eating later and whether or not he should just go get a cup of coffee and come back later.
That she didn’t see him was not unbelievable. Though usually, people noticed him from 100 yards away unless he was hiding in trees. So it did slightly stretch the suspension of disbelief. Or maybe he was just being a cow.
Elliott glanced around thoughtfully.
“You have any idea where the art history texts are, because I just got directions from the head librarian. And—“ he smiled at her conspiratorially. “Between you and me, that woman needs to take a class in giving directions.”
“Heh. Maybe you’re looking for the same thing I am and are just as horribly lost.”
Another Halloween, another birthday. Happily enough, this time he wasn’t alone.
His art had been doing well, so he took his girlfriend out for dinner and a movie. Movie was decent. After that, they hit up a bar. All in all, a very good time. The morning after, however? Not so good.
Elliott’s head ached. Lights were too bright, sounds too loud. His eyes were red. Well. Redder than usual. What he needed was something hot and greasy, that wasn’t coffee. But also, coffee. What he had was wheat toast and green tea. Yum! The girlfriend really needed to go shopping.
Kenzi was at work. He himself needed to go to work and research his next art project... and maybe something for his college classes? Therefore... to the library, he went.
Lucky for him, Kenzi’s flat was within walking distance of a good library. Er, apartment. Not flat. She’s been making him watch too much BBC TV, OMG. GG.
Elliott pushed his way into the library, a tall green skinned bald man with black antennae in a black leather jacket and blue jeans. He smiled at the librarian and got directions about where he needed to go.
So she didn’t like her green hands, was self-conscious of the green hands. That was fine. People could feel however they liked. So long as they didn’t hurt anyone, kill anyone, over how they felt, everything was copacetic.
“Sorry.” He added. “Didn’t mean to upset you.”
It having been her who’d toppled his easel, he kind of felt like he shouldn’t be the one apologizing, but yet here they were.
His red eyes dropped to the easel. It had lost a bit of wood, and the pad of paper was crinkled up real bad, but those were just things. They could be replaced. At least, that was something an old friend of his had always told him. He glanced back at the girl.
“You sure you aren’t cut or anything.” He asked, though it was more a statement than anything. “No giant splinters.”
“Big heads,” he called again. “Great big fu— huh?”
His back had momentarily been turned away from the easel to shout his services. The sound of the clatter as someone bumped into the thing had brought him back, and left him speechless. At least, for a second.
Emotions boiled within him. Anger was one of them. He quashed it beneath annoyance, with actual apprehension and concern following on their heels. The various emotions flickered over his red eyes as his mind did the mental gymnastics. Narrowed, smoothed, twinged. Smoothed to normal once again.
The girl who had tripped into his easel, was she hurt? Had it been intentional? Was there malice, or had it simply been an accident? Nothing seemed broken on the thing, at least from where he stood. Staring. Red eyes focused on the whole scene. Nothing seemed broken on her, either. Just some kid who’d gotten bumped.
In the past, he might have not taken a second to ascertain the facts before he’d reacted. He also may not have had the word ‘ascertain’ in his wheelhouse. Oh, the wonders college and a semi-stable frame of mind can do!
“Here.” A three-fingered hand got extended. A helping hand. A hand up off the ground. He reached for hers, and made a mental connection focused on colors. “You okay, green?” Elliott asked.
Two or three years ago, the sight of a busy mall would have sent Elliott’s heart into beatific pit pat oats of anticipation. So many people. So many things. So much opportunity. Now older and wiser, the tall green man still saw plenty of opportunity... but it was of a different sort.
What once were targets were now just people. Helpful people, who might be valid targets for his business enterprises, yes, but in a wholly friendlier sense. Instead of pilfering pockets, he was picking patrons.
His art paid... but it didn’t pay above and beyond food and rent dues. College costs money. A lot of money. They look down on you if you can’t prove your validity, with your quality of art materials and your pedigree. Cheap paints and cheap origins lower personal worth, and if you can’t elaborate on why your art is first rate, people see you and a degenerate, and dole out hate. Makes you irate. Leads you to prevaricate. And that was why, in addition to his abstract art he peddled to indie galleries, Elliott was drawing big headed caricatures at the mall.
College had taught him a lot of things. Big words were, lah dee dah, one of them. Explaining the social, philosophical, and psychological importance of his abstractions was another. Actually drawing living, breathing people was a close third.
He wasn’t outstanding at traditional artistic sketching, or landscape painting, or any of that. He was more a big idea guy. And if the idea was bigger than him, he kicked his canvas and put extra energy into the art to transfer violence and emotion from point A, his head, into point B, his art. And maybe it would make it all the way to point C, hopefully. His viewer’s heart. Big heads didn’t require as much energy, though. He just set up a sketch pad on a tripod in the center walkway of the mall, and went.
“...And this is you.” Elliott said. He put the finishing touches on a woman’s face, and handed her the big head. She laughed. It really didn’t look like her, save for exaggerated aspects. But that was kind of the point. She ponies up the cash, and went away pleased.
Elliott started shouting his wares, like the fishmonger of olde. ‘Big heads, get your big heads here! Big and goofy, like your faces!’ From time to time, people shot him curious looks... but that may have been due to his very mutant, very n alien appearance, more than anything else.
The darkness hadn’t been complete. The glow sticks Elliott had tossed, and the small amount of daylight seeping in through the half moon upper window of the bank had provided enough light for Rebecca, and enough light for him. Still, the sudden darkness had provided the required uncertainty needed to deter the armed men from shooting everyone up. The emergency lights had not sprang to life during the whole sequence of events. And in spite of the mild illumination, it was surprisingly dark!
He had no special night vision super power. Cheshire had operated on memory, and on strategic placement of glow sticks. He’d held the high ground, and utilized surprise, systematically attacking the armed men first, then the mutants. It had been close once or twice. He’d had to evade a brutal swing backed by some sort of enhanced strength package at one point, springing back several feet across the tiled floor.
He’d darted back in a moment later, and swept the muscular man’s legs out from under him. Then he’d cracked the man’s skull against the tile, using gravity and leverage to his benefit. It’s hard to bring a strong punch to bear when you’re grounded and seeing stars.
Another time, a mutant had hit him with a subsonic TASER that had stunned him for a second and left a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He hadn’t needed a sense of hearing to make the man regret being male. The swift kick he’d given him had left him crying on the floor. The hearing had returned, several minutes later.
His glow sticks had provided him with the light he’d needed to orient on the robbers, while he kept to the darkness, save for a haunting smile. But they’d also provided him with the light needed to see what they were up to. Rebecca never would know how close she’d gotten to being hit by an attack.
Elliott had seen the man turn towards the sound of one of the hostages. Some strange ambient green glow had surrounded one of the robber’s hands, as he’d pointed it her way. Out of the corner of her vision, it probably would have seemed like just another glow stick providing meager illumination. Cheshire had fallen from the ceiling several feet away and sent one of his prehensile hand tongues lancing out to snag the man’s wrist and pull him backwards onto the ground. And not a moment too soon. The attack had fizzled, during the shock of the fall. Cheshire had kicked him in the head.
He’d provided cover for the other tense moments of the hostage rescue, just like he’d said he would. He’d kept a running commentary from his mouth, to mask the efforts of the woman. He’d rushed each thug in turn, and delivered brutal kicks. He’d kept it so fast-paced and violent, most of the men had hardly been able to focus on what was going on around them other than his threat. The man with the green energy blast had been the only one to actually aim an attack at Rebecca or any of the hostages.
Only after the last bank robber had fallen, had the red lights of the backup generator sprang on. And that had been after the alarm had been tripped by the emergency door, and the hostages had all escaped. The alarm had provided a distraction for Elliott, funnily enough. And one that had saved his life.
The last robber had been tougher than the rest. Careful. He hadn’t shown his power until he’d closed the distance between them so that he was standing beneath the man on the ceiling. His friends were all down and unconscious. Many hostages were gone, though some were still filtering out. One person had done it all and stood in his way. He wanted revenge.
“Fall,” he muttered. Elliott barely heard it. Then the whole world turned upside down as he was hit by a stomach-turning dizzy spell.
Vertigo. He didn’t know it was that until after he went splat. He fell from the ceiling, but didn’t die. He managed to stick the landing on his legs and his side. Everything hurt. He didn’t think anything was broken. Unfortunately, for the moment, he couldn’t move.
There was a glint of silver in the low light. Or really, greenish silver. It caught the reflection off the nearest source of light. A glow stick. It struck Elliott just what the glint was. It was a knife.
The man was going to slit his throat.
“Freaking finally,” he said. His voice was a ragged whisper. He got real close, and reached down for the slashy slash slash to make the throat gash. The warning klaxon blared, right before he would have given Cheshire a second smile. Elliott’s red eyes widened under the stocking ski mask as the man stepped back, knife clattering to the floor. He took his opportunity.
A pink tongue shot out to hit the robber in the face. He reeled backwards as the sloppy attack smeared across his eyes, blocking his entire field of vision.
The whole thing was quiet. Amid the noise and confusion, the remaining hostages probably wouldn’t have noticed the brief scuffle. People filed out as Cheshire struggled to his feet, and pulled the man towards him by the tongue wrapped around his head. Right into an elbow, followed by a one two punch combo and a leg sweep. Every hit made Elliott wince in pain. Something was definitely broken. Or cracked.
The lights sprang on about a minute after the last hostage made it out of the bank. Cheshire stood over the unconscious form of the last bank robber, breathing hard. He clutched his ribs.
Was that all of them? He looked around. Yup. He took a minute to duct tape them all to the floor, covering their hands. Then he gathered up his glow sticks and any other evidence he may have left. He didn’t bother wiping down the bathroom sink. Idly, he wondered if blowing the lights had blown out the security cameras. Eh. He was wearing a mask. Without a word, Cheshire leaped up onto the ceiling and made himself scarce.
—
He didn’t want Rebecca to think he’d died in the bank. He also didn’t want anyone to see him and ask him any questions. Especially the police. So, he found a solution.
The pen sailed across the parking lot to land inches in front of Rebecca’s face with a skip and a bounce. It had come from somewhere up high. Somewhere...
It wasn’t apparent how he’d done it. How he’d escaped from the bank utilizing an entrance that wasn’t the main entrance or the emergency entrance, then got to the roof. Probably some sort of utility closet trick involving vents, or something. But whatever the case, there he was. On the roof. Hands on hips, in his leather jacket and his black ski mask, looking heroic. He only stayed long enough for her to notice him, then he sprang from one rooftop to another, up and away!
((OOC react and wrap up, I think? They’ll have to meet again some time.))
He could literally taste the fear and uncertainty on her voice. Unless that was the bad breath and the remnants of whatever the bank robber had eaten and gotten trapped in his beard... that had gotten transferred to the mask by way of some sort of porous bond. The mask did smell. But so did the whole situation.
Yeck. Elliott suppressed his sense of smell for the moment, and focused on senses like touch and hearing. Not smell... or taste.
She asked what he could do, and he summarized as briefly as possible. “I’m strong and fast and I call walk on the ceiling.” He nodded once, as if that was the whole of it. Anything withheld wouldn’t hurt, and she didn’t need to know about potential connections to aliens or grasshoppers or frogs.
Rebecca did not say anything about her being a mutant, which meant she most likely wasn’t a mutant. Easy enough to handle that fact. Most weren’t. He hadn’t been counting on any sort of magical mutant backup. If he could go out and the lights could go out, she could go out and get people out and it was as simple as that. No mutant powers required.
Elliott dug in his pants pocket and pulled out a pocket knife. It was a tiny thing with a folding blade and Swiss army tools, like a pair of scissors and a pen light. Nose hair trimmers. He held it in the palm of his hand as she spoke to him, fighting against her own better judgement with all the questions and the “uh”s and the “of we can, we should do it”s. Then, he held out a hand to her and palmed the knife into her grasp.
“We can. We should. We will. This should handle slicing bonds. Use the pen light if you need to but try and hold back, because it’ll be a beacon in the dark.” One that would draw them to her location like a loud fart in an elevator full of people.
“I’ll kick their asses thoroughly enough that they won’t notice you funneling people out. Hopefully. You should be able to play rescuer without any powers. That exit is probably as good as we’ll get.”
Elliott wrapped it up by telling her to stay in the hallway and peer out to keep watch. To wait until the lights went low, and the fighting started, then to act. If she made a mental note of where the people were in the dark, she might be able to remember it in an imperfect mental picture. Or she had the pen light. But he’d be working hard to make sure she didn’t need that. He’d also be glowing on the ceiling with that glow stick smile, so... he pointed at the smile to illustrate his point. A little prick of light would probably go below their notice. Especially if he tossed glow sticks down from above, at various locations where the robbers were stationed.
“Shock and awe,” he told her. “I’m going to move fast, and leave everyone distracted and confused.” Elliott suited the words with an appropriate action. He sprang into the air, flipping upwards and back onto his bare feet. They caught the ceiling, and he clung there one whole second! He gave her a cute wave, then turned and ran across the ceiling towards the end of the hall, and where all the men with guns were.
—
Distract and confuse. That was the crux of his plan. Distract and confuse. He crept across the ceiling in silence that first minute, and hoped desperately that Rebecca was watching and taking note of everything and everyone in the area from appropriate stealth around the corner of the wall. Once he was in position above the bank robber with the spark hands, Cheshire launched step two: distract and confuse.
He called down at the bank robber. “Hey you! Sparky!”
It wasn’t his best line. But as far as straight lines went, it was incredibly distracting. The man momentarily forgot his responsibility of watching the hostages, the windows, and everyone else as they worked on dealing with the fallout from the arrival of the police. He stared up angrily at the figure on the ceiling.
“What the f—-?!”
His day had not gone well for him. He’d cut himself shaving. His girl had left him. Something about money. Funny, what with how the end result of the entire day plan would have resolved that pesky problem. Ultimately, it proved she wasn’t worth it. But now, the bank plan had hit a snag. Someone had called the cops. They were forced to have Frank speak on the phone with someone who wanted to cut a deal! And if that weren’t already annoying enough to ruin the entire day, this guy on the ceiling had decided to play hero. Where had he even come from? And why had he turned his back towards him and smacked his ass?
The ass smacking distraction had been a cute touch, meant to entice the bank robber towards attacking him. If he’d had a gun, there would have been trouble. And his friends might have sighted on him too, for that matter so the whole thing had been inadvisable. But it had achieved what it had been meant to achieve. The bank robber forgot all caution, and starting flinging bolts of electricity up at the ceiling.
It was bad luck, really. For the bank robber. But good luck for Elliott. If the robbers power had been acid or fire or water, he might not have had a way to knock out the building’s power grid. As it was, bobbing and weaving around the electrical discharge almost got him killed within the first ten seconds. Fire would have spread. Acid would have melted his face. But electricity... it caused chaos, simply by being itself.
Rebecca likely got a good show. He flipped, he dodged, he danced across the ceiling. Guns were sighted on the target, but before they could open fire, Sparky hit the bank of fluorescent lights.
Pop pop pop. The lights went out! A glow stick smile turned, and assessed the whole bank in darkness. And then it fell on where one of the men with the guns had been standing not one second before. There was a meaty thud, and the sound of something clattering out of someone’s hands onto the tiled bank floor.
A single glow stick flew across the intervening space between Elliott and the next nearest thug, and then the glowing smile retreated thirty feet up into the air.
Here was hoping the backup generator didn’t turn on in a minute and bathe the whole scene in red mood lighting.
A couple more green glow sticks dropped from on high, to help illuminate the chaos. Elliott made good on his word by flying down at the bank robbers to attack them as he could, and cause the biggest opening Rebecca could have ever wished for. A distraction so she could try and rescue as many hostages as she could. He was very noisy, too. Plenty of rude quips and psychic warfare to build up fear.
So she’d been the one to call the police? Eh. He couldn’t have blamed her for the knee jerk reaction. They aren’t something one thinks about, bank robberies and hostage situations. It wasn’t her fault she reacted in a way that probably would have been sensible in 90% of the other situations. Though trusting the police was a rookie move, in his opinion. He mentally shrugged it off and moved on. There were far more important things than lectures and assigning blame.
Rebecca was her name. Rebecca wanted to know his plan. Rebecca was in a difficult situation and already struggling. Asking her to help was both presumptuous and asking a lot. He was low on options. And so was Rebecca.
Sun Tzu probably would have had something to say about using what you have and making the enemy think it’s more... then crushing them for their mistake. Elliott has no illusions about his being able to do that. His options were limited to trickery or brute force. Or brute force and trickery. Maybe some sleight of hand could find its way into the plan, ala deception.
“I don’t want to ask anything of you I wouldn’t do myself.. and you can say no,” he said slowly, cautiously, as if expecting an immediate negative response. “What I was planning... was to sneak on in above all of their asses and get sparky sparky finger’s attentions through my boyish wiles.”
The glow stick smile on his stocking mask bent upwards slightly, as if creased by a smile beneath the smile. Elliott scratched at the hidden bump of an antenna that had been folded into the mask against the back of his neck. He sensed BO through the antenna, to go with the normal sense from his non present “nose.”
“I want to distract them all,” Cheshire clarifies with an upturned palm. He clenched it. “Make sparky knock out the power with an electrical surge if he can manage to hit one of the lights. Then, when the lights go low I was thinking someone could slip in and help the hostages out of the building. What do you think? Isn’t it a terrible idea?” He said. Fake cheer dripped off his words like honey. Thick and sweet.
For weeks, months, the two of them worked together. It was a working relationship, to start out. For one of them, it was about doing something. It was their responsibility. For the other, it was about making them feel better about the terrible decisions they’d made— by doing something to address the bad karma. Personally, that person thought the whole “responsibility angle” was an excuse made up after rescuing a cute girl to justify reckless endangerment of one’s self for a thankless job. But then, what did that person know? He’d been a criminal! And pretty much a terrorist, if they were splitting hairs.
Crime went down in the area. The working relationship changed from one where they bickered like a married couple to one of mutual respect. And friendship. It was odd for the one who’d called himself a criminal. Friends, in his experience, were a rarity.
They took on bad guys in situations both interesting and provocative. And stupid. Very, very stupid. They helped a lot of people, saved a lot of lives, and started up rumors in the area about someone in a motorcycle helmet who went around fighting crimes. The helmet design varied, but they were always agile, always fast. They were an odd couple, but the partnership worked. Sadly, it wasn’t fated to last.
—
The man had been a terrorist, from the same group Elliott had once served. Ragnarok. Maybe it had been karma baring its teeth as if to say “all your good work doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change what you’ve done.” Maybe it had simply been a bad situation, and everyone involved had done the best they could with what they had.
There was a bomb, saved up from Ragnarok’s weapons stockpiles. There was a building full of people. Choices were made.
They caught the guy, got him unconscious. He was crazy, had been ranting, but it had still been unclear why he’d done what he’d done.
“They were a chaos faction,” Elliott had told Benji. “Nothing they ever did needed to make sense.”
It hadn’t mattered. The bomb had already been set. The guy had been knocked unconscious in the scuffle. He wasn’t telling anyone how to defuse the bomb. It’s not something one can resolve via google answers. Their only visible solution was to get the bomb away from people, before it went boom. Side to side wouldn’t work. The only way was up. And Elliott didn’t have the hops to reach the top of the area where the explosion would result in the least amount of damage to buildings in the surrounding area. But Benji did. Damn Korean ninja.
It was to save people. It was his responsibility. That was a load of horse $h@t. He had to. It was dumb. It was the only way! But he would die. The argument was brief, but poignant. Elliott lost.
The entire method of resolving the situation to get the height was ridiculous. It involved a lot of jumping, bursting forward to get extra height, wall running and extra jumping. A massive kick off a massive kick. And Benji had double jumped to gain the extra height. And then there’d been the explosion, the flaming helmet shrapnel, and the fall. Not a single person had died. Well, except the one. But he’d done so willingly. Braver than any goddamned x-man.
Elliott had gone home furious.
The papers the next day had blamed early fireworks. July fourth is still on the 4th, kids! That had only made Elliott angrier and more bitter. The only light in the darkness of the whole situation... could have been blamed on Benji, too. Source of the darkness, source of the light. Freaking idiot. How typical. He’d left behind his art supplies. In the middle of the freaking living room.
When Elliott had arrived at their apartment, he’d thrown down the charred remnants of Benji’s motorcycle helmet. The only thing left of the man. Then, he’d kicked it at the blank canvas left out in the middle of the living room. And left paint splotches from the paint the helmet had fallen into. He’d been possessed by the urge to do that a couple more times. It was oddly cathartic. He got all his anger out on the canvas. And what went onto it... well, apparently that was art.
Benji has always been trying to get Elliott into the things he liked. Music. Art. Even the stupid books he read. Haikus about battle strategy, of all things! And the art? Well. It wound up becoming an outlet to his fury. Almost like Benji hadn’t died. Like he was still with him, in spirit. Except he was still dead, and Elliott didn’t believe in ghosts.
The end. Except it wasn’t. And it would take some time before he recovered from it all. Benji has left him with ghosts, and he’d left him with an example that brought up more questions than anyone would ever want to field. They were an odd couple, Elliott and his ghosts. The worst part was that smile. That damned smile.
Before Benji had gone, before Cheshire had gone, he’d raised his visor and smiled at him. He’d left him with that Cheshire grin.
‘You’re dying, idiot. So why are you smiling? What do you know, that I don’t?’
Benji was the real Cheshire. All future Cheshires would be imitators. Even him. And it would be a long while before Elliott ever spoke about the man holding his own death in his hands, and smiling.
‘Why the smile, Cheshire? Huh? What’s so funny about trading lives...’ Superheroes. Elliott wasn’t sure he’d ever be one of those. Or even your tasteless vanilla hero. But he could try. Benji had left him with one hell of an example.
((He’d totally been the sidekick in that relationship. Teary-eyed wimp.))
“I agree,” Elliott said calmly. He strode down the brick wall of the alley, as if he weren’t standing so his body and the wall formed a right angle.
The sounds had reached him as he’d stepped out from inside a liquor store on the corner. Cries for help. He hadn’t been as fast as the Scot. A few steps over to his parked motorcycle, to deposit the bottle of Jameson in the bike bin. A moment to grab a bright yellow smiley face helmet from the handlebars, one of his constant rotation of helmets with painted-on smiles. A moment to pull it on, and strip off his shoes. The two toes on one of his green feet wiggled in street slime as he stashed the shoes away with the liquor.
“Wonderful,” he muttered. And then, he was tromping up the side of the nearest building, up and around to the wall in the alley.
It had taken a lot of physical training to gain the requisite core strength to stand at a right angle to the ground. It was worth every minute. He’d rushed to the scene, though, and now he was stalking down a brick wall towards a bad situation.
There were several men down already, one at knifepoint, one getting thwacked in the gut by a steel toed jackhammer. Several thugs were doing the pounding. And there was a bystander with red hair and a Scottish accent.
Elliott had slowed his stride approaching from above, because a scene like this required more tact than he regularly exercised. Usually, he opted for the element of surprise, but the elephant in the room, the knife against the man’s throat, suggested he not startle the man wielding it- as that was a bad idea.
The bottom of his black leather jacket dangled of either side of Elliott’s body, due to the gravity of the situation. He crossed his arms across his chest, about ten feet above the man with the knife. On the wall. His three-fingered green hands and two-toed feet were obscured by the darkness of the alley.
The yellow helmet smiled. Elliott did not. His voice was filled with chipper spirit, though! Because what good is a mask without another layer of mask over that one? A persona!
The man with the knife changed his expression from one of sneering disdain and annoyance towards the Scotsman, to one of uncertainty as he glanced up at the sudden voice. His fellows took an unspoken cue from him, and shifted between facing towards the guy by the alleys mouth and the one above.
“I agree,” Smiley Face Helmet repeatedly cheerfully. “With the Scotsman. Leave the poor sods alone and go. Unless you want to take a worse pounding than an adult film actress on the set of their latest film. Yo,” he said, and glanced towards the redhead. “Want to team up? In case they don’t take our wise words of wisdom to heart.”
((OOC sorry this didn’t get replied to sooner. I got focused on other threads and other stuff. Really liking this thread!))
As Elliott stared at the ceiling, he silently prayed to whatever Gods of karma or balance were listening that things would get better. The woman had called the police. That would make things do much messier. Maybe no one had ever told her not to turn an armed robbery into a hostage situation? How helpful was she!
Carefully, Elliott rose into a crouch like her. Wasn’t there something someone had written, about gaining another persons trust by mimicking body language? He didn’t know. He didn’t really read.
“I’m going to stop them.” Elliott said slowly, as if he were turning his thoughts over and over in his mind like a polished stone. After hitting his head like he had, the methodical thought process helped.
“At least that was the plan.” He continued. “Steal a mask, disguise myself. Maybe infiltrate them and take them out from within.” Or at least disguise his identity so the whole thing didn’t come back to bite him, from either the criminal element or the people set in place to punish... the criminal element. “Stay here.” He finished lamely.
Elliott had told her ‘stay’, but whether she stayed in place or not was entirely on the girl’s head. Loyalty was not something he had a habit of inspiring. Especially when someone thought he was robbing a bank.
He crab walked to the end of the hall, and peered around to corner, cautious to stay low and stay silent. To avoid attention, and scout the room. There were several men, but thankfully only a handful of them had guns. The ones without guns were probably mutants, if his luck already were any indication of things to come. Lady Karma was working overtime today. As he watched, one of them idly flicked his fingers like he was igniting a Bic lighter. Electric sparks played across the man’s fingertips.
Possibilities ran through Elliott’s mind, and he went over them all at once in the most disorganized, contradictory way possible. That Chinese guy, Sun Tzu, would have been ashamed of Elliott. A Mish mash mosh pit of mediocre ideas, that’s what he had. Each one worse than the last. He was under pressure, so sue him. It wasn’t like Elliott rescued people from bank robbers every day or anything. Speaking of...
People were on their asses all over the building, under watch. The entire thing had turned into a hostage situation, as he’d feared. Somehow, they had learned of the call— maybe one of them held a police scanner or something? Whatever way they’d learned about it, it was bad. Bad, bad, bad. It made him wish he’d stayed home, and never gotten out from under the covers of his bed.
After a minute, he went back to talk with the woman. “7 men. 2 have guns. 1 definitely a mutant. Sparky hands. Others, dunno. Hostages now.” The words escaped him like a rolling tide.
“Means if police show up, there will be trouble. They aren’t getting out of there. Not unless the robbers are taken out or the police let them go... which means we’ve got a little bit of time before the snipers show up to figure out a solution to fix this problem without a lot of people getting hurt!” He finished lightly, glow stick smile smiling at the woman. “My name is Cheshire, by the way. And you are?”
Just as he’d thought. Maybe. If he’d expected that. Or anything, really. He’d just figured the guy would be a tool and that he’d expose him, but probably not know him personally. So he’d been half-right. This put Elliott in an odd situation, though. He knew the guy. It was his roommate. How did one even respond to that?
He stood there on the side of the billboard for about ten seconds. Neither of them said anything, so he crouched there with the helmet still in his hands, and waited for Benji to say some more. The balk was in his court for the delicate secret identity situation and Elliott wanted to be gracious to him. He never expected the response he got.
Benji flew. He just flew, blue lines trailing behind him like motion blur in a cartoon. Flew several feet through the air, crossing the intervening space between them to flip over his head, snatch his helmet up off it, then land smugly on the rooftop again, like a gymnast that had just completed a complex trick.
“Elliott!” He grinned annoyingly. “Just a tip. Standing still, you make a great target. You’re even brightly-colored. Although yellow might have been better than green—“ He trailed off as Elliott landed next to him in a crouch.
Elliott stood, and affected a looming stance... which wasn’t very effective when they were around the same height. Then, he shrugged his shoulders and donned a smile, like “I don’t even care that you blew my secret identity, man. It’s cool!”
“You couldn’t stand your cooking either, huh? Needed to get out for some fresh air.”
Benji stared at him for a second, then tilted his head. “What?”
“I mean, it probably isn’t bad enough to drive one to fighting crime or anything, I suppose.” Elliott continued. He started waking the roof, stretching his arms out behind his head. Brutal fights give muscle cramps. He walked around the black helmet he’d set on the ground, and turned back to his roommate. “Still. I guess I can chalk that up to an origin story for you.”
“That isn’t why I do it...” Benji said.
“No?” Elliott asked. He walked over to the edge of the roof, plopped down, and patted the ledge beside him. “Why then? Do we have time for some story time? You, a vigilante. Me, a vigilante. He, she, we... vigilantes.” He drawled.
“We have time for my foot in your ass.” Benji grumbled.
“No,” Elliott said. “We don’t. I know where that foot has been.” He didn’t, but that was beside the point.
Benji walked over and sat down beside him. He rested Elliott’s helmet behind him on the roof. They were both silent for a second. Benji broke the silence. “We’re doing this, then? First we fought, now we talk?” He sounded incredulous.
“Tonight has been a hell of a night, Roomie.” Elliott told him. “It’s almost like some extra dimensional author were having some fun at our expense.”
“And He has some sort of script he wants us to follow,” Benji continued ominously. “With specific points he wants to address and scenes he wants us to do before it all comes to an end.”
The two of them stared off into the distance. The neon billboard glowed behind them. The city night around them was filled with a background electric buzz.
“I did some stuff.” Elliott broke in on their substantive silence. Their second substantive silence. Seriously. Someone needed to move the plot along. “Stuff I’m not proud of. Stuff I regret.”
“And that’s reason enough to strap a helmet on your head and go crime fighting?” Benji asked warily.
“Karma.” Elliott said. “Always watch out for karma.”
“... that’s a terrible reason to try and help people.”
“And yours is so much better?” Elliott asked.
Benji was silent for a moment, then looked off into the distance sheepishly. “I was bothered by all the crime in the city.” He started. “And then this woman-“
“A woman?”
“This woman,” Benji continued on doggedly. “Got caught by a bunch of criminals while she was out DOING something about the crime. They wanted to kill her, and I just—“
“Was she hot?”
“Couldn’t stand the thought of her getting killed when she was one of the few people trying to help, and—“
“Tell me she was hot.” Elliott smiled.
The corner of Benji’s mouth tilted upwards just a hair. “She was pretty beautiful. Like Felicia Day or something.”
“Fiery redhead?” Elliott asked. Decisively, he added “All male heroes adore a fiery redhead.”
“Shut up.” Benji sighed a disgruntled sigh.
“So anyways,” Elliott continued for him. “Cute redhead. Bad guys. I take it you used your power and tried to help?”
He smirked and nodded to the helmet he’d worn. “Was out on my motorcycle. Kept the helmet on. Helmet had a smile. Fought guys, yadda yadda. Showed off for cute girl.”
“Wore helmet. Helmet had smile.” Elliott blanched. “Tell me your alias isn’t Cheshire.”
Benji’s face was a mask of shame.
“Dude!” Elliott threw up his arms. “My alias is Cheshire.”
“Pretty sure I quoted the damned cat from the book. And then called myself it and it stuck.”
“That’s crazy,” Elliott laughed. “You’re crazy. I just picked it because I remembered the kids movie from the home, and that stupid cat that always left people staring at its smile.”
“Well you definitely have a nice smile,” Benji said thinly.
Elliott showed him his teeth. Zipper-like teeth, bared in a smile.
Kids that ask a million questions back to back don’t always get all the answers they’d like, so when Tom asked about Benji, it was only fair that Elliott was already changing the subject. Away from the nasty question, away! That was a loaded baked potato question, if ever he had heard one. Full of cheese, and with plenty of meat. The kind of gargantuan greasy baked potato that would be sure to give you indigestion if you thought you could handle it all at once, AND your dinner. The question was so big, it was a meal by itself. He was going for lighter fare with the conversation, a lighthearted soup and wistful salad sort of deal. There was a soul searching steak coming, and here she was, asking him to fill up on a colossal Idaho spud with cheese and bits of bacon! If he gnashes his teeth on that question, they’d never even get to dessert. So he pointedly ignored it, with food metaphors. Cold. Like ice cream.
‘I’m hungry,’ Elliott thought. And then he talked at length about him not being a hero, just your friendly neighborhood criminal! Because he didn’t want to talk about that other thing. The baked potato. And she completely missed the point! Maybe she didn’t know the word vigilante? She seemed young enough not to have learned that word.
Tom rattled off some sappy stuff about heroes and Mr. Rogers and children, and despite all the effort he’d gone through to bury the jaded side of himself under downy comforters and a redhead’s smile, he still felt the inexplicable urge to be rude.
She was a kid, for chrissikes! She thought he was a hero? It was too much. He was a nice enough guy and all, but he’d gotten into helping people for the wrong reasons. And if she trusted a guy enough after he’d appeared and beat the crap out of another guy in a dark alley, just cuz he wanted to, then this girl might wind up getting herself hurt.
He ought to talk to her, reprimand her. Was that a protective streak? She wasn’t his problem.
He’d thought Tom was street-smart, then she’d buried him under the babble about wallets and wedding rings and whoopsie! And Mr. Rogers neighborhood. Part of him wanted to be like “who is mr Rogers? He your dad?” That part of him was the same jaded ass who’d lived on the street, and avoided weaknesses like friends such as her like the plague. The silly part, the part that judged people, read people, told him she’d probably just reply to that with an excited “I wish!”
Wistful, light. Not bitter, dark. He schooled his whirling emotions and told himself the urge to be an ass was the direct result of buried anger over the death of a friend. Misplaced anger. And maybe a side of soggy French fries that were annoyed she was so innocent and willing to lower her guard. Because learning how to do that had taken him too damn long and cost far too much. To him, and to those around him.
The helmet continued to smile. He did not. He wasn’t going to let brooding angst flavor the conversation. It was bitter and chalky. Elliott put all the friendliness and sincerity he could into Cheshire’s voice, for her sake. For the Cheshire persona, tone of voice was also a mask.
“You can think whatever you want, kiddo~” Elliott said. “Personally, I think the real heroes are the ones who make sacrifices for the greater good, without thinking about themselves. Like firemen, or people who throw themselves on bombs to protect others, in spite of the cost. Even if nobody realizes they’ve done anything at all.”
He wasn’t brave enough or foolish enough to think he was the heroic sacrifice type. But he could honor it as the mark of a true hero. Him? He was just a guy who liked to fight things, in a scary helmet in the dark.
Posted by Elliott on Sept 18, 2018 13:39:24 GMT -6
Beta Mutant
621
48
Nov 7, 2024 15:16:03 GMT -6
Mugen
Red eyes widened in surprise as a woman tumbled out of the women’s room. Why he was surprised had less to do with the woman leaving the women’s room, and more to do with the tumbling and the suddenness of it all. With his mind already on overdrive from contemplating the situation, even something as simple as a relatively minor surprise made for an adrenaline rush and a heart beat racing in his not-actually-present ears.
Elliott paused as he took in the woman on the floor. That pause was enough of an opening for the woman to turn her floor-relevant position into a lurching frog jump at his legs. It wasn’t quite as good as one of his frog jumps, but it still managed to take him in the knees.
She may have been aiming to wrap his legs. She may have been aiming to head butt him down below. Nasty move, that. Props if she’d been attempting that, but if she had, it hadn’t panned out. He would have been thankful... if he hadn’t lost his balance and toppled backwards onto the floor.
Keh-rack! If there were anything Elliott truly missed having in this situation, it was his helmet. If he’d had his helmet, he wouldn’t have cracked the back of his skull on the floor. He went dizzy for a second.
First, he’d made the bank robber see stars. Now, he saw stars. It was only fair. Perfectly balanced. Elliott lay on the floor for a couple of seconds. While his brain regrouped, he let the happy pain stars dance along the ceiling.
“Hey,” Elliott said, finally. “Why d’jou tackleme. Ima googuy?”
