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.
No medications and only been around for a week. No wonder the poor thing was so skittish. Life on the streets was hard, doubly so for a mutant. Not that transitioning to life in a massive boarding school full of the weird and wonderful would be that much easier.
“Nice to meet you Shelby, my name is Zinnia.”
Between them they managed to bumble their way to the kitchen. Zinnia kept the basket slung over her arm (she had seen what happened to snacks left out on the counter) as she flicked the kettle on and dug for glasses and mugs in the seemingly endless cupboards. She passed a glass to Shelby, empty, and spooned coffee into her mug. Humming softly she retrieved the milk from the refrigerator, added it to her mug and poured some into the second mug, making sure her hands were visible at all times. Water was good, but it had no nutritional value.
She sat at the table and pulled her coffee towards her, swiping another cookie from the basket. She would have to be careful, or there would be none left for Jac.
“So, do you want to talk about it?”
Mental-health first aid was a required certificate for her line of work, and one she used almost as often outside as well. There was no reason for Shelby to give her details. But at the same time sometimes it was nice to just offload on a stranger with no strings attached.
The girl went positively pallid, and Zinn knew she had put her foot in it. Unless this was just the precursor to some sort of body-shifting. She had seen something like that before. Clammy sweat shimmered over her skin and it wasn’t because of the sunlight. This was 100% panic attack.
“Hey, hey, it’s ok. I didn’t mean to frighten you. Here, breathe with me.”
She tried to encourage the deep, soothing box breaths that so often calmed a panic attack. In for four, hold for three, out for four, hold for three. Being an oxygen-generator tended to help with that as well. She had an unfair advantage.
The girl seemed scared of her basket and she casually flicked aside the teatowel to show more of the golden brown cookies. Nothing to be frightened of in there.
“I’m a nurse, as well as trained in first aid and I really think you should at least have a glass of water and sit in the cool for a bit. Are you on any medication, and have you taken it? Do you want me to call this… Saff for you?”
Her next best bet was to call Jude, and ask him what the healer’s name was and could he come and help her. She felt like this was perhaps better suited to a mutant ability than to the ministrations of someone who seemed to be only making things worse.
Tea was apparently a trigger word and Zinn felt her eyebrows creeping up to meet her hairline in worry. The crackle in the ‘no’ sounded like she needed some lemon and honey in that tea. It was the broken sound of someone who had hollered themselves hoarse. Generally it was a side effect of something else. The last person she had heard that grating in had been trapped in a burning house, screaming for help and breathing in smoke. Zinn had eased her pain as best she could by supplying a steady stream of oxygen, but at the end of the day it hadn’t been enough and the girl had passed on to the other side, hacking and coughing all the way. She wouldn’t lose this one the same way.
Someone called Saph was helping her with this problem. Perhaps that was the first name of the healer Jude had borrowed the power from to fix her eyebrow, perhaps the school counsellor (if they had one)… or maybe it was one of the X-men, the name did sound familiar somehow.
“I won’t put anything weird in it.”
It was tactless, really and thoughtless. She had meant vitamin drops of course. Not the body parts of a friend. Why would that have been what she meant, that was just silly.
Being unconscious wasn’t like sleeping. There was no dreams, no passage of time, just nothing. Then all of a sudden, everything again. The murmur of the gathered crowd, the sweet smell of grass and flowers, the sunshine streaming down on her. She gulped in lungfuls of air and made to sit up. The juice man was there and a pile of other people peering down at her. Oh dear, she had made a scene.
Once upright she skimmed the crowd for the kid, but he seemed to have scarpered. He wasn’t anywhere in the immediate vicinity anyway, and she could breathe again. Her groggy mind latched onto those two seemingly unrelated facts as she recited her name, the date and her Dad’s phone number so he could come and pick her up.
Maybe she was allergic to the kid. Was it even possible to be allergic to a person? She had never heard of such a thing in her studies before. Perhaps he had a pollen mutation, or something which reversed her own mutation (can you imagine?). The potential that it was purely her mutation keeping her alive hadn’t crossed her mind. She always thought if there was a cure that she would have reverted back to ‘normal’ breathing. Not that she would ever take a cure, to be sure, but she knew lots of mutants would.
“I’m ok, just a little woozy.”
She took the offered juice and sipped it, the sugary beverage doing nothing to soothe the surge of adrenaline. There was going to be so much paper work. The fact that she was a mutant and didn’t fit any of the test parameters meant that she was pretty sure that at the end of the day there would be no conclusion either, just the recurring unknown- potentially mutation related.
She looked like she was going to throw up at the mere thought of the cookie and a small part of Zinnia was offended. These were good cookies. She could understand that reaction from the first batch where she had derped out and put salt instead of sugar into them, or the ones she walked away from for just-a-second that had turned into perfectly black little charcoal pieces suitable for stuffing naughty kids stockings… but not these ones.
Perhaps she was a vegan. Or a celiac. She looked like something other than the cookie was bothering her though.
“is everything ok? You look like you saw a ghost. And not the air elemental kind.”
If she had met Maya that would be a slightly humorous pun. If she hadn’t then Zinnia would be coming across like a crazy person.
“let me at least make you a cup of tea.”
There was the half-brit coming out, something worrying you? Have a cup of tea. Feeling under the weather? Have a cup of tea. Suffered some horrific ongoing trauma that turned you off all food? Have a cup of tea. That last one was less common though.
She was fairly confident she could find the kitchen this time.
Sure she had eaten. And chucked it straight back up no doubt. She had the guilty look of someone sprung. And the wild-eyed hungry look of someone who was missing out on some vital vitamins and minerals. She knew the mansion took in people from the streets, and at a guess this one was fresh in this afternoon. But the pointed turn to the canvas signalled that this conversation was over. If only Zinnia would take the hint. Pity she could ignore hints just as well as the next person when she wanted to.
She fished a cookie from the little basket and nibbled on it while she watched the girl paint. Up close she seemed to be of a similar age to Zinnia, perhaps even a little older. This was clearly one of the grownup mutants Rowan had mentioned living at the mansion.
“You wanna snickerdoodle? They go best with cocoa or milk, but they’re ok by themselves.”
Because she would be damned if she didn’t try and get something into this kid.
There was a little bounce in her step that came purely from pride. This batch of cookies had turned out perfectly. Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, rolled in cinnamon perfect little snickerdoodles. She would say nothing of the three prior batches which were safely in the trash, nor the smoky smell in the kitchen which she had left the rangehood running to try and dissipate. With the basket over her arm and a picnic blanket in her bag she was prepared for quite the snuggly afternoon once a certain someone got off work.
One of the more regularly outside kids recognised her and buzzed her in (success!) and she made her way across the grounds with something somewhat like confidence. She kindasorta knew where she was going. Plus, even if she got lost it wasn’t like she would stumble across any particularly dangerous rooms or anything. Heh, a danger room. The thought of it was silly. Who would have such a thing in a school, where kids could just saunter in and hurt themselves?
It was a beautiful day outside, the sun was shining merrily now, but the air was still cool enough in the shade to need a light jacket or (what she was hoping for) a cardigan. Kids ran about kicking, throwing and catching an assortment of objects, mostly balls, but there were definitely some juggling pins and superpowers in play as well. There were kids basking in the sunshine and even someone painting.
The painter caught her eye, as for a moment she thought it was Cafas (the pink hair and all). It was a young woman though, and not at all the ball of muscles she kindaknew. She had to pass quite close by the girl to get where she was going and the subject on the canvas drew her eye. Those colours, that shape, it really could only be one thing. And by thing she meant person.
“Hey, is that Jac? That’s pretty good!”
She stopped to admire it in time to hear the painter’s tummy rumble even from her polite distance. A quick glance at the girl’s face and general stature and the nurse mode took over.
"No offence, I can see why Jude hit you." She snorted. No offence was taken, she’d seen it too at the time. But it had got the job done, and both kids made it back to the mansion without giving their mother a stress ulcer. They probably could have done it themselves, but then where would the acquaintances be made?
“Ex-publicist?” Hopefully not through anything too drastic. If his preferred clientele were mutants it was never off the cards. It was hard not to paint mutants with the brush of a few – that was a quick way to the registration act of the past. Cafas seemed curious about her mutation status. Or perhaps he was being polite. It seemed he would have far more day-to-day contact with those with an active X-gene than she would. Case in point – the kids of assorted ages and visible mutation level milling about towards the promise of food. She was curious too, so much potential for data collection in a place like this. She would need some pretty high approval for that though. At very least the headmaster, perhaps even the leader of the X-men, this ‘Sam’ people kept mentioning.
“Yeah, I breathe non-normal air. Carbon dioxide, stuff like that.”
She shrugged. It was a weird power to summarise into a simple sentence. She suspected ‘air stuff’ was already taken in his mind by a certain someone else. She wondered what might happen were she breathe in his girlfriend. It was an intriguing thought, but a little scary.
She hadn’t refuelled all the air she needed before it was gone again. She grasped for aid and the kid took her arm. She turned her face towards him to thank him. She hoped she didn’t look as panicked as he did.
”It’s happening again,” There were not nearly enough exclamation points there for her liking. Juice man took over holding her upright and she looked at him with a detatched interest. It looked like he was talking to her. This time the blood was rushing in her ears far too fast and she didn’t hear the words the juice man was directing at her, he sounded far away, and somewhat underwater. Like an announcement at the pool while she was swimming.
She liked swimming, the laps trailing away behind her, the air sucking into her lungs as she turned her head to gulp in the sweetness that was life. It had taken her a long time to perfect the underwater flip at the end of the pool to turn and head the other direction. Something about seeing everything go upside down and feeling your inner ear protesting which way was ‘up’. Which was sort of what it was doing now. The garden bed was standing on its side, and the ground was rushing up to meet her. If she’d had the presence of mind to care she’d’ve been glad she was still standing on the grass.
As it was she didn’t have the presence of mind for anything. She lay in the grass and blackness enveloped her. Unconscious was the best way to re-boot the breathing cycle.
Her eyes blinked all out-of-sync and it was all Zinnia could do to not let out an audible ‘N’Awww!’. She agreed to the cuppa though, so Zinnia made kitchen-based movements until there was a steaming cup each of coffee and cocoa. Careful not to spill she shimmied back under the covers and offered the cocoa to her sleepy nest-mate.
She sipped her own drink in happy silence. The caffeine worked its way through her body until she felt human again. Well, mutant again, but you know how the saying goes. She let out a contented yawn and stretched her head to either side. For sleeping on the floor with someone made of equal parts shell and spines she felt surprisingly good. Not stiff at all.
“Did you sleep okay?”
She continued sipping the coffee, the heat tingling in her fingers. This could well be a most excellent day. If she was ballsy enough to clarify exactly what this was here. For some it might be obvious… but Jac was a girl, and a shy one at that which meant that Zinnia had to be the brave one in this department.
“So, ah. Are we dating now?”
She waited for what felt like an age, but might actually have been milliseconds.
“Do you think we could be?”
Smooth as a peach. God she hoped that peach wouldn’t be splatted on the sidewalk. What if she was too forward? What if everything was too fast? What if Jac wanted to practice with her to be confident when it came to real kisses with someone else? The remains of the coffee met their forbearers in her stomach where they roiled in suspense.
Posted by Zinnia on Sept 3, 2016 6:25:52 GMT -6
Cafas likes this
The Syndicate
Soldier of The Syndicate
179
29
Jun 20, 2020 5:09:16 GMT -6
There was a train waiting for her. Steam billowed from its stack and past her face. She knew she had to get on it, but she didn’t want to. It wasn’t a newfangled subway-type train, but an old steamer. It looked like it might have been clockwork as well, for it was covered in cogs and gears and a huge pocket watch nestled in the smoke stack. The tick of its hands matched the chug of the wheels.
Which was to say, time was frozen while she hesitated on the platform.
The carriages were all in darkness and shrouded by the steam. One of them looked like inside was the hospital consultancy room, but she couldn’t be sure. She was afraid to board the train, since it was going to an unknown location.
But the platform was crumbling into the sea. Already she was soaked to the waist from the waves crashing against it, every time more of the ground beneath her feet getting stripped away. The water was pulling at her feet, trying to trip her, trying to wash her away too. He was the sea. The tracks seemed dry, but they disappeared into a mirage-ish haze shortly in front of the train. Was it better to stay on the platform with the sea she knew than risk the unknown track?
She looked about for her luggage and found she had a stack of suitcases taller than herself. Her arms were broken, or at least they were in casts from palm to elbow, and she was in a hospital gown that looked like it had been half-soaked in blood rather than seawater. Was it her blood? She would never get the suitcases on to the train in time.
She snatched one of the cases and made the leap onto the train, which started moving even as she made her decision. The pocketwatch started ticking as the sea raged behind her. She wasn't the platform any more, she was the train.
She opened her eyes and took deep, calming breaths. That was an awfully unpleasant experience which she had zero desire to repeat. Her brain was already making a list of all the tests she should go and book in for, and no doubt all of them would have the same result – ‘sorry, mutant, we don’t know how to help you.’ More research needed TM.
The kid was hurrying back a disgruntled looking man and his juice-stained apron and she took the moments that they were returning to her to take her pulse. Higher than normal (even with her calming breaths), but not disturbingly so.
The man bent at the waist to look in her face and she smiled weakly. He smelled like orange peel and apple juice. She could go for a juice actually. Or perhaps a coffee.
“Thank you for helping, I seem to have lost my ability to breathe for a bit there. It was really scary.”
Tears snuck up in her eyes unbidden. She could be as strong as strong when dealing with other people and their medical problems, but not being able to fight or flee her own body meant the crash from the adrenaline was pretty harsh. It really wasn’t what she had been hoping for on her afternoon of reading.
“Um, are you ok now?”
The man fumbled as he patted her shoulder. It was one thing to help someone who was having a problem, but what to do –after- was very rarely trained. Shock and panic were almost as hard on the body as flesh-and-bones injury.
She needed to sit down. And have some sugar.
Oh she was sitting, how about that. Sugar it was then.
“I don’t know, it’s never happened to me before. I think I might get my Dad to come and pick me up. Can I buy a juice from you? Oh hey, thanks Bailey- was it? For getting me someone.”
She was blathering, she could tell. She stood up, somewhat shakily and the juice man hovered his hand near her shoulder awkwardly. This was New York, you can’t just touch people.
[juice]“Sure, on the house. Come sit on that bench.”[/juice]
He indicated a bench near to his stand and she moved towards it. Which took her right into the field of Bailey.
Do you want me to buy you a juice? She went to say. But couldn’t. Not again! She reached out for the juice man, for Bailey, for someone to catch hold of her and keep her grounded. This was really not fair.
The pink haired mutant-come-filmstar-come-step-dad-figure took over the directions and guided them back towards the kitchen and caffeinated beverages. Some part of her wanted to try and curb her caffeine addiction. The other, larger, coffee-flavoured part needed to be satisfied.
“That’s good that Ro’s well, he seems like a handful, but a good kid. Jude seems like… a teenager. But a good one.”
She shrugged. Puzzle-families were always tricky to negotiate. If not speaking was the worst that was going on they would be fine.
He asked about the park and she touched her eyebrow reflexively. The wound had long since disappeared under Jude’s borrowed mutation’s touch, but the wince was deeply ingrained.
“Umm, well I offered him a lollypop and Jude punched me in the face. I did not offer Jude a lollypop.”
In fairness, she had been giving off some pretty massive stranger-danger vibes, and you could never be too careful. Not that punching an unknown mutant was exactly careful behaviour. Knowingly punching a mutant, without knowing their ability, well that was just plain ballsy.
“I don’t think he copied my ability, but when we got back here he borrowed a healer’s and fixed me back up, no harm done.”
Except for the tanbark in her stockings which had left a persistent ankle-itch. Not that she was still sore about it or anything. Those were good stockings.
“Maya left me a message to see if I could find them ‘cause there had been a bunch of accidents and she couldn’t get hold of Jude and I think she was going into a meeting or something.”
So her reason for lollypop offering was solid, even if her technique left something to be desired.
Grumpy lavender eyes changed to recognition and softness. Once the pipes were all out of the way and the mask deposited on the floor she relaxed into the hold. It made her feel safe and protected. Hitting snooze on the day suited her just fine. She wasn’t rostered on to give her time to complete her write-up of the placement, so she didn’t have anywhere to be. Except maybe a breakfast bagel later. Man she had missed good bagels. ---xxx--- Some snooze later ---xxx---
There was a certain first-thing-in-the-morning need she had been ignoring for some time now. It was pleasant and cozy snuggled up within the powerful rainbow arms, but there were some things that just needed doing.
Like bathroom breaks.
She wriggled out, careful not to snag herself on the spines and wobbled to her feet. Pillow nests were not the most stable of footings.
“I’ll be back in a sec.”
She made her way to the bathroom and dealt with that pressing issue, before washing her face and quickly brushing her teeth. She was always a bit paranoid that her morning breath would be worse because of her mutation, even though as far as she could tell it wasn’t.
She hesitated for a moment at the foot of their nest before edging towards the kitchen. Caffinated beverages were calling to her.
“You wanna cuppa?”
Some things she had definitely picked up from her British father, like pressing tea on visitors.
