As the name indicates...this RPG will revolve around Crossroads and New Beginnings.CrossroadsWe would like to see characters come to a 'crossroads' in their lives where important and life changing decisions have to be made. These events can be very personal...i.e. a relationship beginning, ending or changing, or they can be moral or spiritual. Whatever is decided, they should show 'growth' for your character.New BeginningsThis can be any number of items as well and most likely will relate back to the 'crossroads' in your character(s)' life or lives and/or career. They may be starting a new career as teacher or student at Xavier's School for the Gifted or may have been selected to train for the upcoming X-Men team(s). Their 'new beginning' once again may be as simple as establishing a new relationship or changes in an old one.
The X-Men and all likenesses are the property of Marvel Comics, 20th Century FOX, and ALL the creative minds therein. X-Men Crossroads is a non-profit RPG board. We here participate for the pure enjoyment and satisfaction writing in the X-Men Universe brings.Most of the Bio information is courtersy of Marvel Directory
Alexandria, Virginia
Tanya stepped out of the cab into the air. She inhaled deeply. She had been away from home for so long she had forgotten what if felt like to be here. Her eyes darted around her as she looked. Some parts of the town had indeed changed in her absense. She hadn't been back since she had started college. She had not planned on ever comming back. Tanya swore softly as she looked around. Her voice had a mild drawl, not deep South, but distinctly Virginia. She hadn't spoken in that voice for years.
Tanya stepped foreward slowly. She stood in abject horror in front of her father's house. She had never intended it to go like this. After she had stormed out of the house and off to college, she hadn't spoken with her father. All of the bravado and anger she had took a back seat to pure, raw terror. Tanya couldn't believe she was going to do this. She hated her father, but not all men were like him. She had to go inside and face him once and for all.
Tanya's palms sweated as she looked at the house where she had grown up. Tanya began to mutter prayers in any language she could think of as she walked towards her old house. She began to stammer her words. She would do this, she would face him. She gathered all of her rage and closed her eyes. She opened them again and boldly stepped foreward. Tanya stood in front of the door to the house. She inhaled, exhaled, and inhaled again. She would have to do this.
Despite Tanya's knock, the door to the brick and stucco house in which she had grown up remained stubbornly closed, despite obvious signs of immediate habitation - the turning on of a light, the scraping of a chair, and the constant hum of an air conditioner on an unexpectedly warm day.
Mr. Albrechtsen - the man who lived next door - was out in the front yard working a garden hose between the shrubbery and flower bed, paying scant attention until the 2nd, and then the third knock.
"Oh, hello, Tanya. Your father is home. Don't know why he's not answering the door," he told her.
Re: Alexandria, Virginia
"Thanks Mr. Albreschtsen," Tanya said, waving at her neighbor. She put her hand on the door knob and exhaled. It twisted easily in her grasp. She walked into the hallway and closed the door. She looked at the wall to wall carpeting she had grown up on. Her feet scraped the floor as she walked down the hallway. She turned into the living room where her father was working. She stared at him as he looked upon his computer screen.
"Hello, Father," Tanya said. She wasn't able to keep the Southern out of her voice. She was tempted to switch into Russian, but she didn't. She stood as tall as she could, and suddenly she felt twelve years old again. It was when they had the first big fight. Tanya almost flashed back, but she kept her mind on the present. She had come home.
Bolivar scarcely glanced up at his daughter's interruption: it was as if it made no difference, whether she had been gone for an hour or for a year.
"Please sit down," he said, as he continued to work at the computer, clicking and typing, clicking, clicking, and more typing. Ths continued for nearly twenty seconds, before he spoke again. "You're welcome to stay, if you must. You are to stay out of the study unless I am present, do you understand?"
He had as yet made no eye contact with her. He did so now, only to notice her left arm was ominously close to what looked like a toy robot. He reached for it without a word, and then set it safely out of her way.
He had also failed to make mention of a key, knowing she well knew where the spare was hidden, out in the garden.
About him, at his desk, he was surrounded by an organized heap of folders and all the detrious of office life. To one side, on his right, a small color TV with the sound muted had been turned on, tuned to coverage of the ongoing crisis with the Olympia out in the Aegean Sea.
Re: Alexandria, Virginia
Tanya's eyes burned behind her glasses. Her rage boiled within her. She contained it though, exhaled slowly. Things hadn't changed at all she could see. She didn't ask about Larry, she didn't want to know where her younger brother was. It was better if she didn't ask. Tanya sat slowly. She was gathering her power for this moment. She would do what she had to.
Tanya inhaled again and closed her eyes and exhaled. Tanya managed to gain her focus and then she opened her eyes. Tanya spoke with all the authority and force she could muster. It was a stronger voice than Bolivar had probably heard in a while. Even when fighting with him when she was younger, Tanya's anger had never been enough to out right force her father to confession. She was armed not with anger now, but with serenity. It was a heck of a lot more powerful than she thought it would be. "Bolivar, you have kept Larry ignorant of his gift. You tried to prevent me from using mine. What makes you hate us?" Tanya asked.
Re: Alexandria, Virginia
"If I could cure you and him, I would." he said shortly, glancing at the caller-ID on his phone. "Excuse me, I have to get this," he said, then mouthed in a loud whisper "Government Contract."
"Hey, Scooter, how're things in Washington? Oh they are, are they? Fine, fine, glad to hear that."
"Are we go with the Salem project? What do you mean, on hold pending review, is Justice sitting on it? Questions ... about ... habeous corpus," he said, slowly, writing the words on a legal pad. "Well, with the Olympia incident, could we get that moving again? You know, reclassify, like with Padilla. You've got Gonzalez to green-light everything. Oh, I see, the facilities wouldn't work for that, I understand. Have you talked with Trask about a refit? He's got a proposal for some oil platforms, international waters you know. Navy ... wants ... to refit the Ranger..." he scrawled on his pad.
"Now, about the Guardian project ..."
"You want a name change? Oh, I see. Very well, I'll go with what the focus group comes up with, no, that's fine with me, name's not important. Anyways - no, I don't think that would be advisable, if we scale up the prototype it'll just be easier for the terrorists to get away when they're in production, they gotta fit in caves and sewers to be any good or all you're left with are thermobarric weapons and you can't use thermobarric's in a city. He's fixed on it, is he? Well, listen, you just tell him it has to be man-sized or smaller. Remind him that it took the Nazi's two months to run down the Warsaw uprising and these guys were sitting right on top of them and with no way out. No, not when they got to the sewers - Scooter, just tell him, OK? All the resistance had were home made guns, three guys to a gun, and it still took two months. A 20 foot prototype - listen, Scooter, it can't be all about the visuals at the press conference -"
"Very well, we'll talk about it later then."
"Yes, I have it on right now. I was thinking this could be a good Reichstag fire moment -"
"- well, no, it was just the first thing that popped in my mind, you see I've been working on my book -"
"No, of course I wouldn't say that to the press. I don't talk to the press, they're either sheep or jackels, take your pick. It's what? A Pearl Harbor moment for all of humanity? That's good, did McKellen come up with that? You did? Scooter, you're a genius, you should write speeches for the man, honestly, that is just fantastic."
"Will I hold for the Vice President? Yes, of course I will. Hey Scooter, wait, my daughter's here let me take this in the next room. Oh yes," he said laughing. "She's just fine, typical teenager you know. No, I'll make sure not to use that word with the Vice President, I know people there are sensitive to those sort of references. Leave them for the Guardian and La Monde, no one reads those. Pearl Harbor all the way, I'll even use that with him." he said, laughing while making a fist and pushing it forward.
He held up a finger to his daughter: "The Vice President is waiting, I'll be right back. Don't. Touch. Anything."
He stood up and started walking back to the bedroom.
Alexandria, Virginia
Tanya waited calmly. Her hand taveled to her back as she fumbled for somethin. As her father stood and left, she waited. Tanya had learned this in hacking 101, wait for the oppertune moment to strike. The opportune moment had arrived. As soon as her father was gone, Tanya rushed the computer and plugged the Data Stick into the USB port. Don't touch anything hell. Bolivar might have known of Tanya's mutation, but he didn't know she was the cyber criminal Sanctity.
Tanya's keystrokes were so fast her fingers would seem blurred to the untrained and the unobservant. She moved copied all the data she could. She didn't care what she got. She would sort through it later. Tanya broke the encryption gaurding a file with ease. Her father's encryption was so predictable it hurt her. Tanya smirked as the data finished copying.
Her time for revenge was now. Tanya hit a few keys and the Quasimodo's revenge virus was downloaded onto her father's computer. He wouldn't know of Quasimodo until it was too late. The virus would start slow, virtually undected. Then when it did strike, say good bye to all pertinent contact info. It was a simple virus, but it would do the job.
Tanya pulled the data stick out of the USB port and walked back to the couch where she had been sitting. Tanya was a bit worried by some of the things she had seen. She would sort through them later. Tanya gave her thanks to her father in a way. He had taught her the computer skills which had made her what she was, the Untouchable one.
Re: Alexandria, Virginia
After a while he returned, phone still clutched to his hand - although from the way he was talking, it was obviously a new conversation with someone different, and no longer the Vice President or one of his staff.
"Uh huh ... yes ... ahum ...," he said, absently into the phone as he navigated to the computer, past the bookshelves filled with history books. He immediately launched into a furious clicking frenzy as he shot between spreadsheets, email, and specification layouts. "How's the strike test on the new sample? Aha ... ok ... alright, we'll revise the spec - you're thawing the birds, right?. Yes, I'll hold." click. tap. drag. The computer work continued, but his hand paused momentarily while he still inspected the screen and hold music issued from the other end of the phone.
"I am the instrument, not the hand Tanya, if it wasn't ... me it would be someone else. They wouldn't try to protect you and Alex. I gave you the choice, and you rebelled. I won't make the same mistake with Larry. I won't lose him. He will be safe."
The hold music stopped and he was instantly back to the phone. He turned around, his back to Tanya as he stooped down to rifle through the lower drawer of a file cabinet. Edited by: Paid by the Word at: 2/7/06 8:29 pm
Re: Alexandria, Virginia
"We're not robots father, we're not something you can program and control. We have souls, and we make our own destinies. You gave me the mutant gene, it's passed down by the male, most of the time. There are exceptions, but generally men pass on the mutant gene. I have inherited from you extrodinary power, I can stop time. Do you know how powerful that makes me?" Tanya said. The fury in her voice was gone. She stood and she looked nothing like her father. She had the dignity and grace and power of a queen. She was truly Sanctity now, she had realized that she could be touched, but it was her decision what she kept with her. She was Tanya Natalie Trask and she was proud of where she was going. Where she came from didn't matter.
"Humans are creatures of will father. It is the will which drives us. How is being a gay, black, or Jewish any different from being a mutant? Mutants have the same 23 chromosomes humans do. The only difference is somewhere on one of my genes, a protien encoding is different. The only difference between me and Timothy Jordan across the street is that I have entered the next stage of human evolution. You are no better than a fundementalist Christian who denies the existence of evolution because of a lack of evidence. We are the dawn of a new age, to not embrace it is foolish. Timothy Jordan is gay, Elizabeth Crowin is Catholic, but do you see Elizabeth burning Timothy's house?" Tanya demanded. Her eyes burned behind her glasses. The data stick was cluthed in her right hand. She stared at her father, waiting for a reaction.
Background: Many, many years ago, Charles Francis Xavier established Xavier's School for the Gifted. Also, seeing other Mutants misusing and abusing their powers, he created the first generation of the X-Men.This original team was trained and lead by an old friend of his...Logan, aka Wolverine. Logan's co-leader was a young woman and student named Ororo Munroe, aka Storm. Once the team was trained and fielded on active missions, they took on the additional responsibility of teaching and helping new Mutants deal with their powers.On one horrible night, the X-Men were fielded to stop a particularly powerful Mutant and his 'gang'. The 'intelligence' received on this Mutant and his cohorts was sketchy and actually turned out to be a set-up to entrap the X-Men and take them captive. In the ensuing melee', 'things' happened and a number of the team were killed outright or severely injured.After making sure his remaining team-mates were going to be okay, Logan left. Xavier has not, to current time, explained his absence or even whether or not he survived.Current Time/Game Time: Almost seven years later, as Human/Mutant incidents are on the rise, Xavier once again sees a need for a Mutant 'police force'. He sees this new X-Men team as a force for good and a way to help peacefully integrate the rapidly emerging Mutant society with the established Human society. To this end, he has contacted Logan and asked him to 'come home' and train his 'new' team.
Logan has reluctantly agreed.Can shadows from their past be put aside for the good of the new X-Men? How will the surviving members of the original team react and what will they do as 'truths' are learned about that disastrous night?Note: We want the new X-Men to include younger versions of the old familiar characters such as Scott, Jean, Beast etc...as well as many of the OCC’s and other Canon characters that are available.Please ask the Staff BEFORE stating or establishing that your character was one of the old, now disbanded, original X-Men.
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