Who: Mystique OTA What: Mystique Returns When: Monday Afternoon Where: The Streets of Mutant Town Warnings: Language. Other than that, who knows. It probably depends who she runs into.
Mystique had been gone for several months. Time had flown, but then, time tended to do that when one was busy, and Mystique had been very, very busy. Her disagreements with Magneto over his handling of the crisis that had been called the Cure had led to her abrupt departure, but she hadn't cut all ties. How could she? She'd learned the folly of trying to do so. Had a pointed reminder of that, in fact. After all, her son, her own flesh and blood, was one of the Residents at the Haven and had almost been a casualty of the Cure. When she'd left she thought it likely that she would never see him again, but some how Kurt had managed a miracle. That, or the healers had. Somehow he'd survived, a tidbit of information she'd managed to pick up from the contacts she still had among the residents.
Now that she was back in New York she was spending some time alone, or at least as alone as anyone could be in the city that never sleeps. This was a normal pattern for her. She needed a few days to go from being whatever role she'd played to being Mystique just like she needed a few days to assume a role. Not the physical elements, but the mental ones. Lately she'd spent so much time as Leni Zauber, an identity she'd assumed long ago and had frequently found useful, that she was starting to wonder who the real Mystique was. She'd have to meet Erik soon, the information she'd gathered was too important to wait, but not quite yet. No, first she needed to walk among her own kind, among other mutants, and let the smog of New York carry away the stink of the lab.
Wandering through Mutant Town didn't do too terribly much to bolster her confidence in her own, unfortunately. It wasn't much different than the rest of the city in many ways. Just as polluted, just as loud, more than a bit rundown, just as many homeless. Perhaps mutants would have been better served to cut all ties to humans and strike on their own, with their own social structures and their own laws rather than be second class citizens because of the humans' fear. Thoughts like this, while uncomfortable, helped her re-establish the mantle of Mystique.
On one of the corners she saw a sight that did give her pause, though. The man looked human, except for his eyes. They had no iris, no pupil, but were instead solid purple. Eyes that were turned towards the sky while he ranted and raved about the End Times. Mystique would have scoffed, but he was gaining quite a crowd. Some were hecklers, but some seemed to be actually listening to him. She couldn't tell if he was spouting more of that Christian nonsense or if it was some other load of shit, not that it mattered to her. She'd long ago accepted that Marx had been right about religion being the opiate of the masses, keeping them sedated to be preyed on by their betters.
So if mutants here were being targeted as prey, that made Mystique slowly turn in place, looking for the predators.