On the scales of stupidity, I think humanity just tipped things to burn this city down.

"Human or mutant?"

The beastly creature who uttered the question hauled the unfortunate target of it into the air by his shirt. Standing six and a half feet tall, the mutant was absolutely massive, boasting layers of sharply-defined muscle covering every inch of a thick, sturdy bone structure, with a scruffy coat of yellow fur with dark spots over top. A tight tank top and denim shorts were her only clothing, showing her animal-like hands and feet, the long red-brown mane running from her head down her spine, and her short, stubby tail.

The comparatively-tiny man paled as he was face-to-face with the mutant's snout, which was filled with sharp teeth. Dark eyes glared, round ears tense and trained on him, awaiting his reply. He was facing what amounted to a humanoid spotted hyena, and the vicious snarl he was staring into indicated that she was likely about as cuddly as the animal she resembled, which meant she may very well smash him into the pavement even if he did claim to be a member of her own kind.

He let out a strangled squeak, not due to any difficulty breathing but simply due to pure panic. His eyes darted away from the teeth in front of him when he noticed nearby movement. What he saw momentarily gave him hope.

A woman was walking toward them and she, unlike this monstrosity, looked human. She was a thin, slightly sickly-looking girl who couldn't be much older than eighteen, with dusty brown hair and wearing purely black clothing, a sweater and long pants. Had he been thinking straight, he would have noted that that was particularly warm clothing for this time of year. He also would have noticed that her hands were shoved deeply in her pockets, and that she seemed to be walking with a very slight limp.

"Now, now, Bon-Bon..." came a soft, sweet coo from the girl in black as she stepped over to the hyena-like mutant's side. She removed a hand from her pocket and reached up to place it on the muscular, furred arm holding him aloft. "That's not how to behave." A round ear twitched to show she'd been heard.

The skin of the strange girl's hand was the same sickly pale of her face, and her nails were painted black, but neither were its most obvious feature. What was was the very prominent burn scar that covered her palm and then ran along the side of her hand and wrist to vanish into her sleeve. He didn't get much time to look at it as he was suddenly lowered to his feet and the girl in black hid her hand in her pocket again.

"Stop calling me Bon-Bon," was a deep growl from the hyena, as she looked over her shoulder and released him. When the clawed hand let go of his shirt, he scrambled back a few steps and sucked in a sharp breath as if he'd been held underwater and had just surfaced again. He looked at the girl in black, who looked back; she had soft, deep, honey-brown eyes that looked very warm.

For half a second. Then her irises shifted to a sharp yellow, glowing brightly. "Now..." she said, all sweetness completely gone from her tone and replaced by an unyielding ice. "...Human or mutant?"

"What. In. All h***, you two?"

Three heads turned. Bronze, scaly skin gleamed in the sun as another large, muscular mutant, this one with wings open behind her and a sketchbook under one arm, started storming toward them, sharp facial features twisted into a scowl.

The terrified human took this distraction as an opportunity to bolt like a frightened rabbit.

March

Drake focused her attention as best she could on the needle in her claws, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that seemed to blanket the tattoo parlor. Her current customer was a tiny, pale woman whose irises occasionally shifted from brown to yellow, and her hulking hyena-like friend was lurking nearby. She felt no shame in being made uncomfortable by her fellow mutants, because it wasn't the animal-like appearance of one and the occasional shifting eye colour of the other that was bothering her.

The woman she was currently inking had been extremely quiet, only indicating what design she wanted and then rolling up her sleeve to allow the dragon-like mutant access to her upper arm, and her companion, who dwarfed the artist's own significant height and bulk, was even more silent, simply watching Drake at work with a permanent-seeming scowl. This was what was bothering her; even if she did prefer not to make idle chit-chat while injecting ink under a person's skin, the pair just had an eerie quality to them that was getting to her.

There was also the arm that was her current canvas, specifically the thin, jagged scar that ran from her elbow and vanished into her pushed-up sleeve, right beside where Drake was meticulously working on the swirling patterns of the woman's chosen design. She found herself wondering where it had come from, and had to focus all the more intently to try to keep her eye from wandering toward it.

That's why she didn't originally notice when her customer finally spoke to her, and it took a second to realize that she'd missed something and let out a less-than-polite grunt of, "What?"

A small, annoyed sigh preceded the reply. "I said, do you mind telling me your real name? I assume it's not really 'Drake.'"

The scaled tattoo artist blinked, stopping the inking process entirely to look at the pale woman in confusion. She shrugged. "I'll tell you mine if you two tell me yours," she said simply.

A little smile came across the young woman's face. "Nerys. And this is Bonnie." The hulking hyena merely flicked an ear and grunted.

Drake glanced at Bonnie, wondering faintly if she was one of those people incapable of cracking a smile or if she just didn't like the tattoo parlor, then looked back to Nerys. "Kiva," she said, before returning to her work and adding a slightly-belated, "Nice to meet you."

April

Back for another one, hulking hyena lady again in tow.

Kiva supposed she should be flattered, but she still really didn't like Nerys. Something about this girl raised red flags, even if she couldn't put a claw on exactly what. She wasn't doing the eerie silence thing again this time--Bonnie was still stalking around like a caged animal, though--but there was just something off about her that made Kiva's wings twitch with unease.

It also turned out she had more scars. The young woman's shirt was off, the bit of black fabric grasped in Bonnie's hands as she scowled at everything, and her pale back was absolutely covered in slash marks, stab marks, what looked like a bullet scar disturbingly close to her spine on her lower back, and what looked like a set of bite marks on her side from something of significant jaw size. Nerys didn't say a word about it, and Kiva didn't ask; she just worked on extending the tribal-style markings on her customer's arm to cover her back, like she'd been asked.

"...She's not a mutant, is she?"

Kiva blinked as she registered the question. "Who?"

Nerys gave an annoyed sigh. "The girl working the desk. Is she a mutant?"

She blinked again, stopping what she was doing for a moment. The 'girl working the desk' was Raven, the twin sister of one of the other artists who worked here. Decent enough at her job, knew a thing or two about tattoos herself, and...Well, there were a few people who came around solely just to see her and not to get any ink. All of them women.

The way Nerys was asking about her, though, made the scaled mutant very uncomfortable. There was something in her voice, in her inflection, that made her stretch her wings before she forced a smile and chuckle. "What? Looking for me to set you up on a date?" she joked in a desperate attempt to deflect the question and not have to state that Raven really wasn't a mutant.

Bonnie, instantly, went rigid at those words, and a low growl rumbled in her chest as she fixed her stare on Kiva. Nerys turned her head, looking over her shoulder with a single, glowing, yellow eye. Pure disgust coated her next words. "I have standards."

Those were the exactly wrong words for her to say, because Kiva set aside her needle and outright snarled back, "Watch it, Nerys. Maybe the joke was outta line, but she's my friend."

Bonnie's growl changed in volume at this, and the sound almost seemed to rattle in her chest as she took a couple of deliberate steps toward Kiva with sharp teeth bared. She tensed in response, half-expecting to be either punched or bitten, but Nerys raised her hand--burn scar on its palm and all--with a casual air. "Easy, Bon-Bon. Let's not make a scene."

The hyena mutant instantly stopped growling and relaxed her posture, but kept glaring. Nerys let out a sound that was almost like a giggle, before she settled again in a way that seemed to indicate that it was time for Kiva to continue the tattooing.

And there, right there, Kiva finally put her claw on what exactly was so creepy about Nerys...

May 1st

"What did she want this time?" Raven asked, leaning on her desk slightly, after a familiar dark-clothed figure and furred bodyguard were through the doors and thus out of earshot. She tucked a bit of hair--she'd just gotten red streaks added to the jet black strands yesterday, which admittedly looked pretty good on her--and looked genuinely nervous, a very uncommon expression on her these days.

Kiva frowned, silently promising to deck Nerys in the face if it turned out she was harassing Raven, Bonnie or no Bonnie. "She wanted the design extended to her collarbone," she explained, flexing her wings slightly.

"Why does she even bother if she wears that every day?" Raven commented, tapping her black-painted nails on the desk. "I'd understand if it meant something, but you're just giving her fancy patterns, right? No names or anything?" Kiva didn't even bother nodding to confirm this, as it seemed her friend was on a roll. "Do you even know what her mutation is? I keep feeling like she's trying to set me on fire when she looks at me, and I've slept with a pyrokinetic chick before so it's not like I'm just paranoid!"

Kiva sighed a little, glancing at the door. "Ra--"

"Seriously, what is her f****** problem?"

"Raven," Kiva said, raising her voice a little and making the gothic woman look up. She blinked a little as the scaled artist pointed a claw at the man who had just stepped in and was quietly standing there. "Customer."

Raven looked at him, giving a little, weak smile. It wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last, that she'd cussed in front of a customer, but Kiva knew Raven tended to prefer to do so knowingly. "Oh, uh, hey..."

Hopefully, this would be the end of the topic. And of those two coming around, since they were now officially Kiva's least favourite repeat customers.