Putting on Stripes (Manfish)

Tonight should have been a night like any other.  If Darkshift had been a sane human being (or mutant, for that matter) it would have been.  She would have been at home or lurking the shadows waiting to mug someone or otherwise doing something out of the public eye.  Street punk she might be, but even so she preferred to stick to the shadows.

Tonight was not a normal night, however.  Blame Aura, her new employer, for that one.  Something about helping mutants who couldn't help themselves.  Something else about being proud of being a mutant and coming out of the shadows because they more mutants who were open and proud the fewer mutants there would be who would need the kind of help she and Aura and Aura's Order could offer.  She loved being a mutant.  She loved her powers.  She didn't love using her powers in public.

But it was kind of her responsibility now, wasn't it?  In joining the Order, she stood for something that went beyond making money and having fun.  Mutant vigilante super hero is what she'd begun calling herself inside her own head, mostly in jest, but somehow jest had come to mean something a little more serious.  Damn this whole morals and values thing anyway, it just made things complicated!  Life was simpler when profit and fun were the only things that mattered.

So, around 10 at night and covered in pitch black scales, Darkshift walked into one of the local coffee shops, mutant status on display or all to see.  People stared.  She felt uncomfortable inside her own skin.  Her skin itched with the discomfort and she wanted nothing more than to turn tail and run in the other direction, back to the safety of her own home and her nice, normal human skin.  But she couldn't do that.  Nope.  Not an option.  Stubborn as she was, she ignored the stares and the play of anxieties within her own head, walked through the door and into the lineup to get herself a coffee.