Darkshift found herself alone, in the early hours of the morning, in the back alleys of New York City.  It wouldn't be done for a few hours yet.  It was the third time this week she had found herself in such places, taking a page out of her mentor Aura's books.  There was so much violence upon these streets, so much gang warfare and death.  So many mutants who were forced to the streets and had to endure such things.  It wasn't fare and the cops didn't seem to care much about it.  Someone had to care and that someone was going to be her.

Her body covered in the thick, black, protective scales of a komodo dragon, she blended almost perfectly into the night and with every expedition of this sort she went on, she became ever more adept at silencing her every movement.  As always, the ends of her fingers were tipped with vicious cat claws.  Her face resembled that of a panther.  Anything with big teeth, she had found, was a boon when it came to intimidation and if she could intimidate instead of fight, well, that was better.  If it came to a fight, she was more than prepared to do what needed doing.

So far the night had been a quiet one and she was considering ending her patrol early when she came upon a group of people beating on someone.  From her vantage point, there was no way to know if the unfortunate victim was a mutant or not, but either way she knew she would be doing good by saving them.  Not all humans were bad and that meant many were worth saving.  If the police weren't willing to take on these streets then she would do it for them.  Her own way.

A pipe clattered against concrete somewhere off to the panther woman's right. There was a sound of shoes scuffing street. A fence rattled. A cat hissed at the night. One of the thugs knocked over a trash can, and paused their beating to frown down at their brand new Pixies hoodie that had gotten covered in garbage. It could have been worse, he thought. It could have been a Garbage hoodie covered in pixies...

Aside from Mr. Introspective garbage hoodie, there were four other thugs. If there had been five, this might have been a challenge. It wasn't every day he went about in the night, breaking up muggings. It was actually a relatively new development. More of a whim than anything permanent. Spur of the moment vigilantism. But hell. If someone else wasn't standing literally a few feet away, contemplating helping the people, someone else really needed to. There was too much good money involved in the act.

His feet hit the pavement and he took the first guy in a blur of movement, metal sticks in his hands flashing as they struck knees, arms, and guts. The first guy didn't even get a chance to scream before he wound up in the gutter. Then, he screamed. Profanity erupted. The person curled in the fetal position on the ground looked up nervously to see what the hell was happening? She looked up just in time to see the second guy get hit on both sides of his head by dual escrima sticks. Introspective Hoodie turned towards the guy and pulled a gun.

"What the hell are you!?" He muttered. A really good question, actually. The guy beating up two of his friends was a tall green alien-looking man with red eyes and a unique amount of fingers on each hand, and He was wearing a lot of black. One of the sticks flew out to clatter against the guy's gun hand and knock the pistol out of his grip. The guys to his left and right drew knives. One knife lit up like it was covered in fire. That guy's eyes glowed orange. The other one's knife wasn't actually something he'd had on his person five seconds prior. It looked like he'd simply willed light into a form. The knife was green.

"What the hell!?" The long-haired blonde girl on the ground shouted. There were a lot of what the hells this evening, it seemed.

(( OOC: Hope that was alright! I wanted a cool entrance, and you gave me all those nice thugs to beat senseless. ))

(OOC: All good.)

A count of her prey numbered 5.  Even as a mutant against humans, 5 was a challenging number.  Especially if any of the 5 had weapons and, lets face it, thugs like those were likely to have weapons.  Surprise would be her best weapon in this situation; if she could take out a couple of them before the rest knew what was happening she'd stand a good shot of taking out the rest.  She grinned toothily to herself from her hiding place.  Maybe on a subconscious level she desired danger and injury to herself, but she couldn't' help thinking that this was going to be fun.

As Darkshift prepared to pounce, suddenly she wasn't the only mutant in the vicinity nor the only one whose target was the gang of thugs.  A green creature erupted from the night, complete with swinging sticks that collided repeatedly with their intended targets.  Clearly the mutant had some skill with his chosen weapons and clearly he had taken their foes by complete surprise.  Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, it her her turn to act and take advantage of the most adventitious distraction.

With a growl, not quite the proper feral growl of a large cat as her vocal chords remained human, claws flashed and dug deep into the arm of the nearest thug.  The shriek of pain and surprise was expected.  The blood solidifying into an armor that began growing from his wound and spread across his body was not.  "God damn it!"  Either these were M freaks or mutants.  Either way, this was not quite the battle she had been anticipating.  Good thing she had help.  The girl they were saving looked terrified and who could blame her?

Three on one turned to three on two quicker than you could say "What the hell is that?!" Pixies hoodie cursed as claws came out of the darkness to slash at his arm, but the cursing was brief. His mutant power had kicked in. Pain was a part of it, and to be expected. Still, he hated using it. It freaking hurt. First it was an inch of blood armor, then it was a foot of armor crawling up his right arm like a spiky armor of clay. A bit of blood hit the pavement with an audible sound of pottery on concrete. It shattered into tiny chunks. Pixies hoodie held up the injured arm, glaring at it, and through it, to the being beyond.

"God damn it," he muttered. "You cut up my favorite sweatshirt. Freaking lizard cat. What the hell even are you?! Butch? Cassidy. You okay?"

The flaming knife thug rushed at panther dragon mutant woman without a word, and let that be his answer. Green knife person hurled his at green-skinned mutant, and uttered an "Uh, duh!" reply.

The flaming knife came in at a downward angle, held ice-pick style in the creep's hand. The blade's edge faced outwards, away from him, towards his target. Many might have thought such a technique sloppy, the mark of an amateur. And in most cases, they might be right. But this guy knew what he was doing. He even knew to cap the pommel with his thumb when he stabbed, to prevent the slipping of the blade when it struck solid objects.

Elliott rushed backwards a step and let the knife clatter worthlessly against the wall. It vanished as it hit, but he didn't notice because he was already running to retrieve his metal stick. Another green knife lanced through the darkness to hit the ground bare fractions of an inch from where he'd ducked to grab his metal weapon. Elliott looked up at Green Knife Man, and bared his teeth in a dangerous zipper-like smile.

Mutants shouldn't be fighting mutants.  Those were the words Darkshift wanted to yell out at the thugs but, of course, she had been the aggressor in this little dance of theirs.  She also wanted to yell out that that mutants shouldn't be beating on or raping young, defenseless girls but as someone who skirted the bounds of the law frequently (or downright broke those bounds), it seemed a tad hypocritical.  Still, while a thief she wasn't a rapist or a killer and she didn't do any more damage than was strictly necessary.  Besides, she had standards.  Rich ones.  That wouldn't miss a few hundred pilfered dollars.

Grinning at blood boy's words, she retorted, "I could ask the same of you."  Armor meant a change of plan and bigger claws.  Sleek cat claws transformed themselves into the over-sized ripping talons of an eagle.  She might have run at her target then but in the corner of her eye, she spotted a flaming blade swiftly propelled towards the crook of her neck and shoulder.  Cursing, the threw herself to the side and the blade barely missed her.  She could feel the heat from the flames as they brushed up against her scales.  

Two on one against mere humans would have been no challenge at all.  Two super-powered mutants against one was a much more significant threat.  Trial by fire, so to speak.  Here was her opportunity to prove that she was worth the funds Aura was giving her to work for the Order.

As fire blade ran at her, Darkshift waited for her moment.  Once in range, a black monkey tail sprouted from her tailbone.  She crouched low and used it to trip him.  Spinning, her knew eagle claws dug into red blood armor.  She felt them penetrate the armor, but just barely and this time it was his turn to curse.  He was going to be a challenge.

Meanwhile, Elliott was fighting a door to door knives salesman. Felt like it, anyways. He kept throwing out new knives and producing more. "It slices! It dices! It, uh, what's that broad's name that means matchstick carrot slices?"

"Julliene's." Elliott said through gritted teeth.

"Nope. Think it's Shirley Temple's." Knife guy replied. "Anywho, here's a butcher knife!!"

And then a great big green claymore was flying through the air at Elliott's head. That wasn't a butcher's knife. Butch. Cassidy. Whatever this guy's name was. He was a bit off his rocker. A few matchsticks short of a julliene cut carrot. The green-skinned mutant ducked under the claymore, into a crouch. A moment later, he launched himself at green-knife guy in a furious springing punch. The uppercut caught the guy's chin and sent him spinning backwards into several hundred pounds of garbage bags by the dumpster. Elliott suppressed the urge to shout 'Shoryuken!' and tore his attention back to the remaining two men. He noticed his mystery helper for the very first time.

When he'd ducked and punched, Elliott had switched one of his sticks to rest in his free hand with the other. He switched that one back to his right hand as he watched the fight for a moment. "That explains why they didn't stab me in the back, then." He stated.

Blood guy paused in his fight with panther girl to shove a blood-armored fist at her chest. As it went, the blood surged forwards to make a blade. The blade looked an awful lot like an Energy Sword from the Halo video game series, but Elliott figured that was just a coincidence rather than copyright infringement. It wasn't blue. It was red. Different.

Occupied as she was with her own dual threats, Darkshift wasn't able to properly pay attention to her green ally's conflict.  She did, however, hear his witty retorts.  Something she would have to work on, some distant part of her brain that was not presently occupied with problems of her own survival, informed her.  Wasn't that a sign of all proper vigilante super heroes?

Of course blood guy would be able to form blades as well as armor from his own blood.  Why would he not?  Because that was just the sort of luck she was having tonight.  Bad luck.  God damn it, why did she have to choose mutants to practice her super-heroing on?  

Fire blade picked himself off the ground and turned his attention back to her.  "Bitch," he spat, venom in his voice, before charging.  His blade blade crackled as he swung it towards her head.  He was the logical choice to dispatch of first since he didn't appear to have any armor to protect him.  Once again ducking the blade, her claws struck home leaving 5 deep and bloody fissures across his side.  He howled in pain.  Score!  

Focused as she was on fire sword, Darkshift wasn't quite fast enough to dodge the blood blade her second foe swung towards her.  It struck her scales and penetrated, digging into the tender flesh of her shoulder.  Damn.  Blood began dripping though not nearly so fast as if she were protected by weak human flesh.

It would have been incredibly rude if he'd just stood there with his chin held, contemplating the fight and not doing anything. Incredibly rude. Just standing there, one elbow propped on an arm held against his chest, that hand on his chin, keeping his head in place so he could nod, think, nod again, watch. So very rude. Not to do anything. At all. Yep. Which was why he decided to help.

He didn't want to butt in on the woman's fight TOO much. She seemed to be doing alright, minus the shoulder wound and the bleeding. Two on one wasn't really all that fair, and to stand up to that was pretty boss. Blood armor had his bloody blood blade. Flame-boy was cut and screaming. Elliott certainly had a choice of targets. He decided to leave armor to her, since she had a pretty good reason for wanting him down.

It wasn't very far between flame knife and Elliott, and flame knife was focused on his injury, so when the foot came snapping up to get him in the bread basket, he was ill-prepared. He hit brick wall and the fire on his knife winked out. It clattered against the alley bottom and stopped moving. Once Elliott was sure fire knife and green guy and anyone else was unconscious, he turned his attention to panther claw's fight. He'd chip in... if she even needed the help.

As if Darkshift wasn't angry enough, the sign of her own blooded upped the anti.  How dare these thugs be mutants and how dare they force her to act against her own kind?  It wasn't right.  It wasn't right, she didn't like it and, damn it, she didn't have to like it either!  She'd show these mutant, upstart, wannabe thugs who was a proper super-hero and who was a henchmen to be beaten down and tied up!

Out of the periphery of her vision, she noticed her alien ally occupy the attention of flaming knife guy.  Good, that meant she could focus on her real threat and the cause of her currently aching shoulder.  Clearly slashing him wasn't all that effective since all that resulted was either more blood armor forming or barely penetrating the blood armor at all.  Thus, a change of technique was in order.

Once again she waited for her opponent to come close to her and this time he was clearly getting cocky.  "Not so tough now that your bleeding, are you girl?" he taunted.  Well, that suited her purposes just fine.  

"Tough enough."  Almost there and, just as he swung his blade at her head, she ducked under it and began flowing into an attack of her own.  Mid swing her claws melted and a hoof covering her entire hand replaced them.  Her boxing lessons paid off when hoof struck head with a satisfying thump and blood armor guy crumpled to the ground, unconscious.  "Yes!"  Now that was what victory tasted like.  And it was delicious.

He had never seen a horse hoofed mutant panther claw girl with scales clock a bloody armored thug in a pixies hoodie, but there was always a first time for everything. It just wasn't a very common first time. Moving on.

The girl rose to her feet, and as she did, lost her balance. Elliott caught her in his arms, dropping the sticks with a metallic clang as he rushed to her side. "Whoa there. Easy," he said soothingly. She was trying to overdo it. They'd been attacking her and she didn't need to rush to her feet so soon. Especially not before she paid for her rescue. He opened his mouth to say something to that effect, but the words froze in his inhuman throat. Her eyes really were blue, even though she'd been crying. He settled for holding her steady until she recovered from her daze.

The sounds of the city went on behind them, completely usual. Nobody had called the police. Ther were no more than the usual amount of sirens on a night in New York. Traffic honked and rumbled, or just stood still. People swore and stumbled. Electricity ran through telephone wires and the ground.

"You saved me," she managed finally. Her eyes fell on the person not too far away, the obvious mutant, and narrowed. " Both of you." Come to think of it, Elliott wasn't normal looking either. She did not seem to care.

Again, he wanted to chime to in something like 'that'll be $20,' but he held it back. Maybe there wasn't good money in rescues after all.