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Kiva's smile became more prominent at the young man's reaction, or rather lack thereof, to her appearance as he simply answered her question. She tilted her head to one side slightly as he showed her the hummingbird, studying it. Wow, whoever had done that was talented beyond belief; it looked like it was ready to leap off of his skin and fly around the room. The fact that it was a little pink hummingbird on a guy was something that did register in her mind, but not something she considered worth giving much thought.

Gender stereotypes were for losers.

The idea of doing a skeletal fish, which she knew was one of the few things not covered by the numerous designs she'd filled the books with, practically made her giddy on the inside. She loved doing custom designs. She didn't get a chance to reply, however, because that was the moment the young man's female friend promptly freaked out.

The outburst made one of Kiva's wings twitch in a very understated expression of a flight reflex, but then she just gave the long-haired woman an exasperated stare, right up until she apologized. She didn't normally get apologies, and the dragon-like mutant's expression softened as she forced a weak chuckle. "Don't worry about it, hun. I'm used to it." She gave a little casual wave of her clawed hand for emphasis, more than willing to pretend it hadn't happened.

A certain other person in this parlor had had roughly the same reaction when they met, after all; Raven was making a valiant attempt at looking like she was fully engrossed in the book in front of her and not noticing anything going on, lest she make eye contact and it be considered an invitation to mention said event.

"Anyway..." Kiva looked at the redheaded guy again. "I'm assuming you mean something more 'killer skeleton'--" One of her wings jerked in the direction of the skeletal dog image on the wall. "--Than an accurate set of fish bones? Did you want it to be doing anything it particular in relation to the hummingbird?" If he wanted it to be facing toward, facing away, trying to eat it, fleeing in terror of it, or whatever, she needed to know ahead of time. Not that she wasn't going to sketch out some images for him before even starting to put ink to skin, of course.

As for the woman, Kiva looked back at her and asked, "Did you want anything fancy with the lettering? I can do a pretty cool pseudo-medieval style, or a pointed-edged goth one...or, well, pretty much anything." She didn't get to do words all that often, and it was fun when she did.

Suddenly there was a complete stranger right there talking to her. Kiva didn't outright jump, despite the fact that she hadn't heard the person walking up to her due to being focused on the page of her sketchbook, but her head snapped up part-way through the first sentence and she found herself blinking at the young woman as her mind tripped over itself to register what she was saying.

She wanted to watch? Or help? Kiva looked at the girl. She was small, human-looking, and young. Teenager young. And she wanted to sit next to the random muscular scaly woman. Oh wait, she said she used to draw too. Okay, fellow artist. That made more sense, at least. Maybe a fellow mutant, too? That'd also make a little more sense. Still, she was mentally knocked off balance by being suddenly thrust into social interaction.

"...Hi," she said, as her mind switched gears to coming up with some sort of reply. "Uh, no, I don't mind," she added as she willed herself to be coherent. "I'm just working on something, for someone. A friend of mine. Hitting artist's block, is all..."

"Are you a mutant, too, or just friendly?" she blurted a second after she trailed off the previous sentence, instantly mentally flinching afterward. That was both very awkward and possibly potentially insulting. Still, she was covered in bronze scales, had claws on her hands, had little spikes on her lower jaw, and had wings. There was no mistaking Kiva for anything but a mutant, and non-mutants did not tend to just stroll up to her for a chat.

Confused awkwardness aside, though, she did appreciate the company. In fact, she found herself considering the offer of help, imagining for a moment how this girl would look like with a pair of wings as one of her forest sprites.

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."

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.

Kiva hadn't expected the gate to open, and she looked up in surprise at the teenager as she introduced herself. While she had no idea what sort of precautions were being taken around here, Kiva had a distinct feeling that Serena may not have been supposed to do that, and so she stood where she was, making no move to attempt to enter. The warm, comforting words she'd been offered were doing little to improve her current emotional state, at least partly because they were coming from someone likely a good seven years her junior.

The little joke, however, did help. A smile came to her face and a chuckle, manifesting as a deep rumble in her chest, escaped her. "Oh, I'm sure I've seen worse," she commented. "My family's Irish." Well, half of it, at any rate. Her mother's side of her family were big on attitude, eccentricity, and appetite. Christmas every year, when she went home, was always great fun and resulted in enough food to feed a small army.

That seemed a world away from the here and now, however. Kiva touched the claw on her pointer finger to one of the small, blunt, black spikes on her lower jaw, tapping it lightly a couple of times in a nervous habit she'd developed not long after said spikes emerged. "It's...nice to meet you, Serena," she said, "It's nice to see a friendly face."

There was a vague desire to give the blonde girl a hug, one that Kiva suppressed. It wasn't a comfort-seeking impulse, but one brought on simply because Serena was being so nice to her and further reminding her of her little sister back across the border. The main reason she was holding herself back was because few reacted well to a sudden bear hug from a big, scaly monster like her.

The engine of Drake's large black motorcycle, the Manticore, roared in her ears. She was racing far, far above the speed limit, but there were greater concerns right now. The bronze-scaled woman had barely been able to jam on her helmet fast enough, her poor leather jacket and sketchbook left behind as her wings flared out behind her, making her dragon nature obvious to all onlookers who managed to catch a good enough glimpse at the mass of black and bronze roaring down the street.

The attack on Gina? That was no accident.

The words of the mutant reporter echoed in her ears. She couldn't shut it out, even with the wind whipping pass her and the Manticore's roars. Her clawed hands had the handlebars in a death grip that would have turned her knuckles white if she'd had human skin.

Do you know what they said? That they didn't need help from a freak like me. That if I told anyone what they'd done, they'd kill me. They said they were untouchable.

She had never enrolled in Xavier's Sister School for Gifted Youngsters. She'd gone to public school in Manitoba, had attended a 'proper' art school here in New York. She'd never taken charity for what she was, had never sought a safe haven before. She was determined to live on her own, to never let her mutant skin define her entire life.

Right at this moment, she was determined to throw all of that bulls*** out of the window. For the first time in a long time, Kiva Angelique Lynette Augillard was terrified out of her mind.

That time with the five thugs and the knives, that had been unpleasant, but expected. There were always a few judgmental, violent, angry idiots. This...this was something altogether different. Things had rapidly spiraled out of control and she was terrified of getting caught in the crossfire...of leading all this back to her human friends...to her aunt...She needed to hide.

I think humanity just tipped things to burn this city down.

Kiva screeched to a stop at the gates, leaving behind a prominent mark as she skidded to a halt. She dismounted and nearly threw her helmet off, then stood there as the adrenaline surged through her system and she breathed heavily, as if she'd just run a marathon. They'd take her in, right? They had to. They just...they had to...