Mutual Motivation 01

Story by: Sophiie93 and Leena Contrary to popular belief, mutations aren’t always blessings. You see, I was born a mutant of many comforts, perhaps too many. My father owned a car company that did pretty well for itself. “McLane’s Motors will treat you like family,” went the jingle. So we were well off enough that we never wanted for anything. Not only that, but our town was open minded enough that I should have been totally comfortable showing off my mutation to everyone. Should have… but that’s not how it worked out. You see, my mutation was small. The fetish community would call me a “futa” girl, progressives would call me intersex, but the most plain way of putting it was that I had two penises. They were easy to hide, even under something as revealing as a bikini. I never wanted to hide them. I mean, I was proud of who I was. How could I not be when everything around me was telling me to love and embrace myself. You couldn’t walk down the block in 2022 without a mutant pride flag being hung off a balcony. My family, on the other hand. Well, we looked like a model family on the outside, but that’s kind of the point. My dad built his dealership empire off of the image of being a “family” business. I was in his cheesy commercials when I was as young as five, rattling off one liners in the hopes that anyone watching would eat up my cuteness and open their wallets to buy whatever overpriced hunk of metal my dad was peddling these days. My face was on billboards as the “Jane McLane” the little car girl, a weird five minutes of fame to have but fame nonetheless. So you could imagine how concerned my dad was about his family’s outward appearance. I was kept on strict diets to remain thin and presentable for the cameras. My clothes were chosen for me. My hairstyle was chosen for me. And of course, I wasn’t supposed to let anyone know that I was a mutant. “It’s not that being a mutant is bad” my dad would say. “It’s that it just doesn’t fit our company’s image. Maybe if you had a more… publicly acceptable mutation things would be different but it’s just not professional to mention your private parts.” He made sense, a depressing amount of sense. I mean, if guys didn’t go around talking about how big their dicks were on camera, why should I? The only problem? Your random dude-bro eventually got off the clock. Work ended and they were able to go home, get drunk, and yeah, even brag about their penis to their bros… or at least that’s what I assume guys like that do. Guys are weird… Me? I had to keep it a secret at all times. Because if anyone found out, it could get to the press, and if it got to the press it caused problems for dad, and if it caused problems for dad, it caused problems for the business and hurt our entire family. “And you don’t want to hurt the family right pumpkin?” dad would say. No… I didn’t. But I don’t think he understood what this secrecy was doing to me. When I say he and mom were helicopter parents, I don’t think you understand how extreme they would get. I was never allowed to really get close to anyone, lest they figure out my secret. My friends were kept at an arms length, which meant they always faded. I was never able to get into a serious relationship. At one point I even considered surgery if it meant my family would let me get close to someone… anyone. How crazy is that? As I grew up, I realized how unhappy I was with my situation. I just wasn’t… me. I was always the “little car girl” even in my adulthood, the perfect picture of a commercial safe daughter. Everything was done for the sake of the little car girl, and frankly, I had no idea who I was without her. She was more real than me. I couldn’t keep living like that. So I left. Took a chance. I told my parents I was going to try and make it on my own. Of course they were against it, but they were controlling not evil. At the end of the day, I was an adult and I could do what I want. The plan was simple and stupid. I packed my bags and just moved cross country to the big city, a metropolitan paradise of mutant culture. I had a bit of savings to keep me going but that’s just about it. I was leaving my old life behind, dying my hair, changing my last name if I had to. The “little car girl” was dead. Finally, I could just be me. Well, no one ever tells you how stressful moving to a new city is, especially with no plan. Sure, my savings would keep me going for a while, but the constant anxiety of them running out and me having to go home crying to my dad haunted me. So, I got a job, the first job I was even remotely qualified for. If you took the train far enough in my city, you’d come to the beach. On the beach was a pier and on that pier was a small little amusement park, full of rides that constantly need tune-ups. Now, tuning up a tilt-a-whirl and tuning up a car were two different things, but I had just enough skills from helping out my dad around the dealership that I could futz my way through my first few days until I knew what I was doing. The pay wasn’t great and the workday was long, but it was my job, mine. It wasn’t chosen for me, it was something I chose to do. Honestly, the environment helped a bit. I would sit in the middle of the park on breaks, just people watching. Everyone seemed so comfortable in their own skin. Everyone except for me. My perfectly up-kept appearance clashed with my dirty coveralls. I wondered what it would take to be happy and smiling like them, to just be able to forget my worries and enjoy a corn dog and a nice roller coaster ride without worrying about who I appeared to be to other people. Even now I was so preoccupied with being someone different from who I used to be that it still didn’t feel natural. I was putting on an act, a carefully calculated act. At the end of the day I would grab my tools, head to the locker room, and get changed. I always waited until the room was totally clear of other employees. Old habits die hard I guess, and I still wasn’t ready for anyone to see me naked. I started working off the coveralls, my blouse drenched with sweat from the summer heat. I was about ready to slip them off my waist and change into my pants until I heard someone else enter the room. It was one of the mascots, someone in a huge panda costume. They went to a locker, humming a small tune muffled by their suit. I turned around and tried to look busy, biding the time till they left. “Sure is hot today,” said a feminine voice from behind me. “Oh, uh, yeah…” I said, barely acknowledging her. I felt a finger poke me in the shoulder. “Excuse me can I borrow a towel?” I turned around ready to shoo her away so I could continue getting changed. “Sorry I don’t have-… woah.” Standing before me was the most exotic woman I had ever seen. She had four thin and delicate arms, her nails perfectly sharp and manicured. She had long black hair with streaks of golden locks that swayed with her movements. She had a long tail swishing behind her that swayed with her perfectly curved hips. Her skin was covered with green scales, her eyes a reptilian yellow. On her chest were five breasts, perfect for her frame. My dad tried to keep me up to model standards but frankly, she blew me out of the water, and she hid it all behind a giant panda suit! “I’m sorry, are you OK?” she asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” “I- uh… I er… I just… uhm…” I stammered over myself stupidly. She laughed bringing her upper arms behind her head and stretching. “You’re the new mechanic right? Welcome to the park!” “Oh uh… th-thank you” I said, still tripping over my own words. I was a bit intimidated by her energy. “Yeah, it can get pretty hot out there. People assume I don’t sweat because, you know, the whole reptile thing. But I sweat just as much as the next girl.” She laughed a bit more. “The panda suit doesn’t help, so anyway, do you have a spare towel?” “Oh, I… I’m sorry I don’t really-” CLASH! CLANG! I heard my toolbox falling off a nearby bench. The lizard mutant jumped back with a shock. “Ah dammit! I’m sorry” she said grabbing her tail and bringing it in front of her. “Must have hit it with my tail, it kind of has a mind of it’s own. Let me get that for you.” She bent down and began picking up my assorted screwdrivers and wrenches. I tried my best not to stare at her ass as she did, but here was a totally naked mutant, just showing off her body to me here. How the heck do people become THIS comfortable with themselves! “I think that’s everything,” she said dumping the tools on a bench. They kind of fell all over the place. It wasn’t exactly any more helpful than leaving them lying on the floor, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “I’m Elena,” she said extending one hand to me while another played with a lock of her hair. “Nice to meet you, I look forward to many good days working with you. Well… I guess I don’t actually work with you, technically. You know I’m not a mechanic or anything. That’s WAY out of my skill set. But if you ever need encouragement or just someone to get you a hot dog come lunch time, you can count on me! No one better. Of course, I’ll be in the panda suit. It’s a bit hard to carry things in it, but I’d manage. There was this one time, when I spilled a whole milkshake all over it and…” She just kept talking, rattling off experience after experience she had at the park. There was a time her costume got stuck in the gears of the Ferris Wheel. The time a four year old threw up in her lap. The time she got stuck in her costume and had to take a rideshare home. Eventually they all kind of merged together until. “So what’s your name?” “Huh?” I asked, kind of in a daze from her torrent of stories. “I said, what’s your name? Sorry, did I lose you there? I have a habit of talking too much.” “Oh… Jane. It’s Jane…” I said. I considered giving a false name for a second. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to still go by Jane. I mean, was Jane really me or was I- “Well Jane!, you’ve broken the record,” Elena said, snapping me out of my inner thoughts. “What record?” I asked. “You’ve lasted more than two minutes without mentioning something about how I look, good job,” she said with a plastered on smile that I got the feeling she had trained for use in her day to day life. “What? Wait? Should I have?” I said, unable to read the obvious context of the conversation. “Hah! Are you being serious?” she said. “Plenty of people get scared of me. I mean, look at me. Lizard woman? Dragon woman? Crocodile woman? I’ve gotten them all.” “In this city?” I said. “I thought this place was pretty accepting of mutants.” “Oh, are you new here? I mean, even in the most accepting towns on earth, there are always going to be people that stare at you like some sideshow freak. Plus it’s still harder for girls with mutations to get work than plain old human girls. Honestly, this costume is a life saver. No one cares what I look like underneath it.” “Are you serious?” I said with a genuine terror in my voice. Maybe choosing to “come out” as a mutant on this big trip to find myself wasn’t going to be as easy than I thought. “Yeeeah,” she said sitting on a locker room bench. “I’ve been looking for a better job ya know. Mascot performing doesn’t exactly pay well. But I gotta eat in the meantime, and I don’t exactly have too many skills. Plus every time I interview I keep getting the dreaded ‘we’ll be in touch.’” She gestured with air quotes with all four of her hands. “You never get callbacks from those.” “Isn’t not hiring you because of a mutation against the law?” I innocently asked. “I mean sure it is, but how are you gonna prove it? They can just say I wasn’t qualified enough, and that covers their asses.” She laughed a bit. “I mean, whatever. This job is good for the time being. The panda suit lets me be who I am. I mean sure I’m supposed to be playing a character out there, but it’s just me for the most part. And people don’t get worried about seeing the lizard girl run up to them with ice cream. Though the puke stained panda might be equally as scary.” “It’s just so weird that people would discriminate against a mutant as beautiful as-” Oh no. Oh no did I actually say that? Oh crap. Elena’s eyes are going wide. Her cheeks are a dark green. Is she blushing? God how could I have said something so stupid!? “I… I didn’t mean… I mean not that you aren’t beautiful.. I just…” “I think I’m going to go take a shower before I go home!” Elena said suddenly, jumping up from the bench, her tail knocking over my tools again as she did. She walked stiffly to the showers and said “gotta go, nice meeting you, bye!” without even turning her head. Before she pulled the curtain shut she stopped for a second and said “s-see you tomorrow” before turning the water on full blast. The sound of it was enough to drown out a million apologies. God I’m such a dumb ass. I went to picking up my tools and took this opportunity to finally change out of my coveralls. I thought about what Elena said, about how hard it was to get a job. Then I thought about the savings I had, bought with years and years of ad money from my father’s dealership. The savings I got as Jane McLane, the little car girl. I suppose, I really got a head start on “finding myself.” Some mutants weren’t nearly as lucky. Maybe I shouldn’t complain about my life so much. I packed up my tools, changed into my street clothes and thought about saying goodbye to Elena before I left… but… honestly it was too awkward. Besides, there was plenty of time tomorrow to stumble over my words all over again.