Ultra Deviance (Work in Prog)

St. Priscilla's Hidden #1.a - S

Threads (Part 1)

Where was this fooker? Satin twitched his fingers, feeling the yarn dance around them as he used his Power. It brought him a certain sense of peace whilst waiting in this slum, which reminded him of home, in the worst way possible. He leaned against the street pole. Its coldness was felt through his trenchcoat.
Damn him. He's lucky I need the bloody job.
His eyes darted around the streets. He saw the filth picking filth from the ground. A big bugger followed by a few little ones. They were swarming these days. Fookin' disgusting.
Undesirables, they called them. Right fookin' proper that name was. Why do they let these things live? For utility work? Ten percent of their parents' ability, wasn't it? What a fookin' joke.
He wondered how many of the things he could kill with his power before his client showed up. Maybe three. Four? Perhaps he could-
"You're the Night Operator I hired?"
"Fookin' cu-You sneak up on me like that? Fookin' why?" He never got angry anymore, but he did still get surprised unfortunately. He stopped his Power from killing his client and had the red yarn just play dead on his waistcoat.
Satin was taken aback by the sudden closeness of the man who had approached him. He was clean. Definitely not local. The shite-hole location must've been to keep their meeting out of sight and out of mind. His hair and beard were long but well-groomed. He wore the kind of specs that made him look like one of those annoying bookish wankers. He reminded Satin of the teachers he'd been kicking the shite out of since he was fourteen.
"Apologies. So..." The man pushed up his glasses.
"Yes! I'm your fookin' man, alright? I got ya shite."
"Your accent, you're from Watshire?" The man inquired.
"Sure." Satin shrugged. "You got me fookin' monies?"
"Yes, I do." He transferred over the credits and Satin passed him the folder.
"Excellanté, as the Gaunchies say. Oy, tell me somethin'?"
     The man sighed. "Yes?"
     "What's a right proper bloke like yourself doing hirin' Night Operators? Not that I'm complanin'. Business has never been better."
     "There's something I...and a few associates of mine have to do...that would not be acceptable in the eyes of our corporate overlords." Satin wondered what kind of shite such a stick-up-the-arse could be up to. But Satin did little wondering these days, and the curious imaginations were swiftly gone.
     "Hah! I look forward to hearing about whatever ya got plotted in the papers. Or however you people get ya news around here." Satin said with a smile.
     "If all goes well... you won't hear about it all. Thank you for your work. I do hope... no one perished in the obtaining of this information." The stuffed shirt looked around.
     "You don't have to be so uptight 'bout it. Not like this lot can even understand you." He glanced to the filth picking at garbage.
     "I would prefer discretion. But I can't help but notice you didn't address my concerns."
     "Fookin' what concerns? That I offed some arseholes to get a folder filled? No fib, I wish. But we Night Operators run things with a tight leash, nothin' gets done without adherence to the rules."
     "Alright. I believe you." The man said with some reluctance. "May I inquire as to what those rules are?"
    "Same ones as the CamaKilla back home."
     "The legalized assassin organization?"
     "Very same. Some nice people there."        
     "The assassins?"
     "Oy, it ain't murder all the time." Satin guffawed.
     "I suppose not."
     There was a brief and terrible awkward silence.
     "Well, that's it then. I'm gettin' the fook outta..." He gesticulated around the slum. "Whatever this shite is." He stood from the pole and began his journey to the rendezvous.
     "Um, goodbye." The man said more like an afterthought.
     Satin didn't respond.
     He could've taken to the roofs, but he chose the alleys. It was the scent. That stench of home, that nostalgia or homesickness, was just too powerful in the end. But his eyes, unlike his nose, did not deceive him. Whereas the grimy and dodgy back alleys and passages of Autminster were filled with thin whores and pissy pot-bellied drunks, the ones here had ugly, misshapen things, not quite humayn enough. He saw a gangly woman with uneven set of stubby horns, not fit to pop a zit, much less an eyeball. A sickly man with a crab claw instead of a left hand, it clicked inconsistently, irritating Satin so much he pushed on with a quickened pace. Click-click-behind him it went. Every one of them pale and sickly, ugly and filthy, that nasty black UND tattoo that marked their lot in life wasn't even put on in a designated area, some had it on their cheeks, others on their foreheads, one sorry bloke in his left eye, right on the whites of the eye, over the iris, rendering it pink and blind. The lot of them all seemed to be vaguely moving in the same direction in their zombie gait.
     "Oy!" He asked the pink-eye. "What's the lineup for?"
     "Ohh..." He stank worse when he opened his mouth, toxins spewing out most like. "The D...W...R. The Desired Worker Registry. Where we get our work."     
     "Ohh!" Satin radiated shock. "That's so nice!"
     The pink-eye nodded stupidly.
     "Eh, got a Power?" Satin smiled.
     "I can uh, make bubbles."
     "Oh really?" He stretched out the last word as he tilted his head. "You must certainly show me, sir."
     "H-Hey, leave him alone." A female with half a beak where her nose ought to be stutter-squawked.
     "Mind ya own damn business, bird. Get a job." He snarled at her, she gulped and backed away slightly, her tattoo creased with the head it was branded on. "Keep ya damn head down. Out of sight, out of mind, ya hear?" She did as he commanded. Justly so.
     The pink-eye seemed a little worried despite his lack of wits. "Okay." He exhaled. "I'll show you, but away from here. I don't want nobody getting hurt for nothing."
     "Ebed, you'll lose ur spot in line...your brotha.." A hairy one behind the pink-eye failed to whisper with their rumble of a voice.
    "It's okay, man. It's all good."
     "Perfect. Lead the way."
     The pink-eye grinned as he patted the hairy mass and guided Satin down the alley, taking a turn to a dead end. The undie wasted no time as he motioned slowly with his hand, as if dragging the limb against an invisible surface, sweat beating, lost in focus.
     Before Satin could wonder if his time and energy was wasted, he saw that between his dirty fingers was a clear, sticky substance that made his hand looked webbed. As he motioned with it, unwieldy large and shaky bubbles did indeed form and separate from them. They were too heavy to float though, and when they fell to the ground they did not pop or disappear, simply sagging onto the ground like a used rubber johnny.
     "Amazing!" Satin clapped.
     The pink-eye gave a sigh of relief. "Can I go n-"
     "Wanna know mine?" Satin shot the yarn wrapped around his finger at the pink-eye, he threw his arms up but it was too late, it danced along his shoulder to his neck, giving it a big hug. He kicked the undie so his back hit the wall as his hands grasped vainly at the yarn, desperately trying to break free.
    "Wool Manipulation." He spat.
    "W-What?" He rasped.
    "That's my UD Power. Can ya believe it? Fookin' wool. Wool. Yarn. String. What a fookin' joke. How could ya not laugh? Was I gonna knit everyone a sweater?"
    Satin chuckled slightly as he put his hand beside the struggling undie's head and leaned in, whispering into his dirty ear.
    "When I was a guttersnipe... Saw a shadow butterfly dancing on me wall once, the most beautiful thing I ever fookin' saw... in my whole shite life... but then it hit me. All the magick in that moment... was just made by me waving hand..."
    "Y-You.. are evil!" Undie gasped. "Gods.. will.. punish-"
    Satin cackled.
"Gods? That's a right laugh. They're not lookin' down on you, undie. No one is." He smiled as the thing's eyes bulged when he tightened the pressure.