A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, D80 – write an OC-centric fic.

Bangka's Tin Boy

A Spiel on Contractor Powers

Contractor powers could often be quite silly. Not silly in the sense that they were totally useless – though some of them might well be. A lot more of them, probably, if some sort of group or syndicate or even some government agency didn't keep finding ways of making them useful. But, hey. They were self-preserving. Doing anything they had to in order to survive.

But, seriously. Considering it cost them their humanity and ended up with them having a nice hefty sum on their heads, the least the stars could have done for them was make these powers at least a little convenient. Okay, some had the luck of being able to pull something off no matter what circumstance they were in…maybe? Truthfully, he wasn't sure. He'd never met anyone who didn't have some sort of catch to deal with. Aside from their remuneration, of course. And most of those just plain sucked.

Though he had to admit that, watching the guy next to him snap his fingers one by one, that some remunerations were better than others. Like the woman on the other side unbuttoning her top and then rebuttoning it, giving the males in the room a flash peak at her cleavage. Didn't have to be her top, she'd explained one time. Could just be the buttons around the wrist of a shirt. But why not the top?

Her power was unravelling cloth, knots, that sort of thing. Only certain cloths. Certain weaves. Certain knots. Done a certain way. Pretty limited. Handy enough in undercover missions. Making holes in clothing to check for recording devices and such. Or making holes in bags to make things start spilling out. Or unwinding knots that they would have to otherwise cut, therefore confusing the poor sap who'd come along and see something missing, something wrong. Really, tossing secrecy aside they could just as well use a knife – but she wouldn't stand for that. She had to be useful to keep on living, after all.

His power was arguably more handy and less easily replaced. He could change the shape and distribution of metal, so long as he had direct contact with it. His remuneration was to bleed – which was fine because he could just poke his finger and be done with it – assuming he wasn't bleeding already because he'd been in a fight – but rather annoying and a little painful. But he had to be in direct contact so timing was a right god there. And he had to know the relative composition to be able to change it. And he had to stay in contact for long enough.

And sometimes the elements on their own were toxic and he had to deal with that. Especially if he made a mistake and accidentally extracted quicksilver from something or other. Mercury poisoning wasn't the way he planned on dying. With his luck, he could well wind up dying from that. More likely that than running out of places to poke for blood. Or getting cut up because they were in the middle of some stupid mission, almost getting themselves killed so they could walk out, alive, at the end of it. A bit of a walking paradox. But that's what Contractors had been reduced to.

And it was a pretty silly name for them. Contractors. As if they'd had a choice.

As if the name mattered, when the names they'd been born with had been stripped from them, replaced by numbers and flimsy little codes that didn't mean much at all. Just an identity sticker. MO-044.

But yeah. Metal. It would be all fine and dandy if he could pretend to be a normal human and not get involved in such things. He had no desire to go around transforming metals – okay, that was a lie. He did have a desire. Every Contractor did. That yearning to use their power. That impossible grip it had over them. Otherwise they would be able to escape the gaze of the government and others scared and greedy for power. They'd be able to live in peace, pretending to be like the rest of the humans, just not as foolish.

They wouldn't be reduced to weapons.

Emotions. Sentiments like love and kindness and self-sacrifice. That was what differentiated a human from a Contractor. Self-preservation. Desire. Free will. That was what differentiated a Contractor from a weapon.

And the higher powers looked everywhere for a weapon.

Unfortunately, his power had stood out. The woman who undid knots – it was more her day job, her position with the government, that did it. For him, it was the Contract he'd never signed but got saddled with anyway. Enough to be blackmailed out from the middle east in to the centre of Japan – because if he had this power to change metals, of course he was using it to speed up the refinement of ore and cutting labour costs, or turning lead in to gold or something stupid like that –

As if anyone, even Contractors, could turn lead in to gold. That would happen the day someone brought the dead back to life. Or the day after. Or the day before.

And how it required at least a drop of blood every time he used that power. Almost as if it was draining his life's force away. Poetic. And cruel.

He'd been just young enough to still dream of getting out of that harsh labouring life under the thumb of richer nations who paid a pretty penny for tin when the sky had changed. When the true stars had vanished, replaced by a fake sky. But he hadn't known it that night. He'd only seen the meteors and the clump of soil and tin he'd been digging separate into pure tin and soil with everything else. He might have been thinking how much easier it would be if they could just suck the tin out of the soil without having to dig until they had blisters in their palms.

That had been ten years ago and back in Bangka, in Indonesia. That was back before the world powers like America and Japan and Russia had gone seeking Contractors that would be of help in their little power struggle. That was even before Contractors had existed, before they'd been given a name and branded like they weren't human, like they were weapons. Before those Contractors he knew of gave up on the last shreds of humanity because no-one else seemed to care and it was only holding them back…

So he could think almost callously now. How stupid it all was. How he still had to partake in it, because he still had that bare, animalistic, desire to survive. How he could have been speeding up the process of tin refinement back in Bangka and sparing his people some grief – if they weren't all like the rest of the world, looking at them like monsters, weapons good only to destroy. And finally selling him off, like he wasn't a living being at all.

The world made them in to weapons that could only destroy, because that was the only place they were wanted. The silliest powers turned in to the deadliest weapons. Changing sealed safes into easily accessible boxes. Removing coverings from deadly substances. Siphoning mercury or lead and leaving someone to suffer a slow and painful death. Even manipulating the metal in the body in order to cause someone excruciating pain. Good for on the spot torture. Or for sparing others from getting their hands dirty.

Though, in the underground, everyone had their hands dirty to some extent. Drug trafficking. Conspiracies to overrun world governments. Prostitution rings. Slave trading. Not that he hadn't already been a slave. Labouring as they'd been in the mines. And that was just the surface of what existed, under the light, outside that little island of Bangka where they dug up and refined tin.

Luckily, there'd been powers who wanted his power enough to buy him out of the market. And give him a job better – and worse – than digging for tin. Better in the sense that it was interesting, he wasn't looked at as if he was some demon and he got square meals and some means to a normal living – except for when his services were demanded. Hence the downside. Almost getting killed just to survive. At least the poisoning that came from mining would take years to kill. Not that he was helping matters by adding to the taint. But that was the Contract. All because he couldn't help himself. All because he had to go on living another day, even if there wasn't anything nice and sparkly at the end of the road to wait for.

Instincts were silly too. But they were there. And so was the Contract. And the Remuneration. That'd kill them if they managed the near impossible feat of avoiding the payment for too long.

It might as well be a slogan for Contractors. Anything to survive.

A/N: The number MO-044 is a reference to messier object 044. Since the fake stars in Darker than Black are apparently named after their Messier catalogue number, I used the catalogue to find something appropriate. I'm at a loss about the reasoning behind the letters, so MO for messier object… The number refers to a particular part of the constellation Cancer, in particular, the part of the constellation that Cancer is best known for, the Praesepe (Messier 44) also called the beehive cluster. Seemed appropriately fitting for a Contractor who keeps company.

Sort of an introductory fic for the OC used here. I'll have two more fics featuring him, both of those also for the Diversity Challenge. They will be called Tin Mining (dealing with the time the gate appeared) and Metal Contractor (dealing with the bit that parallels the first season setting). Both of those will also be for the Diversity Challenge.