Special thanks to xxdancingwithdemonsxx on tumblr for editing this for me! Please check her out!
My Tumblr is Free-Spirit140, my Descendants blog is descendants-trash-140
Ursala's crap shack was as dingy as Carlos remembered it, faded green walls that looked more like paper than concrete holding up a tin roof with a sign that claimed it was a fish and chip shop. If you asked Carlos the place would do better calling itself a bar or a strip club since the usual customers preferred to use it for that.
A few drunks were skulking around the outside, yelling at the closed door as if their voices would cause it to magically open.
"Can't you pathetic lumps read?" Uma demanded, absently kicking one of the drunks that had positioned himself on the floor by the door "We're closed until 4, fuck off back to your holes until then!"
Curses were thrown her way but she ignored them in favour of unlocking the wooden door and holding it open for Carlos. He briefly wondered where Ursala found a working lock and key but a quick glance at the contraption confirmed it was one fashioned out of scraps.
"Company first."
"Does all your company get the joy of having swords pushed into their backs or am I just lucky?" Carlos asked, feeling one of swords make contact with his spine and force him forward into the slop shop.
"I'll get to the chase," Uma ignored him and dismissing the crew that had been guarding him with a wave of her hand. "You fix electrical things right?"
"Yeah," Carlos raised an eyebrow, "that's the deal I have going."
"Great. Fix that bucket of junk over there." Uma pointed to a corner of the room where what looked like an old electric heater was left to rust. "And I'll forget about you ignoring me for the last two months."
Carlos blinked, flicking his eyes from Uma to the heater and then back. "What?"
"Are you deaf as well as weak?" Uma demanded "I said fix that shit and then we're even."
"You-" Carlos shifted his eyes back to the heater, "you can't be serious? That's all you want?"
"What else would I want from you?" Uma asked, grabbing a chair from one of the nearby tables and swinging her leg over it so she was sitting on it backwards.
"I don't know, to bash my head in? To tie me to an anchor and throw me into the sea? To try and use me as a bargaining chip to get to Mal?"
Uma threw her head back in an exaggerated cackle. "Is that why you've been avoiding and ignoring me de Vil?"
Carlos shrugged, caught off guard by just how relaxed Uma seemed.
"Hades you think highly of yourself," Uma laughed, "let me get something straight de Vil, I don't blame you for the stunt the princess pulled. The way I see it you're as much the victim as the rest of us, you've been left to rot as well. Anyone on this pile of rags that says otherwise is as thick as Dee and Dumb."
Carlos blinked again, trying to process the new information.
"You forget that I've been kicked to the curb by that damn fairy as well, you know. If I held you accountable for her actions I'd be hypocritical, don't you think?"
"I guess..." Carlos muttered. "So you seriously only wanted me here so I could fix your heater?"
"Yep." Uma grinned at him. "The old hag has been screaming about it for months and I heard from one of the Dragon Hall fuckers that hangs around here that you are pretty good with that kind of shit. Of course you were Mal's little lap dog so I wasn't too keen on the idea of going to the enemy. But," Uma smirked again as she stood, "we aren't enemies anymore are we?'
Carlos blinked at her, risking looking into her eyes so he could scan them for any hint of a lie. "I'm not paying your protection money if that's what you're fishing for."
"Of course not!" Uma laughed again. "Protection money only applies to people living or trading on my turf and I'm not exactly desperate to take over Cruella's place."
"So… I don't have to walk around watching my back for your crew anymore?"
"Unless you want to be watching your back twenty-four seven." Uma shrugged. "You can do whatever you want here. You can walk around my turf as much as you like, you can eat here, you can drink here, you can even hook up with my crew if all participating parties so desire. You could even trade around here for a price. And hey, if you ever want to get in on one of my 'Down with the princess' planning sessions, there is always a seat at the bar. We're a lot alike Carlos. Those of us with knives in our back should stick together."
There was something wicked in Uma's eyes, shining as she rested her chin on her hands which she had rested on the back of the chair. After making eye contact with her for long enough he was able to determine what it was. Hatred. It wasn't directed at him though, and there would be no prize for guessing who it actually was directed at. She wasn't hard to read and it was a refreshing change of pace.
The enemy of my enemy is my ally, he supposed.
"Right. We should." He agreed tentatively.
"We aren't friends of course, this is the Isle after all, but we aren't enemies either."
"Of course." Carlos paused for a second, a new thought passing through his head that he had to voice. "I'm not joining your crew either."
Uma threw her head back in another over-exaggerated laugh. It was getting ridiculous now, how could anyone laugh that much?
"I wasn't inviting you de Vil! You don't have what it takes to be a pirate, even if you have grown teeth since the lizard left you alone." She cackled one more time, the few members of her crew that had bothered to hang around joined in. He scowled at the implication but he couldn't deny it. Uma's laugh trickled off until her eyes settled back on Carlos. "Now, go fix that hunk of junk before I push it and you into the harbour!"
Carlos could tell it was an empty threat so he didn't hesitate to smirk at her and respond. "Good thing I can swim then right?" He picked up his tools and headed over to the broken heater.
He set to work on the device, unscrewing the battered and beaten casing and scowling at several particularly nasty dents. Nothing was brought to the Isle working but if this had been in this state when it got there he was surprised it ever worked at all.
"What did you do, go at it with a hammer?" Carlos asked, turning to look over his shoulder at Uma who had moved from her chair to drape herself over the throne that sat in the centre of the stage. Carlos had seen some of the things the 'performers' did on that thing and he could safely say Uma had more balls than him if she was willing to sit in it just for the sake of feeling a little powerful.
"Nah," Uma responded, not even looking at him as she snapped her fingers at a girl who was wiping down the bar. "If I see a single bloodstain on that when you're finished I will personally add your blood to the mix." She barked out before turning to Carlos and finishing her answer as if she was never interrupted. "Harry got pissed at it when it stopped working and took a sword to it. Turns out Hook can't handle the cold."
"Lies and slander!" Carlos' eyes shot to the door, finding Harry Hook himself standing in the doorway, leaning dramatically against the doorframe as if he were Hades himself. One of the would-be customers seemed to think the open doorway meant he could finally get off the floor and head in but instead received an absentminded kick to the face. "I'll have you know I can handle the cold just fine thank you! What I can't handle is the old sea-bitch's constant hollering."
Carlos quickly cast his eyes back to the heater, trying to figure out where he was meant to even start with the mess that was the wiring in this thing. Harry Hook was, by every definition of the word, eccentric. Even by villain standards. He was also very loud. Carlos wasn't a very big fan of loud. From his experience loud usually meant pain was right around the corner and with Harry Hook pain usually meant a hook in your eye. He needed to wrap this up quickly.
"So, you finally showed up wee one?" Carlos resisted the urge to growl at the nickname as footsteps approached and a hook found its way to his shoulder. "You are mighty hard to track down you know. Had me chasing my tail a lot looking for you."
"Harry quit bothering him and let him work," Uma ordered. "Or do you want me telling my old woman that you're the reason people are complaining about the cold tonight?"
"No Captain!" The hook quickly left Carlos' shoulder and Carlos resisted the urge to sigh in relief.
He prodded around the wiring a little more, careful not to damage it any more than the blows to the weak metal already had before sighing and pulling away.
"I'm going to need a whole bunch of parts from the house," he started, standing upright and dusting himself off before turning to face Uma. "I've figured out what stopped it working in the first place but there's damage to the wiring that most likely came from a sword impacting the weak spots."
"You hear that Harry? You're the reason the dumb thing stopped working!" Uma snapped, shoving Harry off the armrest of the throne that he had previously been sitting on.
"No," Carlos quickly rushed out, although he really wasn't sure why he was jumping to defend the pirate, "well, I mean, he didn't exactly help, but the main cause is probably the water damage to a couple of the components and the salt corrosion on some of the others. The protective metal isn't in the best shape so someone probably just rested wet clothes on there a few too many times and the water finally got inside."
"Right," Uma said, nodding as she whacked Harry when he tried to get back onto the armrest. "Go get the stuff, Hook." Harry quickly scampered off into a back room and Carlos picked up his bag, throwing it over his shoulder and making for the exit until Uma called him back. "You don't need to go de Vil. We probably have what you need here."
"I highly doubt-" Harry reemerged before he could finish his sentence, heading right for Carlos and holding out a particularly large basket of electrical components and devices to him as if he was presenting him with pure gold. Well, to Carlos it might as well have been.
"Any of those what you need?" Uma asked from her throne.
"H-how did you? Why do you?" Carlos moved his eyes between the basket and Uma as the girl chuckled quietly, not missing the way Harry was smirking in the corner of his vision.
"The first plan was to try and fix the thing ourselves but when we didn't even know how to get in we gave up. Then we heard about your deal with the rats and decided to try and smoke you out by taking your resources and offering you them in return." Uma was failing to keep the sly smirk off her face as she leant forward, propping her elbows on her knees and her chin on her folded hands. "My crew are pretty friendly with the barge goblins, fellow sea lovers and all, so we usually get first call on stuff the second it comes in."
Carlos blinked a couple of times before carefully moving to the basket and wading through the contents. Several phones, a portable fan, wiring and motherboards that looked basically undamaged, this was like a treasure trove for him.
"Take whatever you need to fix the heater. If you want the rest I'm sure we can strike up some kind of deal, don't you think?"
He had to play this right. Not too eager, not too uninterested. "Yeah. I think we can."
My Tumblr is Free-Spirit140, my Descendants blog is descendants-trash-140
Once again, special thanks to xxdancingwithdemonsxx on Tumblr for editing this for me! Please check her out!