Snatch 1.6

Three hundred dollars, give or take a bit of change... Sasha had about three hundred dollars in her pocket from that uncomfortable moment a few days ago. That incident during which she’d been a damsel in distress, being kidnapped in broad daylight because she’d looked like somebody’s wayward young daughter. Even now she felt that flush of embarrassed powerlessness at the memory of the man as he tugged at her arm, dragging her off to a fate of which she hardly wished to think. Even now it crumpled in her pocket, the money taken from him as she’d escaped his grasp. Money which she’d declined to spend on herself even as the chill rain poured down.

Afterall, her reasoning had gone, the longer she held on to the money and stretched it out, the longer she could go without finding herself having to dig her way through a dumpster in order to eat.

Sabah’s derail of that had been one of the most bafflingly touching moments in her life.

It was the very reason why as she looked down into her hands, mind churning with ways and means to acquire the various items which she felt would help her become a far stronger, she couldn’t quite get out of her mind the image of Sabah’s disapproval at potentially robbing anywhere, even if it was just another fancy shop out in Nazi controlled territory. Even if the tickling urge to just take something, itched lightly at the back of her fingers.

No, today instead she’d devote herself a bit more towards enhancing the powers which she’d gained, a few ideas flowing through her head as she nibbled lightly upon her lip. She didn’t have a particularly clear idea of what she wanted overall though, instead merely a few scattered lesser goals. Her thoughts drifted idly to the enchants which she’d made during the night, small things that were little more than quality of life improvements. The durability enchant on her shoes would make them a bit tougher, the apparent durability of a dime not particularly amazing over all, and less so when spread over the surface area of her shoes, but none the less it worked well enough that her shoes were definitely more durable than they had been. Not that they were particularly awesome shoes in the first place though, old and somewhat tattered, they were at least mostly intact and not so compromised as to no longer keep her feet warm or mostly dry in the rain. She wouldn’t pass up better replacements though.

And the other enchant… we’ll it made her giggle at the idea of what she’d done. Nervous last night at the prospect of her new roommate potentially coming across her terrible laundry, she’d stolen a piece of air freshener which had been laying around and enchanted her underwear with the resultant enchantment.

The results had been embarrassingly good.

Apparently taking the >>Pleasant Sensory Input<< and adding it to her panties was not exactly the greatest idea she’d ever had. As the time between talking to Sabah and getting into the bath had been dominated by the distraction of every single sensation settled upon her ass where the panties rested, becoming a noticeably pleasant experience. One which would not have been so bad or remarkable, if not for WHERE at some points the caress had pressed.

Needless to say she did have some extras things to deal with before getting out of the bath.

Luckily Sabah thought little of lending her a pair of her own undies, figuring that Sasha’d probably had enough of her ‘gross’ underwear for a while. And truth be told, clean undies everyday were in fact one of the things she missed about not being homeless.

In a way it almost hadn’t sunk in. She wasn’t without a home, at least not for now. She had a place to return to and someone who seemed to like her well enough to let her keep coming back. The thought of it hitched her breath midstride even as she approached a corner store over at the market, and something which she thought the streets had torn away seemed to bubble back up in her chest.

Hope.

Hope for the future lost seemed to burn, the spark of the moment, though it was stuffed back down quickly as her more cynical disposition reasserted itself over memories of caretakers who’d betrayed her, and every hardship and worry which the streets had bred. Right down to that moment those weeks past.

Fingers clenched in silent hate.

She had power now. Power which needed to be nurtured and developed. Power which could become her bulwark against the vagaries of the future. And whether this girl who’d taken her in proved ultimately genuine or false, the power would be with her till the end. She couldn’t help but clench her fists with a smile, remembering how she’d laid that man low only a day before.

The euphoria of being powerful in that moment even as she ran away in fear of its consequences.

She wasn’t going to stop until she had more.

Well, first stop to making this power trip work out, Smart-E-Mart. The local dumb store chain. At the very least the first items in her list would be easy enough to procure. A cheap solid black cap, indiscriminate but able to shade her face a bit. A surgical mask, a charcoal filter, and a bottle of bleach were on her list.

The little cheap-ass kitten shaped choker however was a bit more of a spontaneous buy, something that she might have gotten on a whim before her life had churned itself up into the freshest lower layers of hell. A little piece of her old normality reclaimed.

The whole bill came up to about fifty bucks in all.

The next store which she went to was a nice cozy little hardware place, where she’d gone to pick up Kevlar gloves.

In truth, she though as she considered the tough material, everything which the gloves did at their base, beyond simply being gloves was basically covered by the ones which she’d created. As superior base materials she couldn’t help but feel that they would probably work better for enchanting rather than disenchanting, every perk which they would potentially provide on the lower end of non-unique, and only truly useful or remarkable in the combination of traits which they represented. At the very least though she wouldn’t be needing them to make herself bullet and stab proof, after all the all over protection of the bike armour had combined well with the durability of the iron piece, and the shock absorption of the sponge. It would always take damage before she did and reduce a portion of the further shock. Hell even scrapes and bruises on her exposed skin seemed to be complete negated.

The manner in which each enchant was executed seemed to vary with the quality and quantity of the items used, and while differing enchants overlapped, enchants which were too similar seemed to usually replace each other and overwrite to the ‘best’ variant used. On the other hand other enchants, like durability seemed to accumulate together, possibly to do with its disposable nature. Durability enchants wore down, it was something she could feel almost imperceptibly with every rub and touch to her shirt. Similar ones, she felt, could likely be stacked, but the process of staking was not linear in growth, and some aspects of what it meant for a material to be durable seemed to only be acquirable by gaining better materials to add to the enchant rather than stacking together existing materials to do so.

Sasha sighed lightly.

She still had a long way to go before she could make something really special of this power... but first she needed time and she needed ideas. And besides that, a legal way to get some money. After all if she was going to get things and not disappoint Sabah, she needed to be able to make money in a nice legal manner.

Either way, for now at least she’d head out to the boat Graveyard.

If she hurried she’d make it home before night fell fully on her head.

That was not a safe place at all afterdark.