Snatch

She’d been there for a while now.

Laying on the ground, face bruised and battered, clothing torn as she clawed her way out of the gutter, the last of her resolved spent as she sobbed ceaselessly into the bitter cold rain. Everything hurt, her stomach pounded in bitter hunger even as the last of the adrenaline which had been coursing with bitter futility though her veins had finally worn away like the ugly gray pavement on which she was forced to crawl. The old, think scars of previous strife sat exposed across her back even as the only thing she still owned in this world, the tattered shirt which still clung to her like a loose short dress. Her normally light brown skin now purple with the beating which she’d taken; she struggled to remember to take the next breath, and the next, her tangled matted black hair a fetid mess of mud and dirt and blood.

She’d been there for a long while now, tears mingled with the flush of spring rain.

Alone.

Bereft.

She curse herself once more, thinking of how naive she’d been to even walk this way, to have trusted anyone at all as once more everything which she’d held dear had been stolen away. The safety deposit keys, the wallet with the number that should have been hers, the pants and everything beneath them, her dignity, her... She teared up again even as she worked her way deeper among the trash for shelter from the cold harsh rain. She’d lost everything, even the ratty old sneakers had been taken.

Stolen.

She was so very lost.

Terror flashed as the noise of foot falls interspersed the rain… was it them, come back again to take more? After they’d already taken it all? Was it? What could she… what?

Fear.

… only the last vestiges of self-preservation remained as she hid, now more animal than girl as she finally moved from the place where they’d left her to languish and die in the mud. Shivering cold, and wheezing she found the will to drag herself out over into a darker corner, full of the smells of refuse and the materials of discarded civilization. She couldn’t even think about it as she rooted in among the filth, the stink, and the unclean, reaching over to find herself a blanket and a plastic bag. She could hide here till morning, she could be safe…

…she could keep on crying with cardboard over her head so that the tears wouldn’t wash away.


She trembled.

Why? What had gone so wrong? Why did it always all have to be stolen away.  Always taken from her. Always... Her fingers curled about the plastic bag in her hand, part of the trash in which she now resided… in which she now belonged… and then it was gone. Removed from her fingers as her tired, hurt, wandering mind seemed to push against something... Qualities floated to mind as she lay there cold beneath the dubious cardboard shelter. Black. Waterproof. Flexible.

She chose without thought, her cardboard shelter becoming suddenly just a bit more comfortable, the Quality used the moment it was taken, now gone from her mind.

Tiredness overcame all else.

She slept.



-=-=-=-



She woke with a sudden start, shivering lightly as her eyes flitted open to the sights of the balmy night. It’d been that dream again, a horrible memory which she couldn’t escape, that moment of low desperation, the last time she’d been vulnerable in such a deeply unpleasant way. Three weeks on the street since then, she’d managed to pull herself together. Bloody minded stubbornness being the only thing that had stood between her and a breakdown which she was absolutely certain she could have never survived out on these hellish street. Brockton Bay was a shitstain of a town, drab and grey, or ugly redbrick according to the part of town you were in. It had a gang problem, a drug problem, and a parahuman problem. A place for opportunity, she remembered thinking that when she’d been a bit more naive, running away from the human stains that called itself family. It gave none of what it had promised, taking instead from her all means of getting away from its horrible underside.

She’d always been the tough tomboyish type, insensitive her father would call her, back when he still drew breath, before he was stolen away by an errant breeze on top of the construction building on which he’d worked.

Grief had stolen her mother away next. And the greedy assholes that called themselves ‘family’, stole everything else from under her. Running was the only way in which she could think of denying them anything else that they wanted to steal. Stolen hopes, stolen dreams.

She wished someone would take the nightmares too.

She sighed, dirty tattered clothing clinging badly to her rail-thin body, her short stature and lack of a chest making her easily mistaken for a rather younger boy. She’d stolen every stitch.

The world had been cruel, it took everything it could.

She’d had to learn how to be just like it was, and somehow in that lesson, she learned that she’d been given something in exchange for having lost everything there was to lose.

“Alright Sasha, keep it together…” She mumbled to herself even as she walked carefully at the edges of the light. She needed to be vigilant, and she needed to be careful... but most of all, she needed another bath... and probably a delousing shampoo… and one of those really, really fine-toothed combs for getting the fleas out of her hair. Not that there was much of it left.

She resented the tangles and gunk that had seen her remove the bulk of it after that horrible night.

“All you have to do is play it cool, get what you want and then go back out. No nobody knows you. Nobody cares.” She spoke to herself, almost a mantra as she moved with purpose into the shelter doors. She couldn’t really trust that she wouldn’t have trouble, no matter how many times she’d come in.

“Jenifer? How are you? I haven’t seen you around for a few days.” She took a moment to register that the person whom she’d been about to pass by was speaking to her, the false name barely recognized by the one who wore it. Another one that wanted something. Wanted to ‘help’.

“Fine.” She murmured, face mostly hidden in her hoodie as she continued onward.

“Have you been eating well? I haven’t seen you since last week.” The woman continued, trying to penetrate her withdrawn demeanor. A moment later the woman simply sighed as Sasha kept her head ducked, crossing over into the open mess hall, glancing nervously about at all the people in the room.

Sasha looked back, pulling back her hoodie as she reached up to scratch where her scalp still itched. “I… I’m fine. I’m just fine... I just need a bath, and some shampoo… I got lice and fleas again… need to get one of those combs too...”

“Oh so you can talk.” The woman smiled, arms folded as sighed the words.

“I just want to get clean... There’s already too many people around.” Sasha spoke once more, her shoulders shifting with the clear discomfort of being so close to others. Her eyes darting about at the other homeless people about the room, marking them off in her mind.

“Jen... you’re perfectly safe here you know.” The woman spoke knowingly to the brick wall that was Sasha. “I’d much rather you stuck around than chance it out in the streets. There’s room for it you know... not much but you’re not too big.”

Sasha winced in the reminder of her tiny stature. That mark which it seemed all the bastards of the world were attracted too. Bite sized and easy to tame.

Her stomach roiled in queasy memory.

“I… I just need a spot for myself for the night.” Sasha replied, almost meekly, almost defiant. “I’m only staying if there’s a full room free…”

“Wanting a little privacy? I can understand that. Especially after the grooming you’re going to be needing.” The matronly woman smiled sadly. “I just want you off the streets luv... If I didn’t know better I’d probably call child services to get you into a home. Anything better than kicking around this hell-hole, Brockton-bay isn’t a kind place you know. Hell, even knowing that you’re seventeen I figure you could fake it if you really wanted off the streets.”

“I couldn’t stand faking being thirteen again.” Sasha spoke, her face warming into a slight smile.

“Fifteen more like. You’re a bit more mature than you tell yourself.” The woman replied, even as she moved over to her desk, fingers shuffling though records to write up, as she prepared to sign the short girl up for the night.

“And that’s why you mistook me for a boy when I first came in?” There was a smile there, beneath the grime.

“Oh shush... go eat something and then we can talk later. Alright Jenifer?”

Sasha nodded, it would be alright to care for herself a bit.


-=-=-=-=-=-


At least now I don’t smell, Sasha thought to herself, even as she ran the comb once more though the short curls of her messy hair once more. This time no more gunk, bugs, or even their eggs seemed to fall away from her now shining hair once more. Enchanting the comb had been a good move, she decided. The qualities of the shampoo as a pesticide she’d applied to the comb, and combined literally as she pulled it though her hair again and again, bugs fell away and died. Better yet, there was none of that chemical tingle that the using the stuff usually offered.

Curled up in the bed, one of the few private rooms possible in this the ‘Rosa Park Memorial Shelter’, she pondered the power which had become her own since that horrible night. Research and trips into the public library of late had filled her in on some of the things that she figured she’d need to know, experimentation on the rest. Not even a full month, but she was coping...

Parahuman.

She’d become Parahuman, and her powers while they didn’t seem all that impressive to her, had become a bit of an edge while living out on the streets. Already twice she’d changed some fresh chunks of plastic, easy to keep clean, to something edible, stealing away that quality of edibility from some clearly rotten food which she’d come across pretty easily. It was the first time in a while that she’d managed a full stomach without having to come into the shelter. A good test for what her abilities could do, she figured.

So far she figured that she’d worked out its rules. She could at will touch something and ‘steal’ it away, breaking down that something into ‘Qualities’. From the set of Qualities she could then choose one of them and then apply it to another object. As far as she could tell she could only take things that way about five times in a day before the power became… tired. And she could only hold on to one set of qualities from an item at a time, if she tried to take something while she hadn’t applied the qualities from the last it simply overwrote them.

So far the Qualities all seemed to have something of a common sense vibe to them, something she could intuit. It was never hard to approximate or guess what she could get out of something if she put her mind to it. On the flip side the power seemed to like simpler things, and leaned towards a certain amount of abstraction in functional Quality the more complex something proved to be.

She’d tried to ‘take’ a car... her power just vanished the chassis and left everything else, leaving her with a few options of ‘Material strength [Composite steel]’, ‘containment’, and ‘Red’.

It was probably a skinhead’s ride, so she didn’t feel too bad about it.

Either way as nice as it was, she found that she needed to keep things she’d made with her powers near to her, barely two hours out of her presence and the power faded to nothing, in any of the items which she’d managed to enchant. Just one more way in which things kinda sucked even if her powers were ok she guessed.

Tonight she’d just wanted the time to lay down, get clean, and think for a while without having to fear.

She had powers.

Even if they weren’t the best thing ever, she had powers… and that meant that she had a future. Really she had options open to her now that just weren’t there before, things she could do. Unfortunately though, the most obvious answers were not in the least particularly attractive to her.

As a parahuman, joining one of the gangs or with the protectorate was a choice... though they might just stick her with the Wards as she looked older than some.

But even as she laid back fingers splayed as she looked though them at the light on the ceiling, she couldn’t help feel a dark mixture of contempt and in some cases outright hate for the established parahumans here in the bay. The Merchants were opportunistic parasites, the AZN Bad Boys were one man’s legion of bootlicks, and the Empire... the less she said about that the better. The ones from That night… she was sure it had been some of them. Others were there, the mysterious Coil gang, the mercenaries, independent heroes, New-wave, a apparent neo-nazi reformist calling herself a hero, some independents. The city was a buzzing cauldron of power and opportunity.

She really didn’t have much in the way of a plan.

She didn’t have much in the way of power.

But Sasha knew... she had a chance.

She had to try.

But try what… that was a whole other story.



[---------------------]



[]