Money was weird.

It wasn't that she didn't understand money or American currency. Even before ever moving to the United States Aitana had seen and handled a fair amount of US dollars. While she herself live in a fairly rural area both of her parents had worked in the tourism business. Her father was a guide in one of the many companies that did jungle canopy tours and her mother was a cleaning lady at one of the hotels in the big city. It was part of the reason her Japanese was as good as it was even despite the declining Nikkei Burajiru-jin population. Her parents both needed and used Portuguese and Japanese on a daily basis, so they had passed it on to her daughter, assuming she would take after her father if for some reason her aspiration for sports did not lead her elsewhere. They had also taught her some English, though.. obviously it hadn't been as diligently as her two mother languages.

Even though dollars weren't really used as currency in their town her parents had brought home a few here or there to show their daughter when she was younger. And on days when she'd been allowed to tag along with her father she'd handled more than a few tips from wide eyed American visitors. And she'd even be able to spend some herself on trips into the city with her mother.

So it was not the look of money, or how it worked, or really anything along those lines that confused Aitana. It was more along the lines of what the hell to do with said money that perplexed the Amazonian.

Construction work was lucrative business in a place like Destiny City. In a city so full of constant destruction and a city council trying to appear as if they were doing 'something' to help the city there were always jobs available for someone in her field. Whether they were fixing some building that had sustained 'mysterious' damage or building something totally from scratch, Aitana could easily find 40 hours of work a week if she wanted it. And for the most part, ever since returning to Destiny City she had very little she wanted to do other than patrol at night, sleep, and eat. Work, along with giving her enough money to have someplace to sleep provided a good distraction for the remaining hours she had in the day. Besides, it looked way better for a new immigrant to actually look like she was working.

And in truth, Aitana was a pretty fantastic hire. A hardworking, enthusiastic, and fearless worker who hit the double minority jackpot in being both a legal immigrant and female. She hadn't even had to start at the lowest rungs of the wage ladder and she had quickly crept even higher with each new specialty she picked up. By now she was making nearly $20 an hour, more for specialty projects or on the few occasions she was roped into overtime. And in just over a week the costs of her dumpy studio apartment, cellphone, and internet were covered. Which left 2 1/2 weeks a month of pay that went to well.. a whole lot of nothing.

There was the initial 'furnishing' of said dumpy apartment. Which included a bunch of junk she'd picked up at the nearest store. A bed, a medium sized tv (with just the basic channels because she wasn't much of a tv watcher), a dresser, a table, some minimal kitchen supplies. If someone were to see her room they'd swear she was destitute, when the truth was far from it. She just didn't want or desire for anything material.

Food was her next largest expenditure but even with her steady appetite and tendency to eat out it hadn't dented what was left. Which meant Aitana was left with a small stash of money and nothing to do with it.

She'd started by simply putting it in a jar in the kitchen. A strange wad of money that she'd add to whenever she got paid or fish bills out of when her wallet was empty. But soon the jar was getting heavy and obnoxious to dig around in, so it had all been dumped into one of her drawers. Which was sufficent for now but... what was she going to do if it kept multiplying? If she had this much in a month she could only imagine how big the pile would be in 6 months. Or a year even.

Maybe she just needed to go to a bank or something. But the thought of trying to set up an account was more than she felt like dealing with currently. And then like... checks.. or debit cards or... yeah. Cash was so much more simple. Maybe she just needed to find something to spend all the money on and get rid of it? But what did she want? Nothing really right now, so she simply ignored it.

Much like her laundry. There would come a day when she HAD to do something with it (in terms of laundry that meant when she had nothing left to wear and had to re-wear her least dirty pair of clothes just to go hit the laundry room). But for now she would just ignore it, and hope that it did something to itself.

Stupid money.