003 - [Video] Happy Birthday, Chloe Price.

[helladoomed]

[It's a little after noon when Chloe turns her communicator on. She's sitting on an old white plastic deck chair, and from the look of the buildings behind her, probably on a roof somewhere in Nonah. She's in a worn old white tanktop with a skull on the front, her jeans-covered legs propped up on something, her coat hanging off the back of her chair. She's spent the morning avoiding people, not answering her texts, just...brooding. There's a cigarette between her lips, and she takes a drag off it before she catches it with her other hand, her attention mostly on the phone.]

You ever think about time 'n shit? Like, how it hella doesn't make any sense here? Like, okay, back home, before I wound up here, it was 2013 right? In October.

[She leans back in her chair, resting the phone on her leg, tilted up so all the screen really catches is her face and neck and the clouds.]

Suddenly I'm here, it's three years and a couple months later. Just, wham, welcome to the future except it's a weird fucked up cold war version of the future. And I get like, it's way worse for other people, right? Pulled from other centuries or other fuckin' planets with their own weird-ass calendars but.

Three years.

[She's not even really sure what she's going on about, honestly. She'd been puzzling this over in her head all morning and hadn't gotten anywhere, so maybe she thought rambling out loud would help. It wasn't really working.]

So here we are, right? March 11th, 2016. Shit had gone different, I'd be twenty-two today.

[She hesitates, her gaze distant, up on the clouds as she took another puff off her cigarette.]

Instead, I guess I'm twenty. Sort of. Minus a couple months. Still my birthday though. [And then she smirks, pointing the two fingers holding her cigarette at the sky.] Fuck you, universe. Chloe Price made it to twenty after all.

[She scooped up the phone again, and for a second is framed in the picture again, the camera half-covered by her thumb as she reaches for the disconnect. Her voice is quieter again.]

Didn't see that comin'.

[Click.]

Comments

[lunaraneae]

You know I coach Peewee hockey! And I have to practice on my own time, too!

[helladoomed]

Pretty sure that peewee hockey isn't an excuse to never date.

[Hmm.]

I mean hell, there are probably some hot dads at practice. Or moms. Hot parents.

[lunaraneae]

--Are you saying I should become the other woman?

[helladoomed]

[Chloe thinks this over. No, Cindy deserved better than that.]

Nah. But lots of hot dads and moms are single hot dads or moms.

[lunaraneae]

Pretty sure that's against the hockey coaching code or something. Thou shalt not date the Peewee's parents.

[helladoomed]

Bet it's not. I bet it's not cause whoever wrote those rules wanted to bang a hot dad and/or mom.

[Chloe always assumes the baser instincts win.]

[lunaraneae]

Wow, you must think telling eight year olds how to skate is pretty exciting. Mostly I'm too busy trying to make sure no one runs into the boards to look at the parents.

...Though they do yell a lot.

[helladoomed]

I figure it's hella boring, actually.

Hence spending at least some of it eyeing up what little eye-candy there'd be!

[lunaraneae]

Hockey is great! Have you ever been to an actual game? And it's totally different when you're on the ice!

[helladoomed]

Nope, never.

But you aren't playing it, you're teaching rugrats to play it.

[lunaraneae]

And that's even harder! A lot of them can barely stand on their skates!

They're also surprisingly vicious.

[helladoomed]

And that's what you want to do. Teach vicious brats to use deadly razors on their feet.

[lunaraneae]

My own little secret army.

[helladoomed]

Huh.

Okay, I could get behind that idea.

[She's grinning. Is she joking?]

[lunaraneae]

You could always join the adult team, you know. Learn to play yourself.

[helladoomed]

Pretty sure you've already figured out I'm not much of a joiner.

[lunaraneae]

I had to try. Otherwise I couldn't call myself a hockey coach.

[helladoomed]

[She snickers at that.]

So what, you're just team spirit rah rah all the time?

[lunaraneae]

[Cindy can't quite hold back an inelegant snort at that.]

Do I seem like I'm a team spirit kind of person?

[helladoomed]

...Yeah, kinda?

You're a kiddie sport coach.

[lunaraneae]

That's just the job they gave me. Back home I was a reporter.

[helladoomed]

But you keep doing it.

[lunaraneae]

I like it. Molding young minds. Plus I get to skate again.

[helladoomed]

See?

Rah rah team spirit.

[lunaraneae]

Really, I like to work alone. Promise.