Soldiers [Detective Conan] [Crow series 1/2]

Happy birthday,

28 July, 2010
New York City, N.Y., USA

It starts, like so many stories, in transit.

"This is a Line 4 Train for Crown Heights/Utica Avenue... The next stop is Grand Central – 42 Street... "

Jen grimaces out the subway window. The view of her reflection in the neon light turns to a view of the crowds of Grand Central at rush hour, and it turns her stomach.

It wouldn't be so bad if she'd gotten out of the house maybe five minutes later, or half an hour earlier.

But the half hour earlier is half an hour of precious sleep she needed after staying up until five in the morning to finish up her annual Survivor Mode run-through of Bioshock. And five minutes later would have her late enough for her colleague Lou to nag her about it for the next week. So: rush hour Manhattan it is, whether she likes it or not.

"Please step aside, and let customers off the train, first."

Jen squeezes her eyes shut as more civvies squash into the subway car than get off.

She tries to shut out the crowds.

She tries to even her breathing.

She tries to focus on the music coming in through her earphones, the hard yet soothingly consistent outrun beat, and not on the announcement declaring the next stop to by '14 Street – Union Square.'

Jen knows the route like she knows the millisecond timing for a Zerg rush, anyway. She's lived in this city long enough for that.

The train shoots into the darkness of the tunnels, and that helps.

Jen opens her eyes a fraction, and sees her reflection again.

It's comforting.

Even though last night's eyeliner blends with the bags under her eyes – even though any freckles she might have had as a kid have long faded from lack of sun – even though her lips are chapped from overuse of tinted chapstick – even though the thin young ginger woman in the reflection looks nothing short of washed out in the crowded neon half-light – Jen is intensely comforted by seeing her face. Her brown eyes desperately looking back at her. Her too-scruffy eyebrows still visible behind thick-rimmed glasses. Her softly sharpened jawline that she spent thousands of dollars on getting right.

The train rolls into the next station, and Jen closes her eyes again.

Maybe she's a little old to be so anxious about this kind of thing. But despite all the training she's had and all the shit she's seen – something as simple as New York City crowds still fucks her up.

So Jen keeps her arms wrapped around her laptop bag and breathes quietly through her nose. She counts the seconds into minutes. 

Just a little longer. Jackson should have the bike fixed up before the weekend. Just a little more.

She's lucky, at least, to live at the end of the line. The landlord is scummy of course, the flat is freezing in winter, and her two flatmates are dating which makes her an awkward third wheel – but at least she gets first serve on subway seating.

"This is Wall Street..."

Jen moves faster and sharper than the elderly man beside her might have anticipated.

She shoves violently out of the train, and together with the innumerable Wallstreet choffers trudges up the stairs, across the road, past the Starbucks, and right to the New York Stock Exchange.