FicWad

Sighing, Lexi glanced up at the sky to see that a storm was several miles away. The gray clouds sat at the horizon, and the damp air promised another rain, possibly torrential in magnitude like the night before. Deciding to get out of the house while she got the chance, Lexi plugged in her small iPod shuffle and inserted the headphones into her ears. Pressing play, she took off down the dilapidated sidewalk beside the road.

Her sneakers slapped against the concrete, but Lexi could only feel the vibration. The loud music drowned out all other noise and she let herself relax into the beat. Her car may not have radio, but her small laptop still had access to new and popular music, and so her music selection was much more modern. Though, somewhere in her heart, she preferred the classic tunes to anything.

The first car passed her when the opening notes of 'Natalie' began to play. Lexi smirked, turning up the music up a few more notches. They said blaring music into your ears was bad, but it honestly didn't bother her much. She'd deal with that years in the future.

"Oh, I've never done this before, never wanna do this again. Wrong turn down a dusty road, it did it to myself I can't pretend.

"Well, I learned just a little too late. Good God, I must've been blind, cuz she got me for everything, everything, everything, alright."

She sang, though because of the volume she couldn't hear herself. The sidewalk slowly changed into crumbling concrete, before turning completely into dirt and gravel. There wasn't a barrier between her and the cars, so she made sure to watch what was in front of her. Not that she could do much anyway if a passing vehicle decided to plow straight for her face.

That would be a bummer.

Her thighs began to burn, then right after that her calves. She was a pretty fit person, but compared to athletes, she was not in shape at all. With her main hobbies including listening to music, reading books, and the odd horrid dancing she did in her room to said music, she wasn't really trying too hard to keep a workout routine. Though, she did enjoy running to her music, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

She continued to run, and the song ended. The landscape changed so drastically, as she'd always noticed driving the long road to and from the university. One moment you were in rolling fields, the next, a looming forest of dense trees, and then suburbs further down the road. She liked the change, though, especially when on long runs.

The next song in the shuffle started to play, and she turned onto the dirt path that branched off into the woods. The temperature dropped some, but it still remained pretty humid. There wasn't much she could do about that though, as she was already sweaty from the workout and the atmosphere.

"Fergalicious definition make them boys go loco. They want my treasure so they get their pleasures from my photo. You could see me, you can't squeeze me. I ain't easy, I ain't sleazy. I got reasons why I tease 'em, boys just come and go like seasons, Fergalicious." Lexi sang, bobbing her head back and forth in time.

Her pace became much slower as she had to watch out for the occasional fallen branch and outlying rock. The sun wasn't especially strong that day, and so it was rather gloomy within the trees. Shadows bounced across the path, but Lexi had run along this route many times. The only times she was ever unsure was when a storm was approaching. There was supposed to be one, but not for several hours at least.

The path bent and zigzagged along the trees, sometimes opening into small clearings, but otherwise remained rather covered. She was about to round a bend, coming to a point where she couldn't see around the corner. Still running full speed, and having her music up so high, she couldn't see or hear the person running in the opposite direction down the same path.

The two ran smack dab into each other, and they fell backwards onto their butts.

"Lexi-chan seems…" Penguin tried to think of the right word, but Shachi helped him out.

"…Vicious, at least sometimes." He added, feeling like he was insulting their host, which when your thought about it, he was. Law smirked, seeing the grandmother shake her head sadly.

"Oh, don't blame her too much. She only means well." She coughed sharply, a sound that resonated from deep within her chest, and Law narrowed his eyes. Such a sound wasn't healthy, as his expertise in the medical field told him. His senses told him that there was possible damage to her lungs, but he didn't mention anything. With Nana the way she was, she'd probably just shoot him.

"She still seems a little scary." Bepo muttered, fidgeting with his bears, looking rather downtrodden. Nana brightened up, shushing the bear.

"Oh, hush now. Lexi can be rather brooding and cold, but she's a very sensitive person." Nana sighed, patting her leg in an unconscious way. Law was willing to bet she didn't even realize she did it. "She was never the same after losing her parents, my daughter and her husband."

Sadness filled her filled Law's. "How did they die?" His question was rather blunt and intrusive, but that seemed to compliment Nana's style quite well, and she didn't mention anything.

"They both passed in a car accident when she was nine, just up along route 23." She said, as if expecting them to know where that was. "It was raining pretty badly that day, very unsafe for anyone to be driving." She muttered.

"Then why did they?" Law cocked his head to the side.

"Oh, well Lexi had gotten into a fight with her parents just a few hours before. She packed up her little pink backpack and ran away. When her mother tried calling her for lunch, and she was nowhere to be found, they panicked and went to look for her out in the storm.

"Lexi had walked along route 23, looking for a bus station, though I suspect she was close to turning around and running back home. She was caught in the middle of the storm, you see. I'm surprised she made it that far. She's a strong one, that girl…" Her eyes were loosing focus and Law sensed she was beginning to get off track.

"What happened to the parents?" She nodded, and he saw the sorrow filling her eyes again.

"They were driving along route 23 at the same time Lexi was there. They just about hit her, but they swerved out of the way at the last second, sending the vehicle straight into a passing car. They both died on impact, as did the driver of the other car. The passenger was the only survivor, a boy named Logan, I believe."

"Hmm." Law said, processing this new information. "And Lexi-ya witnessed everything?"

Sighing again, Nana nodded. "She blames herself for their deaths, which is why I think she's trying so hard to do right by me. She wants to ease the guilt that she's piled up on herself, though there's no reason to feel that way. None of it was her fault."

Law was very composed about hearing Lexi's backstory, as was Bepo who merely lowered his head and whispered an apology to no one in particular.

The two engineers, however, weren't so composed.

"Poor Lexi-chan!" They cried, holding onto one another for comfort, tears streaming down their faces. "If only there was something we could do!"

Law grinned in amusement at his mens' reactions. They were always the dramatic type.

Nana rose from her seat, grunting with effort. Law held out a hand to help her, but she waved it off.

"Oh, I may be old but I'm still young enough to keep my stubbornness." She grinned. "If I were you, I'd keep what I told you to yourselves. If Lexi knew I told you, she'd be raisin' hell and sendin' down brimstone on your heels." She wandered into the kitchen, and opened the fridge. "Now, who wants peanut butter and honey sandwiches?"

"Lexi, hun, I love you but you need to not run face-first into me." Brittany rubbed her head, straightening from the ground. With a sheepish look, Lexi did the same.

"Yeah, sorry, couldn't see around the bend." They laughed a little, and Lexi noticed that her friend was similarly outfitted in running attire, her much nicer iPod's headphones dangling from a band around her arm.

"So, what's been up with you? You haven't answered my texts or anything. I was worried that storm took down your house of something." Lexi's eyebrows rose. In truth, with the craziness that had happened the day before, she hadn't even bothered to check her phone at all. Something was always keeping her busy…

"Nah, we're ok. And sorry, I haven't had much time to check it today. I went to the store earlier to get groceries-"

Brittany waved off her excuses. "No matter, at least I know you're alive." Brittany pulled out her phone from her sports bra. "Anyways, I saw the hottest guy at the mall this morning. You have to see him."

Lexi watched in amusement as her friend looked through her hundreds of pictures for a specific one. Lexi had never been as much into technology, besides her iPod and laptop, as her friend.

It was a wonder the two got along in the first place; Lexi was an introvert, preferring to keep to books and her own thoughts rather than going out and partying, and Brittany was a busy bee, always doing one thing or the next, and caught up in friends and such. The only thing in common they seemed to have was running. Every once in a while they'd run together, which were the few occasions Lexi didn't have some form of a music player on her. They didn't even talk all that much. And the one thing Brittany liked to talk about was boys. Nice looking boys.

Brittany showed her the phone. "I mean, look at this gorgeous face." Displayed on the picture was a black-haired boy, with a flat brim hat facing backwards, piercings covering his face. He wore some sort of band tee, though Lexi didn't recognize the name.

He wasn't that attractive, but seeing Brittany's hopeful face, she wasn't about to say so. "I'd say he's your type." Was all she said. She grinned, flicking through a few more pictures to herself.

/'//Not as attractive as Law.'/ She thought before she could stop herself, imagining the smirking face of the strange man she'd rescued not even a day before. She kicked mental-Lexi in the face, screaming that she was not ever to think those things again. Then she realized Brittany was still talking.

"He's /totally/ my type, and he even glanced at me as I passed by. I swear I saw him smile. Anyways, I've decided we're going to name our children Melody and Davie." Lexi laughed.

"I'm pretty sure you should inform him you two are going out before making decisions like that." She waved it off jokingly.

"Psh, he doesn't have to know. I'll just stalk him from a distance until he realizes I'm the love of his life."

As much as Lexi couldn't exactly connect with her friend, she was certainly a source of good entertainment. Brittany checked the time on her phone before stuffing it back into her workout bra.

"Well, much as I love talking, I've gotta finish this run. Don't wanna be late for a second trip to the mall later today! See ya lates, babe." She gave a wink before putting her headphones back in and heading off in the direction Lexi had come. Watching her round behind a branch of trees, Lexi plugged in her music once more, taking off down the path again, this time looking a little more carefully for other runners.

"Baby, I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down eat you alive. Just like animals, animals, like animals-mals." She sang, getting lost in the music once more.