Sidestory:
Best Foot Forward
by Legend and Zoi
The stench of sweat permeated the air around them, the sun beat mercilessly down on them, and the sounds of cheering could be heard everywhere.
Abby Mazzoni was in absolute heaven. This was her environment, the one place she felt the most like herself, the one moment when she could forget everything.
The track stretched out before her, an endless circle of pavement and white paint that beckoned her. Kneeling down, the five foot two Italian tied her shoelaces for the twelfth time, making sure they were tight and short enough not to let her trip.
"Shoulda worn my other ones," she muttered to herself as she finished and glanced around, surveying the competition. It was Virginia Tech against Radford University, and Abby had yet to lose a race.
Of course, it probably didn't hurt that she'd only been in three so far, and that those three were her best ones. Still, she was the sort who never lost confidence and never seemed nervous. Jen Sumner finished going through some stretches one last time, then stood up and began to jog on the spot to warm herself up and to give her something to do while she looked around. She was nervous, but tried to hide it. This was her first race for the day, and the first time she was racing for her new university. She wanted to do the best she could.
Her eyes scanned the audience, and she smiled when she saw her friends here waving at her -- all two of them. She waved back, and then glanced around at the girls she was racing against, a couple of others from Radford and some from Virginia Tech. One of them was also looking around at the others in this race. 'Wow, *cute*,' Jen thought, then blushed slightly and glanced away. 'Okay, Jen, maybe now's not the time for that, when you have a race, oh, *now*.'
She took her starting position with the others, and found herself next to the girl she'd been looking at.
"Good luck," Jen said, smiling slightly nervously, then switched her attention to the track as she waited for the starter's gun.
Abby grinned, flipping the girl a thumbs up. "Don't need luck," she said, her emerald green eyes sparkling with mischief. "Got talent like everybody else here."
She glanced up at the starter, shaking her head. "Always take too long," she commented softly. "Mama mia, I could've started seven races in the time she's been holdin' up that gun."
Jen glanced at her, snickering briefly. "Maybe they decided to change this to an endurance competition to see who can stay like this the longest and forgot to tell us?" she suggested, also speaking softly.
She stared back at the track. 'I hope they hurr...,' she began to think just as the starter gun fired. She started to race down the track. There were a couple of girls ahead of her, so she pushed herself harder and overtook one of them. The other, she realised, was the girl she'd been speaking to at the starting line.
'She's fast,' Jen thought, blocking out other distractions like the crowd shouting. 'C'mon, Jen, gotta run faster.'
Abby ran, the wind whipping her ponytail behind her, curls falling out more every minute. Freedom. She loved running more than anything else, and she was -good- at it. The ground swept by beneath her, but she kept her eyes ahead. She could hear the others panting behind her, running, catching up...then falling behind. The end of the race was near, and she could feel another of the girls on her heels, could sense them drawing closer.
Drawing on the little burst of speed she always knew she could count on, she sprinted forward, taking the lead, and passed over the finish line.
Jen passed over the finish line right after the other girl, then slowed and came to a stop just off the track.
'Damn...if that race had been a few more meters long, I might have won,' she thought. 'Then again, maybe not. I nearly caught her a couple of times, and she always managed to find extra speed from somewhere.'
She steadied her breathing down so that it wasn't racing so fast now, and pushed the hair band back to keep her ponytail from falling out. Then she walked over to the other girl and held out her hand.
"Congratulations," she said, smiling. "That was a really good race."
Abby grinned widely, taking the girl's hand and shaking it. "You, too. Almost had me for a minute there," she said, reaching back with her other hand and letting the rest of her curls fall loose from the ponytail they were in. "Abriana Mazzoni. Don't ask the middle name because there're three and I don't feel like reciting them. Call me Abby."
"Three? Damn, couldn't your parents decide, or something?" Jen asked. "I'm Jennifer Sumner, but everyone usually calls me Jen. I'm from Radford, you...?"
Abby snickered. "Well, my parents decided just fine. If it'd been up to them it would've been Abriana Natalia. Unfortunately, my grandfathers wanted a hand in the naming as well, so tack on Apollo and Dante, and there you go." She tossed her hair over her shoulder, her emerald eyes sparkling with exuberance. "Virginia Tech," she responded to the inquiry. "Not smart enough to go to most of the others."
"Oh...." Jen's pale grey eyes blinked, she wasn't used to people announcing to her that they weren't smart enough to go somewhere. "Smartness really just equals study, y'know." She smiled suddenly. "Half of my class didn't even *go* to university or anything. They all went to become hairdressers, or something stupid like that. So, um....you're not American, are you? I mean, your accent and all."
Abby grinned. "Oh, I don't have the patience for studying, that's all," she said, tossing her curls about to get them out of the slight form created from keeping her hair back into a ponytail. "And no, I'm not originally from America. Born in Italy and lived there until a few years ago."
"Cool," Jen said, smiling back. "Did your family move here, or did you just come over by yourself to go to Virginia Tech?" She glanced down and scuffed the toe of her shoe on the ground. "Um, not meaning to be nosy or anything, that is."
Abby managed, although just barely, to keep the lopsided, lazy smile on her face. The thought of why she'd moved to the US was always a rather disheartening one for her. "Moved out here by myself. Papa wasn't too happy about it, but he understood why I had to. Don't worry about being nosey, I'm not all that secretive so it doesn't bug me."
"That's good, don't want to be a pain, or something. Your dad sounds cool." Jen nodded to herself. "Sounds like he cares about you. The one I had the misfortune to be landed with doesn't care that I moved over here. Don't think he even knows I'm here, actually. I sure didn't tell him. I hate him and he hates me and we are a happy family." She half-sang the last bit in mockery of a song she'd heard once, then grimaced. "Way to totally get on a complete shit of a tangent, huh? Moving right along now...d'you have any more races today?"
Abby nodded, snorting a bit at the comment. "Oh yah, Papa loves me just fine. He'n I are great buddies. It's Dominique that's my problem. My mama, you see. She was a bitch and left my da when I was only three. At any rate...nah, no more races. You?"
"Wish my mum had left my dad," Jen muttered, then shook her head. "Not today. A couple tomorrow. If you're not doing anything now, then, d'you want to go out for a drink?" She held up one hand quickly. "Non-alcoholic, if that's alright with you. I don't drink that stuff, and don't like being around people who are drinking it."
Abby laughed, clapping the other girl on the shoulder. "I'm with you, mio amico," she said, shaking her head, "I can't stand people who drink alcohol, but I've got my reasons for that." She managed to keep the pain out of her voice, but her emerald green eyes were more expressive. "Anyways, I'd love to. Coffee shop down the road if I remember correctly."
Jen caught the look in Abby's eyes, and just gave a small nod. "Yeah...," she said, a little distantly, then shook her head and smiled. "Okay, let's go there," she said. "After you." She gave an exaggerated bow, then giggled slightly. "To be honest, I don't know Roanoke that well, so you'll have to show me where it is."
Abby nodded. "Sure, how about I drive you?" she asked, motioning to the parking lot. "My car's not too far from here, and it's nice and clean. Just got it washed this weekend...although I do that every weekend. Papa sent it to me from Italy, so I have to take good care of it, that's for sure."
"Sent it from *Italy*?!" Jen exclaimed, eyes going wide. "Wow...wouldn't that have been expensive? Wow," she repeated, shaking her head slightly in amazement, then nodded. "That'd be cool. Thanks."
Abby nodded, grinning. "Yah, from Italy. Papa's not too worried about money. The car itself was rather expensive as well."
She guided the other girl towards a dark green Italian model car and unlocked it. "Here ya go, mio amico."
Jen whistled and ran one hand along the top of the car. "Niiiice," she said, opening the door and getting in. "This is a cool car. My mate Sandy would kill for one like this." She smiled, strapping on the seatbelt.
Abby grinned. "Yes? Well then, maybe she'll have to see it some day. I'd love to gloat," the teasing tone of her voice showed her quite well that she wasn't at all serious, at least about the gloating.
Then, with the 'purr' of her engine, the car was running and they were headed towards the coffee shop.
When the car stopped outside the coffee shop, Jen glanced out the window as she unbuckled her seatbelt. "Nice looking place," she said. "Y'know, I always thought that all coffee shops in America were those huge multinational ones, like Starbucks. Guess I was wrong -- nothing new there." She grinned, opening the door and hopping out.
Abby laughed. "Me too, mio amico, when I first came to America a lot of things surprised me."
She ordered a cappuccino from the waitress when the woman asked, then watched her newfound friend curiously. "If you don't mind my saying so, you don't sound like -you're- from around here either. Unless your accent is from somewhere in America I haven't been. Which is entirely likely as I've never been outside of Virginia." She mused. ”Well, except that one time when Diana took us on a road trip."
"Nope, I'm an Aussie," Jen replied cheerfully, then looked up at the board. "Jeez, decisions, decisions." She shook her head, before finally ordering a cappuccino herself, and turned back to Abby. "And you're one up on me, I haven't even been out of the general Roanoke area yet. I only got here a few weeks before classes started, just enough time to get over my jet lag and get everything organised. A road trip sounds fun, though. Where'd you go? And Diana is...?"
"Ah, we travelled all over," she said, casually waving her hand in a rather random direction, "Stayed on the East coast, though. Went to North Carolina, all the way up into a bit of New York, then down to Florida....Diana's the woman I'm staying with. Like a new mama to me, the woman is."
"Hey, cool, I have someone like that, too. Known Emma since I was little, she's Sandy's mum." Jen took her cappuccino and paid for it, still talking. "She's more like a mother to me than anyone else is. She made me apply for Radford; she said if I didn't she was going to come back to Australia and kidnap me." She laughed slightly, and gestured around the shop. "Where'd you want to sit? New York as in the city? Or the state? It is a state as well, isn't it? I'm pretty sure of that."
Abby shrugged. "Really doesn't matter where we sit," she said, absently walking forward a bit and then plopping into the nearest booth. "And the state....the city too, actually. We wandered around, saw the sights, it was great. Well, except when Jonathan lifted me up on the Statue of Liberty. I'm not afraid of heights, but really."
The blonde shuddered. "Yeah, that is a bit much. *So* nice of him," she added sarcastically. "Sounds like it was great fun, though. I have *got* to do the sight-seeing thing sometime."
She blew lightly on her drink to cool it down a bit more before taking a sip, then making a face and emptying three sugar packets into the drink. "So, besides going on road trips during the holidays, and slaughtering any poor Radford girl who dares to race against you, what do you do around here?" she asked as she stirred the sugar in. She took another experimental sip, then dumped in another packet of sugar. She gave Abby a slightly guilty look. "I like really sweet drinks," she admitted.
Abby laughed. "What do I do? Sports. I play football with the boys, I take karate lessons, I play any other sports that happen my way...and I run and work out quite a bit, of course." She sipped her own drink, peering at it carefully. "What do most people do? Probably go to the mall. Maybe to Busch Gardens. That's the amusement park a few miles away. Not too far, lots of people go there."
She grinned. "I went there last summer, was great. I love roller coasters."
"Geez, is it some kind of unwritten law that wherever you are, one of the main hobbies of people is to go the mall?" Jen sighed, and took another sip. "Most of them are teenagers, right? I want to go to this amusement park. I think Sandy might have mentioned it once but I wasn't completely paying attention to her. Would you believe I've never been on a roller coaster? A proper one, that is. With the exception of those little portable ones that do the fairground circuit, there isn't one in Adelaide -- where I'm from. 'Till now, I spent my whole life there." She took another sip. "Most boring place on Earth, Adelaide. Pretty, but boring. I wish I'd been born in pretty much *any* Australian city other than it." She stared into her cup for a moment, swirling it in her hands to watch the patterns on the drink, then looked up again.
"Hey, we should swap numbers, or something," she said. "We could both go to Busch Gardens sometime. Or train together sometime, and I can try to figure out how to beat you next time." She grinned.
Abby laughed, shaking her head. "Of course. If you've never been on a roller coaster--crime of all crimes!-- I'll -have- to drag you to Busch Gardens. And as far as beating me.…" She tossed her curls rather arrogantly over her shoulder, grinning widely. "It's simply not possible." With another laugh, she pulled out her sketchbook, easily skipping to a blank page without one sketch being seen, and wrote down her number on the top, ripping off the bit with it and offering Jen the book and the scrap of paper. "There you are, mine. Just go ahead and write yours on the same page I ripped mine off of."
Jen laughed slightly as she took the book and scrap of paper. "I nearly had you a couple of times today. Don't get too cocky, 'cause I might surprise you one day and manage to beat you." She glanced at the paper and tucked it into her wallet, then wrote her house and cell phone numbers in the book and handed it back. "And mine. You draw, too? Anything you *don't* do?" She laughed again and leant back in her seat, taking another sip.
quot;No wait, mio amico, Speed's my -life-," Abby laughed. The girl had -no- idea how much speed was her life. She almost wished she could escape it, for a brief moment, but then the feelings washed over her; her feet padding barefoot on the ground, the wind whipping about her...yes, that was worth all this Senshi stuff.
She'd go see Percy today and go on Patrol, in fact, just to prove it.
"Eh, I draw, yes, but it isn't any good...as far as things I don't do--study, for one," she grinned, her emerald eyes sparkling, "Unless I really have to."
"You don't study?" Jen's voice took on a tone of mock horror. "Oh mate, studying's important. Fun, too, once you find the right subject for you." She grinned. "Remind me to take you out stargazing next time I have an astronomy assignment. So relaxing, just let your mind wander and look at the stars and forget about everything else."She leaned back in her chair again, sipping some more of her drink. It was nice to have made a new friend, one who *wasn't* mixed up in all that Senshi stuff. And who was also *really* cute. The next few years looked like they were going to be fun.