A/N: Thank you all for sticking through those agonizing two weeks!
Hopefully this chapter will fulfill your expectations. I'm posting as soon
as possible, but I'm sure yous know how it is getting back from vacation
and having to readjust to a time zone. I also needed to do a little
research when I got to a certain point in the chapter.
Thank you all for the awesome reviews! You all know by now that more
reviews means faster chapters!
________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 6: Explain Yourself
"So what's this big announcement you have?" Alec complained to Max, wanting to speed things up. "I could be picking up some girl at Crash right now."
"Will you ever grow up," Max grimaced as she turned and walked up the stairway. "Where's an anvil when you need one?" she mumbled to herself. "Listen up people!" Max shouted to the crowd of transgenics below. "I've got news that'll change things around here, but it might not be for the better. White's dead," she began. As an up roar of cheering and commotion came from everyone below, Max held up her hand for them to stop, "Hold up! I know this sounds good, but it's not. Yeah, we don't have to worry about White and his government goons anymore, but now more then ever we've got the familiars to deal with. You think they're gonna just shrug and forget that White was killed? No, and of course they're gonna blame us. Against them, we don't have the upper hand. We need to be alert and prepared because these bastards won't give up easily. I don't know how long it'll be before they come, but we can't let them win. And when they do show up we're gonna bring them to their knees!"
The transgenics below all hailed and held up their guns with pride. As Max made her way back down, several of them reached out to high five her.
"Hey," Mole stopped Max by grabbing her shoulder. "Thanks, um, for the heads-up," he mumbled grudgingly.
"See Mole, you do care," Alec cooed tauntingly as he came up behind them. Mole just grumbled something unintelligible under his breath and walked away as if he had something more important to do. Alec turned to Max with a laugh-like breath, "When people would go on about missing you, he'd always say that you were trouble and you defended the ordinaries too much; but I knew he kinda missed you, too."
Max shook her head back, "And here I would have expected at least some of you to change over fifteen years."
Across the warehouse, Lex sat on an old couch when Tera came up behind her.
"Hey!" she approached Lex with a warm smile. "I'm Tera. Dix tells me your Max's daughter."
"Yeah, I'm Lex," Lex shook Tera's extended hand.
Tera was about the same height as Lex, with straight brown hair that just brushed the tops of her shoulders. Her emerald green eyes shimmered when the light caught them and Lex smiled at the flamed-printed Superman symbol on her shirt.
"Well welcome to Seattle. It's nice to see another teen around Terminal City."
"There aren't a lot?" Lex was surprised by Tera's comment.
"No I'm the only one left after Riley ran away. He was the only other one my age. His mother was killed in a drive-by when he was six and last year he just said he was sick of this city," Tera let out a depressing sigh. "There are some others who are like, twelve and younger. But hanging out with kids all day can get old fast."
"I know what you mean. But what about that boy's father?" Lex wondered.
"Never came to Seattle after Manticore burned, I guess," Tera shrugged. "And the fire was right after they started the program, so hardly any X5s were pregnant yet," she added.
"Program?" Lex didn't like the sound of that word.
"Yeah, the breeding partner thing." Seeing Lex's confused and appalled expression, Tera explained a little about it, "I'm surprised you of all people don't know about it, but whatever. See, after your mom and some other X5s blew up the DNA lab of the original Manticore, they had to move the facility. And without the DNA of the X series, they couldn't create any new soldiers in test tubes like they had dome with all the rest. So they paired off the X5s to ummm, make new soldiers the old fashion way. That's how my mom got pregnant with me."
"That's sick," Lex grimaced. Suddenly a rather disturbing thought popped into her mind, "Wait, my mom was captured when they blew up the lab. So wouldn't she have been at Manticore then?"
"That's how she and Alec met," Tera winked. "But don't worry, nothing happened between them. I overheard Alec say once that Max kicked him in the crotch and said that was the only kind of contact they were going to have."
Somewhat relieved, Lex laughed, "Yeah, that sounds like my mom. Maybe that has something to do with why she hates him."
As Max and Jondy mingled with the rest of the crowd, Lex and Tera spent the evening talking, and finding that they had a lot in common. Once, Max looked over at her daughter and smiled to herself, thinking that this was the way things should be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Do you have it?" Grayer Clasin ordered as a man approached him on the dock.
Without a word, the man opened the briefcase he was carrying and spun in around so Clasin could examine its contents.
"It's being called mud dust on the streets. Asians pay up to $100 a pop," the man began to talk.
"What's in it?" Clasin demanded.
"PCP with a lot of its byproduct. There's THC and crack mixed in, too. The guy I got it from says users call it mud dust because it turns dark brown with you burn it."
"Well if you burn it where are the needles to shoot it up?" Clasin asked when he didn't see any in the briefcase.
"It don't work like that. That shit stays like powder, but if you burn it, you get a better high," the man adjusted his over-sized parka as an omniscient smirk spread across his face.
"How much?" Clasin grabbed the drugs.
"Twenty thou for the whole case."
"Fifteen," Clasin slid a second briefcase towards the dealer.
"No way, man. I need twenty to make a profit," the dealer protested.
Bringing a gun out if a hidden holster, Clasin pointed at the dealer's head, "Fifteen or I walk away with both cases. I'd hate for things to get messy, but either way I still get the drugs in the end."
Shaken, the dealer reached out and took the money Clasin offered, "Aiight, man, aiight."
"We'll be in touch," Clasin leered as the dealer walked back towards the road.
Back on the road, the dealer's accomplice shouted to him, "How much you score?"
"Fifteen," the dealer mocked a small victory dance as he climbed into the front seat.
"How'd you get that fool to pay so much? That shit ain't worth the risk."
"He don't know what it does," the dealer grinned.
"What?! You crazy man? One sniff can kill a brotha dead! You know that!" the second man worried. "And if that shit kills someone, you know that fool's gonna get us!"
"That ain't gonna happen. He's selling them in Asia, and those people'll kill him first," the dealer remarked as they sped off down an alleyway.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"So it looks like you and Tera hit it off, huh?" Original Cindy asked Lex at Crash later that night.
After leaving Terminal City, they had decided that they weren't ready to go home quite yet, and pool at Crash seemed like the perfect solution.
"Yeah, she's cool," Lex nodded as she sipped her soda. "At least now I'll have someone to hang out with over the summer."
"Hey, grab a stick," Jondy nudged Lex over towards the rack of pool sticks next to her. "I think I've found someone who could actually kick your ass at pool."
"Really," Lex rolled her eyes at Jondy's proclamation. "And just who would that be?"
"Logan," Jondy turned Lex's attention to the game between Logan and Alec.
"She's right there, little boo," Original Cindy agreed with Jondy. "Boy's got mad skills when it comes to the game. Can whoop even a transgenic's ass."
"Why did you say I'd play him? He couldn't wanna go up against me," Lex smirked as Alec handed Logan a few bills.
"No, but he thinks he's hot stuff after beating Alec. You usually love bursting people's bubbles. Besides, he won't get pissy when you beat him, tack it up father-daughter bonding," Jondy laughed.
"For the record, you set him up to this," Lex shook her head she took a stick next to her. "Care for a real challenge?" her persona changed as she slinked up to the pool table.
"Lex, this isn't play-time," Alec laughed. "People are betting here."
"Good," Lex smiled slyly. "I could use a new carburetor." As Logan and Alec exchanged worried looks, Lex slammed a fifty-dollar bill on the table. "C'mon," she taunted Logan, "I'll even let you break."
Assuming Lex wasn't going to back down, Logan shrugged and rubbed some chalk on the end of his stick, "If you insist."
Logan sunk three balls on his first shot, and casually sunk another two after that. He could have showed off, but he was playing his daughter, after all, so he wanted to keep the game friendly. Lex caught on to his reserved manner and took it upon herself to show that this was no friendly game, and she wanted him to try and beat her.
"And now the real pro steps up," she continued to taunt as she sunk two balls behind her back. Turning to look at the table, she imitated a ditz, "Oh, gee, did those go in? I didn't see that shot."
Logan simply watched in shock as Lex sank ball after ball, being sure to flaunt just how much skill she had. When she scratched a ball on purpose, Logan marched up, intending to show her what a mistake she'd just made. However, it didn't quite work out that as he missed the ball he aimed on his second shot.
"Awww, better luck next time," Lex teased as she sank her last ball on the table. "Now let's see," she dragged out as she lined up her shot at the eight ball, "whoever sinks the eight ball wins, right?" She pulled back on her stick and sunk the eight ball with hardly any effort exerted. "Hmmm, I do believe you owe me fifty bucks," she held out her hand to Logan. He just stared in disbelief as Lex snatched her money out of his hand. "Next victim?" he heard her turn to crowd of onlookers that had gathered around them.
He thought he was pretty good, to say the least; he could beat an X5. And yet he had just had his ass handed to him by a fourteen year old.
"Now ya see what happens when you underestimate people?" Jondy teased as he sat down on the stool next to her. "Just for future reference- Lex doesn't enter any bets that she doesn't know for a fact she'll win."
"Where did she learn to play like that?" Logan shook his head.
"There was a pool table a the rec center across the street from us. She's been screwing kids outta their allowance since she was three," Jondy laughed. "It was actually kinda funny. When she was in kindergarten, she actually had these kids who would go around and hit up the kids who owed her money, like she was a little mob boss. But then, of course her teachers found out and she got banned from the pool table. Max and I would take her to the bar we'd hang out at and she played there, but she wasn't allowed to bet money on any game for a year."
Logan laughed as an image of a five-year-old Lex eating pasta with a cigar and a brandy popped into his head, "So I guess she was always this cunning?"
"That's our girl," Jondy grinned back. Suddenly she remembered something, "Oh, remind me when we get back, I have something I wanna show you."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"So what's this surprise you've got up your sleeve?" Logan asked as Jondy plundered through the boxes they'd been storing in Lex's room.
"Wait, you do have a DVD player, right?" she didn't answer his question right away.
"Yeah, why?"
"Well, Lex's laptop has one, but the TV screen is bigger. Ah, found them!" Jondy grinned as she unearthed a CD case from under some socks. Walking back towards the living room she started to explain what it was, "Well, I wanna show you these while Max and Lex are still at the Needle cuz they would probably try to stop me."
"What's on the discs?" Logan became curious.
"Well, when Max was pregnant; actually, it turned out to be about a week before she had Lex; we were walking around the flea market in our town. We lived in Nova Scotia at the time. So we pass by this guy's table and there's a DVD camera there. And I'm sure know as well as anyone how few of them there are. Once the Pulse hit, they became impossible to find since they were so new and the price of the existing ones just totally skyrocketed. So I look over this one, and it's a little broken, but nothing I couldn't fix in less than ten minutes and this guy even has two blank DVDs he's selling with it. Now, Max, of course, doesn't want to buy it, even though it was only twenty bucks. But I convinced her to; truth be told the incentive I used to win her over was if she ever saw you again." Logan's head snapped up at that. "See," Jondy continued, "I said that if you two ever did get back together, it wasn't gonna be in the next few days. Lex's cute years would be over and I kept going on about how you would want to see them, and how much better this was than pictures, and how she would appreciate it, too. So we bought, we fixed it, and even though there are only six discs, we made the best of them. This one," she pointed to the first disc in the case, "starts with the day we got the camera, so Max looked like a blimp, and as you go back, they get more recent, up to Lex's last birthday."
"Wow," Logan held the case in his hands, "this is great."
"So where do you want to start?" Jondy smiled at Logan's excitement. "But you gotta at least see the first entry on the second one. If you ask me that's the cutest one of all."
As the two played clip after clip, watching Max yell at Jondy to stop making jokes about pregnant stomach, then Lex at various stages of screaming, crawling, and making Max and Jondy chase her everywhere.
"A one year old with transgenic speed," Logan laughed, "I don't know how you two survived."
"Hey you didn't see her at seven months old. She learned to walk then, but had running down pat in about a week. Now that was hell. Oh, shit they might be back soon," Jondy glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly 1:30 a.m. "Lemme show you the dance quick."
"Dance?" Logan laughed.
"Yeah, don't tell Lex I told you this, but her biggest guilt pleasure has always been, and still is, Cyndi Lauper. She has all her CDs; it's really funny. But when she was two, she had this dance that she made up for 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', and I filmed it when she was about 2 ½," Jondy said as she loaded the new disc into the DVD player.
Logan just smiled broadly as he watched the clip transpire.
"You ready?" Jondy's voice asked Lex from behind the camera.
The bouncy two-year-old nodded yes, her ponytail whipping around from its place on the side of her head. As the music started, Lex began to dance around, singing along with every word. Her tutu-like skirt and bright purple tights mixed with the jean jacket to look like something that had been taken right out of the 80s.
Just as the song ended, they heard the roar of engines down on the street, "Sounds like they're home," Jondy collected the discs.
Logan tried to control his laughter of little Lex, "Thanks Jondy."
"No problem," Jondy shrugged. "But you still have a lot more to see."
"No, really," Logan smiled softly, "That means a lot."
Understanding how much Logan appreciated seeing those moments for himself, Jondy stood up and hugged Logan, "You're welcome. And just so you know- one way you can tell Lex has officially become comfortable around you is when she starts playing those CDs in her stereo instead of through head phones," Jondy winked. "Hope you like the song 'Sally's Pigeons'," she hinted over her shoulder as the elevator dinged.
________________________________________________________________________
A/N: Well, there you go. I finally got the chapter up. Yes, I know it took a while, but I had to finish my scrapbook of my trip to Europe before the reunion this weekend in addition to everything else. And then I spent longer than I expected at the orthodontist this morning, but I got my braces off, so it's all good! (Yes, I'm physced about having a straight and metal-free smile!) So, as always, give the purple some love and you'll see another chapter soon! Let me know if you wanna see the next few chapters focused around the EO storyline, more about the gang in Seattle and the lost time between S2 and the story, or more about the familiars. Or do you want them all to have equal writing? I'd really hate to bore you with material you guys don't necessarily wanna read! So thanks in advance for your reviews!
Chapter 6: Explain Yourself
"So what's this big announcement you have?" Alec complained to Max, wanting to speed things up. "I could be picking up some girl at Crash right now."
"Will you ever grow up," Max grimaced as she turned and walked up the stairway. "Where's an anvil when you need one?" she mumbled to herself. "Listen up people!" Max shouted to the crowd of transgenics below. "I've got news that'll change things around here, but it might not be for the better. White's dead," she began. As an up roar of cheering and commotion came from everyone below, Max held up her hand for them to stop, "Hold up! I know this sounds good, but it's not. Yeah, we don't have to worry about White and his government goons anymore, but now more then ever we've got the familiars to deal with. You think they're gonna just shrug and forget that White was killed? No, and of course they're gonna blame us. Against them, we don't have the upper hand. We need to be alert and prepared because these bastards won't give up easily. I don't know how long it'll be before they come, but we can't let them win. And when they do show up we're gonna bring them to their knees!"
The transgenics below all hailed and held up their guns with pride. As Max made her way back down, several of them reached out to high five her.
"Hey," Mole stopped Max by grabbing her shoulder. "Thanks, um, for the heads-up," he mumbled grudgingly.
"See Mole, you do care," Alec cooed tauntingly as he came up behind them. Mole just grumbled something unintelligible under his breath and walked away as if he had something more important to do. Alec turned to Max with a laugh-like breath, "When people would go on about missing you, he'd always say that you were trouble and you defended the ordinaries too much; but I knew he kinda missed you, too."
Max shook her head back, "And here I would have expected at least some of you to change over fifteen years."
Across the warehouse, Lex sat on an old couch when Tera came up behind her.
"Hey!" she approached Lex with a warm smile. "I'm Tera. Dix tells me your Max's daughter."
"Yeah, I'm Lex," Lex shook Tera's extended hand.
Tera was about the same height as Lex, with straight brown hair that just brushed the tops of her shoulders. Her emerald green eyes shimmered when the light caught them and Lex smiled at the flamed-printed Superman symbol on her shirt.
"Well welcome to Seattle. It's nice to see another teen around Terminal City."
"There aren't a lot?" Lex was surprised by Tera's comment.
"No I'm the only one left after Riley ran away. He was the only other one my age. His mother was killed in a drive-by when he was six and last year he just said he was sick of this city," Tera let out a depressing sigh. "There are some others who are like, twelve and younger. But hanging out with kids all day can get old fast."
"I know what you mean. But what about that boy's father?" Lex wondered.
"Never came to Seattle after Manticore burned, I guess," Tera shrugged. "And the fire was right after they started the program, so hardly any X5s were pregnant yet," she added.
"Program?" Lex didn't like the sound of that word.
"Yeah, the breeding partner thing." Seeing Lex's confused and appalled expression, Tera explained a little about it, "I'm surprised you of all people don't know about it, but whatever. See, after your mom and some other X5s blew up the DNA lab of the original Manticore, they had to move the facility. And without the DNA of the X series, they couldn't create any new soldiers in test tubes like they had dome with all the rest. So they paired off the X5s to ummm, make new soldiers the old fashion way. That's how my mom got pregnant with me."
"That's sick," Lex grimaced. Suddenly a rather disturbing thought popped into her mind, "Wait, my mom was captured when they blew up the lab. So wouldn't she have been at Manticore then?"
"That's how she and Alec met," Tera winked. "But don't worry, nothing happened between them. I overheard Alec say once that Max kicked him in the crotch and said that was the only kind of contact they were going to have."
Somewhat relieved, Lex laughed, "Yeah, that sounds like my mom. Maybe that has something to do with why she hates him."
As Max and Jondy mingled with the rest of the crowd, Lex and Tera spent the evening talking, and finding that they had a lot in common. Once, Max looked over at her daughter and smiled to herself, thinking that this was the way things should be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Do you have it?" Grayer Clasin ordered as a man approached him on the dock.
Without a word, the man opened the briefcase he was carrying and spun in around so Clasin could examine its contents.
"It's being called mud dust on the streets. Asians pay up to $100 a pop," the man began to talk.
"What's in it?" Clasin demanded.
"PCP with a lot of its byproduct. There's THC and crack mixed in, too. The guy I got it from says users call it mud dust because it turns dark brown with you burn it."
"Well if you burn it where are the needles to shoot it up?" Clasin asked when he didn't see any in the briefcase.
"It don't work like that. That shit stays like powder, but if you burn it, you get a better high," the man adjusted his over-sized parka as an omniscient smirk spread across his face.
"How much?" Clasin grabbed the drugs.
"Twenty thou for the whole case."
"Fifteen," Clasin slid a second briefcase towards the dealer.
"No way, man. I need twenty to make a profit," the dealer protested.
Bringing a gun out if a hidden holster, Clasin pointed at the dealer's head, "Fifteen or I walk away with both cases. I'd hate for things to get messy, but either way I still get the drugs in the end."
Shaken, the dealer reached out and took the money Clasin offered, "Aiight, man, aiight."
"We'll be in touch," Clasin leered as the dealer walked back towards the road.
Back on the road, the dealer's accomplice shouted to him, "How much you score?"
"Fifteen," the dealer mocked a small victory dance as he climbed into the front seat.
"How'd you get that fool to pay so much? That shit ain't worth the risk."
"He don't know what it does," the dealer grinned.
"What?! You crazy man? One sniff can kill a brotha dead! You know that!" the second man worried. "And if that shit kills someone, you know that fool's gonna get us!"
"That ain't gonna happen. He's selling them in Asia, and those people'll kill him first," the dealer remarked as they sped off down an alleyway.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"So it looks like you and Tera hit it off, huh?" Original Cindy asked Lex at Crash later that night.
After leaving Terminal City, they had decided that they weren't ready to go home quite yet, and pool at Crash seemed like the perfect solution.
"Yeah, she's cool," Lex nodded as she sipped her soda. "At least now I'll have someone to hang out with over the summer."
"Hey, grab a stick," Jondy nudged Lex over towards the rack of pool sticks next to her. "I think I've found someone who could actually kick your ass at pool."
"Really," Lex rolled her eyes at Jondy's proclamation. "And just who would that be?"
"Logan," Jondy turned Lex's attention to the game between Logan and Alec.
"She's right there, little boo," Original Cindy agreed with Jondy. "Boy's got mad skills when it comes to the game. Can whoop even a transgenic's ass."
"Why did you say I'd play him? He couldn't wanna go up against me," Lex smirked as Alec handed Logan a few bills.
"No, but he thinks he's hot stuff after beating Alec. You usually love bursting people's bubbles. Besides, he won't get pissy when you beat him, tack it up father-daughter bonding," Jondy laughed.
"For the record, you set him up to this," Lex shook her head she took a stick next to her. "Care for a real challenge?" her persona changed as she slinked up to the pool table.
"Lex, this isn't play-time," Alec laughed. "People are betting here."
"Good," Lex smiled slyly. "I could use a new carburetor." As Logan and Alec exchanged worried looks, Lex slammed a fifty-dollar bill on the table. "C'mon," she taunted Logan, "I'll even let you break."
Assuming Lex wasn't going to back down, Logan shrugged and rubbed some chalk on the end of his stick, "If you insist."
Logan sunk three balls on his first shot, and casually sunk another two after that. He could have showed off, but he was playing his daughter, after all, so he wanted to keep the game friendly. Lex caught on to his reserved manner and took it upon herself to show that this was no friendly game, and she wanted him to try and beat her.
"And now the real pro steps up," she continued to taunt as she sunk two balls behind her back. Turning to look at the table, she imitated a ditz, "Oh, gee, did those go in? I didn't see that shot."
Logan simply watched in shock as Lex sank ball after ball, being sure to flaunt just how much skill she had. When she scratched a ball on purpose, Logan marched up, intending to show her what a mistake she'd just made. However, it didn't quite work out that as he missed the ball he aimed on his second shot.
"Awww, better luck next time," Lex teased as she sank her last ball on the table. "Now let's see," she dragged out as she lined up her shot at the eight ball, "whoever sinks the eight ball wins, right?" She pulled back on her stick and sunk the eight ball with hardly any effort exerted. "Hmmm, I do believe you owe me fifty bucks," she held out her hand to Logan. He just stared in disbelief as Lex snatched her money out of his hand. "Next victim?" he heard her turn to crowd of onlookers that had gathered around them.
He thought he was pretty good, to say the least; he could beat an X5. And yet he had just had his ass handed to him by a fourteen year old.
"Now ya see what happens when you underestimate people?" Jondy teased as he sat down on the stool next to her. "Just for future reference- Lex doesn't enter any bets that she doesn't know for a fact she'll win."
"Where did she learn to play like that?" Logan shook his head.
"There was a pool table a the rec center across the street from us. She's been screwing kids outta their allowance since she was three," Jondy laughed. "It was actually kinda funny. When she was in kindergarten, she actually had these kids who would go around and hit up the kids who owed her money, like she was a little mob boss. But then, of course her teachers found out and she got banned from the pool table. Max and I would take her to the bar we'd hang out at and she played there, but she wasn't allowed to bet money on any game for a year."
Logan laughed as an image of a five-year-old Lex eating pasta with a cigar and a brandy popped into his head, "So I guess she was always this cunning?"
"That's our girl," Jondy grinned back. Suddenly she remembered something, "Oh, remind me when we get back, I have something I wanna show you."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"So what's this surprise you've got up your sleeve?" Logan asked as Jondy plundered through the boxes they'd been storing in Lex's room.
"Wait, you do have a DVD player, right?" she didn't answer his question right away.
"Yeah, why?"
"Well, Lex's laptop has one, but the TV screen is bigger. Ah, found them!" Jondy grinned as she unearthed a CD case from under some socks. Walking back towards the living room she started to explain what it was, "Well, I wanna show you these while Max and Lex are still at the Needle cuz they would probably try to stop me."
"What's on the discs?" Logan became curious.
"Well, when Max was pregnant; actually, it turned out to be about a week before she had Lex; we were walking around the flea market in our town. We lived in Nova Scotia at the time. So we pass by this guy's table and there's a DVD camera there. And I'm sure know as well as anyone how few of them there are. Once the Pulse hit, they became impossible to find since they were so new and the price of the existing ones just totally skyrocketed. So I look over this one, and it's a little broken, but nothing I couldn't fix in less than ten minutes and this guy even has two blank DVDs he's selling with it. Now, Max, of course, doesn't want to buy it, even though it was only twenty bucks. But I convinced her to; truth be told the incentive I used to win her over was if she ever saw you again." Logan's head snapped up at that. "See," Jondy continued, "I said that if you two ever did get back together, it wasn't gonna be in the next few days. Lex's cute years would be over and I kept going on about how you would want to see them, and how much better this was than pictures, and how she would appreciate it, too. So we bought, we fixed it, and even though there are only six discs, we made the best of them. This one," she pointed to the first disc in the case, "starts with the day we got the camera, so Max looked like a blimp, and as you go back, they get more recent, up to Lex's last birthday."
"Wow," Logan held the case in his hands, "this is great."
"So where do you want to start?" Jondy smiled at Logan's excitement. "But you gotta at least see the first entry on the second one. If you ask me that's the cutest one of all."
As the two played clip after clip, watching Max yell at Jondy to stop making jokes about pregnant stomach, then Lex at various stages of screaming, crawling, and making Max and Jondy chase her everywhere.
"A one year old with transgenic speed," Logan laughed, "I don't know how you two survived."
"Hey you didn't see her at seven months old. She learned to walk then, but had running down pat in about a week. Now that was hell. Oh, shit they might be back soon," Jondy glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly 1:30 a.m. "Lemme show you the dance quick."
"Dance?" Logan laughed.
"Yeah, don't tell Lex I told you this, but her biggest guilt pleasure has always been, and still is, Cyndi Lauper. She has all her CDs; it's really funny. But when she was two, she had this dance that she made up for 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun', and I filmed it when she was about 2 ½," Jondy said as she loaded the new disc into the DVD player.
Logan just smiled broadly as he watched the clip transpire.
"You ready?" Jondy's voice asked Lex from behind the camera.
The bouncy two-year-old nodded yes, her ponytail whipping around from its place on the side of her head. As the music started, Lex began to dance around, singing along with every word. Her tutu-like skirt and bright purple tights mixed with the jean jacket to look like something that had been taken right out of the 80s.
Just as the song ended, they heard the roar of engines down on the street, "Sounds like they're home," Jondy collected the discs.
Logan tried to control his laughter of little Lex, "Thanks Jondy."
"No problem," Jondy shrugged. "But you still have a lot more to see."
"No, really," Logan smiled softly, "That means a lot."
Understanding how much Logan appreciated seeing those moments for himself, Jondy stood up and hugged Logan, "You're welcome. And just so you know- one way you can tell Lex has officially become comfortable around you is when she starts playing those CDs in her stereo instead of through head phones," Jondy winked. "Hope you like the song 'Sally's Pigeons'," she hinted over her shoulder as the elevator dinged.
________________________________________________________________________
A/N: Well, there you go. I finally got the chapter up. Yes, I know it took a while, but I had to finish my scrapbook of my trip to Europe before the reunion this weekend in addition to everything else. And then I spent longer than I expected at the orthodontist this morning, but I got my braces off, so it's all good! (Yes, I'm physced about having a straight and metal-free smile!) So, as always, give the purple some love and you'll see another chapter soon! Let me know if you wanna see the next few chapters focused around the EO storyline, more about the gang in Seattle and the lost time between S2 and the story, or more about the familiars. Or do you want them all to have equal writing? I'd really hate to bore you with material you guys don't necessarily wanna read! So thanks in advance for your reviews!