<div class="floatleft">(http://i.imgur.com/Mtx59.jpg)</div><br/><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: arial;"><strong>Name:</strong> Allison Leclerc<br/><strong>Title:</strong> The Brains<br/><strong>Location:</strong> Foulweather Bluff<br/><strong>Tags:</strong> Taras, Adriano, Natalie, Ryan</span></span><br/><hr/><br/>Allison gently untangled her arm from Taras' and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder when he mentioned the side-bet that he had going on again, feeling a bit awkward. It was an amazing compliment that he was so confident in her abilities, especially coming from him since he was quite an accomplished racer himself on top of being perhaps the person who's opinion mattered to her the most, but she never knew how to react properly to something like that. Allison's cheeks flushed with a subtle hue of pink, although it probably wasn't really noticeable in the relative darkness of the night, and she glanced down at Adriano's shoes while brushing the hair on one side of her head behind her ear like she always did whenever she was feeling nervous or embarrassed.<br/><br/>They were nice shoes. Expensive, Italian leather, nothing could really have been more appropriate on Adriano. Ally had had a pretty huge crush on him when they'd first met to the point where she hardly even dared to speak with him, but she'd gotten over it after a while and they'd become pretty okay friends. He seemed like a nice guy as far as she could tell, and he was quite knowledgeable about a lot of things both empirical and practical, so he was always a fun person to talk to. They had quite a bit in common despite also being very different in many respects, so they could still relate to one another pretty well.<br/><br/>Ally gave him a quick little wave and a smile before spotting Natalie and Ryan who'd just walked up together to join them. She gave Natalie a hug, because they were also good friends as far as she knew, but she kept it brief and not too intimate since she knew that the blonde wasn't particularly big on the whole 'warm relationship' type of thing. It was kind of hard for Allison to wrap her head around that whole concept, since she'd always been desperate to find people that she could be close with while Nat seemed to almost actively avoid it, but she did her best to respect that preference all the same. <br/><br/>The two of them got along just fine, and it felt like they were steadily (albeit slowly) getting closer and closer as time went on, so Ally content to just let things develop at their own pace, or whatever pace Nat was comfortable with. Anyways, nobody had ever accused her of being excessively pushy or outgoing, so it wasn't such a hard thing for her to do.<br/><br/>She gave Ryan a similarly quick hug as well afterwards, since she thought that it might be awkward if she didn't and she was always trying to make him feel more at home within the crew since he was new and all. Ally knew that it wasn't easy jumping into an already established group like that, and she certainly hadn't forgotten all of the times where she'd felt alone and ignored during her childhood, so the last thing that she wanted to do was make anyone else feel that way, especially a new crew member. They hadn't had time to get to know each other that well yet, but he seemed cool enough and he was an excellent driver, so Ally didn't see any reason why they wouldn't end up as good friends.<br/><br/>"So how come you're sitting out?" she asked him with genuine curiosity and a tiny hint of disappointment. Ally loved racing against good competition, and Ryan was better than 'good' from what she'd seen and heard, so she'd been looking forward to going up against him in a real race. Plus, one more crew member on the track meant that much more of a chance that one of them would take home first prize, and that was never bad either.<br/></div>