A/N's: Now, there is a picture online of the inside of a 1973 Porsche race car, and that is the basic design I'm using for the inside of Lightning's 'body'. In this chapter, the small discrepancies have been fixed, you'll notice you know have to climb in through his driver window, there's only one bucket seat, and so on.
It wasn't the boy before her that made her scared; it wasn't the way that he had her pinned against a wall so harshly. It was the illuminated red race car that had spotted them, that was glaring heatedly at the new human.
It was that Lightning looked ready to mow the kid over, and that was what scared Carmen.
66
It had been thrilling to him; all of his life, he had wanted nothing more than this. And for once in his life, to travel the world and explore on his own, without any one. And to be sure, he was enjoying every second of it. Living on the edge like his father, staring out into the blue horizon everyday and wondering where life would take him next. This would never bore him; he was sure…even if it was a bit scary. And unsafe. And scary. And when he stumbled into this new land, this land populated by talking cars, that moved and lived and…talked, was scary enough for anyone.
It had been astonishing to say the least, and wonderful when he found another person here besides himself. So he wasn't going crazy unless it was possible for two people to go crazy with the exact same mental insanity about cars, and he didn't think it was.
But following his father's footsteps had always been Calvin's dream. And he was going to live up to his wanderer heritage even if it turned out to be the scariest, most unsafe thing he would ever do. Which, he reminded himself uneasily, it probably would be. But he tried not to permit himself to think of the daring adventures that he, Calvin, would embark upon. Even if he wasn't sure where he was or where he was headed. And even if he had to put up with certain nut jobs in the process.
In honest truth, the aforementioned "nut jobs" of the place really just consisted of one person, and it wasn't even a person. And "nut job" really translated into "machine", "terrifying" and "menacing".
Three strikes for Lightning McQueen.
"Let. Her. Go." McQueen tried to put as much venom in the statement as possible.
Carmen wiggled hurriedly between the wall and the other kid. The boy let her brake loose and stumble away from him, principally because he seemed too bewildered for speech or movement other than gazing at the talking car with eyes the ideal extent of dinner plates.
This, in perspective, was good for him, as this gave Carmen the capability to intercept Lightning before he clipped the new human with his front tire, and his engine was already alluding to such an feat as he dug in his back tires and prepared to charge.
"Lightning, calm down!" She placed herself half in front of him, both palms spread spacious on his garnet slick hood; as if this action could hold back about nine hundred angry horses. He glared intensely around her, his engine buzzing. Still, her body language was clear, but it confused him, and he finally stared at her with questioning eyes. His engine stalled. He pouted.
"Don't look at me like that, you over grown lawn mower." Like a toddler, McQueen stuck out his lower lip farther, and settled haughtily on his tires.
"Now." Carmen spoke with clarity in the other human's direction, though her voice cracked just a smidgen at her next sentence despite her control. "Tell me who you are….and how…how did you get here?"
The other human only glared at her, pursing his lips in defiance. Lightning's engine rumbled and little and he gathered himself on his chassis. Clearly he was disgruntled. Clearly he wanted to go back the motel and sleep for Chrysler's sake, but noooo….he, personally, saw nothing immoral with driving (literally) the boy either out of town, or out of his mind.
Carmen's face transformed into a wicked scowl. Above all, rudeness was not tolerated to her.
The boy suddenly turned to run, only to find himself sandwiched between the racers' nose, his teeth gritted against each other as he spoke.
"Stay. Put." The car ground out, his wide eye lids were quite low.
"Now…what is your name?" Carmen asked a second time. If there was just glint of menace in her tone, it was because she had the thousand pound machine on her side and she knew it, then no one blamed her for it.
"My name's…Calvin." He muttered.
"What?" Carmen leaned forward to hear the boy's statement clearer.
"It's Calvin." He blushed, staring at his sneakers as if he expected them to tell him all of life's secrets.
"Ehh…I hear someone coming," At this interrupting statement, McQueen rolled back an inch or so, glancing behind him with hesitation. Calvin slumped to the ground a little and quickly regained his balance. He seemed to be considering the back exit of the alley way behind him as a possible escape route. The approaching noise turned out to be an engine, but it seemed far enough off.
Carmen proceeded to panic. "Ahh uhm…Oh! Lightning!"
"What?" The stock car jumped on his tires, startled.
"Put down your window, let him hide in you." Carmen urged.
Lightning looked at her as if she'd asked him to kiss Chick Hicks on the mouth. "Are you nuts? No way am I letting that punk in me!"
"Please! We don't have a choice," Carmen said, pushing Calvin by his shoulders toward McQueen, who reversed until his back end hit the side wall, a clear look of disgust on his features.
"No WAY! That thing almost killed me!" Calvin dug in his heels.
"Oh for the love of," With an insistent shove, Carmen got Max in Lightning's window, hurriedly pushed his waist, then used the sole of the boy's sneakers as leverage when they were all that was left of him dangling out of Lightning. He fell in to Lightning's bucket seat with a whack. The red car shook himself sadistically form left to right, a glare on his windshield.
"Lightning, behave." Carmen hissed at the other motor came closer.
A loud thunk came from inside McQueen. Carmen stared at him and he inoffensively gazed upward, mouth warped comically.
Lightning gave a discontented grunt, but stayed motionless as was requested of him.
After several minutes during which the only thing Carmen could hear absolutely perfectly was her pounding heartbeat, and soon she decided the coast was clear, whoever it was must have just been taking a u-turn back down the road. There was no real danger here anyway, between Luigi's tire Shop, an abandoned building and with both alley ends opened to the road and the desert night behind them.
Calvin poked his head out of McQueen's window, glaring at the girl.
"You stupid girl! I-iiiieeeeee!" Before Carmen suddenly floated a cloud of dust. Lightning had took off, that teenager still in him. He was holding on to Lightning's side with ashen knuckles as the racecar sped along into the desert. The car didn't speak or even retort to Max's yells, his engine merely roared down the dirt as he sped through the night, his indigo eyes narrowed in livid concentration.
"Slow down! Stop! Please!" The kid's words were whipped from his mouth as shallow echoes into the starry darkness. Lightning sped into a extensive circle, then narrowed it, turning the slide into fixed doughnuts and letting his back end fish tail behind him.
Even from Carmen's point of view, (and she could only decipher a red spot severing the thick night with wicked turns and jumps, about one hundred yards away form her) it was a spectacle nothing short of terrifying.
"Okay! Okay! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, just….get me out of this death trap!"
Lightning's eyes widened slowly, he blinked twice as if gathering his wits, as he coasted to a gentle twenty miles per hour, he elegantly glided back toward Carmen, but the expression on his face was one of smug impiety. It grew at the stunned look on the girl's face. His engine purred terrifically.
"Putting that kid in me? Yeah….Worst. Idea. Ever." The stock car spoke declaratively.
Carmen swallowed. "For him, yeah. You looked like you enjoyed yourself."
Poor Calvin was shakily climbing out of his driver window at this point, and without any hesitance McQueen gave himself one great heave to the left, and the boy fell out onto the cool ground into a piteous bundle.
"You'd better come with us," Carmen suggested as Calvin picked himself up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She admonished her hand to him, to help him up. He reached for it, but thought better of it when Lightning's engine growled behind him forebodingly.
"Oh-oh yeah? I can just run, you know." Calvin dusted off his jeans as he spoke.
"And I'm only the fastest thing on four wheels, you know. You'd only get, oh, maybe, five feet." McQueen quipped. Calvin stared back at him.
"Maybe." Lightning threatened.
Calvin ogled between them, and finally dropped his head down to rest his chin on his chest in defeat. "…Fine."
Carmen jammed her hands in her pockets to warm them as she walked along side Lightning and Calvin. The night breeze was undisturbed without the alley walls now, and it sent a chill down her spine at its tickles. It was a quick jog down from Luigi's Tires Shop to the Cozy cone, but they had to move extra quiet past the sleeping buildings and the cars within them, though it wasn't unusual for Carmen and Lightning to be out and about this time of night, it was to have more than one human.
"Do you even have a license?" Calvin inquired impertinently as they snuck into Motel Cone number one.
Carmen stared at him; mouth slightly a gape, before throwing out her arms in a wild gesture to Lightning. "He's a living breathing car! Why bother drive him when he can just drive me?" She whispered harshly.
McQueen yawned pointedly.
Carmen shook her head at the tactless boy, and then gestured to the room around them, that was lightly bathed in an opaque radiance from the moonlight that spilled from the windows. "Here. You'll hide in here until…until I can figure out a way to introduce you to Doc without him losing nuts and bolts. So…uh…good night." She mumbled out the last words, dropping near Lightning's side groggily.
He smirked as he wondered what Carmen would do without him.
Carmen settled down next to Lighting, cozied right into to his right side, hand tucked into fists to avoid him accidently roll over of them. It was tepid next to his humming body, even after he turned off his engine and set himself into park. She dropped her head under her arm, and Lighting felt her breathing even out quickly.
Calvin, for his part, stared at the scene before him, but after a few noiseless minutes he went to sit down on the wall farthest away from the living car, even when he sat down with his knees tucked up to his chest no one else made a move or said anything to him. Calvin spent several minutes staring at where he imagined Carmen to by laying. It was a room with enough light to well decipher both Lightning and Carmen; he could even read the Rusteez's logo on the stock car's hood pretty well.
And then Lightning's eyes suddenly snapped open and darted over to the other human.
An awkward silence loomed over them, and suddenly the brown-haired boy wanted to be anywhere except under McQueen's frightening glare.
Carmen, unaware of what was transpiring, merely snorted in her sleep as she further buried herself against the stock car. This actually would've been really funny to Calvin, had Lightning not been looking at him like he wanted to ram him down.
But instead of doing something incredibly scary, the red car merely gave an irritated grunt and closed his eyes. It took a few moments for this to register in the teenager's mind; it took a few more for him to realize he was safe to go about his business.
When Calvin was finally in his own corner, however, he couldn't help but cautiously glance a peek at the two. And as he did so, he didn't know whether to be amused or surprised. Certainly seeing the car that'd tried to murder him earlier in such a situation would be deemed humorous. On the other hand, the trust openly extended by that girl to this hunk of metal was almost astonishing.
It was at this revelation that Calvin's mind was finally put to rest. A relieved sigh escaping his lips, he closed his eyes and breathed easy for the first time since he set out from his home.
"Come near her again, and I'll run you over."
I unfortunately caught a small bug Monday, and it seemed to have escalated into a bigger bug today. Therefore I found ample time to write this chapter, though while it may be less rushed this time, I have less of an idea with what to back it up for the fifth chapter. Well, I'm certain I will think of something sustainable. Thank you very much for reading!