Conflict

Part 3, Chapter 10

One car was driving down the highway, against the flow of tourist traffic.

"Sal?" Lightning muttered. Where had she come from? He squinted and observed the town below as she reentered. Something green had just rolled out of Luigi's.

"No. No, no, no," he mumbled, turning to face the road again.

"Hold on a second," the Chrysler blocked his path. "You can't just go back down there."

That was it. That was all Lightning could handle. He went off with frustration and rage. He was scared.

"What?" he yelled aggressively as the imposing flyer stood his ground. "Why? Tell me what's going on! Who are you? Why does Chick want me dead? I haven't done anything to you guys!"

"Lightnin', calm down and I – "

"No! Don't tell me to calm down!" Lightning cut him off. "Sally's down there. The rest of the town is down there. Chick is on a rampage. I can't just leave them. I can't let anything happen..."

At the mention of the Porsche's name, Lightning's voice cracked and grew weaker until it ended in a whisper.

Strip watched in empathy as Lightning seemed to dive nose first into a bottomless pit of despair. He didn't make any sudden moves, but he did turn to check on the progress of the Route 66 travelers. They had maybe five minutes before Wheel Well was covered in other cars.

"What's going on?" Lightning asked again. "Why did you save me?"

Strip turned back to look at his former racetrack competitor and sighed. "You deserve to know. But not here. Not in the open. Is there somewhere out of sight we can go?"

Lightning noticed the oncoming wave of traffic as well. The last thing he wanted was to have a meltdown in public. No, the last thing he wanted was to be questioned about the resurrected war machine at his side.

Not even that. The last thing he wanted was to be the reason his friends got hurt.

"Yeah."

Strip hurriedly followed Lightning up the road a ways and veered off through an open area cleft in the mountain. He barely fit with his wingspan, but eventually it opened up again. The path ended in a small clearing at the mouth of a cave. To one side, the mountain rose vertically above them. To the other, a clear view down to the town remained.

"Alright, give it to me while I'm thinking straight," Lightning ordered. "What don't I know that – "

He stopped as something clicked in his restored mind. When the Chrysler had asked him if he was "alright" just moments earlier. That tone. That inflection. It was familiar. He recognized that.

You alright, kid?

Lightning shivered as he remembered the day he'd heard that same nuance, less than two weeks earlier.

What're you doin', kid?

"No," Lightning turned to look at the fighter head on. "I'm losing my mind."

Strip knew he'd figured it out. He braced himself and triggered the conversion, returning to his normal self.

Lightning stared in astonishment as the fighter's wings retracted and folded away. The jet engines tucked themselves neatly out of sight. In seconds, the black metal panels that had protected him from the deadly blast shifted and replaced themselves with familiar Dinoco blue sheet metal. This wasn't a fighter. This was an exhausted, remorseful looking Piston Cup legend.

Strip faltered a bit as he recovered from the aftereffects of the transformation. Wincing, he looked up at the shell-shocked rookie.

"King?" Lightning asked unevenly, feeling more unsettled than ever.