Disclaimer: I do not own Cars, all characters and references belong to Disney.

Ok, let's get started. This is my very first story and my English is not that good so I'm definitely going to mess up something, hopefully you'll still get it but if you report my mistakes I'll may be able to improve. Thank you for reading this thing and if you don't mind to waste some time leave a review, they're always appreciated.

Nightmare before crash

It was just another take-off, the weather was perfect.

Not too hot but neither cold, there wasn't any turbulence, not a gust of wind nor a cloud in the sky. I had been flying for just a couple of minutes when the plane began to pitch down slightly, only when I tried to correct it I realized that all the controls and avionics were missing. In front of me there was now only a plain metal panel but the thing that truly freaked me out was that I couldn't control the airplane anymore. I started to feel something like panic and even though I was still trying with my cold logic to find a way to take back the control of the plane I soon realized that it was impossible. I couldn't do anything but watch the ground getting closer and closer as the plane entered in an uncontrolled nosedive. I was going to die.

Suddenly I started to hear an alarm far away, hidden by the engine roar. The alarm was getting louder and louder as if it was getting closer with the ground. When there were only few feet left to the crash the alarm became deafening and I sat up quickly. Stunned I grabbed my phone stopping the annoying noise. For a good couple of minutes I stood still thinking about the nightmare I just had. That was pretty weird. I hardly ever remembered my dreams, and the one I had just experienced was a vivid and yet so absurd one.

With a sigh I got up stretching and I started to get ready for school. I picked a dark grey t-shirt with the Messerschmitt logo, a black hoodie and a pair of military green cargo trousers. I wasn't one who followed trends and neither I was doing anything to look attractive like my sister. I was more the kind of person who cared about efficiency and my look said it all, tactical, cozy and sturdy, without unnecessary frills.

After I washed my face and brushed my teeth I took a look at the mirror over the sink. Two green eyes were looking back at me, they weren't bright green like my brother's ones or light green like my mother but a duller green, almost of the same color as my trousers. My skin was really pale making my dark brown hairs look even darker, they were really short and spiky as usual. I snorted and proceeded to try to flatten them a little with my hands, I would have to go to cut them soon. With my slanting eyes, my small pointed nose and my thin lips I managed to look many years younger even without my petite size.

I got out the bathroom and after a quick breakfast I putted on my black combat boots and grabbed my camouflage tactical backpack. After one last look to the clock I putted on my headphones and got out on the road listening to 'Highway to the Danger zone'.

My breath was coming out in small white puffs in the cold morning air. It was the twenty seventh of October and there were about four degrees Celsius, I couldn't keep myself from enjoying the fresh and clean air, I was happy to live up in mountains. I walked down the road to the bus stop in less than ten minutes then I stopped a few steps away from the stop where there were two old ladies chatting. I really cared about my personal space. Maybe too much. The bus arrived fifteen minutes later and I sat near the back end, putting my backpack on the free seat next to me. It wasn't like there weren't spare seats, the bus was almost empty as usual. I spent the trip deep in my thoughts while watching the landscape passing by through the window, always keeping an eye on the people who were getting in and off the bus. After a bit more than an hour I finally reached my destination. I walked fast to the school arriving just in time and went sitting at my desk.

My desk mate was checking his phone and the rest of my classmates were either chatting with each other or minding their own business. Soon our old math teacher entered in the classroom. After five hours of lessons and being told off multiple times about how we weren't taking our fourth year in high school enough seriously I was finally allowed to go home. I didn't have any specific program for that afternoon so I spent it on my flight simulator, checking once a while the METAR* and TAF* of the nearest airport, looking forward for the flight that I had scheduled for the next day.

Unfortunately, at five my mother arrived home with my brother who decided to make a show of all his maturity keeping the doorbell pushed for almost two minutes. As the afternoon became evening I rechecked my plans and route for the upcoming flight with my mother and brother arguing in the background. Same as always. A few hours later arrived also my father with my sister, now the shouting competition had three participants, in the meantime my dear little sister started to mess up with her nails varnishes filling the air with a terrible smell. Around eight my mother finally managed to put together something like a dinner.

My sister went to bed at half past nine as usual, she was thirteen and she attended the middle school. I saw her as a pretty smart and resourceful person although that was the only thing we had in common. Our tastes were almost the opposite. She had tanned skin, big brown eyes and long dark brown hairs that arrived at her butt that she spent hours to straighten every morning although they were already straight, like me she was pretty tiny.

My brother was apparently done arguing with my parents, who seemed to be able to keep their competition going pretty well even without him, and he went to take a shower. My brother was fifteen and he was almost as tall as me although maybe a bit more muscular. He had short light brown hair and green eyes, his lips and eyebrows were pretty thick and his face looked more mature making him look his age even if he was only one and sixty meters tall. Although we had some tastes in common I didn't thought much of his intelligence at that point, maybe because his biggest achievement seemed to be playing with his computer the whole day every day, constantly requesting my assistance because he didn't want to actually learn anything useful about computers, he was barely able to start his games on his own. His laziness was also the main reason behind our parents' arguments.

I needed a shower too and knowing that my brother could be extremely slow I decided to wait watching a movie. I was looking around the web without any idea until a picture from Cars caught my eye, when I was a child Cars was my favorite film, so I decided to give it a try. The movie ended at eleven o'clock and my brother was finally finished with his shower. After I got cleaned up and ready for sleep I decided to watch another movie, I wasn't used to go to bed that early. I opted for Cars 2 as I had never watched it before. At one am I turned off my laptop, got to bed and relaxed thinking about the movies I had just watched, it didn't take long for me to fall asleep.

That morning I woke up early, got dressed and had breakfast but then my mother came to me with some bad news: my siblings were going to have to come fly with me. How to totally screw up a beautiful day. The bright side was that my parents didn't trust them to stay at home alone as well as taking the bus so our father would take us there by car. My sister spent the whole trip playing with her phone while my brother was staring out of the window looking pretty upset. I thought I had many more reasons than him to be upset but I kept quite as usual focusing on my music.

Once our father dropped us at the airfield I first got to a computer to check the weather once more waving at one instructor on my way out then me and my brothers reached the fuel pump where another flight instructor was waiting for us with a student in his thirty in front of a white Cirrus SR20. I planned to do two wide circles of the area that would have last about thirty minutes each. After thanking the instructor and the student for filling up the aircraft they leaved it to me, I proceeded with the walk around and then I sat on the front left seat.

My sister started begging me to leave her on the ground but I coldly told her to get her ass on the aircraft and so she sat pale and quiet on the back with my brother who still looked upset. Really... if a pilot would have asked me to go fly with him before I started studying for the PPL* I would have been the happiest person on earth, they were making a tragedy for less than an hour of flight. Aviation had been my passion since I stepped on an aircraft for the first time, nothing was better than flying. Unfortunately no one in my family was interested in it so I had to work very hard and to be extremely persuasive to convince my mother to sign me up for the PPL when I was sixteen. Less than six months later I got my license and when my mother started seeing my 'childish' passion as a career opportunity I could finally fly whenever I wanted although no more than ten hours a month due to economic reasons.

After I was finished with my prestart-up checklist and I got the engine running I proceeded with the first radio call. "I-SRFG taxing to holding point 02". Nobody answered, it seemed there was no one on the tower or nearby. I was halfway through the taxiway when my siblings started arguing and insulting each other. It took me some well-placed threats to make them shut up without unplugging their microphones. "I-SRFG line up and take-off runway 02" I announced after the last checks. Then I proceeded with the lining up and in a few seconds we were airborne. I levelled at 5000 feet and I made a right turn, heading east to start my route.

Everything seemed to be fine, my brothers were quiet and it was a nice day for flying. We completed one of the two circles and after passing on the airfield we were heading east again. Suddenly a wall of clouds appeared directly in front of our nose. I didn't have time to think about anything before we were in it. I immediately stopped looking outside and shifted my sight on the PFD and MFD* turning on the pitot heat*. I had to get out the clouds quickly, I hadn't get my instrumental rating yet. Keeping my cold temper I pushed the cloche forward while pulling out the throttle trying to reach a lower altitude than the clouds base.

Thought on one side I was wondering how such a massive cloud could have appeared right in front of us in just a couple of seconds my cold, logical, determined mind was heavily focused on getting out the potentially dangerous situation we were in. I wasn't scared at all, panic is never useful. I kept losing altitude ignoring my siblings' questions as they seemed to start noticing the changes in my flight path, watching the altimeter showing lower altitudes. We were right below 4000 feet when after taking a look outside I noticed that the grey clouds were starting to thin out. Feeling relieved I kept watching out 'till I saw more grey appearing below the clouds.

I quickly pulled the cloche to me feeling the sudden impact of the main landing gear on the asphalt. Something had just been badly smashed. I quickly turned off the magnets managing to stop the propeller right before the front wheel hit the ground and got smashed by the force of the impact. At least I managed to avoid to tip us over. We were keeping to slide on the asphalt, I could hear my siblings screaming in the background, the com was no longer functional. Suddenly I saw a huge pile of scraps getting closer and closer right in front of us. I barely managed to realize we were surely going to hit it pretty fast before passing out.

*METAR stands for Meteorological Aerodrome Report and is a format for reporting weather information. Raw MTARs are standardized by ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) which allows them to be understandable almost everywhere in the world.

*TAF stands for Terminal Aerodrome Forecast and they're similar to METARs in their format, but while a METAR is used to see real time weather TAFs are more like weather's forecasts.

*PPL stands for Private Pilot Licence.

*PFD stands for Primary Flight Display and MFD stands for Multi-Function Display. They are two screens that integrate many avionics instruments in glass cockpit configurations.

*The pitot tube is a pressure measurement instrument that like in our Cirrus and in many other airplanes is situated under the left wing, it's very important because it gives the pilot some essential flight information like the wind speed. Pitot heat avoids ice formations in the pitot tube.