S: I was getting really, really sick of writing angst. I don't like killing Lightning! So I decided to do something light and humorous that doesn't involve mental anguish to anything or anybody, myself included. I'm still picking on Lightning a little, but hey, he'll be all right.

Disclaimer: I don't own Cars, the movie, or even cars, the means of transportation. The Blazer I drive is registered to my father.

THESE AREN'T TULIPS

About ten minutes ago, Lightning McQueen had decided he really hated cacti.

About three minutes ago, he had decided he really, REALLY hated cacti.

This wasn't the first time he'd wound up in the small ocean of prickly plants that occupied the gully next to the Willey's Butte track, but it was by far the most embarrassing.

"All right!" he shouted finally, trying to squirm away from something that felt like it had legs. "I give up! You were right, I was wrong, now will you please get me out of here? There's something crawling on me!!"

An edge of darkness moved over him like an eclipsing shadow of doom, and Lightning squirmed harder, until he felt the now-welcome goosing sensation of a tow hook under his back end.

An engine revved above and behind him, and, not for the first time, Lightning McQueen, crown jewel of the racing world, was hauled butt-first up the side of the dirt cliff, shedding bits of cactus all the way.

Once he had all four tires back on flat, non-cacti infested ground, he turned what he hoped was a pathetically grateful and contrite look to his rescuer, hoping to be spared the imminent lecture. "Thanks, you don't know how creepy it is to have something crawling on you…"

One eloquent, chrome-edged windshield arched. "You mean, like the tarantula on your roof?"

Lightning blinked. Hesitated. And then he looked up, going slightly cross-eyed.

And came eye-to-eye (to eye to eye) with the Biggest. Freaking. Spider. He had EVER seen in his life.

"AAAAHHHHH!! GetitoffgetitoffgetitOFF!!" Lightning dissolved into little more than a red blur as he spun – backwards, yet – through an increasingly frantic batch of doughnuts, before hurtling through a display of backwards driving that would have left even Mater drop-jawed speechless. He finally ended by spinning around frontwards and slamming on his brakes, so abruptly that the tarantula - which had been hanging on by the skin of its (very large) teeth – was catapulted in a high arc through the clear desert air.

Just before it would have splattered against the hard-packed dirt of the track, the hapless arachnid caught by a deft and incredibly gentle tire, extended just in time to prevent a life-altering (or life-ending) impact.

Gently setting the tarantula down, Doc Hudson watched it scurry off before turning a rather sardonic look on his young protégé, who at least had the grace to look sheepish.

"Basic desert tarantula, kid. Utterly harmless."

"Uhh… it startled me?"

"You know, if you'd listened to me, you wouldn't have been down there in the first place."

Lightning grimaced slightly. He'd been hoping to avoid the lecture, not give him another prompt for it!

"Have you ever noticed," Doc began calmly, shaking the other end of the tow chain off his own undercarriage, "that it's the times you ignore my advice that you wind up in the tulips?"

The grimace increased. "Doc," Lightning began carefully, "I'm not sure if you've noticed, but these," he waved a tire, indicating the clumps of prickly pear still Velcro-ed to his sides, "are not tulips!"

Doc's bark of laughter sent the grimace into a full-scale pout.

"Maybe next time, Rookie, you'll listen to me when I tell you that you need a brake service."

END