Introductory Essay

Another year, another fresh batch of talented students walking through the doors of Racer Academy.

Summer was over, everyone was back from the break, and the qualifiers were out of the way. New students were learning their way around the campus and finding friends to help them out when they needed it. All of the rankings and class placements had been decided and communicated. Everyone was settling in nicely, preparing for a truly promising semester.

This year had so much potential, Professor Winn thought as she graded papers. So many of the new students showed promise, signature moves of legendary racers aside. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that every student had earned a place in the academy, so all that was left was for them to prove that they had the right to stay. Easier said than done, of course, but Professor Winn hadn't been disappointed so far.

Speaking of potential... She looked to the neat stack of essays to her left which were waiting to be graded and saw that Speed Racer's was right on top. She couldn't help the small smile that twitched at the corner of her mouth as she saw that—she had been anticipating this ever since she had announced the assignment.

Every year before they got too far into the course, Professor Winn would assign an essay to all of her students. The prompt was simple; in no less than 500 words, explain the importance of defensive driving. She left the rest up to the students. Every year she got a whole variety of different responses to her prompt. Some students just did as they were asked, giving a textbook or near-textbook answer, more intent on earning a good grade than anything else. Others, however, put more or debatably-less thought into what they wrote (X's most recent essay had been especially fun to read... Mitch's even more so). She always made it sound like a bigger deal than it actually was, and found that it was a great way to find out a little bit about what kind of students she had to teach. She only really graded on content and effort, and the quality of both said a lot about how much effort her students were likely to put into their schoolwork in general.

That was why she was looking forward to reading Speed's paper—to see how someone like the kid she had seen so far would respond to her prompt. He seemed so far like someone who would who would just put his best foot forward and hope for the best, and he had appeared to be daunted by the assignment, to say the least. Or at least that's what she had made of his weary expression when she had assigned the essay...

She set her pen down and picked up the young racer's paper. Only one page of single-spaced font, the centered title at the top of the first page simply reading "Why Defensive Driving is Important." She didn't let her hopes drop at the sight of that—she wasn't grading them like college research papers, and she had received plenty of papers in the past that had featured brilliant yet poorly written ideas.

The first paragraph was a fairly standard introduction:

'Even without having much experience, I know that defensive driving moves are extremely important. Everybody learns how to drive defensively from the moment they get their license, whether they realize it or not, and I'm no different. I learned about the importance of defensive driving the hard way, before I even had a real driver's license.'

Needless to say, Professor Winn was thoroughly interested... She would freely admit that she hadn't expected someone so inexperienced to be able to approach the assignment that way. She didn't waste any time in reading the rest of the paper, her eyebrows rising higher the further she read. This wasn't what she had been expecting at all...

'I think I was 14, but I hadn't been driving for very long. I was pretty good at it for my age, though, so that wasn't a problem. One day, I was driving Ms. Gallahad (she was one of the caretakers at the orphanage) to the store. There was a little traffic, but it wasn't too bad. I was doing pretty well. We were listening to music, had the windows rolled down, all that. It was a nice day. She even let me go the long way so that I could drive more. It was nice, until I got to the intersection at Moridan and Cormick. I heard a tire screech. I didn't think much of it at first.

'The light had just turned green, and I was second in my lane. The person ahead of me started to move and I started to follow, but I was going slower than usual. I don't know exactly why, I just felt like something was wrong all of a sudden. I was just barely in the intersection when it happened. A car came flying from the other direction (he must of been clocking 50 or even 60 in a 35). He ran the red light, drifted around the corner in front of me, and crashed sideways into a car almost right in front of me. If I had been going much faster, I might not of had time to react to the situation. Thankfully, I was able to avoid getting in the accident by swerving at just the right time. I ended up facing the other way and accidentally hit another car to get out of the way, but it was only a fender bender and neither of our cars were really damaged. The other two cars weren't nearly as lucky.

'I didn't really want to know what happened to the other drivers. I saw one pedestrian that had been hurt. I assume that the drivers of the two cars that were involved were both hurt, but aside from that I don't know because I didn't ask. I was okay but terrified, Ms. Gallahad was okay, and so was everyone who was in the car I accidentally bumped into. Ms. Gallahad told me not to look at the wreck and I tried not to, but I did anyway and it made me feel like throwing up. The car that had been smashed into was completely totalled. I was so tense the whole time that I was so sore the next day that I could barely move.

'If I hadn't moved when I had, I could've been seriously hurt. Or worse. Defensive driving is one of the most important things a driver will ever learn whether they're a professional racer or not, because it saves lives and makes driving safer.'

When she was finished reading, Professor Winn just sat there staring that the paper for a moment, her mouth gaping slightly. She couldn't recall anyone using such a personal experience to write their paper before...

After seeing the way he had performed in his qualifier, she didn't doubt the miracle of a move he had claimed to pull. Even if she hadn't seen his performance, she didn't think she would've doubted a word. It was just too…it couldn't have been made up. No wonder it was so short; she couldn't imagine how much trouble he probably went through just to recall and write down as much as he had. It just barely obeyed the word limit, if it even came close at all, and she could practically see his eyes glued to the word count the entire time he was typing to see when he could stop.

All of this had only just happened a year or two ago... But if it had been as troubling for him to write as she was picturing, why hadn't he just changed his topic? He could've easily given an answer that was practically plagiarized in its conventionality but instead had chosen to keep going.

After just sitting there, trying to think of something she could say, she decided against leaving any comments. Instead, she just marked a full score at the top of the paper, and slipped it underneath her growing stack of graded papers. She had to take a deep breath before continuing, forcing herself to focus on the other essays so her mind wouldn't wander onto imagining scenarios for the parts of the story Speed's essay hadn't told of.

When she returned the graded essays to their writers during their next period, she made sure she set Speed's face-down on his desk, preventing anyone from seeing what he had written unless he chose to show them.

He gave Professor Winn a slight uncertain smile—which she returned with an empathetic smile of her own—and quickly slipped the paper into his bag without looking at his grade.

Author's Note;
Guess who's not actually dead?! ;D I've actually been writing for other archives in different places recently, and I've been more into video making and not finishing anything than writing and publishing, soooo, yeah... I smell dead, but I'm not. (Those other archives are The Flash/Arrow and Steam Powered Giraffe, if anybody's wondering. If you care, check the name "TheWhittiePhantom" for CW Flash/Arrow stories on here, or MumblePhantomFox on Archive of Our Own for SPG.)

So yeah; short headcanon-centric one-shot time! I actually have several headcanons about shenanigans that Speed got up to in the orphanage/foster care, including this one. I wrote this like this because I can, and I don't think it really worked because too many of the emotions are just implied and ride on the reader knowing how freaking long it takes to write an essay, but whatever; I'm experimenting. If anyone would like, I have two other ideas for actual stories/one-shots that have something to do with Speed's past that I could possibly write down and post...? Eh? ;) I might. We'll see.

I still don't own SR:TNG or any of the characters (except Ms. Gallahad, that one's mine and she rocks), and any grammatical/spelling errors in Speed's essay were intentional on my part.