"Okay, everyone! Thanks for coming! See you all next time! Yeah, I owe you a call…okay!" Lightning McQueen said, slowly taking backwards steps into his headquarters.

Amidst the numerous photographers taking, well, photographs of him, Lightning managed to keep smiling and not have to wince more than once.

"Wait! One more! Hold up the trophy!" multiple photographers shouted.

"Sorry, Lightning's gotta…um, do something else now. Bye folks!" Sally said suddenly butting in and saving McQueen from blindness.

"Wait!" some cars shouted. But Sally had already shut the door.

"Saved you again- you owe me!" she said playfully.

Lightning laughed leading to a silence afterwards.

He and Sally's eyes locked unto each other and the silence went deeper…and deeper…

They slowly leaned in-

"McQueen and Sally!" a voice suddenly cut in.

"Don't worry, Mater. We know the rest." Lightning turned backwards closing his eyes slightly.

Mater chuckled, driving toward them.

"I should go. Hotels don't run themselves." Sally said, quietly leaving the room.

"Yeah, you go." Lightning tittered, facing Mater a little.

And Sally took off through the back door.

"Aren't you supposed to be at the museum?" Lightning questioned.

"Well, I was gonna stay and do my job, but then got tired and I couldn't talk properly, and I askt to be excused and I came here, and I saw you had a fresh can of fuel and I drank it all and then I found this real nifty trophy and accidentlee broke it, then I slipped on a welcome mat and…" Mater slurred.

"W-w-wait, what did you say?" Lightning shortened Mater's possibly super-long sentence.

"I slipped on the welcome mat. You maybe shouldn't put it in fron' of the place to go in."

"No-before that." The red car reacted as fast as his name.

"Oh. I dranked all the fuel and broke some trophy." Mater said quickly.

"You…you…"

Mater backed away a little. "Uh, oh! Took at the lime, I should be goin'!"

"Mater!" Lightning began chasing Mater around in the small room going around in circles with Mater laughing his tow cable off.

But just as the chase went into its 50th turn, Mater felt a brush against his side view mirror. You could almost call it a bump.

"*gasp* Hey!" Mater stopped.

"What?" Lightning stopped too, although with intentions of throwing surprise attack on his best friend.

"Did you see that?" Mater jumped.

"Uh…no. No I didn't." Lightning turned around and examined what was behind him.

"There was a…uh, actually I didn't see anything- but sumthin' was there!" Mater complained.

"What?" Lightning turned around again. "There's nothing here, Mater."

Just then, a black car-shaped figure appeared behind Lightning for about two seconds (which made Mater gasp) and then disappeared in a flash.

Mater jumped back about a foot.

"What is it?" said the subtly annoyed McQueen.

"Uh, I-I gotta go! Go, um, fix appendicitis!!" Mater picked up a random word of excuse and quickly ran through the fire exit with a revving blood (oil?) pressure.