Colors and shapes began to blur as they zipped past, creating a rainbow funnel of vision.
"Woohoo!" Royce wailed, as though he were riding some seriously gnarly waves. Which he might as well have been doing, except about twenty million times more awesome.
"Hey, watch it!" came the muffled complaint of some innocent passer-by.
"Nope!" Royce cackled, kicking into high gear as he left the little whiner in the dust. Nope, nope. Not stopping for anyone. Royce Rolo flies solo. He cackled his carefree chuckle once more, going faster. Faster.
"Faster," he found himself muttering. And faster he went. But it felt like it wasn't fast enough. "Too slow." he grimaced, descending from reckless joy to impulsive frustration. Not this again.
Too late he braked, screeching across the asphalt so loudly they must've heard it across the Pacific. He skidded and careened off the road, slamming into a metal pole fifty times harder than he would've liked.
"Gah," he winced. "Fender-bender."
A pathetic and agonizing attempt to move affirmed that suspicion.
"Nothing that can't be pounded out," he reassured himself, rolling himself back onto the road with effort. He groaned, carefully and cautiously making his way back to town at a sluggish pace. He passed the old car that had yelled at him earlier. Royce tried to sneak by, eyes lowered, without being noticed, but it was hard for the passer-by not to recognize his sleek black coat with an impossible rainbow-like sheen. He practically resembled a black pearl.
"Should've listened to me and watched where you were going, eh?" the geezer teased. Royce resisted the urge to ram into him out of pure spite. Barely.
He settled for just rolling his eyes and puttering on pathetically.
Five million years later, he rolled into town. He was starting to think it was more than just his fender and his ego that got smashed.
"Gonna need to visit Vance..." he muttered. "He'll fix me up." And hopefully without asking about how I got so messed up...
He looked around. The town seemed so much quieter than usual...It was unsettling.
"Hello?" he ventured, vaguely wondering if this was a prank. He carefully maneuvered around a shattered light-bulb and glanced around. The buildings seemed hollow and desolate.
"Hello!" he shouted in a more demanding tone. He was liking this less and less, and with good reason, too. The town had taken on an eerie-deserted-ghost-town vibe. "Anybody here?!"
He almost released a girly scream-thank goodness he didn't, that would've been embarrassing-when something dug into his rear end and dragged him into the shadows, like one of the nightmare monsters parents tell their children about to scare the living bolts out of them. He whirled around in a combo of shock, fear, embarrassment, and rage. It was Lennie, the local tow-truck. His lime green coat was unmistakable.
"What the heck, man!" Royce hissed, not in the mood for shenanigans. "Is this some sort of joke?! Because I'm not-"
"Quiet!" Lennie hushed, uncharacteristically agitated. He glanced around warily and paused before speaking again. "She'll hear you."
Royce rolled his eyes, "Who?"
"Her," Lennie nodded at something behind Royce. Not sure what to expect, Royce turned to glimpse what Lennie was referring to. The sleek black racecar's eyes widened. He wasn't sure what he was looking at, but it was beautiful.