"What was that you said? Hm? Something about 'taking care of yourself'?"

"Do I look like I'm in the mood for this right now?"

"You look terrible."

The pain medications had worn off several hours prior. In fact, they had started wearing off even before Rotor transported him to the Los Angeles airport, nearly six hours before they touched down in Michigan. Strip winced as two forklifts gingerly picked him up and carried him off the unmarked corporate jet.

Lynda followed them close, quietly asking the assistants carrying her husband to be careful. She'd seen him in pain before, but never like this. Despite hearing his reservations about her joining him on the way to the factory, she insisted on accompanying him. After a wreck like that she wasn't about to let him out of her sight, especially en route to a place like this.

As the forklifts rested him on the back of a flatbed wrecker to be hauled inside, Lynda looked around and for the first time consciously acknowledged where she was. The Chrysler headquarters were so much larger than she ever imagined. Their jet had landed in a huge courtyard several times bigger than any racetrack she'd ever been to. All around them, buildings loomed as though their only goal was to block out the sun. She felt small and insignificant.

"Bit much, isn't it?" Izzy asked her, noticing her hesitation.

"It's just…" Lynda struggled to find the right word. "Imposin', I guess. Kinda weird to think we all came from here."

"I'll give you the grand tour later," Izzy promised, turning to follow the wrecker inside.

Lynda followed, unsure if she really wanted to know what conspired in the depths of this cradle of life.

In a repair bay, Rick's assistants unloaded Strip from the flatbed and placed him on the repair machine's track as the Power Wagon watched nearby. Izzy and Lynda stayed at the far end of the room until the aides left them in peace with the CEO and the crippled racer.

"Gracious, boy. The last time you looked like this we'd just pulled you out from under a building," Rick commented as he neared Strip.

"Just knock me out already, will you?" Strip tried to sound as terse as possible. In all reality, he sounded pathetic.

"Izzy, knock the edge off for him," Rick ordered.

The Daytona nodded once and drove over to a nearby shelf full of bottles. Carefully, she mixed a few of the compounds and filled a blunt-nosed syringe with the liquid. Strip eyed her suspiciously as she brought it over.

"You know, this might be the first time I've ever been hesitant to trust you," he said to her.

Izzy rolled her eyes. "Do I have to physically show you my doctorate? 'Cause if I do, it's gonna take me another twenty minutes to go get it and bring it back to you. I'm qualified, I promise."

Strip looked at Lynda questioningly. She knew he didn't like taking medication in general, but she wasn't about to defend his case here.

"Don't look at me. I trust her."

"See?" Izzy gestured toward the waiting station wagon. "Now are you gonna drink this, or am I gonna have to pry that hood off and force it into you?"

Why she even asked the question in the first place was anyone's guess. She shoved the syringe in his mouth without a word of warning and dosed him. Strip begrudgingly submitted in defeat, flinching as he swallowed. It shouldn't hurt to swallow, but it did.

"Give it a couple minutes," Izzy said in a softer tone. "You won't feel a thing."

"In the meantime, a few things you should know," Rick announced as he took center stage. "It's a new millennium, and your equipment from the seventies isn't gonna cut it anymore. You're too vulnerable. As you are, or in flight mode for that matter, you could be taken out with a single shot. It's happened before, and we're in no position to risk that now. We've done a lot of research and improved the paneling materials and defense systems. Izzy? Show him."

Strip looked to his sister as she drove into the middle of the floor and converted to flight mode. The rough sliding of metal over metal was now nearly quiet, nothing more than a hum and smooth whirring. The distinct, jagged mechanical motions that once plagued the transformation had been smoothed into something that was borderline graceful. Finally, her body didn't look like a hodge podge of ill-fitted geometric shapes anymore. Instead, she retained all the graceful curves of her model while extending them to her flight mechanisms. The only thing that remained the same was the flat black-painted exterior that disguised their identities.

"Hm." Strip couldn't deny he was impressed.

"Bulletproof, too," Izzy paraded herself in front of him.

"To an extent, anyway," Rick admitted. "That round that took you down all those years ago wouldn't so much as scratch this stuff."

Strip looked at Rick as he became increasingly coherent at the absence of overwhelming pain. "This is it, ain't it? This is the end all be all."

Rick's gaze fell to the floor as he nodded. "I know I've said it before, but this time there's no other option. If we lose, GM's toast and Ford's undoubtedly going to win. If GM falls first, Ford will come after us, and eventually one of us will lose. There's so few of you left. Someone has to die. There's no getting around it. You know that."

Strip sighed as the room and everything in it became lucid around him. It was a familiar feeling, one that signaled only a few minutes before unconsciousness. Izzy had mixed those drugs up quite effectively.

"I know."

"That's why I'm asking your permission to do this," Rick said in a more understanding manner. "I'm going to do everything within my power to help, but this is your choice. Will you let me install this new equipment?"

Strip looked up at him. "You've never given me a choice before. Why now?"

"I saw what happened today. I doubt you can sit there and tell me you don't care what happens next. This is your fight, whether you like it or not. You get to choose how you want to fight it."

He gazed down at his crinkled hood, still covered in dirt like the rest of him. Reality began to blur with memory, not in the form of sudden flashback, but in vivid recollection. He felt himself being pushed across the finish line.

It's just an empty cup.

"Do it."

Rick nodded once and abruptly drove to the nearby control panel. With a flip of a switch and a series of commands, the machine around Strip whirred to life.

"See you in a couple days."

Those were last words he heard before sinking into peaceful oblivion.

"Is it really only gonna take that long to fix him?" Lynda asked.

"Yeah, hopefully," Izzy answered. "The machines do most of the work. Rick'll stand by to do the manual bits. He's good at it. He's had a lot of practice."

The two of them drove slowly through a corridor, bustling with workers. Izzy was making the most of her time with her sister-in-law, trying to keep her occupied while shedding a little light on Strip's unspoken past. This leg of the tour took them through the adoption center, where nurses rushed around, tending to all the newly manufactured.

"I hope it all goes okay," Lynda muttered, more to herself than to Izzy.

Izzy glanced over. Lynda wasn't even trying to hide her concern, and no one could blame her. Having to watch the love of her life wreck that badly and then be told there's still a war to fight? Izzy thought she had it bad. What she felt likely didn't hold a flame in comparison.

"Try not to stress yourself out too much," Izzy advised. "He'll be fine. He's seen worse."

Lynda shuddered. How much worse could it have been? Worse than a rollover wreck at high speed?

"Anyway, over here's where they keep them all," Izzy returned to her tour guide speech, gesturing through a large windowpane into another room. "These are the newest. There's a separate room for each age group, up to six months or so. Most are adopted by then."

"Aww," Lynda felt herself get all warm.

There were rows of them, each no more than a few days old and completely helpless. They looked through the window at the adult cars. A couple of them smiled. Lynda felt as though she might cry. The cuteness was simply too much for her overwhelmed mind to bear.

"Some days, I come down here to remind myself why I do what I do," Izzy whispered.

Lynda nodded and blinked back a few tears. How could anyone propose a fight over anything this innocent? These weren't just machines. These were naïve, adoring, living things that needed love.

She thought back to a few times she'd discussed parenthood with Strip. He'd always told her he wouldn't feel right about it until the war was over. After a bit of prying and a small argument, he'd told her about that Mustang he'd encountered. He told her how he'd watched it die, and how some part of him still felt at fault for it. That had been enough of an argument to convince her to wait, but this? He hadn't told her about this. She suddenly understood what he'd meant by still having work to do before they really, truly settled down. He wouldn't ever be able to abandon something like this completely.

"You ever want one?" Lynda asked, finding her voice.

Izzy thought for a moment and nodded. "One day, after the fighting's done."

Lynda smiled. "That's what Strip always says. I'm holding him to it."

"Great minds, huh?" Izzy found herself smirking at the thought of her brother being overrun with youngsters. "The racecars always tend to have the most trouble finding homes. I want one of those, I think."

"I like the Magnums, like that one over there," Lynda pointed out. "It would look more like me, but I'd want one with the Hemi so it would act more like him. It'd drive him crazy."

"See, now we have to win this thing, because I have to see that," Izzy laughed.

They both got a good giggle out of that, but ultimately fell silent again at the subtle mention of the war. They pried themselves away from the window and continued down the hall. The further they went, the more deserted the corridors became until there was no one around but them. Lynda eventually broke the silence.

"When you said earlier that he'd been through worse, what did you mean by that?"

Izzy bit her lip. She'd assumed the questions would start rolling out eventually. Strip wasn't much for talking in general, let alone about something he purposely avoided.

"I want to show you something."

Izzy led Lynda down a series of hallways. They drove for nearly fifteen minutes before reaching their destination outside. There was a small knoll with a monument fixed atop it next to a newer building. Two flags waved in the gentle breeze on a flagpole above them – the American flag and one other Lynda didn't recognize. It was white with a black pentastar on it, and it looked dirty.

Izzy drove up a well-kept brick path to the face of the monument, leaving room for Lynda to park beside her. The polished stone face was ornately engraved with a grid of twelve names and a memorial statement.

For those that fell protecting those that could not protect themselves. Your sacrifice will be remembered.

November 24th, 1986

"That night, building one fell before we ever got in the air," Izzy narrated as Lynda looked over the monument. "That building there isn't the original. Rick took the broken marquee off the old building and turned it into a mausoleum for all these guys. It's buried underneath us.

"Anyway, it didn't take long before we lost one, two, and then five. We were dropping out of the air like flies. A couple of them caught fire and burned out before they ever hit the ground. One caught a bullet in his weapon's compartment and detonated midair. The rest of them crashed.

"I remember when Strip got hit. It was shrapnel from someone else falling apart next to him. I don't think he saw it coming. Ripped half his tail fin off and busted his wing flap controls. I saw it much too clearly. He couldn't do anything to help himself, but he was smart about it. He dropped every weapon he had but his machine guns before he crashed, about four hundred yards in that direction over there."

Lynda followed Izzy's gesture toward an empty lot. The foundation of whatever had been there remained.

"I thought he'd be safe over there but the building started to crumble. He wasn't the first thing that had hit it, and he wasn't the last. I got caught up trying to save one of my sisters, getting her out of the line of fire, but by the time she'd taken a hit and fallen, and I'd disposed of the last Mustang – "

Izzy paused and took a breath, feeling the emotions come rushing back. She hadn't cried over that night in years. She thought she'd gotten past it, but then again she never openly talked about it. Lynda waited patiently for her to continue. She knew how the story ended, but she wanted to hear it from a different perspective.

" – the building was nothing but a pile of concrete. I knew he was somewhere under there, but I couldn't see him. I gave the order for everyone else to go chase that Buick down and kill him, but no one responded. I turned around and I was alone. For the first time I could remember, I didn't know what to do."

Lynda looked at her company sympathetically. The tears in Izzy's eyes were every bit as real as her own. The Daytona took a few more ragged breaths and closed her eyes to gain her composure before continuing. Lynda noticed it was the same technique Strip used to calm himself down when he was angry or upset.

"Several hours later they dug him out of there. What Rick said a few hours ago when he commented on how bad Strip looked? That might as well have been a compliment. He was in pieces. Wings, gone. Jets, gone. If I'm being honest with you, I almost threw up when I saw him. Everything behind his doors was just gone. Crushed to a point they couldn't do anything to save it. He was so lucky though. A crossbeam stopped anything from crushing the front half. That's what saved him. Rick did some magic and in less than a week he was back to normal, more or less."

Izzy looked over to find Lynda frowning and looking twice as upset as she had before. Maybe it was best that she hadn't known the details of that night. Maybe, but Izzy felt relieved. Twenty years of pent up horrors had taken a toll on her. It felt good to share.

"He's gonna kill me for telling you all this," she said with half a smile. "Lynda, I didn't mean to make you upset."

"No, no, it's okay," Lynda assured her. "I'm glad you told me. I can tell you needed to. It helps me understand your relationship with him. I knew you were close, but I guess I was a little naïve to what you all had been through. But there's still one thing I don't understand – why'd he fight to start with? He told me he wouldn't."

Izzy pointed to a name on the monument, Stacey Johannes. When Lynda didn't give any inclination she understood, Izzy explained.

"That was his mother," she said quietly.

"What? He told me you were the only family he had."

"Well, that's not necessarily a lie. I'm all that's left. Stacey was Rick's wife, and before the war, they adopted him. Then they made the mistake of introducing him to me and we got attached. Rather than split us up, they gave him up to be like us and turned him into a flier. Stupid, stupid decision. They never told him, and I didn't have the heart to do it. Rick ended up telling him about it right before the attack that night, said he felt like Strip needed to know, but that first missile that hit building one killed her before he got the chance to see her. He was angry. That's why he fought."

"I feel so guilty for being upset with him," Lynda murmured. "Upset about him fighting, I mean. I can't blame him for that. He had flashbacks and nightmares for months after he got back. I knew it had been bad, but… I had no idea."

"That's all?" Izzy asked, astonished. "Wow. He's more resilient than I am, then. To this day I'll still get triggered and find myself experiencing that night all over again. I can't shake it."

"I don't reckon anyone can go through that and come out the same."

"Yeah," Izzy sighed, looked over the names on the memorial in front of her for the thousandth time. "But anyway. Now you know."

"Thank you for sharin' that. Really. I appreciate it."

Izzy smiled softly and backed away. "Now how about we go see something less depressing?"

The repair bay rested in eerie silence as they entered. Strip sat motionless, eyes closed, on the lift in the midst of the reparation machine.

"He looks…" Lynda's voice trailed off in amazement. "He's perfect. Like new again."

"Should be," Rick grunted. "I haven't slept in three days."

Lynda drove closer to look him over. Her husband looked immaculate from the bodywork down to the placement of his sponsor stickers. She couldn't remember the last time she saw him without a scratch of some sort. His career had him in the shop at least once a month.

"When's the anesthesia gonna wear off?" Izzy asked. "Looks like he's taking a nap to me."

"Any time now," Rick answered. "I figured he'd be awake by now."

"Sometimes you just gotta smack him real hard," Lynda said with a slight laugh. "He'll sleep forever on his own."

"I – "

Izzy gave Rick a glare, cutting him off before he could say anything. He watched on in exaggerated agitation that stemmed from unhealthy amounts of caffeine. He'd worked so hard on getting that Dinoco livery flawless. He'd rather fight someone than watch his hard work be scratched.

Lynda glanced back at the jittery truck and saw him watching her every move. She couldn't blame him for acting paranoid. The work he'd been able to do in such a short amount of time was unbelievable.

"Hey," she said softly, placing a gentle kiss on Strip's lips. "Can you hear me?"

He moved so slightly she wasn't sure if she imagined it or not. She lightly nudged him in the fender and kept talking.

"You can wake up now. They did a real good job fixin' you up," she told him, waiting for any response at all. "I don't think I've seen you look this good since our weddin'."

She carried on quietly for a few minutes until he cracked his eyes open. His gaze drifted aimlessly around the room in a dazed fashion until it fell on her. She held his gaze as he found his bearings again.

"You feelin' okay?" she asked, giving him another light kiss.

He relaxed at her touch and took a breath. "You're beautiful, you know that?"

She laughed a little. "Drugs haven't completely wore off, have they?"

"I'm serious," he mumbled, voice hoarse from lack of use.

His sense of awareness returned quickly. He found his recent memories still intact and momentarily turned his attention to himself. He wiggled around a little, feeling for anything that seemed out of place. He started his engine and let it idle. It was new, but every bit as smooth as the old one had ever been.

"I saved what I could, but you're pretty much brand-spankin' new from top to bottom now," Rick told him, driving forward. "Plus some."

Izzy rolled forward as well, anticipating his reaction. "Well?"

"You really outdid yourself this time, Rick," Strip admitted honestly. "I guess I owe you thanks."

Rick nodded once, proud of his work, but unwilling to accept more gratitude than necessary. "Least I could do, boy. Just try and keep yourself together from now on."

Strip rolled off the lift and into the open. It felt good to move under his own power once again, something he knew he took for granted.

"Come on, let me see the new wings," Izzy goaded. "I wanna see how it looks on you!"

"I don't know," Strip hesitated. Historically speaking, converting from one mode to another after anesthesia had never agreed with him.

"It shouldn't hurt as much as it used to," Rick informed. "Go on and try it."

Much to his chagrin, Strip braced himself and triggered the transformation. The smoothness surprised him. The panels didn't move around in a jagged fashion anymore, and he couldn't feel the mechanical releases clicking in and out of place. It was almost fluid, and much quieter than it had been. However, despite the improvements, he found himself losing awareness of himself and his surroundings. As the conversion came to a finish, he forced his eyes shut and tried to focus on which way was up. The familiar nauseating aftereffect remained, but after a few moments of adjustment, disappeared.

"Yeah, that's more like it!" Izzy exclaimed, driving around him and checking him out. "We match!"

Strip took a breath and looked at himself in a nearby reflective glass pane. Izzy had a point. At first glance, they looked almost identical in flight mode. The only difference was that he was still slightly bigger.

"This new stuff shaves a couple hundred pounds off," Rick told him. "New engines use less fuel so you can go farther on what you have."

"You take care of the weight issue after I retire?" Strip asked, wiggling his wing flaps and getting a feel for them. They felt incredibly precise.

"No more need for a runway, either," Rick ignored his remark. "Engines can lift you straight up in the air. Uses more fuel than taking off normally, but I thought it could be useful."

Strip found he could rotate his thrusters. It felt weird not having them locked in place, but it was one feature he'd always longed for as a child. He found it slightly ironic that he was graced with it in middle age.

"Well, Rick, it's smoother than it was, but I wouldn't say it's any less uncomfortable," Strip admitted.

"So, what do you think?" Izzy asked Lynda, who'd been sitting by, silently watching.

Strip looked to his wife and immediately felt a twinge of guilt. Her expression was more surprise than anything, but he'd always tried his best to separate her from his association with the war. Even though the past few days felt like an instant to him, she'd been there that whole time, undoubtedly learning more about his past than he ever shared.

"I've only seen you like this, what, once?" she asked him, driving closer. "And that time was in the dark."

"You've been married how long?" Izzy asked, surprised.

"I avoid doin' this, Iz," Strip explained, turning to apologize to his wife. "Sorry, Lyn, I forgot, I'll just change back and – "

"No, no," Lynda smiled at him. "I never get to see this."

She drove around him and inspected him from every angle. It dawned on him that while she'd never really asked about his life at the factory, that didn't mean she didn't want to know. She simply kept quiet to keep from making him uncomfortable, not the other way around. He suddenly felt stupid for taking so long to realize it. He didn't hate talking about it that much, he just didn't want to dwell on it.

Lynda reached out and traced the altered curvature of his body with her tire. "Better than I remember. Crazy what's possible these days, ain't it?"

Izzy watched her touch him and snickered. "Should we leave you alone?"

Strip shot her a glare. Lynda laughed a little.

"Maybe."

Strip sighed and suffered through the conversion again. Once back to normal, he looked to Rick.

"What now?"

The question was simple, but no one, not even Rick, had a definitive answer.

"Keep an eye out," he responded. "And be ready, both of you. I've been monitoring the news. The world didn't take too kindly to Hicks' win, if you want to call it that, and he doesn't seem to be responding well to the dissident. Between that and the so-called deadline Stephen had that's passed, I would expect something to happen soon. Couldn't tell you when or where, though."

"Hmm," Strip pondered it for a moment. "I think I have a good idea where to start. I got a kid to go thank, anyway."