FOREWORD

About ten years ago, a fanfiction was posted in the Dora the Explorer section of this website by user Wegee769. This fanfiction is entitled "The Great Dora Deathrace," and it features Dora and her friends in an absolutely chaotic race to the fifteenth or sixteenth wonder of the world, Rainbow Canyon. Despite being extremely rushed and riddled with typographical errors, I fell in love with this story, and although I have grown up since then, I still continue to enjoy it in some capacity.

I began writing this version when I mistakenly assumed the original version had been purged from the website. When that turned out not to be the case, I didn't stop writing. This is both a remake of and a love letter to the original story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

This is The Great Dora Deathrace REDUX.


"So, what do you want to do today, Boots?"

The monkey took a long sip from his lemonade. "I dunno."

Dora the Explorer and Boots had nothing to do. A few minutes ago, Dora's Mami had all but shoved them out of the house because she thought they were watching too much TV—but more importantly because her telenovela was coming on, and the last thing she wanted was to explain to a seven-year-old and her simian friend what that naked man and woman were doing in bed.

But I digress.

The girl wiped sweat off her brow, squinting against the glare of the sweltering July sun. "Yeah, me neither," she groaned. Suddenly, she noticed the cameras were rolling and jumped to attention, smiling and waving. "Oh, yeah. ¡Hola! ¡Soy Dora!"

Boots took another sip from his lemonade. Dora got tired of waiting for him, so she grabbed his glass and threw the rest of the beverage in his face. After coughing and sputtering for a while, Boots looked at Dora with a questioning stare. She simply frowned and pointed at the camera crew in front of them.

Boots placed his finger to his chin, and then remembered. "Oh! And I'm Boots!" he chirped.

"Do you like… uh…" Dora trailed off momentarily as she scanned her surroundings for a topic. Finding nothing, she improvised. "…sitting on the front porch and being bored?" she finished, still beaming dissonantly into the lens.

The two said nothing for about ten seconds. You could have heard an amoeba fart. Boots, realizing the building awkwardness of it all, leapt into the air and cheered, "I love sitting on the front porch and being bored!"

"I know a song about all about sitting on the front porch and being bored," said Dora.

"Song?" whispered Boots, leaning in closer. "What song?"

Dora elbowed him in response. "Just go with me on this, okay?" she whispered back, before turning back to the cameras. "Do you want to learn the song?"

More silence followed. Boots squirmed uncomfortably in his spot, yearning for escape.

"Great!" Dora shouted, despite never having gotten an answer. Latin, maraca-heavy accompaniment began to play. "It goes like this…

"Estoy sentado en el porche delantero

Y sintiéndome realmente aburrido

Necesito un enfriador de vino

O tal vez una buena cerveza suave—"

pss pss pss

The music stopped abruptly. "Did you hear something?" asked Boots.

Dora tensed. "It sounded like… Swiper the Fox." In the background, Swiper poked his head out of a shrub.

"That sneaky fox is always tryin' to swipe our stuff!" griped Boots.

Dora turned to the camera again. "If you see Swiper the Fox, say—hey!"

To their surprise, the bandana-clad fox was right in front of them and had already swiped the pitcher of lemonade they were sharing.

"You're toooooo late," he taunted. He was about to retreat with it when the monkey spoke up.

"Hey, give us back our lemonade, you thieving jerk!"

"No way." Swiper hugged the pitcher tighter. "It's 105 degrees out here and I can already feel my organs shutting down from heat exhaustion."

Dora had an idea. "I can ask Mami to make more lemonade," she offered, still wearing an unnaturally wide grin.

"No," said Mami, suddenly poking her head out the front doorway and pulling it back in just as quickly.

"Awwww," the girl and monkey groaned, hanging their heads.

"Now we'll never get that lemonade," sighed Boots.

"Guess not," Swiper said mockingly, making a show of bringing the pitcher to his lips.

"Wait!" came a voice. Swiper paused and lowered the pitcher. Joining Dora and Boots in front of him was a large, green iguana. "Did I hear someone say 'lemonade'? I love lemonade!" The reptile clapped her hands in excitement.

"Hi, Isa," Dora waved. "Swiper took our lemonade."

"Lemonade?!" Now a blue bull came running up. "I want some lemonade!"

"Lemonade? Where?!" asked Dora's cousin, Diego.

Swiper facepalmed and shook his head. "Please stop saying 'lemonade.'"

His ears picked up what sounded like a stampede and his free hand flew to his mouth as he realized what he had just done. Within just a few seconds, the yard was filled with all of Dora's friends and family, all jumping and down and clamoring for Swiper's rightfully-earned stolen lemonade. Even the Big Red Chicken was there, his frantic gyrations shaking the earth and making the golden liquid in the pitcher ripple. The screaming congregation kept stepping closer and closer, reaching out and trying to grab the lemonade out of Swiper's grip. He tried to hold the pitcher away like a basketball player would with a ball, but the restless small crowd was relentless.

"QUIET!" the overwhelmed fox finally shrieked, panting heavily. The others became still. "If you want this damn lemonade that much, you can pry it from my cold, dead—"

"I know!" rang a cheerful voice from the crowd. From deep within the sea of people emerged Dora the Explorer, her cheerful demeanor still unshaken in spite of everything. "Let's have a race for it," she proposed.

"Race?" questioned Swiper, eyebrows raised. In this heat?

"Yeah," repeated Dora's Abuela, mulling the idea over, "a race."

Swiper watched as the others began to murmur amongst themselves. To his surprise, the idea of racing for lemonade seemed to be pretty popular. He grinned slightly. Maybe he could have a little fun with this.

"Okay, we'll race," agreed Swiper. "We'll all race from Dora's house to, uh…" He paused to think of a suitable endpoint. Blueberry Hill? No, that would be too easy. And driving to Spring Valley would take all day. Numerous other locations flashed through his mind as he tried to pick a suitable one. "…Rainbow Canyon," he finally blurted out.

"Rainbow Canyon," repeated the Big Red Chicken. "Sounds good to me. Brawk!"

The others in the crowd simultaneously voiced their approval, except for one.

"Hold on a minute," Isa interrupted. "Are we all racing in separate carts, or are we pairing up?"

Swiper rolled his eyes and pulled out a Magic 8-Ball, shaking it vigorously. When an answer emerged from the cloudy smoke within, he wordlessly and aggressively shoved the ball directly in front of the iguana's eyes for her to read.

"TEAMS," Isa read. "Uh, okay. Guess we'll do teams."

"Meow meow meow?" asked Baby Jaguar.

"He wants to know how the pairings will be decided," Diego translated.

Swiper felt like his eyes were about to burst from his skull. The Magic 8-Ball only offered, "Yes." The fox sighed deeply.

To be fair, some of the pairings were obvious enough—namely, Dora and Boots and Diego and Baby Jaguar. This left only Benny, Isa, Abuela, The Big Red Chicken, and Tico. Then Swiper realized that even after teams were picked, they would have to pick a driver for each vehicle. He found this out very quickly when the situation devolved into a no-holds-barred fight to the death and he got caught in the thick of it. Crawling out of the dust cloud that had been kicked up, and now battered and bruised from head to tail, Swiper once again managed to calm everyone down.

"SHUT UP!"

Everyone stopped beating each other up immediately. Abuela slowly removed her clenched teeth from Benny's ass. They all turned to look at Swiper, who was now panting even harder and frothing at the mouth just a little bit.

"I will drink this lemonade, right here… right now, if you don't sit the hell down!" growled Swiper, slinging the pitcher around in the air and causing precious droplets to leak.

The others complied. Boots began to weep.

"Look, you can switch places halfway through the race if you'd like if it makes you happy," the fox continued, trying to hurry things along so that he could go home. "I'll have the list of teams ready by next week."

"Next week?!" Isa stamped her foot like a child. "I thought we were racing today!"

"Hey, you gotta have time to build your vehicles," came Swiper's apathetic response.

"But we can have our vehicles done today if we hurry." She turned to the others. "Right, guys?"

The others answered in the affirmative, nodding their heads.

"No," spat Swiper, a little too quickly. "I need time to… uh… prepare." He turned his back to them and rubbed his gloved paws together. "Yeah… prepare."