"Well, Boots, what do you think?"
Boots' mouth fell open at the finished go-kart now standing before him. In fact, it wasn't even a go-kart. It was a subcompact powdered blue two-seater convertible with a wraparound windshield. Climbing inside, he was met with soft, plush dark red Corinthian leather upholstery and a six-speed manual transmission with overdrive. "How… how did you do this?" he near-whispered.
"I couldn't have done it without them," Dora grinned, pointing out in a vague direction past the end of the set before turning toward that same direction. "Thanks for helping."
"Wait, was that our cue to roll the cameras?" someone asked from off set.
"Oh, shit! We'll have to do the whole scene over!" groaned the director.
Dora initially shot the crew a piercing glower, then tried to smile. "Uh… esta bien. ¡Esta muy bien!" she forced through gritted teeth.
The makeup artist ran in brandishing a powder puff. "Wait! Don't roll yet! The cursor needs more blush!" she cried, snatching the blue arrow from out of frame. The startled cursor retaliated by clicking a lock of the makeup artist's blonde hair and roughly dragging it off to one side, causing her to shriek in pain and stumble across the set.
Boots joined Dora in staring wide-eyed as the makeup artist let loose a string of Spanish profanity, some of which the young Dora had never heard before. The disoriented makeup artist walked into one of the standing lights on the set, sending the now-sobbing young woman crumpling onto the floor in a fetal position as the furious cursor clicked her rapidly and repeatedly. The director and camera crew, meanwhile, bickered over whether or not filming Dora showing the car to Boots was necessary, which soon escalated into one of the cameramen grabbing the director by the neck and strangling him. The foley producer tried to break up the fight by bringing out a small pocket knife and holding it to the cameraman's throat while screaming at him as loudly as he could.
Dora slumped. The race hadn't even started yet and already the episode was falling apart. She looked to her monkey amigo for answers, but he had already resorted to sitting down, knees pulled to his chest, and shivering. When she returned her attention to the scene, she saw only a pile of dead bodies once belonging to the show's crew. Even the cursor, once full of life and contagious vigor, now lay flat on the ground, all the color drained from it.
A small blue frog hopped in and began to play "Taps" on his little frog horn.
"Well, Boots, what do you think?"
Boots scampered into the newly-completed vehicle. "How… how did you do this?" he near-whispered.
"I couldn't have done it without them. Thanks for helping." Dora waved at the camera as the cursor clicked her. The credits began to roll, the cursor mousing over an image of Benny the Bull. From somewhere offscreen Dora's voice stated, "This is my friend, Benny the Bull. Find—oh, Dios mio!"
The happy-go-lucky closing theme ground to a halt and the screen suddenly cut to black.
"Well, Boots, what do you think?"
"How… how did you do this?"
The girl took a second to scan the area for rogue cursors before responding. "It wasn't easy. The wind tunnel test results kept coming back subpar, so I had to replace the hood ornament with a banana peel to decrease the drag coefficient." Dora pulled out a clipboard as she spoke and flipped through it.
Boots's smile faded. "What?" he asked after a brief pause.
Dora sighed. "The drag coefficient is a measure of—"
She leapt several feet in the air as the blast of a deep horn tore through the garage, which she noticed suddenly seemed much darker. She then realized the source of the shade—a titanic, school bus yellow SUV now filling the tiny garage. The deafening engine noise faded as the driver's side door opened and a shadowy figure stepped out, initially silhouetted against the light coming from outside. Dora cocked her head when she realized it was her Abuela.
"Well, Dora, how do you like my new Hummer?" asked Abuela.
Dora glanced at her car, which the gargantuan Hummer had missed by just centimeters. "Uh, it's great," she hesitated, scratching the back of her head.
Her grandmother pulled out a stepladder leaning against the wall and climbed it just to pat the hood. "Yep, I'll be driving this baby in the big race today." Her eyes narrowed. "And I'm going to beat you, you sorry little cucaracha," she smirked.
In spite of the dim light in the garage, Dora's pupils shrank.
"Oh, yeah?" Boots piped up, no longer frozen in a state of suspended animation and marching up to Abuela. "Well, we have something you don't!" He walked around to the back of the tiny car and rested his hand on a yellow structure above the trunk. "A spoiler!"
Dora whipped her head to the side and saw what Boots was doing. "Boots, stop! The spoiler's made out of—"
It was too late. As if on cue, the spoiler instantly fell apart, tumbling off the car's back edge and buring Dora's best buddy in a miniature avalanche of…
"…banana peels," Dora sighed.
Boots' head arose from its banana entombment. "Sorry," he chuckled. A small vein in Dora's temple throbbed.
"So much for your spoiler, huh?" snarked Abuela, heading back toward the Hummer as her granddaughter began to pick up the banana peels. "Face it. That lemonade is mine, puta." Just before she shut the car door, her expression suddenly brightened. "See you at the starting line, sweetie," she chirped before backing out of the garage.
"¡Adios, Abuela!" Dora exclaimed, already having forgotten the entire conversation between them. She stared absent-mindedly at the pile of banana peels in her arms, then called out, "Hey, Boots, do we have any superglue?"
