(Lightning's POV)

Darkness. That's all I could see. I couldn't really remember what happened. All I remember is waking up in a weird room. My sight was blurry at first, due to a bright light, but eventually my eyes adjusted. I was outside, and that blinding light was the sun. The tall grass swayed in the breeze and the ground was cold and wet. I tried waking up fully, but my head was throbbing.

I groaned and put a hand on my forehead. Wait, a hand? Wait a minute.

I quickly jumped up and looked at myself. I had to bite my tongue or I would have screamed. I was a human, not a car. I was wearing a red racing jacket, with black sneakers and black pants. My hair was a very bright red and underneath my jacket I was wearing a red t-shirt with a 95 and lightning bolt. How could this have happened? Then I remembered. The portal.

I looked around for Mater and found him lying in the grass. He was a human too. He had brown hair and freckles around his cheeks. He was wearing a white shirt with overalls and brown boots. I leaned down and shook him until he awoke.

After a few minutes of shaking him, he finally started waking up. He sleepily looked at me, then his eyes went wide. "McQueen?" he asked.

I nodded and he sat up. "McQueen? Buddy! What happened to ya? What happened to me?!" he asked, panicked.

I tried to calm him down. "Mater, everything's going to be okay. I just need you to calm down. All we need to do is find the black box and we can get home." I calmly said.

He nodded. "Alright, good thinkin' buddy."

I smiled and started searching the ground for the portal. That's when panic started rising. The black box wasn't here. I started to panic.

"Oh no! The box is gone! What are we gonna do! We're stuck here! FOREVER!" I screamed, starting to hyperventilate.

This time Mater had to calm me down. After, what seemed like forever, we regained our composure and decided to come up with a plan.

"Alright, what's duh plan?" Mater asked.

I shrugged my...shoulders? I think that's what they were called.

"I don't know Mater. For all I know, we might never leave."

"Don't talk like dat! We'll find a way out of here."

I smiled a half smile. Mater always knew how to cheer me up.

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After a while of planning and deciding what to do next, Mater and I went with our first plan: to drive (no, no, no. Walk!) towards a town. The only problem was that we were in the middle of nowhere. No road or town in sight. Well, walking was our best bit, so we decided to just walk until we found something.

After what seemed like a few hours, no oil and no car wash in sight, we found an old, cracked road. On the right side of the street stood a sign. The sign read, "Brookstown: 1 mile".

We followed the road for a long time, until we came upon Brookstown. The town was small, like Radiator Springs, but the buildings were newer and taller. The streets were empty, besides a few cars driving into and out of the town, and the sidewalks were bare. The town almost seemed abandoned, but Mater and I continued into town.

We walked along the sidewalk and came upon a super market called "Speedy Goods". We walked inside to find barely any customers. Mater and I strolled through the aisles until a worker approached us.

She was short, with long brown hair and was wearing a workers uniform. Her name tag read "Cammy". "Hello, can I help you find anything?" she asked sweetly.

I nodded,"Yeah, um...could I possibly speak to your manager?"

If I was going to ask someone if they could help us home, I wanted a head official, not some store worker.

She looked sadly and shook her head, "I'm sorry, but our manager isn't here right now. Could I give him a message?"

I shook my head, "Nah, that's alright, I'll just...come back later."

She smiled and apologized again before walking to another aisle. Great! Now who was I going to ask?

After the conversation with the store worker, we left and continued down the sidewalk. We kept walking and realized we had entered the housing portion of the town. Nobody was out, the only people were many men in dark uniforms with dark sunglasses standing on street corners and sitting on benches. The thing that scared us was that the men were all staring at us. Only us.

All of a sudden, a man walked up to us. "Sorry gentlemen, but you have to come with us."

"We ain't goin' no where with y'all" Mater said.

The man chuckled and grabbed our arms. "Sorry, but no cars are allowed here."

Before we could react, we were tranquilized, and everything went black.