The Shy Driver

The Final Run

By now it was the afternoon, and the sun was preparing for its descent towards the horizon.

"Five hours and a few hundred miles to go," Fluttershy thought, navigating through lanes of traffic to get in front, where the road would be clear. "I can still do this. Oh my friends, I am coming home."

After twenty minutes of flicking the indicator lights and swerving, she finally found an opening, and with the boost set to a high setting of 25 PSI, hit the gas hard, flying down the highway, smashing the speed limit as the speedometer needle passed the 170 km/h mark, then the 220 km/h mark.

Oh Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy thought with a giggle, amidst the crazy speed and the screaming sound of boost from the huge turbo. You'd be sooooooooooooooooooo jealous if you knew what I'm doing now.

After another long high-speed run, she slowed down to a modest 105 km/h and kept going. Down the highway, however, she faced a big problem. Interstate Highway 10 split into two highway: the main going northwest and the other heading slightly south.

"Hmmm," she thought, slowing down to give her mind more time to stir up a good solution. Finally she decided to stop. But as she pulled over to the side, a little scraping sound came from the rear of the car.

Upon stopping, Fluttershy gasped in horror as she realized why the car was making that noise – the rear tires were almost completely shredded and worn out from so much hard driving over a distance that was now several hundred miles.

"I've got to get these changed!" she said to herself. "As soon as possible."

With the uncertainty feeling rising within her, Fluttershy popped the hood and looked over the engine bay. Many of the parts were covered in dust and sand from the winds back in New Mexico and Arizona, which gave the turbo and the intake manifold a pale look. On top of that, a battery fuse had blown out. Thankfully it was just the air-con fuse and not a performance-related fuse.

Checking the map and nearby locations via the Supra's ever-helpful head unit, she figured out the best way would be to take the smaller Highway 60 and from there join Highway 215, then go a little northwest, and then head down south along Highway 91 to the small town of Corona, where hopefully she could get some new tires and a new battery fuse.

With her route planned out, Fluttershy drove back out onto the highway, driving no faster than 80 km/h. After half an hour she reached Corona, and found a tire and oil change facility.

"Hi there," Fluttershy said in a sweet voice to the employees. "I really need to get my tires changed. Do you have any racing performance-spec tires in stock for my rims?"

The workers just smiled back but also wore "WTF?" looks.

After checking the Supra's chrome CCW rims, the tire specialists hoisted the Supra up and carefully removed the shredded rear tires and performed a full-on inspection.

"It still intrigues me how you manage to drive that thing without crashing. How long have you been driving this car?" one of them questioned Fluttershy, who was looking so cute and innocent sitting on the sidelines observing the Supra's underside.

"Um, about two and a half days now. I'm actually in quite a hurry, because I need to arrive at a certain location soon."

"Two and a half days? Without any accidents?" the man exclaimed. "Non-stop? You don't look like much of a truck driver."

Fluttershy let out an adorable giggle. "I sure sugar ain't. I drove for about fifteen to eighteen hours at a time and took brief naps in between. As a matter of fact, I've driven all the way from Albuquerque. Nothing's like a Supra, this car is just amazing. It was scary, that big turbo, but I got used to it after about a day of driving. In spite of being rather nervous and shy, I found it a real joy to drive."