Tachyon sat in the driver's seat, with 2 seatbelts and a bottle of water. Plazma sat just next to her clutching an old stopwatch.
"How's my time?" she asked him, nervously.
"Bad." he responded, in Macintalk.
"Oh." she groaned, putting her hands back on the steering wheel.
They had been at it for a couple of hours now, and the sun was beginning to rise. Plazma figured it was probably time to go home.
"We should sleep." he says.
"Good point, honestly." she says in return. "Maybe that's why I can't drive."
Tachy pulls the car off of the dirt road and back onto an actual street and begins to drive home.
"13 thousand people... and nobody in sight." Plazma says.
"What?" Tachy asks, clueless as to what he's talking about.
"Well, there are 13 thousand people in this town, and nobody's out here."
Tachy ponders this for a moment. "Well yeah, it's the early morning. Nobody wants to be out here..."
The car hits a massive pothole on another old dirt road and the pair flinch.
"Don't they ever pave these roads?" asks Tachy.
"I don't think so." Plazma responds.
"Hm."
Finally, the two pull into a small driveway in front of a duplex house.
"Hey, isn't it weird that we don't even know our neighbors?" Plazma asks.
"We don't... Plazma, we don't have neighbors."
"Oh."
They get out of the car, and Tachy reaches into her pocket for her heart-shaped housekey. Behind her, Plazma is fumbling, trying to get the stopwatch into his pockets.
"They made these things so... Inconvenient." Plazma says.
"You're the one who opted to bring an actual stopwatch..."
Finally, the door opens, and the pair see Flash face-down on the carpet.
"Is... Is he..." Tachy asks, nervously.
Plazma nudges him with his foot. Flash immediately hops up, embarassed.
"I... Look, I..." Flash says, before nervously chuckling.
"Too tired to walk, huh?" Tachy asks.
"A little..." Flash admits.
"Well, now that you've rested some, you should probably curl up on the couch or something..."
"Would probably be better for my back, now that I think about it..."
Plazma chuckles at the two and immediately flops down on the couch across from Flash's favorite loveseat. He slides off his boots and drops his gloves on the table before dozing off entirely.
"Alright, well... goodnight then, Flashy." Tachy says, wrapping her arms around him.
Flash squeezes her back, smiling a little bit. "Can you not vanish for the entire day again?" he inquires.
"But it was just the night, this time..."
"I... well, I guess I'd rather have that than you vanishing for a week again." he says.
"I think you're just paranoid." Tachy chuckles, nudging him.
"Well, we've already established that, yeah?" he says.
Tachy laughs and starts to head upstairs.
"Wait- uhh, I wanted to say something to you before you went to sleep." he says.
"Well, say it, then."
"I think you take this racing stuff too seriously." Flash says, nervously scratching the back of his helmet, like any sensible person would do.
"I think you take me taking this racing stuff too seriously, too seriously..." she responds.
"I... huh?"
"Goodnight, Flash."
"...Good night?" Flash says, confused.
She climbs up the stairs and he stares off into space into the attic. Tachy pulls up the little staircase and closes the trap door.
Flash sighs and curls up on the couch.