au where lightning’s mom was a spy, but was killed by the lemons when her home was invaded when she least expected it. Before the invaders could flee however, grem heard a baby monty mcqueen waking up in his crib, starting to cry when he fully gained consciousness and saw grem’s face. With a little persuasion from him to acer, grem was able to kidnap take in the kid and raise him in the oil factories without miles axelrod (or anyone outside of the “lemons mafia” really) finding out about his existence. Monty was renamed Lightning so that it would be harder for people in the outside world to identify him, and rarely had anything like television or connections to social media. Most of the lemons were like uncles to Lightning, with Grem and Acer being the “fun” uncles and Professor Zundapp being the scary but actually really caring one.
Zundapp obviously hated the idea of having some “snotty nosed whiny brat” as he put it running amok around the factories, but he actually grew fond of the kid over time and showed him his lab and latest inventions despite Lightning not understanding any of it at a young age. Would also call him “mein sohn” once in a while if he especially feeling fond of Lightning. In fact he actually becomes the lemon who genuinely loves and cares about lightning the most, and when he goes out into the real world for the first time (spoiler alert) along with finn, mater and holly, zundapp assumes that they kidnapped him and nearly mauls and murders them on sight before lightning quickly defuses the situation.
also btw lightning has never seen the sun before 😭😭 like he wont be allowed outside the buildings and onto the platforms during the day so hes usually just seen everything from night time so when he actually does leave the factories and sees the world at day time for the first time he just looks right into the sun and immediately gets flashed by it followed by mater being like “well dont look straight at it!”
so uhh if u guys have any other thoughts on this au lemme knowww lol
I'm doing a series of "Best Character Named X" polls where all the characters have the same first name but are from completely different media, feel free to send in name/charcacter suggestions, I'm posting one poll a day, check my pinned post for active polls
So, I just found out that during Día de los Muertos at Disney California adventure they put out an Ofrenda for Doc at Ramone’s. I’m going to cry this is so sweet.
All of the little details make me so emotional like oh my god 😭
saw someone's headcannon post and I started thinking
blame @x0stormie0x for getting me into this mess
anyway
I love the idea of Doc being so fatherly towards Lightning. Like not even just being a part of the pit crew, all of RS became for Lightning, but literally being a father.
Someone mentioned Doc having to pull Lightning out of bed every morning, and HE WOULD! you're telling me this man is a morning person? never. he gets up at 3 pm SHARP.
I can see Doc waking Lightning up like in those cliche movies. He opens the blinds and yanks the covers off him. "Rise and shine, Mcqueen! we got training today!" All cheery and Lightning just groans and rolls over, trying to go back to sleep.
I can see during the off season Lightning and Doc just having this father-son relationship like no one else, and Doc even adopts Mater into the family dynamic at one point bc that's Lightning's beat friend and they already act like brothers anyway.
During off-season, while there is training, Doc isn't as harsh. Instead, he's sweeter and a little more gentle. It's only when racing season picks back up that he gets a bit harsher on our boy, and Lightning hates it, but he knows Doc does it out of love.
When they're not training, they're hanging out at Doc's place or maybe Flo's. Doc has to rally Lightning like he's a 3 year old because he gets so caught up in everything and starts getting so excited he can't contain himself.
They get on one another's nerves all the time, but that's because they love each other like their blood, and everyone knows it. They wouldn't have it any other way, especially when they keep each other busy and in check.