The Great Easter Egg Hunt

"Thanks for that lunch, Flo!" Doc smiled gratefully at the ex-show car as he gathered up the dirty dishes.

"Yeah, thanks, Flo!" everyone else in Radiator Springs echoed, most of them adding their own comments about how delicious the ham had been.

Flo smiled modestly. "I'm so glad you all enjoyed it."

"Wow! What a great Easter!" Ramone declared. Of course, he'd put together the perfect paint job just for the occasion: yellow, pink and blue in a pattern resembling an Easter egg. "Last night's Spring Fling Dance was a huge success. We all got great stuff from the Easter buggy. Lunch was perfect, as usual." He leaned over to give Flo a kiss.

"Not to mention the beautiful spring weather we're having", Fillmore put in. It was true. The sun was shining. The sky was a clear blue. The flowers were in bloom. Truthfully, it almost felt like summer.

"Yeah, but Easter ain't over yet!" Mater reminded the others excitedly.

"The Easter egg hunt!" nine-year-old Fudge added, just as excitedly.

"That's cancelled this year", Flo teased them.

"Don't be silly, Aunt Flo!" Fudge giggled, clearly not buying it.

"I'm not", she insisted. "It's cancelled."

"You can't do that!" Mater howled.

Flo laughed. "I'm just kidding", she admitted. "Lizzie, why don't you go and hide the eggs?"

Hiding the eggs was always Lizzie's job, so the Model T obliged happily, taking the basket of eggs (both chocolate and plastic, containing little prizes) and disappearing out the door.

"This is gon' be the best Easter egg hunt ever!" Mater declared excitedly.

"Yeah!" Fudge agreed. "Maybe this'll finally be the year I beat you!"

The others groaned. Mater and Fudge got along great ninety-nine per cent of the time, relating to each other as brother and sister, but if there was one thing almost guaranteed to cause a fight between the two of them, it was the Easter egg hunt. Ever since she was little, Fudge would get upset because Mater would end up with more eggs than anybody else. She used to cry about it, but now, she was just determined to beat him. Unfortunately, while they both had plenty of enthusiasm, Mater was just bigger, stronger and faster than his surrogate sister.

Sheriff groaned along with everyone else. "For the love of Chrysler, please don't start up that stupid rivalry again! I've barely recovered from last year!"

The year before, Sheriff had had to break up a fight between the two because it got physical. He'd been worried that one of them (and by "one of them", he meant Fudge) would get hurt.

"You must not get so carried away this year", Luigi informed his daughter. Even though he knew that he had no right to get all parent-y with Mater, he gave the tow truck a look that clearly said, That goes for you too.

"Okay", the two murmured.

Finally, Lizzie returned and everyone lined up outside the V8 Café. Mater and Fudge were shooting each other death glares.

Lizzie grinned. "On your marks... Get set... Go!"

The residents of Radiator Springs shot off. The Great Easter Egg Hunt had begun!

Everyone made a beeline for the Stanley statue. Every year without fail, there would be Easter eggs there. A couple of the townsfolk had complained to Lizzie that she made it too easy. Despite always promising to make it more challenging the next year, she still used the same hiding spots.

Not surprisingly, Mater reached the statue first. He grabbed an egg. Then another. And another.

"You can't do that!" Fudge yelped, practically hysterical. "That's cheating!" It was true. The rule was supposed to be one egg per person in each spot.

"Mater, put 'em back", Sheriff instructed, already sounding like he'd had enough.

Reluctantly, Mater obliged. Then he took off like a rocket while everyone else remained behind to claim their eggs.

Fudge narrowed her eyes as he left. If he could play dirty, then so could she.

Most of the townsfolk caught up to Mater down by Willy's Butte, Fudge included. She waited until Mater and everyone else was distracted. At just the right time, she leaned over and swiped a handful of eggs from his basket and placed them in her own.

Mater whirled around sharply. "Did you take my eggs?!"

"No", Fudge lied.

"You is a bad liar, Fudge!" Mater insisted. He pointed to her basket. "Where'd you get all them?!"

"I found them." That wasn't technically a lie; she did find them, in Mater's basket.

"Give 'em back!" Mater shouted.

"They're mine!" Fudge insisted.

"No they're not, Fudge", Sally spoke up, looking and sounding just as fed up as everyone else felt. "I saw you take them!"

"Both of you, stop being so childish!" Sarge yelled.

"Yeah, does it really matter who finds the most eggs?" Fillmore wondered.

"All the eggs get divided evenly anyway", Ramone reminded them.

"It's just not fair that he always gets the most!" Fudge whined, kicking little stones that were around.

"She's just jealous 'cause I'm better than her!" Mater countered.

"That's enough, both of you!" Sheriff barked. "Any more nonsense from you two today and you ain't gonna like what I'll do! Understand?!"

Looking quite scared, both Mater and Fidge nodded.

"Good! Now, let's get back to the Easter egg hunt- sensibly!"

So, the Easter egg hunt went somewhat smoothly for a while. Mater and Fudge still sprinted around, trying to reach each spot, but there were no dirty tricks after that.

However, when Fudge arrived at the Wheel Well, something awful happened. Although, unlike the other incidents that had occurred during the Easter egg hunt, this happened quite by accident. Mater had turned around, leaving his basket unattended. Meanwhile, Fudge leaned over to reach an egg on a rock. Unfortunately, she didn't see Mater's basket and kicked it over. Several eggs tumbled down the cliff.

"Uh-oh!" the nine-year-old murmured solemnly,

Mater heard her and whipped around. "What did you do?!" he gasped.

"I'm sorry!" Fudge cried. "It was an accident!"

The human girl had been about to offer him some of her eggs, but Mater wasn't having it.

"How could you do somethin' like that, Fudge?!" he yelled.

"It was an accident!" she repeated. "Honest!"

"Mater, Fudge!" Doc groaned. "Are you fighting again?!"

"Fudge done pushed my eggs down the hill!" Mater accused, just as Fudge insisted one more time, "It was an accident! I swear!"

"I've had enough of this!" Sheriff declared, sounding like he really was at his wit's end. "Mater, Fudge, go back to town! You're done with the Easter egg hunt!"

Not surprisingly, both tow truck and human girl tried to protest, but Sheriff wouldn't listen to either one of them.

"I DON'T CARE!" he barked. "Now, go!"

"You can spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about how selfish you are to ruin the fun for everyone else", Luigi added. "Then you will apologise to all of us and each other."

Both looking angry and as if they might cry, Mater and Fudge headed in the direction on town. The rest of the townsfolk felt a little bad for upsetting them, but they couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief.

"Now, the fun can really begin!" Ramone declared.

Reluctantly, Mater allowed Fudge to ride in his truck bed. He was still plenty mad at her, but he wasn't completely heartless. The walk back would've been too much for her. Neither one of them said a word until they were back in town, glaring at each other.

"This is all your fault!" they yelled simultaneously, pointing at each other.

"My fault?!" Mater repeated incredulously. "None of this woulda happened if you hadn't pushed my eggs off the cliff!"

"That was an accident!" Fudge cried. "None of this would've happened if you had just listened to me! And if you weren't so selfish and let someone else win for once!"

"Well, maybe I would listen to you, if you hadn't cheated!" Mater countered.

"You cheated first!" Fudge accused shrilly.

"I ain't talkin' to you no more!" Mater turned away from her.

"Good! 'Cause I ain't talkin' to you either!" Fudge turned around too.

"Good!"

"Good!"

The two sat there in sullen silence for about fifteen, twenty minutes, watching wistfully as everyone else collected eggs, laughing.

"It's not fair!" Fudge wailed. "I wanna do the Easter egg hunt! This is the worst Easter ever!"

"I thought you weren't talkin' to me", Mater muttered.

"If I were talking to Mater, I'd tell him that I was talking to myself. And ha, ha! He talked to me first! I win!"

Mater looked embarrassed, then annoyed.

Fudge sighed, still feeling wistful as she watched the others. "If I were talking to Mater, I'd also tell him that I don't care whether or not I get the most eggs now. I just wanna do the hunt."

Mater turned around slowly.

"If I was talkin' to Fudge, I'd tell her that I don't care 'bout winnin' neither. If only we could join the Easter egg hunt again, then I could use my skills to help her."

Fudge turned around too, the ghost of a smile on her face. "If I were talking to Mater, I'd tell him I'm sorry I acted like a baby."

"And if I was talkin' to Fudge, I'd tell her I'm sorry I done cheated and upset her by always winnin'."

Now, the pair had both broken out into huge smiles. Then they hugged. They were back to being the perfect surrogate siblings that they were.

"Whaddaya say?" Mater quizzed Fudge. "We kin work together!"

"But we could get in trouble!" Fudge remarked worriedly. "We got banned from the Easter egg hunt."

Mater frowned. Then he brightened. "How could they possibly be mad? We is workin' together now."

"Yeah", Fudge agreed, also brightening.

"Listen, you got an advantage I don't have", Mater informed her.

"What's that?" Fudge wondered, looking confused.

"You is small", Mater pointed out. "You kin get into places I can't."

"But you've got your tow hook", Fudge reminded him. "That can reach into smaller places too."

"My tow hook ain't much good if I can't see what I'm doin' with it!" Mater countered.

"It'll help getting your eggs back from the cliff", the nine-year-old reasoned.

Mater grinned, dragging her along. "Let's go!"

So, Fudge followed Mater to the first stop: the Wheel Well where they retrieved his eggs. Their next destination? The tractor field.

"Let's go!" Fudge whispered with a grin, climbing over the fence.

"Ya know there's a gap in the fence, don't ya?"

"But it's not as fun... Mater, no!" Fudge exclaimed, realising that her surrogate brother was creeping up on a sleeping- and, therefore, unsuspecting- tractor.

"Jus' one!" Mater pleaded.

"What about the Easter egg hunt?" Fudge reminded him.

"I promise we kin still do it! Jus' one tractor!"

Knowing better than to argue with him, Fudge obliged.

Grinning, Mater honked his horn, waking the tractor, who promptly toppled over, mooing.

Lightning, who was nearby, stopped dead in his tracks. "Did you guys hear that?"

Sally paused. "Hear what?"

Lightning shrugged. "It sounded like Mater was tractor tipping again."

"He better not be", Sheriff groaned. "He and Fudge are supposed to be thinkin'. Besides, tractor tippin' is the bane of my existence!" He glared at Doc. "Why did you ever teach 'im to do that?!"

"Wait! Doc taught Mater tractor tipping?!" Lightning asked incredulously.

Doc shrugged. "I thought he'd get bored within a week."

Just then, Ramone called out to them. "We got some more eggs over here!"

Everyone made a beeline for the Lowrider, Mater forgotten.

"Okay. Now, let's find the eggs!" Fudge requested, starting to sound bored.

"I wanna do another one!" Mater shouted.

Fudge shook her head in irritation and searched for the eggs herself.

"Hey! Here they are!" she cried excitedly.

That got Mater's attention. "You got 'em?"

"Yeah!" The nine-year-old almost added, "No thanks to you", but she didn't feel like starting another fight. "Where do we go now?"

"The waterfall!"

So, Fudge climbed into Mater's truck bed and headed off to the waterfall.

A few minutes later, the others arrived at the tractor field and Fillmore was the first to find the eggs.

"Hey! How come there's only twelve, man?" he wondered.

"Just twelve?" everyone repeated, looking back and forth between Fillmore and Lizzie questioningly. "Are you sure?"

"I definitely put fourteen here", the Model T insisted. "One for each of us."

Lizzie's mind and memory may not have been what they used to be, but she was so positive and not in the least bit confused that they all believed her right away.

"Could a tractor have taken a couple?" Flo questioned.

Red shook his hood; clearly, he didn't think so.

Guido noticed something else and spoke in Italian.

"You are right, Guido!" Luigi realised. "That tractor has been tipped over."

A very angry Sheriff figured it out very quickly. "Mater's been here! And Fudge! There are two eggs missin'."

"That does not prove anything", Luigi pointed out rationally (or maybe he just didn't want to think the worst of his daughter). "Mater could have very easily taken two. You know what he is like."

Sheriff didn't seem to hear. "They have no idea what they're in for when I get my tyres on 'em!"

"They're ain't no eggs here!" Mater complained.

"I think I see them!" Fudge announced.

Mater looked around. "Where?"

Fudge pointed. "There!"

Sure enough, on the other side of the water, on top of the rocks were a collection of Easter eggs.

"How is we gon' get them?" the tow truck wondered. Not only could he not swim, but he was afraid of water.

"Leave it to me!" The nine-year-old peeled off her T-shirt, sandals and shorts. She had been swimming at the waterfall that morning and was still wearing her swimsuit underneath.

Even though Fudge wasn't a great swimmer, she managed to scrabble across the water, retrieve the eggs and come back. Fortunately, these were the hard plastic eggs that had pieces of candy inside. The other fortunate thing was that whenever Fudge dropped them, they would bob back up to the surface.

Mater sighed with relief and gratitude. "Thanks, Fudge! I couldn't have done that! I can't swim!"

"I know." She redressed herself. "So, that's two more eggs! Now where do we go?"

"Tail Light Caverns!"

By that time, most of the others had split up. Only minutes after Mater and Fudge had left, Luigi, Guido and Sheriff arrived at the waterfall.

"Luigi, let it go!" Sheriff groaned.

"All I am saying is she is innocent until proven guilty", the Fiat insisted. (Sheriff tried not to laugh at hearing Luigi use that term.) "I don't think that the fact that two eggs are missing is enough proof. And it is not like Fudge at all to be so disobedient, especially when she is already in trouble."

"I'll talk to both of them as soon as we see 'em", Sheriff assured him. "Fudge is too honest to lie to me."

He stopped short, noticing something. "That enough proof for you?"

"What do you-" Luigi stopped short too. He had just seen. There was a small footprint in the wet dirt.

"That was definitely made by a human ", Sheriff pointed out. "And there's only one human 'round here."

Luigi looked bewildered. "I don't understand. Why would she...?" He trailed off.

"You can ask her that before I kill her!" Sheriff muttered. "Now, come on!"

Sheriff was no longer hunting Easter eggs. He was hunting two fugitives.

Meanwhile, Mater and Fudge were blissfully unaware that anybody had figured out what they were doing. Or that Sheriff was dreaming up all kinds of terrible punishments for them.

No. They were too preoccupied in their hunt. In Tail Light Caverns, Fudge spotted the eggs in a ditch and Mater used his tow hook to grab it. In the Enchanted Forest, Mater spotted the eggs in a hedge, so Fudge crawled in to retrieve them. They were having a good time, running around from spot to spot...

...which was the scene Luigi, Guido and Sheriff stumbled across at the drive-in theatre.

The two Italians softened at the sight of the tow truck and human girl running around, laughing.

"You found 'em?" Mater quizzed Fudge.

"Yeah!" She held them up triumphantly.

"Good job!" Mater shot out his tow hook as a high-five.

However, the two of them stopped dead in their tracks when they heard a booming voice shout, "MATER! FUDGE!"

"Uh-oh!" Mater murmured.

"Busted!" Fudge added, trembling a little.

"That's right!" Sheriff confirmed sternly.

"We is sorry, Sheriff!" Mater apologised hurriedly. "We know you said we wasn't s'posed to, but me and Fudge worked together this time! We was very good!"

Sheriff sighed as he, too, softened. "I can see that", he acknowledged, "and I'm glad to see it, but you both deliberately disobeyed me."

"Sorry, Sheriff", Mater repeated, lowering his cab contritely.

"Yeah, sorry, Uncle Sheriff", Fudge added, looking and sounding equally remorseful.

Sheriff sighed again. "Now, for your punishment..."

Mater and Fudge looked at each other nervously. What kind of awful punishment did Sheriff have in mind for them? Time in the impound? Community service? If so, what kind? Paving over holes in the asphalt on the road? Picking up trash on the highway?

No. The squad car was smiling. "I want the two of you to take care of dinner tonight. We're all exhausted and I think Flo deserves a break after she slaved away at lunch."

Mater and Fudge looked at each other again, with wide eyes. That didn't sound so bad. In fact, it sounded pretty fun (plus, it made them feel quite responsible and grown-up; something neither of them ever really felt), even if neither one of them could cook.

Fortunately, dinner that evening was pretty simple. Everyone was tired from the hunt and still on the full side from Easter lunch, so dinner was just sandwiches (with some treats found on the hunt for dessert!). Plus, given how the weather was great, they decided to have a sunset picnic in Tailfin Pass. What could be better than that?

So, Mater and Fudge were in the kitchen at Flo's, making a stack of sandwiches with Sheriff supervising. Cheese, butter, peanut butter, jelly, tuna salad and ketchup were all over the counter.

"I wish we had a dog", Mater commented, eyeing the mess. "A dog could eat all our mess. Like Bruce used to do. Remember I done told you about Bruce?" Bruce was a German shepherd who belonged to a human family, who used to live in Radiator Springs back in the town's heyday. Of course, the humans moved out and Bruce was long gone now.

Fudge nodded.

Sheriff couldn't help smiling. "I remember Bruce. He was a great dog." The squad car loved dogs (he loved cats too, but would never admit it).

"Hey, Mater?" Fudge began.

"Yeah?"

"Do you regret everything we did today?"

Mater shook his cab. "Naw. Maybe we shoulda listened to Sheriff, but today's been one of the most fun days I ever had."

Fudge grinned as she stacked another sandwich. "Me too."

"So, you don't regret anythin' we did?"

"No way!"

"Even the cheatin'?"

Fudge shrugged. "We were just messing around, right? So, it was fun!"

"Right!" Mater agreed. Neither one of them would seriously cheat at anything. The Easter egg hunt had just been for fun, and messing with each other was part of the fun. "Well, that there's the last sandwich", Mater declared after counting twenty-eight (two each).

"Good." Sheriff nodded, satisfied. "Now, I want the two of you to get to work, cleanin' this mess up."

The tow truck and human girl looked around them. You could barely see the floor with the mess they had made.

"Hey, Mater!" Fudge had a devilish grin on her face. "I bet I can clean up faster than you!"

Mater returned the grin. "I bet you can't!"

Laughing, Mater and Fudge got to work.

Happy Easter, everyone!