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One bright afternoon in Radiator Springs, Lightning McQueen and Mater were filling up at Flo's V8 Cafe when Ramone drove across the main street to show off his new paint job.
"Lookin' good, babe!" Flo called out. "Those flames make you look hot in more ways than one."
"I'm trying for the Optimus Prime look," Ramone announced, turning as tightly as he could to show off his side panels to his mostly-captive audience.
"Ha!" exclaimed Sheriff. "I'd like to see you tow a trailer."
"Yeah, yeah. Next week I'll figure out Starscream's tattoos, and then you'll all think I can fly." Ramone pulled up to a pump. New body art was business as usual with him.
"I was a Transformer once," mused Mater.
"What?" Lightning scoffed. "No way."
"Yes way," Mater contested, as always.
Lightning wasn't finished. "You've been in Radiator Springs since before those guys were on the planet. I know, 'cause this time I was there too."
"Naah, it was longer ago than that," Mater half-sighed. "But I was one. I had one'a them Autobot sigils painted across my hood." He looked down, going cross-eyed with the effort, at his own exposed engine. "I had a hood back then, too."
"What?" Lightning asked again. "When we found your hood in Carburetor Canyon, you told me it'd been twenty years since you'd seen it. And it didn't have anything painted on it, either."
"Are you gonna let me tell this story?" Mater took a brief silence as acquiescence, and settled back contentedly on his wheels. "It was twenty-some years ago, back when the first Autobots and Decepticons were on Earth. Bet'cha didn't know there were two bunches, didja?"
The silent "o" of Lightning's mouth was answer enough. From somewhere, Lizzie laughed... and then asked someone, probably herself, "But now was it two groups, or three? I just can't remember."
"Well, there was," Mater said. "And the Autobots, they was just like anybody else. Sometimes they needed a tow..."
*
"Thanks, Mater," Gears grumbled as Autobot Mater pulled up and swung him around into the open atrium of Autobot Headquarters, the former spaceship Ark. "You got sand into places I didn't know I had, and a tumbleweed, too, and now I still gotta get Ratchet to fix me. Home sweet home."
"Any time, Gears," Mater replied cheerfully, and rolled back out.
*
"I had hands. I had guns. I had a rocket pack. I had gadgets you've never seen before," Mater went on, rocking side to side on his tires as he told the story. A grin appeared on his face. "But I never had anything that beat my tow hook."
*
Mater stood on a small rocky rise in undeveloped rangeland, with a battle going on all around him. He was sea-green and glossy and definitely an Autobot biped. He still looked older than the 'bots around him, thanks to his curves and their square corners, but he didn't look old. And rising from the hip, his towing "tail" made him instantly recognizable.
In front of him, Optimus Prime -- the elder, the square-cab semi with flat red paint and no flames -- struggled with Megatron. Megatron gave Prime a shove, causing him to lose his footing, and brought around his fusion cannon to shoot.
But Mater was there to save Prime. He swung his tow hook around in his hand until it sang, and flung it out to lasso Laserbeak in midair. The Cassetticon wheeled sideways and crashed into Megatron. Prime had time to get up and aim, and Megatron, still on the ground, realized he was in trouble and called the Decepticon retreat.
*
"Wow, Megatron?" Lightning asked.
"Yup!" Mater rose up proudly on his shocks. "But he wasn't the worst."
"There was that Fallen guy... right?" Lightning hesitated.
"Naah, that's all the new bunch. The scariest Transformer I ever saw was Unicron."
*
Unicron was incomprehensibly vast, a spheroid starship easily mistaken for a planet. He'd just eaten two of Cybertron's moons as if they were ice cream cones -- slurp! Then, as if that wasn't enough, Unicron transformed into a robot miles tall, and began to tear Cybertron to pieces with his bare hands. The Decepticon army turned out in full force to attack Unicron, but they had about as much effect as a swarm of Volkswagen flies. When Unicron caught one, he tossed it in his mouth for a snack.
"You ever seen anything like this before, Mater?" asked a petite Transformer with a feminine voice and recognizable traces of Miata around her robot body.
"Do you have a story to tell us, or something?" agreed another Miata-bot.
"With a happy ending?" added the first.
Mater stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed at the screen of the starship he was inside. His Autobot face looked a lot like his truck self, with irises and pupils, buck teeth and a tongue. He shook his head. "Nope. Never seen anything like this before."
The Autobots joined the battle. When their lasers had no visible effect, they rammed their starship into Unicron's eye. Half-blind and hurting, Unicron was distracted -- but the starship was destroyed, and the Autobots fell into Unicron's enormous, dangerous engine section.
*
"We were split up," Mater told his rapt audience in Radiator Springs. "One of us here, two there. I lost track of Mia and Tia. I had to escape a bundle'a gears with teeth bigger than a Colossus XL. I got flushed through Unicron's radiator -- at least, I think it was his radiator -- and even almost fell in a tank of battery acid.
"But worst of all, those Decepticons he ate? Some of them were still alive. I thought I'd finally found me a safe spot to take a breather, and then I heard something behind me. There was Galvatron, the most powerful Decepticon cannon ever, and even worse than that, he was holding the Matrix! I thought I was a goner."
"What'd you do?" asked Lightning, enthralled.
"Well, shoot, don't you remember? You was there too!"
*
Galvatron could barely be seen in the shadows of Unicron's internal cavity, except for a few shiny highlights, a pair of narrow red eyes, and the definite shape of the enormous orange gun barrel set on the back of his forearm. That barrel was pointed straight at Mater.
Just at that moment, Lightning gunned his engine, and flashed one headlight in Galvatron's eyes. "Ka-chow!" Galvatron, temporarily blinded by the light in his eyes, missed his shot.
Mater transformed and hastily backed up, while Lightning roared up to Galvatron and spun out into his feet, driving on the slick floor like it was a dirt track. Galvatron stumbled and fell on Lightning, who transformed into a red robot and began to struggle with him hand to hand. Mater threw his tow hook into the fray and knocked the Matrix away from Galvatron.
Galvatron tried to dive after the Matrix, but Lightning was faster. ("Fastest car I ever met," Mater added in a proud aside.) Lightning grabbed the Matrix, while Mater tangled Galvatron in his tow cable.
*
"We gave Galvatron a one-way ticket to the middle of nowhere. And I mean the real middle of nowhere, not just off the interstate," Mater teased.
"I know Radiator Springs isn't the middle of nowhere anymore, Mater. But what happened with Unicron?"
"Well, you used the Matrix to blow him up," Mater said cheerfully, as if it were nothing. "It turned you into a camper, too. That was funny! Big red camper with yellow lightning bolts on your big square sides. So even though they were so impressed they made you the leader of the Autobots, after a couple months you decided you just wanted to go back to being a race car. And that was the last I ever saw of you... until you came to Radiator Springs."
"I was Autobot leader?" Lightning repeated, skeptically. "And a camper?! Mater, that never happened."
"Suit yourself," Mater said, undaunted. "I knew you didn't want to remember that camper part."
But as Lightning drove away, he saw in his rear-view mirror that a pair of Miatas with Autobot sigils had pulled up at Flo's.