Thunder rumbled and crashed one night on the Island of Sodor. Lightning streaked rapidly in millisecond flashes across the sky. The steam engines were in Tidmouth Sheds, unable to sleep at all.
"Oh, Thomas, I'm scared!" wailed Percy to his best friend.
"So am I, Percy," admitted Thomas. "So am I."
Henry groaned. "Oh, when will it all stop so that we can all get our sleep!?" He jumped when thunder crashed for what felt like the thousandth time.
"Yeah!" Gordon boomed in his deep voice. "When can we all get our sleep!? I don't want to pull the Express tomorrow only to fall asleep somewhere out on the main line!"
"It better not be still raining by tomorrow!" James complained. "I don't want my lovely red paint all wet and ruined—AHH!" He let out a loud shout as he caught a flash of lightning streaking across the sky, knowing that what would come next would scare him. Thunder crashed loudly, and James shut his eyes tightly and jumped.
Emily didn't say anything. She just whimpered and sighed.
The only engine that was quiet and didn't seem to be cringing was Edward. He just kept his eyes closed the whole time, trying to sleep through the raging storm. The complaints from the big engines were not helping matters at all. Their shouting and fussing proved to be just as disruptive as the storm.
Then they all heard an abrupt and frightening noise. Something was loudly thumping against the side of the shed.
All the startled engines jumped and shouted in terror.
"Help!" Percy shrieked.
"There's a monster trying to get in our shed!" James yelled.
"It's trying to knock Tidmouth Sheds down and gobble us up!" shouted Thomas.
Maniacal cackling could then be heard, which sounded all-too-familiar…
The long, sinister shape of a diesel sneaked out from the side of the shed into the view of the frightened, now hushed engines.
"What's the matter?" cackled the diesel in a bullying tone. "Monster got your tongues?" A large metal claw, edges jagged and sharp like the teeth of the shark from Jaws, clacked open and closed a few times in a threatening manner.
"Diesel 10!" Thomas exclaimed.
"What are you doing here!?" Percy squeaked out.
"I'll tell you what he's doing here!" James shouted, his tone border-lining on anger. "He's come to scrap us all!" He scrunched up his face in disdain as the clawed menace cackled again.
"What do you want, you big bully?" Henry exclaimed.
Diesel 10 cackled. "Why, I want to scrap you all, just like the red puffball said," he sneered. "And I delight on proving my own point that you are all scaredy steamies!"
The engines fumed. "And diesels aren't?!" James snapped.
"Oh, but diesels do," Emily piped up. "Remember the time the sheet fell on me when I was in the smelters? Arry and Bert were so terrified; they thought I was a ghost!" She sent a small sneer towards the olive green warship. "If the Grim Messengers of Doom are prone to being terrified, then it's right to assume that there's the faintest chance the most menacing diesel on the island can be frightened, too!"
"Ha!" Diesel 10 shouted boisterously. "I don't get scared. I'm never scared," he said, making his voice as obnoxious as he could. "I'm Diesel 10! I'm 10 out of 10 for devious deeds and brutal strength! I'm the big, bad clawed monster of Sodor! Monsters are never scared."
Edward smirked. "You keep on saying that, Diesel. But when something occurs in your life later that frightens you, don't say we didn't warn you! No engine is unable to experience feelings of fear."
"Ha! You're delusional, old puffball," Diesel 10 growled, rumbling forward. "You should have been scrapped years ago!" He left Tidmouth Sheds, disappearing into the heavy rain.
"I hope the rain rusts that claw of his!" James hissed. Then he, Gordon, Henry, Emily, Thomas, and Percy all started muttering and exclaiming angrily about the rude warship. Edward sighed at the other engines bickering. "Here we go again…." Closing his eyes, he managed to drift off to sleep and slept through the angry conversation.
The next day, Thomas and Percy were working together. Sir Topham Hatt had given them a job to do at the quarry to help Mavis and Toby out. While arranging trucks, the two best friends tried to come up with ways to prove Emily's and Edward's points.
"What could possibly scare that big bully?" Thomas muttered.
"Maybe one of us could dress up as a ghost and scare Diesel 10," Percy put in.
"Mmm….No. I don't think that would work, Percy. We would have to do something a lot bigger than that. It takes a lot to scare someone like him."
Percy went quiet for a while as they worked, until he thought up another idea an hour later. "What if we sneaked into the Dieselworks and started making noises at his shed?"
"Mmm….No….I'm sorry, Percy. You're coming up with nice ideas, but I know that idea wouldn't work either. Diesel 10 would just assume it was Den or Dart or Arry or Bert bothering him and get angry. And if he decided to open those shed doors and come out and discover us there, it would get really bad."
"You're right, Thomas, you're right."
"And obviously, thunderstorms don't seem to faze him a bit," Thomas muttered in disappointment.
The two went on with their work. No other ideas on how to scare Diesel 10 entered their minds. They were often distracted with socializing with Mavis and Toby and listening to their instructions on where to place trucks and where to take the ones filled with gravel. They didn't mind, though. Mavis and Toby were very pleasant friends to talk to and helped Thomas and Percy forget about the rude, bullying behavior of Diesel 10 for a while.
The next night, all the engines rushed to Tidmouth Sheds before their fires went out, slipping back into their slots as quickly as possible.
"Why is it storming again!?" James exclaimed. "I thought we were all done with that!"
"Sir Topham Hatt said that the weatherman predicted it would storm again for at least one more night," Edward said.
"Nice. Just nice!" James fussed. "Now my paintwork is all wet!"
"So is mine!" Henry frowned.
"And we're going to have to go through this again and enjoy another sleepless night!" James complained loudly.
"Ohhhh, the indignity!" Gordon groaned glumly.
Edward sighed. "Please, my friends. Don't complain. Complaining about it is not going to make it any better. It will only make it worse."
Suddenly, some frightened peeps sounded from Percy's shed. "He's back!" Percy squeaked. "Diesel 10 is back!"
"What?!" James and the other big engines glared at the sinister presence of the warship approaching from out of the misty downpour. "Come to try to frighten us again, you big bully!?"
Diesel 10 smiled devilishly at the red engine and clacked his claw at him as he approached the turntable. "Oh, I've come to do much more than that!" he threatened. "I've come to-"
His sentence was cut short by a lightning bolt striking down into the ground beside him, merely inches away from him. The crashing noise that followed was deafening. All the engines jumped and cried out. But the engine that was the most frightened was not anywhere to be found in Tidmouth Sheds.
Diesel 10 let out a scream of terror, loud enough for all the engines to hear well. They had never heard the big menacing diesel scream before...
With his features twisted into a frightened expression, Diesel 10 reversed away from Tidmouth Sheds as fast as he could go. The engines thought they heard a shout from him as he left.
At once, the engines erupted into a frenzy of cheering and laughing. "Thank you, storm!" James shouted upwards into the angry sky. "Thank you, thank you for coming tonight!"
The other engines chuckled and giggled endlessly. "Well, well, well, who would have thought Diesel 10's fear was lightning?" Gordon smirked.
"That's just one fear. How do we know Diesel 10 doesn't have other fears besides this?" Thomas smirked.
"True that." Edward smiled at Thomas. "Diesel 10 had this coming to him. As the old saying goes, 'What goes around, comes around.' Diesel 10 bullied us and threw fear into us with his prank, but the bolt of lightning made a beeline straight for him to scare him back for us."
All the engines laughed and agreed with the wise old engine.
Ever since that raging, stormy night, Diesel 10 never came back to Tidmouth Sheds to disturb the engines' sleep again.
THE END