As the sun began to rise, the engines of Tidmouth began to wake up. Sir Topham Hatt, the controller of the standard gauge Northwestern Railway, drove up in his car to assign the day's jobs.

"Thomas and Edward, you have this morning's passenger trains on your respective branchlines. Henry, Emily, you've got to take paper to the printshop for the newspaper. Gordon and James, you have the express and mainline passenger duties respectively. Percy, you're to take some coal up to the Skarloey railway. And Rosie, you have to collect Kelly and take him to Arlesburgh so he can help fix a downed power line. Is that clear, everyone?"

"Yes, sir!" James said triumphantly.

Inside her tunnel, Lady yawned a cute little yawn as Burnett Stone gently lit her fire.

Derek rolled out of a shed, a smile on his face.

"Thanks Mavis," he said. "I feel like my old happy self again. I really did need that nap. Now let's get to work."

Mavis laughed as she rolled with him to take care of some trucks. Bill and Ben looked to the tunnel Lady was hiding in.

"Tonight," they said to each other mischievously.

"Hey!"

Billy snored.

"Hey!"

Billy was still snoring.

"HEY!" Brauuuuuuuuuump!

Billy jolted awake to see an angry Diesel glaring at him.

"You're in my shed!"

"Diesel, five more minutes," Sidney mumbled in his sleep.

"You'll have to wait until my crew comes," Billy grunted.

"What is a STEAM ENGINE doing here?!" Diesel hissed to Den and Dart, who had already woken up.

"He's our new, well, parts fetcher. What he does is, um-"

"What he means is, Billy works here now," Dart interjected. "He collects parts so we can spend more time repairing engines. Just arrived yesterday."

"Can't you make all your parts here?" Diesel inquired.

"Not everything. We don't have the equipment needed to make bits like motors, or transmissions, or alternators. Those we have to get shipped in from elsewhere."

Just then, Donald arrived carrying a battered Rusty on a flatbed.

"Rusty got caught in a rockslide," Donald explained. "He got dented an' he's leakin' fuel."

"Rusty needs a new radiator, too," Dart mused. "A shipment with it should've arrived today. We can replace it today while we smooth out the dents and replace the fuel tanks. Should be very easy."

"Billy, can you, erm, get the parts?" Den asked.

"Sure thing!" Billy said, as his crew arrived and got him steamed up.

"Be very careful!" Norman warned him. "Go slowly! A lot of these parts are very delicate and would be very costly to replace."

Billy then puffed off...very slowly.

"You don't have to go that slow right this minute," his driver told him.

"No, I do, this way I don't forget," Billy told her.

"Good idea."

Once he'd left the sheds, Diesel, too tired to mess up the parts run, pulled in and fell asleep.

No one knew that in a distant shed, someone had seen the entire spectacle.

"Well that's odd," Diesel Ten said to himself.

Thomas was finished with his jobs for the morning. Now that Hatt had acquired so many engines, there were enough on the NWR fleet so that Thomas was left without any jobs until two o'clock. It was ten right now.

Needless to say, he was bored.

A whistle shook him out of his thoughts (he'd been wondering where Arthur had gone). Thomas turned his eyes and saw Emily move up beside him, on his left.

"Hey Thomas," she said cheerfully.

"Oh, hi Emily. Are you and Henry done already?"

"I am. Henry had to go get Rocky when we were done. Arthur got separated from his train by a falling tree."

"Ooh," Thomas winced. "I hope Arthur's alright. Say, I haven't seen him in a few years. Where was he?"

"Getting restored, apparently. Who knew?"

"I did," Rosie said, puffing up on Thomas' right.

Emily gave Rosie a death glare.

Now, both Rosie and Emily had a crush on Thomas, and both were aware of this. Thomas, being an idiot, was not.

"I guess you must've met Arthur when he was coming back," Thomas mused. "You have any other new engines to meet? Because I'm bored stiff."

"No, I don't."

The three sighed.

"Hey...why don't we have a race?" Rosie asked.

Emily knew of the tank engines' races to the docks, and was frankly quite jealous. But then she got an idea. "We should! But not to the docks. To our sheds. Me and you, Rosie. Whichever one of us gets there first has to take the four o'clock waste train."

"You're on!" Rosie grinned. "And Thomas, why don't you race ahead of us? So we have someone to check if we have a tie."

"Okay," Thomas said, puffing in front of them.

Then came the real reason Rosie said that: to give the girls an incentive. In front of their faces was Thomas' bunker, causing the girls to lick their lips lustfully. Thomas couldn't see them, so he didn't react. "Let's go!" Thomas exclaimed, whistling a hearty fa fa fa!

And thus the race began.

Billy returned to the Dieselworks, the parts in tow.

"Good job, Billy!" Norman said.

"Eh, whatever," his brother Dennis mumbled. Norman rolled his eyes in exasperation.

Toad and Oliver watched the race from afar. "So who do you think will win, Mr. Oliver?" Toad asked.

"I hope Rosie will," Oliver replied. "Score something for us tank engines. And you and I both know our opinion on her and Thomas."

"Don' be silly!" Douglas said as he pulled up beside the 14xx. "Emily's gon tae win. She's a tendie, an' a Scottish one a' that. She knew Thomas longer besides."

"How about we make a bet?" Oliver said deviously.

"I'm lis'nin'."

"If Rosie gets to Tidmouth Sheds first, you have to get painted green and say 'The Great Western Railway is better than the Caledonian Railway' to Donald's face. If Emily gets there first instead, I won't do passenger work for a month."

"What if something happens and they can't finish the race?" Toad piped up.

"Good thinking, Toad. If they can't complete the race, then you can sleep in my shed for...well, today's Sunday, so for the week."

"Wass the big deal about Toad sleepin' in yer shed?" Douglas asked.

"He sleeps with the trucks. I know it's been twenty-seven years since Scruffey, but I don't want them getting any ideas."

"Yer on," Douglas grinned.

The three had made it to Haultraugh when Thomas, not realizing the points were set against him, disappeared into a surprise siding.

"Thomas!" Rosie and Emily shrieked.

The signalman saw them and called out to them. "Sorry about that. Darn lever keeps slipping. I'll have to get it fixed. I wouldn't worry about it anyway. That siding hasn't been open since 1893."

"We should go in there anyway," Rosie said to Emily. "Who knows what we'll find in there? Or who?"

"Rosie, I highly doubt we'll get a repeat of Hiro," Emily sighed.

"Weird things always happen to Thomas," Rosie said. "Weeeeeeeird things indeed."

"If we go, will you promise to be quiet?"

"Sure."

"Switch us onto the siding Thomas went on!" Emily said. The signalman complied.

"Thomas, are you alright?" Emily asked as she and Rosie chugged up next to a dazed Thomas.

"I'm fine. Luckily, no one was hurt," Thomas grunted.

"Speak for your bloody self!" Bob screamed from inside his engine's cab.

"Your driver hit his head when we stopped," Thomas' fireman explained.

"What stopped us?" Thomas asked. It was then that he and the girls noticed the vine-covered object in front of him. Thomas gently buffered up to it. "Nothing!" he exclaimed.

Then the thing lit up, incinerating the vines. The three gulped as a vintage coach, painted dark gray, appeared in front of them. She looked old and wise. Her buffers turned into slender six-fingered hands and clasped under her chin. "Hello, my children," she said sweetly.

Somewhere in Australia, Shane was woken up by what he swore were three screams.

"Don't scream!" the coach exclaimed.

"Who are you?!" Emily yelped.

"Calm down, it's okay," the coach said. The engines calmed down. "My name is Crana," the coach explained. "Built 1806 as a rail carriage, rebuilt 1836 into a safer design, moved here in 1892 and forgotten. I am the original Lifer."

"The original?" Thomas asked. "So...before you, no machines were alive?"

"That's right."

"How are we alive, anyway?"

"You know," Emily's driver said, "I heard of a legend that a long time ago, God sent some metal down from Heaven, and that was used to make the first Lifer."

"I've heard it too," Crana said. She sighed. "A shame, really. My creators have existed a mere fifth of the time humans have, yet humans have yet to evolve past their need for spiritual beliefs."

"We humans are a stubborn lot, not very willing to change," Emily's driver replied cynically.

"Wait - your creators?" Emily asked.

"When science fiction first came up with the idea for beings from other planets, I immediately realized that's where I must have come from, and I decided to use the data from my nanotechnology to piece together my past," Crana explained.

"Nanotechnology? Aren't those tiny robots?" Rosie asked.

"Indeed. From the data I've managed to collect from them, I've discovered that on a planet far, far away from here, creatures created nanobots, and used them to bring machines to life. They did this by using the Crana technique, after which I am named. The way to bring machines to life is to give the nanobots a base made of white paint containing at least some titanium, and this." She picked up a softly glowing purplish-pink rock. "Sudrian quartz. The nanobots use this as a key component in their power chips. Doesn't exist naturally on Earth - the nanobots have to turn ordinary sand into it - but in the high radiation levels of my creator's homeworld it's quite plentiful. When a Lifer on Earth dies, the nanobots convert any Sudrian quartz back into sand."

"But why did the aliens come to Earth?" Rosie asked.

"They weren't trying to. Another race from a different planet wanted the technology. You see, the first year on the creator's planet - thirty days on Earth - that a machine is alive is their most important. That's when their entire personality takes shape, and it's vital that one raises them properly. Otherwise, they won't behave themselves. But the other creatures wanted to teach their machines how to kill and fight - turn them into the perfect loyal war machines. The creators said no. They paid the price."

The engines shuddered at the thought.

"One ship, carrying the last container of the nanobots and a tiny bit of Sudrian quartz, was flying by your planet when the other creatures found them, fought them, and shot them down. From the remains of that ship was I built, and a few nanobots found the quartz crystals embedded in the white paint used to make my face and brought me to life. Now, some machines carry on the legacy of my creators."

"What a wonderful story," Thomas said. "We should tell everyone."

"No, you shouldn't."

"Why not?"

"Thomas, are there any other LB&SCR E2s out there?"

"No...I was #109, put into a shed and forgotten. My base was found in 1960 and then I was brought to life."

"Rosie, you're an American engine. Have you met Southern Pacific Class 4 Number 4449?"

"You mean Aurora? Yeah, we've met."

"Now what do she and Thomas have in common aside from being English-speaking steam engines?"

"They're...the only ones of their classes left," she realized.

"AND the only ones of their classes to come alive in the first place," Crana added. "Think about it. Often times, a Lifer is the only thing keeping a class from extinction - none of that class left. But some people don't take that fact well."

"She's right," Emily commented. "Some of my passengers on the mainland weren't comfortable with me being alive."

"It's worse than that, Em," her fireman said. "In the 1950s, when the Beeching Cuts and Modernization began, steam engines started being scrapped by the hundreds. But the people who started both events said that LIVE steam engines were not to be scrapped. Instead, they were to keep working until they could no longer, and then go to museums for preservation. However, some people wanted ALL steam engines destroyed. So they began abducting and killing the live ones in direct violation of the rules. Donald, Douglas, and Oliver know this all too well."

"Luckily, in 2011, the UN passed a law that said Lifers could only be scrapped if they couldn't be kept alive - and they were very specific about what that meant," Bob interjected.

"So there are people who don't like living vehicles...and if they knew that the original one was here..." Thomas gasped. "They could destroy you, and render all of us nonliving! Then they'd be free to scrap all the steam engines in the world!"

Emily and Rosie recoiled in horror.

"I know, and I'm sorry that I can't help stop these marauders, but I'm equally as mortal as you, if not more so due to my age," Crana sighed. "Soon, I shall be able to give you all the ability to move without drivers - wonderful people they are, I want you to experience more of the human's world. But that will not be for a while."

"Don't worry, we won't tell anyone about you," Emily promised. "You won't be scrapped. We'll make sure of it."

"So who won?" Oliver asked Thomas.

"Won what?"

"The race between the girls."

"We...canceled it."

"Drat," Oliver groaned. "I was so ready to see the look on Donald's face when Douglas ticked him off. Oh well, I suppose I could always make another bet..."

As he left, Thomas asked Duck "What was that all about?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," Duck replied. "But we've got more important things to think about."

You have no idea how right you are, Thomas thought.

Rosie's right. The weird stuff always seems to happen to Thomas.

This chapter was to solve the mystery of why the machines are even alive. Most of the time, the Crana technique doesn't work, thus why not all of the rolling stock is alive. Nonliving locomotives will appear in a later chapter.

Now the OT3 have found out why they're alive, and that not everyone likes Lifers. Meanwhile, Diesel Ten appears at last, and Billy has proved himself worthy of his new job.

Will a Lifer-hater appear and cause trouble on Sodor? Will Billy meet Diesel Ten? And are Oliver and Douglas the only ones betting on who will end up with Thomas?

All this and more in the next chapter - The Call of the Claw!