So here's an episode that exists.

Yeah, that's about it.

You'll note that this one is a very slight episode. Primarily because we're coming up to the final six episodes, which I'll be spending more effort on, and also because I was on holiday in Dartmouth, so busy busy busy!

AaronCottrell97: Yeah, especially seeing as he wouldn't have had a model on standby unlike, say, Duke or BoCo. Weird choice.

Reality Rejection Service: That they are. And that Bulgy is, we will learn what happened to him as we enter the final six episodes.

Game-Watch: Yeah, it's a weird little snafu, and it's so easy to solve as well, you've got the models for Duck and Oliver on hand, why not use them apart from selling Emily toys and bringing Thomas in- And I answered my own question.

MattPrice01: If he does, he is on borrowed time.

Streakofscarlet: Yeah, those are all things that happen in this very weird, very oddly done episode.

Radical Sandwiches: Pretty much what I was going for here, and something that will be a theme throughout Season 8.

UGX7: You find out a little of what happened to him here, so you needn't hold your breath for long.

Bronze Shield: Giggity.

Australian Guest: Egg puns are always a sign of rather well done eggsecution. Someone stop me.

jsw: Bulgy's voice is weird in that episode, and it's the only time it turns up, so it makes it stand out even more.

Guest: As a stressed induced hallucination, sure!

Garchomp65: As well as trying to write other stories in other fandoms, and having to juggle a university career as well, I'm only human. Besides, I'm trying to make sure they are really good when I send them out. A lot of effort has to go into these.

GreatWestern1522: Eh, call it a little continuity hiccup, or maybe the Fat Director took credit for it and Zero just let him roll with it.

CUE THE THEME

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Oh. So we're doing this now.

This is why we should start staging more crashes, we get less filler like this. Actually, that's an insult to filler.

We really have to do this episode?

….Fine, fine.

Harold the Helicopter is a racist old sod who hates steam engines with a passion and thinks that all of them except for Percy are worthless piles of scrap.

…..Oh, I'm sorry, I misread the script. Harold is very glad to not be a steam engine, as he is far happier flying in the sky than racing on road or rails.

As you can see, an easy mistake to make.

One day, after Harold got slightly drunk and accosted the viaduct, convinced that he could see Duke crossing it after having risen from the dead, his pilot decided to look at the accounts again and noticed, with some distress, that Harold's gambling addiction had started back up in full force.

"It's back to low maintenance stuff again, Harold!"

"Piffle! Sah, I know what I am doing!" said Harold, a statement that sent the entire airforce into roars of mocking laughter.

…..

One morning, the engine's were preparing for the vicar's annual fete. It felt like only last year that they had been doing the same, Percy had remarked to Thomas. The latter hadn't the heart to tell him that was why it was referred to as the 'annual' fete.

Everyone was very excited. This is what we in Britain call sarcasm, kids, learn it. But who could resist the treats of 'Guess How Many Grains of Sand Are In This Bag of Sand' (Capitalization was not one of the vicarage's strong points), or who could hold themselves back from 'Cut Me Own Throat Norris's Coconut Shy, This Time With Less Glue'?

Many people, as it turns out. Even Trevor looked close to cracking completely at the sight of 'Hook a Cement Ducky'.

"It's not quite our tea party, is it, Bertie?" grimaced Edward, as a poster with the words 'summer fete' written in a cheap font was plastered over a 'do not drink' sign. That wasn't worrying at all. "I'm not sure that drawing of a sun with eyes that appear to consist only of pupils would pass much muster at the National Gallery."

"Looks like shite." The bus said.

"So you'll fit right in! AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYE!" Bulgy arrived, left and spoke in the amount of time it took for some people to sneeze.

"I….really hate him." Bertie growled, before taking over in a desperate attempt to scrounge more money from the passengers. Edward grimaced, he knew that feeling. Gordon had been bringing up the 'Tar Wagon Incident' once again, and it was beginning to annoy him immensely.

"I'd like to help!" Harold said, lying through his teeth. "But I'm on patrol!"

"For WHAT!?" Percy exclaimed in frustration. "Pissed off farmers?! UFO enthusiasts!? …Baffled doggers?!"

"He'll find plenty of those here." James muttered.

He was looking, supposedly, for engines in trouble. This did not explain how he somehow managed to fly into Season 5 stock footage as he flew around aimlessly.

….

The engines were still waiting on news about Oliver, currently locked into the Works until he could be moved to somewhere with more advanced facilities. Still, work went on, and Percy had been roped into carrying deckchairs and, less than specifically described, decorations.

There was no call as to whether or not the Fat Controller was going to cause a scandal like last year and break thirty deckchairs by attempting to sit on them, one after the other, but the amount of titanium put into the chair suggested that the possibility had passed the creator's mind.

There were also tables, tea urns and reminders, such as 'DON'T BE A YOB' and 'PLEASE REMEMBER THAT DUMPING GROUND IS NOT LITERAL, NORRIS'.

"Don't forget to come to the Vicar's fete!"

"How could I forget?"

"I don't know, how could you?"

"….Well aren't you an annoying smart alec today, doncha know?"

"I am?" Percy was puzzled.

"Thanks but no thanks. Duty calls! Who knows where I must go and venture forth in order to save some poor so-What was that? …There's another cat? AGAIN!? It better not be the same one!" Harold was feeling a lot less RAF around about this time, the constant forcing up and down and flying around of his work had finally begun to take it's toll on his fragile grip of sanity.

He was just landing at the airfield (And wondering why the hell Butch wasn't taking care of that massive amount of bush and bramble that had somehow managed to trap all other planes inside one of the hangers) when he saw Pegasus the horse.

….Okay who the hell is Pegasus the horse?

Huh, apparently I am being handed a piece of paper and…."Pegasus in the carthorse who lives in the field nearby'.

Sure. Okay. Whatever.

So Pegasus the suddenly appearing horse who will most certainly be on sale in Tesco in a few weeks time given how the UK apparently can't stop shoving horses into microwave meals, whinnied as he saw Harold. The whirlybird indicated what he thought of this at great length, but the whining of his blades cut it off.

Pegasus was preparing to give rides to the people at the fete, with a large leather harness and a cart glistening with gleaming paint. Some had argued that it wasn't paint, but the blood of all those he had killed.

Given what we have learned about the Island of Sodor thus far, this might not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

Harold was beginning to feel left out. How he could with the noted partiers Tiger "BLOODY!" Moth, the faceless fire engine and Butch (Who had a sore throat), we'll never know. At that moment, Thomas puffed in with passengers.

"Where are you going next, chap?"

"Oh, the fete. Of course. …Isn't everyone?"

"I say old thing, you know I have a crippling phobia of being BEING LEFT BEHIND!" wailed Harold.

"Not my problem." Thomas said.

"I'm on duty!" Harold recovered quickly enough to try bragging.

"Of course you are." Thomas said, patronizingly "It's very important job being a rescue helicopter. Think of all those lost cats you've returned to being…lost again."

"I get the sense that you are mocking me, old chap. No one needs rescuing!"

"Nooooooooooooooo. Me? Mock? Never."

…..

"HELLO RUSTY!"

"CATS ON A HOT TIN ROOF WATCH OUT!" Rusty nearly tipped into the water as Harold swung so close to their fuel tanks that they very much wondered if it was a Viking funeral they were after. Harold had just been informed by his pilot that the Fat Man wanted something.

"Pegasus is stuck in a ditch!"

"Stuck in a ditch?"

"Stuck in a ditch!"

"Silly old Pegasus is stuck in a ditch."

"All on a Monday MOOOOOORNING."

"OH VERY FUNNY!" Gordon screamed as he hauled past. The Fat Controller, Harold and Percy shared victorious grins before getting serious.

"Silly old horse apparently can't get out and for that we need to waste time with sending our one helicopter to the scene. Even if he is a shit one. The children will be disappointed. Sod em, I say, but that's why I'm not liked by most of the Island these days."

"Alllllllll set and ready for action!"

"Then why are you shaking like you've been doused in coffee?"

"BECAUSE HE HAS!" screamed the lunatic who had knocked the pilot unconscious and stolen his uniform.

"Oh dear." Percy said as Harold lurched from side to side, taking out several trees in the process. Then he paused as something far more important occurred to him. "Funny name for a horse."

"It's a name for a horse in a very old story. Older than even Mrs Kyndley. And it could fly, apparently."

"Ha! Flying horses! They can't fly!" And somewhere, in a place called Equestria, a random pegasi died. Percy felt very clever, and that was sad in it's own way.

"Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite!" screamed James as Harold nearly took his face off with the blades. Eventually, he managed to land as the pilot was busy throwing up.

"What happened!?"

"We loaded the cart, horse went off to wander and fell in that ditch. Silly bloody nag."

"No, that would be a donkey, Thomas."

Thomas looked at Harold in angry disappointment. "I really hate you sometimes."

"Only sometimes?!" Harold beamed. "That is an improvement!"

"….I'll take the cart if you take the bloody horse."

"IIIIIIII'lllll p-p-put him in my sling!" said Harold, as the maniac retook control of him and knocked the shock absorbers off.

"Need to hurry!"

"HURRY IS MY MIDDLE NAME!" said the man who, strangely enough, was not associated with the Norris family.

Soon, the sling had been outfitted around the wannabe Starhill Pony, and the pilot took Harold up into the air, letting the horse scream with sheer terror. The handlers wondered vaguely if they had made a mistake.

And off they went.

When Percy saw Pegasus flying through the air, he was amazed and did in no way put two and two together. "Flatten my funnel! Carlin, did you-?"

"I'm too drunk to care." Drawled Carlin.

"A FLYING HORSE!"

"Sure, Perce, sure, let's get the f**k moving, I want to go home and sleep forever." He ignored the cheering kids, who was so pleased that Harold had saved the fete.

Then the helicopter dropped suddenly. Pegasus went sailing out of the sling, spun through the air-

And landed face first into the wall.

In the horrible silence, Harold managed to settle down on a clump of grass, and grinned.

"So did we do it?"

…..

After retrieving the backup horse from a nearby paddock, he was quickly shoved into the role of Pegasus and hurried into the fete to fulfil the duties of the original horse. The fete was a relatively decent success, hampered only by the strange smell of bleeding horse.

Harold was happy, he had done his duty and had fun at the fete as well.

Now, if only the airfield would get on to paying his ransom, all would end well.

…..

THE PAST.

"Lights on!" croaked the Malignance, as Zero went to switch off the lights. "Can't…can't abide the dark!"

"Ye're….You're telling me that you're scared of the dark."

The Malignance hissed. "Not afraid. But while this body can sustain me while I am here, it will not make the full journey to and from Sodor. And I need to gain an understanding of how the land works, if it changes by night. The nature of what I am at present requires a source of light to keep me from vanishing into the darkness."

"So what's your plan?"

"Lanterns. There's a lot of them on the Island, I plan to make sure I have a stockpile ready for me. Lamps too. Any light so that I can stay alive, no matter the cost."

Zero shrugged. "Go for it. Just try not to draw too much attention to it. I'm sending Jasper over to see if he can't find out what happened to all of the stuff Marklin was stockpiling in the Smelters. You have no problem with it?"

"….Loath as I am to use things that the Malevolence has sullied, it may not be such a bad idea to at least take note of what we have at our…fingertips, for lack of a better word. I hope you have a plan."

"Likewise."

The two of them stared at each other, carefully.

"Put simply, I want to take control of the Island in the closest thing we have to a legal way." Zero said, carefully. "Now, apart from us sabotaging the Fat Director, his greatest error was in how he approached the situation as a whole, like some bizarrely over-complex labyrinth of plans atop plans. No, what will separate him from us, aside from the worthwhile nature of your apparent cause, will be that they will want to GIVE us the land rather than us having to TAKE it from them. Awkwardly balanced financial situations are easy to manipulate, so are people wanting a quick and fast solution. And Sodor is full of both of those."

"Clever." The Malignance smiled. It was not…actually that bad. "Very clever. It'll be a long haul, but worth it in the end, I believe. Now, on my end, I have similar plans. There is a lot of engines there that could be amendable to my plans, tainted though they may be. We all deserve a second chance." He paused. "Speaking of which, I wonder….do you think you could find something out for me with these new…what was it you called them, contracts?"

"What?"

"I'm very much interested to learn what the Iron Circle is up to nowadays. Check them out for me, please."

…..

"Give it to me straight, what are we looking at?"

Duck didn't answer, he was just staring off into the distance with a rather odd look on his face that honestly unsettled plenty of the engines around them. Edward looked at Fergus, who coughed.

"Well, he's alive. Barely. A preliminary examination of the scene of the crime suggests that he was chased down along the rails from the cement-works by a group of at least eight diesels. There's one casualty on that front, one who looks an awful lot like Mavis. My assumption is that she was already suffering quite badly beforehand, and Oliver exploited that to make sure that the others went off the scent. Toad and most of the trucks are currently being taken to the Bluebell Railway for the time being."

"Yes, but Oliver himself?"

"….Both of his crew are dead, which indicates human interference. His wheels are in terrible shape, most likely a result of going too fast, and there are a lot of bullet woudns along the boiler, cab and buffers. Fact that he didn't go up is a miracle. The fall off the bridge has also damaged areas of his chassis, and most of his face is bloodied up from the fall. Best chance for his survival is to get him to Crewe."

"Cameras." Duck muttered at last. "Who was on the cameras?"

"…From what I can gather? This D1."

"Right."

And Duck stormed off into the night.