Ah. Chapter 69. Hehehe. Right, got that out of my system.

Henry and the Wishing Tree is a...weird one. In retrospect it's hard not to see this as the moment where it became clear that no one had any real idea of what to do with Henry (Which isn't THAT bad, as making him the super envious one as opposed to Gordon being super angry and James having constant prideful moments like in the books isn't really that unique, though it's something that I personally like) and thus we get...this. Sort of making him to be an idiot who doesn't understand how passengers work is really dumb, though the fact that he likes the forest is a nice holdover. A weak episode, but some impressive model work on the internal shots for my money.

Now, reviews!

Guest: I think you repeated a lot of the reviews, so I'll just say thank you, I appreciate the song and yes, all of them did get through! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Game-Watch: You'll have to wait til next chapter for that, but I really hope you enjoy it when it comes!

MattPrice01: The idea is to be slightly uncomfortable. It's very much something this season is going to be about, the very awkward and screwed up ways the original seven interact (Emily not so much). So I'm glad it worked, but I hope it wasn't TOO awkward.

Radical Sandwiches: BE AFRAID.

UGX7: I'm guessing that no one wanted to adapt anything from the original stories so the floodgates would have opened for requests? ...Not that that stopped them. We might, at some point!

jsw: Very stupid! He has Norris blood somewhere!

Garchomp65: I'll consider that!

The Nerdinator: He was hungry? Or a therapy metaphor!

Streakofscarlet: Toby is for definite on there somewhere. Edward...hmm...XD.

Shin-Dan Kuroto: Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed! Yeah G-1 is something all right.

CUE THE THEME!

THE PRESENT.

Harold stared at the ground in confusion. "Sah, can you just…make sure I'm seeing the bally thing right?"

"….Yes, you are."

"Why is that man sitting in the river and sulking?"

"Don't know."

"Does he know that there's a waterfall behind him?"

There was a loud cry of "Oh f**k!" and then a louder splash.

"He does now."

…..

It was, depending on whom you asked, either summer time or what appeared to be summer time, on the Island. There was a great flurry of activity, mostly for the sake of the establishing shots, but also because of a general tension in the air for some unknown reason.

Perhaps it was the loud braying donkey that was Gordon, holding court as he loudly proclaimed that he was the greatest, and someone should watch him fly by. With the amount of onlookers and increasing numbers of workers from the now reactivated Other Railway, the express was busy.

He was so far up his own tender that he gave not one care, however. More people to marvel at his beauty, his grace, and the fact that he was the wittiest engine since….well, ever, if he was being modest.

Meanwhile, there was Henry, who was now on truck pulling duty in the forest. He loved the peace and quiet of it, but he didn't see many people. Which was a positive, rather than a negative.

Again. He was in possession of a rather embarrassing nickname as a result of being stuck there. Mid-drunken rant, he had declared that he didn't want to be property of the MAN any more. He wanted a name that reflected his nature as a proud member of nature's garden.

And thus had some bright idiot christened him Henry the Big Cock.

The fact that the engines were now always making odd clucking noises every time he passed, and the fact that James was redder than ever and constantly on the verge of laughing every time he pulled in, gave Henry a few clues as to what the next year or so of life would bring him.

As was the case now, as he pulled into Knapford Station. Luckily, no one was focusing on him at present, but Henry had already got the general idea of what would happen when they focused upon him.

"Keep your smelly freight away from my passengers!"

Ah. And there it was.

"Morning Gordon. You seem in a good mood. Besides, it's only logs!"

"So what? Bloody hippie! Passengers and freight don't mix!"

Not for the first time, Henry wondered if Gordon realised how close he came to death on a daily basis. As he puffed away, he thought longingly about getting back out of the forest for a bit and pulling a passenger train again.

For the first time e-

"What?"

Oh, sorry Henry, this is the script they've given me. That'll be your first time ever pulling the express….ever.

"That's bollocks."

That's show business!

"I'd love to pull passengers! Just for a-GET THAT SCRIPT AWAY FROM ME!"

….

Later, Henry passed into the forest once again. He spotted a tree. This was not unexpected in the middle of a forest. However, the fact that there were kids standing around it was. "What are those kids doing?" He asked Thomas, who was there….for some reason.

"They're making a wish on the wishing tree!"

"Ah. A stupid answer for a stupid question. I getcha."

"Nah. That's the old Sodor Wishing tree!"

"HA! I think not, I've been here before their parents even met, and I've never heard of such a stupid thing!"

"You may mock, but it's true."

"Oh, how wonderful!" cried Henry in a mocking way. "And I suppose if I make a wish upon it, I shall get happy ever after and all my dreams!"

"You never know!" Thomas intoned ominously. And then he left, making loud cawing noises..

Henry growled at this, and then, just for a laugh, rolled forward. He closed his eyes, stuck out his lips like he'd taken something sour in the boiler and asked. "I wish that I could take the express! Ha! What tommy rot!"

That evening, the Fat Controller arrived, and in a slightly robotic manner, declared. "You shall pull the express tomorrow, Henry!"

"Ha! Thank you sir! Bloody Nora! TAKE THAT GORDON! Where is he, anyway?"

"Currently in works for coal sickness."

"A HA! Not so funny when it happens to you, is it, matey!? Now you can be the one having to go through life-altering surgery!"

"So bitter."

…

The next day, Henry arrived at the platform in good spirits. He waited as the passengers boarded, bubbling with smugness.

"Bawk, bawk."

He even ignored the drunk Carlin making those ridiculous noises. And once the last door had been slammed, he started off.

Yep.

…Ahem.

Sorry, did you not here me, Henry? Once the last door had been slammed, he started off.

"Guard hasn't blown his whistle yet."

Yep. But you need to start off.

"Why?"

Because it's in the script!

"But I've pulled trains before. Lots of them! Why-?"

Look, you can either start off or we can just sit here in awkward silence until you do!

"Okay, okay, FINE!"

He pulled off too quickly. The coaches smacked into each other and the guard roared out something about "Not starting until he blew the whistle!"

"Go gently!" hissed his driver, who was getting paid by the second. "You can bump freight but you can't bump passengers!"

"I KNOW!" hissed Henry. "Bloody script-writer! And you, Angelis, how about you shut your cakehole in the future?"

How about you pay me actual money instead?!

Silly old cock.

He puffed proudly through the countryside. "What a grand job!" He declared to all who would listen, and quite a few that did not. "I wonder what Gordon's up to!"

Gordon was miserably sitting in the Works, staring bleakly at the television. He was being fitted with a new boiler, very painfully. And to add to that, he was also stuck watching the most mind-numbing program he'd seen in ages.

"Not more Andy Pandy!" He protested. "Have I done something wrong!?"

"Look, we spent an awful lot of money getting the rights to air this stuff, and our contract states we have to re-run every episode at least one hundred and thirty nine times! Get used to it!"

They hadn't. The foreman of the Works just wanted to torment Gordon for the hell of it. And having to listen to Andy Pandy and Looby Loo, not to mention Teddy too, was more torment than any sane person over the age of twelve could take. He missed his passengers immensely.

And for once, the feeling was mutual. They were having the bumpiest ride, helped in no small measure by the fact that Henry had been sent onto the wobbliest track ever constructed for, to quote the signalman, shits and giggles.

Later on-

"HENRY YOU DOLT!"

-came the Fat Controller.

"Sir! It's not my fault! It was the wind!"

"Did the wind make you do a full loop-de-loop for fifteen minutes!?"

"In my defence, that was the tracklayers fault. No one's told them that the Island of Sodor is not the next Sonic the Hedgehog game."

"Passengers are not logs, no matter how much we wish that was the case! You have to treat them right!"

"Sir, your marriage is of no concern to me."

"AH HA! Being a Sassy Gordon, eh? Well on principle, you're being left behind tomorrow. Henry, suit up and prepare yourself! Don't screw it up, it's not the Flying Kipper now!"

"Yes sir." He muttered. Henry had no idea how to treat people gently. It had been knocked out of him after the fifth or sixth time pulling the Kipper. Gordon was looking miserable in the corner. "My wish has made Gordon go to the repair yard! And in doing so, he's getting a day off! The lazy git!"

This made him feel very bad. Mainly for himself.

The next day he had to collect the buffet car. He decided, that on principle, he would try to be gentle.

There wasn't much of a station left after he had attempted this, needless to say the buffet car (Instead of coach, we have to be polite to the yanks, I guess) was in pretty bad shape.

"MAMMA MIA!" declared the Italian Barber, who had become a chef due to the hard times that he had been going through. "You MAKE-A ME SO MAD!"

"I want to go HOME!" Henry wailed, and he stormed off to make one last wish. "Now, let's see…I know this forest like the back of my buffers!"

…..

TWO HOURS LATER.

"I wish I could pull freight again!"

"I wish I could pull freight again!"

"I wish I could pull freight again!"

Thomas stared at Henry in bafflement. "Uh….what? I imagined plenty of mental breakdowns, but this was not one of them."

"I have lost the tree that grants wishes! So I'm wishing on all of them! I wish I could pull-SIR TOPHAM HATT!?"

"Oi! Watch it! I'm a married man! Also, WHAT THE HELL. Confusion and delay are reignth!" He listened as Henry told him about the wishing tree in gradual bafflement. "THAT TREE DOES NOT RUN THIS RAILWAY! I AM THE KING! Gordon can run the train tomorrow, at least he gets his work done on time! Bloody hippie!"

"THANK GOD."

….

"It's not Henry!"

"HOORAY!" shouted the passengers.

"I'll take it!" said Gordon, cheerfully. Elsewhere, Henry hid in the forest and talked to the squirrels, on occasion wishing that he never had to interact with people ever, EVER again.

The wishing tree, meanwhile, was cut down by Zero. Just on chance.

….

THE PRESENT.

"So, Henry, let's talk about you for a minute." Arthur's smile was that of a kindly funeral director. Well-intentioned, but seemingly unaware of how badly he was going to handle the feelings of the engine in front of him. "Let's start, with a few simple tests."

The projector behind the engine whirred into life.

"You're familiar with this, I imagine."

"Ink blots?"

"Uh huh! Given that I have no hands, we figured what the hey, let's just use a projector. So…tell me Henry?"

Click.

"What does this look like to you?"

Henry considered this question. "A….fish."

"….just that?"

"Why, is it not a fish?"

"Nope! Just checking!" Click. "And this?"

"That looks like a mushroom cloud."

"Uh huh." Click. "This?"

"That looks like a penis."

Arthur didn't even blink. "And this one?" Click.

"A rainbow."

Arthur paused, looked at the pure blackness of the ink, then back at Henry, then at the notes being made, and then back at the blot again, before moving on. "One last one. What does this look like?"

Click.

"That looks like it's a picture of me bleeding out heavily in the middle of the snow while James and Edward try to get rid of the Flying Kipper."

"Ah. That's suggestive."

"….That's not an ink blot."

Arthur paused, and then looked behind him. "Isn't it?!"

Henry narrowed his eyes, confused as to whether or not Arthur was, in fact, bullshitting him, or was legitimately that stupid.

"But that leads us into a great Segway for the main topic of discussion! Namely….how are you feeling, Henry?"

"Great."

"Really?"

"Yep. Dandy."

A small twitch began to occur in Henry's left cheek.

"Because we've been mostly keeping you stone cold sober over the last two to three days. No drugs, not even the medicinal kind, in an attempt to get to know the real Henry. We're curious, did you die?"

...

1984

"We're losing him!"

"Ruddy hell he's going fast!"

"Why's he smiling?!"

"Oh shit we might need to improvise!"

...

"I-" The twitch was now beginning to spread to most of the muscles in his face. "What do you-"

"See, because I've got the results of the Crewe tests on you. It's officially stated that as soon as you got out of there, you put yourself down as 'Henry 2.0', saying that the original you died in there. There's a running bet going on along the mainland as to whether or not you're a clone or not."

"Not a clone." Henry's throat was burning, suddenly.

"Then, what-"

"How about we talk about…something else?!"

"…..Sure!" Arthur's demeanour snapped back into peppy mode. "The drugs, apparently, include Welsh Coal. Slipping back onto that again."

"Ah, that's the company. Apparently they've changed it. Made it better. Less addictive."

"Considering that you have, at present, been recorded checking into detox on a weekly basis since the season started a while back, I think we should probably question that."

"Are you a doctor, too?" Arthur smiled. Henry sighed. "What was it for?"

"The Flatline Squad! Won an Emmy, if I recall correctly! We all had to learn how to actually be doctors for five seasons. Operated on actual people too!"

"…..And how was that?"

"Interesting!"

Henry paused, and then decided that this was beginning to freak him out a little. "So, what exactly is my problem?"

"Well, let's see….we asked some of your friends about you a few days before we even started putting together a file. Aren't you interested in hearing what they have to say?"

Henry suddenly felt very uncomfortable. "I'd really rather not."

"Gordon says that he is surprised that you are currently still alive from the consistent amount of drugs that you put into your system-"

"Allegedly. I cannot stress that enough!"

"-Emily says that you're fairly decent but the fact of the matter is, your entire nervous system is screwed up, and you appear to have the worst luck and health she's ever had to witness…I'm cleaning her language here a little and also dropping the accent. It is...significantly strong. What else? Ah, Toby says that you are a good engine." Henry beamed. "Now, if only you'd stop growing drugs along his old line, he'd find you grand."

"He's lucky anyone even uses that line anymore! Besides, THAT'S ALLEGEDLY!"

"Edward says that he thinks you've really come along since the old days where you were, and I quote here, "A bit of a whiny prick who was miserable all the time." He then goes on to hurriedly shout "IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE!" before running away from our question asker. Really, why this didn't tip him off, I'll never know." Arthur looked at Henry. "What does that say about them to you?"

"That they're not really on the level. And that Gordon and Edward have clearly forgotten the seventies!"

…..

THE SEVENTIES. DOES IT REALLY MATTER WHAT YEAR?

"THIS IS THE POLICE!"

"GUV, HE'S HOLDING!"

"The hell are you talking out?!" cried Edward, his moustache splendid even for this time period. "This is over the counter stuff!"

"And who told you this?!"

"Gordon did!"

"WELL, CHUBBY?!"

"I dunno." Gordon shrugged, or did the engine equivalent of, as he munched down on some crisps. "I've never met this man before."

"YOU LITT-"

"Enough! All right sunshine, we'll let you go if you give us every last bit of your stash!" Edward growled, but had little choice. Worst part was he hadn't even had time to take

"Ahhhhhh." Declared the police chief, as he smoked the doobie. "This is that grade A stuff, lads! Clearly this is Stoner Norris's best batch yet! Come on, let's go beat up on some minorities!"

"For what?"

"Does it matter, Sergeant!?"

"Huh? What?" Henry woke up as they were leaving, their cars wailing off like the Keystone Kops. "What just-"

"Go back to sleep, Henry."

…

"I see…well, that was a very interesting story. But I want to go back to one point, namely about how you used to be. You know. Before the accident."

"You are a very persistent engine, Arthur. And crap at being subtle."

"Now, it's generally agreed that you were one of the more louder engines when it came to having your displeasure known, before James became….James. But after the accident, you've seemed to become a new engine. By comparison, that is. ….Enjoy the forest?"

"I-Uh, yes?"

"You've been involved in many campaigns. The Save Hospitable Inhabits Today group. The Forest United Caring Kings alliance. And of course, the most infamous, the Warriors Against Nature's Korrupted-Spelt with a K, I assume-Evil Ruination!"

"For the record, those were NOT THE NAMES I CHOSE! Gordon told me they would be great on a banner!"

"Again, funny that you never seemed to care about the environment before the crash."

"Do you have a POINT!?"

"….What happened in the crash, Henry? Are you, in fact, a pod person? Or perhaps a clone?"

"NO!"

"Then what happened to you!"

"You know what happened!"

"No. You know what happened in there-" Arthur moved his eyes in the direction of Henry's skull "-better than anyone. Did you literally come out of that workshop a new engine? Because I've got to say, I'm not seeing the connection here!"

Henry looked more than a little shaken up. "You're full of it, you know! And…And this Island is being bloody predictable! No bloody good environmental protection services, no good drug stores, no…NO good therapists! I'd like to leave now! Very, VERY much now!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way Henry! But thank you for explaining things a little more. Hopefully we can continue this conversation later! Oh, and one last thing!"

Henry was already moving back out when this statement was being uttered.

Five hundred nerf pellets to the face later, Henry stormed back to the others with tears in his eyes. "I'M NOT A CLONE!" He shouted in Toby's face.

"I…never assumed you were."

Arthur looked once more at his own notes.

-Lingering PTSD from first Kipper incident.
-So unused to being off the drugs that he's having a hard time readjusting to how normal engines talk to each other
-Addictive personality
-Some desperate attempt to hide something with the drugs, considering how many varieties he's taken.
-Something not right about personality before the crash anyway.
-Crewe records could indicate some other personality? ….Or that there was some mistakes on their part?
-Seems mildly popular, doesn't really seem to care how others view him, but could just be better at hiding it than Thomas.
-Does not like the Nerf Gun. Some kind of maniac, obviously.
-Pod Person?
-Possibly.

"Next up isssss….James."

"What a load of RABBISH! …I didn't say that. I didn't say that STOP SNICKERING!"