Thanks to all who reviewed! Now, let's get under way with EPISODE THREE.
CUE THE THEME.
...
Morning Mr Starr.
Mornin. Suppose you want another one?
If you wouldn't mind- Hang on, is this the footage?
I dunno mate, it's your show.
Hmmm...you do your stuff, I'll be back in a couple of minutes.
S'cool. All right, fine, let's go.
...
And cue the brass band!
Once a engine attached to a train
Was a chicken about a few drops of rain.
He went into a tunnel
And squeaked through his funnel
And wouldn't come out again!
...
It's possible you may not know what is being described to you, as that one rhyme is not very indicative of what has happened, exactly.
Okay, so stick with me here. The Main Line (That's not a telephone line, by the way, I mean line as in railway) runs right the way around the Island. And one of the stops is the Ballahoo Tunnels, you may remember it from where Gordon tortured Thomas.
So the average configuration, at the moment is this. Two tunnels. For whatever reason, the tunnel on the left only had one track leading out of it.
Now Henry, who we have established is the most miserable engine alive at the moment, was pulling a express train along, for Gordon was still being punished for the incident involving the car, when the rain began to fall.
Now, that in it's self wasn't a big alert to the driver and fireman. Rain was natural for them. And in a way, Henry was used to it as well. Many a night Gordon had frog-marched him outside of Tidmouth and had left him in the rain, for being so much of a moaning minnie that he would have made Eeyore want to commit suicide. But there were two factors in particular that caused certain events to happen. One: He had recently had a new coat of paint, and he was a prideful engine was old Henry.
Two: Without realizing it, Mr Carlin had left a potent bit of pot in Henry's boiler. And he was slowly getting hiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.
So now Henry saw the rain as his terrible and terrifying enemy, a enemy that sought, nay demanded green paint with red stripes for breakfast! He saw it as his Engine Duty to prevent the rain from taking his body.
Also, the pot was making him tired as balls.
So, he entered the tunnel, slammed on the brakes and refused to move. On the opposite tunnel, Edward looked baffled as he pulled a train of trucks with him.
"Uh, Henry?"
"NOT NOW EDWARD. I HAVE BESTED MY FOE."
"Well good luck with that." Edward drove off cheerfully deciding to leave Henry to his little episode.
Mr Carlin slipped (literally) off Henry's footplate and shambled forward, accompanied by his minder/fireman. He stood in front of Henry and...well, went on a bit of a rant. It's too filthy to put it here.
His driver and fireman argued with him, but he would not move.
"THE RAIN-" He declared with the certainty of truly high people "-WILL TAKE MY LOVELY GREEN PAINT WITH RED STRIPES!"
"Are you ******* serious!?" shouted Carlin.
The Fireman tried a different tactic. "It's waterproof."
"Oh really! I did not realize they sold waterproof paint at the Works!"
"Well..." The Fireman was stumped. He was a rather simple man.
The guard (Oh, we haven't mentioned them yet! Guards, or Conductors, as the Yanks would put it, are basically that one guy who turns up drunk at a party before it's even started. You know, the guy no one wants to talk to, everyone wants to get rid of but basically you're relying on him to fill his admittedly not very hard job. That is the unhappy life of a guard, no respect.) blew his whistle (Wa-hey, am I right?) til he had no breath, and waved his flags til his arms ached.
"I told him this new raving course would work." said his mother, a elderly lady who had come on the train for a break and was now knitting a sweater.
But Henry still stayed in the tunnel and blew steam at him. "I'm not going to spoil my lovely green paint with red stripes for you!" What a arrogant prat.
"HENRY!" wailed the guard. "I THOUGHT WE HAD SOMETHING SPECIAL."
"TAKE THAT SKY!" bellowed Henry as the guard screamed in agony as the steam entered his eyes. "I HAVE BESTED YOUR AGENT UPON THIS EARTH!"
...
Edward heard the screams and was about to suggest turning around when he nearly smacked right into the Red Engine. "Woah!"
"Watch where you're going!"
"Sorry, uh...Jerome?"
"IT'S JA- Oh forget it." The Red Engine sighed. "So, what's happening?"
"Henry's finally lost his bloody mind."
"Huh. Marklin owes me a pound."
"What are you going to spend it on?"
"It's the appearance of the thing. So uh...see you later?"
"Sure. Have a great day!"
...
By the point of this conversation between mixed traffic engines, Henry had calmed down somewhat. He now no longer felt that the rain was trying to poison his very soul, and had come to the surprisingly moderate conclusion that he had been a bit high. But with the loss of the drugs came the knowledge that his paint would run if he left the tunnel.
Besides, it wasn't too bad. So he decided to stay firmly put.
At that point, the Red Engine pulled up alongside him on the opposite side.
And then, along came Sir Topham Hatt, the man in charge of all the engines, the big cheese, Numbero Uno, the T-Hatt. They mostly called him...Barry.
No, just kidding, they called him the Fat Controller.
He had not noticed.
Topham surveyed the sight of one of his engines doing something he hated, and considered killing himself right there and then. But no, then control would pass to his son, and his son was currently at a school where they didn't believe in sex ed. Which meant that he wouldn't believe why he had done what he had done, and why he was know being blackmailed for it.
"Now then-" He ground his teeth as he spoke. "-unless another engine gets stuck, I am not closing the tunnels down."
"YOU!" Henry declared, gesturing, or trying to, in the vague direction of the Red Engine. "Join me, and we can DESTROY THIS OPPRESSIVE BOURGEOIS."
The Red Engine looked at Henry.
It was the deviour look that the snake may have had before slithering up to Eve.
"Oh, I'll join you-"
"Thank! GOD."
"-On one condition. Say my name."
Henry's smile froze on his face. His mind suddenly whirled into action.
"Uh...uh...oh, I know is it...uh...Jerome?"
"HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA no." The Red Engine puffed away.
"WAIT! COME BACK!" cried Henry desperately, but it was too late. He looked back at the Fat Controller, who scowled.
"We will pull you out!" he declared to his green engine. But Henry only blew what remained of his drug steam at him. Coughing and spluttering, Hatt bent over the side of the ditch and groaned.
"All right then." He said standing up. "You asked for it, mate!" He turned to the many passengers milling about. "Right sirs and siresses!" Topham occasionally lost control of his words "This way!"
...
"Where did all this blue tack come from?"
"Marklin derailed a truck."
Topham sighed. The black engine was more trouble than he thought. He crossed himself, for that could be taken out of context.
Everyone pulled except the Fat Controller. Because, and here he coughed "My doctor has forbidden me to pull!"
"That never stopped you before you randy old-"
"MR CARLIN!"
"Nothing sir."
But still Henry stayed in the tunnel. Perhaps using humans to pull engines out was foolish.
A wiser man would have called in the Calvary.
Topham was in such a foul mood that his wisdom had left him for a new home. "TO THE BACK!"
As the passengers pulled themselves through or over the dank and dark tunnel, Topham considered just shooting the two nosy people and just letting their bodies decay in the abandoned mine shaft. He dismissed that idea as being too brutal, and besides some foolhardy sod would more than likely crash into it.
They tried pushing from the other end. The Fat Controller said "ONE! TWO! THREE! PUSH!"
But he didn't help.
"Well my doctor forbade me to push! I know, maddening! I have no idea why he said that!"
They pushed and pushed and pushed, but still Henry stayed in the tunnel. "You know guys, I can do this all day. You can't."
Oh he wants to play it like that, does he? mused Sir Topham, as he angrily went in search of a telephone box.
...
At last, after several wrong turns and a incident with Gordon (Who was currently pulling the sewage train. Much to his hatred), Thomas came up from behind and pressed against Henry's back.
Again, wa-hey.
The guard waved his red flag (At least he hoped it was, he was still having trouble seeing) and stopped him.
Everyone argued with Henry. "Look, it has stopped raining." they said. (Or to put it in Carlin's language "LOOK YOU ******* IDIOT! THE GODDAMN SKY HAS STOPPED URINATING DOWN UPON US! GET OUT OF THE ******* TUNNEL!")
"Yes, but it will begin again soon." said Henry in that annoying smug tone that he used. "And what will become of my lovely green paint and red stripes then?"
"How about YOU'LL BE SCRAPPED!" shouted Topham, tired and done.
Thomas whistled and was coupled up. He puffed and pushed and pushed and puffed as hard as he ever could. The sound of creaking and squeaking wheels echoed out, causing several of the passengers to lose their hearing temporarily.
"Bloody hell!" he gasped. "What have you been eating?!"
But STILL Henry stayed in the tunnel. He smiled in that way that most hippies do when they feel that they have won a point. Thomas stopped and let out a gasp of tiredness.
...
As the sun rose the next morning, Topham Hatt finally gave up. The passengers had abandoned the fight long ago to climb onboard the next train, which happened to be the sewage train. So that was another good thirty passengers who would never return. Carlin and his buddy had sloped off in the middle of the night to visit a pub. Thomas and Marklin had tried to push Henry out a second time, but to no avail.
So Hatt, having not slept for an entire night and with everything else having come down on top of him, promptly went for the one method that made absolutely no sense.
"Okay you idiot." He said in a tone that made Henry look one in suddenly disturbed confusion. "You want to stay in the tunnel? We will let you stay in the tunnel. We will take away your rails. And leave you here for ALWAYS AND ALWAYS AND ALWAYS!"
Henry scoffed. That would never happen. Right?
...
They took up the old rails and built a wall.
They left most of the sleepers and rails around for some reason. They were exceptionally messy workers. Sir Topham himself oversaw the operation, which mostly meant pointing randomly and echoing what the foreman had said in a confused way. And he also had the niggling feeling that he had just made a very big mistake.
But the end result was that Henry couldn't get out of the tunnel anymore.
All in one day, Henry had gone from heroically protesting to sitting in a damp tunnel wondering how the hell he'd gotten into this situation. Not the least because all of the pot had finally been purged from his system.
And then he was on his own.
...
All he could do was watch the trains rushing through the other tunnel.
He was very sad, because he thought no one would even see his lovely green paint with red stripes again. He was also sad because, you know, he was trapped in a bloody tunnel with no way to get out, but mostly it was the paint thing. As time went on, Edward and Gordon would often pass by. Edward would say "Peep peep, hello!" And occasionally stop for a chat while reloading on water.
And Gordon the git would say "Poop poop! Serves you right you idiot!"
Poor Henry had no steam to answer. His fire had gone out long ago. In more ways than one.
He looked over his shoulder and saw- "OH FOR GOD'S SAKE THIS IS SO UNFAIR!"
Soot and dirt from the tunnel had spoiled his lovely green paint with red stripes anyway.
"THIS IS JUST PILING ON THE KARMA NOW!"
He wondered if he would ever be allowed to be pulled trains again.
"THIS IS A VIOLATION OF SOME OF MY RIGHTS!"
But I think he deserved his punishment, don't you?
"THIS IS A TERRIBLE ENDING!"