Back to Storytime with Thomas!
CUE THE THEME!
...
It was a beautiful moonlit night on the Island of Sodor. At least, so said most people who enjoyed not going to sleep. The others didn't give a flying hoot whether or not the night was pleasant or just mildly interesting.
The engines had been working hard, the work was done, and the six in Tidmouth were glad to be home, instead of out in the cold and dark, like some other fools that they could mention.
Elsewhere, Oliver cursed all those in nice warm sheds as he angrily pulled the night train along the track.
Thomas had not stopped talking about setting up his own political campaign to run for Mayor. At first, when the other engines had heard of this, they reacted with their normal response to many of the crazy and wacky things Thomas said. They nodded and ignored it. That usually did the trick. It had worked that time Thomas had wanted to join the circus. It had worked for that brief period where Thomas had decided that he should get into the talk show circuit (The resulting bomb, Tankin With Thomas, was now banned in seven different countries and passed around only on bootleg in most of the other ones).
It did not, in fact, work for this one.
Thomas had already insisted that most of the other engines could share in his glory (The Mayor of Sodor had so much to deal with that you needed a full blown cabinet to deal with all the little side jobs) and truth be told, some of the engines were getting swayed.
"Thomas." whispered Percy.
"Oh go on then Percy, you can be my vice-mayor!"
"Er...thanks? But, I was actually going to ask about the end of that story."
Toby, Gordon and Henry shot Percy glares that could have cooked a omelette. Percy immediately realized his mistake and tried to take it back, but Thomas latched onto it like a muscle on a boat. "Oh, about Duke the Lost Engine?!"
"No, the one about the barge and his ballast!" scoffed Henry. "Exactly that!"
James, who had mercifully missed last's night twisted version of Jackanory, spoke up. "But please remind us of the story so far."
"You hate us, don't you James." remarked Toby. James gave a rather smug grin. He had been taking all of the comments about his recent varnishing today, and thus he wanted to get a little payback.
"Well, we could always talk about my political campaign instead-"
"STORY TIME!" interrupted Toby, suddenly a bundle of enthusiasm.
"YAY!" Gordon said, desperately trying to make sure that Thomas could allow them to sleep for ONCE.
"Well-" Thomas started. And here is the rest of his story he told. "So there's this old geezer named Duke, who lived with two young imprudent scallywags named Stuart and Falcon. They teased Duke and called him Granpuff, and he in turn terrified them with how the manager would repeatedly violate engine rights, but they were happy together. Somewhat. But then the recession hit, probably the fault of some American, let's be honest, their line got closed and the young engines went off to do some funny stuff, no doubt. Duke was left alone, he went to sleep, and like the old silly fool that he was-" Thomas heard Toby cracking his cowcatcher, the engine equivalent of cracking his knuckles and hurried on. "-HE WAS VERY RESPECTFUL. But everything around him changed! But Duke was never forgotten!"
"Like you forgetting to be a asshole?" muttered Henry.
...
Edward cracked open a eye. "Hmm. BoCo?"
"Yep."
"Shed's on fire."
"Huh."
"Bill and Ben locked away?"
"Er, yeah- ...Oh god."
"What?"
"Edward, the shed's open."
Both engines had enough time to think about this, before at last coming to the same, well thought out and respectable conclusion.
"SHI-"
...
Back at the sheds, Thomas had continued his story. It was lucky that he had been privy to the drunken ramblings of Angelis, as some of the very events he had described had taken place that very day.
"The years went by, as they are want to do. Until one day, not long ago, visitors came to see the Fat Controller."
...
"So, this mission?" Mitton looked at Allcroft. "It's pretty interesting."
"Camera crew is ready, sssh, here they come!"
"Gentlemen, I understand your concerns." Hatt sat down at his seat. This was a temporary office located somewhere not too far from the little station of Rheneas, named after the little engine currently working his wheels to make sure he was fully repaired outside. "But aren't you aware that most of the terrain that hasn't been reused for the Skarloey railway is a potential risk?"
"We don't care!" cried the Fat Clergyman, Vicar Teddy's replacement in the roll of Island Vicar and owner of Trevor. "We want to find Duke!" He pointed to the portrait on the wall. "And we want to make him happy again!"
"Bit of a hard task." muttered Hatt. "He's probably senile by this point."
"Nonetheless." remarked the Thin Clergyman, a old man much respected by all who knew him, and writer of quite a number of books on trains. "We wish to travel to the old remains of Mid Sodor and find him."
"Mid Sodor, what is this, Lord of the Rings?" Asquith laughed, until the cool glances from the enthusiasts shut him up.
Maps lay everywhere, and everyone in the room, bar Hatt, who made his escape to go and eat another set of cream buns, began pouring over them in great detail to find a place to begin searching. Jem Cole and Farmer Trotter finally managed to retrieve one map and placed it down.
"We follow the old line on this map-" indicated Jem "-we'll travel north of the village and into the mountains."
"What about this place?" Angelis pointed to a section of the line entitled 'Old Station'. The cartographers hated the Island, so they stopped bothering after a time.
"Look!" said one man with a bobble hat. "There's the old station!"
"As indicated by the name." muttered the Thin Clergyman.
"If Duke's anywhere, he's there." declared the Fat Clergyman. They quickly packed up their stuff and hurried downstairs to the nearest train, clambering on-board to head off to the mountains. Skarloey was the engine who took them, and slowly he pulled along the various stations, that once made up the Mid Sodor Railway. The days went by, and the search grew harder and harder as they eliminated area after area.
The rescuers wouldn't give up.
"This is hopeless!" moaned Asquith to Angelis. The latter ignored him. "You're not still bitter about the Christmas thing, are you?"
"Leave him." suggested Mitton, as he brought over a selection of pasties. "He'll talk when he's ready."
Allcroft glanced through the cameras. "We've got some nice footage here. Maybe we should stick with THIS railway for a bit, it'll be interesting to see how different they are from the main one."
"Well they're mostly Welsh." remarked Asquith. "So there's that."
"Let's go this way!" said BobbleHat, randomly pointing in any direction.
"But we've been through there."
"THAT WAY!"
...
But there was still no sign of Duke, and station after station passed them by. There were also a lot of stop for toilet breaks, considering that the pastries had been made out of what appeared to be rubber. This didn't help when they crossed quite possibly the largest viaduct in the world that had the thinnest track ever. Much sobbing and wailing was had by the visitors.
At last, they stopped on one of the large and steep inclines, where some headed down and some headed up. Skarloey was just glad to get a bit of kip for once, not least because the Fat Clergyman was contributing to some of his troubles hauling the train with.
"He's got to be here somewhere!" remarked Cole to Allcroft, who smiled wearily and shrugged. The Fat Clergyman and his friend with the bobble hat wandered aimlessly up to the mountain. The others scrambled over hills and struggled through ditches, all in vain. At last, their search ended when a twin pair of yelps alerted them back to the top of the mountain. They had just enough time to see Bobble Hat sink into the ground (The Fat Clergyman having plummeted down doing the splits already) before he vanished from sight. Scrambling up, they stared in shock.
"We've found him! Our sleeping beauty!"
"Now that would make a good episode title." muttered Mitton to the side.
"Scuse me!" snapped a very grumpy and dusty looking engine. "THAT'S BAD MANNERS! Are you vandals?! Have you come to take my soul!? Driver says that they break and smash things, and also that one stole his heart one time! He's very odd like that! I'm also more a Snow White, if you want my personal and humble opinion, as it is the greatest of all time. Very humble indeed!"
"Bless you, no!"
"But I didn't sneeze!"
"We've dropped in because we couldn't find your door! Sir Handel and Peter- I mean, Stuart and Falcon will be pleased to see you! It was them that put us onto you to begin with!"
Some of the fog seemed to clear from Duke's eyes. "So they did remember me!" he beamed.
...
The rest of the day was spent cleaning up the cobwebs off of Duke, until finally, a truck arrived to take him to Crovan's Gate. They all set off to Duke's new home. He was pulled along by Skarloey and someone who may or may not have been Rheneas. It might have been Duke's mental state getting very confused.
And at last, Duke rested inside the Skarloey Shed, dozing in the sun.
"Here he is!"
"You go first!" laughed Falcon.
"You woke me up!" moaned Duke "Where's me biscuit! I asked for a biscuit! In my young days, you little silly beggars, engines were-"
"Seen and not heard!" laughed Stuart. "We know!"
"We'll all be back to work tomorrow, Granpuff!" Falcon grinned. "We're so glad you're back here! We think we should try and keep you in order!"
"KEEP ME! IN ORDER!? You little sons of guns! Get off with yah!" Duke laughed. "I don't care what your names are!"
The two engines backed away, laughing to themselves and resolving to start their first set of pranks tomorrow. Falcon had a plan involving replacing the flag with the Communist one, just to screw with Duke even further.
"Impudent scallywags." But Duke's eyes twinkled, and for the first time in years he smiled as he dozed in the sun.
Nearly thirty years asleep, and the second he woke up, off he went to the land of nod again.
...
"And that-" concluded Thomas "-is the end of the story! Did you enjoy?"
"Not bad." admitted Henry.
"Yes indeed!" remarked James.
"Liked the happy ending." Toby reluctantly conceded.
Soon they were all fast asleep.
Then Gordon picked upon a question that had been troubling his mind for some time now. "Thomas?"
"Yes?"
"...This took place only a few days before, correct?"
"Indeed. It's only today that Duke was brought home and I got the whole tale, why?"
"Well...what were you going to tell us if Duke was never found? Were you literally just lying through your teeth up until today when you said that there was a happy ending?"
"Well-" started Thomas "-that's not imp-"
"No, hang on!" Toby started. "I think it is! See, now Gordon's said it, I'm curious, how did your original Oscar worthy script end?"
"Yeah, spill the beans, Thomas!" Henry smirked.
"We're not going to stop until you do!" Percy gloated.
"Fine...er...well in my original draft-"
"You mean poorly concieved fanfiction that you had no idea how you were going to end it so you just randomly pulled something out of your smokebox." interrupted James.
"...It originally ended with Duke's fiance returning to find him, at the end of life...and then something about aliens. Pretty sure Bobby Ewing woke up in a shower at some point. There was also a tap-dancing scene with Rheneas, and also Smudger was going to come back from the grave to haunt Duke's sleep, and there was also this one bit where-"
Everyone started laughing.
"Well, if your stories are as bad as that, you'll never make it into politics." Gordon grinned as Thomas spluttered.
"OUT OF THE WAY!" wailed Edward as he rushed through the station, a large crew of firemen waiting in his trucks "FIRE AT VICARSTOWN!"
"WEE WOO WEE WOO WEE WOO!" shouted BoCo as he trailed after him, imitating the siren of the fire trucks.
Everyone stared at each other as they vanished into the night. They decided to get some sleep. They were clearly all very tired and seeing things that didn't exist. That was the only possible explanation for how weirdly this week had turned out.