CUE THE THEME!
...
Thomas was puffing happily along his branch-line with Annie and Clarabel, til at last, they made it to Elsbridge station. There, he spotted the Fat Controller standing there impassively. His leg had gotten somewhat better, though it was still a little stiff (Ha!) and as such, he was somewhat more focused than he had been during Stepney's departure. He looked at his watch. "Well done, Thomas, you are right on time and really useful."
"When am I not, sir? ...Don't answer that, actually."
"Oooh, right on time, really reliable! Down to us!" hummed the coaches. Thomas rolled his eyes, and whistled to Percy, who was busy taking on water. The two of them were planning the big speech at the end of the campaign. Before the final tally of votes came in, a rather odd formality had to be observed. The Callan people were rather fanatics when it came to bikes, and therefore, each candidate had to deliver a half hour speech pertaining to how awesome bikes were. After which, support would be judged by how many people rang their bells at each one.
No, seriously, Sudrian law was weird.
Also, this has basically nothing to do with the rest of the story, but we just needed padding.
...
The matter had been resolved rather quickly, Gordon thought as he dozed in the warm sunshine.
Drampf's attempts to smear the campaign with suggestions of 'wicked orgies of darkness and violence' with rather graphic details of what Henry had supposedly done with his perversion had failed somewhat when Gordon had pointed out that if they were even capable of a quarter of things that Drampf was describing, this would have been news a long time ago. And then James had returned home one night, looking as smug as ever, explaining that Drampf was already drafting a apology. Many tried to get what happened out of him, but he refused to tell anyone.
Even so, the big engines weren't happy.
"Where's Percy?!" bellowed Henry. "He's supposed to be fetching our coaches! Does anyone get a sense of Deja-Vu about this?"
"We get no rest!" grumbled James. "Let's go on strike again!"
"No thank you." groused Gordon. "I like having the ability to pull the express and look amazing whilst doing so, thank you. Did you see the state that Edward left the main line in last time!?"
James angrily moved into the turntable, and took out his anger on the one engine who wasn't in a fit state to fight a chicken, let alone James. In short, he was rude to Henry because Gordon could probably kick his arse. "What's the matter Henry!?" he snapped "There's no rain today to make you scared! Get off that big fat green arse of yours and do some work instead! If you know what the word even means!"
"I am not afraid of the rain! I never was afraid of the rain! I was HIGH that one time!" Henry fumed, unaware of what was going to happen come Adventure Begins "Besides, fat arse yourself! You look like a clown, and just like a clown, no one is laughing at you for the right reasons! Go join a circus and maybe you'll find some lions desperate enough for a-"
"Oh you heard the news!" said Percy, excitedly.
"What news!" grumbled Gordon, who realized very early on that he wasn't going to get to sleep.
"About the circus!"
"He's flipped. What are you on about, Percy?"
"The circus has arrived at the docks! I've been there now, watching them unload all their trucks and helping. The Fat Controller wants you to come and help too!"
"Don't we have anything better to do?" Gordon growled.
They didn't.
...
The circus masters had managed to find some old sheet music from one of the earlier seasons, and was playing it in their usual circus like way. They later got sued out the wazoo from Messers O''Donnell and Campbell. Whilist that was happening, the engines soon forgot to be tired and cross (Okay, they were a little less of those things, that was the truth) until, after a rather messy ending to the circus which involved twelve custard pies, a clown car and the ringmaster's wife, it was time for the circus to leave. No, not the engines, the actual circus. At which point, being prats, both Henry and Gordon grew angry over the fact that James had been chosen instead of them to take home the ridiculously long train.
Why they didn't just shove them back on the boat is beyond me, but then we wouldn't have a plot, so hush.
A little later, a very frazzled Sir Topham rushed back to the sheds, stumbling over his words and frantically looking over his shoulder in case something came after him. Now, Henry didn't know this, but James had somehow managed to lose a elephant. It's a weird thing to lose, but he managed it. And Hatt was rather afraid of elephants, ever since one had eaten his cream bun when he was eleven, and then had picked him up and insisted upon parading him around the ring. Lowham had laughed his arse off, of course. So Hatt had made sure that the bodyguards had impressively looking, but useless, guns around. "Er, come about, Henry, there's a tunnel that's been blocked. You need to take the workmen to investigate."
"And you picked me, sir? With my history of tunnels?"
"Jump to it, and don't argue!"
...
"Pushing trucks, pushing trucks, Henry do this, Henry do that, oh my god a cream bun, mmm, my father never loved me!" grumbled Henry under his breath. His driver rolled his eyes, and nodded to the workmen, who got off the truck to examine the Ballahoo Tunnel. Henry growled. At the very least, he'd have some nice scenery to look at, even if he was next to the worst place he had ever got high in, ever.
All bar the foreman headed inside, chatting together amiably, asking after children and wives and what they were doing over the weekend and so on. The foreman sat down to have his tea, pulled out some cake and began to snack.
It was very quiet for the first minute or so.
Not for long.
Suddenly the tranquil nature of the surrounding area was shattered by the most awful bellowing sound that anyone had ever heard. Henry leapt three feet in the air and tried to reverse backwards, only for his driver to clamp down the brake. "HELP!" came the cry, in much less polite terms, and the workmen promptly rushed back out, pushing and shoving and shoving and pushing over themselves so as not to be the last one in there.
"IT'S THE DEVIL!"
"THE SOUL EATER HAS ARISEN!"
"IT SOUNDS LIKE MY AUNT ETHEL!"
"THE GHOST OF PROTEUS HAS COME FOR US AT LAST!"
"I NEED NEW PANTS!"
At last, the foreman smashed a few heads together and some sense was gotten. "We went in, started to dig and then it grunted at us and moved! And then it let out a bellow of HATE! HATE I TELL YOU!"
"Rabbish!" said the foreman.
"It is not rabbish, or rubbish! We're not going in again! We're going for a safer job, like using jackhammers! You're on your own, mate!"
"Right!" said the foreman decisively. "I shall go in on the trucks with the gun like Marcus Brody with that great white and get rid of this monster! Henry shall push us in, and we shall fix it all!"
"Oh SHALL HE?!" shouted Henry. "WEESHT!" He looked at the tunnel. As has been previously mentioned, he had been stuck in a tunnel once, and he was not pleased to repeat the experience, especially when there was something in there! "I don't want to!"
"Neither do I!" moaned his driver. He had heard horror stories from Carlin about the last time Henry had had to go into a tunnel, and he was in no hurry to repeat the experience. "But I don't think we've got a choice in the matter. We've got to clear the line, or else we won't get paid!"
"Oh blow, oh jeez, oh god, oh god, oh god I regret my life choices so much, oh why is it so dark, why does it always have to be-" Henry suddenly went very quiet as he entered the tunnel, in case whatever it was hated gibbering idiots.
And, as per usual, then there was trouble.
The block was alive, angry and very, very strong. Suddenly, the train started to reverse. First came Henry, stunned into silence by whatever the hell was happening, then came the trucks with a very startled foreman aboard, and lastly, a huge, grey and very confused elephant.
"Well knock me down with a feather and call me Sally! It's the one from the circus!"
"You shock me, foreman!" shouted a worker.
"Can we eat it?!" shouted another.
They didn't eat the elephant, who was rather dazed and pining after his very nice warm truck. No one thought that having elephants was even legal anymore, but they called the ringmaster. They fed the elephant some cake (which he seemed to be very much enjoying, judging by the noise he made) and then gave him three buckets of water which he drank post haste.
He was on his fourth when Henry accidentally whistled out of sheer terror. The elephant was so surprised that it squirted water all over Henry's stunned face. The green engine spat out the water like he was Grampus the Submarine and stared slack-jawed at the elephant.
Poor, poor Henry. Everyone laugh at him.
The elephant and his keeper were soon reunited, and they headed off back to the rest of the circus, who were getting a right earful from Sir Topham. Henry was ignored by the rest of the workmen, who went home, leaving him to complain.
"AN ELEPHANT PUSHED ME! AN ELEPHANT HOOSHED ME!"
"What is a hoosh?"
"What you'll be getting in a minute."
...
That night, Henry told the whole tragic tale. And while James and Gordon felt sorry for him, that of course didn't stop them from teasing him one bit. They had already scheduled Sudrian television for the next few days to be filled with a marathon of Babar the Elephant, the Jungle Book and Dumbo.
"First the rain, then a elephant, what will you be afraid of next?"
"Never mind, Henry, you did your best today, and I know you were really reliable."
"Thanks Thomas...and nothing was accomplished."
James scoffed. "Yeah, well, be lucky that you got off so easily."
"I wonder how that happened."
James said nothing. But he thought a great deal. Especially about the night after the news had first broken.
...
ONE WEEK AGO.
James watched Henry sadly trundle away to work. There had been a rather awkward silence between him and his passengers, a few odd looks, a few worried glances between workmen...James could tell that there was clear some discomfort regarding Henry and his choices in life. Now, James was many things. He was vain, he was mean, he was a massive prat, and most of the time he was a massive idiot. But damn it all, Henry was his friend. Even if they did bicker, and even if he was horrible to him half the time, and Henry to him the other half.
So, very calmly, he finished his jobs as quickly as he could, and hurried off towards Vicarstown.
The large station loomed overhead. James quietly sidled in next to the tall, green engine standing at the platform. He looked, from the back, like Henry. But as you got closer, you'd soon see the very clear difference between them. Henry didn't have deflectors, for one thing, that almost hid the face. A face that looked like it always wanted to sneer at you, with a thick, bulbous nose.
His name was St Eustace. He had got that name from the war, where a bomb had briefly set him on fire while delivering a train. But despite that, he had survived, and become a minor celebrity on the Island. Years ago, before he had come to Sodor, James had met him while being constructed, back when his paint had been mixed traffic black, and didn't gleam like it did now. St Eustace was a bad tempered, sour, unlikeable sod. And he was the only one that James knew he could get information from.
"Well-" sniffed Eustace, also known as the Foreign Engine, ironically. "-you've changed, haven't you, Breakblocks? Can't believe that you sent me a message after all this time."
"Oh hush up, you bloody boiler buster." snapped James impatiently. "Do you have it, or don't you?"
St Eustace glowered for a moment. "John Drampf is, in fact, a deserter. He didn't even get into combat. Matter of fact, he used his position as the son of one of the Ministry of Defense boys to take the 'Beetle' out for a spin, on the Island. After that, he got a lot of unearned cash for his 'hard' work and never looked back. I read somewhere that he mocked war deserters for not having the guts. I didn't think you were the type to argue against fighting."
"I'm not. But when a man like he lies about what he did during the war, well...I'd say it was nice to see you, but-"
"Goodbye, breakblocks. Until the next time."
James puffed off, determined to confront Drampf with the evidence.
Eustace was alone for a minute or two. Then, two engines clanked up besides him.
"Should we warn Montague?" asked Pug.
"No. It's a isolated incident. Scotsman and Truro need not know. You two, meanwhile, should focus on finding this beetle, before it's too late."
Sir Eustace, by the way, is the Foreign Engine from the story Gordon Goes Foreign. I chose the name because it sounds like 'Euston' which was his main line in the story. And because it also lead me to a nice story about how St Eustace was the patron saint of firefighters, which gave me a nice excuse to give him the name.