//------------------------------//
// Chapter One: The Road To Toronto 
// Story: The Road To Toronto 
// by Alden MacManx 
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Rapid Transit sat across the desk from Alex, in the ‘mayor’s office’ of Alexandria. “Now, let me get this straight. You would like me to head up to Toronto and open face-to-face dealings with this Ponytown group, right?” the silver-gray unicorn asked.

                “That’s it in a nutshell, Artie,” the bluish-green earth pony said. “You did say your range includes Toronto, so that makes you a natural. I can provide you with directions to their site, and get you good maps. You did say there are Amazon warehouses up there, yes?”

                “Three, as far as I can figure. I can help them raid the places, if they aint been taken already.”

                “You did help us get through late winter and spring by raiding the Phoenix warehouses. Up in Ponytown, they just barely made it through the winter. Additional supplies will help them, and once you learn how to get into the warehouses up there, you can forge a link between the warehouses and Ponytown. We can arrange a regular schedule for you to go up there and give them a hand when they need it.”

                Artie sighed some. “I can see the logic in it, but dammit, Alex, I aint a diplomat! You know I can get along with damn near anyone, but opening ties? Jeez, it aint my style!”

                Alex smiled some. “That’s why Soaring Heart is going with you. SHE will be the diplomat. Ponytown’s mayor, Sudden Storm, is a pegasus. You do your thing, let her do hers. In fact, take Coppertop and the dogs along as well. I’ll look after Sethra myself.”

                “Alex, you I think she would allow to do that. She’s a very particular kitty.”

                “You mean peculiar, yes?” Alex said with a small laugh.

                “Now, Sethra will know if I’m disloyal to her. She sees the need for everyone at the house, even the dogs, but she made it perfectly clear she aint doing any more traveling!” Artie said back, a smile on his face, but his head nodded in agreement.

                “Okay, then. It will be about a week before we get a Prius modified according to the instructions they sent us. You can drive that there.”

                “A Prius? Why that?”

                “Electric drive. Just take out the gas engine. Gas goes bad, but they have a reliable power supply up there, so you can recharge it.”

                “Put Amy on it. She’ll have it done in a day. Better yet, why not a Chevy Volt?” R.T. asked.

                “Once she clears her backlog, she will. That’s why I said a week. If you can find a Chevy Volt, go right on ahead and use it. Otherwise, wait for the Prius.”

                “Oh. Gotcha, Alex.” Artie said, getting up. “Who do I have to see about the maps? Don’t tell me Joseph, please.”

                “You’ll have to see Joseph. He runs the database.” Alex said, deadpan.

                Artie grimaced. He and Joseph had not got along in the time he and his family had been there. “I asked you not to tell me that, Chief.”

                “Get cracking, Max. You’re the best pony for the job. I trust you to do the job right.” Alex said, knowing the right words to motivate the unicorn.

                The words had her desired effect. Rapid Transit stood at attention on his hooves and saluted smartly, just missing his horn with his hoof. “Your trust won’t be misplaced, Madam Mayor!” he said before departing.

                Alex hid a smile as the unicorn left her office. “He’s so good to have around.” she said quietly. “He never fails to make me smile, one way or another. Even when he’s rude or angry, he’s always so polite.” She forced her attention back on her paperwork.



                Rapid Transit telegated home, to find nopony there, just his cat, Sethra. He let himself inside to fix a quick salad while waiting to psych himself up to meeting Joseph. While eating, he explained to Sethra what the plans were. When he was done, she walked over for a snuggle and purr, which he took as approval from her. After giving Sethra a thorough nosing, and getting a tail swat in return, he left a note saying he was heading for the library before stepping outside and telegating there. If it was just himself, or one or two other ponies, he could open a gate whenever he wished. After hauling a larger load, he would have to rest a while before opening another gate.

                Rapid Transit got the information he sought from Joseph, with a minimum of fuss, meaning he only had to raise his voice twice and threaten to telegate Joseph to the Pacific Ocean once. To say that Artie did not like Joseph was an understatement. Ever since their first conversation months before, Artie has hated Joseph’s attitude, and his guts. All he ever wanted from Joseph was an apology, but the nerd doesn’t understand why he wants one. It’s as if the super-genius had completely forgotten the reason for Artie’s rancor. That only gets Artie even angrier, but bluster and threats wouldn’t work on Joseph, so all Artie could do was fume in frustration after every meeting.

                Back at home, R.T. made a pot of coffee and studied the maps and information he was given, plotting routes from one place to another. The one place he was certain he could nail in Toronto was the Ontario Science Center, and he carefully checked the maps, determining where it was and where Ponytown is. He snorted as he studied. “I knew of Eglinton Avenue, but I could never remember why. Now I do.

                “Eglinton Avenue to the Don Valley Parkway, to the 401 East, take the Whites Road north to the Kingston Road, then east, mall on the right. Okay, that’s done, now to find out how to get to the warehouses.” he muttered as he flipped the pages. “West on the 401 around the airport to Highway One, Mississagua Road, go south to YZ1, north to Steeles and turn left, YZ3 is on the right, YZ2 further down on the left.”

                “What are you muttering about, Dad? When it comes to you and maps, you could study them through an earthquake and not notice.” Coppertop said as Rapid Transit made a bold leap roofward, yelling in surprise, knocking over his fortunately-empty coffee mug.

                After making a four-hoof landing back on the floor, Artie looked at his son. “When did you come in? Ya stahtled me!” he squawked in surprise.

                “About two minutes ago. You were so deep into your charts, you didn’t notice me slipping by and getting an apple.”

                “Yeah, I do that when I get handed a project. C’mere, you need a hug.” Artie said, moving back some so the orange earth pony could move in. “So, how was your day?”

                “Not bad, Dad. I spent a lot of time after class helping Doctor Oliver ready his garden for the spring. They say I’m not quite ready for unsupervised work yet.”

                “It won’t be long now before you will be. We’ve only been here two months. You’re making a lot of progress, and I’m proud of you. Me and Mom both.” Artie said with pride.

                Coppertop blushed a little, but leaned up against his adoptive father. “Thanks, Dad. Since we arrived, I’ve lost twenty pounds. Doctor Oliver is really happy about that. So am I.”

                “Glad to hear it, kid. Think you’re up for a trip next week?”

                “A trip? Where to?” Coppertop asked.

                Artie indicated the maps. “Toronto. There’s a colony of ponies up there that can use a hand. Mom will open diplomatic ties, I’m to open up warehouses, and you are to make ties with the kids up there. I’ll teach the unicorns, Mom will learn from the pegasi, and you learn from the earth ponies.”

                “They have kids up there?” Coppertop said, slightly unbelieving.

                “Yes. A young pegasus colt, about ten if I remember right, and an earth pony filly, five or so. Think you can make friends with them when you’re not helping me unload the warehouses, eh?”

                Coppertop gave his foster father a bit of a smile. “I think so, Dad. All I can do is the best I can do.”

                “And the best you can do is all you will do.” Artie finished before they head-hugged each other. “That’s my colt!” he said with pride.

                “Hey, you’re my dad now. I got a great example to follow.” Coppertop said with equal pride. “You don’t yell at me unless I really deserve it. You’re so supportive and loving and caring…” The chunky colt leaned up against his adoptive father, enjoying his presence.



                For the next week, Rapid Transit studied the Ponytown colony information, along with his wife, Soaring Heart. He got to know the ponies (as best he could from reports and a phone call) as well as the setup of their residence, learning of their problems and trying to brainstorm solutions. This was in addition to his other duties of going on salvage missions and learning how to run Alexandria’s fledgling fire department. With the return of non-wintry weather, the fire chief, Max Morley, got an itch to explore in his North Slope fire truck, so he had to learn to be a fire officer along with three other ponies.

                Working with Alex and his wife, he decided on gifts to give Ponytown and its residents. Alex contributed copies of beginning magic lore and histories to be brought to Ponytown, while he and his wife worked on gifts for some of the ponies. One thing that plagued the colony was its lack of fresh water. Artie came up with a solution, but the parts for it could not be found in Alexandria. He had to hope he could find what they needed somewhere in Toronto.

                When the car (and trailer) were ready to go, Rapid Transit telegated ahead to a place he remembered from over forty years before. He came out in an empty parking lot, with the debris of past storms piled about it. Walking around, he fixed in his mind the spot he wanted to come out at. It was cloudy, cool and damp, but no rain as of then. With a shrug, he gated back home.

                “Everyone ready to go?” he asked as he climbed into the Prius and buckled in. His wife and son said they were ready, while Laddie and Vanna yipped, eager to go see. “We’re off on the Road to Toronto…” he sang (badly, as usual). He put the car in gear, and nothing happened. Confused, he looked at the dash.

                “You forgot to start the car, love. Put it back in park.” Soaring Heart said gently as Coppertop tried to hold back a giggle.

                “I thought you already started this beast.” Artie grumbled as he put the shifter back in park before pushing the start button. “It’s so damn quiet, how can you tell it is on or off?”

                “Just look at the lights, love. Now, open the gate and let’s go!” Soaring Heart urged.

                “Yes, dear.” he sighed as he put the car in gear, the white beast moving. He opened the telegate, and they drove through from sunny Alexandria to cloudy Toronto.



                It took the better part of an hour to get to their destination, debris on the road keeping their speed down. More than once, he and Coppertop had to get out and move tree limbs, fallen signs or wires out of their way. “Remind me to send a nasty note to the Highway Department.” he grumbled.

                “I don’t think anyone is there to receive it, Dad.” Coppertop said gently.

                “Point made. We should be within a few hundred yards of the place.”

                “We are.” Coppertop said, pointing to a large billboard that proclaimed ‘PONYTOWN 500m AHEAD ON RIGHT’ in several different colors along with a bright yellow arrow pointing the way.

                “I like it when I’m right.” Artie said as he and Coppertop got back into the car. Coppertop rolling his eyes gently. He loved his father dearly, but he was so maddeningly oblivious at times.

                Through fortuitous happenstance, the team from Alexandria arrived at Ponytown just before lunch was served, which enabled the gifts to be given out (a good thing) and Artie’s speech (verdict uncertain) almost immediately. One thing Artie hated was any form of public speaking. Acting and radio work is fine, but to be up in front of a crowd, not so fine.

                “Citizens of Ponytown, Ponytown citizens, residents of Ponytown and Ponytown residents. That ought to cover everypony.” he opened to much laughter. “We come from Alexandria not only bearing gifts, but goodwill. Gifts do have meaning, but goodwill transcends meaning. It means we care enough to help.

                “Thanks to my discovery of the subway tunnel through everything, we have come here today to see how much help and goodwill we can bring along. We know your winter was difficult, but now that we are establishing ties, may the next winter not be as bad.

                “Now, let me talk about the gifts. For everyone, we have brought manuals about how to use our magic, brought here from Equestria by Lonely Day herself, who asks that you use them to enrich your lives. These are only basic-level texts, but they will serve as guidelines to see how well you have learned on your own, and what you have not figured out yet. If you want advanced training, call me and ask about transport to Alexandria. Suitable arrangements can be made, once I get to learn this place here well enough to add to my destination list.”

                After pausing for a few quick bites of lunch, he went on. “The individual gifts we hope to have tailored to the ones we decided to give. Soaring Heart and I worked hard on what we knew of you, and we spent several days putting everything together.”

                “Meaning I decided what to give, and he spent a day and a half crawling through various warehouses finding everything.” Soaring Heart said.

                “That’s my wife, putting me in my place.” Artie said to chuckles around the table. “So, on with the gift giving!”

                Coppertop pulled up a wagon, piled high with wrapped packages, both big and small. The first one Artie pulled out with his silver glow went to Tammy, the little light blue earth pony filly who was next to her mother, Rhonda. “I’m not good at giving little fillies gifts, so if we did something wrong, please let us know, okay?” he said, smiling at the little filly.

                “Okay!” she said, tearing open the package, to reveal a large stack of different colored construction paper, paint pots, paint brushes with handles big enough to be held in a pony’s mouth, and a box of BIG crayons, ones she could color with without biting through them. There were also painter’s smocks and two art folders big enough to hold the paper without folding or creasing. Tammy let out a squeal of delight, rushing up to tackle Artie with a big hug, the little earth pony easily knocking the bigger unicorn off his cushion onto the floor.

                “Lemme guess, ya like dem?” he said when he could draw breath again.

                “Yeah! I can color again!” she said happily before getting off Artie and heading to Soaring Heart for a gentler hug.

The pegasus mare easily wrapped her wings around the filly. “Glad we can make you happy, Tammy.” she said quietly.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!” Tammy said before going to sit next to her mother, the others of the Ponytown crowd stomping and whistling with joy and approval.

“Where did you find such big crayons?” Rhonda asked.

Artie levitated a package to Rhonda. “Open that and you’ll find out.” he said, getting back up onto his cushion.

Rhonda opened her package with her own blue-green glow. Inside was a crayon maker, one adapted to produce crayons much larger than normal. “You melt old or different crayons down and pour it into the mold there, and out comes big strong crayons.” RT explained. “We didn’t find them, we MADE them!”

                “Thank you for this, ponies. It’s wonderful.” Rhonda said, sitting back to admire the joy she could see on Tammy’s face as she tried to work the crayons.

                Rapid Transit then looked at Randy, the yellow pegasus colt. “I understand you are a bit of a Harry Potter fan, right?” he asked as he levitated a big box to the colt.

                “Yeah, I like the stories. We have them in the library, well, some of them.” Randy said as he opened the package, to find not only the complete seven-volume set in both hardback and paperback, the two additional books in the series, and the complete DVD set of the movies, with a portable player.

                Randy’s eyes grew wide as he looked deeper in the box, finding House Gryffindor banners, a Sorting Hat, and a Hogwart’s robe. “Wow…” he breathed as he looked at his haul.

                “Oh, yes… one more thing.” Rapid Transit said as he levitated a smaller, slimmer box to Randy. “Nopony can be called a wizard without a wand, right?”

                “A wand?” Randy said as he opened the box to find a wand big enough to be held in his mouth. When he did, the wand’s tip lit up, not with a battery, but by magic.

                “A wand. One of the unicorns in Alexandria made this up for you when she heard of the trip here. Study the instructions, and you can learn a few tricks with it. Exactly what, I can’t say. I didn’t make it, I just delivered it. Do be careful, it is made of teak and rosewood. Rather expensive, really. Cost a few galleons, it did.” Artie said in his most upper-crust British voice.

                Randy smiled at Artie before putting the wand down and giving both him and Soaring Heart a hug of thanks. “Thank you. It’s wonderful.” he said, trying hard to be polite while inside he was exulting with glee.

                “You’re welcome, Randy. Do enjoy.” Soaring Heart said quietly.

                When Randy went back to his seat, Coppertop went over to him. “Hey, can we watch a movie or two later?” he asked the pegasus.

                “Sure! Once you show me how to work the player.”

                “Not a problem. I made sure it was fully charged before packing.”

                Reaching into his saddlebag, Artie pulled out a small box, about the size a good-quality watch would come in. As he levitated the box to Sudden Storm, he coughed a little.

                “Madam Mayor, er, Sudden Storm,” he quickly amended after his wife’s warning cough, “years ago, I aspired to work in radio. I went to school for it, and worked at a two-bit podunk country station for several months before I found running my mouth is not high on my list of favorite things to do. In that box, you will find a thousand hours of music on flash drives, broken into hours to play on your radio station here. All genres that I approve of, and a few I don’t. I was an older fellow, and I like the older music. So, sue me, I was old before. I ain’t now.

                “I made this up for you because I have heard how potent your radio station is, and want to give you a hoof in making it better. I hope you have a compatible player system on your computers.” he said, blushing a little as the box set itself down in front of Sudden Storm.

                Sudden Storm opened the box, to see several high-end flash drives inside. “Rapid Transit, this must have taken a long time to produce.” she said, looking at the visiting unicorn, who shrugged a little.

                “So, what’s a few white nights between friends, eh?” Artie said before having something to drink.

                “A few white nights, he said.” Coppertop said bluntly. “Dad, you stayed up late three nights in a row picking songs and loading them!”

                “Son, quit queering the pitch!” Artie growled mock-ferociously.

                “He’s not queering the pitch, he’s reinforcing it!” Morgan, the blue-green earth pony said, to the agreement of the Ponytown team.

                “He also needed my help in picking almost everything after 1990, except country. Dad, you may like music, but your tastes fossilized thirty years ago, when you got out of the Navy!” Coppertop said with a giggle.

                “I like MUSIC, son, not that raucous claptrap you listen to!” Artie fired back. “That Anime stuff you like is NOT music!

                “But, that brings me to another, more critical point.” Rapid Transit surveyed the small crowd. “One of your pressing problems is a lack of fresh, potable water, despite that mini-ocean you have knocking on your back door. Well, I have a possible solution, if we can find or fabricate the parts.”

                “Ladies and gentleponies, back in my misspent youth (or as he said the word, yoot), I served on not one, but three different nuclear submarines in the United States Navy. Our main source of fresh water, when we spend ten weeks out at sea without pulling into port, was an eight thousand gallon a day steam-powered evaporator.

                “Now, I know damn well that making steam like that here is not worth the effort, so I will now turn to our backup method of making fresh water, a two thousand gallon a day electric-powered distilling unit. It was a cranky piece of machinery, and we all hated it, but it saved our asses more than once, especially on the Grant when the evaporator sprung a leak.

                “The potable water requirements for you, me and the garden outside are not quite as strict as the water we ran through the nuclear reactor, so I think getting a few of the distilling units, hooking them up to some storage tanks, and pumping water from the lake to here, maybe into a holding tank the distillers can draw from, will go a long way in solving your water problems.”

                The Ponytown ponies looked at each other, with varying degrees of ‘why didn’t I think of that’ mixed in with ‘what the hell is that crazy old coot talking about’ playing on their faces before one of them, Serge, the big white pegasus, spoke up. “Just where do you propose finding these distilling units you talk about, Rapid Transit?” he asked.

                Rapid Transit looked back at Serge. “Submarines are not the only ships that have distilling units. You do have a waterfront, yes? One with ships tied up to it? Once we’re done plundering the Amazon warehouses, we’ll do some ship raiding. Hope you don’t mind being pirates for a while.” he said bluntly. Said bluntness struck a wrong chord in Serge, as he frowned in disapproval.

                “That is something that never would have occurred to any of us, Rapid Transit.” Sudden Storm said. “We have been using filter pitchers, filter straws, and raiding for bottled water since we started. Having a fresh water source would be of aid to us. We thought about starting the water system, but that is a little above our capabilities.

“Right now, we have afternoon chores to get done, so I propose that you go with Swift Quill, Soaring Heart with me, and Coppertop with Jeff and Karin to help ready our field. We’ll all meet again at dinner, okay?”

                “Sounds good to me, Madam Mayor.” RT replied, getting up.

                “Dinner will be different, too, what with the spices and other goodies you brought with you. Sacks of flour of different types as well as a bread maker.” Jenn, the designated housemother said, with the other cooks nodding approval.

                “Not to mention the seeds you brought along.” Karin piped up, holding a book she was given, ‘What to Expect when You’re Expecting’, translated from Equestrian. “Some seeds we didn’t have will go good with the garden.”

                “Hey, we’s happy ta help.” RT responded in classic Bronxish.