Porter sped along as best as he could, his wheels pounding the rails and his cylinders shaking back and forth as he thundered along. "Come on!" he shouted. "Keep the signals green for me!"
The two coaches he was coupled to were loaded with workers, people who were fleeing the battlefield to try and get to safety. It turned out that not everybody wanted to hang about on a battlefield, and as such they were fleeing every conceivable way they could to try and get away from the enemy campaign.
Just as the train joined another line, a truck was rattling alongside the line. Several soldiers were on the back, and one carried a megaphone. "BY THE ORDERS OF QUEEN OPALINE, YOU ARE TO STOP IMMEDIATELY! OBEY THIS ORDER AND YOUR LIFE WILL BE SAFE!"
"Like Hell it will be!" Izzy said, who responded by opening the regulator even further. Porter shot away at speed, bouncing up and down at speeds he was never designed to travel at. The coaches similarly rattled and bounced along, loaded with passengers seeing the world collapse around them.
"Is this what the First World War was like?" Porter asked.
"If so, I'm glad to have missed it!" Izzy said, with a sound of fear in her voice. She leaned out of the cab and saw the truck trying to draw level. "Time to try the escape plan!"
She pulled a lever- and this triggered something on a flatcar coupled to the back of the train. Moments later, a bathtup tipped over and fell onto the bed of the truck, covering those on the bed in some sticky substance.
"Bathtub full of jelly never fails!" Izzy said, as they sped away. "Uncle Alphabittle taught be that trick!"
"I thought you weren't related!" Porter said.
"Uncle in the Northern sense!" Izzy said.
"I see now."
Izzy then checked behind her- and screamed. "RED LIGHT!"
She slammed the brakes on as the train rocketed into a derailing siding, but it was too late. Porter and his coaches left the rails and tipped onto their sides, falling into a ditch and smashing onto the ground with a bang.
All was silent. All was still. And then the groans of the injured began as people tried to evacuate from the train. The soldiers from earlier arrived, still covered in jelly, and surrounded the train.
Izzy recognised them. "Hey, you guys are from PHALANX!" she said.
"No better call than the call of a good payout," the soldier replied. "Are you going to come quietly or will I have to force you?"
"I'll handle this," said a voice, and behind them appeared Opaline. With her was a formation of 1860s locomotives, each without a face.
Opaline stepped up next to Porter. "So remarkable to finally get to see one of the engines that has caused me so much trouble. Any last words?"
"Go to Cashmore."
"My dear, I've already been." Her gauntlets glowed, and magical flowed out of Porter and into Opaline. As Izzy ran, all she saw behind her was the lifeless husk that had once been her engine.
On the other side of the battlefield, Omaha was leading his fellow engines into battle. "Ready the crank guns!" he shouted.
Several coaches then had side doors pop open, and out of them popped rotary barrel weapons.
Torch looked back. "Blaize, you give the word."
Blaize saluted. "Understood. Sir, it has been an honour."
Torch nodded as the formation pulled up on a hill overlooking the battlefield. Most of the team was there- Omaha, Nebraska, Jupiter, Leviathan, Antelope, and Falcon. Each was coupled to a passenger car.
"Let's hope this works," Jupiter said to himself.
Blaize raised her hand. "Steady... fire!"
In that instant, an entire battery of gattling guns opened up, sending a hail of bullets tearing across the landscape and slamming into their foes. Buildings had holes torn in them. Structures were damaged. Soldiers flew everywhere from the unexpected extra layer of weapons fire.
Some of them noticed and turned to return fire, but they were prepared. "Get moving!" Falcon shouted. The engines began to move off in turn, allowing the crews to maintain and focus their fire on the enemy troops on the ground below.
As they flew along the clifftop, they ran into a loop and began to circle round. "Switch the guns to the other side!" Leviathan shouted.
The weapons were swapped over, and the crews prepared to resume fire on the ground with a fresh hail of bullets. Unfortunately, the plan soon began to become unstuck, as up ahead vehicles tried to block the line.
"Child's play," Omaha said, as he impacted the lead truck. His crossbar threw it aside like a toy, causing it to bounce away like a childrens toy haphazardly thrown across the terrain.
With the sheer speed they were doing, laying down any sort of precise fire soon proved to be difficult. Several sets of choppers soon formed up on the side of their formations, trying to stop them.
"Flying machines!" Antelope shouted.
"Keep going!" Jupiter said. "They can't stop us all!"
The engines thundered onto a loop track and were soon routed down into the ground level of the battlefield itself. The line soon began to lead them away from the enemy, with a chunk of the enemy force in pursuit.
Torch got on the radio. "The enemy are chasing us! Hope that gets some of them off your backs!"
"Greatly appreciated!" radioed the voice of that English noblewoman. "We'll need to fall back in short order or else we'll never get out of here."
Torch acknowledged. He'd never expected war to find him here once again, but then again he'd spent much of his life involved in one conflict or another. To be fighting alongside British people with American accents felt a bit strange, but then again they shared the same enemy.
As the formation roared across Sodor, enemy in pursuit, he could only hope reinforcements were coming soon.
Out at sea, well off the coast of Sodor, HMS Duke of York limped through the ocean. Flames burned on the open sea from burnt and destroyed ships, all lost in a sneak attack nobody saw coming. Several ships still afloat had suffered heavy damage, and the task force was a fraction of its full power.
On the deck of the Duke of York, Admiral Seaspray activated his megaphone. "Damage report, over?" he said.
The chief engineer radioed up from the engineering station. "It's not good, sir. We've got an engine leak. The generators are damaged and running at partial capacity. We've finished fighting an onboard fire that damaged the rudder linkage, and we're leaking fuel. The situation could be better, sir, but we'll do our best to patch it up, over."
The Admiral looked out to sea, as the carrier sailed past more burning wrecks. "We were fired on by our own side," he said. "What in the Seven Seas is going on out here?"
"Sir!" shouted a sailor. "HMS Coventry is severely damaged and needs resupply. The Captain of HMS Portsmouth is beaching her on a sandbank to avoid sinking."
"Grim news indeed," the Admiral said, looking back to his display. "I have half an operational taskforce at my disposal, but the Admiralty are oddly quiet. The MoD aren't responding, and although we appear to be free of immediate threats I suspect they'll be back for more."
"Sir, land approaching!" said the ship's captain. "Island of Sodor!"
"If they have a harbour still in loyalist hands, we can attempt to resupply in safer waters," the Admiral noted, averting his eyes from the wrecks of more burning vessels. Not many men bobbed about in the water, and all available lifeboats had been dispatched for rescue duties to pull them out of the water.
He then spotted explosions from the coastline. "Land battle underway. They may need our help. Dispatch recon drone!"
"Aye sir, dispatching recon drone now."
After a few minutes of flight time, the drone hovered above the battlefield, and gave them a view as to the mayhem breaking out below. It was chaos of a sort not seen on British soul in a very long time.
The Admiral was shocked. "Civilians?" he said. "What sort of foe are we fighting that they attack civilians?" He then spotted a familiar face on the ground. "If my eyes do not deceive me, then I recognise that girl in orange."
His mind briefly flashed back to the museum opening all those months ago, before focusing on the task at hand. "Prepare the task force to engage the enemy! Prepare all fighters for launch!"
"That's going to take a few hours, sir," said the Executive Officer. "The deck is covered in scrap and damaged fighters that are in no condition to be launched, and the rest need to be fuelled."
"Push the damaged ones off the edge and get the rest ready for action." The Admiral looked back. "In the meantime, initiate a missile bombardment on my word."
Opaline stepped back from the engine that had once been Porter, rubbing her hands. "Victory grows ever closer," she smiled.
Just then, she heard a familiar puffing sound behind her. "Ah, Bellerophon," she said. "Nice of you to come to your doom."
"We won't let you get away with this!" Bellerophon said defiantly. "My friends showed me the way, and the light will always outshine the darkness!"
"Not unless you get rid of the light source first," Opaline replied. "And I detect the little traitor is with you too. I have a question for you, Misty- was it all worth it, only to end up on the wrong side of history?"
"You can't do this to me or my friends," Misty said, climbing off Bellerophon's footplate and towards Opaline. "They showed me there was a better way, a better world waiting beyond the darkness. They showed me what it meant to care about somebody, and in them I found a true family and my parents!"
"Parent?" Opaline said. "I did all that. I fed and sheltered you, didn't I?"
Bellerophon snorted. "Well done, you did the bare minimum."
"It's kinda sad, really," Misty continued. "All this power, and yet you're still alone. Power can't buy you friendship. Being a good person does. Tell me, Opaline... who do you really have?"
"Plenty of people! Soldiers who have undying loyalty to me!"
"Only through the promise of power. They're on your side because they'll get something out of it. Feeling important. Special. Gaining their own power in the regime you want to build. That's not friendship. That's an alliance of convenience. And that is why I fight."
Opaline looked furious. "You ungrateful little beetle! Kneel before me! NOW! DO IT, YOU TRAITOR!"
"No," Misty said. "You can't betray somebody you're enslaved to. That's the difference between a leader or a tyrant like you. But that still doesn't answer the main question- will you reconsider this? Is all this pain and destruction worth it?"
Opaline looked down, seemingly surprised by this.
"It worked?" Misty said quietly.
"I hope so."
"I have friends, and you can never take that away from me."
Opaline suddenly fired off an energy blast, sending Misty slamming into some trucks, before turning her powers on Bellerophon, draining him utterly.
Opaline's gauntlets glowed with fresh energy as she loomed over Misty, who looked utterly helpless. "That's better. This should remind you who your betters are. Your friends cannot save you, nor can this pathetic world. I am ruler now, and I shall reshape Britain in my image. That's the first lesson you learn from the school of hard knocks. You can't rely on anybody but yourself."
Misty looked up, pleading. "Please don't kill me!"
Opaline laughed. "Kill you? A pathetic worm like you isn't even worthy of my blade. Besides, Misty, you can't suffer if you're dead. Because of you, Bellerophon is gone. I hope you can live with that."
Opaline walked away as Misty quietly wept to herself. Despite her attempts to fix things, she had only made the problem worse.