Chapter 1
Forty-Two, Twenty
A Fanfiction by ATSF Asbel
On the arrow-straight railway out of Ponyvillle, an otherwise unknown road meets the iron upon a level crossing guarded only by two of the most passive beasts of grade-crossing protection—the wooden crossbuck. Merely a somewhat high pole set into the ground with two whitewashed slats, they do not assert the presence of an incoming train—from the slowest peddler freight to the mightiest cargo drag to the fastest express—with blinking lights, lowering barriers, and clamoring bells.
No, they just stand by idly, silent witnesses, silently proclaiming this was a railway crossing, and for everypony who read the message on its slats to stop, to look about, and to listen for the snorting, seething iron beasts.
The crossing could have been protected, had it been used more. Here was where the pole-line ducked down, its commands and orders flung from a switchboard in Canterlot to the dual blades of a metal semaphore signal as fast as the electrons in the metal cables could travel. Planted lineside like a massive flower, the signal’s two, single-petal’d blooms stood poised, the higher one gesticulating to the heavens, and its subordinate gestured off to the right, towards the woods.
Both these iron petals normally pointed toward the sylvan landscape, the lamps attached to them dark as Luna’s skies. However, as a train—however fast or slow—received “authority” over the modest eight miles of track between Ponyvillle and a location timetabled as “Everfree Springs”, the lamps would begin to burn with the fury of Celestia’s sun, and the blades would create a cryptic gesture that was about as universal to the train-crews as the national language.
Not very many trains receive this one cue, however. A skyward upper blade here would always guarantee that the turnout two miles distant was lined straight-through, no stopping at the station, no waiting for another train.
This was the message that only an express train would receive.
***
“At Forty-Two Twenty, at Fourteen-Forty-Five,
Two hearts shall be taken with one live,
A desperate one, by your deeds in the past,
Torn down, now vengeance approaches quite fast.”
The parchment wrinkled in his toned, trembling forelegs, its reader both puzzled and frightened by its message. No, not since he was a young, tender colt did he let fright overtake him so. Obviously this was somepony who knew him well, somepony who was somehow defeated by him, and somepony who knew of his love interest.
But how? He had silently admired that mare from a distance, hesitant that she would reject him, dash his heart upon the rocks, out of the mere notion that her own anxiety would overcome the kindness that radiated about her.
Curious was the perseveration on the letter “F” in the first line of the poem. Curious was also the numbers—both addresses, maybe? He knew the street grid of Ponyville somewhat well, and recalled seeing numerous “1445s” in the business district, but the grid petered out once the thirty-two-hundred blocks were arrived at. The highest address in the entire town, in fact, was close between Fluttershy’s “3901” and his orchard’s own “3892”.
Perchance, he pondered, he might be able to crack the code, with some assistance...
***
The town librarian, a mauve mare with a deep violet mane, rested peacefully in her study, absorbing the contents and texts of some historian several hundred years before had scrawled down. The creak of wood and the gold glow of sunlight abruptly permeated the room, and with the soft, hefty thud of hooves on In stepped the gentle giant called Big Macintosh.
“Uhm…sorry if I’m interruptin’ anything, Miss Sparkle…” he stammered.
“Big Macintosh! So, how have you been?” She chirruped. “By the way, no need for formality here, any relative of my close friends is just as close.”
“Well, Twilight, things were just fine until…well…I got this.”
Holding the note out, trembling slightly, it was enveloped in a mauve sheath, and levitated briskly out of his hooves.
“Hmm…this is sinister.”
“Didn’t have to say that twice.”
“Cryptic.”
“Eyyup.”
“…and seems to be pretty concise once cracked. I’m on it!” She finished, beaming with nervous optimism.
She might as well have been Starswirl the Bearded himself, for all he knew. Her incantations and complex charms apparated maps, conjured up calculations, and delivered data which hopefully would crack the code and derail the devious deed alluded too.
“Mac…I didn’t find any reference to 4220 in the street plats. Not even on any roads out of town.” His head sunk. “Fourteen-Forty-Five, however, might not be an address. All government entities run on something called Continental Time, be it the royal guard, the clerical department…”
Abruptly she gasped, staring at the topographical map before her. Along the rolling hills upon which the Everfree Forest stood was drawn a perfectly-straight line, crossed by shorter tic-marks every half-inch, leading to the edge of town. Where the line bent upon entry to town, the neat architectural lettering proclaimed: “W. PVL Siding, Milepost 39.5”
She rummaged through the old archive now, her aim focused on musty surveyors’ plats, and drew out one which had succumbed to the yellow ravishes of time. She spread it upon the floor, and after several seconds of study and scrutiny let out a subtle gasp.
“What’s the matter?” He inquired in his perpetually-relaxed pastoral drawl, as though stuffing fear into a mental compartment and hiding it from visible manifestation.
“How close is Sweet Apple Acres to the railway line?” The purple unicorn inquired, the air of the hollowed-out tree reaching the pressure of cider in a press.
“It’s o’er a hummock or two. Can hear the Cannonball’s whistle ever’day, ‘bout three sharp.”
“Fourteen-Forty-Eight is when it’s timetabled through Ponyville! That means…” She scoured the map now, honed in on her target, her pupils swooping in like a bird of prey near the smooth, low watershed near the orchard.
“Forty-Two-Dot-Two is the milepost for the farm crossing…could that mean anything?” His eyes shot up to the massive clock occupying the corner—two-thirty, or fourteen-thirty in Continental time. “Mac?”
“This don’t look good…” He drawled. In his youth, he had seen vaudeville melodramas, complete with the pencil-mustached foe holding the hero’s love hostage by tying her to the railway tracks, and slithering off to leave her to meet her fate at the steel sabers that are a speeding steamer’s wheels. Was he hero enough to charge up and rescue her in time? Would he fail and behold the gruesome sight?
“If there’s anything that works in your favor, you’re a stallion of competent action when others are involved. This is just like when the Flim-Flam brothers came to town.”
The musty gears, cams, and pistons of his intuition began to churn. That blasted alliteration of the sixth letter…the letter “F”…could it be…
“The Flim-Flam brothers! Balderdash!” He expelled. “Twilight, thanks for all the hel-“
“I barely even did anything!”
“Sometimes it helps to talk with somepony, gets the intuition steaming. If I’m not mistaken a certain cider-peddlin’ stallion is about to imitate some Western melodrama. Farewell, heiress ‘o Starswirl!”
As he steadied himself, she stood flabbergasted. Nopony ever compared her to the mythical alchemist, even back in Canterlot where she stood on the shoulders of the enchanter’s expertise. As he was halfway to the door, she fired off one final question.
“That second line…I’m assuming it alludes to somepony you love, correct?”
“Ah’ won’t tell. Even if she is the kindest gal in town, I dunno if she doesn’t feel the same way.”
As the door to the library drifted shut with a gentle “thud”, she stroked her chin with her foreleg, rustling the mauve fur gently. Wow, Big Mac’s gotten as cryptic, if not moreso, than that message. He can’t possibly be alluding to Fluttershy though, can he? Then again,the two of them would be a lovely couple, he’s got just as kind a heart. As the dying embers of the thought slipped her mind like ashes expelled from a smokestack, she grinned. Have I just been…flattered? Or was the comparison meant with all dear sincerity?
***
She awoke from her chemical-induced slumber, now with her head resting on an iron pillow and under a blanket of jute ropes, chafing her skin and matting her coat as she struggled to break free. The malevolent lullaby of her mustachioed captor chilled her, chilled her to the bone.
“Ah, you’re awake now, miss Fluttershy,” the paradoxically warm yet malevolent, ominous voice uttered. “Your oaf of a lover shall not find you now!”
“Wha…lover…?” She trailed off, still in a bit of a stupor, taking in her surroundings.
“That red one. That one who defeated my brother and I, bankrupted us, dashed our hopes of fame and fortune.” The voice sneered. Glancing to its source, she took in the image of a mustachioed stallion, with a greasy red mane and tan coat. The azure-and-white striped shirt and straw hat looked all-too familiar—this was one of the two Flim-Flam brothers, the sleazy cider-pressers from out of town who attempted to put Sweet Apple Acres out of business a few months previous.
“My brother and I…we destroyed our marvelous machine, fouled its pinions, stripped its gears, turned it into mere scrap in our struggle to buy out Sweet Apple Acres! After the lot of you two-bit yokels refused to buy our fine cider, we were hemorrhaging money, and with little more than the scrap value of our press to live off of, we decided to try a…different approach.”
“Now…mister Flim…or Flam…I…I really don’t see why it is necessary to…drag me into all of this…” The buttercup-yellow mare stuttered. Her new environment had wrought a serious toll on her appearance, her typically-graceful carnation mane slowly becoming disheveled with every twitch and convulsion of the subtle spasm of terror she experienced. “B…besides, I don’t see how-“
“I’ll break their spirits! I’ll take from them everything and everypony they hold near and dear!” The stallion boasted, an insidious undertone lingering in his words. “When they’re sullen, and their hearts and wills crushed, my brother and I shall swoop in and take their land!”
As if to punctuate this sentiment, a far-off whistle rang out—the high, shrieking cry of an incoming express.
***
Big MacIntosh made haste; his leg muscles weren’t built for agility, but for brute force, and thus as he summited the low hummock near his family’s barn the dull, disconcerting pain of lactic-acid fermentation began to snare his sinews. Nay, physical forces shall be overcome by heart and chivalry, they shall b-
His thoughts were sent flying as the distant shriek of a steam whistle echoed across the landscape—that of the Express issuing a warning for the distant crossing of Everfree Springs, five miles distant. Lost in mental calculation, he let the precision of his gait slip ever so slightly. Cresting the final hummock, he saw before him a scene that was part nightmare, part horrible melodrama. But it was an internal sensation which whalloped him hardest.
To fight or to flee:those were the choices his endocrine system offered him. He had flown here, now all that remained was to siege the iron-and-aggregate crenellations of his foe before the steel serpent was upon them.
The showman knew what he was doing—every Western melodrama he’d seen always had the hero to the rescue, and in every time the hero foiled the villain. That was the classic cliché everypony had come to know and love. However, seeing the crimson blur rustling the leaves of the orchards in the distance, a lump of fear developed in his throat. He was offered, by the instinct imbued in all ponykind, benevolent or malevolent, to fight or flee as well.
With a devious grimace gracing his muzzle, he chose to fight.
“Unhand her, ya snake!” A voice bellowed. Its owner was none other than that of the crimson blur, the proverbial “hero” of the western.
“Not on your pathetic life, buffoon!”
At the mere utterance of said word, the tidal wave of adrenalized sinew towered over him, dodged adeptly by the slithering salespony. With a deft thrust of his foreleg into his opponent’s back, the wave crashed upon a sea of coarse dirt.
The engine’s light was visible now, freshly-flickering into view from a graceful arc behind a wooded hill, and as sunflowers turn to face Celestia’s orb each and every morning, the machinations of a madpony began to materialize at its mere presence.
With a clever feint, the sly stallion had scuttled across the steel ruts, his back to the orchard, his grimace, could it talk, bespoke “I could end all you hold near and dear.”
What he didn’t see coming was the fury of a second wave, a furious right hook which rattled bone and bruised flesh, of harvest-hardened hooves hassling every nerve in his jaw.
Like a ragdoll, the unconscious stallion slumped unceremoniously into the dirt trail, hyperventilating with defeat. Glinting in the sunlight, Big Mackintosh noticed the formerly cloaked blade of a bowie knife, which had sailed clear of its owner and was now bouncing across the aggregate.
’twas he that was the bufoon, not I! The farmer chuckled mentally as he claimed the spread-eagle salespony’s bowie, a deus ex machina from any foes who would dare assail the two-faced traveler. The serrated edge, with the obvious capability of fraying rope with ease, now carried the humble duty as a deus ex machina for the heroic farmer. Oh, brutal irony, how I adore thee!
A low thunder came at first, the harbinger of his other foe, and a reminder of his task at hand.
***
The bowie knife frayed the rope in time to the rolling, thunderous snorts of the approaching orb and its metallic bearer, a proud thoroughbred of the express passenger fleet. Just as the last cord split, and in his forelegs he held the trembling Pegasus, the shrieking note of the locomotive’s whistle rang out.
It started low, a moan at first, but rose to a high, bloodcurling screech, as though fearing the worst of the impending collision itself. Its cab—along with the engineer, her muzzle flushed with white and a sparking, oxide-red glow blazing from her horn, in a futile struggle to muster every last pound of resistance out of the brakes—came into perfect view, as well as the line of crimson passenger carriages with profuse streams of sparks and smoke shooting from the undercarriages.
The two jumped; the beast near, its formidably-pointed cowcatcher merely inches away. Clearing the first railhead and the tip of the steaming, hissing battering ram, the two were in mid-air now.
But the widest part of any steam locomotive, any railroader will say, is actually the steam-chests. These massive chambers, sometimes a yard across, are where the steam from the boiler gets funneled around a piston and therefore converts the pressure of the steam into mechanical energy.
The crimson shell of one of these steam-chests, with the heat rivaling that of an oven, clipped the chivalrous stallion, with a sickening crunch and a searing feeling his hide in the split second they came into contact. It was as though he had been thrust against Celestia’s orb, the white-hot pain clouding his senses and, from his perspective, warping time to a standstill. The clanking, whirling drive-rods cartwheeled by behind him, each revolution and arc of the many brass bones in perfect detail to the green, adrenaline-fueled eyes. Sparks shot from the shadows, leaving a curious sensation tingling from his unharmed hind leg, and the acrid stench of burning metals filled the air.
The occupants of the crimson-and-brass cab—two earth-pony stallions and a unicorn mare—stared from the cab, their jaws dropped half in awe, half in fear that the duo had met their fate beneath the wheels of the still-speeding engine.
Then it went black for the red stallion, mid-arc, snared in excruciating pain.
***
He could sense the small crowd gathering—the murmurs, the grunts of the former captor who now himself was captured, and the worry in the air.
“I…is he all right?” A timid voice squeaked.
“I’ve seen worse pull through. Struck a farmer and his cart while on the Los Pegasus line a few years back and he was in worse shape…last I heard he completely recovered,” A husky female voice, that of the engineer, assuaged.
He could feel three pairs of hooves now, pressing against him, sliding him onto an impromptu stretcher—the polished hardwood felt stiff to his back, and the ropes which secured him weren’t very comfortable either. However, he knew he couldn’t walk on a broken leg—his injury was all too real now, the searing pain licking the fractured bone, the nerves of his wounded leg broadcasting signals of pure agony on a non-stop loop.
Just then…warm, soothing sensations, dulling out the pain; different nerves tingled with warmth, of embrace, of COMPASSION. His jaw, which ached with dull pain from a blow struck earlier on, now sparked with the contact of another, which he could instantaneously sense was the lips of a certain mare.
The kiss broken, he was elevated and began to move, prompting him to open his eyes to the scenery passing to his side…and the graceful wave of carnation hair poking up from under the side of the stretcher.