Magic Carpet Made of Steel

How do you turn this damn thing off?

“Can this piece of scrap go any faster!?”

“Hey! In case you didn’t notice, this isn’t exactly the The City of New Orleans, now is it? , Blast Pipe snapped back as he threw on the sander to try and get extra traction, as steel on steel isn’t very good at that. “This was designed for cargo, not speed, and the wheels can only go so many rpm.*”

It had only taken about 10 minutes to get up to speed, but they were really pushing the locomotive, and based on the amount of hopper cars they had passed, they still had a lot of catch up to do.

Although pushing a locomotive wasn’t easy with only a 1 second nap and no other sleep for 16 hours, Blast Pipe could tell the stress on the loco was far worse. With every chug of  the 4 driving wheels, there would be the usual hiss and chug sound, they would be accompanied by an unnerving pop. It was bluntly obvious that the locomotive was being pushed far beyond what it had ever been designed to do in its long service, and if anything broke, well, you never heard about survivors of a boiler explosion for a reason.

This didn’t seem to matter much to Conductor, however. She just kept shoveling in coal, turning the appropriate knob, and pulling the correct lever when necessary.

Slowly, however slowly, they started to gain on the men among giants, and considering its speed, that was no small feet. The trail of smoke was getting thicker and somehow darker than the jet black shade it already was as they passed the slightly rust iron ore hopper cars.

“Well now that we’re gaining now. What’s the plan?”, asked Blast Pipe.

“Shimfal.” Conductor replied. “Simple,” she said again,spitting out the coal shovel, her teeth now black with coal dust. “We’re on parallel track, so you’re going to get our cab and that….thing’s adjacent, and I’ll fly over.

Blast Pipe felt a twinge of nervousness, a jump from a moving train was obviously very risky, but of all people to know this, it would be Conductor, so Blast Pipe simply nodded. As he reassured himself with this logic, he checked the speedometer. “Oh HELL no, you are NOT jumping off this train at 60 miles per hour”, which was 4 times the fastest speed they were told was “safe”, 15 mph. “The air resistance alone would rip you under the wheels!”

“Too late” Conductor replied, and just as Blast Pipe noticed that they were starting to PULL AHEAD of the titanic locomotive, he cried out as Conductor jumped out of the cab. He gave the biggest sigh of relief in his life when he saw her head, now almost coal black, pop up in the window, wearing the biggest shit-eating grin Blast Pipe had ever seen on her face.

Equestria! Fuck ya! Was running through her head, if her face was indicating anything going through her head.

However, their victory was short-lived.

Blast Pipe’s thoughts froze as a loud, low, metallic groan sounded from the engine. He ran over to the backhead and checked the water levels.

“SHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT," Blast Pipe shouted, as all the blood drained from his face, when he saw the water was FAR below the top of the firebox.**

Blast Pipe had wanted to go for the anti-climatic ‘just take that piece of wood in the corner and walk over’ ending, but he knew he didn’t have time for that.

Conductor shouted what Blast Pipe needed to do anyway. “JUMP!”

He didn’t hesitate. He ran to the edge of the plate form, and jumped with all his might. The air ripped around him and a shot of terror and adrenaline shot through him as gravity started to remind him that he was making its job harder.

“Got ya!” Conductor said triumphantly as her hooves wrapped around one of Blast Pipe’s forelegs. With a grunt and a hard pull, she pulled Blast Pipe into the colossal locomotive’s cab. Now outside the engine Blast Pipe could see the red glow from the other locomotive. It have a shutter, and then jumped the tracks, falling over, before suddenly Exploding 18 seconds later

Blast Pipe knew that there wouldn’t be anything left to speak of the Locomotive [2nd picture]

His locomotive

“I swear to Celestia herself that I’m taking all my vacation and sick days after this.” He said after a long moment of pondering his loss.

“Behind you all the way. I hear there are some good places to go sightseeing in Canabra.” Conductor casually said, turning to the backhead. “Ok, how do we stop this damn thing?

Blast Pipe turned to the controls, and, not for the first time that night, balked. There were what seemed like dozens of knobs and levers, and many of them were far out of his reach. It was as if it was designed for a short mintor. There was a chair next to a window on one side, however, so that would be a minor problem.

“I don’t know,” Blast Pipe admitted.

“Better learn quick.” Conductor said as she leaned her head back into the cab “The peak’s coming.

“What?” No way, not this fast, the record was 2 hours, and it had scarcely been 40 minutes. He jumped onto the chair and peaked out the window. There was a sudden part of the horizon that seemed to go lower^, and it only got lower and lower.

Quickly, he ran a through scenarios in his head. “Ok, we’re going to have to ride this out until Ponyville station, maybe even Grand Central.”

“What are you crazy? That’s a 9 hour trip away!” Conductor responded. “We need to sto-

“We need to stop argueing about this, just clear the mainline and figure out where the hell the Celestia-damn brake lever is, unless you want to see this on a downhill grade!” Blast Pipe said, cutting her off. Conductor stopped thinking for only a fraction of a second.

“Fine, but damnit find that lever!”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It was a peaceful morning in Ponyville, and Twilight, much to her number one assistant delight, was making breakfast. Now, Twilight would the first in a LONG list of people to say she wasn’t a great cook, but she had (*ahem* finally) nailed pancakes, which was thankful considering some of the… results of her experiments in the kitchen.

This was not one of those mornings, thankfully, and her horn softly glowed as she cracked eggs, measured milk, added butter, and the various other things you do when making eggs from scratch. (although in her first attempt Twilight managed to completely ruin Fusseaz “just add water” mix.) She did it with an impressive amount of finesse, even for she was a princess.

“Wow.” was all Spike could say after leaning his head in the kitchen door.

Twilight didn’t miss a beat, nonchalantly saying “Good morning Spike, go get the Syrup and silverware, I’ll have something done in just a second.”

“That….practice is really paying off, eh?”

“I would hope so”, she said, pouring some mix onto the hot pan, as it gave a satisfying hiss. “You can only screw up as many until you’ve perfected whatever you’re doing.”

“Hopefully it won’t end up like yesterday’s experiment.” Spike muttered under his breath, “I didn’t know you could burn gems like that.”

Twilight pretended not to hear the second part as she pulled out 2 plates and stacked each high with pancakes before setting one down in front of Spike and herself.

“You take the first bite.” was the first thing Spike said.

“Oh come on it was ONE time.” Twilight responded, sounding just a little hurt.

“Ya, and my stomach got a restraining order on me for the assault.”

Twilight was about to give a nice retort when there was a crash, and a coal black pegasus with teal blue poking out in a few places flew in the room. “Twilight, we’ve had a problem.”

“R-Rainbow!?” Twilight asked, she recognized the fur and voice, but she knew that, while RD wasn’t much for looks, she wouldn’t be caught dead looking like she did now. “What happened?”

“What happened?! What happened?! Some metal monster…..thing just blew my house apart, that’s what happened!” She almost shouted, and was very agitated by it. “It’s in the station now.” She said, calming down a little.

It took a second for Twilight to process the second part of Rainbow’s message. “Wait a second, a TRAIN destroyed your house?”

“If you can even CALL it that.” RD muttered.

Twilight gave a heavy sigh. So much for breakfast. “Spike, get on my back.” As she followed Rainbow out the door.