Sodor's New Worker (Semi-Hiatus Due to an AO3 rewrite)

Right & Just

   Early that morning, James made haste to make his exit, leaving Vivian a note that he had left, and thanking her for letting him stay instead of leaving him sit there and be at the mercy to those awful, awful bugs that were outside. Though, once he made it back to Tidmouth, he was blocked by a red tender.

"What's the big idea?" he hissed. "Get the hell off the turntable!"

"Wait your turn." the other engine snapped back.

"Reginald!" another voice snapped. "Be nice, for Lady's sake!"

"Who..what!?" James growled. "Who are you two!?"

   As the other red tender engine turned around, he was meet with a rude face, ruder than his own face, and as this unknown 4-6-0 engine backed into an empty berth, he noticed another tender engine. A blue one, much darker than Gordon, and had glasses snug on her face.

"I stay somewhere else for one night.." he grumbled, stepping off the tracks. "And the controller replaces me with...that."

"We aren't here to replace you." Reginald spat. "We're here to replace...Millie? Molly?"

"Maddy, Reginald." the blue tender engine corrected him. "Please pardon him, he's always acting like he woke up on the wrong side of his pretentious berth."

"...Right.." James slowly nodded, crossing his arms. "Reginald and.."

"Jennifer. Call me Jenny." she smiled. "Who might you be?"

"..James."

"Pleased to meet you, James."

"Pah."

"Reginald, you can cut back on the ego. So what if he looks a little similar to yourself. Pipe down or you'll be kicked off this island before you've had your first assignment."

"Did you two just get here today?" the No. 5 asked, soon beginning to notice he'd arrived so late that none of his actual friends were here. Just these two strangers.

"We are." Jenny replied. "I was called here to help with the uptick in express services.....but I don't know why Reggie here was called for other than to replace this 'Maddy' the controller kept mumbling about. You knew her, right?"

"...I knew her. I really knew her. That woman was everything to me."

"So what kind of engine was she? What exactly did she do around here?"

"Maddy did anything and everything under the sun that isn't passenger service. It was incredible to see her happily take on anything." James started. "Garbage, sand, scrap, livestock, you name it, she was on top of it. She'd also work in the yards, or sort coaches for me or other engines."

"A grand, flexible engine, then. Got a lot to live up to, Reggie." Jenny teased. "Good luck." 

"I won't need it, but thank you, Jenny, and for the record, it's Reginald. Not Reggie."

"But here's the thing-" James butted in. "Maddy wasn't...isn't...an engine at all."

"Then what on earth was she?" Jenny asked, puzzled, as was Reginald.

"Human."

"...Surely you're yanking our side rods here, right?" Reginald asked in a snappy tone. "She'd have to be an engine. No other way to do the work."

"Maddy was a violation of humanity, to put it bluntly." James retorted, mocking Reginald's tone. "A mix of man and magic. You want proof? Here."

   After a bit of fumbling with his phone, he showed Jenny and Reginald a video he had taken a long while ago, showing what they assumed was her, harnessed to a load of six trucks filled with scrap.