Author's Notes:

I am SO sorry this chapter is very late. I've been putting my work into two other stories I have in the works, and balancing this out with work (at the moment) and other projects is taking its toll. Having writer's block doesn't help by any means, hence the slightly shorter chapter considering the time gap.

"So, whereabouts are we headed again?" Nathan asked.

"To some abandoned E.U.P. base in Foaledo, just a couple of miles south of Canterlot," I replied as I drove down the mountain train tracks road to our destination, with Nathan sitting in the passenger seat.

Unfortunately, Thomas' ability to soak up magical radiation was causing some health issues for him, so on the day we drove down to Foaledo, which in turn was the Sunday after my date with Celestia, he was getting a magical / surgical operation to fit a force field that would protect his body from the radiation. The preparation was momentous, as this was apparently the first operation of its kind...

But that story was his to tell, not mine.

If only he had written about it before he passed away.

Anyway...

"Hopefully it isn't filled with mini-cabbers," Nathan joked, referring to the similarity between the names of Foaledo and Toledo, bringing out a chuckle from me.

If you don't get the joke, cars across the world have become iconic for their view as being taxis, for example, the Ford Crown Vic in New York, the London Taxi LT-series in... well, London, and Russia, especially Moscow, has the Lada Riva.

Scotland doesn't have one set car for the job, however. He have a multitude of different cars for use all around Scotland, particularly in the Glasgow and the West region... and all of them are as equally as dreary and pathetic as each other. You have Skoda Octavias, Skoda Superbs, Volkswagen Passats, Ford Mondeos, Vauxhall Insignias (Opel Insignias for anyone living outside of the UK), KIA Optimas, Toyota Avensises (Avensi?) and the worst of them all... the SEAT Toledo.

I don't think I've ever been in a car as boring as the Toledo. I think my English teacher was more interesting than that car, and he nearly bored me to death on a ten minute lecture on the differences between a colon and a semi-colon and its importance in writing!

If I ever have to sit in a Toledo ever again, I will saw my right arm off and beat myself to death with it.

"Hopefully not," I replied, turning off to the road that took us to Foaledo. "I don't need to be in a car that smells of sick and is basically a Jetta underneath."

"VW's idea of marketing is probably to just change the the badges, and not much else," Nathan replied. "Oh, and lying about your emissions helps, too.

"True. I mean, with the Mii, Up! and Citigo, they weren't even trying," I replied. "Who makes a city car THAT ugly?"

"It's not that bad..."

"Let me guess, you also think the hate to the S-Type was unjustified."

"It's not that bad looking of a car!"

"No, the one of the sixties was a thing of beauty. That Ford version which was basically a Lincoln, designed by someone who clearly didn't have a set of eyeballs, into a category just so Ford could improve sales at Jaguar, not caring about the fact that the old S-Type used to fit in the slot the XJ holds now..."

"But let's face it... your test drive of the S-Type R was better than you were expecting it to be."

...

"Okay, I can't argue with you there."

"Told you."

It took us another fifteen minutes to reach the outskirts of the city, and another 10 to find the military base that Celestia had told me about.

Nathan and I had decided to take the day off from working to explore an old royal guards base that could accommodate the car company that we would try to set up later. Celestia said that with a population of nearly 90,000 ponies and no major industry in the area, it would be an ideal place to set up a car plant if the company was successful. Unfortunately, Sonic Blaze couldn't attend due to other business matters.

On a side note, Celestia herself was apparently going to a friendship party in Ponyville, as there were apparently delegates from Yakyakistan who were improving relations with Equestria.

Pinkie, don't screw it up.

In addition to this, we wanted to drive on the base's runways, to see if there is a possibility that it could become Equestria's first permanent racing circuit. From what I read from Spitfire's letters to Nathan, all of Equestria's 'great' racing circuits were temporary ones in the cloud cities that were dismantled after use. These were mostly in the city of Cloudsdale, although there were some events held in Rainbow Falls and one in Las Pegasus as well. The permanent ones were all oval shaped, and were all dirt tracks.

Not so great for our cars in the long run.

But these old runways were different. From what we were told, there were two of them that cut at 120 degree angles, and taxiways that connected to each. These were made on a smooth stone surface, similar to concrete. I wasn't entirely happy that it wasn't asphalt that was there, but concrete is the next best thing.

When we pulled up to the side of it on the dirt track that we were using (and checking Nathan's back hadn't disintegrated), we got out of the car and looked at the old base that used to thrive nearly 20 years ago. It wasn't looking too bad for a building that was abandoned for nearly 20 years: there wasn't any moss/plants growing in the edges, the buildings weren't falling apart and the barrack logos were still clean (but not shiny).

"Shall we see what state they are in?" I asked as I shut the door of the car.

"Aye, let's go," he replied as I hopped over the fence and into the dirt on the other side. Thankfully, we didn't mind getting our old trainers wet.

A short walk later, we were at the west barracks, which was slightly smaller than the other two. It made up for being shorter, however, by being much taller than the other two. Pulling the doors open, we saw that the previous owners hadn't been bothered with removing any of the furniture, as was evident in the bunks.

"What do we do here?" Nathan asked. "Do we take out the furniture and tear down the internal walls or... what?"

"Well, we could remove the furniture if we can," I replied, looking at the furniture that was starting to look tatty. "But keep it, as it can be useful to us in the future. We'll probably need to tear the doors down to make room, but we'll worry about that later."

We continued to go through the different rooms in the barracks, seeing that if we tore down some of the walls, we would have more than enough space to work on the car. Moving through the other buildings, we found that that was also very much the case, with the only issue being that in one of the buildings, a wall was made out of metal that effectively halved the building, and that wouldn't be easy to get rid of.

But we decided to leave the floor plans aside, as we went back to do the thing we really wanted to do.

Fool about on the runways.

When we got back to the car, I got rid of most of the dirt on my shoes, before getting back in. Nathan did the same, albeit he was much quicker to do so than myself.

"Ready?" I asked, pressing the Start/Stop button as I fastened my seat-belt.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Nathan replied, repeating the seat-belt procedure, not seeming to notice or care that I had turned the traction control off.

Pressing the accelerator lightly, I pulled off from the spot and rode onto the concrete surface of the taxiway, picking up the pace once I was on a much smoother surface. Immediately, I saw a good idea for a racetrack in my head, and immediately decided to floor the accelerator, gradually letting out all 476 angry horses from the rear wheels, the speed keeping on climbing as I approached the end of the taxiway-like area.

60 mph. 80, 100, 120, 130...

Eventually, though, I had to slow down to attempt the corner, so about three hundred meters away, I started to brake, slowing to about 40 miles an hour, allowing the car to attempt the corner. As I flicked the tail sideways, I heard a yelp from Nathan, who was trying to not look scared on the surface.

The C 63 quickly sprinted down the other taxiway, with another route down back to the runway being an ideal hairpin turn, to test a car's handling. I therefore braked again, slowed to the appropriate speed, and tightly hugged the inside of the corner as I stepped on the accelerator again and let the turbochargers spool up and do their work.

As the speed kept climbing, I turned the car in the opposite direction and onto the runway, to test to see if lift off oversteer occurred. When going on the Knockhill, you have to lift off slightly to get round the Scotsman corner, due to the weight of the Merc.

Surprisingly, the corner was clean, and I belted down the runway. To mix things up, I decided to corner to the left and onto the other runway, ignoring Nathan's comments, having stopped his screaming at the top of his voice.

"It kind of feels like Knockhill..." Nathan said as I got to the end of the runway.

"It does, doesn't it?" I replied as I flicked the tail out and went down another section of the taxiway, which for circuit racing terms, was highly technical. It had a long bend to the left, like a left hand version of the Dunlop on the Circuit de la Sarthe (Le Mans), whilst containing a side area which could be used as a chicane, also similar to the Le Mans circuit, and a sharp right hand corner which can be described as a right hand version of Gambon from Dunsfold Aerodrome (aka. the Top Gear Test Track).

Performing each corner to the best of my abilities, I headed past the other end of the runway and drove down the taxi-way on the other side which lead through more high speed turns like a shorter version of Curva Biassono on Monza, and had a section of opposing corners which could test the amount of stress the car goes through in a section consisting of two separate chicanes.

I like to call that segment Imp's Sickle, as it was shaped like a sickle (kind of) and due to the Hillman Imp, a hatchback made in the past that my dad learned to drive in and his uncle helped to build, which would have been great in those corners.

He said the reliability wasn't great, but it was a small car and it was the first mass-produced car in Britain that had large numbers of components of the engine, including the block and cylinders, made out of aluminium. It also had the engine in the rear of the car and was rear wheel drive, like a Porsche 911, which aided it in cornering. As a result of these design features, it won the British Touring Car Championship three times: in 1970, 1971 and 1972, as well as the Tulip Rally in Holland in 1965.

They only made one Imp for every ten Minis that rolled off of the production line, right enough, but still, I suppose it could be worse. They could have ended up producing a car that looked like the Lancia Thesis.

If you don't know what a Thesis looks like, which may be perfectly understandable, think of a Jaguar S-Type, only longer... and worse looking.

Thank fuck they didn't bring them to the UK.

Anyway...

Getting round these corners was a pain in the arse, mainly due to the fact that the car's weight distribution is very front heavy. If I remember correctly, the weight distribution is 55:45, which I think roughly makes the car weigh nearly a tonne at the front (roughly 990 kilograms if my maths is right).

In the faster corners, this wasn't a problem, but with the tighter turns, the heavy front end weight made the car prone to slight understeer.

Nothing that a little drift couldn't handle, although I suspect that hurt the car's overall lap time.

My old Lotus would make mincemeat out of this track.

After exiting the corner, I stepped hard on the accelerator so I came back to roughly where I had started, going round another left hand Biassono-esque corner on the way to where we had decided was the finishing line.

Slowing down to a full stop, I took my hands off of the steering wheel and looked to my left to see the response from Nathan. Eventually, he spoke.

"Not exactly the Alpine Handling Circuit, but still pretty good," he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. "Can we do that again? I want to see the lap time."

"Aye," I replied, putting my hands back onto the steering wheel. "I'd like to see it for myself."

I turned the launch control on again as he nodded his head.

"Three..."

Race mode...

"Two..."

Now, just rev it into the right range, brake on...

"One... GO!"

And with that, I took my foot off the brake pedal and let the launch control do its thing, letting the car accelerate much faster than the car in its normal comfort setting.

After this, I simply followed the track again, with the advantages of knowing what I was doing this time and the different traction control settings really helping in the corners. Imp's Sickle was still a challenge, but I still felt like this lap was much faster than the previous one.

After I had crossed the line, I brought the car to a gradual halt. I then turned to Nathan, smirking at the face he was making. "Well? What was the time?"

Nathan looked down at his phone. "One minute, and fifty three point four seconds."

I raised my eyebrow. "Is that fast?"

"No idea."

"Well, if it goes round Anglesay in 1:41," I began, turning away from him and instead looking at the dashboard. "And that's 2.1 miles, then if I use the odometer to calculate how far I've travelled..."

I trailed off as I began to calculate the total distance. The odometer function of the car stated that I had travelled five and a half miles since I started the car again, so if I subtracted a tenth of a mile, since that was roughly the distance I travelled to the start line, then I would end up with 5.4 miles. Divide that number by the two laps I did of the track, and I would end up with roughly 2.7 miles.

I also took into consideration the fact that this track had a mixture of straights and both short and long corners, as well as them being fast or tight corners, as well as a double chicane. With all of this taken into account, and judging from what I know to be the car's weakness, I had finally made up my mind.

"Yeah, I think it's fast," I answered, turning back to Nathan. "Sure, it's not a Radical GT3 by any standards, or a Lotus, for that matter, but it's still very quick."

"Even quicker than your old Esprit?"

I stayed silent at this, the mere mention of that car was enough to make me feel nervous. Especially around him. If he ever found out the truth about what happened...

"...okay, then," he said suddenly. "Just ignore me."

"What was the question?" I asked, in an attempt to salvage the situation from the awkward state it was in.

"I asked if it was quicker than your Lotus?"

"No," I replied with a laugh, as I was thinking of a joke the entire time. "The only way it would be quicker is if the Lotus broke down half way around the track."

We both did a belly laugh at that point, basically at how a lot of British cars were - and still are - unreliable.

You see, the problem with the British car industry is that most companies (looking at you, British Leyland) were not really equipped to make cars as other countries moved forward - Germany and Japan being the most notable example. The problem really was that unlike America, the UK was hit very badly during the Second World War by German bombers, and later the V-series of rockets (V1/'Doodlebug' and V2) launched from mainland Europe.

As a result, rebuilding all of the cities from the wrecks was extremely expensive, and there was no money to go around for most normal people, let alone building new cars. That's why rationing lasted for fifteen years after the war started, and for nine years after it ended.

The industry was further affected in the sixties and seventies by the twats in the management sector. The 'managers' probably wouldn't be able to manage a creche, never mind a car factory, and were making the workers work in poor conditions, and with very little pay.

As a result, the British Leyland worker's day at <insert car assembly plant here> would consist of going to work at ten to nine, standing outside until the tea break, have said tea break, go back to standing around outside until lunch, have lunch and stand outside of the plant again until work was over at five.

Yes, they were on strike the whole time.

Eventually, any profitable companies, such as MG, Rover, Austin, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mini and the like were sold to foreign companies, while the ones that weren't were liquidated.

I wasn't old enough to witness that sort of thing myself, but my father did, whilst his uncle was working his hardest at the Linwood factory where the Hillman Imp - and later the Chrysler Sunbeam was produced. The Sunbeam was a shit car as well, but the Lotus version... boy, was that a different story.

I'm talking about the last car to win the World Rally Championship before Group B was created. To really point out how great this car was, Henri Toivonen helped win the championship for Talbot in 1981. You know, the guy who was said to be the only man who could tame the Lancia Delta S4.

Although we know how that ended up going.

Talk about going off on tangents! There's a history lesson to sink your teeth into.

The laughter finally died down after a while. Eventually I spoke out, setting the car back into the normal traction control settings. "Alright, I think we've seen enough."

"Fine. I'll contact Sonic to let him know that the facilities are adequate for production, with a few minor tweaks."

"Well, let's get going."

We were talking in the car as we drove back to Canterlot, the rough terrain taking a toll on our spines. We were about to approach the rail tracks that we would take to drive to the city in the mountains, but then, disaster struck.

"...so, Spitfire then turns around and says-"

"AAAAHHHH!" I screamed suddenly.

"What?" Nathan asked. "Have you seen a ghost of some sorts? Or did you realise you were late for a meeting?"

"No, worse," I replied as I pointed towards the dashboard.

Nathan, confused as to what I was getting at, leaned over and looked at the dashboard. His eyes widened when he saw for himself what I was scared about.

"Fuel warning light!" I shouted again.

"And we have to climb all of that..."

Slowly, Nathan and I turned to look at each other. There was silence as we entered the tunnel, but after a few seconds, we decided to scream at the top of our lungs in a fashion that would make you believe there was a serial killer in the car.

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"

Weirdly, we managed to get there before we ran out of fuel - if only just. I pulled the car into a spot that would be more easily accessible for me to put fuel in, as Thomas had managed to explained the process of obtaining petrol to some of Equestria's chemical engineers.

"We made it?" Nathan asked in surprise as we got out the car.

"I glad we did. I'm not willing to be pushing a car that weights nearly two tonnes this late at night," I replied, as I started to walk back to the castle. "I better get going if I want to get some good rest tonight."

"It's only eight thirty though," Nathan replied, confused as to why I would go to sleep that early.

"True, but I would like to be up earlier in the morning so I can do some running," I replied. "You know, to keep fit and all that."

"Okay, you do what you want to do. See you later."

And with that, I walked back to my room, grabbing something quick to eat on the way. Very quickly I was on my bed, thinking about the upcoming weeks.

Things are going to be much busier over the next couple of weeks, for all of us.

But then, my mind strayed away to something I didn't want to think about.

Emily...

As a result, memory after memory came back to me, with one in particular seeming to be on a loop constantly.

I've got to tell Celestia at some point, I promised her. But when do I tell Nathan? Do I tell him at all?

...

Celestia... I don't know how she'll react to it.

But Nathan...

...

No doubt I'm dead to him if I tell him.