The Adventures of Arbuckle
Breaking the Schnitzel Bank
Jon's search around the mansion showed no signs that either Garfield nor Odie were anywhere near there, but he had to be sure. He was told by the stellar horse that by helping others he'd find them, but as he searched each room, he didn't find a single trace of them and grew more scared and desperate. He didn't even call out to them so that he wouldn't alert the mayor to his presence.
He hadn't actually seen the mayor since he arrived, but if what the griffins said was true, he'd be there somewhere, holed up with all the schnitzel he had been taking from them. Jon shuddered to think what kind of terrible person would take food from the people in the town he was running, especially when it brought them such joy at their festival.
The house proved much larger than he thought before, now that his search took him through several rooms without him finding his pets, and eventually, he got lost in the maze-like hallways of the house. He opened the next door, and discovered it to be the kitchen. Things seemed to be looking up for him now. Out of all the rooms, this was the most likely place for the boys to be.
"Garfield? "Odie," He whispered, hoping they would come out of wherever they may have been hiding. No response came from either of them.
Jon heard something fall down inside of a cupboard and got his hopes up. The cupboard slowly creaked open, but what came out was not either one of his pets. Instead, a can rolled out to the ground, followed by a tiny mouse who pushed the can away with its little front legs.
After the mouse was out of sight, Jon heard a new sound: footsteps followed by a clacking noise that were becoming steadily louder.
Jon knew he was trespassing, and didn't want to face the mayor's wrath, whatever it may be.
He first tried to dive under the table, only to realize he was perfectly exposed under there.
He came out and looked for another place to hide, when he noticed a gentle breeze.
Looking up, he saw a slowly spinning fan, which was high enough to keep him out of sight. He jumped a few times try and grab it to pull himself up, but it was too far out of his reach.
Jon needed a way to get up there. He stood up on the counter and jumped towards the fan, now grabbing hold of it. If he had any common sense though, he would have turned it off before he did. He grabbed the spinning blade with his teeth, but as he tried to grip the other blades with his hooves, one of them hit a small switch on the fan that made it rotate even faster. He spun around on the blades before he was thrown off them, landing hard against the fridge.
When Jon shook his head, he heard that the footsteps had grown closer now. He looked desperately for a new place, even going so far as to consider jumping inside a jar of biscuits the way Garfield would hide in the cookie jar.
The approaching footsteps made his decision for him. He stuck his head in the jar and tried to pull the rest of himself in, but he couldn't do it. That's what he got for not being a cat.
He blindly scrambled around the kitchen, trying to take the jar off his head until he ended up charging headfirst into a cabinet, shattering it. Then he heard the footsteps again.
They were now in the kitchen with him, far at the other end of the room.
Jon couldn't see the owner of the footsteps as he stayed hidden behind the counter, but he heard the steps growing closer to his position.
Without a single thought, he jumped inside the cabinet he was in front of, shifting his body to uncomfortable proportions to fit between the various utensils that were kept in there.
He waited and listened to what was happening out there. No more noises came, giving Jon the impression that whoever was out there stopped walking and was analyzing the room for an intruder. He opened the cabinet door a crack to see what was happening. Nobody was there, and the only thing in his view was the counter on the opposite side of him, and the refrigerator.
Suddenly, the refrigerator shifted to the side a small distance, only an inch or two. Then it shifted again.
Jon knew only one animal who would drag an entire fridge behind him, and he was about to beckon him into his hiding place.
"Filthy animal," Jon heard a dry, croaky voice say, "I'll teach you to steal from me!"
It seemed that the fridge thief had been caught. Jon recalled the terrible things that the griffins told him about the mayor, and wasn't about to let his pet get hurt. He burst out of the cabinet and rushed to the aid of his cat, only to feel something incredibly hard hit his head and knock him to the floor.
After Jon's vision cleared, he saw the mouse from before with the refrigerator cord slung over its shoulder, before it ran away to safety. When he stood back up, Jon found himself staring at the face of the single bitterest, meanest, make-you-run-for-your-life-screaming old creature he had ever seen. In one shriveled talon, Jon could see a wooden cane, most likely what had just hit him.
"Vhat are you doing in my house, pony," he croaked, disdain clearly evident in his tone.
"Uh...hi," Jon said, coming up short for what to say to the mayor.
The mayor's cane suddenly flashed in front of his face, hovering between his eyes.
"Don't 'hi' me. Vhat are you doing in my house," the mayor repeated.
Jon sweated nervously as he stammered before answering, "Uh--I--So, you like schnitzel? I know someone else who does."
This earned him a jab between the eyes from the cane.
"Do not think that you can appeal to me to share my schnitzel vith the others," the mayor spat to Jon as he took a step closer to Jon. Though the mayor was much older and shorter than he was, he still managed to intimidate Jon into backing away slowly a few steps. "In my long years, I've grown tired of all the things this world has to offer! It vas only vhen I came to this town that I found the one thing that can abate my sorrows. I saw the joys that the schnitzel brought to the town, and I vanted it all for myself. The process of lovingly making it, the smell of the finished product, and the sight of the perfectly prepared dish...It's almost as if I'm young once more."
Jon never met anyone who liked food that much. Maybe Garfield, but even he didn't like food the same way that the mayor did. While Garfield loved food because of the different ways to make it and the flavors that it yielded, along with a bottomless stomach. But the mayor had some kind of sentimental attachment to the dish that bordered crazy. He thought it may be wise to try and explain the situation to the mayor.
"I'm not saying you have to share it. I mean that...I have these pets who eat me out of house and home. I thought that they might be up here, since you have all this great schnitzel."
"You vhat," the mayor growled, "You intrude in my home after you set your gluttonous animals loose in here!? I von't have it! I von't let you ruin vhat little joy I have left!"
He raised his cane high to strike Jon again, but this time Jon was ready for it.
As the cane came down, Jon dodged to the side so that the cane struck the counter, cracking its surface upon impact. Jon already knew that the cane was nothing to be trifled with, but seeing the damage it could inflict drained all the color from his face.
Jon dodged each blow as they sailed past him and destroyed everything around him.
Before long, Jon tried fighting back by heroically wielding a soup ladle against the mayor.
But Jon wasn't a hero. He was a sissy. In no time at all, the mayor swatted the ladle out of Jon's teeth high into the air, which then landed on Jon's head.
"I have no time for you," the mayor said before he urgently left the room.
Jon saw this and knew exactly where he was going. It was his last chance at finding Garfield and Odie there, so he went with his only choice: follow the mayor.
Jon rushed out of the kitchen and saw the mayor's tail disappear around a corner. He followed in the same direction, but soon as he rounded the corner, he shrieked as he ducked under the mayor's cane.
"Turn back, pony," the mayor ordered, "I'll not have you invading my sanctuary!"
He jabbed Jon with his cane once more and ran away down the halls.
But Jon wasn't about to be deterred. He continued to chase the mayor through the various rooms of the house, no matter what the mayor did to stop him.
As Jon gained on the mayor, the elderly griffin tried to impede his progress any way he could. Any object, be it a vase, a painting or a candelabra, they were thrown at Jon as they made their way down the halls.
Jon was hit by every one of them, but no matter how much pain it caused him, or how ridiculous he looked with his head stuck through a painting of a griffin in a dress, flowers in his mane and candles stuck up his nose, he pressed on unfazed.
After their chase led them through another doorway, Jon was finally hindered when the mayor swung a low table at Jon's legs, taking them out from under him.
Jon did a graceless somersault and landed on his back, with only a second's notice that the mayor's cane was coming down on him.
He turned so that the cane struck the frame of the painting around his neck before he quickly scrambled to his hooves to face the mayor.
The mayor wasted no time leaving the room to rush to his destination.
Jon quickly shook off all of his silly decorations and continued his pursuit. No matter how the mayor tried to lose him, Jon was determined to keep up.
Soon, the surroundings grew familiar to Jon, and he realized they were heading back to the main foyer of the mansion. He followed the mayor up the stairs, but was stopped when he saw the mayor holding a marble bust of himself, ready to smash it on Jon's head.
In less than a second, Jon grabbed another bust and lightly tossed it to the mayor.
"Here! Catch!"
The mayor let go of the bust over his head to catch the one thrown at him, making it come down on his head, and momentarily stunning him.
As Jon looked for another way to attack the mayor, the griffin recovered and pushed him over the railing.
Jon barely managed to grab the rail and pull himself up to resume his chase.
At the end of the hall, he saw the mayor disappear through a door, which he closed behind him.
Jon burst through the door and cringed with his hooves up, expecting to be attacked. When nothing happened, he peeked through his hooves and saw no trace of the mayor, but he did find something more interesting.
The room was very large, almost big enough to take up the entire second floor, and had no visible windows anywhere, but most striking of all: it was filled schnitzel.
The breaded meat lined the shelves of the walls, and was placed on pedestals that were placed on either side of a red carpet. All manner of shapes and sizes of the dish were stacked in decorative ways that almost made the room seem like a temple, or a shrine of some kind.
Now Jon knew this guy liked schnitzel on a whole different level than Garfield did. Also evident was that neither of his pets were there. If they were, there would be no food left in the room.
Jon would have lamented his rotten luck if he hadn't noticed all the schnitzel in the room. It was plain for him to see that the mayor could have easily shared a fraction of his collection, and still have much to spare. But that didn't matter to him. All that mattered was his own happiness over others'.
He became aware of a clacking noise, and turned his head to see the mayor on his cane appearing from around one of the stacks. "It vould seem that my sanctuary remains so," he croaked before he turned to Jon. "Since there vere no animals in here to begin vith: I vill forgive your intrusion this one time. Now begone!"
"Okay," Jon answered, not wanting any further conflict with the mayor. But his mind was still settled on the food there.
He remembered the advice that the stellar horse gave him, and decided that it wouldn't hurt if he took just one platter to the griffins. Maybe it was bringing them just a small amount of joy that would be the key to finding his pets. "I'll just be going now, no harm done," Jon said as he tried to surreptitiously take a platter of schnitzel. Big mistake.
The platter he took must have been a load bearing platter, since as soon as he removed it, the entire stack came crashing down and blocked the door behind him. When the last plate fell, Jon could only nervously smile as the mayor glared murderously at him.
"Well, no sense letting this all go to waste. Why don't I bring it to the griffins in the town," he offered.
The mayor answered with a lunge of his cane, which Jon dodged by diving to the side, while the cane went through the wall.
"You are a vaste! You are a vaste of space, a vaste of air, a vaster of perfectly good schnitzel," the mayor growled as he continued to swing at Jon.
Jon tried to hide by jumping behind some of the schnitzel displays, only for the mayor's can to jab through the gaps and hit him in the chest. Jon recoiled backwards and tried to intimidate the mayor, "H-Hey, back off! I took down your bull with sauerkraut, so just think what I can do to you!"
The mayor wasn't easily intimidated though, "Knuckle Duster? Ha! I only keep that beef head around so that I von't have to leave my house!" He jumped over the display and swung his cane hard, cracking the floor when he missed Jon. "I can easily deal vith wrongdoers on my own! And since you crossed me: nopony, nocreature, vill find even a hoof clipping after I'm done vith you!"
Jon tried to defend himself by throwing plates at the mayor, only to see them caught in his free talon while he swung his cane at Jon with the other.
This was going nowhere. His three main objectives at the moment were to beat the mayor, escape, and then return the schnitzel to the griffins, but this was easier said than done.
Jon was pushed back against a wall, and the mayor thrust his cane towards Jon's head again, which Jon barely dodged as well. When the mayor pulled his cane out of the wall, Jon saw something through the hole it left: a knothole view of the town. A look back at the stacks of schnitzel in the room made something click in Jon's bean brain.
He was no fighter, but that didn't matter, because Jon was a dork with way too many hobbies and that was all he needed to be.
As the mayor swung his cane again, Jon put up his hooves, and took one fast step to the side, sending the cane deep into the wall. When the elderly griffin tried to pull his cane loose, he saw Jon, who was now pressing his hooves against an invisible wall with an exaggerated look of bewilderment on his face.
Many things annoyed the mayor, but none so much as a talent-less mime. Were it up to him, every sort of street performer would be put out of his misery by being thrown to the ursas. He pulled his cane loose, along with a small chunk of the wall, and swung with even more fury than before. But every swing he took missed its target, raising his ire every time his opponent made that overly-frightened face. Every swing and thrust was met with a hole in the wall, and more incessant miming.
After what seemed like a hundred holes had been put in the wall, Jon did a graceful leap away from it and the mayor swung at him again.
He hesitated, when Jon put a pedestal that had schnitzel on top of it between them. He tried to swing from a different angle, only to have Jon put the pedestal between them again.
Every angle the mayor tried, Jon moved his shield as if he were ballroom dancing.
Jon blocked another blow by dipping his 'dance partner,' making the schnitzel on top slide off.
The mayor dove to save the falling schnitzel, only for Jon to grab it and several other plates, and start juggling with them.
They mayor would allow no harm to come to his precious schnitzel. Hitting Jon would mean that he would drop the plates, so he tried to take each plate that Jon was juggling.
Even though he was able to recover some of the plates, Jon just picked up more and juggled with them. Soon, Jon began discarding them on his own and threw them into a circular formation on the floor.
Jon then moved to throwing entire platters full of schnitzel into the air for the mayor to catch, who stacked them in the circular formation. This kept up over and over so that the mayor was building an entire tower of schnitzel that reached to the incredibly high ceiling. Soon, Jon was tossing plates high into the air for the mayor to catch and gently place at the top of the schnitzel-skyscraper.
With one last toss, the mayor caught a plate and landed on the top of the tower, where he gently placed the plate. With a sigh, he was able to put his nerves at ease as he was able to save his hoard. But Jon had other plans.
With the mayor busy, Jon carefully observed the base of the tower and found the keystone plate.
"Yoink," Jon said as he pulled the plate loose. He took a small bite of the schnitzel, and remarked how good it was. No wonder the griffins loved it so much. Then he realized a very crucial factor: he was standing in the shadow of a collapsing tower of schnitzel.
With a completely un-masculine scream, the tower fell on him and brought the mayor with it, right into the wall that was full of holes.
All the holes that they mayor put in the wall had weakened it to the point that could not stand much weight to be pressed against it. The force of the schnitzel tower was more than enough to break through the wall and send Jon and the mayor sprawling through the streets on a wave of tasty meat.
After riding the pan-fried tide through the town, Jon came to a halt against the front legs of a griffin, which after his vision cleared, he saw to be Greta.
"Did I win," Jon asked as stars and tiny griffins flew around his head. The next thing he knew, he was lifted off his hooves as Greta tightly embraced him.
"You've done it," she excitedly shouted, "You've saved Schnitzel-Fest!"
The griffins all cheered for the stranger who saved their festival. So much so, that they didn't notice the mayor weakly crawl out from under the pile of schnitzel before passing out.
That year, the celebration was held with exponentially more joviality and laughter than any year before. That year, the schnitzel tasted better, the games were more fun, and the merriment was merrier than anything that could have been in all of the land. Even some new activities were added to the festival.
Bound, gagged, and suspended over a dunk tank full of sauerkraut, the mayor and Knuckle Duster struggled helplessly as a ball hit the lever that dropped them both into the vat of putrid-ness. One griffin's ball missed the target lever and instead hit the mayor in his beak. That would have normally been against the rules, but this year, the griffin running the game decided to grant six bonus throws to whoever missed the target. Were they not gagged, the two dunking victims would have screamed as a hail of balls came flying towards them.
Back in the fountain square, the music played on and the griffins continued their dance, though several of them gathered around Jon as he shared his story about what happened at the mansion. Sure, some creative liberties were taken, such as how Jon 'faced his opponent without fear,' but it remained true to the spirit of the story and would become a legend in the years to come.
His heroics earned him a peck on his cheek from Greta, which make him sweat profusely, grin like an idiot and drop to the ground. The resulting laughter rang loud over the joviality of the festival, but it all stopped when a gentle light shone in the fountain square.
From the light, stardust fell and created an archway like the one Jon took to come to this town in the first place. All around, concerned murmurs sounded about what the anomaly was. "What is that," asked one of the griffins.
"I think it's where I have to go next," Jon answered. He had done what he was instructed, and helped these griffins. So, maybe where he was going next would be where he would find his boys.
"But you just got here," Greta protested. She had only just met him, and wanted to learn more about him, but now he was saying that he had to go away. It wasn't fair to her.
Jon hated to have to leave, especially when he had just made a bunch of new friends, but he still had a job to do. "I'm sorry I can't stay, but I still have to find my pets. It's like you said earlier: any one of you would go if it were your loved ones. Well, those boys are all that I have in my life, and I don't know what I'd do if I didn't find them."
Jon's words sank into the griffin's minds. Sure, he was pathetic for only having pets in his life, but he was so earnest that they had to support his decision.
"Alright. But don't be gone too long. You still have to finish your heroic story for us," Greta said.
Goodbyes filled the square as Jon left through the archway, which closed up behind him. Many a griffin was saddened by his departure, but their sorrow was soon forgotten by the continuing of their festival, and the joy and laughter it brought them.
Garfield's entire body felt warm, and his head grew light. After a second of vertigo passed, Garfield let out an immense burp.
"Whoah. That was the weirdest gas I ever had," he said as he munched on another cannoli while Pinkie was cleaning up the mess he made from his monster burp.
"Come on, Mr. Kitty," Pinkie said giddily as she handed Garfield a broom, "You made this mess, so you have to help clean it up. It's all part of party etiquette, you know?" She stood there with a grin, as though she were expecting him to actually get up and help with the cleanup.
Garfield briefly thought about what she said. Pinkie had been nice to him since he arrived, and made him a huge banquet for the sole reason that he came to town, but his lazy nature won out as usual. "Sure, it's the polite thing to do, but in all fairness: the food was here first before the mess. And in the sense of fairness, I'll just finish this up while you keep cleaning."
He didn't even get to finish his snack when he was interrupted by a shrill, incredibly loud scream.