//------------------------------//
// The Adventures of Arbuckle: Welcome to Appleloosa 
// Story: Garfield: Friendship is a Big, Fat, Hairy Deal 
// by wingdingaling 
//------------------------------//


The Adventures of Arbuckle

Welcome to Appleloosa


Jon's walk through the tunnel was just as strange as the one before. It was the same starry scenery, but with it came a strange sensation of forward movement. Behind him was the lingering smell of schnitzel, but it was soon wafted away by a breeze blowing in front of him. The breeze started out very small, but the farther Jon walked, the stronger it blew.
To satisfy a small curiosity he had, Jon started walking backwards and the breeze became weaker.
He walked forward more, and it increased in strength again.
He took more steps back, and then many forward to the point the breeze became very strong.
He stepped back to where it was weaker, and would have kept up his goofing off, if it wasn't for a strong breeze that blew behind him and rushed him forward.
"Okay! Okay! Don't get pushy," Jon shouted to whoever was there.
He walked forward on his own, and the wind in his face grew stronger and stronger, along with the feeling of motion that started below him. The feeling soon enveloped him from all sides, and was joined by a new smell, like smoke.
The wind became so strong that it blew him back with its force.
Jon ended up crawling back the way he came toward the other end of the tunnel, and closer to the doorway at the end. He reached one of his hooves out to open it, but it disappeared before him and he found himself elsewhere as a loud whistle sounded off.
Instead of the starry tunnel, Jon found himself in a small compartment with seats arranged on either side of the aisle he was laying in. A chugging noise, and another whistle sounding alerted him that he was now on a train that was going somewhere.
When he got up and looked out the window, he saw that he was in the middle of some vast desert, and in the distance, he could see what looked like a small settlement town with an apple orchard behind it. Maybe that was where his pets were.
"Hey! Who the hay are you!"
Jon turned to the direction of the voice, and saw that the car he was in was also occupied by two other ponies. Both were dressed in old western outfits, complete with ten gallon hats and bandannas around their necks. And judging from the look they were giving him, they were none too happy to see him.
"Uh...It's a nice day for a run, isn't it," Jon nervously asked before he bolted for the door behind him.
"Get that stowaway," one of the other ponies shouted as they both ran after him.
Jon burst through the door, and stopped short when he saw that he was on the caboose end of the train, and was about to run right off it onto the tracks. His rear hooves barely stayed on the train, while his front hooves waved around while he tried to regain his balance.
As his front hooves flailed about, each one caught onto something behind him, and he used them to pull himself back onto the train. What he found he was holding onto was the bandannas of the two stallions who were chasing him.
"Thanks guys," Jon said hastily, and quickly proceeded to tie their bandannas to each other before he ran back the other way.
When he exited the car and crossed over the other, he quickly entered it and grabbed something to barricade the door with. Unfortunately, what he grabbed was another unhappy pony who was glaring intensely at him.
Jon looked back, and saw there were more ponies, all dressed in old west attire, who were ready to jump him.
"Do I need to show a ticket," he asked, shifty eyed. He knew he was in trouble, and needed an out.
Without thinking, Jon reached up to the luggage compartment to find something to drop on their heads, and maybe even something to defend himself with. Instead, he got a big surprise.
As soon as he opened the compartments, out fluttered a whole flock of ducks. It wasn't what he had in mind, but it was doing what he intended.
All the stallions stepped back as the frightened, agitated ducks flapped toward them.
"Aw, nuts! We just rustled those birds," one of them yelled.
Jon decided to see what other surprises were held in the compartments and opened them on after the other. Sure enough, out came more ducks, a bunch of chickens, and even a large turkey that had to squeeze its way out.
Despite the success of his plan, Jon got caught up in the pandemonium. He had no way of knowing which way he was going and which way he came from, not only from the fog of feathers around him, but also from the fact that the stallions were still trying to attack him.
Jon got past them easily enough, by pulling their hats in front of their faces, handing them one of the birds, or simply pushing past them. He almost reached the door, when he felt one of the grab his tail and pull him back towards them.
"Where do ya think yer goin' stranger," one of the stallions said as he pulled Jon back towards them, and they all proceeded to jump on him and beat the ever loving snot out of him.
Or they would have, if the turkey didn't jump into their midst, followed by the other birds. They soon became a jumble of ponies, ducks and chickens, and none of them could tell who was who in the confusion.
Jon took advantage of this, and simply crawled out from beneath the pile with the turkey perched on top of his head. He crawled to the door and left promptly to the next car. One of the stallions saw him going and alerted the others.
"He's goin' to the 'Stolen Bits' Car!"
They all started clambering after him, making Jon and the turkey scream loudly as Jon ran out the door, and tried to undo the coupling between the two cars.
The turkey on Jon's head gobbled urgently to hurry his progress.
"I'm trying! It's not as easy as westerns make it look," Jon strained as he struggled with the coupling.
When the other ponies all tried to get through the door at once, Jon worked doubly hard to separate the cars.
The turkey offered its helping hand by trying to peck it loose.
The pin holding the cars together started to loosen, and just as one of the thugs from the other car squeezed through the door, Jon finally pulled it loose, and the two cars started separating.
The stallion who was approaching them was in the unfortunate position of having his front hooves on one car, and his back hooves on the other. The two cars pulled apart, and the only thing holding them together was the length of the pony. One of the others tried to use him as a bridge, but Jon wasn't going to stay for when he crossed. He ran into the car behind him, and he found another surprise.
In this car, they found bags and bags of money. Some of them were so full that they couldn't even be drawn shut. Jon started to put what he had seen together.
"Wait a second: rustled livestock? Stolen money? Bandannas? These guys are bandits!"
The turkey dragged its wing down its face. It was a turkey, and it knew that!
Both of their attention snapped to the door as it opened, and one of the bandits stepped in.
Thinking quickly, Jon grabbed a bag of money and threw it out the window.
The pony who was coming through saw what was happening, and dove to save the loot. It was already out the window when he caught it in his teeth.
As soon as he did, another bag was thrown out that same window, and another pony dove out to save it, which nearly pushed the first bandit all the way out.
Jon continued to throw the money bags to keep them all distracted while he continued his way to escape.
Of course, so far, he only escaped into greater danger.
Sure enough, one of the bags he threw became surrounded by a yellow aura, and drifted over to a pony with a horn on his head, which was glowing the same yellow color.
Any other time, Jon would have squealed like a schoolgirl if he saw a unicorn, but not when the unicorn was swinging a heavy bag of coins like it was a blackjack at him.
Jon decided to use the one weapon he had at his disposal: being an utter dork.
He allowed the bag of coins to hit him, and at the same time, he jumped backwards so that he somersaulted and landed on his face, before springing to his hooves and leaving out the door.
"That worked out pretty nicely," Jon said optimistically.
The turkey on his head didn't share his sunny outlook, since it didn't particularly enjoy almost having its beak broken by a bag of coins.
"Don't worry, I bet we're safe now," he assured the bird on his head.
It then gobbed loudly as more danger approached them.
When Jon looked in the direction of its alarm, he saw two ponies flying out of the windows to get to him.
"Pegasuses! Pegases!? Pegasi? Pegusen," Jon asked, unsure of what the plural was.
As he was pondering grammar, one of them swooped in and carried him and the turkey off the train and high over the desert, likely to drop them.
It was just as Jon thought.
The pegasus let go of him, but Jon wasn't about to go so easily.
He grabbed hold of the pegasus's bandanna and held on for dear life. His dangling weight made flying difficult for the winged pony to keep his balance while flying, and the turkey pecking his head wasn't making his life easier.
The pegasus flew around blindly until his friend came in to help him, at which point, Jon let go and grabbed onto the pegasus's back.
Jon was barely able to cling to the pony's lower waist, and was being shaken hard so he'd let go.
The turkey on his head started pecking the pegasus's back, until Jon looked down and saw they were approaching the town he saw earlier, and an idea came to him.
"Work the wings, Gobbles," he shouted to his avian companion.
The turkey did as instructed and worked its pecking up to the pegasus's wings.
"NO! NO! DON'T WORK THE WINGS," the pegasus shouted in protest.
No good though, as the bird kept up its pecking, and made the pegasus lose some control over his wings.
Jon took advantage of that, and twisted his flier's waist so that he could steer him towards the streets of the town.
"WHAT THE HAY ARE YA DOIN'?!! STOP THAT," the pegasus shouted more. But Jon was determined to make a safe landing.
Meanwhile, the turkey kept pecking away. Perhaps a little too much, since all of a sudden, in one sudden wave, many of the pegasus's feathers blew off, and prevented him from flying.
Jon's first order of business was to shake the feathers off of his face (unaware that he looked like Albert Einstein before he did) and try to glide to a landing.
Thing was, they were gliding too fast to land without injury. In a last ditch effort, Jon let go of the pony and held onto the turkey, who fluttered hard so that he and Jon slowly floated to the ground.
"SORRY! HAVE A SAFE LANDING," Jon shouted to the pony, genuinely hoping he didn't get hurt too bad.
The pegasus hit a wall.
"Oof! I guess it's slightly better than hitting that cactus patch right next to it."
He and the turkey both landed safely in the town's main street, just as a train was pulling up. Through the windows, Jon recognized a few of the faces from before and alerted the town.
"BANDITS!! SOMEONE CALL THE SHERIFF AND GET A POSSE OUT HERE!!"
Instead, all the townsponies ran inside and locked their doors.
"What kind of western town is this," Jon asked, outraged by such a thing.
His outrage became fear as the bandits from the train all poured out the doors and windows, and started making their way into the town streets.
While most of them went about looting the town, two in particular made their way towards Jon, brandishing large clubs as they did.
"Well, lookee here: it's that stowaway from earlier," one of them said.
"We gotta pay ya back fer what ya did to our bandannas. Sure, they ain't expansive, but I'll be danged if ya didn't ruin a perfectly good accessory," the other one finished.
Fashion faux pas aside, Jon had to duck under a swing that was aimed for his head, while the turkey had to jump to avoid getting hit. Then another, and another.
It kept up until Jon decided to try the same strategy he used earlier.
The turkey saw that Jon was about to let himself get hit again, and fluttered off of Jon's head and away from the danger zone.
Meanwhile, Jon did what he did before, and jumped backwards as he got hit to escape with minimal harm.
It didn't work as well as he had hoped, since he landed in a blacksmith's open furnace.
With a shriek, Jon spread his hooves so that he landed safely on the stone perimeter of the furnace, but didn't have time to rest as the two bandits swung at his legs.
Jon avoided each hit by keeping in mind the tap dancing lessons from his youth, and quickly pulled his legs out of harm's way, followed by quickly replacing his foot on the solid ground.
Jon kept dodging in concert with their blows, and soon he began to actually have fun doing so, and added his own moves to what he learned as a boy.
One he added was when both bandits swung down at his sides, and he jumped on top of their clubs, which also put his hooves, and his opponent's faces over the red hot coals.
With a yell, they all jerked away, but Jon's hooves remained on his opponent's clubs.
They both swung their clubs out from under Jon, which made him only barely get a foothold on the edges of the furnace, while his face and body were dangerously close to the coals.
The two bandits continued to swing at Jon, who now arched and twisted his body so that instead of hitting him, they were hitting each other.
With one last jump, Jon dodged what was sure to be a crippling blow, and allowed his two assailants to knock each other out.
Jon returned to the street, and was immediately assaulted by one of the bandits. He was lucky enough to dodge the attack and put up his mime stance, remembering how effective it was against the mayor from before.
Miming being a boxer was not a smart idea on his part, since it oddly left him open to a series of sucker punches that ended with an uppercut that sent him flying onto a table that was loaded with every apple dish imaginable.
The bandit lifted Jon up by his collar to punch him some more, but jumped back with a startled shout at what he saw.
When he lifted Jon up, two apple rings were stuck over Jon's eyes, his face was dripping with applesauce, and he had three whole apples stuffed inside of his mouth.
Jon quickly spat out the apples into his attacker's face, and shook off the rings around his eyes. He was about to find a way to keep up his assault, but it was kept up for him.
An apple pie flew over his shoulder and hit his attacker in the face. It was followed by another one, which made the bandit recoil backwards.
For years, Garfield tried to convince Jon that apparitions that he called 'spluts' existed, and now the proof was looking him in the face. His side was joined by a yellow stallion in a hat and a vest, who was carrying stacks of pies on his back.
"Come on, stranger: quit starin' an' start splattin'," he told Jon as he placed one of his stacks on Jon's back. "Fight the good fight for Appleloosa!"
After taking a brief second to understand what was happening, Jon noticed that all of the townsponies who ran into hiding before were now in the streets fighting back with an arsenal of apple pies.
Another festival, maybe? Whatever it was, it was doing its job at keeping the bandits at bay. An approaching hoard of bandits forced Jon to join the action.
Jon's first instinct was to do what he did best: make a spectacle of himself. He started by bucking the pies on his back high into the air, and grabbed each of them as they came down one by one to thrown at them before they could loot anything. The final bandit was passing close by Jon, so he simply grabbed a pie and smashed it in his face.
The pony whose face he hit went stiff as a board, and when the empty pie tin slid off his face, it revealed his intensely angry visage.
Jon had seen that look plenty of times from women he dated. It was a look that said, 'If I see you again, I'm going to slash your tires, burn down your house and push you naked into a pool full of rabid wolverines.'
With a mighty buck, Jon was sent flying into the saloon, where he impacted two more bandits who were looting whatever was valuable in there, and took them both with him into the back room.
Once they all stood up to face each other, Jon found himself wearing a ruffled skirt, which gave pause to the other two bandits because of how ridiculous he looked.
After a brief chuckle, the two of them started attacking Jon, who fought back by swinging his billowy skirt in their faces.
In his head, Jon could practically hear the can-can playing as he redirected their attacks with his quick, loose movements that befuddled his opponents.
One of them tried to stop Jon's attacks by grabbing his skirt, which made Jon pull his skirt out of the offender's teeth and give him a dainty slap.
"Pig!" Jon yelled
Their fight took them out to the stage of the saloon where Jon's opponents were bombarded with pies that were thrown by the townsponies.
They started throwing them at Jon as well, until the were stopped by the stallion he'd met before.
"Hold yer fire! He's with us," he shouted to all the others, "Come on! They're headin' fer the orchard!"
With that, all the townsponies left out the door with Jon following quickly behind them.
Their attempts to stop the robbery of the orchard was too late.
As soon as they stepped into the streets, one of the bandits ran by with a barrel full of apples on his back.
He was unfortunate enough to trip over Jon's skirt and get his legs tangled up in it. After that, Jon and the other townsponies had their hooves full trying to stop any bandits from getting past them, but little good came from it.
Their ammunition had nearly run out, and the bandits were able to escape with a large part of the orchard's contents, along with many possessions.
They all shuffled onto the train as it began to chug away, until they were all aboard with their haul.
"See ya next harvest time," one of them yelled as their train pulled away from the town and disappeared into the distance.
But in their haste to leave, they left one of their own behind. It was the pony who had tripped over Jon's skirt, and was still struggling to free his legs from their entanglement. He began to panic when he found himself surrounded by the townsponies. Now there was no escape for him, which was trouble enough, but he knew he was in serious trouble when he saw the sheriff approach him.
"Get yerself ready, son. Yer in for a world o' trouble," he said before he pulled down the bandits bandanna.
When he did, the entire populace gasped at who they saw under it.
It was a young stallion with a red coat and deep blue mane, and he had a look of pure horror at having his face revealed.
"Fritter...I shoulda known you'd be hangin' 'round the likes o' them," the sheriff grumbled as he looked down on the cowering stallion.
The revelation sent a wave of murmurs through the civilians.
From what Jon could hear from them, they all knew him, and they all knew that he was trouble for years.
Through the crowd came the yellow stallion who helped Jon earlier, and he stared in disbelief at the revelation before him. "This...This ain't right. Of all the plum stupid things, I...You were my best friend! How could ya do this!?"
"B-Braeburn..." Without anything else to say, he only stammered his surely now-former friend's name.
In all their years together, Fritter was always something of a headstrong outcast who had his own way of doing things, and had a knack for getting into trouble. Most of the townsponies did their best to avoid unnecessary contact with him. But even so, he managed to keep a friend in Braeburn since they were both foals. Now, in one single moment, all that went out the door.
"Where's that train headed," the sheriff demanded to know.
Everypony there knew that the sheriff was not a stallion to be tested, and he didn't like to be kept waiting, but Fritter still hesitated to answer.
"I'm talkin' to ya, son. Where's that train headed?
"I-I can't tell ya that," Fritter said as he shrank to the ground.
"An' why not?"
No answer came after that.
"Get him outta here," the sheriff ordered his deputies.
The deputies stood him up to lead him away, but were stopped by Braeburn.
"Hold it," he said as he ran in front of them, "I know that Fritter ain't exactly the most sociable pony, but I'll be danged if he didn't have his reasons fer doin' what he did."
"You ain't exactly makin' a good case fer him," the sheriff snorted, "Besides that: even if he did have his reasons, he ain't tellin' us."
Even though they had grown apart, Braeburn was determined to not let anything happen to the pony who he shared his fondest foalhood memories with. "What if I found out why?"
"Watcha talkin' about, son," the sheriff asked, "Ya think ya can get him to start talkin'?"
At the sheriff's question, Fritter started to sweat nervously, and pulled his hat down over his face so that nopony would see him bite his lip.
"He ain't gonna talk to any of us. But I got a feelin' that the answers we want are wherever that train went. If I can find it, I bet I can get back all our stolen valuables, and and answer to why Fritter's with those thieves."
To the sheriff, this whole thing was ended. But even so, there may always be the chance that things weren't what they seemed. "Alright. I'll give ya one week to find anything." He then turned to face the crowd of civilians. "Anypony wanna accompany our friend?"
None of them answered, as they were all convinced that it was nothing but a wild goose chase.
Jon, on the other hand, felt like Braeburn had a point. He himself had put up with all kinds of grief at the paws of his unruly pets. From walks in the park that ended with a trip to the emergency room to remove a birdbath from his mouth, to having to pay damages after a riot at a candy store, Jon stuck by his pets like they were his family. That, and he kept in mind that he was told to help others to find his pets.
"I'll go," Jon said concisely as he stepped out of the crowd.
"Well, fancy that. The city boy stranger's gonna help track down a ruthless, violent bandit horde," one townspony in the crowd said.
Jon felt offended by being called a city boy, given his childhood on the farm. But at the same time, he was frightened of having to face the bandits again. This time, he may not have a can-can skirt at his disposal.
"Well, stranger: I say we get goin'. No tellin' how long it's gonna take to find those thieves," Braeburn said as he motioned for Jon to follow him out of town.
The two started following the tracks in the direction the train went, and soon left the town behind them.
"By the way: what's yer name."
"Uh, Jon. Jon Arbuckle."
"Well, Jon, before I forget: Welcome to Aaaaaaaaaappleloosa!"