//------------------------------//
// The Adventures of Arbuckle: The Next Best Train Robbery 
// Story: Garfield: Friendship is a Big, Fat, Hairy Deal 
// by wingdingaling 
//------------------------------//


The Adventures of Arbuckle

The Next Best Train Robbery


After what felt like days in the desert sun, their skin began to turn red.
At least, Jon thought it did. He couldn't tell underneath his or Braeburn's fur.
Their mission was simple: follow the tracks and find that train full of stolen goods. But so far, their search yielded no results, and the tracks only led in one direction.
Besides tracking the train, the two stallions' time was occupied by idle conversation. Mostly, Braeburn talked about his life in Appleloosa and the time he spent with his friends.
Jon, on the other hand, had no such life to talk about. He mentioned a roommate he used to have, who left him abruptly some years ago, leaving him with only his pets, who tortured him to no end. He also talked at length about his disastrous dating life. At that moment, he was just wrapping up a story about an incident with a salad bar and a fat woman, which ended with a trip to a chiropractor.
"All that from droppin' a crouton," Braeburn asked in disbelief.
"I guess it's one of those 'butterfly effect' things," Jon answered. Now that he thought about it, his whole life was one big butterfly effect. He bought a cat, he got a lasagna with fur and fangs. He got a roommate, he ended up with a dog that  mistook dynamite for 'fetching' sticks. He finally got a date with Liz, his shoes ended up on fire at the end of the night. He went on a camping trip, his pets go missing, he turns into a pony, and ends up in a John Wayne movie after defeating a bitter old griffin and his enforcer.
"Shoot, I wish my life was as excitin' as yours sometimes," Braeburn said with a chuckle.
"Do you want it," Jon offered, hoping to have the simple life of an orchard worker as opposed to his dull, undate-able, painful- misadventure-every-week life.
"Absolutely, if it means I get to date as much as you do," came Braeburn's answer. Jon nervously rolled his eyes, since he hadn't told him about some of the scarier women he dated.
They followed the tracks more, which seemed to go on forever.
It had been hours now, and there was no end in sight for them. After so long, another complication arose: the tracks split off into several different directions.
"So, which way do we go," Jon asked.
Such a silly question, since Braeburn had exactly the solution to the dilemma: spin Jon around like a top and wait for him to stop. When he did, Jon was facing the left direction.
"Thattaway, buddy," Braeburn answered as he walked toward the direction Jon stopped.
Jon had to wonder about the kind of logic it took to make an important decision based on something like that, and could only compare it to something that Odie would do. Then again, that dog once finished a sudoku puzzle in under ninety seconds, so who was he to question Odie logic? Heck, it may very well be the way that led them to where they needed to go.
The stretch of train tracks went on until the junction was out of sight behind them.
Even though Braeburn was sure that this was the right way, Jon thought it was going nowhere. Not only was he finding no clues to the whereabouts of his pets, but Braeburn had a friend who's life was on the line. A friend who may not be worth saving, after what he had done. Of course, Jon could identify with a dilemma like that.
Only he would be able to put up with pets like his for so long. And even though they drove him nuts, they had far too many moments together that he wouldn't trade for the world, and he knew his pets felt the same.
Even Braeburn's attitude reminded him of his dog. In all the years that Garfield had abused Odie, that dog remained optimistic and upbeat as if Garfield were his best friend, never once leaving his side through thick and thin.
Now that Jon thought about it: Braeburn was very Odie-like. Almost like he was Odie in pony form, but that would be ridiculous. Wouldn't it? When Jon arrived in that strange land, he turned into a pony, so how far-fetched would it be for the same to happen to his pets?
"Were you ever booted off a table by a fat, grumpy orange tabby at several points in your life," he asked, just to be sure.
"Naw, but when I was a foal, I licked a doorknob that had too much static electricity on it. The doctor said I had nerve damage that gave me two smile modes: reeeeeeeeal big, an' none at all," Braeburn answered with a smile.
It was a longshot, but Jon was still slightly let down by the fact that he hadn't found his pets.
"Hey, Jon: ya hear somethin'," Braeburn asked after a bit of walking.
Jon didn't actually hear anything, but he became aware of a vibrating sensation under his hooves.
What was going on? It wasn't like there was a herd of stampeding buffalo or something behind them, was there?
No, just a train that was careening towards them at an unsafe speed.
Now that he thought about it, it was going way too fast to be any passenger train. The closer it came, the more Jon started to think that the only reason a train would go that fast is if it were making a getaway from somewhere, and only one reason came to mind for it to make a getaway.
"Braeburn: we should really get off the tracks now," he said as the train got closer.
"Way ahead o' ya, partner," Braeburn said before Jon turned to see that he had already gotten off of the tracks.
A split second after Jon looked back, the train was now dangerously close.
In such a dangerous situation, Jon did what he did best: run away and hope something would save him.
After the train nearly caught up with him, he finally started using his brain and veered off the tracks to run alongside it.
As the engine passed by him, the engineer looked at him and whistled to someone that Jon couldn't see.
Before he could think more on it, a pegasus, who was riding on top of the front car flapped into the air and swooped towards him.
Jon ducked under his attacker, but that didn't seem to be what he was trying to do.
He looked behind himself and saw the pegasus yelling into the cars, which was followed by more bandanna-wearing ponies sticking their heads out the windows.
It seemed that Jon and Braeburn had succeeded: they went looking for the bandit's train, and instead, it found them.
Jon would have felt like it was a lucky break, but it would have been much safer if the bandits hadn't seen them.
With a yelp, the cartoonist had to start jumping to avoid the knives that were being thrown at him.
After the knife-thrower passed by him, a new danger reared its head in the form of a unicorn a few windows down, who started swinging a sledgehammer at him.
Jon weaved back and forth to avoid the attacks, and in a desperate move, he leapt forward and grabbed the hammer's handle in his teeth.
Now Jon was completely off the ground, and was floating side by side with the train he was trying to find.
The unicorn deactivated his magic, intending to leave Jon in the dust, but Jon grabbed onto the outer frame of the window he was next to. And, in a lucky break, it was open for him to climb through.
As he boarded the train through the window, he could see Braeburn on the other side of the train, dodging a lasso that was being thrown at him.
It seemed that he had the same idea as Jon to grab hold of what he was being given and board the train that way. He caught the lasso, and after a brief period of being dragged through the sand, he quickly climbed up it, boarded the train, and bucked the lasso's wielder into Jon as he was about to climb completely through the window, which sent him sprawling back out, and off the train.
Thinking quickly, Braeburn threw the lasso out the window and caught Jon by his front hooves.
Jon was then dragged through the sand, and had to roll to the side to avoid hitting any big rocks or cacti that came his way.
"Hang on! I gotcha, buddy," Braeburn yelled as he reeled Jon in.
When Jon was close enough to reach the window, the unicorn with the hammer tried to swing at Braeburn.
In order to dodge, Braeburn let go of Jon's rope, and sent him sprawling back into the sand.
After the blunder, Braeburn grabbed the rope just before the entire thing went out the window and left Jon behind.
Once it was in his teeth, he resumed reeling Jon in, but his attacker kept him from doing so efficiently.
He pulled Jon in, but whenever Jon got close to climbing aboard, Braeburn had to slack up the rope in order to properly dodge a blow.
As time went on, Jon felt like he was being teased with being able to climb aboard, but his annoyance became sheer terror when he saw that the train was heading toward a canyon with no bridge.
Jon screamed, and let go of the rope, but his momentum kept him sliding forward toward the edge of the canyon. He stopped just shy of the edge.
With a relieved sigh, Jon looked over the edge, and thanked whatever force was looking out for him, and keeping him from tumbling to the hundreds of feet below.
Said force must have been on vacation, as a rampant tumbleweed pushed him all the way over.
In the meantime, the train kept going toward the cliff at a speed that was too unsafe to stop at.
There was a hidden switch off the side of the tracks that a pegasus flew off the train and activated.
The sides of the cliff opened up and mechanically placed tracks for the train to safely chug to the bottom of the canyon.
While Braeburn was holding his own against the bandits on the train, Jon was falling towards something he didn't expect. Below him was a rocky outcropping in front of a cave, where two low-level bandit grunts were emptying barrels full of trash over the edge. The two were wondering when they were going to get their promotion in the gang, but their conversation was cut off when Jon landed in one of their barrels and fell over the edge in it.
"OW--OOF--GETTING--DIZZY--BLACKING--OUT," Jon shouted with each bounce down the tracks.
Eventually, his bouncing ended, and he only began rolling down the tracks. Soon after, the train caught up behind him.
Both the barrel and the train safely reached the bottom of the canyon, and followed the tracks until one of the walls opened up for the train to go inside of, and into the bandit's lair.
Jon's barrel began losing momentum, and the train bumped it from behind, making it fly forward through the lair and coming to a sudden stop against something.
Jon cautiously poked his head out of the top of the barrel, and came face to face with the stallion who bucked him into the saloon earlier that day. Even though he hadn't gotten a pie in his face, he looked even more angry than he did the first time.
Without a word, Jon shrank back down into the barrel, hoping that maybe he wasn't seen.
The stallion bucked Jon's barrel away, where it broke against a stone wall, only to reveal that Jon was not inside of it.
All around the stallion were more barrels, loaded with stolen loot, and Jon's head came popping out of one of them next to him.
That barrel was bucked as well after Jon ducked back inside, only to have him pop up again in another barrel.
After a subsequent buck, and Jon reappearing in another barrel, Jon decided he'd better explain how his trick worked, in an attempt to ease his opponent's building rage.
"These barrels have little doors in the side," he opened the small door in the side of the barrel he was in to demonstrate, "See?"
Neither one of them could think of a conceivable reason that there would be a door there, other than to create a sight gag for anyone in their one in a trillion circumstances. And all it did was enrage the stallion further, who bucked Jon's current barrel, this time before he could duck out, and sent him flying towards the train.
Back on the train, Braeburn had his hooves full with a bandit who was clinching his front legs, and another who packed a really mean punch.
"Is that all ya got," he said after the first punch to his face. Braeburn had been in plenty of saloon brawls, and while this guy ranked up there in heavy hitters, it was nothing he couldn't handle.
Until the second punch hit him.
"Is that all ya got," he repeated, slightly more dazed, and was punched again. "Is that all ya...ggooott...?"
The altercation ended when the bandit holding Braeburn became aware of something to his side that was flying toward them outside the train. He didn't even have time to register what it was when it broke through the side of the train, hit them, and carried them all out the other side.
They landed hard, and Jon crawled out of his barrel in a daze.
"I'll have the salad with chocolate sauce..." he slurred as he tried to get on his hooves. After so many barrel rides, he was almost on the verge of passing out, until he saw Braeburn on the ground near him. "Hey...how's it going, Braeburn?"
"Pretty goooooooood..." he answered, drawing out the 'o' sound. He then indicated the two bandits who were whaling on him in the train, "I got me some new buddies I want ya to meet..."
But the two bandits had no intentions of making friends with them, which Jon and Braeburn quickly caught on to, the way they both picked up weapons that were lying around and made their way menacingly toward them.
"Uh-oh," Jon said as he saw one of them wind up for a swing, and that Braeburn may have been too dazed to move in time.
He put his hooves on his friend's shoulders, and pushed him down so that he ducked under it.
The next hit was aimed for Jon, which Braeburn returned the favor, and pulled Jon to the side so that he could avoid getting hurt.
The two stallions continued to push, pull, drag and lift each other out of harm's way all around the bandit's lair. They even got a few good hits in, the way they used each other's dead weight to counter their opponent's attack.
"What the buck is goin' on here," a new voice yelled loudly over the action.
"Aw, shoot. Boss's comin'," one of the bandits mumbled to the stallion next to him.
The bandits all stopped their attack, and parted as their leader approached the intruders. When Jon and Braeburn saw her, they almost didn't believe that she was the leader, the way she looked. To them, she looked more like a southern belle the way she was wearing a silk gown and a sun hat, topped off with a gold necklace. The only un-ladylike thing about her was the lasso that was fastened to her sash.
Up until now, she had been in her personal quarters, devising the gang's next big heist, but her concentration kept getting broken by all the noise that was coming from outside to the point that she decided to investigate. She was most displeased to find that it was intruders who were making all the ruckus.
"Who're they? Filly scouts goin' door to door," the boss asked after appraising them and wondering how they of all ponies could have found their way in.
If there was anything the bandits didn't want, it was to get their leader in a temper, so one of them tried to explain the situation. "Sorry about the inconvenience, Miss Rose, but...Well...It kinda wasn't our fault they got in."
"'Kinda wasn't,'" she asked incredulously before she threw her lasso so that it practically weaved through the crowd to loop around the neck of her malcontent, and she pulled him toward her. When she retrieved him, she undid the lasso, grabbed his collar, and gave him the evilest eye he had ever seen her give, "There ain't exactly a doorbell fer them to push and get somepony to open the door! So, which one o' ya let 'em on the train!?"
As the leader was chewing out her subordinates, Braeburn's head started to clear up, and he was able to figure out a little bit of what was going on. "Oh. Thing's kinda make sense now: this here's the Rose Gang."
Upon saying the name out loud, he and Jon both started giggling like a couple of schoolboys, but Braeburn quickly finished up his explanation, "They're notorious for their fast, brutal waves of theft so they folks don't think they're sissies, 'cause o' their name. That, an' they're led by Desert Rose, who's world known fer her skill with a lasso, an' her borderline psychotic temper."
"Ohhhhhh," Jon said as if it all made sense to him now. It took about a half second for what Braeburn told him to sink in, "Oh! Jeez, that's bad, isn't it?"
"You know it, buddy."
"Ah-ha...So, what do we do about it?" Jon had asked a question like that before, and in return, he got an unorthodox solution.
This instance was no different, when Braeburn took hold of Jon's collar, and his belt, then charged forward with him in front.
"GANGWAY," Braeburn shouted as he plowed through the crowd with his screaming battering ram. His plan was to get past the bandits, get back to Appleloosa and get every available lawpony within fifty miles to handle them.
Sure, by that time, the bandits would likely have cleared out, but they wouldn't be able to take all the loot they had in the lair, and somepony may have been able to find something that would save Fritter's hide.
They were in luck that the door to the lair hadn't been shut when they arrived, since all the bandits were busy taking care of the two intruders. It made their escape that much easier.
"We made it," Jon yelled as relief washed over him when they got past the entire gang and were speeding towards the door.
His declaration was premature, as suddenly they both saw a length of rope come down in front of them and then felt it tightly wrap around them and made them tumble forward. When they stopped, they were bound back to back, and saw themselves getting reeled in toward Desert Rose by the length of her lasso.
Even at the distance they were, they could see that she had no intentions of letting them leave the lair alive. But Jon and Braeburn weren't about to let that happen. As long as Fritter was in trouble, and Garfield and Odie were missing, neither one of the guys was going to give in. The only plan that they could come up with, though, was to flail like mad and hope to wriggle out.
Naturally, it did no good, and they were only dragged closer and closer to their demise.
"I can't go out like this," Jon thought, "I'm too good looking to...I'm too much fun to...I make too much money to..."
Okay, if he was being honest with himself, he couldn't think of a reason not to die, but he still wasn't about to snuff out so easily.
The two stallions were now being dragged back through the crowd of bandits they had just charged through, and they were running out of time to save themselves.
With only one option, Jon flung his and Braeburn's weight at one of the bystanders, and got him tangled in the rope with them.
The bandit struggled to get out, and his cohorts moved in to release him from his entanglement. Jon and Braeburn caught them too, creating a mass of ponies who couldn't tell who was who in the muddle.
The extra weight was slowing down their dragging, but it wasn't enough. They needed something that would stop it entirely. Sure enough, in an old cave like that, there were plenty of stalagmites that were  lying around.
The guys shifted the weight of their mass of ponies, getting a wave of alarmed protests, and were able to get it to roll and wrap around the one, sturdy looking stalagmite that was nearest to them. They spun the rope around it one last time until they were tightly secured, and Jon and Braeburn could wriggle out. But even then, Desert Rose wasn't about to give up so easily.
If there was anything that she hated, it was when things didn't go according to plan. She had meant to reel them in so she could haul them away for the vultures to peck at. Now they were delaying that objective! It was an outrage! She wouldn't stand for it!
Her rage built so suddenly, it could have powered the train, and with a mighty pull of her rope, the base of the stalagmite started to crack, and made all of the struggling ponies stop.
"Uh-oh," one of the bandits said, "Boss's in a real temper this time."
"We're gonna get it now," another one added.
Desert Rose yelled like a viking when she mustered her surprisingly vast strength into one final pull that tore the stalagmite from the ground and sent it, and the mass of ponies flying towards her.
The pointed end of the rocky structure was coming towards her, forcing her to duck, and allow it to fly safely over her.
The stalagmite broke against the wall it impacted, and released many of the ponies from the length of rope. All except for Jon and Braeburn, who were still caught in the lasso.
Jon stood up with Braeburn tied to his back, and began trying to escape to the door again.
Their progress was impeded by wave after wave of bandits trying to stop them, but Jon's impeccably stumbling footwork, along with Braeburn's flailing hooves, saw them through the danger.
But Desert Rose wasn't about to give up so easily.
She and the intruding stallions were on opposite sides of the train engine from each other, but it was no problem for a mare of her skills. She threw her lasso through the engineer's window, and caught all four of Jon's hooves.
Jon stumbled and fell, so it was up to Braeburn to try and run away, but they were both reeled toward Desert Rose with a strong pull.
Once they were pulled into the engine, it was up to Braeburn to save them since Jon's hooves were all tied up.
As Braeburn scrambled to grab onto something, anything, he pulled levers, spun cranks, pushed a doohickey towards a thingamajig which activated a whatchamacallit.
Then the train started to lurch forward.
Desert Rose ordered the bandits onto the train to stop it, but the speed slowly picked up, and Rose was getting pulled along. She decided to board the train herself to stop the intruders from getting away with it.
Before she was pulled off her hooves, she let go of the rope and jumped through a window on the passenger car. Now on the train, Desert Rose proceeded to plow her way through her underlings until she reached the engine to take care of the intruders herself.
Jon and Braeburn screamed loudly, as they dodged a buck that was meant to smash their heads.
Instead, Rose hit the lever that pushed the train into full throttle, and sent the locomotive barreling full speed into the bowels of the bandit cave.
Deep in the lair, the caverns were loaded to the brim with loot. The floors were piled with just about everything you can name, and even the walls and rock formations were lined with stolen this and that.
Another buck, and the guys were thrown off the train.
In the split second that followed, Braeburn took the length of rope, tied another lasso and threw it around one of the rock formations. Their momentum swung them back toward the train, and with a pull of the rope, the rock was released, and they went through a window.
The battle that followed went between the cars, out the windows, and even above and below the train. And with every stumble, Jon and Braeburn ended up changing between whose hooves were on the ground.
Braeburn had no problems avoiding danger, but Jon, whose hooves were still bound, needed to hop around like a flea.
The hazards, including the waves of bandits and Desert Rose's seemingly living (and not to mention unlimited supply of) lasso, were only amplified by the wild, rampant speed of the train.
Every corner, the train tilted. Every dip, the passengers tumbled forward.
The train began speeding up a hill, and burst through a hidden back entrance, flying high into the air as it did.
It landed with a thud, that made everypony jump, and sent Jon and Braeburn in front of Desert Rose.
There was no escaping it now. They got boxed in by the other bandits, led by the one with anger issues.
They backed away from him, and into Desert Rose, who grabbed both of their shoulders. Whatever she had in mind, it was definitely the end for the two of them. Then one of the bandits started sniffing the air.
"Anypony smell sugar?"
None of them knew what happened next, but from what they could tell, some unknown, yet powerful force hit the train and sent car after car flying off the tracks. After the landing, all the ponies were barely clinging to consciousness. Fortunately, it was Jon who awoke first.
In a total daze, Jon was only aware enough to realize that he was no longer tied to Braeburn and pulled his hooves loose from the rope around his ankles.
"Braeburn," he called out, more asking than anything, "I think we won."
A wooden barrel staggered towards him, then dropped. All of the planks fell apart to reveal Braeburn on the inside.
"This sure don't feel like winnin', pal. I ain't happy enough," Braeburn said in a daze.
He then looked around and saw all of the bandits, either knocked out or too woozy to stand. He felt his spirits lift when he saw Desert Rose's top half sticking out from under a pile of her underlings, while Jon noticed the locket necklace she was wearing at his hooves.
Braeburn looked down on them all with a small sense of satisfaction, mixed with a small bit of regret. Even though they had caught the bandits, they found nothing to clear Fritter's name.
"Braeburn: look at this," Jon said as he showed Braeburn the open locket.
On one half of it was a picture of Desert Rose. But in the other half of it was a picture of Fritter.
"Well, I'll be dipped in applesauce," Braeburn mumbled.
In that moment, everything started to make sense to him. That was why Fritter got mixed up with bandits. That was why he wouldn't tell where to find them: their leader was his marefriend.
Braeburn's heart sank when he realized that it meant that Fritter willingly joined the bandits, but his reasons for doing so made a little bit of sense. He was always an outcast among the good folk of Appleloosa, so it seemed logical that he would find his place on the wrong side of the law.
He didn't want his friend to go to jail for the rest of his life, but then again, who was he to stand in the way of love. He kicked a little dust as he thought about his dilemma. He didn't have to say anything for Jon to understand what was going through his head.
Jon had faced the choice to give up the pets he cared about to do what was right before, and always did what he thought was a compromise. But he could see none here.
Then he noticed what had been thrown off the train: among the mishmash of everything, he saw ropes, pulleys and harnesses, all in working condition.
"You know," he began, "I think we need to teach these guys a lesson in honest labor and doing a good deed."



Back in Appleloosa, the townsponies looked into the distance and saw the peculiar sight of a train being pulled by a team of ponies.
As it drew closer, they began to recognize the train as the one the bandits had used. Closer still, and they recognized the bandits who came through the town. They stopped when the train arrived at the station, huffing and puffing from exhaustion, while Braeburn rode in the engineer's seat, and Jon stood triumphantly atop the engine.
A round of hurrahs sounded for the two stallions, who single hoofedly brought down the most terrible gang known in decades.
Jon tried to step into the crowd with Braeburn, only to find that he couldn't quite figure out how to get down. He ended up simply falling off. He then heard voices in the crowd that sounded like the were restraining someone, and failing to do so.
Through the crowd came Fritter, who charged right to the front of the team of bandits where Desert Rose was.
The loving reunion that followed sent a wave of sentiment through the crowd. Even though Fritter stopped mattering to them, he was everything to somepony else. Desert Rose, who loved him so, and Braeburn, who even though the two had drifted apart, he never left his friend's side, and never stopped believing in him.
A newfound bond was made that day, one that would keep them all together through the ups and downs that life would throw at them.
A light shone in the main street of the town, and without even looking, Jon knew what it was.
"Whoah. Ain't that somethin'," Braeburn said.
"It's my way back home. Or so I'm told," Jon answered.
"Yer leavin'? After this whole shenanigan, yer gone like that!?"
"I'm sorry. But I have a couple of trouble making friends who I still need to find."
"Well, happy trails to ya, buddy. In the meantime," Braeburn hitched Fritter up next to Rose, "Yer gonna payback society by helpin' give back all the stuff ya helped steal."
Fritter had no objections to that. As long as he was with his precious Rose, and Braeburn remained his friend, in an odd kind of way.
Jon turned away from the crowd and passed through the stellar archway once more as he was seen off by his new friends.



In the dark of the luggage compartment of the train, Odie began to feel light headed as a warmth spread through his body. He began scratching madly and shook his whole body like something just bit him.
"Hey, knock it off, dog," Garfield demanded. "Your breath's bad enough! I don't need your fleas in my face too!"
The rest of the trip was passed in much discomfort up until the train's arrival in Canterlot station.