Applejack spat into the skeleton pirate’s face. “These fellas sure—ungh!— have a bone to pick with us!” He crumbled immediately. Applejack stepped back with a smile.
“I know, right?” said Twilight, who was busy stuffing black powder into a fresh batch of peach scones. “I don’t know what’s gotten into these numbskulls for them to attack us like this!” The skeletons around her radius collapsed. Twilight stared at them for a moment, shrugged, and scarfed down an explosive scone, paying no attention to the muffled boom! and waving the smoke away from her body.
Fluttershy frowned under the light of the full moon and let her mane hide her features. “I hope we won’t need to use the Elements against this skeleton crew…” More and more of the possessed pirates fell apart.
“Fluttershy, dear,” chuckled Rarity, who found herself surrounded by five lanky skeletons, “I think that the six of us are more than capable of besting these boneheads!” Jumping to her hooves, Rarity was about to execute a whirlwind roundhouse kick when the skeletons flashed with a burst of white light and fell to the ground.
“Look!” cried Pinkie, pointing dramatically off into the distance. “It’s Spike!”
Sure enough, the little dragon was huffing and puffing as he crested the horizon, burdened with an enormous tray of custard danishes. Twilight rolled her eyes and concentrated. With a loud pop, the Spike appeared in the air.
Five feet in the air.
“Whoaaaaa—oof!” wheezed Spike as he impacted the ground. The pastries descended at a casual pace, safely in the grasp of Twilight’s magic. Once the tray was down, Twilight threw them into the mouths of her friends, who chewed happily as they held off more of the undead skeleton army.
“For a bunch of spooky bones, these guys sure are spineless!” Pinkie giggled as the pirates flashed pink and were reduced to harmless piles of bones.
Rainbow Dash looked on in disappointment, watching her friends defeat the possessed pirates with their silly puns. It wasn’t fair, she felt, that they got to do the fun part while she had been tasked with disposing the remains.
“You’re putting me on clean-up duty?” Rainbow Dash had asked an hour ago, not attempting to hide her anger. Outside, the skeletons were organizing themselves into a loose military formation. “I’m the fastest pegasus in all of Equestria! You don’t think I can handle a couple of enchanted ghouls like them?”
Twilight had stared at her. “First of all, ghouls are a different type of monster altogether. I mean, sure, they’re undead, too, but reanimated skeletons aren’t depicted in classic literature as devourers of pony flesh.” Twilight hummed. “Come to think of it, that would make for an excellent twist in my next short story…”
“Twilight!” Rainbow Dash yelled. “This is kinda all your fault, remember? If you hadn’t opened that dumb ‘Nightmare Night Book of Real Spells: Warning: Do Not Open under Any Circumstances Ever’—”
“Why is it always my fault?” wailed Twilight.
“—Then we wouldn’t be in this mess!” Rainbow Dash sighed. “Look, Twilight, I can still take ‘em! Ghouls, skeletons, Thelonious Monkey, whoever! I can totally kick their flanks into next Tuesday!”
Twilight, it would seem, had not been of the same opinion, so here Rainbow Dash was, watching the spectacle play out from the sidelines. She sighed and wilted a little when Pinkie took down another row of the baddies with yet another awful joke.
But she could do the same, couldn’t she? After all, she and Pinkie went on regular pranking sprees throughout Ponyville all the time. Was this so different? Rainbow was thinking this when she was crushed by a pair of pink forelegs.
“Did you see that, Dashie?” Pinkie grinned and hopped about. “All it took was a snappy one-liner, and—” She giggled. “—Down they went! They never even knew what hit them!”
This was it, the moment of truth, the be-all and end-all for Rainbow Dash to rightly claim her place as the princess of puns, the queen of quips, the empress of epigrams! “Heh, yeah!” said Rainbow Dash. “They’re so brain-dead!”
A blue light surrounded the dismembered skeletons. Their bones shuddered as they lifted off the ground, knitting themselves back together as they started to advance once more. Fluttershy and Rarity let out identical shrieks of horror. Gasping, Applejack shouted something about “Thoracic Park,” which caused the skeletons to disintegrate. Wheeling around, she stomped towards Rainbow and thrust her face very close to the pegasus’.
“Listen here, RD, and listen good.” Applejack narrowed her eyes. “If you don’t want to help fight these here nobodies—” There was a series of loud clunks of bones hitting the ground behind her. “—Then I suggest you stay out of our way, sugarcube.” Applejack let out a sigh and looked at the ghostly ship on the distant black waters. “I don’t mean to offend you none, Rainbow, but you’re not being much help right now.”
“But… but!” Rainbow Dash squawked. “I can totally help you guys! Leave it to Rainbow Dash, fastest pegasus in Equestria, to deal with these bloodsuckers!” She put on a cocky grin.
The twenty skeletons that heard her spun back to life with a flicker of light blue.
“Boooo…” booed Twilight, shaking her head. The tall pines, dark and rustling, seemed to bow in agreement. With a few creaks and crunches, the skeletons began the march again.
Rarity shrieked and rushed the skeletons head-on.
Twilight scratched her head. “You know,” she said, a smile spreading across her face, “This reminds me of Canine by Maxilla, which has the best example of a—”
“Zygomatic archetype!” screamed Rarity. A massive concussive blast shot forth from Rarity and completely pulverized the skeletons, which had been inching closer. Hundreds of bones went in every direction, and one particularly large femur bonked Spike on the head, knocking him out. Twilight rushed over, quickly summoned a crude bed, and gently laid the dragon down inside. With a flash, seven steaming cups of hot chocolate appeared, into which Twilight placed a generous amount of marshmarrows.
Rainbow Dash sipped her drink with a frown. “Why didn’t that work? Skeletons have teeth, too!”
“Yeah, but they ain’t vamponies!” sneered Applejack. “Or zombies, either!”
“W-well… skeletons don’t have brains, do they?!” Rainbow Dash held up both hooves and leaned back. “Sheesh! Just a little mistake and you guys bite my head off for it!”
Everypony winced. With yet another flash of blue, the skeletons were on the move.
Fluttershy sighed. “Well, it’s true, Rainbow Dash. That last one wasn’t even close to being a good joke, let alone an insult.”
“H-hey!” Rainbow snorted. “There’s no way you have a good one, Fluttershy!”
Fluttershy thought for a moment. Then she sighed. “You’re right. But,” she said, brightening, “at least I know how tibia little humerus.”
“Besides!” said Pinkie. “It’s good self-defense! How do you think we’ve been able to keep fighting these… er, walking keys?” The pirate skeletons looked at each other, shrugged, and disassembled. Applejack trotted over and placed a few bones in a socket.
“Pinkie’s right, Rainbow Dash. Apart from magical laser beams shooting out of my head, it’s the only thing that gets under their skin.” Twilight blinked. “Which, you know, is quite a feat in and of itself.”
“Not to break up this delightful palaver,” interjected Rarity, performing several well-placed hoof-to-neck chops, “but would somepony be so kind as to throw me a bone here?” Fluttershy flew over and very politely, very gently to “stop lumbarring towards my friends, please.” The skeletons complied.
Applejack finished her assembly of part of the skeleton, and, with a somber expression, played a melancholy trombone tune. Four of the ponies chuckled.
Rainbow Dash did not. “Come on, guys! I’m not that bad at skeleton jokes, am I?”
Fluttershy shook her head. “No. You’re this bad!” the pegasus said, widening the distance between her front hooves by two feet and a few toes.
“I don’t get it…”
Applejack smirked. “You’re a real knucklehead, sometimes, RD.”
“Hahaha! Now that,” said Twilight, nodding at Applejack, “was a bonafide pun.”
“Hmm…” Rarity tilted her head aside as Pinkie plowed through another row of skeletons. “I’m not sure I agree; it didn’t seem fleshed out enough.”
Ignoring Rainbow’s temper tantrum, the remaining ponies staved off another wall of pirate skeletons with nary an eyelash batted.
“Ha!” cried Rainbow Dash. “Get a load of these dingbats!”
Everypony—even the skeletons—paused to glare at the pegasus. The captain cleared his throat. “I found that to be insulting and, quite frankly, not funny in any way whatsoever.” He squinted. “Besides, you already made a vampony joke.” Turning to Applejack, he leaned down and whispered into her ear. “Would you mind terribly if we—”
“Yeah, y’all can take her,” said Applejack with a gesture. The captain stood upright and charged at Rainbow Dash, his crew close behind him.
Rainbow Dash gulped.
Author's Note
Thanks to FanOfMostEverything, RedSquirrel456, and Titanium Dragon.
If something seems to be spelled wrong, that's probably another pun.
...
I'm not apologizing.
