Author's Note
Dunno if this topic’s already been explored, but hey, here I go.
Absolutely Rattling!
Today was… an okay day.
Nothing spectacular or of any worthy note—which, in this place that was probably disaster capital number one, was actually a very welcome thing. This entire place screamed “peaceful town.” It could at least try to live up to appearances!
While living far enough away from town basically enabled immunity from danger, them getting hit was still bad for everybody involved. Shops got shutdown, shipments were halted, and reconstruction needed to happen, because somehow, something always managed to break.
Just like his thoughts right about now.
“Smith!? Smith!? We need to talk, immediately! It’s absolutely vital we see this done!”
The man’s brow furrowed as he spun around, high alert. Alarm and worry was present in her voice, coloring it steadily with hints of, “this is serious.” So, of course, he was in a similar state. Bad things happened when the purple pony gets ignored.
The owner of that voice, Twilight, was flanked by six of her friends, each with varying stages of emotions. Fluttershy, Starlight, and Rarity looked… scared. Applejack and Dash had almost masterfully masked their outward appearance, yet their body subtly betrayed that stoic exterior and revealed what looked to be anger. And for Pinkie… he wasn’t going to waste the energy attempting to decipher that enigma. Despite that, the one thing that they all managed to share quite equally was the infliction in their leader’s voice. Each of them were rapidly closing the distance separating them.
“Twilight? What happened?” he replied, clutching his grocery bag tighter and looking around in bewilderment. “And I know I told you you could call me Drake. We’re friends, yeah?”
“But you’re not a dragon, Smith… I don’t know why you want to keep comparing yourself to them…” Fluttershy murmured, pawing at the ground and managing to beat the alicorn in response time. “We like you the way you are.”
The group all let out sure sounds of agreement before that was smothered and they rebounded back to what they arrived as. “Strange... male dragon titling aside…! Smith, we have a problem!” Twilight insisted. It was easy to see the unease in her rapidly darting eyes, gaze most likely flicking around his form.
“Friendship problem? Another invasion? Infestation? Another villainess bent on rendering the planet an inhospitable wasteland?” Drake fired back. “Spit it out, Twilight! Time’s of the essence, yeah?”
She blinked, not expecting the sudden but completely justified list of questions. Equestria really was a troubled place. A cough escaped her as she shook her head. “Yes, yes, you’re right.” Twilight took a deep breath while her friends exchanged uneasy glances. “I don’t know how to say this, Smith…”
A pained expression had taken hold. She really didn’t want to be the one to announce it, but nopony else would be strong enough to break the news. Not Applejack, not Dash, not Starlight, not a single one of her friends! She needed to do what they couldn’t. He needed to know. He deserved to know.
She was the chosen element of magic and princess of friendship!
With the suspense built so tall, it was high time it was knocked down. “...but you have a skeleton in your body.”
Silence reigned as the information was left to be digested.
There. It had been said aloud. What they could not, she had accomplished. With her vital contribution, the collective weight that plagued them all had vanished. But each of the ponies still frowned. Despite already hearing it, the words were still disturbing.
And even then, it was not over. The battle was won but the war raged forward. Now, it was the fallout they all waited with bated breath. How would he react? Fear? Hysteria? Anger at the brazen violation?
Laughter.
He responded by bursting out into laughter! Had the announcement broken him so that his first response was to mask the grave nature of the news? Attempt to lighten the darkness!? All of the mares turned to look at Pinkie. She was, after all, the expert in such things.
It took her a second to realize all eyes were on her, waiting for her opinion. His actions were unexpected outcome, thusly something enrapturing to her. Shook out of her musing and scrambling to action, she began to scrutinize the display, stretching as far forward as she dared. Which to say, was pretty close. Nevertheless, she needed an examination that was near perfect, untainted. She knew—unlike everypony else—that laughter was an art. Just like art, it could be faked really well. But she was the embodiment of laughter. Nothing got past her in her domain. Content, she leaned back.
Pinkie looked to the others, all of whom bore the expression of, “don’t keep us waiting!”
“It’s real.” They gasped. Real!? How could that be?
“You guys really don’t need to worry, I’m fine,” he chuckled. “Whew~! And here I thought it was something actually bad.”
He just brushed it off like it was nothing? Rainbow’s eyes widened. Something was wrong and she needed to fix it! True to her brash and slapdash nature—along without completely working to understand the situation—she zipped over, quickly locking the poor guy into a hold. “I don’t know what horrifying things you’ve done to our friend, skeleton, but I won’t stand for it any longer. Not… not while you brainwash Smith!” she hissed.
He yelped in surprise, dropping his bag of groceries. Poor groceries. “Gah! Rainbow!? What the heck are you doing!?”
“Don’t worry, Smith! I’ll get this stupid skeleton to relent and you’ll be right as rain!” She grunted as she grappled with the struggling human, throwing her weight around to confuse her opponent. “Fight the skeleton, Smith! Help me out here! Get it out of you!”
“What does that even mean?” he cried out, attempting to grasp the slippery pony. “Guys!? Anybody! Help!”
The rest of them watched on, satisfied that this was a possible solution or worried that interference may end up injuring more ponies than necessary. Pinkie, being who she was. hollered in the back, waving encouraging signs of which advocated for the prompt beatdown of reanimated bone fiends.
Drake, on the other hand, just continued to flail around as the pegasus pressed her assault without pause. Granted, he was much bigger than her and it was sorta like an eight year old trying out wrestling for the first time after seeing it on TV, but still. He didn’t want to accidentally hurt her. Rainbow, while admittedly not the brightest of the bunch, still meant well in whatever she did, even if her way to get there could be questionable at times.
Finally, he managed to catch her by gripping her hind leg. Mustering a decent amount of strength, he yanked her away, tossing Rainbow into what was hopefully the sky. Drake honestly couldn’t tell. Coupled with the feathers in his vision and the heat of the moment… he would be lucky he didn’t smack the mare into the ground.
Screaming as she tumbled through the air, Rainbow recovered and settled into a disgruntled hover, floating closer down to the safety of her friends.
Relieved that he hadn’t Loki’d her, Drake took a moment to catch his breath… which didn’t last as long as he wanted. It was obvious to identify the telltale noise of a unicorn horn powering up, setting him on the immediate defensive. “Woahwoahwoahwoah!” Drake shouted, holding his hands up. “Chill! Chill! Don’t go warping the skeleton out or anything!”
Rainbow snorted, probably still sour she hadn’t managed any success. “And why wouldn’t we, skeleton? You don’t belong there and you’re endangering our friend!” She dropped into her infamous ready stance, raring to go for round two. That never happened, however, as Twilight raised a hoof.
“No, even if Smith isn’t all Smith right now, teleporting the skeleton might have adverse effects,” she said aloud. “It’s probably a hostage situation. I think we need to call in special magic and tactics.”
Drake blanched. “Wait! Wait, let me explain first, please, before we do something rash and call in the big guns.” He shuddered to think just what Equestria’s elite looked like and could accomplish. He very much liked his skeleton inside his body and not vacated from his body, thank you very much. Pause washed over him. Just what was their elite equivalent? Did they have literal seals? Food for thought.
The group mumbled to each other, exchanging impossible-to-eavesdrop information. A while later, Rarity perked up from their huddle. “I’m not quite sure what game you’re trying to field, friend, but know we’ll see through any ruse you try to put up!”
“Yeah! If you weren’t inside Smith, we’d give you a super duper walloping! Smack you to the other side of the moon! Slam dunk the sun on—“
“Pinkie, ah think we all got what ya’ meant.”
“Look, I think this is all a big misunderstanding. I know I haven’t exactly shared as much information on humans as I hoped, but the skeleton really is a part of me and—“
Pinkie jumped up from behind all of her friends, pointing an accusatory hoof. “HE’S BEING ASSIMILATED! TWILIGHT, STARLIGHT, QUICK, SAVE HIM!!!”
The last thing he saw were two brilliant beams of light.
When he came to, Drake found himself strapped to a table—admittedly comfy—with a harsh light blazing down on him. He squinted and looked around to see Twilight in a funny gown and Spike wearing a nurse getup.
“Twilight, please, listen!” he cried, attempting to break free from the table restraints, shying away from the various surgical tools that floated around.
The alicorn frowned as the human woke up. “Smith, if you can hear me, we’re going to save you, okay?” She fixed a mask to her face and tied her mane back. “...and don’t worry. I’m a certified surgeon.”
She turned to her little assistant, who was carrying a blue vial. “This is some pretty strong anesthesia. When you wake up, Smith, I’ll assure that you’ll be good as new. Without the monster inside of you, of course.” She picked it up and began fixing it to a delivery device.
Time was running out. Think of something. Anything! His eyes widened. Taking a deep breath, he shouted for all he was worth. “THE SKELETON AND I SHARE A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP!”
The outburst frightened Twilight, causing her to drop the tools and vial (which fell and broke on Spike, knocking him out instantly). She stared at him, processing what he said. Drake could see the gears turning in her head. Finally, he got what he wanted.
She pulled her mask down. “...tell me more.” There was the scholarly mare he knew so well. The glint of knowledge-lust in her eyes told everything he needed to know.
The pen that he had gifted to her scribbled away furiously. “...so what you’re telling me is that when a human is born, they’re immediately paired with a similarly sized skeleton, which provides what again?”
He blinked, rubbing the wrists that had been rubbed wrong by the bindings. Out of everything he could’ve tried, this absolutely absurd idea worked the best. Go figure, huh? “Uh… protection and structure.”
Scribbling. “What does the skeleton get in return?”
“Calcium. Lots of calcium.”
“Amazing,” she murmured, writing away in her book about humans. “This is a level of symbiosis that we’ve never seen before. Who knew skeletons could be so benevolent?”
“Ha… ha… I know, right?” Play along or you get the table again.
“So a human is actually a bag of meat and organs, sort of like a blood slime—“ wait what that’s a thing “—protected and given form by the skeleton. In exchange for its services, the skeleton is given nutrition and a home. Is that correct?”
“Uh… yeah.”
Pony biology compared to his own was widely different, that much was obvious. Just how different, he totally didn’t expect. Turns out they don’t actually have skeletal structures and instead have these changing-state fluids that hardened when they need to and allow for extreme flexibility. Now that he really thought about it, that explained how they managed to… do what they did. Pinkie especially.
Also turned out that skeletons are their “own thing,” as if they were some self-sustaining albeit evil organism. They formed, haha, magically, from graves. Somehow. When he asked about that one time he saw somepony struck by lightning and he saw a skeleton, Twilight laughed him off and said he was seeing things.
He sighed. At least the entire ordeal was over and he would be compensated for his lost groceries—plus some extra. He was, according to them, “eating for two.”
He sighed again.
Drake looked up when he heard wings fluttering. Fluttershy shuffled over, ears down. “We’re sorry, Mister Skeleton, for accusing you of doing bad things.” She hid behind her mane, single eye staring back. She continued to look, as if she expected a normal response…
Drake gave her a funny, blank look before he remembered to keep with the story. “Skeletons can’t talk, Fluttershy.”
“O-Oh, y-you’re right.” She scooted away, embarrassed. “S-Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
Pinkie was immediately next, clattering her teeth and doing what looked to… be what a seizure would be if it was crossed with a sugar rush. Luckily, he wasn’t the only one who was confused with her antics.
“Pinkie, what the hay are you doing?”
She stopped. “Since skeletons can’t talk like we do, I’m speaking their only language! I’m rattling to say sorry!” Everypony “ahh’d” and nodded in understanding. Pinkie was about to start up again before she tilted her head. “Does this mean I have to throw—I get to throw another party! It’ll be skeleton themed!” She cheered, hopping and bouncing to who knows where.
Twilight finished writing, closing her book with a clap. “Well, I’m glad we cleared that up, Smith and skeleton.”
“Yeah… me too.”
Rainbow flew over and patted his shoulder. “Hey, if the skeleton’s cool with you, I’m cool with him, y’know?” She made a funny face. “At least you don’t have microorganisms in your body that consume foreign intruders! Now that would actually be scary.”
“Uhh…”
