Rainbow Dash never felt the crash that broke her neck, so she had that going for her. Otherwise, being dead was turning out to be worse than getting a surprise preening from Derpy.
It took a few seconds to realize she was hovering over her own body. It took another few before Rainbow realized she was transparent. Most of her focus, though, was on her own rump, which stuck up straight in the air after she’d plowed into the ground.
Rainbow grimaced. “Ugh, is that really what it looks like?” At least now she knew what everypony who’d lost a race to her had seen.
Looking around, her friends were on the way. Rainbow crashing was not an uncommon occurrence. The grassy meadow where she’d been practicing her moves was convenient to Ponyville and the sound of her collapsing spinal column had probably been heard for miles.
Applejack was the first to arrive. She prodded Rainbow on the cutie mark. “Hey, are you alright?” Without getting a response, she prodded again.
Rainbow smirked. “If you wanted to feel me up, you could have just asked.”
Applejack didn’t seem to notice. She frowned and pulled at a limp wing. “Rainbow? Hey!”
“I’m right here,” Rainbow reminded her.
Her other friends arrived just then. Applejack turned to face them. “Rainbow isn’t moving!”
“Hello?” Rainbow waved her hooves in front of their faces.
Fluttershy tentatively reached down to where the body’s neck was bent at a ninety degree angle. “There’s…” She paused for several seconds, swallowing hard before continuing. “There’s no pulse.”
“What? No! Hey! Hello!” None of them seemed to hear Rainbow.
All of them suddenly started talking at once. Rainbow couldn’t even hear herself over the questions, crying, and hurried orders to do something.
The hubub was broken by a long whistle from Applejack that got everypony’s attention except Pinkie.
“...but it was too late because there was already a spooky skeleton inside her!” Pinkie looked around. “Er, sorry.”
“Now there’s no use in comin’ off the handle,” Applejack managed, tears welling in her eyes. “We all need to calm down. I...I hate to say it, but if Rainbow is dead then there’s nothing we can do.”
“Wait, I’m what!?” Rainbow checked herself again. “Okay, yeah, suddenly that makes a lot of sense.”
“What if we could do something?” Twilight proposed.
Rarity was quick to demand, “What are you saying?”
Applejack raised a hoof. “If you know somethin’ magic, spill it.”
“I mean, it’s just theory, but…” Twilight stammered.
“If we can help Rainbow, we have to do it,” Fluttershy spoke up.
“Yeah!” cheered Pinkie. “Let’s all just do whatever Twilight is about to come up with to save our friend!”
“I, um…” Twilight cut her eyes side to side and then came to a decision. “Okay, let’s get her picked up. We’re going to my place.”
Applejack gingerly lifted the limp corpse and laid it across her back.
“Hey, watch it!” Rainbow called. “I see where you’re putting my head!”
But of course Applejack couldn’t hear her and regardless of Rainbow’s protests took off for town with the body flopping.
Rainbow huffed and crossed her forelegs. “So now I’m a ghost. I could already fly but now nopony can see me. My friends are probably going to do something unethical to my body. Just great.”
Still, she had better go see what they were up to. If that involved putting her back in her body, then she should probably be there. The whole broken neck thing might require hospital time, but Rainbow was beginning to see that as less as an annoyance and more a slightly less annoying thing to deal with.
She flew into Ponyville. Still, not a soul noticed her. Rainbow frowned. Surely she couldn’t be the only ghost around. Ponies died all the...actually, no, she couldn’t remember anypony actually ever dying. But then where did they all go?
She glanced at a shop window as she passed by. She was mildly surprised to see her ghostly reflection, but more interested in the golden halo hovering over her head. “What the heck?”
She reached up to touch it. It felt light, but perhaps that was simply because of the anti-grav effect it had. If she let it be, it hovered just over her ears. Pulling it down, she stared at it. It looked as shiny as the average golden bit.
Rainbow shrugged and tossed it back on top her head. “Meh. You’d think these things would be made out of something cooler than gold.”
When she got to Twilight’s place, the door was closed. Rainbow grabbed for the handle, but her hoof passed right through. “Weird.”
She edged forward and her nose went right through the door. Grinning, she stuck the rest of her head through the wood. “Heh, Fluttershy would love this. You could really feel what it was like to be a tree.”
She followed the sounds of voices down to the basement. Her friends were gathered around the body, which lay on the cheap IPEA table Twilight used for studying. Books were strewn everywhere, hastily cleared from the table to make room.
Twilight was flipping through a book with a black cover and mumbling to herself. “Magic Brownies, Mold Removal Spell, Moo Moo Transform You, Narcolepsy Naptime, Necessary Evil, ah, here we are, Necromancy.”
Twilight looked at Applejack. “It means-”
“I don’t care, just do it!” Applejack interrupted.
Twilight’s focus went back to the book. “This won’t be easy. And, well, it’s kind of frowned upon.”
“Like that time you mind-controlled all of Ponyville over a doll?” asked Pinkie.
“Or the time you wanted to force Discord to reform with a spell?” said Fluttershy.
“Or any villain we’ve ever encountered?” Rarity added. “Why are you asking questions now, Twilight?”
“Okay, okay, I get the point. Bringing our friend back to life is worth bending a few rules,” Twilight agreed.
She cast the spell. The magic surrounded the body and it rose a few inches off the table. The muscles twitched and the back arched. A few crackling noises came from the neck.
Rainbow gulped. “Okay, I guess here we go.” She stretched out a hoof. Nothing happened, so she moved closer. “Come on!”
The magic dissipated. The body thudded back down on the table.
There was a faint sigh of air as the chest rose. “Uhhhhhhhh…”
“Hey! I’m not back in!” Rainbow dove forward. All she got was a faceful of table.
Raising herself, she came face to face with herself. The body sat up, eyes slowly sliding open.
“Um, Rainbow?” ventured Fluttershy.
The body turned to look at her. Fluttershy smiled.
It ripped her head off.
Fluttershy shrieked, but the only one who could hear her was Rainbow. In fact, she carried on shrieking despite the fact that she was feeling no pain. She didn’t even notice the shiny halo that had appeared over her transparent self.
The sound made Rainbow’s ghostly mane stand on end, but she had presence of mind to grab Fluttershy. “Stop! You’re okay!”
Fluttershy blinked. She looked at Rainbow, at the halo over her head, and then down at the a body that was currently standing in the middle of the room in a pool of a yellow body’s blood.
“You...you call this okay!?”
“Well, um, no, not okay, but not as bad as it could be. We’ll get it figured out.” Rainbow paused to glance at the blood and body parts and wished she hadn’t. “Twilight will figure something out.”
Twilight charged her magic, but the body flipped the table over on top of her. There was a bang of an interrupted spell from underneath. A ghostly Twilight appeared beside Rainbow and Fluttershy.
“Well, ponyfeathers,” muttered Rainbow.
“What’s going on?” Twilight demanded.
“Um…” Rainbow rubbed the back of her head. “Well, you see, you kind of made my body a zombie.”
Twilight’s hooves went to her face. “Wait, that’s what necromancy does!?”
“You didn’t know?”
“It’s not like I’ve ever done it before!”
“Well, what are we supposed to do now?” Rainbow gestured at the wreckage. All living ponies had vacated the premises.
“We have to stop that thing!” Twilight insisted. She rushed for the stairs. Rainbow grabbed Fluttershy and pulled her along.
Rarity had tripped on the rug at the top of the stairs. The body grabbed her by the tail and hauled her back down to the basement. Rarity’s hooves screeching against the polished floor were almost as loud as her screams.
At the bottom, she tried to stand up, but tripped again, doing a half-pirouette on her hind hooves before falling on one leg of the upside down table. The spindly leg of the cheap table ran her through, catching only momentarily on her ribcage before bursting out the other side of her abdomen.
Rarity was beside herself in more than one sense. The one of her that was as transparent as a gem and accessorized with a gilded halo was rather distraught about it. At least until she went into a swoon.
“Ghosts can faint?” Rainbow asked skeptically.
“Hush up and let me have the moment,” Rarity ordered. She picked herself up and looked at the other three. “Well, this is a fine predicament.”
“Aren’t you scared?” Fluttershy asked.
“I am, but I trust that things will either improve or they won’t. And I’ve read enough supernatural romances to keep myself occupied with either eventuality.” Rarity dusted herself of imaginary dirt. “Now, what about the others?”
That was a good point, and the four of them made it upstairs just as the body was squaring off with Applejack.
“You stop right there!” Applejack shouted, turning around to line up a buck. The body kept coming. She reared forward to kick and caught the body right under the chin, knocking it straight up towards the ceiling.
“Yeah!” Rainbow cheered, ignoring the implications of what she might be rooting for.
The body made a lazy arc through the air and got tangled in the chandelier, ripping the mount free of the ceiling. Applejack’s pupils shrank to pinpricks as the assembly slammed down on top of her.
“Aw, shoot,” muttered Applejack. She glanced up, startled to see Rainbow, Fluttershy, Twilight, and Rarity there to greet her. “What in-”
“It’s complicated,” said Rainbow. “But long story short, we’re dead.”
“That...that does simplify things,” Applejack managed.
Rainbow took her by the shoulders, lifting her off the floor. “But now we can be together forever.”
Applejack frowned. “What are you talkin’ about?”
“Us. You know how you’re always making double entendres about doing hard work or taking a roll in the hay?”
“A double what?” Applejack shook her head.
“But…” Rainbow’s hooves began to shake. “I thought you liked-liked me?”
“What are you talkin’ about? Since when have I been attracted to you? No offense, sugarcube, but if that’s what you’re feelin’ I’m afraid there isn’t a gho-uh, there isn’t any chance.”
It was about that time Applejack noticed she was hovering three feet off the floor with nothing supporting her. She jumped, which was pretty hard to do when one was already midair. “Uh…”
“Yes, there are some advantages to ghostliness,” Rarity said.
Applejack frowned. “Well, at least Pinkie ain’t in harm’s way.”
“Hey freaky zombie!” called Pinkie from across the room. Everypony turned to look.
Pinkie appeared in the doorway holding a corked test tube. The body had extracted itself from the chandelier and turned to face her.
“Somepony has to stop you!” Pinkie said. “I’ve never fought a zombie before, so I pulled out my super secret weapon! This is the concentrated extract of the Dulcemortem plant, grown only in one valley high in the mountains of the former Hoviet Union. Between its very specific growing season and ridiculously prevalent border guards, you have no idea how hard it was to get my hooves on! One drop can replace all of Sugarcube Corner’s sugar for a week!”
Pinkie popped the cork and grinned. “Let’s dance.”
She downed the entire thing. Her face, and the rest of her body, suddenly went pinker. Her mane, tail, ears, hooves, and eyes twitched.
And then she fell over on the ground. “Die...d-diabetesss…”
“Oops,” said Pinkie, twirling her halo bashfully.
Twilight turned to the others. “The Princesses can’t find out about this!”
“Well, what are we supposed to do?” asked Rainbow. “We’re all dead now.”
“What if we...killed them all?” Pinkie put forth.
They all looked at each other.
Applejack pushed her ghost hat back. “I mean, you aren’t supposed to keep your problems secret, right?”
“There would be a temporary rise in public health issues followed by a permanent decline,” Fluttershy suggested.
“I wouldn’t call it a perfect solution, but I suppose if we let this thing run wild everypony in town might die of a heart attack if nothing else,” said Twilight. “You know how Ponyville ponies are.”
Rarity wrung her hooves. “But what about clothes?”
“Why do we need to wear more than a sheet anyway?” asked Rainbow.
“Because even if we are dead, I cannot stand being without fashion.” Rarity glared.
“Ugh.” Rainbow shook her head. “You’re killing me.”