Jokes. These are jokes.
Pinkie Pie was nearly vibrating with excitement as she bounced down the Manehattan street with her sister, Maud, and Maud’s boyfriend, Mudbriar following close behind. “I'm so excited for this comedy competition!” she trilled. “This could be your big break! You're going to do great, I just know it!”
“Technically, that's not something you can know in advance,” Mudbriar interjected.
Once again, Pinkie was forcibly reminded why she tried to not invite him anywhere. “Mudbriar, don't ruin this,” she said, her smile turning taut with a bit of forced pleasantness.
“Mudbriar is right,” Maud conceded. “But while the future is beyond all of our sight, I do have a good feeling about this.”
Pinkie wrapped her in a tight hug. “Me too! You’re going to rock this competition, Maud!” She gave her a wide smile.
Maud picked up on her word choice. “Puns are my job tonight,” she said, the tiniest of smiles pulling at her lips revealing her profound appreciation, “but thank you.”
They soon arrived at their destination. They walked past the large sign proclaiming “Side Splitter’s Open Mic Night!” and found free seats at one of the many round tables scattered across the floor. They ordered from one of the servers walking around, and she returned quickly with their orders. A simple glass of water for Maud with ice (technically a mineral), a club soda for Mudbriar (which took him nearly three minutes to decide, much to Pinkie’s consternation) and an extra large bubblegum milkshake for Pinkie. She suppressed a gleeful squeal and began drinking through the large striped straw.
Maud looked around. “There are a lot of ponies here,” she observed blandly.
Pinkie winced. Her experience allowed her to grasp the true meaning behind these words, and she could tell that Maud was really, really nervous. She quickly swallowed what was in her mouth. “True,” she said, doing her best to give her a little sisterly support, “but only one pony here is the bestest, funniest sister in all Equestria, and that’s you.”
“Technically…”
Pinkie glared at him and, while holding eye contact, drank noisily from her straw, drowning him out.
He gave her a sideways look, but thankfully was distracted by the host stepping on stage.
With a wide smile and an easy laugh, Side Splitter introduced the competition. Each pony would get two minutes that they could use however they wanted. The pony with the best reaction from the crowd would win a funny hat… and a nice stack of bits.
“You got this,” Pinkie said supportively. “Ooh, I can hear those bits jingling already.”
“Well, technically-”
Pinkie did her best to not scream.
After a few contestants, a lot of laughs, and far too many interruptions from Mudbriar, it was finally Maud’s turn on stage. Pinkie stomped politely, fighting the urge to stand up and cheer and wave around the pom poms she’d stored in her tail for safekeeping.
Maud slowly climbed on and approached the microphone. There was a quick sound of feedback, and then a brief pause. Then, she started. “My name is Maud. I like rocks. I think they rock.”
Pinkie smiled. “Ok, good start,” she said, but as she looked around, she could see that this joke had gotten only token reactions.
Maud pressed on. “I’m here with my sister and my boyfriend tonight. Romance is an important part of every geologist’s life. One of my coworkers was actually dating a rock. She was gneiss.”
Pinkie giggled. “Gneiss,” she repeated, nudging Mudbriar.
But again, she was the only one amused.
“But it’s not all fun and games in love. I heard about these tectonic plates that broke up. It wasn’t either’s fault; there was just too much friction between them.”
Pinkie looked around and realized that even though that had been two for one, the sounds she was hearing were more of confusion than amusement. She began chewing nervously on her hooves.
“But seriously. It’s nice to share a mutual love of rocks, but it’s a red flag if you feel like your special somepony is taking you for granite.”
Laughter did not fill Pinkie’s ears, which quickly pinned with distress. She looked at Mudbriar. “She's dying up there!” she hissed.
“Technically, she's still very much alive,” Mudbriar returned. “But none of her jokes are having the desired reaction with her audience.”
Pinkie imagined how much fun a reaction her rear hoof connecting with his muzzle would be, but she swallowed it down and looked back at Maud.
“I know they say igneous is bliss, but I’ve brought a few other enlightening geologist facts to share anyway.”
It was like nopony else had noticed the word substitution. Pinkie chewed on the straw, nervously tying it into knots with her tongue.
Maud persevered. “Why are geologists never hungry? They lost their apatite. And they’re never sleepy, because of all the bedrock.”
Pinkie started sweating. She looked over at Mudbriar, who looked blandly back at her. Ostensibly, that was a look of concern for his girlfriend on his big, dumb face, but she really couldn’t tell.
“The life of a geologist is hard. You can never expect perfection from one, because they all have their faults.”
Pinkie looked around, but this joke didn’t land, either. Maybe nopony here liked rocks?
“Like me. I spend a lot of bits on rocks. I picked up some sedimentary rock last week. It’s ok. It was on shale.”
Pinkie could swear she heard crickets.
Maud inhaled softly, then stepped away from the microphone and walked offstage without even so much as a departing joke. She walked about as fast as she normally did, and her expression didn’t look like it had changed at all.
But to somepony who knew her, like Pinkie, she might as well have been running off stage in tears.
The red stallion fought to suppress his snickering as he finished. “And then he said, ‘Well, yeah. Where do you think I got the horseshoes?’”
The crowd burst out laughing.
Though Maud tried to hide it as she sipped at her water, and a casual observer might not have noticed, it was plain to Pinkie that she was feeling devastated. She tried her best to comfort her. “Don’t feel bad, Maud,” she said. “Manehattan just isn’t ready for your kind of humor.”
“Pinkie and I found your jokes riveting,” Mudbriar assured her. “In the figurative sense, of course,” he hastily clarified.
“Thank you,” Maud said, but somehow she didn’t seem comforted by this.
Pinkie winced as the crowd burst out laughing at another joke. Maud couldn’t have been comfortable hearing the reactions she didn’t get. “Sounds like you stalag-might be ready to go?” she offered.
Maud cracked the barest of smiles and nodded.
Together, the three ponies walked down the Manehattan street, even Pinkie. She didn’t feel like pronking. Her heart just wasn’t in it right now. Maud just looked so depressed, and she wasn’t sure how she could help. She cycled between the cupcakes in her tail, her party cannon, and
“Don’t feel bad,” Pinkie reassured her. “I’m sure there were plenty of ponies laughing on the inside.”
“Technically, that’s not possible,” Mudbriar interrupted. “By definition, laughter is literally an audible, vocal expulsion of air from the lungs, though it is usually accompanied by characteristic facial and bodily movements.”
Something inside Pinkie snapped. She darted over, her smile too wide and obviously not real. “Hey, Muddy, follow me!” She pushed him along, his hindquarters kicking up dust as she pushed him down the street, all the way back to Ponyville, into Sugarcube Corner, and down the slide back to her party cave. She shoved him into a closet, retrieved a pile of old fruitcakes that had been impossible to get rid of, and began building a wall, using buttercream frosting as mortar to seal him up.
“Technically, you'll be stuck in there forever, but you'll literally be there for the rest! Of your! Life!” She sat back, still holding a cake in one hoof and the trowel (still dripping frosting) in the other, laughing madly as she was finally, finally free of-
“Pinkie?”
Pinkie Pie snapped back to reality. She knew that voice. “Rarity? Rarity!” She excitedly gave her friend a hearty hug, squeezing the air out of the unicorn with a soft ‘squeak’. “Fancy meeting you here!”
“Yes, well, you are outside Rarity For You,” Rarity pointed out as she tactfully tried to extract herself from Pinkie’s forelegs.
“Oh,” Pinkie realized. “So we are.”
Rarity dusted off her jacket. “Anyway, what brought you to Manehattan?”
“The train,” offered Mudbriar.
Pinkie gritted her teeth. “Maud took part in a comedy competition.”
“Ooh,” Rarity said delicately, clearly remembering the last time she’d been treated to Maud’s comedy stylings. “How did that go?”
“Not well,” Maud answered remorsefully. “I brought my best wordplay jokes and I was hoping at least one would get a laugh…
“-but no pun in ten did.”