Deep in the middle of the remote wilderness, a lonely communication tower stands, with a solitary figure residing at the location. The individual reclines in a chair, staring up at the sky, as their radio device crackles to life, and they pick it up, holding it to their ear silently as they wait for the other person to start talking.
"We've got some real bad news, Comm. Blackbird's down."
The man doesn't respond to the information, instead just replying with a "roger that" and typing this information onto a computer at his workstation. His radio turns on again, and he once again listens.
"Well, we've got some new recruits for the first time in a while, but don't get your hopes up about them. It's two brats from the Smash Brother family."
"I thought we were done with recruiting for now."
"Well, someone clearly thought otherwise and sent these kids to me, so we just gotta deal with it."
"Fine. Over and out."
In the depths of the unnamed city-state, hours after Rattler Geoff's timely re-demise, a rift opens in the center of the monument lying at the heart of the city-state. From this rift emerges the enlightened ruler of this nameless land: sordo, steel king of nowhere.
"Wadley, where did we go wrong? Just look around, this place is horrendous. All of that trouble to have control of an almighty power, but what does one do with it? I wish to leave here, dearest Wadley, but perhaps I am the burden? What must happen for us to reach our full potential?"
"Hi, the burden, I'm interrupting!" says Dad, slapping sordo playfully on the shoulder.
"Shoo, father, we're having deep thoughts." sordo makes a dismissive gesture as he holds the skull of Geoff at eye level to continue his soliloquy, but the presence of Dad has sullen his attitude, and he finds himself at a loss for words, returning to the monument to sulk in solitude.
Back at the WCL headquarters, the doorbell app on Rattler Geoff's left behind phone rings, and through the entrance arrives the oft-absent second in command of the World Crime League, Camryn Sanfrancisco, who usually is busy being a very talented thief on her own, rather than participating in WCL endeavors. She swiftly makes her way upstairs to indulge herself in the Raisin Bran she set up earlier, ignoring any and all glances received along the way. After watching Camryn pass by, Cybr looks back to his computer, trying to find a single other location that offers the specialized walker he was looking for, but it appears that with Special Ed's completely decimated, there are no other locations within the forty mile radius in which Cybr is searching. With all other options exhausted, Cybr sighs, knowing he'll have to make a trip to the dreaded EsMachinaburg, a bustling shopping city where you can find just about anything for a heavily inflated price compared to anywhere else. Cybr heads upstairs, knocking on the wall to get Camryn's attention, just as she finishes the last of the milk from her Raisin Bran bowl.
"Are you going to be busy within the next couple of hours?" Cybr asks.
"No, not particularly." Camryn responds, pulling up her sleeve to check her wrist calendar and wrist watch and confirm the status of her schedule.
"I need to get something in EsMachinaburg, and I need somebody to come with me in case someone tries to ambush me on the way."
"Really? EsMachinaburg? Just how desperate are you that you can't just find whatever you're looking for somewhere more convenient?"
"Less so desperate, more just lacking any other option."
"Well, I guess I can come with you anyways."
"Good." Cybr heads back downstairs, and Camryn follows him as both leave the building to head to the train station and catch a ride to EsMachinaburg. After arriving at the station, Cybr approaches the ticket booth.
"I will take two tickets to EsMachinaburg, round trip." Cybr states.
"He will actually be taking one ticket." Camryn corrects, sneakily showing Cybr that she already has a ticket up her sleeve.
"Fine. One ticket will do."
"That will be 30 monetary units." The sly and strange ticket keeper says. Upon receiving the money in question, the ticket keeper provides the ticket.
"So, when will this train get here?"
"In like two minutes."
Cybr glances over to the train tracks, and sure enough, the train is closing in on the platform at whatever the opposite of breakneck speed is. Cybr and Camryn both walk to the platform, and soon enough, are aboard the train.
Elsewhere, on the streets of Costa Brava, the bonebook that Cybr left sloppily unsealed is spewing out bones from between its pages, rapidly beginning to fill the bone booth from the inside. As the bone booth fills more and more past its usual capacity, a passing bonerologist (which is like a meteorologist but for bones) notices this anomaly, and as the glass gives way and shatters to release a tidal wave of skeletal pieces and parts, Bonerologist tries to predict what types of bones will emerge from the book next. While the book seems to currently be dormant, Bonerologist observes that the scattered bones lining the street are beginning to rattle and shake, just like the rattle me bones commercial warned about. Bonerologist quickly updates the daily bone forecast, just as the explosion bones hidden amongst the bones are detonated by the rattling hyperstimulation, causing several bones to embed themselves into Bonerologist, resulting in Bonerologist actually gaining bones from an injury. Bonerologist is able to see that these explosions have catalyzed the return and reformation of the dreaded skeleton supreme, Boner, who now towers over the bonerologist.
"Tell me, learned one, where would be an ideal spot to start a skeleton revolution?" Boner demands. Bonerologist scoffs as though this question is mocking her very intelligence.
"Isn't it obvious? The BONEYARD is the ONLY logical place to arrange such an event!" Bonerologist responds.
"Can you help me make flyers to hang up around town? We'll front it as like, a barbeque or something."
"Sure, I was just on my way to photocopy some things at the post office, anyways." Bonerologist replies, immediately losing all the edge in her voice and taking on a more agreeable tone.
"Thanks, I'm gonna head down to Trader Joe's to get the food."
"Hi, gonna head down to Trader Joe's to get the food, I'm interrupting!"
"Dad's coming with." Boner adds.
"I'll meet you at the photocopier." Bonerologist says, while Boner goes to the bike shop to see if he can rent a two-seater.
"Can I rent a two-seater bicycle?" Boner asks politely.
"No-seater, take it or leave it." The shop owner responds, seemingly only willing to offer Boner the most bare-bones bike models due to his status as a skeleton.
"Listen here mister, Trumbone didn't get died for this." Boner says, in reference to a fictional character made up for a skeleton rights protest. The owner still refuses to open the small gate leading to the higher-end part of the store.
"I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend of a fellow bike shop owner from out of town that a skeleton just like you once stole a bike from right under their nose, and I will not let that happen to me." The owner insists.
"Would you prefer I take my business elsewhere, then?" Boner scowls.
"Yes, I would, seeing how the only other place you'll find a bike in this town is in the shop in the skeleton ghetto."
"Fine then." Boner storms out, slamming the push door so hard that it becomes a pull door. Boner walks all the way to the skeleton ghetto, the only place where folks really understand the skeletal struggle. Boner passes by several passed out drunk skeletons on his way to the bike shop, and after reaching and entering the shop, Boner repeatedly rings the bell on the counter to get the skeletal shopkeep's attention away from the marrowana that he's smoking. The shopkeeper coughs and wheezes, waving away the marrowana smoke in the air before speaking.
"How can I help you, good sir?"
"I need a one-seated, bicycle." Boner says, and the shopkeeper nods, procuring one of the three bikes they still have in stock. Boner pays the proper amount of picked up trash and takes the bike over to Trader Joe's. Boner dismounts the bike and enters the store, walking up to M'arc Jacobs to ask a question.
"Where do you keep the barbic yewie?"
"Let me check if we even 'ave that stuff in stock." M'arc begins looking around the store, while Boner attempts to access the skeleton leaderboard located at skeletonleaderboard dot weebly dot com in frustration, finding the website to be down at the moment. M'arc eventually finds EBE with visible yewie stains on his mask.
"EBE did you take all the yewie?" M'arc asks, and EBE shakes his head. "EBE, you made sure to leave some of the barbic stuff, right?"
EBE points towards the back back room, and M'arc heads into said area, finding that while there isn't a whole lot of yewie left untouched, there's still enough to make a sale. M'arc brings the remaining barbic yewie.
"Will that be all?"
"What the hell man, even I could run this website bett- oh yes thank you very much." Boner looks up from his phone, pays for the barbic yewie, and bikes over to the photocopier to meet back up with Bonerologist, who already has several sketched flyer concepts at the ready.
"Do you think we can get these hung up by 6?" Boner asks.
"If we start working now with what we have, we might be able to finish before 5:30."
"That's good. Also, do you know when the leaderboard will be back up? I wanna have it on big display at the event."
"I don't, but my friend who works in web design might have an idea, I can call him up."
"You do that, I'm gonna head over there and set up chairs 'n' shit."
"Hi, gonna head over there and set up chairs 'n' shit, I'm interrupting!"
"Dad's coming too." Boner says, as he heads to the Boneyard, which isn't very spooky at all in broad daylight. He locks up his bike extra well and looks for the shack containing the party supplies, which is known to move on a day to day basis according to the lunar calendar. As such, with the relatively recent destruction of the moon, its position has been a bit more difficult to track. Boner takes out his trusty sextant and calculates the approximate equivalent position of the moon in order to locate the party shack, but it doesn't seem to help all that much, so Boner just speaks out to nobody in particular.
"Is there anyone here that could help me find the shed?" Boner asks. Seconds later, a shady fellow by the name of Moonblast Morty crawls out from between two floorboards located on the ground.
"So, ya wanna find the shed, huh?" Morty asks.
"Aren't we outside right now?" Boner says in reference to the fact that Morty emerged from floorboards to make his entrance.
"Yeah, so what if we are?"
"It's nothing. Can you help me find the party shack?"
"Yeah, I've been in charge of moving it since the moon went away. Come with me." Morty pulls up his dark hood and takes out a lantern and leads Boner in a complete circle around the area approximately five times before taking a right turn to reach a shack.
"Is this the right one? I hear it's shack spawning season at the moment." Boner inquires, and as if on cue, a second shack spawns nearby. The door briefly opens to reveal the figure of Thinkles Junior inside, but is quickly slammed shut and locked again. Boner sighs. "Are there any other shacks I should know about?"
"I dunno, but this is as far as I can go. I'm banned from entering a three meter radius of any shack." Morty states.
"Then how do you move them?"
Morty rushes away and squeezes between the floorboards he came from before he can be forced to answer this question and potentially incriminate himself. Boner enters the shed that did not contain Thinkles Junior, and sure enough, there are party supplies in here, seemingly intended to be used for the birthday party of a young girl. Boner sees no issue with using the pink and purple tables and chairs from this shed, as they match the colors of the barbic yewie. Boner begins to set up the party, while Bonerologist has already finished setting up the flyers she had on hand. Several skeletons notice the flyers, and start to accumulate in the general area, including such prominent skeletal figures as Boneregard. Boner has already finished setting everything up by this point, except for the display, since the website for the leaderboard is still down. Boner calls up Bonerologist to see if she got in contact with her friend yet. Bonerologist happens to be on the phone with said friend at this very moment, so she uses her second phone to talk to Boner at the same time.
"So, what's the status of the website looking like?" Boner asks.
"My friend is trying to buy the website off of its current owner so that he can fix it directly." Bonerologist responds. "He says that they're only able to be contacted by fax for some reason. Thankfully, my friend happens to own one of the only three fax machines left in the world, so supposedly the transaction has been going relatively smoothly."
"Done." Web Design Friend says from the other phone, having successfully completed the transaction through exchange of ascii art of various U.S. presidents dressed as clowns.
"He says he's done with the transaction."
Sure enough, within minutes, the website is back up and running, though Web Design Friend has made the somewhat controversial decision to slightly alter the font and background color.
"You think you can have him advertise the party on the front page?"
"Could you advertise the party on the front page?" Bonerologist relays to Web Design Friend.
"Okay." Web Design Friend pastes a poorly cropped JPEG of the flyer onto the sidebar of the website, and by the end of the hour, Boner's BBQ is looking like it may very well end up being the largest skeleton related event in recorded history. T Bone, having long since fallen from his position of number one, is attending the event among others, and watches the grand reveal of the leaderboard, where Boner is proud to see that after all this time he is still squarely at the number five position. However, Boner suddenly remembers that this party was supposed to be a revolution, so he steps in front of the crowd.
"At midnight, we will march to the capitol and proclaim the superiority of the skeleton species!" Boner shouts, and the skeletons cheer with him, as the display switches to a large countdown timer counting towards midnight.