Some time has passed. It seems short to her, but very much has happened. Most of it was confusing, ending with strange looks all around.
But all of that is done- so, according to the pink one, there’s nothing else left to do except eat, talk, and dance. She doesn’t dance, she remembers that. Not from where, though.
So, she’s returned to the table with the cupcakes. Her muscles are still burning with unfamiliar pain. She’s picked a stool close enough to the pile of them that she doesn’t have to rely on any other entities to acquire her next one for her.
Two of the smaller entities are already at the table, to her left. Neither of them have either wings or pointy thing- and the closer one seems interested in her.
“Another blank-flank, huh?”
She looks curiously at the entity, using one limb to peel off the inedible layer of her cupcake, before returning to her food to take a bite. Just like before, it is thoroughly enjoyable.
The entity doesn’t seem satisfied. “Hey! Blank flank!”
She raises one eyebrow, looking towards them again.
Then three more small entities show up on the other side of the table, and also start talking to her. One of them has wings, another has the pointy thing, and the third has neither.
The one with neither is the one that speaks. “Don’t listen to them.”
She blinks, looking at them now.
The one on the left responds. “Hey, flanks out, blank flanks!”
The right again. “We’re not about to let you bully a new friend.”
“Oh? Well-”
Sensing a building argument that could only go nowhere good, she moves. The second half of her cupcake falls quickly to the table, but she’s not worried about that. She places her front legs between the two other entities, one against the chest of each. “Stop,” she states. “We can have a match.”
This gives her pause. Even though she said it herself, she doesn’t know what kind of match she’s talking about- or how it would help. Only that a ‘match’ would help.
“A match?” the one on the right asks.
The one on the left blinks. “You mean Hoofball?”
She nods. “Yes.”
The one on the left snorts. “Sure. Join in, if you like- we’ll smash all four of you.”
That sounds like a challenge- and she’s not one to turn down a challenge. Not when… She’s not sure, but she knows this qualifies. She nods. “Sure.”
The three on the right look at each other. “Cutie Mark Crusaders Hoofball Players, Yeah!”
An entity behind her somewhere- the green one, if she’s identifying the voice correctly- mutters something that catches her attention. “Uh-oh. Uh, hey, Bonbon?”
The other one on the left, the silver one, speaks up. “We can use my dad’s Hoofball field. This way.”
Both the two on the left then rise and move towards the door; the three on the right do the same, moving around the table. She snaps up the last of her cupcake and follows.
It’s a large field of grass. There’s nets at either end, and a couple lines across the field. She doesn’t understand any of them. Two of the larger entities have followed them, though they seem to be hiding. She’s pretty sure it’s the green one and the cream one- the two that had thrown her cupcakes when she entered that building.
While the two that had been on the left disappear into a closet- after pronouncing it ‘off limits to the blank-flanks’- she asks the other three what Hoofball is.
They blink at her. “You challenged her to a match when you don’t know what it is?” the white one- with the pointy thing- asks.
“We’re screwed,” the orange one- with the wings- states.
The last one sighs, glancing at the other two. “We’ve still got twice as many ponies. Um, basically, we try to kick the ball into the opposing team’s net and keep it out of our own.”
The white one stuffs a foreleg into her own face. “Ugh, why didn’t I think of that? Um… yes. Do what we do, basically.”
She hears snickering coming from the stands, where the two larger entities have hidden.
Swish-THWACK!
The net on the two earth ponies’ side shakes violently while the scoreboard emits a little ding, confirming the first point of the game.
Diamond Tiara blinks, looking back at the ball; she’d been on guard duty. “What just happened?”
Over in the stands, covered by an invisibility spell, Bonbon drops her jaw while Lyra chuckles. “Come on. She ate a cupcake out of the air and you’re surprised she can shoot straight?”
Zzzwooop!
The whirling ball seems to curve in midair, ducking smoothly underneath Silverspoon’s dive and touching down in the grass before slamming into and climbing the net. The scoreboard chimes.
Swoop!
It seems to go up this time, curving up to hit the top of the net when Diamond Tiara dives low. The scoreboard chimes.
She’s on guard duty this time- the two earth pony opponents got tired of her kicks, it would seem. One glance- or memory- of the scoreboard proves it; the score is currently sixty-three nothing in her favor. The pink one- silver one called her ‘Diamond’- is ‘dribbling’ the ball, as the yellow one- Applebloom, her other two teammates called her- called it. None of her teammates are close enough, being distracted by an amusing feint on the part of ‘Silverspoon’, what Diamond called her other opponent.
Then the kick comes. Once again, she estimates trajectories, amuses herself, calculates the required blow, tweaks it for an assured victory, and finally moves.
Score! The ball tears across half the field, ricochets off Applebloom’s outstretched hoof, flies outfield and curves back in, all to finally slam into the goal at the other end of the field before launching itself back out to roll to a halt in front of her while the scoreboard chimes.
The final score is one hundred ninety-three to nothing. It’s at that point that her opponents admitted defeat at the hooves of the ‘blank flanks’... She still doesn’t know what that has to do with anything. She will admit, especially since the burn in her muscles disappeared, the match has been really fun.
Everypony- her comrades and opponents alike used the term a few times throughout- gathers in the middle of the field once again, as the two teams facing.
The two ponies facing her team seem more shocked than anything else.
“I… I’m sorry,” Diamond states. “I didn’t realize…”
Silverspoon finishes the thought. “We didn’t realize you were so good at Hoofball.”
Diamond blinks a couple times. “Though it makes me wonder…” Both she and Silver look directly towards her- then blink. Diamond speaks again. “I, uh, seem to have missed your name.”
“Last One,” she states calmly.
More blinking. “Wait. You’re named last one?”
Nod.
Even more blinking. “Uh, okay. Um… Anyways. I was wondering… as a little, uh, friendly competition… wanna try a game, the five of us against you alone?”
She smiles, and nods. “Sure!”
“How?” Scootaloo asks, staring at the scoreboard. Eighty-one to zero in Last One’s favor.
“Oh, hey there,” another voice states, approaching them. Multiple members of Team Demolished- the latest nickname for what had started out as Team Cutie Mark- jump and yelp in response, turning to look.
Lyra glances up at the scoreboard as she approaches, then over towards the lonely filly guarding the entire other side of the field. “Need some help?”
Applebloom is the first to nod. “Uh, yes. She has us outnumbered.”
She glances up towards the lonely filly. “That okay?”
The answer comes back instantly. “Absolutely!” If anything else, she seems excited.
“We need more balls,” Bonbon states, staring at the scoreboard with Lyra, Diamond, Silverspoon, the Crusaders, Applejack, and Big Mac, the last two of which joined twenty minutes ago. The score is one eighty-three to nothing in Last One’s favor.
“More balls?” Applejack asks.
“Yes. That okay, Last One?”
The filly tilts her head. “How would that work?”
“We simply stick more balls in play. If any one of them makes it into a net, that’s a point- and play won’t pause until all balls have made it into nets.”
“Awesome!”
“That’s not even possible,” Lyra states. Through this last game, there was a whopping ten balls in play simultaneously- and Vinyl, Octavia, Doctor Hooves, Derpy, Mayor Mare, and two of the flower girls have all joined Team Crushed, the latest nickname. The score is nine hundred thirty to zero, in Last One’s favor- and the stands have filled up by now. It’s also getting pretty late.
“Alright then. How many balls do you have, and who wants to play?”
Zip swish zwap swoop zip zip zeep zoop
“I have absolutely no idea what is going on anymore,” Lyra states. Rainbow and Pinkie have joined, along with some fifty more Ponyvillians; there’s also about forty balls in play. Play is still going on- but the score at the moment is a whopping ninteen thousand two hundred eighty to one in Last One’s favor. Rainbow managed to score that lonely point with a Rainboom- but the filly successfully intercepted all her following attempts.
She kicks her ball solidly forwards with as much power as her horn-augmented hoof could muster, propelling the ball to something like two hundred miles an hour- but yet again, the filly is faster. A momentary blue-and-gold blur is all she sees before her ball becomes a serpentine white-and-black blur dodging around the players on the field to enter into the goal.
“Seems a little unfair,” she states, upon arrival at the stadium. One glance down at the playing field would show an immensely unfair setup of players- one filly on one side, with at least fifty full-grown adults and some thirty or so youth on the other.
Only, with a score of thirty thousand to one in the lone filly’s favor, she knows exactly who is outnumbered. She gains an amused glint in her eye and turns to her sister. “Sister? How would you like to join this game?”
“Join this game? Pah! You’re setting me up for failure, Sister- there’s no way one filly, even with my assistance, can fend off that many- with that many balls, as well!”
“Have you looked at the scoreboard?”
“Huh? … Uh…”
“Don’t worry, you won’t be alone. Captain? How many hoofballs do we have?”
“Hoofballs? Forty-three.”
“Alright. Who wants to join in this game- on Team Cutie Marks’ side?”
Hundreds of jaws are hanging as they stare at the scoreboard. Celestia is lowering her Sun now- but, with half of Ponyville, at least three professional Hoofball teams, and over a hundred Royal Guards as backup, Team Cutie Mark has scored a measly ninety-seven points.
Against Last One’s fourteen million.
Nevermind the shining golden Rainboom that happened when the Guards joined play- and the bell-like peal of laughter sounding throughout the entire last section, from somewhere on that side of the field.