A few weeks went by and the ponies continued to come back and play.
The Princesses happened to have time to come and watch the games. They wanted to see how much better the players had gotten.
Applejack brought her little sister, Apple Bloom, Rarity had brought her little sister, Sweetie Belle, Twilight Sparkle brought Spike, and Rainbow Dash brought Scootaloo along with her to see how they would all play this game.
Each filly and Spike picked up a racket and strapped it to one of their front legs. They all tried to play, but the rackets were too heavy and long for the fillies to play with. The fillies were also very rough with the shuttles.
Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity both took their fillies over to the Princesses who were sitting near each other and explained the problem. Twilight Sparkle brought Spike too.
Princess Celestia used her magic and shrunk the rackets down to a junior size. That took care of that problem. Princess Celestia looked at her shuttle bin and realized that she was getting very short on shuttles. She looked at the shuttles that the fillies had and saw that they were all mangled and were missing feathers. Princess Celestia needed to save whatever shuttles she had left for future games. She looked at Scootaloo and said, "Scootaloo darling, you can't fly at the moment, right?"
Scootaloo looked back at her wings and then put her head down and sighed. "I can't fly, Princess Celestia," she said.
"Would you mind doing me a favor?" the Princess asked.
"Sure," Scootaloo replied.
"I just need you to turn the left side of your body toward me, so I can grab a few feathers from you," Celestia said.
Scootaloo turned her left side of her body to the Princess and said, "Sure, as long as it doesn't hurt too..." Scootaloo cut her sentence short when the Princess plucked a single feather from her body. "OUCH! Hey that REALLY hurt!"
"I'm sorry Scootaloo, but this will just take a second. It's not like your wings are of any real importance to you, right? Princess Luna, can you please restrain Scootaloo for a moment. This will be quick, I promise," Celestia said.
Luna bit her lower lip and used her magic.
The magic glowed around all four hooves of Scootaloo and her legs collapsed to the floor.
"Hey! What are you doing to me?" Scootaloo asked.
"This will take just a moment, Scootaloo. Please relax."
Princess Celestia used her magic and ripped every single feather off of Scootaloo's left wing.
"EEEEAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHH!" An ear piercing scream from Scootaloo shot out through the entire sports arena and echoed.
Everypony stopped playing and looked over to Princess Celestia.
"Just having some technical difficulties with the shuttle making. Everything's fine! Please go back to playing." Princess Celestia looked down at Scootaloo and said, "There!" All done. It wasn't that bad, was it?"
Scootaloo had tears in her eyes and looked at her left wing that was bleeding very badly. Scootaloo sighed and said, "At least I was able to be useful for once, but my wing is bleeding so badly."
"Oops!' Celestia said. "How could I forget?" She used her magic and summoned a single band aid that had a picture of the Princesses cutie mark on it. She placed it on Scootaloo's left wing and the band aid slid off because there was too much blood running down her wing.
Princess Luna used her magic and summoned several large medical bandages and some medical tape. "I don't think putting a band aid on a bullet wound is going to do the trick," she said. Luna began patching up Scootaloo's left wing.
"What's a bullet?" Celestia asked.
"I don't know," Luna replied. "Just an expression I've heard before."
Luna finished patching up Scootaloo and asked, "Why don't we just use the feathers from the left wing of a duck or a goose?"
Princess Celestia looked over at Fluttershy who was playing with a Wonderbolt. She then turned back to her sister and said, "I don't think Fluttershy would be ok with that. It's bad enough that we use leather to cover the cork parts of the shuttle. We can't even let her know about that. You know she is an extremely sensitive pony."
Luna shrugged and said, "Well, maybe we could have our royal servants stop by the nursing home and pick up all of the loose feathers that fall to the ground that are swept up by the nurses."
"I'm sure those feathers wouldn't last as long. We need ponies who are in the peak of their prime, or else I would imagine that they would break off too easily," Celestia said.
"There's always our prisoners, right?" Luna asked.
Princess Celestia put her hoof to her chin in thought and replied, "I think we can manage that."
Luna grinned a rather sinister smile and used her magic to pluck one single feather from her bigger sister.
Princess Celestia jolted upwards and let out a screech in pain. She turned to see her little sister hovering one of her feathers with her magic.
"We could always use your wing feathers since you have the largest set of wings on the planet," Luna suggested.
Princess Celestia scowled at her sister and said, "My wings and feathers are far too big for a shuttle, and I need my feathers to fly, even if I do get carted around in a chariot all day! Scootaloo's feathers are just right for a junior sized version of a shuttle. If you do that to me again, I'll send you back to the moon for another thousand years!"
Luna giggled a bit and apologized.
Celestia used her magic and replaced the broken and mangled feathers with Scootaloo's new feathers and then gave them back to the fillies.
Each pony took their fillies over to a court and began to play with them.
Scootaloo stood there on the opposite side of the court from where Rainbow Dash was. She had her head hanging low and didn't look motivated to play.
"Aw, what's the matter, Scoots? Don't you want to play?" Rainbow asked.
"I do, but I'm afraid that I acted like a total cry baby and that you think I'm a wimp now," Scootaloo said.
"Come on, kid!" Rainbow said. "You didn't act that badly. Look, I'll pull a feather out of my own wing right now." Rainbow turned and plucked a feather out. Rainbow's eyes widened. "Mmmmph!" Rainbow muttered. She spit the feather out of her mouth and cried out, "Son of a.....That was terribly painful!" Rainbow looked back at Scootaloo and then changed the tone of her voice. "I mean, I didn't even feel a thing. Come on, you did something useful for the Princess."
Scootaloo sighed and began to hit the shuttle with Rainbow Dash.
Twilight Sparkle was trying to teach and play with Spike.
"Heads up, Spike! I'm going to lob it for you!" Twilight yelled out. Twilight lobbed the shuttle high into the air and very close to Spike's side of the net.
Spike backed up a little bit and then jumped into the air. He hit the shuttle with all his might.
The shuttle went under the net and the cork side of the shuttle hit Twilight's hoof.
Twilight used her magic and hovered the shuttle in the air. She wasn't wearing her necklace because this game was more for fun and to teach the younger players. "Let's try this once more, Spike." Twilight whacked the shuttle high into the air and Spike prepared himself to smash it.
Right before the shuttle reached its peak, Twilight used her magic and hovered Spike high into the air. "Do it now, Spike!" Twilight called out.
Spike smashed the shuttle and it landed inside of Twilight's court.
Twilight put the baby dragon down and started giggling. "It looks like Spike is too short to spike the shuttle on his own. Spike can't spike!"
Spike put his front claws on his hips and said, "Very funny, Twilight. Very funny."
Applejack and Rarity played with Sweetie Belle for a while until the Wonderbolts showed up.
Applejack got rather distracted when she saw that Lightning Streak had brought her a bouquet of flowers and rushed over to see him.
Rarity paired Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom together so that they could play with each other.
Rainbow Dash practically pushed Scootaloo over to where Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom were playing when she saw that Soarin' also showed up with a bouquet of flowers for her.
"But Rainbow Dash, where are you going? I want to play with you only!" Scootaloo cried out.
Rainbow Dash dragged her front hoof over her own mane several times and replied, "I uh, have some other important business to take care of. You all just play nicely. Remember, winner stays and continues to play until she loses a game! Have fun girls!" Rainbow Dash then zipped over to see Soarin'.
Scootaloo sighed and stepped onto the court where Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle were playing. This was turning out to be a lousy day for the little orange filly.