The Little Curiosities

by Comma Typer

Immaculate Inning

“Thou desire to purchase our daughter?”

“Nothing of the sort, Mister Pie! We just want to loan her for a couple of weeks. If you’re concerned about her welfare, there’s no need to worry. We have the best training facilities in the league.”

“The best in the league, thou proclaim… on Earth.”

“Yes.”

“Pinkamena is here to commemorate the marriage of her older sister to her betrothed. This business of sports and loaning shall taint this sacred revelry.”

“Then we could arrange for the loan to happen after the marriage!”

“Thy world has souls numbering to a thousand multiplied by tens of thousands. They are many compared to those who inhabit this wide and open land of Equestria. Surely there are a multitude of athletic ponies surrounding thee. They will be found if thou would only but look.”

“That’s the thing. We’ve been given a year to get it all going, but a lot of players are still figuring out how to play football without tripping up on their legs. We also have multiple species playing the sport now—it was made for humans and just humans a century ago, you see—and I don’t want to talk about the horrible mess of meetings that finally got all of us to agree on the new rules to accommodate everyone, but that’s beside the point. The point is: we have heard from our scouts that Pinkie Pie—semi-professional buckball player for Ponyville—has shown she could adapt to our sport quickly. Her natural equinity could be of great benefit to the both of us.”

“Pray tell, what is the great benefit that thou presume to promise for this humble family?”

“I guarantee we’ll win the championship with Pinkie on our side, and you know how championships have big money pools. We’ll give you a lot of bits so you can upgrade this homestead into something more gentrified along with a bunch of other luxuries and amenities.”

“A sober and satisfying life shall never be achieved without peace and contentment in thine heart.”

“But, sir, you have to understand: she’s the best in her buckball position in this world—in both worlds. My scouts say that she’s even expressed implied interest in joining us for the playoffs and taking a football crash course when they talked to her back in Ponyville!”

“I have not heard her express such interest. More over, her actions reveal her interests, that they lie in seeing our second-born unite with her beloved in holy matrimony.”

“If you want, we could come inside your home and work out whatever concerns you may have regarding the arrangement. We’re willing to shell out enough bits to have her home in a jiffy after each game. You value family a lot, and that’s good!“

“Our daughter can look after herself. She will be home on time thanks to Harmony’s mysterious ways.”

“But we can cover everything else! You don’t have to pay a single bit!”

“These designs mean that we confer to thee our daughter’s time and presence. They hold infinitely more value than any tangible gift thou could hope to offer us.”

“Sir, the benefits I’ve yet to layout—and this is not without precedent! Many teams are already pushing the transfer market across worlds and the players they sign are given way more than humane treatment—“

“If thou do not know the meaning of this simple phrase, ‘less is more,’ thou have no right to speak to this family’s patriarch. Now, begone, you pig of greed, and I pray that Harmony and Providence open your eyes to a greater purpose than trophies of temporary gold.”

“Oh, y-yes, well. I see what you mean. I’ll be out of your tail, but the offer is still open if you have any last-minute changes!”

“Farewell.”

---

“Hi, Dad! I heard you were talking to somepony outside! Who was he?”

“Do not dwell on it too much, Pinkamena. He is merely somepony from the other world, wishing to borrow thee at unconscionable interest for your services in the sport of… football.”

“Amareican or association?”

“I do not know what you speak of.”

“Well, to-may-to, to-mah-to! On second thought, I think I have met some of those guys, but they looked kinda’ funny and were talking about trades and contracts, so I—“

“Hey, Pinkie! I need extra hooves for the rock porridge!”

“Sorry, Dad, gotta go! Limestone needs help with the cooking for like the tenth time in five minutes. Maybe we can talk about it later, right? Right? Oh, I can feel Limestone’s anger going through the roof! Limey Pie, I’m coming!”

Comments

[Ninjadeadbeard]

A tragic loss for the world of sports...

[FanOfMostEverything]

Not sure why the recruiter felt the need to ask Igneous for permission. Pony Pinkie's presumably a legal adult. Still, this is probably for the best.

[Comma Typer]

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I can imagine a cute-crazy Rainbow Dash trying to do non-cute things like skateboarding and video gaming, only for other creatures to still call her cute. It's a losing game when ponies are just so cute.

derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/8/7/1219788.gif

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I personally would still squee with joy if I met my favorite famous people or just favorite people in general.

The Time Twirler still being out there is a good point. Still, maybe an SCP Foundation-esque organization could've been formed in response to the revelation that Star Swirl, the Sirens, and potentially other ancient creatures accessed this world already. If that is the case, then the Time Twirler belongs to what they would call a museum.

As for my term for Sunset's gaming fans, it's inspired by Karl Jobst's term for his fans: "you absolute legends."

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Romantic escalation: brought to you by post-human changelings getting used to their new diet. Now that would be a woefully ironic alliance: Principal Cadence having changelings as student counselors helping Crystal Prep teenagers deal with their crushes.

GallStream may be my Student Six OTP, but ZephDash is my OG OTP. Fight me.

Honey stomach: oh, so that's how bees make honey? Those post-human changelings are going to have a weird digestive lesson then.

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It's a cruel reality to admit, even if things are on the upward. My best bet is if Gaothlub was a melting pot of different cultures coming from a wave or two of immigration in its history, resulting in a substantial portion of the population being non-breezies who would act as a cushion for the breezie majority.

The Equestrian-Earth version of the CIA (or just plain ol' S.M.I.L.E.) could benefit from having breezie agents. Under the right circumstances, they can be literal flies on the wall, performing record-breaking reconaissance.

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To go on a tangent: Wouldn't d20 Modern become fantastical anyway, given enough decades or centuries? d20 Modern wouldn't feel present-day in, say, Star Trek.

This version of d20 Modern could substitute nationalities for races but instead of something hard-coded for everyone in that nationality like it's so for races, national attributes/boosts would just be more likely to happen for someone from that nationality. So, say, while every dwarf will get +2 to Constitution, their Appalachian modern-day counterparts might only get that +2 to Constitution if the dice roll right during character creation (though it's always very likely to happen anyway).

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Yeah, I dropped the ball on that one; I focused too much on doing an Igneous Pie piece that that slipped from me.

[ShadwSonic]

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Best to go the Kirby route for her: do not run from the cute, embrace it... then kick so much butt that they have to add "cool" to it.