Button Mash and the Machine for Ponies

Button and Sweetie Belle kept making their way forward into the forest. Not sure of their objective, all they could do is walk and hope for the best. They really did hope for the best. Of course, how could it get worse? Dark environment, no way out, and there was no telling what creatures lurk there.

Before long, the Button found a...thing. He couldn't say much about it, it wasn't really much of anything. Looked like a lump of dirt with a door. There was a switch beside it. He pulled the switch and the door opened. It was a large portal.

"Should we go?" Sweetie asked.

"Well..." Button replied slowly. "Where else would we go?"

"Good point." Sweetie said. She pushed him in and jumped in herself.

☣☢☣

The couple fell down in a bed surrounded by a gate. It was almost exactly like the game. Except the two children weren't there to open the door. It was already opened. Button looked over at Sweetie Belle, given her red face, she had realized the awkward situation before he did. They weren't just on the bed, they were under the covers tucked in real tight.

"Hmm...didn't see that coming." Button said. He took the covers off himself, and quickly put them back on with a red face.

"What's the matter, Button?" Sweetie asked.

"Wh...what's the c-cover up spell for an earth p-pony..?" He stuttered. His face turned redder by the minute.

"Oh...oh goodness let me think..." Sweetie said. "Oh I got it!" Sweetie cast a spell on Button. Button got out, perfectly covered. He didn't know that the 'simulation' was going to undo the cover up spell completely. He didn't fully understand the concept, really. The cover up spell is why most ponies don't need to wear clothes. It's a spell to keep all sensitive parts from other ponies. Young ponies are never granted access to turning off the spell, because of what could happen with their mistakes. Apparently, the...what he hoped was a simulation...had deactivated the spell for him. Unfortunately he didn't think about Sweetie Belle.

"Alright I'm good, lets go." Button said. He made his way to the door and opened it. Sweetie was behind him, neither of them noticed Sweetie needed the spell too. They made their way up stairs and to the attic, just like in the game.

"I'll go first, I'm afraid of heights." Sweetie said.

"But you just climbed another flight of stairs!" Button pointed out, looking the direction of the other flight of stairs and looking back at her.

"Well this is...different I can see through the stairs..." Sweetie said.

"Alright, go ahead." Button said. Sweetie stepped in front of him and up on the stairs. At that point, Button (unintentionally) locked his eyes on Sweetie. "Oh my..." He muttered.

"What?" Sweetie said. She glanced back at Button whose eyes were dilated and directed towards...a different Sweetie Belle.

"I th...think you n...need the spell t..too..." Button said, he quickly shook his head to get out of the daze. Sweetie immediately turned red and ran up the stairs.

"I'm sorry Button...I didn't know the spell was off of me too!" Sweetie quickly cast the spell on herself and sat down biting her lip.

"Nah...nah it's fine..." Button said. "I didn't mind at all..."

"Button!" Sweetie exclaimed.

"What?!" Button asked. "How am I supposed to help it?"

"Ugh...Touche..." Sweetie replied. "Come on, lets go." They kept walking through the mansion until they found another recording device. Button pressed the button and it started playing.

"I must say my dear stallion, you...you look awful."

"Yes I...I've seemed to have picked up something rather nasty in Mexico."

"I do understand...what you've...been through. A lesser man would have crumbled yet you...have made all this. Your great factory, your charities...It is a wonder...for one man alone---"

"It will all be made clear professor, but first...a drink?"

With that the recording ended. Button and Sweetie were...very confused with the recordings...the phonographs. They didn't add up. But one thing was for sure...they can't record something that wasn't there...in this place...Mandus was real, the professor was real...

The Machine...was real...

☣☢☣

Making their way closer, Button Mash and Sweetie Belle found a telephone of some sort. Button remembered and waited on it to call. He was expecting it to say "Precious Eagle Cactus Fruit...Help Us..."

"Hey, it's that phone..thingy!" Sweetie said.

"Yeah, I remember that!" Button said. They waited on the phone to ring, but nothing happened.

"We should look for another one...this one seems to be broken." Sweetie said.

"Yeah." Button said. They both walked about three feet from the phone before it started to ring. When Button turned back, he saw a shadow run across the room.

Button trotted to the phone and looked at Sweetie. Sweetie nodded her head as a signal for Button to answer. He did, expecting the Cactus Fruit statement, but instead he got something else.

"Button Mash...Nice of you to join us." A voice said.

"Wait...you're supposed to say something else!" Button said.

"No...no no no." The voice replied with laughter. "I'm not supposed to say anything. You are in the world, not the story...Mandus is not here yet, your journey is before his. Do you remember that shadow across that wall? Well that's something for you to deal with, as Mandus deals with his pig mask."

"You mean...it's going to stalk us?" Button asked. There was a clicking sound on the phone, then a louder sound indicating the voice hung up. "Hello? Hello?!"

"Wait...so we aren't walking through the game?" Sweetie asked.

"No...we but we need to shut down the machine." Button said. "Or at least try."

Button made the decision to take a new route. Going through hallway upon hallway, getting to the machine through a different way than what Mandus did through the church.

☣☢☣

"Extraordinary...Quite Extraordinary...and you built it all! Dear Celestia...Mandus...you have been busy.

"It is wonderful how tragedy focuses the mind. What else was I to do? Fall into grief and fade into my hopelessness? Why not then *DIE** in those jungles amongst those dead temples?"*