Button Mash and the Machine for Ponies

"Your faith shackles your vision professor...it is an iron coffin that keeps you from grasping the future! We require a new deity, one of steam and the wheel of...magnetism and progress! That old Celestia is nothing more than a lamed hog! Spitting back awful and ponykind. These stallions...these so called stallions of vision, they would shackle the masses to a wheel, and turn it till their backs break! All for that opiate the lure of profit. Eh...these fools who lackey them, these priest, these officials, this...government...they make pigs of us all!

But what solution my dear Mandus, how to break this cycle...you cannot simply remove the promise of a better world from these unfortunates! In the work houses, in the orphanages! The belief in heaven is certainly the only sucker one can find!

We do not need to wait! We can bring forth paradise now! We can...speed the passion! With only a small sacrifice, we can hold the apocalypse! With just a small sacrifice, we can free our shackles, and deliver them to paradise now!

☣☢☣

"It's the elevator...to the machine." Button said. Looking around. He found a lever and stepped in. Sweetie followed right after. Button pulled the lever, and nothing happened.

"What's wrong with it Button?" Sweetie asked. She had a concerned look on her face.

"Ahh, it's nothing. Just didn't do it right." Button said as he pulled the switch again. The elevator lit up. Button smiled, but his smile quickly turned into a frown as the lights got dim and eventually turned off. Button kept pulling the lever.

"Button, I don't think it works..." Sweetie said.

"What tipped you off genius..." Button mumbled. He punched the lever and walked out. "You know what happens now."

"What?" Sweetie asked.

"Remember the Dark Descent? Before the prison?" Button said.

"Yeah...what about it?" Sweetie asked.

"The elevator. It took me three hours to fix." Button replied. "and now I have to do it again..."

"We could just take the stair---"

"What am I going to do...?"

"Maybe we could walk down the stai---"

"I don't even know where the engine room is!"

"BUTTON!" Sweetie shouted.

"Huh, what?" Button replied.

"We can take the stairs!" Sweetie finally finished pointing to a staircase. After a brief, but intense derp, Button made his way to the staircase, taking Sweeties hoof in his and walking down.

☣☢☣

"But we can save them! We can set them free! We can replace a rotten, old world, with a clean, new one."

"Mr. Mandus, you sound every bit the finatic!"

"Well, how can I be otherwise professor? How can, ANY stallion of ethics stand by and...watch this world drown in it's own excrement?

"...And your engineer...this...visionary whom which you are embarked upon this course, does he share your views?"

"Indeed he does, Indeed he does! The poor fellow has seen it ALL before. Now, this is not the first great civilization HE as wept for.

"And so you set about things immediately upon your retur---"

"Naturally, naturally! These things cannot be left a rot upon the tree, and sponsors were remarkably easy to find. I tell you professor, a trail of greed brings rich men to your door, like pigs to truffles!

"You've seen to have undergone quite a conversion in Marico Mr. Mandus..."

"You could have not seen it yourself and know it professor. As we disembark---even through my fever---I saw the detritus of this so-called progress! I saw, starvation and disease, rot and destruction, polluting the water of the empire! We are ruiners, you and I! ...And all of us, and we make the world unclean!"

"And you took it upon yourself to act as redeemer?"

"Professor, I would NOT be so presumptuous! I am merely a conduit! I am constructing an architecture to wrestle our damnation to the ground, and smother it with steam!"

☣☢☣

"They are continuing their way into a nightmare...why are you letting them do this?"

"Because, my dear, it is necessary."

"But why? Why all of the pain?"

"So that they may know."

"Know what?"

"Their mistakes."

"I knew you would have a reason father, you always do."

"Yes, I just wish your sister were here to see it."

☣☢☣

Button and Sweetie continued their way down the staircase, dark and scary as it was, they couldn't believe it would have gotten any worse. The staircase was a general design, spiraling and made of metal circling around a metal pole with a ten inch diameter. The staircase became more rusted as they descended. Not only that, but the feeling of something not being right also intensified.

"Does it feel strange to you?" Button asked, slowly descending the staircase. Sweetie doing the same, responded.

"Yeah...I'm not sure the stairs was the best option."

"It was our ONLY option." Button said. They continued down as the metal became more rusty, and the staircase less orderly. The steps started to feel damp on their hooves, which they disregarded until they saw a glimmering substance on the walls. A thick smell of iron infected the air. Both Button and Sweeties eyes were wide as they looked at their hooves. Sweetie nearly screamed. Their hooves were wet with blood from all over the walls and stairs.

"M...my hooves their....uhh...!" Sweetie stuttered.

"Sweetie, it's okay, don't worry!" Button said.

"But that's bl--blo....!" Sweetie stuttered once more, starting to panic and not being able to finish her sentence.

"It's...ugh..." Button said, before giving up on a comforting verbal response. He was at a loss of words, so he decided to give Sweetie a hug, hoping it would work. Sweetie stopped panicking and hugged him back.

"Sweetie it's alright, I'm here. It doesn't matter what comes our way I'm going to protect you from anything that will harm you, even if it costs my life. Just give me one thing in return, your trust and cooperation. We can't get through this on our own, we have to work together. I'm sure Rarity would be panicking over you right now, and we have to get back to her."

Button's expression was confused after he was done talking. 'Where did that come from?' He asked himself. He looked over at Sweetie who was smiling. She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him again.

"Thanks Button..." She said smiling still.

"Your..welcome..." Button said, still wondering where in the wide world of Equestria he'd gotten those words from. With that, they continued their way down the stairs.

☣☢☣

"How sweet."

"What is it father?"

"Oh, just the two individuals enjoying their moments of love."

"How can you see that daddy?"

"Because I am God."

"You are?"

"Yes, and I am bringing redemption to all of these ponies...starting with these two."

"And how do you supposed you will do that, father?"

"With my architecture, I shall conquer this nation, to set things right."

"One more question, father."

"Yes, my dear?"

"Why are you inside this machine?"

☣☢☣

Button and Sweetie descended the stairs for approximately fifteen minutes before reaching the end. There they found another elevator.

"Lets hope this one works..." Button said. He walked into it and pulled the switch. The elevator closed and slowly slid down. "Can't this thing go any faster?" Button muttered. The elevator suddenly stopped.

"Great..." Sweetie said. Suddenly the elevator sped down the shaft. Adrenaline pumped in both Buttonmash and Sweetie Belle as the elevator continued to fall faster and faster. Sweetie started screaming in fright as both her and Button started to fall slower than the elevator, giving the illusion that they were levitating above the floor. And all in a few seconds, the elevator crashed sending Button and Sweetie to the floor with a loud thud.

☣☢☣

"Is this it father?"

"No, dear, this is only the beginning."

"How much shall they endure before you stop?"

"As much as they can endure before their backs break."

"But why father?"

"Because it is better to punish them sooner than later...Wait a minute.."

"What is it father?"

"Oh yes...he's here."

"Who father?"

"You ask many questions my dear, you love to learn. That's good."

"But who is it?"

"Somepony I know, very well, and somepony who needs the punishment more than anypony else. He is the owner of a great industry. He left his two daughters and his wife to go on an expedition. In which he came back forgotten by them, he decided to get revenge by killing the wife, and leaving the two daughters to die. Luckily they grew up with the assistance of a mare who gave them comfort and support. But she couldn't take the stress of her life. She injected the older one with amnesia, but forgot the younger one. She told them to sleep the next night, and put them in an alley with enough supplies to live from it, and committed suicide."

"But why father? Why kill herself?"

"Because she knew what was coming."

"And what was that father?"

"Judgement"

☣☢☣

"Oh...ahhh I..I think my ribs are broken..." Button mumbled. Sweetie was lying on top of him barely conscious. She was just waking up when she noticed all of the blood on her. She got up and saw that the blood originated from Button's chest though some torn skin and bruises.

"Oh no...Button!" Sweetie said. She tried to look for a fabric to put over his bleeding wounds. She spotted some spare cloth lying on a catwalk piece. She picked it up when she heard Button mumble something. "What Button?" She asked.

"Behind you..." Button said. Sweetie turned around to see something she had never seen in her entire life.

"The Machines Reactor..." Sweetie said.

"What?" Button asked.

"And...the girl..."

"What girl..." Button said again. Sweetie seemed to ignore him as she walked over and applied the bandage to his chest.

"He tried to kill my sister...but he only killed my mother..."

"Sweetie...what are you talking about..."

"Our caretaker committed suicide...that's why Rarity never knew..."

"SWEETIE! WAKE UP!" Button shouted. Sweetie shook her head.

"Wha...What?" She asked. Button coughed and caught his breath.

"What's wrong with you?" He asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You are talking about some...person killing your mother, or something."

"Wait..."

"What?"

"I have to go..."

"Go where?"

"Goodbye Button..."

"Wait! Sweetie where are you---Wait! Come back!"

Sweetie!

"And they feel no pain. The process is completely sane."

"Sane, professor? Do we judge the accessible level of suffering by the pony's condition? Ask the beggar...professor. Ask the orphan, ask the whore...Ask the STARVING....Professor. The weak, the sick, the filthy! Ask them to define your 'sane!'

"I can meet him! Your great engineer, how marvelous. I must say my dear Mandus, my excitement is almost unseemly."

"Yes I can see that...Step this way professor, I will be right behind you." *A door is slammed*

"Mandus...? Mandus where the devil are you...I can't see a bloody thing...MANDUS!" *a piece of wood is shattered*

"We are the pig professor...we are all, the pig."