Button Goulash
by Present Perfect
The Whitetail Woods is far less scary than its neighbor, the much-vaunted Everfree. But like that imperious forest, there are still large tracts of the Whitetail which remain unexplored. This is the reason why Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle had picked one particular swath of it as the site of their Nightmare Night Eve shenanigans. The potential for scaring stupid boys there was through the roof, and without the danger of being eaten by timberwolves, manticores, or worse.
Said stupid boys -- Truffle Shuffle, Rumble, and Button Mash -- had mutually agreed that they were coming along on this dumb outing because they wanted to help the Cutie Mark Crusaders earn Filly Scouts merit badges, since they were such good friends and all. That was what the Crusaders had asked them to do, anyway. It had absolutely nothing to do with how cute they looked in their Filly Scouts uniforms.
"Are we there yet?" Sweetie asked, her voice cracking amidst the whining.
"Twenty-seven," Button muttered.
Truffle shot him a glance. "Thirty-one by my count, actually."
Button rolled his eyes. "C'mon, I had to take a leak! You can't hold that against me!"
Truffle closed his eyes and turned his nose up. "It stands to reason that I was aware of Sweetie's complaining for a two-minute period for which you were not. Therefore, my count is the accurate one."
"You guys are giant dorks, you know that?" Rumble said, giving them both a glare.
Button snorted. "Yeah, well you're like a year younger than us, so shut up."
"Are you boys arguin' again back there?"
All three colts' faces burned red. "N-no, Apple Bloom," Truffle mumbled.
"Good!" Scootaloo cried, cresting a hill. Beams of sunset lanced through the trees behind her. "Because we're here!"
"Finally!" Sweetie let her saddlebags fall to the ground with a thump, releasing a loud sigh and collapsing onto her stomach. "I thought we'd never make it!"
"You sound just like your sister," Apple Bloom said, snickering as she hefted Sweetie's bags and brought them forward into the campsite. "Leastways from what my sister says about her."
Sweetie kicked at a leaf. She missed. "It's not my fault I'm so tired!"
"Whose fault is it then?" Rumble asked.
"Oh, shut up, Rumble," Sweetie said, puffing out her cheeks. She moved over the hill and the boys followed.
Apple Bloom was setting up the campfire as they arrived, moving large, round stones into a ring in the center of the clearing. The area was surrounded by thin trees, between which Scootaloo zipped, hanging long ropes of orange and black pennants.
"Pull up a log," Apple Bloom said. "Let us do all the work!"
"Yeah!" Scootaloo added. "We're gonna get Filly Scout badges for this trip for sure! You're our guests, so sit back and relax!"
They did so, taking up two logs opposite from where Sweetie unpacked her supplies. She had rather a lot of them, mostly containers filled with things they couldn't quite make out.
"What badges are you trying for?" Rumble asked.
"Fire safety!" cried Apple Bloom, looking up from the sticks she was rubbing together.
"Storytelling!" said Scootaloo, arranging branches into a frame to span the eventual fire.
"Cooking!" added Sweetie Belle.
The boys blanched. In truth, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo would have joined them had those two not already come to terms with Sweetie's emphatic choice of badge-earning and abandoned all hope upon entering the woods.
Sweetie scrunched up her nose at them. "Don't give me that look! I got my big sister to help me with the recipe!"
"W-w-what are you m-making?" Button Mash gulped.
"Soup!" Sweetie grinned. "Trust me, it's simple. There's no way I could screw it up!"
Rumble leaned over to Truffle and stage whispered, "I'm pretty sure she can burn water."
Sweetie glowered at him and made a noise not unlike an angry cat. Turning her nose up, she went back to her supplies. Scootaloo dragged a bucket off to the creek as Apple Bloom at last got the fire lit. The light from the sun waned noticeably.
The boys' eyes remained riveted on Sweetie, sweat rolling down their faces as she poured pre-chopped vegetables into the water.
"Guys," Button said quietly, "whatever happens tonight, just know that I always valued your friendship."
Rumble and Truffle nodded gravely.
The soup was bubbly and gloppy, smelled like wet carpet, and, in the dim light cast by the fire, had the color of rusty nails. Sweetie frowned at it as Apple Bloom ladled servings into the bowls they'd brought.
"It didn't come out exactly the way I wanted it to," she said, her lower lip sticking out. "But at least it's not black..."
"Let's not be too hasty," Scootaloo mumbled.
Bowls were given out to the colts first, who held them out at arm's length and watched them, waiting for something untoward to happen. The Crusaders served themselves, then looked at their guests expectantly.
"Uh, aren'tcha gonna try it?" Apple Bloom asked, cocking her head to the side.
The three boys passed a look between one another.
"Y-you try it," Button said, not looking at the girls.
"Um, yes," Truffle added, glancing around nervously. "It is, after all, your greatest attempt at culinary mastery, Sweetie Belle."
Sweetie laughed. "Oh, don't be silly, boys! You're guests, and that means you get the first bite! My big sister taught me that!"
Button, Truffle and Rumble gave one another looks befitting convicted criminals.
"Rock, Paper, Scissors for it?" Rumble said, his voice tiny. The other two nodded.
Button counted to three, then shouted, "Rock!"
"Paper!" cried Rumble at the same moment.
"Scissors!" said Truffle. He always picked scissors.
"Oh, c'mon!" Button frowned. "None of us won! That doesn't solve anything!"
"Guess you're all losers then!" Scootaloo crowed. She zipped behind them and, in a flash, pushed their heads forward one by one, dunking their faces into the soup bowls.
The three boys came up gasping and gagging while the Crusaders giggled and high-hoofed Scootaloo. Then Truffle licked his lips.
"Far be it from me to assert an impossibility, but I think you may have actually prepared something palatable, Sweetie Belle!"
"Hey, he's right!" Button exclaimed. "This isn't too bad." Rumble nodded his assent, and the three began eating in earnest. The girls joined in.
"He is right," said Scootaloo. "I wouldn't exactly call it 'soup', though."
"It's more like a stew," Apple Bloom said, a hoof on her chin. "Oooor maybe a casserole."
"With the addition of more paprika," Truffle offered, "it might pass as goulash." At questioning looks from the others, he added, "A thick vegetable soup, Hungrarian in origin. My grandmother is from Hungry, and she makes it all the time."
Sweetie clopped her hooves together. "I'm gonna get my badge for sure!"
"My turn!"
Scootaloo rose atop her log, sticking her hoof into the air. "Me and Rainbow Dash have been working all week to come up with the creepiest, scariest story to tell you all! Prepare to experience the thrill of a lifetime!"
"S-scary story?" Truffle swallowed.
Rumble raised his hoof. Scootaloo frowned at him. "Yes?"
"Does it still count for a storytelling badge if you're not telling a story you made up yourself?"
Scootaloo rolled her eyes. "Shut up, Rumble, of course it does! I did most of the work, after all. Dash just made sure the story would be awesome!"
She hopped off the log and spun around. Crouching, she buzzed her wings hard as she could, fanning the fire. It swayed back from the wind, then flared to life even stronger than before, and spirited shadows slunk across the trees behind her. She returned to her log, rising up on her back legs, and leered at the others.
"This story," she began, putting as much menace into her voice as she could, "is about the town that was swallowed up by the Whitetail Woods." She gave them a wicked grin. "The town whose remains we're camping on at this. Very. Minute."
Truffle began to shiver.
"...And they were never. Seen. Again."
Scootaloo waited a count of four before unleashing the most terrifying laugh she could muster. Truffle screamed and dove behind his log. Button pulled his hat down over his eyes, and Rumble hid his face with his hooves. Even Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom clung to each other, teeth chattering.
Snickering, Scootaloo dusted off her hooves and sat down. "Well, what'd you guys think? Scary, right? I like the part about the abandoned graveyard best! That was my idea." She polished her hoof on her chest.
"We-we-we're good with the badges now, right?" Button asked, voice muffled by his propeller.
"Sure!" Apple Bloom said. "I just gotta make sure the fire goes out okay and--"
When she said "fire", the flames guttered, shrank, and turned blue. Apple Bloom turned her head very slowly toward it, the corner of her mouth twitching.
With a roar, the earth beneath the firepit burst open, and all six foals screamed. Sweetie and Apple Bloom clung together once more, Scootaloo hid behind her log, Truffle Shuffle curled into a quivering ball and Rumble fainted. Button Mash, sitting in front of where the thing sprang up from the ground, was knocked off his seat, falling with a splash into his bowl of soup.
Looming up from the center of the sputtering embers was an animate, desiccated pony corpse. Grey flesh hung in strips from white bones, and it lit the clearing with the ethereal blue flames shining from its empty eye sockets. It gave an otherworldly howl, the embers around its waist flickering before flaring back to life, and the foals screamed again.
"W-w-w-what is it?" Button cried.
"Who cares?" shouted Scootaloo. "Run!"
Button grabbed Rumble and took off for the path. He didn't stop to look back until he'd reached the bottom of the hill. The Crusaders scrambled down, hot on his hooves. Rumble stirred on his back. Truffle, panting, crested the hill last and fell onto his front, sliding to a stop halfway down.
"I thought you said you made that story up!" Button shouted, pointing at Scootaloo.
"I did!" Scootaloo's gaze darted left and right. "I mean, me and Rainbow did, but it wasn't based on real life or anything! It was just supposed to creep everypony out!"
"I don't care!" Apple Bloom whined. "We need to get outta here!"
"If I may," Truffle wheezed, lumbering down to meet them. "Has anypony else noticed that this particular phantasm has yet to pursue us?"
As if to corroborate his statement, another ear-splitting howl sounded from the other side of hill.
"Draw straws to check it out?" Sweetie suggested.
"Aw, forget it," Button said, letting Rumble off his back. "I always get the short one. C'mon, Truffle, you're with me."
Truffle Shuffle's eyes widened as Button started dragging him up the hill. Rumble dashed after them.
"Hey, wait for me!"
The three colts crept up the hill, ducking low to the ground as they reached the summit. Swallowing, Button took point, peering over the hilltop at their abandoned campground.
The horror was still where they had left it, sticking halfway out of the firepit. It cast around the clearing blindly, hooves clutched against its barrel.
"What's it doing?" Rumble hissed.
"Nothing," said Button. "That's really weird. You'd think a creepy ghost pony would be, like, I dunno, doing scary stuff or something."
"What if it isn't a ghost?" Truffle said, positioning himself across from Rumble and garnering another look. "Ghouls are said to be undead entities bound to their gravesites. If we built the fire over top of one such site, it stands to reason that we might have awoken its occupant. Of course, ghouls aren't supposed to exist, but then neither do ghosts."
"Okay." Button took a deep breath. "If it's a stationary boss, then that means our best tactic is to swarm it and use ranged dee-pee-ess to draw aggro." He stood, looking back over his shoulder. The soup on his hindquarters had cooled in the evening air. "And the only projectiles we have are, uh... the bowls, I guess."
Truffle gave Rumble a look. "Can you translate that?"
"Run around it and hit it with soup!" Rumble cried, grinning and thrusting a hoof in the air.
"C'mon, Truffle!" Button shouted. "For the horde!"
He and Rumble charged off. Truffle Shuffle, unclear on the plan of action but still latching onto the other colts' enthusiasm, gamboled behind them. With an unintelligible warcry, Button scooped up the bowl nearest him, his own, and heaved it at the ghoul. The specter didn't react until the bowl hit home, then howled and struck out with its hooves in the direction the projectile had come from. It wasn't anywhere near reaching Button.
"We can do this, guys!" he shouted, hopping in place. "Fire!"
Two more bowls sailed through the air, whacking it in the jaw and chest. Its howl changed from wrathful to pained, and it shrank back into the earth.
"The soup is putting the embers out!" Truffle said. "Perhaps its existence is linked to the flame!"
"Soup it up!" Button cried. He raced over to the bucket that held the remainder of their dinner, which had remarkably landed upright after being upset by the ghoul, and hefted the handle in his teeth. Rumble joined him, and together, they were able to lift it up and dump it over the embers. They hissed and crackled under the assault of thick soup and chunky vegetables. The ghoul shrieked and wailed, retreating into the ground and reducing in size as well.
"Finish it off!" Truffle cried.
"But we're outta soup!" Rumble held up the empty bucket.
Button cringed for a moment, then drew himself up to his full height, pushing his hat forward over his brow.
"No we're not. Truffle!" he called. "Fastball Special!" He charged at Truffle.
Truffle's eyes widened. He took a step back. "Fast whatnow?" He didn't have any time to react as Button sailed into him, rear hooves first, and rebounded off him, knocking him over.
"Eat my shorts, demon spawn of the underworld!" Button cried as he sailed through the air. He rotated until he was facing away from the ghoul. With a crunch and a thud, he landed, rump-first, on its head. The last embers went out and the shrieking howls died away.
In the clearing, all was dark and still. The full moon, filtering through the leaves, cast tiny moving shadows over the three colts as they stood, frozen, looking at one another.
Then Rumble busted up laughing and fell over onto his flank. Truffle just lay where he was, overwhelmed by the action. Button climbed to his hooves, wincing and gingerly rubbing his butt.
"Owwww!" Tears sprang to his eyes. "That was one hay of a landing..."
"You did it!"
The Crusaders swarmed over the top of the hill, smiles on their faces. Button sucked the tears back into his eyes and straightened, sticking his chest out a little.
"No ghoul is a problem for Team Button Mash!" He winced and groaned as Sweetie Belle collided with him, hugging him tightly.
Scootaloo helped Rumble up and gave him a soft punch in the shoulder. Apple Bloom did likewise for Truffle.
Sweetie, still clinging to Button, sighed happily. "My hero," she cooed.
"Augh!" Scootaloo stuck her tongue out. "We don't have to kiss them now, do we?"
Rumble's face went from hopeful to disappointed in an instant. Apple Bloom cleared her throat and held out her hoof to Truffle, who bumped it. Then they all looked at Sweetie and Button.
She had paused in the act of pressing her lips against his cheek to stare out at them. She was bright red. So was Button. Rumble busted out laughing once more, and Scootaloo and Apple Bloom joined in.
"Button's got a fillyfriend!" Rumble said through his laughter.
"Sweetie's got a coltfriend!" Apple Bloom and Scootaloo chorused. Truffle just shook his head and mumbled something at the ground.
"I do not!" Button and Sweetie said in unison. Their faces scrunched up and they turned away from each other with a "humph!"
As the laughter died down, Apple Bloom cast a despondent look at the fire. "Uhh, do y'all think I 'demonstrated adequate fire safety skills' tonight? I don't wanna be the only one of us who doesn't get her badge."
"Sure you did, Apple Bloom!" Scootaloo said, clapping her on the withers.
"The fire was extinguished by night's end," Truffle asserted, "and did not once spread into the adjoining foliage. The method of quenching it may have been unorthodox, but it stands to reason that the ends in this instance justify the means."
"I think what he's trying to say," said Button, "is that you did a good job, Apple Bloom."
Sweetie nodded and gave Apple Bloom a hug. "And look on the bright side! We didn't get our cutie marks!"
There was a pause. Scootaloo raised an eyebrow at her. "How is that the bright side?"
Sweetie rolled her eyes and grinned. "C'mon, do you really think we'd get cutie marks and merit badges? We didn't get one tonight, so we're sure to get the other!"
"Sound logic, Sweetie Belle," said Truffle, nodding.
"It's too bad there ain't a ghost-bustin' merit badge you boys could get," Apple Bloom said.
"Well, it's not like we can be Filly Scouts," Button said, shrugging.
"I dunno," Scootaloo said, leering at him. "I bet you three would look awfully cute in Filly Scout uniforms!"
The boys turned red and scrunched their faces as the girls laughed.
"I'm not cute! You sh-shut up, Scootaloo!"
"Be lucky she's just talking to you," Button grunted, dragging Sweetie Belle behind him as he attempted to make his way across the campsite. She was latched onto his rear legs, grinning and squealing too high-pitched for anyone to make out what she was saying. "I'd rather have to fight a hundred ghouls with just my butt than have to deal with girls!"
They all laughed.
Author's Note
Did you get the double pun-tendre of the title? Didja, huh, huh, didja? :D
When Obselescence announced The Buttoning, this was actually my first idea, though I wrote Button Splash (find it on my clopfic account, should you wish) first. I wasn't sure if a two-syllable "ash" word was acceptable. Then I decided I didn't care. Screw the rules, I have horsewords! :V
Anyway, this isn't a Whiskverse story because Button Mash. (Gravy Whisk essentially takes his place as "Sweetie's coltfriend" in those stories, so fuck him. :V) If anything, I'd put it in the same continuity as Those Awful Rumors Round Town because Truffle. Though if you thought you caught a reference to Branch Management in there, you wouldn't just be imagining things... :3
I hope everyone likes the way I rendered RPS. Ponies don't know how to play games right, y'know? (See also: I Spy.) Originally, it was a thing called "Hoof, Pastern, Cannon" that involved various arm movements, but my pre-readers said it was too complicated, so I dropped it. :( I was so proud of myself for coming up with it on the fly, too.
On that note, I'd like to thank Obs and MaskedFerret for their feedback. :D Enjoy the Buttoning, if you dare!
