“Okay, but like… why, though?”
Scootaloo thought it was a perfectly valid question. Judging by the angry-sounding whirs of her cooling fans, Sweetie Belle evidently didn’t.
“What do you mean, why?” Sweetie chirped, glowing eyes narrowed into a pixelated glare. “He’s smart, and sweet, and really cute…”
“And a dork,” Scootaloo insisted. “Like, maximum dorkness. He’d get swirlied at a chess tournament.”
“So? That doesn’t mean I can’t like him!”
“I’m just saying you could do so much better! You’re with me on this, right, Apple Bloom?”
After dumping her lunch trash into the can at their table's end, Apple Bloom ignored her saner friend next to her and looked across the table at Sweetie Belle instead. “Ya like whoever ya like, Sweetie,” she said through clenched teeth. “But, y’know… plenty’a apples in the orchard too.”
“But I don’t want apples,” Sweetie Belle hummed, ignoring Scootaloo’s eyeroll and Apple Bloom’s involuntary shudder. “I want him.”
Scootaloo managed to resist looking where Sweetie Belle’s pupils — twin pink 16-bit hearts — were pointed. Apple Bloom didn’t. “Horseapples, I can’t do this,” the latter exclaimed. “I was tryin’ to be nice about it, but… Button Mash? Really?”
“Button Mash…” Sweetie dreamily confirmed. The hearts in her eyes were pulsing now.
“Ugh,” Apple Bloom groaned. “Sweetie Belle… no.”
“Thank you,” Scootaloo added.
“You could do so much better.”
“Exactly what I said!”
Sweetie’s fans whooshed with fury. “You’re being jerks! Both of you! He’s a sweetheart!”
“He’s a dweeb!” Scootaloo argued.
“He’s obsessed with video games,” Apple Bloom added.
“And scrawny!”
“Like, weirdly obsessed.”
“And he wears a propeller beanie. In public.”
“Like, strip-you-for-console-parts-in-his-android-sex-dungeon obsessed.”
Sweetie Belle let out a tinny huff and crossed her forelegs over her chest casing. “Well, I like him. And for your information, I think he likes me too.”
“He likes robots?” Apple Bloom asked.
“He likes girls?” Scootaloo asked next.
“Yes!” was Sweetie Belle's staticky reply. “And he likes me. I see him staring at me all the time. In class, in the computer lab, even once when I was walking home from the coolant shop!”
“The ice cream shop,” Apple Bloom corrected.
“Stop the race, marshal, that’s a red flag,” Scootaloo muttered into her hooves.
“And any day now,” Sweetie went on, each word more electronically distorted than the last. “he’s gonna be brave enough to ask me out, and I’m gonna say yes, and we’re gonna go to movies and walk through parks and do all the other stuff pony couples do, and then in ten years we’re gonna get married and it’ll be perfect and you two are not invited to the wedding!”
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo squinted across the table at Sweetie.
“What kinda ‘stuff couples do’?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Like, what specifically?” Scootaloo asked next.
The heat sinks in Sweetie Belle’s cheeks began to glow yellow. “Y’know… t-the stuff. Like the Internet says.”
“The Internet with SafeSearch on, right?”
Then orange.
“With SafeSearch on, right?”
Then cherry-red — just in time for them all to be saved by the lunch bell. Sweetie Belle hopped off her seat like she meant to sprint away from any further questions, and that meant she didn’t even see Button Mash standing behind her before she plowed right into him.
“Oh! Oh no, I’m so sorry!” she wailed once she saw who she’d knocked flat onto the sticky cafeteria floor. At least he stood up on his own, stupid hat and all, before Sweetie could degrade herself more by helping him.
“It’s okay,” Button groaned. “Ow. You’re really strong.”
“Oh… t-thank you,” Sweetie stammered, as Apple Bloom and Scootaloo both cringed in helpless silence. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I, uh… yeah.”
He stared at Sweetie Belle. Sweetie Belle fluttered her lenses back at him. Scootaloo wondered whether his extremely stupid hat had a battery inside it, or if he just manually spun the propeller every time he wanted to look especially pathetic.
“Can I, uh…” Button Mash finally said. “Look, I’ve been, um… wondering something for a while, and…”
“Yeah?” Sweetie Belle trilled in excitement.
“Oh no,” Apple Bloom murmured in disbelief.
“It’s kinda awkward, a-and I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable…”
“Yeeeeeah?”
“Don’t tell me…” Scootaloo moaned.
“I just didn’t know how to ask, y’know? But if… is it okay if I…?”
“You can ask me aaaanything you want…”
“Okay. Uh… Sweetie Belle…”
Sweetie Belle leaned in close, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo shut their eyes — and Button Mash asked his question.
"Can you run DOOM?"
Apple Bloom and Scootaloo’s eyes shot open. Sweetie Belle’s lenses clicked together.
“The original version, obviously, not the remake. You'd need a better graphics card for that. But your GPU can handle two-point-five-D, right?"
The pixels at the bottom of Sweetie’s right eye flickered. Scootaloo heard a whirring sound from Sweetie's fans, rising into a whoosh as Button Mash circled around her.
“Oh, but where would it be displayed, though? You think Bluetooth would work, or… wait, do you have an HDMI port?”
Sweetie Belle’s horn lit up green. A tendril of her magic — Scootaloo had no idea how it worked, and sure wasn't going to ask now — wrapped around the trash can at their table's end.
"Well," Apple Bloom intoned.
"That about tracks," Scootaloo agreed.
“Oh, hey, you do have an HDMI port! It’s right–”
===
Cream Heart heard the front door creak open, then a strange mixture of clunking and squishing as somepony trotted across the hardwood foyer. She turned just in time to see her son come to a stop behind her — covered head to frog in crumpled wrappers and the discarded food they once contained, dripping ketchup and mayonnaise onto her kitchen floor as he stared aimlessly into space.
“You… okay, sweetie?” she asked. Button blinked, sighed, and pointed his thousand-yard stare up at her.
“I don’t understand girls, Mom,” he mumbled. Then he squished down the hallway towards the bathroom, and Cream Heart allowed herself a single small sigh before heading to the pantry to get a mop.
