Button Mash! Master of the Arcade Arts!

by Clockworklich


Jackpot Winner!

Once the group had made it back to town hall, Luna looked around.

"Thou are certain that thou have defeated all of the other nightmares here?" Luna asked the children.

"Yep, we dusted them all!" Scootaloo proclaimed.

"All except the... hey, were did the evil tree go?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"It may have used the nightmare sand of its fallen comrades to heal itself." Luna guessed. "We can not feel its presence though, it must have fled."

"I'll have some guards sent to keep watch until it's found," Celestia told them. Without further words, Luna's horn lit up the room and all of the sleeping ponies awoke with groans and groggy questions about what was going on.

"Attention my little ponies," Celestia called out getting the crowd's attention. "First I would like to assure you all that the threat of Nightmare Moon is over." At those words, the ponies started stamping their hooves while cheering. "And I would like to thank these six ponies for not only saving all of Equestria from Nightmare Moon but even more so I would like to thank them for saving my sister Princess Luna, who has finally returned home." Celestia smiled at her blushing sister while letting the cheering go on a little more. "And we should all thank these little ones." Celestia gestured to Button and his party. "For when there was no one else, these brave young heroes defended the town from invading nightmares-"

"WHAT!?" Eyes widening, ponies quickly scrambled in an attempt to get out of the way. Moms were terrifying when they think their children were in any danger. When that mother's special talent is, in and of itself, being a mother...

Mommy Mash

Epic Mom

Lv. ???

How did mom's level jump into the triple digits?! Button exclaimed in his mind as he watched his mom crash through the other ponies like an out of control train. Button's ears folded back as he braced himself for the coming humiliation.

"My baby! Button are you hurt?!" Mommy Mash asked as she quickly snatched him up and lifted him to eye level. This, however, resulted in his hat being knocked off. Blinking in surprise, Mommy looked up at the thing on her son's head. It looked like a tiny Pinkie Pie but with darker shades of pink and its mane and tail were perfectly straight. That alone raised some red flags as a Pinkie that looks like that is not a happy Pinkie. And a not happy Pinkie is either a sad Pinkie, which this clearly was not, or an angry Pinkie. And an angry Pinkie is scary. On top of that, the whites of its eyes were black with pupils that glowed red. And then there were the teeth. Those things look like they could punch holes in a guard's armor.

With a startled scream, Mommy Mash struck the little nightmare and sent it flying into the crowd and landing on the muzzle of one of the three worst ponies it could have possibly landed on.

"The horror! The horror!" Let it never be said that those flower sisters didn't have an astonishing talent for spreading panic amongst their fellow ponies. Once more there was a scream and a tiny Pinkamena was sent flying across the room to land on another pony who reacted in kind.

Soon the two princesses and hero parties were watching a screaming hoard of ponies running around and a flying pink nightmare that would be sent flying again upon landing by the kick of a pony that really didn't want her to be too close to them.

Celestia turned to her sister, wondering how she could have missed that thing only to see Luna watching on in morbid fascination. That made it clear that Luna did know that the nightmare was there. Turning to look at Celestia, Luna gestured to the children which were giving the expression that Luna had been giving as they watched on. This meant that the children also knew about it.

"We think it is like Spot," Luna whispered. At first, Celestia was confused before an old memory came back. Nightmares were monsters that fed on fear, but they were also created from the mind. This means that they will follow rules based on how they're viewed by the one that dreamt them up. For example, a nightmare that came from a child that dreamt of a monster his parents told them about that would gobble up bad little children would prioritize hunting bad children because that's how the dreamer perceived it. Spot was a nightmare of a dog dreamt up by a thief that had a close call with one in a house he had marked and as such, it was a nightmare that hunted criminals. Before it could be destroyed, it was claimed as a familiar of a unicorn in the guard after it saved some ponies from a mugger.

Celestia was about to raise her voice to try and defuse the situation but she stopped when she saw that she had been beaten to it. With joyous laughter and shouts of "Weeeeeeeee!" the panic slowly started to subside at the appearance of Pinkie Pie who had started running around in the crowd. Her dark counterpart was still being sent flying around the room only instead of being kicked, Pinkie was catching the little nightmare with her poofy tail and playfully tossing it across the room, only to run over and catch it again.

"Look! Look! It's a mini-me!" Pinkie Pie called out excitedly once she had the situation under control. She bounced back towards her friends with Pinkamena being bounced up and down in Pinkie's hair like it was the floor of a bouncy castle.

"What is that thing?" Twilight asked in fascination as she followed the bouncing nightmare with her eyes.

"Oh, that's just Button's pet nightmare," Spike said nonchalantly.

"We hath called it!" Luna exclaimed.

"What?" Mommy Mash asked in confusion as she looked between her son and Pinkamena.

"Please, mom." Button pleaded while giving her the dreaded puppy pout. Pinkamena jumped from Pinkie's head to his and joined in with its best attempt at being cute.

"...I don't believe this. The first filly my son wants to bring home and it's to be his pet?! I can't take it anymore! What is going on with you?! I want an explanation now!" Mommy Mash cried out. Button leaned back while giving a look of panic. There was no way he could give an honest answer to that question. But what could he say that would be excepted as a believable answer? At that moment Sweetie Belle grabbed the panicked Button by the head, turned him to face her, and planted a kiss right on his lips. Button went blue screen as he fell onto his back with a goofy smile on his face. Without blinking, Mommy shifted her eyes between Button and Sweetie as gears turned in her head. The sudden need for improvement, how he started working out, the slick kart, how he was so much happier now, and finally Button's reaction to that kiss. Mommy's eyes stopped on the blushing Sweetie Belle who had a dreamy look on her face. Even in Canterlot, they could hear Mommy Mash.

"Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"


The next day.


Button examined the stick that he gave Pinkamena to try and damage for his experiment. He wanted to know what she could do as a pet and it looks like his earlier assumption was correct. She can interact with things but she can't damage them. And judging by the beating she got from those ponies yesterday and the fact that she has no health bar she can't take damage either.

Button was honestly surprised at how easy it was to keep Pinkamena. It was just after the fact that Button Mash truly grasps the full benefits of his first choice as a teacher. He had been concerned about slipping up and drawing too much attention to his abilities, but all it took were two words, 'Pinkie's Apprentice' and not only did nopony ask any questions, but they also went out of there way to avoid an explanation. To many migraines in the past. He can't take it too far, but it does give him a little more wiggle room if he uses slight of hoof.

Though he was a tad confused about the princesses. They had taken him aside to talk about Pinkamena. When they asked if he knew what she liked to get fear from to eat he didn't know what to say. He didn't even think she needed to eat at all being a game pet but he couldn't say that. So what did he tell them in that moment of panic? He told them that she ate bad dreams. Basically, he told them that she was a cannibal. After he realized what came out of his mouth he expected them to not believe him but he can't figure out why they suddenly forgot about Pinkamena and started giving Pinkie Pie disturbed looks and assigned two guards to watch only her. I wonder how long those two guards will last. Button thought to himself.

Regardless Button now found himself with some time to kill as he had promised to not take any more quests until the others had caught up by getting a class and grinding their stats up to 50. Though he didn't say anything about doing more grinding himself, he decided to work on experimenting with what he had, and maybe find something for his INT stat seeing as he had run out of books.

"Oh! I almost forgot!" Button exclaimed. He took a moment to look around to see if anyone was around as he was experimenting in the Whitetail Woods. Seeing it was clear he took out the eleven random loot boxes he got from the event and unlatched one. Instead of opening the box just disappeared leaving a first-aid kit. Looking inside he found several potions. Putting it in his inventory he used the next box and got a crafting table from Minecraft. To test it out he placed a rock and some sticks on top and got a stone shovel.

"Neat!" Button said as he grabbed the shovel and tried it out only for it to fail to sink into the ground. Blinking in confusion for a moment he tried just hitting the ground with it instead until, with a pop, there was a perfectly square hole and a small block of dirt floating above the ground. Grabbing the block he looked it over before placing it in the hole causing it to grow back into place, leaving no sign that a hole had ever been there.

"So cool!" Button cried out while looking at the table with sparkles in his eyes. "I can make a super awesome secret underground base with this!" Suppressing his desire to start playing with the table right then in their he put it and the shovel in his inventory and used the next box and got a box of gears. In the inventory it went. Next was a skill book.

Trap making Lv 1.
Traps made do 5% more damage.
Traps made are slightly harder to detect.
Traps made are slightly harder to escape.

Could be useful. Button thought. It did come with some free trap schematics but nothing Pinkie didn't already cover.

"Let's see what's next." Button said as he used the next box, only to get a Fallout bobblehead. As soon as he touched it he got a pop-up.

You found a volt colt bobblehead!
Would you like to use it now to increase one of your Gadgeteer skills by 10 levels?
Yes/No

Pushing no he tossed it in his inventory to use when a skill is much higher in level. So far he was happy. These loot boxes had a much better payout than in real games. Excitedly he used the next one and got a cookie. Staring at his cookie like it was his mortal enemy he was about to kick it for being such a lame prize, but it was chocolate chip so instead, he destroyed it by eating it.

The next prize was a simple bag of 200 bits. Tossing it into the inventory he moved on to get...

"Why is one of the prizes for a loot box... another loot box?" Button asked with a twitching eyebrow. Using the new loot box he got a pair of dice. Something about those dice gave him a bad feeling that made him think he would regret it if he were to roll them so in the inventory they go. Next prize however made him grin like a loon. It was a spiky blue turtle shell. This would be great for chasing a bad guy too fast to catch. Opening the next one he got a gun buddy from that old battle tanks game.

"A turret that never runs out of ammo, always useful." He said as he used the last loot box. But what he got quickly wiped the smile from his face and made him go pale. For what he got was infamous in the Fallout games. Carefully, so as not to jostle it, Button put the mini-nuke in his inventory. "Never-ever-ever-ever using that."