-When it comes to video games, Button Mash was basically the connoisseur.
Anything digital, hand held, pixilated, it didn’t matter. Button Mash knew everything there was about video games and what they were: He knew the release dates before the game companies knew the release date, he knew the character roster for the game before they even develop characters for the game, and when it came to recolors for characters, you could only imagine who they would call first hand: Button Mash.
But there was always one challenge in a video game that scared him, one so heinous and fueled of evil and hatred, that it chilled him to the bone to even think of it: The Lavender Town challenge in both Pokémon Red and Green. Button Mash wasn’t just simply scared of this, he was petrified to even pick up his own copy of the Pokémon Red cartridge and put it in his gamecolt.
It had all changed for him after hearing of the rumors on the internet, of colts choking themselves with their own hooves and sticking their heads into their mothers’ ovens. He never viewed Pokémon as quite the same joyful kids’ game it once was to him. Sure, many of his games involved murder and killing of various things like zombies, or enemy soldiers, but they never were quite the same thing as an actual pony life. He never killed outside of the pixelation, and never wished to do so in real life: Especially to himself.
To avoid the possibility of it ever happening to him, to ever get the temptation or feel the want for his own blood on his hooves, he has hidden away the cartridge deep within his closet. It was safe there….much rather he was safe with it there…safe from the horrors it held within.
But, on a far lighter note from Pokémon, another thing Button Mash loved was dares. He has never backed out on a dare, and really he got a lot from it. On many occasions, he has won a few games and game consoles off of his buddies for doing their stupid dares, and Button was pretty contempt with that. The games were free, and the dares were usually harmless, even fun to do sometimes. One time he was dared to lick a hot pepper, and his friends gave him a brand new PonyStation 1, being that he trashed his old one with some hard core Major League Gaming.
But once confronted with his new dare, he knew he may fall back on this.
His friends knew very well of his irrational fear to the song (or much rather the whole entire village) of Lavender Town, and the two sacred games that contained it. They always took it into thought that he was simply overreacting, or just being a wuss. The suicide rumors were just precisely that: rumors.
Rumors are not real, and normally do nothing but cause trouble as it is. Could you imagine how much money Haytendo lost when these lies came out by CreepySparkle? It was all some ploy to put them out of business for a rival gaming company PonyStationPortable, or so it was rumored. But, as said, rumors are just rumors. They never understood why something so dumb, so radically false, would be so mystifying and moreover terrifying to the young colt. He was never superstitious and was not known for forming his own superstition. They found these actions by Button to be strange, so they decided a dare would be the best way to call him out on it.
Button had dreaded it, and didn’t even prefer to talk about it to his friends. He himself had not even remembered how his prick friends would have ever figured it out. They don’t read his journal, and they don’t go snooping through his closet. You could only imagine his confusion, frustration, and over-all hatred when confronted with this new dare: a burning deep within his chest and stomach, a want to lash out and retaliate against them and get back at them for what they have damned him to: A fate without his innocence.
In a last ditch effort to ensure he wouldn’t back out of this one, the three foals Hammer Smash, Broken Glass, and Sweetie Belle (He hangs out with the “wrong crowd”) dog-piled on top of him. This was to ensure that the little Button Mash would not escape his new challenge. Really, and in all honesty, this was meant to show him that the game was literally harmless: It cannot physically hurt him, as it was virtual.
The weight of the three foals on top of him was not all too pleasant, and after a while of continued pressure on his rib cage, Button Mash was about to give in…that was until Sweetie Belle began to tickle his back hooves with some of Broken Glass’s feathers. This both infuriated and embarrassed him. Secretly he had a crush on Sweetie Belle, but was never able to tell her his feelings, so he always hid his face in his Gamecolt or began blowing off cartridges any time she was around. This kept him safe from an awkward situation. But now he had to buck and kick, as the stimulation within his back hooves was becoming too much: He had to get them off.
Upon the first few kicks, he had gotten Broken Glass off, only to be piled on again. With this repeated cycle of kicks and smothering, Button Mash only managed to wear himself out and tire up. He knew that he had to end this before it went too far, but already he was showing that he was not capable of doing so: Prolonged time sitting and playing games had taken the physical part of his body and made it frail, subject to torment from the world around him.
As a result he simply laid on the grass now. He closed his eyes and knew for sure his fate was sealed. The ponies on top of him were not going to let him go, they were determined to kill him, and he finally accepted their betrayal. Yes, it hurt to know that they would do this, but he always knew the situation would come one day. He had accepted that this would now be his death:
-His new dare was to play Lavender Town