Halloween, the day of darkness and terror, was a holiday that, when one thinks about it, doesn't actually make any sense. What started as a Celtic harvest celebration soon became a way to use humor to confront the fear of death (literally the time of year when people learn to giggle at the ghosties), and then that somehow morphed into a festival of pranks, sweets, and, ironically, scaring the pants off of yourself and others.
Sweetie Belle was a coward. Unlike Applebloom and Scootaloo, she made no effort to deny it. As far as Sweetie was concerned, there was nothing wrong with being a huge wuss, especially for a girl like herself. Fear was what keeps you alive.
Which is another reason Halloween is such an odd occurrence; it celebrates fear. Fear, the only negative emotion that people not only seek out, but willingly pay for. Fear, a necessary and well-evolved human defense against danger, was also one of humanity's favorite pastimes. For whatever reason, people just enjoyed being frightened.
Well, except for Sweetie Belle.
She was not a fan of being scared. So little did she enjoy spookiness, she had to cut herself away from YouTube for the entire month of October, for fear of catching a glimpse of a trailer for whatever new horror film was being released. October put Sweetie on high alert. She was constantly on guard, prepared to be scared by her dear friends. It's funny how constant vigilance can't protect you from yourself. All the guarding and preparation amounts to nothing if you willingly walk into the trap.
Just like Sweetie Belle did.
Not that you could blame her. Applebloom had made it sound so appealing. And, seeing as she had been grounded for several months now, Sweetie felt she had to hang out with her friend on Halloween. On top of that, Scootaloo went out and bought a game that she wanted Sweetie to play. It was actually more like a movie than a game in a lot of ways. The controls were very simple, and the game basically told her what to do whenever she needed to do it. All she really had to do was make choices and enjoy the story. The plan was for Sweetie Belle and Applebloom to stay the night at Scootaloo’s place, where they had Applebloom’s PlayStation 4 set up in the basement, and, with Sweetie at the helm, they would try their hardest to emulate the concept of the game, and survive the night. It was all very simple, and Sweetie most certainly understood why the game was called what it was called.
Until Dawn.
“Alright, alright, alright!” cheered Scootaloo when she opened her door. Sweetie Belle was standing in her doorframe, holding a large grocery bag in each hand. Scootaloo grinned and took one of the bags from her. “Come on, AB’s in the basement.”
“Basement?” asked Sweetie, stepping into Scootaloo’s dark mudroom. “Uh, Scootaloo? I’m a little worried about the stuff you sent me out to get.”
“What do you mean? You had trouble finding it?” Scootaloo closed the door and led Sweetie through the hall.
“No, I found everything just fine.” Sweetie could hardly see anything with all the lights out, but she could make out the shadowy figure of Scootaloo opening a door that seemed to lead down.
“Then what’s the issue?” asked Scootaloo. Her voice seemed to be receding downwards, and Sweetie carefully followed suite.
“Okay, I get the chips, pop, and candy,” said Sweetie, gently and gingerly stepping down the near-invisible steps. “What’s the deal with the lighters?”
“Ambience,” answered Scoots vaguely. “Come on, Sweetie, I thought you’d of all people would understand.”
The two were approaching a dim light, one that Sweetie Belle was very eager to get to. She was already starting to regret this.
“Uh-huh. The habaneros?”
“If I told you that, it’d ruin the fun.”
“And the crucifix?” asked Sweetie Belle. In the dim mid-light, Sweetie could see her friend turn and grin at her toothly.
“Just in case,” she said ominously. “Wow, you got the cross, too? Didn’t think you’d be able to find one so easily. What’s it made of?”
“Gold. I borrowed it from my Nana, so I’d appreciate it if we were careful with it,” said Sweetie Belle. They were nearly to the clearing now, so it was no trouble to see Scootaloo nod. They delivered the “groceries” through, and Sweetie Belle took a good look around.
Sweetie had never actually been in Scootaloo’s basement before, but it still felt familiar somehow. It seemed that Scootaloo had converted the place into a man-cave of sorts: sports posters covered the wall, particularly MMA posters (Scootaloo seemed to be a fan of a woman named Ronda Rousey). Besides the posters, there wasn’t much else besides a decent-sized couch, a mini fridge, a pantry area for snacks, and a massive, flat screen television. Sweetie could see Applebloom’s bow poking up over the back of the couch, indicating that she was slouched out on the couch.
“Applebloom, you’re gonna ruin your back like that,” said Sweetie Belle. She took a step forward and set her bag down onto the ground. “I keep telling you, posture is-” Sweetie felt two hands grasp her shoulders sharply.
“BOO!”
Sweetie Belle shrieked and jumped in fear, while Scootaloo and Applebloom just laughed. Applebloom lifted Sweetie’s discarded cargo and carried it to the couch, Scootaloo following behind.
“Howdy, Sweetie Belle,” chuckled Applebloom. “Ah swear, yer gettin easier an easier to scare.” She grabbed her bow from the couch and reattached it to her head. “What’re we gonna do with this one, Scoots? ‘Fraid of her own shadow.”
“You guys know how I feel about Halloween,” grumbled Sweetie Belle. She threw herself on the couch next to Applebloom, while Scootaloo walked around the basement to get everything in order.
“Trust me, Sweetie, we definitely know,” said Scootaloo. “Bloom, remember the time she got us kicked out of that haunted house?”
“Sure do. We still banned, ain’t we?” asked Applebloom. “Wouldn’t have believed it, if’n hadn’t seen it mahself. Gave tha poor guy a concussion!”
“He had a chainsaw!” squealed Sweetie Belle.
“With a rubber blade.”
“How was I supposed to know?!”
“Maybe cause it was bright orange?” tried Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle crossed her arms and turned her chin up in disgust, a practice she had emulated from her big sister.
“I don’t care what you say. I still think I was being brave,” said Sweetie. “I thought it was a real chainsaw, and I fought him off anyway!”
“Sweetie, chucking yer sneakers while shoutin ‘please don’t hurt me’ ain’t exactly fightin em off,” said Applebloom.
“Look, can we just move on?” asked Sweetie Belle in annoyance. “At least explain what all this stuff is for.”
Scootaloo made quick work of unpacking all the supplies needed for the night: chips, cookies, brownies, soda, M&M’s, Skittles, Snickers, Reese's, and other assorted candies. A perfect storm of processed junk foods that Rarity refused to let in the house, let alone allow Sweetie to eat any. A cheat day if she ever saw one.
That was in only one of the bags.
“Uh… Scootaloo?” Applebloom poked around the bag in confusion. “Ah get tha peppers, an’ tha milk, an’ even the cross, but what’s up with the fryin pan, hammer, spray-deodorant, an’... one, two, three, four… eleven lighters?”
“Just in case, you know?” said Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle definitely did not know but, for obvious reasons, she kept it to herself.
“So, here’s the deal. We have forty-ish habanero peppers,” explained Scootaloo. She whipped out her phone to read off some notes. “These babies are 350,000 on the Scoville Scale.”
“Ah don’t speak Russian or German or whatever tha heck this is,” said Applebloom. “English, if’n ya don’t mind.”
“The Scoville Scale is a way of determining how spicy a pepper is,” explained Sweetie.
“Uh-huh. An’ 350K is a lot?”
“Well, jalapenos are only one thousand,” said Scootaloo. “So, yeah. Pretty damn spicy, I think.”
“Why did you have me buy some?” asked Sweetie. Scootaloo grinned evilly.
“None of us have seen anything about this game, right?” asked Scootaloo. Her friends nodded. “Good. This game is kinda scary, okay? So, for fun, I thought we’d play a game within the game. Every time you get spooked, you have to eat a pepper. The whole thing, seeds and all.”
Sweetie Belle didn’t really believe in demons (besides Sunset Shimmer, Crystal Prep Twilight, and Diamond Tiara). However, that plan was evil to a demonic extreme, and Sweetie Belle wasn’t altogether fond of it.
"That's dumb. Let’s do it!” cheered Applebloom.
"This is a bad idea," noted Sweetie. “Do we really have to?”
“Come on, it’ll be fun!” said Scootaloo. “Oh, and I forgot to mention: If there’s a scare that doesn’t get’cha, you get a fistful of candy. Or a nice tall glass of milk, depending on your preference.”
“Can someone tell me what this game is about?” demanded Sweetie. “I’m not gonna let this be like that time in sixth grade, when we watched that super scary movie cause you guys tricked me!”
“Sweetie Belle, we watched Ghostbusters that year,” said Scootaloo.
“Seventh grade, then!” The girls thought about it for a bit.
“Tha Princess an’ tha Frog?” asked Applebloom in wonder.
Sweetie Belle was, understandably, getting annoyed. Her inability to remember the year was causing her to look equally scared and stupid. Even though she was fine with being thought a huge wuss, her friend’s needling did get under her skin a little.
“Whenever it was we watched Sinister!” grumbled Sweetie. “That movie was scary… Look, will you just explain to me what it’s about?”
“Like we said, we’ve never played it,” said Scootaloo. “But, from what I’ve heard, it’s just Horror Movie: The Game.” Applebloom shook her head.
“She’s been sayin that all week, an’ Ah still haven’t the darndest clue what that means,” said Applebloom. “Still, Ah’ve been hankerin to play this fer ages. Didn’t think Ah’d be able to afford it fer another week or two.”
“How’d you get it?” asked Sweetie. Applebloom pointed to Scootaloo, who was going around the room, lighting several candles that seemed to have come straight from Victorian England, some of them even complete with silver candlesticks.
“I bought it from a guy at a yard sale,” said Scootaloo. “He seemed really eager to get rid of it. Something about a curse or something.” She cackled sinisterly, then slammed her hand against some unseen switch.
The lights cut out, clouding the room with darkness. The only light in the room came from the TV and candles, which gave the room an ominousness that made Sweetie’s skin crawl. Scootaloo flopped onto the couch next to Sweetie Bell, then passed the controller to her.
“Let’s get it cracking,” said Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle reluctantly accepted the gamepad, and prepared to play the game. By the time she got to the startup menu, there was already an issue.
“Turn them subtitles on,” requested Applebloom.
“Why?” asked Scootaloo. “It’s not like you can read em.”
“What’chu tryin to say?”
“I’m trying to say that you’re dumb,” said Scootaloo with a shrug. Applebloom reached across Sweetie and socked Scootaloo in the arm. “Ow! Geez, girl, what’re your fists made of, iron?”
“I’ll just start the game,” said Sweetie meekly. She pressed the New Game option, and they were greeted by a shaky screen displaying some sort of butterfly, the title “The Butterfly Effect”, and a description of what it was.
“That movie was decent,” said Scootaloo nonchalantly, in reference to The Butterfly Effect.
“Wait, that doesn’t make any sense,” said Sweetie Belle. “How can one butterfly cause a hurricane? That’s not how that works.”
“Ah think it’s a metaphor,” suggested Applebloom. Sweetie nodded, and they fell quiet for a bit. After trudging through the opening explanation of how the game worked, they were shown a camera pan through a lightly snowing forest, and a cabin in the clearing.The camera moved through the woods and the house, allowing the girls to catch a glimpse at a girl. The camera zoomed back out, and a cloaked figure with a machete crept into the scene for a moment before cutting back into the cabin.
Sweetie Belle was already a bit jittery.
There were three girls and a guy standing near what appeared to be a kitchen area. From what Sweetie gathered, two of the girls, Jessica and Emily were plotting some sort of prank on their unseen friend, while one of them, Sam, was trying to talk them out of it. If Jessica and Emily were just a little less nasty sounding, Sweetie Belle might’ve mistook the characters for her and the others.
While the girls, and the guy (his name was Mike) were luring poor Hannah into their trap, much like how Applebloom and Scootaloo lured Sweetie, they caught another glimpse of that coated figure, this time holding a gun of some sorts as he menacingly gazed at the house. He had some sort of gas tank on his back, only visible when he turned for a slight moment.
“Oh, so I’m playing as Beth?” said Sweetie Belle questioningly. She was in a kitchen, where two guys, seemingly about the same age as the others, were passed out at the counter. Slowly, Sweetie Belle worked out the fact that Beth, Hannah, and one of the sleeping teens were siblings. As soon as she figured that out, it cut back to the prank on Hannah.
“Oh, that’s mean,” said Sweetie Belle. Hannah was vulnerable, finally alone with the boy she liked, and her so-called friends were humiliating her. In a fit of embarrassment, Hannah ran out of the cabin and into the biting cold winds of the forest. The pranksters tried to stop her, with Emily declaring that Hannah just couldn’t take a joke, and that it was “just a prank, Han!”
“Okay, so does this Emily chick remind you guys of anyone?” asked Scootaloo.
“Mh-hm,” grunted Applebloom.
“Yup,” agreed Sweetie.
“Kill her if you get the chance,” suggested Scootaloo. Sweetie Belle wanted to argue how mean and uncalled for that was. But, after thinking about it for a bit, she decided that it was just a game, and that Emily would probably do something else to earn her fate.
“Well, this is a bad idea,” said Applebloom, as Beth ran out in search of her sister. Sweetie succeeded in what she would later learn was her first QTE (quick-time event), and managed to leap over a fallen branch. She ran to a point where she had two options: a route that was safe and a route that was quick. She chose the safe route, and Beth hurried down a flight of rather haphazard stairs.
“Congrats, Sweetie, you just killed Hannah,” said Scootaloo. “Everyone knows that you never play it safe in a situation like this. Reckless speed is the only way to go.”
“I’m ignoring you,” said Sweetie Belle. She was met with another choice a few moments later, and she chose to follow a strange noise rather than a set of footprints. Then, another choice, where Sweetie decided to follow the footsteps over a creepy shadow in the woods.
“These are a lot of choices,” said Sweetie Belle uneasily. It was easy to be overwhelmed, especially when you were nervously expectant of scares and the penalties that come with it.
“Hey, what’s that?” Applebloom pointed to a glowing icon on the floor. Sweetie Belle walked over to it and picked it up. It was some sort of totem. Her character turned it over, and had a vision of some sort. Hannah falling from a great height and smacking into a rock, dying instantly, with what appeared to be Beth falling behind her.
“Death Totem?!” demanded all three girls. Soon, they all discovered that the Totems were scattered around the game, each giving them a glimpse of a potential future. Some marked good fortune, while others, like the one Sweetie just found, were omens of death.
Sweetie moved on, though she questioned her character’s motives by the second burst of fire. Seriously, if it were Sweetie and Rarity, Sweetie would’ve ran as soon as she saw the flames erupt from nowhere, call the cops, and pray for her sister’s safety. Beth was a braver girl than Sweetie.
But not brave enough to stand her ground when an apparent monster was nearby.
“She dropped her phone,” noticed Sweetie Belle as Hannah and Beth ran from the nothing that had spooked them.
“How observant,” said Scootaloo dryly.
The girls were backed up against a cliff, holding hands to give each other the strength and support necessary to refrain from fainting. The thing that was chasing them, which now appeared to be human in nature, slowly began to advance. The Crusaders saw from his perspective, which, for whatever reason, was through a thermal camera. As their pursuer stepped closer, Hannah backstepped, sending herself and her sister off the cliff. Luckily, Beth managed to clasp onto a root and keep the two girls up. The man chasing them made it to the drop and offered his hand, and Sweetie had yet another choice to make.
“What’re you gonna do, Sweetie?” asked Applebloom as time ticked away. “It ain’t pretty either way.”
Rather than save herself, Sweetie chose to let go, and send both Hannah and Beth plummeting to their deaths. Beth hit her back on a large stone with a sickening crack, and the two tumbled down into a chasm or trench, their bodies laying lifelessly. Hannah’s fallen bodied rolled forward and landed with her dead, lifeless eyes beaming directly at the camera. Sweetie Belle let out an involuntary squeak, which brought a grin to Scootaloo’s face.
“That’s a pepper,” she said, handing Sweetie the jar.
“B-but… Oh, whatever!” Sweetie Belle popped open the jar, removed a pepper, and stuck it in between her teeth. She pulled out the stem and chewed the thing as quickly as she could before swallowing.
This was a mistake.
Suddenly, they were in a therapist’s office, where a rather creepy doctor was lecturing his patient about things outside of their control and finding a way to work through the spookiness. The doctor, Doctor Hill, asked his patient (whose identity couldn’t be determined as of yet) a few questions regarding a picture of a barn and a creepy scarecrow. Sweetie answered them as honestly as possible, which resulted in the expected reaction.
Scootaloo and Applebloom called her a huge wuss.
The game was becoming less and less fun as time went on. By this point, they had been playing for several hours, and Sweetie had ingested several habanero peppers. Most of the times she got spooked, it wasn’t even all that scary, rather, she was nervous from having eaten so many peppers. It was a vicious cycle. It also seemed to have impacted her decision making.
They were near the endgame, and Sweetie was significantly less good-natured and pure in her decisions than she would be ordinarily. Though it did take her a bit to decide to “kill” Josh in order to save Ashley when she played as Chris, she slowly lost her conscious. If it weren’t for her dropping the controller, she would’ve killed Ashley in a later choice in order to save herself as Chris, and she made the choice to leave Emily for dead rather easily when playing as her boyfriend, Matt. Scootaloo and Applebloom were as surprised as they were entertained by the sudden change in style.
However, when her tongue had gotten used to the burning agony, she began to soften. As much as she really wanted to, she couldn’t let Mike shoot Emily on the off-chance that the monsters of the game (Wendigos) operated on a principle like that of zombie bites. She later found out that they did not, which made her feel better about her choice (until she found out that her choosing not to shoot Emily put Ashley in danger in the final sequence). On top of that, she managed to save everybody (although, given Josh’s fate, save was a rather giving term).
“My mouth is on fire and Josh just killed some poor guys,” grumbled Sweetie as the credits began to roll. “But, I guess this game was pretty good.”
“I can’t believe you finished off all the habaneros,” said Scootaloo. “I didn’t even know there were that many scares in the game.”
“An’ you got the good ending, first try,” nodded Applebloom approvingly. “Not too shabby.”
“This wasn’t fun,” grumbled Sweetie Belle, though she did enjoy it a little bit. “I’m going home. What time is it?” Scootaloo glanced at her phone.
“5 AM.”
“See you tomorrow.” Sweetie Belle swept up the remains of the supplies she had brought for the night, and heaved them over her shoulder. Without another word to her friends, she stomped up the stairs and let herself out of the house and onto the street. Sweetie’s house wasn’t all that far away, and she probably could’ve made it there in around five minutes.
A hand grasped her shoulder, and any semblance of courage she had vanished. In one quick move, she shut her eyes, wrenched out that strange frying pan from the bag (letting its contents spill on the floor) and swung blindly around her.
“Stay away, Josh!” she screamed.
“Whoa! Hey! Calm down!” Sweetie’s face blushed with embarrassment, because she knew that voice. She knew it fairly well. He was, technically, the reason she felt like she had just French kissed the sun.
“Button?” she asked, not daring to open her eyes.
“Yeah…? And you’re Sweetie Belle, right?” asked Button nervously. Sweetie opened up when her fears were confirmed. There he was: lanky, scrawny, and wearing that dumb yet adorable propeller hat. “You okay?”
“I’m tired, and scared, and I kinda wanna kick someone’s butt right now,” grumbled Sweetie. She shrugged slightly. “So, yeah, I’m fine. Sorry about almost taking your head off like that.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m used to girls hitting me with random objects,” said Button with a grin. Then, he thought about what he just said. “Eh… Probably shouldn’t be bragging about that.”
Sweetie Belle giggled slightly, which was more than enough for Button Mash. Self-deprecating humor seemed to be the way to go.
“What’re you doing out this late?” asked Sweetie. “Er… Early?”
“Oh, I was just over to Scootaloo’s so I could get my copy of Until Dawn back,” said Button. “I still haven’t finished it, and she asked if she could borrow it for Halloween.”
“Wait, that was your copy? I just finished it.”
Button’s jaw just about hit the concrete.
“You play video games?!” he asked in absolute shock. Sweetie nodded. “B-b-but how?! Why?! You’re a girl, girls don’t play video games.”
“What, so I don’t get to play just because I’m a girl?” asked Sweetie Belle in mock-disapproval.
“I never said girls can’t play. I said they don’t,” said Button, though he did notice that Sweetie was at least mostly joking. “It’s cool that you do. We have to game together sometime.”
In a flash, Sweetie Belle yanked out a pen and a small piece of paper (she had been preparing this for ages now), scribbled out her phone number, and passed it to Button.
“Call me,” she said. She scooped up her fallen wares and set back off in the direction of home. Button, who had just gotten his first phone number from his first real, live, actual girl, was, understandably, a bit shocked. It took him several seconds to realize what just transpired.
“Uh… You need help with that bag?” he called to Sweetie, who was now down the block.
“You can help by calling me!” she answered.
She grinned at her own smoothness, and continued on her way. When she was sure that Button was gone and could no longer hear her, she calmly reached into her phone, dialed a number, and brought it to her ear. The phone rang for a few seconds before picking up.
“Yello?” said Scootaloo.
“YOU’VE KNOWN BUTTON MASH THIS WHOLE TIME?!”