• Published 22nd Jun 2022
  • 709 Views, 66 Comments

Button Mash's Adventure - David Silver



It had finally happened. He was in another world, one of adventure and excitement. Many would be concerned, but he knew the rules of that game. He was a pro! The best! With a new sword in mouth, he set out to conquer that new world.

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4 - Sign Up!

The next day, Button charged out the door, ready to... What was he doing? Right! There were dungeons waiting to be plundered and all their valuable loot claimed. He knew where to look, he just had to go get it. What could he get at that level?

As he contemplated this, somepony was rude enough to poke him on the shoulder. "Busy." But they poked again. "What is it?" He wheeled on the pony and squeaked. It was that big demonic one, the fire born. "O-oh, hi! Did you need something?"

"Flint said you're an adventurer."

"Yep!" Button stood up tall at that. "That's me. Why?"

"Where's your badge?" The fire born poked Button right on his shoulder in the same spot. "You should be wearing it. You are lying, or breaking the rules. Which is it?"

"Wait." Button looked to the larger pony's shoulder, where a badge did rest. He hadn't noticed it before, as he had little reason to look for it. What did it mean? Wait. He squinted.

Burning Question
Element: Fire Rank: Third class

"Third class?"

Burning's ears flattened. "You know how to read a badge and still profess ignorance." He brought his hoof down firmly on Button's head. "You test my patience, small adventurer."

Button flashed a big smile. "I didn't know you had to have one. So, uh, where do I get one?"

"Impossible." Burning shoved Button away, sending the colt tumbling to the ground. "Come with me. If they hear I let some adventurer wander off like this, it could be on my head next." With low grumbles, he led the way with lashes of his thick tail.

Button followed, adjusting his hat as he went. "You don't need to be so pushy all the time."

"If you do not like it when I am blunt." Burning smiled at him, flames licking around his lips. "I can get hot instead. Would you prefer that?"

"Nope!" What a choice. "So... that place?" He pointed to the building they seemed to be headed towards. He had seen it in the game but had no reason to go inside. The saviors of the world were not adventurers, technically. They didn't belong to the adventurer's guild.

Mind, no reason to go inside meant he couldn't go inside. They probably never even drew what the inside looks like, just the fronts for players to see. New territory!

"That place." Burning did not slow in his approach. "It is only with the blessing of the guild that we can operate. To do so outside of it is to invite trouble on yourself and all other adventurers." He pushed open the door with a hoof and stood there, holding it open.

Button perked an ear. "Oh, um, thanks." He hadn't expected such sudden courtesy from the fire born.

"I can't let you wander off." Oh. He was keeping Button in sight.

Button scurried past the looming presence to check out the supposedly super important guild. Inside looked like a tavern or an inn or something. There were ponies at tables, drinking and chatting. The main difference is that all the ponies there looked armed, minus the spellcasty ones that looked ready to do that with staves or orbs or whatever else they needed.

Burning shoved him from behind. "To the counter." He thrust a large hoof at the long counter. "Talk to Sally Evenhoof. She's good with newcomers."

"Sally? Alright." Button raced across the area, taking note of the other interesting ponies he saw on the way. An elf pegasus mare, a half-orc earth stallion, and others taunted him with being there and not having time to go check them out.

There were about four ponies at the counter, most of them normal-looking. Sally was a smiling pegasus. "Hello there." Her eyes darted to his bare shoulder. "Are you here to submit a quest?"

"Neat! But no." He reared up, placing his hooves on the counter to see Sally better while talking to her. "I wanna join. I'm already good at adventuring."

Sally looked past Button to Burning near the door, watching them. "Ah, I see. I'm glad you've come to your senses. We'll need to test you first. The tests cost 20 coins."

20 coins would have been a considerable amount, until he had farmed his way across the mountain. Button quickly fished out the requested currency. "Here ya go!" Wow, inflation was already taking effect. "What's next?"

"This way." She looped around the counter to a side hallway. "We value your privacy, sir...?"

"Mash! Button Mash." He kept up with her easily as they entered a new hall with curtains on either side, like a fitting hallway. "So what do we do here?"

She waved her hoof slowly. "I don't think anypony is here right now, so pick whichever booth you like and stand in the center. I'll do the rest."

Button played a quick game of eenie minie moe and dashed into the selected booth. Inside was a glass platform, perfectly round. "Huh..." He wandered up onto it, tapping at it with his hooves with the tink tink tink of hoof against glass. "On it?"

"Good, stand still." He could hear buttons clicking. The floor lit up under him and a wave of energy emerged from it like a disc that went up and down his small form, scanning him maybe? Pop, his personal equipment screen appered, without squinting! "Can you see it?" Sally asked from outside.

"Yep!" Button inclined his head at the information, though it was all stuff he'd seen before. Nothing new there. "What now?"

"With your permission, I'll join you."

"Oh, sure." His stats weren't like a super secret, so far he knew.

She pulled the curtain with a sweep of her wing, just enough to slip inside herself and close it behind herself. "Very good." Her eyes were on his sheet, not him specifically. She drew out a clipboard and got to taking notes. "You really are an adventurer." She tapped a quill on where the class was noted. "A lot of ponies use the word without knowing which they're referring to.

"Yep!" Button considered squinting at her, but things seemed out in the open. "So what class are you?"

"Oh, I don't have one." She waved that away. "I don't adventure, I just work here. Now for page two."

Page two? She casually reached out a hoof for the screen and made a swipe from left to right, making it flip over and reveal the next page Button didn't even know existed. "What?!" She arched a brow at his reaction. "Sorry... never saw that before."

Sally smiled gently. "But you have seen the first page then?" She was taking notes of what was on that second page. "Naughty colt! You've already scored an impressive number of monsters for not being a registered member. If you weren't here signing up, we would have more serious things to discuss. Thank Burning on the way out."

Button nervously laughed, rubbing behind his head, causing his hat to flop. "Yeah, uh... I didn't know." Still, a second page of info. It had his monster slaying stats, broken down into types of monsters. 'Mystical Connections: Birds of Evelon' "Wait, it knows that?" He pointed to the floating letters.

"Hm?" She looked where he was pointing. "I was going to ask about that." She leveled her quill at Button. "Somepony of your level shouldn't have anything there. The birds of Evelon are a mythical creature that only responds to a specific cry that nopony knows! The last ones that are rumored to have that knowledge are the ones that saved the world. You, somehow, have forged a connection with them." She folded her arms in front of herself. "Have you edited your sheet?"

Button blinked rapidly. "You can do that?!"

Sally relaxed a little. "That is a better no than many answers... Yes, you can. There are magics that will change what it displays. The truth will not be altered, but it would fool us taking a look. Some prefer to keep this entirely hidden." She waved a hoof at the floating sheet. "We'd have to ask them to disable it while they joined. I can't write down what I can't see."

"Makes sense... Sneaky ways to hide what you are, neat... But that's all true, promise! I didn't edit a thing." He crossed his heart and stuffed an imaginary cupcake in his eye.

"As you say, and I am inclined to believe you, but that only raises more questions." She flipped onwards to the next page. "Let's see your potentials. Hm..." Graphs. A lot of them. Many different colors battling for supremacy. Sally seemed to understand what it was saying, taking notes. "You've already started using magic... You have no specific talents, except..." She brought up two hooves and swept them apart as if someone was zooming in on a touch display, causing the sheet to zoom in on a specific part.

Innate Talents: Scan(Level 2), Meta Knowledge(Level 5)

"Scan explains why you've seen the sheet before. You can take a peek without this." She pointed to the glass platform Button stood on. "Very useful. But that other one... I've never even heard of that, and level 5, very high indeed... Have you experienced... whatever it is?"

She ran her hoof down the sheet, her wings slowly moving in flapping motions behind her. "You have how much? How are you holding that?" She squinted at him. "Empty your pockets."

"What?" Still... "Um, alright..." And out came his poison bat, and a few other random weapons and entire suits of armor and other things he had found on the way there. "I planned on selling this stuff, but I never got around to it."

Sally spread her hooves wide over the collection of stuff. "You are a little thing, no offense, but you must have another talent." She squinted at the sheet that betrayed nothing. "Without Pocket of Holding, the things in there still weigh things, and even that has a level, like everything else." She beamed suddenly. "I have Pocket of Holding level 1. Very useful for my work at times." She shooed Button off the pad and stepped up.

A new sheet appeared and she quickly flipped to the abilities, zooming in on Pocket of Holding (Level 1). "See? You don't have that, so... There are a lot of questions..."

Button considered the mystery before them. "Well, let's pretend a moment I am being sneaky about that, which I'm not, but let's pretend. Is that against the rules?"

Sally opened her mouth, but words failed to emerge. "Hm... Technically no." She made a new note. "But I will record that you have talents we haven't recorded. Now, as a new adventurer, you would be fifth class, but your level is too high. You'd die of boredom, poor thing, doing fifth class assignments." She drew a four in the air with a wing. "So I'm putting you in fourth class. Don't gloat about it. The others will get annoyed."

Button pointed off. "I want to explore the Cave of Lost Whispers first."

She took half a step back. "That's very dangerous! Especially alone. Get a party. Don't you want to get some assignments instead? Doing those is good experience and you get paid, on top of anything the monsters happen to drop. It's a win/win, and far less dangerous."

"A party..." The game had given you a party pretty early on. It was designed with multiple heroes at any given time. "Right... How do you get a party?" Going out and socializing was not one of Button's specialties.

"That's something a lot of ponies do right here." She went up to the wall and pressed her hooves against it. A card popped out, made of some ceramic with bright colors, then another cloth patch. She brought back both, attaching the cloth patch to his shoulder and offering the card. "These prove you're in the guild. Welcome!"

Author's Note:

Yay, in the guild! Perhaps unsurprisingly, Button has some unusual talents.

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