> Button Mash and Sweetie Belle Play Minecraft
>  by QuilliamPenn
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Let's Play Minecraft!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 1: Lets Play Minecraft!


“I’m telling you Sweetie Belle, this game is great!” Button Mash stated for the hundredth time, looking back at Sweetie Belle as they trotted to his house.

“As long as we can play it inside, I’m all for it, cause it’s cold out here!” Sweetie said with a shiver, an icy cold breeze whipping through the air and stinging the ears and noses of both small ponies, turning them red and numb.

Button smiled sheepishly and looked back at Sweetie once more. “Yeah, sorry about that…we’re almost there though!” He said reassuringly, to which his companion only shivered and continued trudging forward.

It was winter, obviously. The snows had yet to be cleared and Winter Wrap Up wouldn’t be occurring for a few more weeks, and so Ponyville was covered in a thick layer of snow. It clung to the roofs, making them look like somepony had covered them in diamonds. Snow covered the fields and the roads, the lakes had frozen over, and even more snow now drifted down from the sky above.

Soon enough, Button’s house came into sight, Plopped on the edge of a large field, marking the end of that stretch of road and almost forming a sort of square cul-de-sac.

Button could practically feel the warmth of his home from here, it beckoned to him like the call of a thousand lovely sirens, its call floating over the wind and into his mind, as if he were a pirate on the high seas, drifting and doing pirate-y things. Like drinking apple juice, saying “Yar!” constantly, and getting all the “Scurvy Wenches.”…whatever those were.

His visions of all things pirate-y were suddenly and swiftly ended, however, as he received a shove to the side followed by a muzzlefull of icy-cold snow.

“AGH!” Button went flying and smashed headfirst into a snowdrift, limbs madly flailing about as he tried to escape this icy predicament he found himself in, through his now snow-filled ears, he could make out a single voice.

“Firsttoyourhousewins!” It shrieked, growing fainter as it did so.

Sweetie Belle.

With a huff, Button pried himself from the icy entombment, and shook the few chunks of snow that clung tightly to his mane. He then snapped his gaze over to the rapidly shrinking form of Sweetie Belle, who was hauling flank towards his house; her curly mane flailing behind her like mad as she did so.

“SWEETIE BELLE!” He cried, taking off after her like a bat out of Tartarus, kicking up flurries of snow as he ran.

Sweetie only let out a half shriek half giggle as she ran as fast as her little hooves would carry her, kicking up just as much snow as Button was. From afar it would have looked like two tiny go-carts were whizzing about, throwing up clouds of smoke as they did.

Button grinned smugly to himself as he gained ground on his opponent; he would catch up to her in no time. Maybe he’d stick out his tongue as he ran by and say something snarky or smart! He liked that idea.

This idea; much like his list one, was suddenly and abruptly halted to an utter stop, as Button was met with a second muzzlefull of snow, it impacted right on his forehead and forced him to slow down a bit. He shook his head and found that; as expected, the assailant was Sweetie Belle, hurling snowballs at him using her magic.

“Sweetie Belle, no fair!” He whined, trying to regain the speed he lost as the house grew ever nearer.

Sweetie replied with yet another giggle of delight, apparently enjoying humiliating Button in this icy manner.

Button simply groaned and rolled his eyes, little legs starting to burn as he desperately tried to catch up to Sweetie Belle; somehow she was faster and he didn’t like it.

Finally, Button made it to his front door, collapsing into the snow just inches from the patio and breathing heavily into the icy blanket beneath him; melting it a little with each exhale.

“I guess I win, huh, Button?” Came Sweetie Belle’s voice, laced with a triumphantly playful giggle as she sat in front of him, looking down from her perch on the patio.

Slowly, Button Mash raised his head and gazed upon Sweetie Belle.

There she sat in all her glory, looking like some dictator leading her armies into battle and conquering nations with neigh but a giggle and a flash of her pearly whites, White and pink mane hanging in loose curls over her fluffy ears, and smiling innocently down at him.

Why did he put up with this?

“Yeah…sure, Sweetie Belle…” He groaned and let his face fall back into the snow, waving a dismissive hoof at her weakly as he resigned himself to the snow.

“Button, I wanna play that game you were telling me about, come oooooon!” She whined after a moment, apparently tired of waiting for him.

With another groan, Button pried his body from the freezing ground and regained his composure, brushing himself off before looking over at Sweetie Belle, who was impatiently awaiting him by the front door.

“Alright, Alright…” He said, sighing softly and opening the door for Sweetie Belle.

Why she didn’t just go inside herself, he hadn’t the slightest idea.

“Mom?” He called out as they stepped inside, looking around silently and awaiting a response from his mother.

No response.

“Maybe she’s not home?” Sweetie suggested, trotting further into the house and looking around curiously.

“Guess not.” He replied, shutting the door behind him with a rear leg and trotting after Sweetie Belle; best he make sure she didn't get into anything she shouldn’t; Sweetie Belle was nothing if not inquisitive.

Trotting up ahead of Sweetie Belle and taking the lead, Button Mash lead her into the kitchen and over to the fridge, pulling it open with a hoof and scanning inside, searching for his prize like an eagle for its prey.

And there she was, the most beautiful thing in Equestria, shining like a thousand gems gathered from the depths of a dragons lair, or like a super-rare amulet you loot off of a wizard in just about any RPG, ever. She was the sweetest thing a colt could ask for, entrancing and hypnotizing as a level 43 Naga with a golden broadsword of fire.

A carton of apple juice.

With a happy smile, Button snatched the juice box out of the fridge and stuck the plastic straw through the soft spot in the top, proceeding to take a large sip equal to an entire teaspoon, sighing happily as he swallowed the godly nectar.

He looked over at Sweetie Belle, eyes glazed over from this exhilarating experience, staring at her blankly with a dumb smile on his lips.
“You’re weird sometimes…” She raised an eyebrow and lifted a hoof up, leaning back slightly. 

“No, I have apple juice.” He stated, shaking himself from his trance and turning over to the kitchen table.

“Anyway…” Sweetie Belle let out slowly, following him over to the kitchen table. “What game is it you wanted to show me…?” She asked, watching as he hopped up on the chair.

Saying nothing, He motioned for Sweetie to come sit on the chair next to her. She did as asked and clambered up onto the chair, scooting it over a bit so she could see what Button Mash wanted to show her.

Slowly and with (An attempt at) dramatic flair, Button opened up a laptop and the screen flashed to life, a screen saver depicting the face of some strange green creature shone brightly.

Sweetie Belle’s eyes widened in a mixture of disgust and wonder. “What is that on your screen?” She asked.

“A Creeper.” He said flatly, mousing over to an icon of what appeared to be some sort of block.

“What’s a-“

“You’ll find out…” Button said almost evilly, cutting Sweetie Belle off mid-sentence.

“Oookay…” She said uncertainly, filing Button’s actions under “Button is just being weird as usual.” And not thinking much of it.
Sweetie watched as the screen flashed once again, and an image saying “Marejang” appeared across the screen for a moment, followed by what appeared to be some sort of menu.

“This…is Minecraft.” Button said, trying to sound like a narrator for some sort of documentary.

She stared blankly at the screen for a moment, the words “Peter Griffin.” Fluctuating up on the top left of the screen, while images of a strange looking block-world shuffled behind the menu.

“Looks boring.” She stated, eyes hooded.

Button almost fell out of his chair.

“WHAT! No, Minecraft is the best game EVER! S-sweetie Belle, you gotta try it!” He had almost instantly switched into pitiful mode, practically begging her to try the game like some sort of puppy dog. 

Sweetie Belle didn’t understand why she enjoyed his reaction. Into the, “Button being weird.” File it went.

“Ok, ok, ok…but if this is anything like that Haylo game you showed me, I’ll hit you.” She glared over at him, memories of being utterly destroyed by Button Mash during a firefight in a game they had played last weekend.

Button hold up a defensive hoof and shook his head. “It isn’t my fault, you suck at-WOAH!”

Button was unable to finish speaking, as Sweetie shoved him off of his chair and onto the floor, sliding into the now empty seat in front of the computer, only then realizing she had no idea what to do…wonderful.

“Button, what do I-“

“Click single-player…” He groaned; face still one with the kitchen floor.

Sweetie moused over to the button labeled “Single Player” and clicked, and a screen popped up asking her what she wanted to name her world.

“Oh!” She exclaimed gleefully, eyes widening at the prospect of being able to name something.

The sound of keys clacking reaching his ears, Button slowly sat up; massaging his nose for a moment before moving to climb up on the chair next to Sweetie, praying all the while that she would manage to refrain from causing him any more humiliation for the remaining duration of her visit.

“Button, I named my world, now what do I do?” Sweetie inquired, tearing her eyes from the screen to look over at him.

“Ok, now you hit that button there.” He said, still rubbing his nose and pointing at the grey bar near the bottom of the screen.

Silently, Sweetie Belle did as directed, silently clicking the start button, and delving into the world of Minecraft…

The next half-hour or so Sweetie Belle spent learning the basics. The basics being “Yes, the tree doesn’t fall over if you take a block from the middle.” As well as “That’s a chicken, not a duck.” Over the course of this half hour, Sweetie spent her time gathering unnatural amounts of dirt and logs; the birch logs only, Sweetie Belle claimed that they looked the “Prettiest.”

Then came the building phase, Sweetie Belle ended up spending an annoying amount of time perfecting her small house, making sure she put a fence around it so “Those pesky ducks wouldn’t get inside.” A statement to which Button simply sighed and facehoofed.

Not long after that, night fell in Minecraftia, a pixilated moon shone over all of the land, illuminating Minecraftia in its soft glow. The only other source of light being the singular torch Sweetie Belle had made and placed in her home. The torch cast its warm orange glow over the inside of the house, and Sweetie Belle now stood alone inside her small home.

“Ok…now what?” She asked, looking away from the computer and over to Button.

“Well, it’s dark, so you wait till daytime since you didn’t want to kill a sheep and make a bed…” He grumbled with a roll of his eyes.

“HEY! That sheep didn’t do anything wrong, he probably has a family, and little lambs and everything!” She protested, stomping her hoof on the chair for emphasis.

“Sweetie Belle, the sheep don’t…ugh…ok, fine, whatever.” He hooded his eyes and looked over at her, not understanding why she didn’t just kill a sheep.

“So what do I do then?” She asked again, moving her cursor to look around the small house she had made.

“Well...Don’t go outside, there are monsters.”

Sweetie’s eyes widened. “Ooooh, monsters?”

Button nodded. “Yep, Zombies, and Skeletons, and Spiders, and Endermares, and especially-“

“OH! I wanna see a zombie!” She said excitedly, practically bouncing up and down with joy in her chair.

“Sweetie Belle, no you don’t, you only have a wooden sword, and on top of that-“

“Buttoooon, I wanna see a zombieeeeee!” Sweetie Belle whined, playing it up so that Button would give in. A plan that worked quite well, as Button soon hung his head and sighed in defeat, giving into the whims of the whimpering filly sitting beside him; as usual.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you..” He said with another shake of his head.

“Crusader Sweetie Belle is armed with her wooden sword of justice! Nothing can stop her!” She exclaimed, posing valiantly on her chair and swishing a non-existent sword around in one hoof.

“Just…go outside and look around, but be careful.” Button warned, slightly afraid of how Sweetie Belle would react should she die in the game.

Last time they played Terraria, and Sweetie Belle had died at the hooves…er…eye, of the Eye of Cthulu, tears had been shed. They had turned his heart to mush and he couldn’t help but give in and give her half his armor and weaponry…only for them both to die five minutes later.

“I’ve got this!” She insisted, turning around in-game and trekking outside into the darkness, the sound of pixilated grass crunching beneath her digital hooves.

“Oooh, spooky!” She said with a giggle, exiting the “anti-duck” gate and looking around the dark wilderness.

For a moment all was silent in Minecraft, only the sound of background music being heard amidst the otherwise utter silence.

At least until there was a spine-chilling groan.

“AH!” Sweetie Belle jumped in her seat and in the process nearly sent the computer mouse flying, scooting up against the back of the chair with wide eyes.

“BUTTON MASH WHAT WAS THAT?” She cried, staring at the screen with a look of horror.

Button flew into action, taking hold of the mouse and keyboard like a pro; he flipped around in-game and located his target, a lumbering, rotting, stinky zombie-pony.

The “KE-YAH!” That followed as he bludgeoned the digital monstrosity would have put karate experts to shame, the sound of damage being dealt mixing with the unsavory groans of an undead equine being repeatedly smacked with what was essentially a baseball bat, until it fell sideways and disappeared into a poof of smoke, leaving behind only a small, floating chunk of rotten meat.

“Ha-ha! Take that vile beast!” He cried triumphantly, an unnaturally happy grin on his face in light of his victory.

“W-wait…that was a zombie?” Sweetie asked, figuring out what the monster was after thinking about it instead of screaming bloody murder.

“Yes, it was, and you’re welcome!” Button said with a smug nod, crossing his front hooves as he did.

“Oh…that wasn’t too scary at all!” She chimed, practically shoving Button out of the way so she could grab a hold of the mouse yet again. “Where’s another one? I wanna fight another! Wait…ewwww, it dropped rotten flesh, Button that’s unsanitary, why do I have it in my inventory!”

Before Button could respond to any of her questions, Sweetie had tossed the rotten flesh out of her inventory, and was already turning around to find more monsters.

“Do they drop good treasures? Oooh, do they drop bits or something if you kill certain ones? Do they-ohmygoshlookanotherone!”

Again, before Button could say anything, Sweetie had charged at another zombie she found, this one was carrying what appeared to be an iron shovel.

“Button, do I get that shovel if I kill it? Ooooh, maybe it’s a super-shovel or something, and I can get ‘em in one hit and everything!” She spoke and swung in-game simultaneously, bludgeoning the zombie-pony repeatedly until it fell sideways and dissipated in a flash of smoke, leaving behind rotten flesh like before, but this time there was also an iron shovel, slowly floating up and down and spinning even slower at the same time.

“Oooh!” Enamored with her new treasure, Sweetie Belle snatched it up and equipped it, not even pausing before charging at yet another zombie.

Button gave up on trying to say anything, he could have told Sweetie Belle that treasure drops from mobs were rare, he could have told her that the shovel wouldn’t do much good as a weapon, he also could have told her she should stick close to her house, but he couldn’t due to her now constant stream of questions she would find the answer to not five seconds after she asked them.

It went on like this for about five minutes, before Sweetie Belle had finished her campaign of digital carnage and all was silent. Her inventory now filled with a decent amount of rotten flesh. If in-game physical exertion transferred to real-life, she would be sweating profusely. Despite this she still was panting for some reason.

“Are you finished?” Button deadpanned, staring blankly at the computer screen.

“Yes…I would like to return home now.” Sweetie Belle said matter-of-factly, beginning to turn around.

And that was when it happened, the event that would bring about the most eventful and memorable day both Button and Sweetie would have for a very, very long time. It was almost as if it happened in slow motion. 

Sweetie Belle slowly turned around in-game, feeling rather proud of herself for successfully butchering half a dozen zombies and not taking a lick of damage. She felt invincible, like she could take on the world with only her iron shovel.

How wrong she was.

Just as she turned around, a familiar face filled the screen, the same face she had been disgusted at when she saw Button’s screensaver. There, in all its pixilated, horrifying, hissing and explosive glory.

Was a Creeper.

It hissed and began to flash white. Sweetie Belle let out a scream of terror and unleashed a bolt of magic from her horn; it flew true and impacted on the screen of the computer. There was a small “poof!” that followed and the screen flickered to a halt.

Sweetie Belle was pressed against the back of her chair, chest rising and falling heavily as she stared upon the computer with wide and horrified eyes.

Button Mash, however, had a much different reaction.

“AGH!” He cried in despair, diving over to his computer and shaking the screen gently, as if he were trying to awake an unconscious loved one.

“No, no, no, don’t do that!” He cried frantically and continued to shake the computer, tapping the side of the screen as he tried desperately to get it to respond. After a few seconds, he realized the futility of his actions and slowly turned his gaze to Sweetie Belle, a look of despair and utter heartbreak across his face.

“B-button…I-I just got scared, I didn’t-“

“Sweetie Belle, you fried my computer! My mom is going to murder me!” He cried frantically, flailing his hooves about for emphasis.

“B-button…I…”Sweetie Belle tried to apologize, but couldn’t seem to do so due to her need to fight back tears at what she had done, she felt truly awful.

Button, however, didn’t seem to notice this, and continued ranting.

“Do you know how much trouble I am in? A LOT!” He cried in despair, the fear of his angry mother seeping into his very bones.

“W-wait, Button, look, its fine, look!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed, jumping up from her seat and frantically pointing at the computer screen.

“My mom, is going to- Huh?” Button stopped mid-rant and turned around, what he saw on the screen was returned with an expression of confusion.

The words “Loading New Chunks” sat motionless in the middle of the screen, a background made up of stone blocks behind the three words.

“That’s new…I haven’t-“

Suddenly the computer screen flashed an unnaturally bright green; both ponies fell out of their chairs and onto the floor, shielding their eyes from the light with their hooves. The strange light illuminated the room for a moment, before disappearing completely from existence.

They wouldn’t see it again for a long time.

Slowly the two sat up, looking over at one another with shared expressions of shock and confusion, eyes wide and bewildered.

“What…was that?” Sweetie Belle asked through labored breaths, her chest heaving from the excitement.

“I-I don’t know…maybe-“

Again, Button was cut off. However instead of a green light cutting him off, he was cut off by the worried moan of Sweetie Belle as she laid her eyes upon what would rapidly become a very, very big problem. Pointing her hoof over to the table they had previously been seated at.

Button followed his friend’s hoof, and found himself just as shocked as she was when he saw what she was pointing at.

Where there had once been a table, there was now only a large, blocky, pixilated tree. It was identical to an oak tree from Minecraft, gently swaying in a non-existent breeze. It poked at the ceiling, brushing it just barely with its topmost leaves, the laptop now sitting on the floor, at the base of the tree.

“AHH!” Again came the high-pitched scream of a certain pink and white maned filly, before Button knew what was going on, she had scrambled up his body and was desperately trying to perch atop his head like some canary.

“AGH, S-Sweetie Belle, what are you doing?” He said, blushing slightly at this sudden barrage of physical contact with his friend.

“THE FLOOR IS CHANGING!” She shrieked.

Button turned his gaze to the floor around the tree, and sure enough she was right. The floor was rapidly changing from its previous carpeted state, into the familiar green grass blocks found in Minecraft, flowers and grass patches sprouting up sporadically here and there.

Now both of the young ponies were screaming, both because they were unsure what to make of this, and because…well…it was kind of horrifying when your house starts to turn into a video game.

The grass spread faster than Button could scoot backwards; especially with Sweetie belle firmly latched to his head like a headcrab out of Hoof-Life. The grass generated closer and closer, eventually sliding right underneath them, the feeling of carpet being replaced with that of soft grass.

Button scrambled back farther; still wearing his Sweetie-Hat, until he hit the wall. Now only able to watch as his house was transformed block by terrifying block.

The walls became a mixture of stone and dirt, kitchen counters becoming bushes and more trees while the kitchen sink turned into a small waterfall originating from a wall that was now made of stone and dirt blocks, the fridge then became a chunk of iron ore, sticking out of the stone wall slightly as the rest of the kitchen transformed, the blocks spreading out of sight and into the rest of the house, leaving Sweetie Belle and Button alone in their newly re-generated house.

“W-what…I don’t even…” Button managed to breathe once he and Sweetie had managed to calm down, cautiously eyeing their surroundings with uncertainty.

“Button, is this part of the game?” Sweetie Belle whined; though she already knew the answer.

Just as he was about to answer, Button realized he was still wearing Sweetie Belle as a helmet.

“Hum…Sweetie Belle…?” He said softly, looking up at her with cheeks as red as pixilated apples.

Sweetie Belle stared down into his eyes for a moment, before realizing exactly where she was, her cheeks matching his as she scrambled off of his head with an embarrassed yelp, the red in her cheeks sticking out even more than Button’s due to her white coat.

The two stared at each other with red cheeks, seeming to forget their surroundings for a moment, the only sound being heard, that of the small spout of water now spewing from their wall and into a small hole where the kitchen floor once was.

Their moment was short lived however. Just as Button tore his gaze away from Sweetie Belle’s to look behind her, his previous look of embarrassment turned to one of horror.

Horror directed at the large, green, rotting, zombie-pony, now creeping up behind Sweetie Belle.

> Chapter 2: Zombies and Skeletons and Endermares Oh My!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 2: Zombies and Skeletons and Endermares Oh My!



“S-sweetie Belle…” Button said in a shaky, hushed voice, holding a trembling hoof up to point at the large, green zombie-pony now creeping up behind Sweetie Belle.

Sweetie seemed to pick up on his emotions, and instantly managed to figure out for herself exactly what was creeping up behind her. She turned and recoiled in fear, eyes wide at the zombie-pony. It was about as tall as a normal pony, but considering how short she and Button were, it looked rather large from their point of view.

It was a deep green, mane colored different shades of brown, as if faded. Upon meeting Sweetie Belle’s gaze with its own milky eyes, it groaned unpleasantly and continued shuffling forward.

“I-I really like your…mane?” Sweetie Belle squeaked, as if compliments would stop the monstrosity heading slowly for her.

Button realized what was about to happen and began frantically searching for something to use as a weapon, but alas, everything had been turned into blocks…how was he supposed to use blocks to fight an undead equine? On top of that, he wasn’t even sure what would happen if he tried to dig up a block!

“Sweetie Belle, RUN!” He cried, running over to her with the intention of head butting her out of the way of their undead assailant.

However he was too late, the zombie reached the small white filly and swung its head, it impacted on Sweetie Belle and she let out an unpleasant cry and flashed red for a moment.

Wait what.

Button stared in bewilderment at Sweetie Belle for a moment, and through her shock she too realized she had just flashed red, and upon being hit, the sound of damage being taken was heard.

This just got weirder and weirder…

“RUN!” Button cried again, and this time Sweetie Belle obeyed, she righted herself and scrambled away from the zombie-pony, running around to the other side of the tree, until it would find her, and then she would run around to the other side, and it would find her again, and it went on like this for a few seconds before the zombie-pony got tired of it and spotted Button Mash.

He could have sworn he saw it smirk a bit, before it groaned and started shuffling towards him, eager to do…whatever it did to Sweetie Belle, to him.

“That’s not good…” He whimpered, scrambling backwards as fast as he could, eyes locked on those of the undead equine.

His scrambling was short-lived however, as his backside soon met the grassy wall with a “Crunch!” 

Button frantically looked behind him, as if to confirm there was indeed a wall there. Oh Celestia, he didn’t want to die here, not like this, not at the hooves of some stinky, nasty, video-game-made-real zombie-pony!

He tried his best to press himself farther against the wall, as if it would help him escape his inevitable fate, however in the process he smacked a hoof against the grass wall and was rewarded by a familiar noise.

The sound of digging.

Button turned his attention from the zombie for a split second, and hit the wall again with his hoof. Small pixilated cracks ran through the form of the block before disappearing and being replaced with the previous pixels.

“Wait…I can-“

“YOU GET AWAY FROM BUTTON!” Came the shrieking voice of Sweetie Belle, seemingly out of nowhere she flew into action, dealing out a loud, ringing “CLONG!” To the zombie-pony’s head with what appeared to be…and Iron Shovel? Where did she get that from?

The zombie-pony let out a groan of pain and stumbled back, flashing red for a moment as the damage was dealt. It groaned quizzically and went wall-eyed for a second before shaking its head and re-focusing on Sweetie Belle, totally forgetting about Button Mash.”Uh…B-button!” Sweetie Belle whimpered, holding the pixilated shovel with her magic.

“RUN!” Button cried, grabbing Sweetie Belle with a hoof and hauling her behind him, she let out a yelp and ran behind him, going as fast as her little hooves would carry her tiny figure.

“BUTTON MASH IF I GET EATEN RARITY’S GOING TO KILL US BOTH!” She shrieked in horror, looking back to see the Undead Equine shambling after them with increasing speed.

“JUST RUN!” He cried back, running through the kitchen doorway and into the hall, only to let out another scream and nearly slide off of the edge of what was now a large, deep ravine.

“W-what…”

All that was left of his hallway was a two block wide path that stuck out from the wall, everything else was ravine, on the far side of the wall, there were ore veins, still generating, and at the bottom of the ravine; about 30 blocks down, was nothing but hot, bubbling, lava. The sound of it popping and broiling reaching his ears before he actually saw it.

Sweetie Belle however, did not spot the ravine as quick as Button had, and in her attempt to stop, she only slid past him.
Right off the edge.

“SWEETIE BELLE!” Button cried, sticking out a hoof and just barely clasping it around the trembling hoof of his now dangling friend. 
She looked up at him with a look of confusion as to why she was currently dangling over any sort of ledge at all.

“BUTTON MASH YOU BETTER NOT LET ME DIE!” She shrieked, looking down at the pit of lava far beneath her and beginning to flail like a fish on a hook as the realization of where she was began to set in.

“I’m trying not to!” He said with a strain, slowly pulling Sweetie Belle up with all his might, she was heavier than she looked; best not say that however, lest he wanted a hoof to the face.

A few seconds later, Button was able to pull his companion up next to him on the ledge, where she instantly slammed herself against the stone wall and slumped down, breathing heavily and looking down at the ravine with wide eyes.

“W-where did that even…” Was all she managed to say.

“I’m…not…sure…” He panted, eyes widening just as he realized he had forgotten something.

Where was the zombie-pony?

Sweetie Belle had the answer, as evident by the shriek she let out upon spotting the zombie-pony creeping through the doorway into the ravine-hallway, looking to the side and locating its prey, an evil grin coming across its rotting lips as it shambled closer and closer.

Button flipped around just as the zombie-pony swung its head, he flashed red and the familiar sound of damage being taken was hear, the knockback nearly pushed him off the ledge, and one more hit would have sent him plummeting to a fiery end. 

Unfortunately for the zombie, that is how it met its fiery and boiling hot end.

Button swung his hoof and hoped for the best. The zombie-pony groaned in displeasure and flashed red, the knockback from the hit pushed it over the ledge and tumbling down to a burning grave, it groaned just before hitting the lava, pixilated fire enveloping its body as it rapidly flashed red from the damage, two seconds later it keeled sideways into the lava and was no more.

Button and Sweetie Belle both stared down at where the zombie had previously been, now only lava in its place, neither of them were sure what to make of this, or anything that had happened in the five minutes it had taken for Minecraft to successfully invade the house.

Button sighed and slumped against the wall, the only light in the hallway now that produced by the lava in the bottom of the ravine; the blocks had finished generating and successfully eliminated all lights in his house. The lava cast its dim glow onto the ceiling and spread out faintly.

“Button…w-what’s going on…?” Sweetie Belle squeaked, her eyes wide and startled looking.

“I-I…I don’t really-“

Button was interrupted by the sound of an arrow zipping just by his nose; he cried out a jumped back against the wall, Sweetie Belle did the same as the arrow flew past button and a few inches from her face.

The all-too familiar sound of clinking bones came from the other end of the hallway, a moment later, out stepped a Skeleton-pony, it was a unicorn and just like in the game, it was using its magic to hold the bow, already notching another arrow from its unlimited supply, to fire at them.

“I am so tired of being cut off by these guys…” He groaned to himself, turning and looking at the terrified form of Sweetie Belle. 

“We should run.” He deadpanned.

The chase that ensued was anything but pleasant.

Button and Sweetie Belle made their way down the hall as fast as they deemed safely possible, not wanting to fall into the lava, yet also trying to avoid the Skeleton-pony now firing at them, arrow after arrow whizzed by their heads, just barely missing them. They both skidded to a halt just as the ledge sticking out from the wall ended, only empty ravine taking its place. Button could see his living room from here, and the staircase was on the other side of the ravine, maybe if he got up to his room they’d be safe from this nightmarish occurrence.

The ravine wasn’t too wide, only three blocks, they could make that! Hopefully…

“Sweetie Belle, you gotta jump!” He cried, looking frantically back at the Skeleton-pony that was busy notching another arrow.

“WHAT! Button are you crazy, I’m not gonna jump over THAT!” She jabbed a hoof forcefully at the death-pit, looking at him like he was an idiot for even thinking about jumping over.

“It’s only three blocks! You can make it!” He cried is response, just barely ducking under an arrow as it whizzed by his head, clipping a few hairs from his mane.

“Nhh….” Sweetie Belle let out an unsettled whine, gaze flicking between Button, the ravine, and the Skeleton-pony currently reloading.

“You got this Sweetie Belle, you got this, you can do this…yeah…you totally got this…” She told herself, trying to psych herself up for the jump.

Another arrow whizzed by, narrowly missing Button mash and sailing downwards in an arc, into the bubbling lava.

“SWEETIE BELLE!” Button screamed, tired of getting shot at.

With a horrified scream, Sweetie Belle forced herself to jump off the ledge, she sailed through the air with anything but grace, flailing wildly for something to grab hold of, and a moment later she landed safely on the other side of the ledge looking around wildly as if to make sure she was still alive.

“H-ha…I…I’m alive!” She said gleefully.

Button waited for the Skeleton to fire once again narrowly dodging the arrow; good thing Skeleton-ponies had crappy aim.
Without taking near as much time to psych himself up, Button leapt across the gap, he was sure he would make it across without trouble.

He was wrong.

Mid-flight he felt something hit his flank and he flashed red, the knockback sending him on a diagonal flight path, he hit the edge of the ledge and latched on tight with his hooves, back legs now flailing like mad as he tried to pull himself up.

“Sweetie Belle, help!” He whined, failing to pull himself up.

“Sweetie Belle to the rescue!” She cried heroically, trotting over to where Button was dangling and holding out her iron shovel, clutching the handle in her teeth as button wrapped a hoof around the shovel end, allowing himself to be pulled up and safely onto the ledge opposite the Skeleton-pony.

“T-thanks…”He breathed shakily, a bit shell-shocked from what had just happened.

Sweetie Belle didn’t have time to respond, due to an arrow implanting itself in the stone wall just next to Button’s head, to which both small ponies cried out and backed away.

“T-this way!” Button called, scrambling to his hooves and frantically motioning for Sweetie Belle to follow him towards the front door. Sweetie Belle nodded and took off after him, another arrow implanting itself above her head as she did.

Dang, these Skeleton-ponies had worse aim than Stormtroopers.

Button slowed down a bit as they got out of range of the Skeleton-pony, his front door now only a few blocks away. The Skeleton-pony silently glared at them from the edge of the ravine, unable to shoot at them from this range as its arrows just arced downwards and into the lava.

They both sat in silence, glaring at the Skeleton-pony, who glared back with empty eyes.

And the Sweetie Belle screamed…again.

“BUTTONMASHYOUHAVEANARROWINYOURBUTTOHMYGOSH!” She shrieked, jumping back and flailing her hooves frantically, as if that would help.

Button brought his gaze down to his flank, and indeed, a blocky arrow was imbedded in his rump, that must have been what hit him mid-leap.

Then he started screaming.

“OHMYGOSHSWEETIEBELLEPULLITOUTOFME!” He fell over to his side and clutched his rump, the arrow didn’t hurt, but still, there was a large, foreign object protruding from his brown behind, and that wasn't exactly a good day.

“WHAT! I’m not going to touch it!” She protested, motioning with her hoof at the arrow.

“Well, I’m not pulling it out!” He replied, shaking a hoof at the arrow.

“But you have to! It could get infected or…something.” Sweetie Belle raised an eyebrow as she began to ponder if one could get an infection from a digital arrow in the rump.

“Can you just-“

Button stopped mid-sentence as the arrow suddenly poofed and disappeared in a thin plume of smoke, leaving behind unhurt and unscarred booty flesh.

“Oh.” 

“Is that…normal…?” Sweetie Belle asked, trotting over and poking at his butt with a hoof.

Button’s face instantly turned red and he jumped up off the ground and turned his butt as far away from her as possible.

“D-don’t be touching my flank! That’s weird!” He protested, face almost as red as the lava below them.

“I was just looking…”Sweetie Belle said with a nonchalant shrug.

Button said nothing, simply staring at her for a moment before turning his gaze to the door. “W-we should probably go…” He said.

“Oh! Yeah, good idea.” Sweetie Belled scrambled over to the door, and Button turned his gaze back to the Skeleton-pony still glaring at him with hollow eye-sockets.

“Uh…B-button…?” Sweetie Belle whimpered from behind him, her tone sounding defeated and like they she just discovered their problem had gotten bigger.

“Huh?” He tore his eyes from the Skeleton-pony and turned back to her, only to find her staring at the open door with a blank look, he couldn’t see what she was looking at due to where he was sitting, but whatever it was he didn’t think it would be good.

Turns out he was right, it wasn't good.

“No…this is bad…this is very, very, very bad!” Button began to get Hysterical, tugging at his mane with his hooves as he sat on his flank.
Behind the wooden door that had replaced his previous door, was not a breeze wafting in from outside, or snowflakes drifting down from the winter sky, it wasn’t even his patio.

It was bedrock.

Button felt himself losing it, his eye twitched and a few hairs popped out of their place on his head, giving him a rather…”touched” look.

“Button…are you ok?” Sweetie Belle asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“T-that’s bedrock…” He said with a slightly insane chuckle.

“So…?”

“Bedrock…is unbreakable, Sweetie Belle.”

Sweetie Belle processed this for a moment, then when it finally hit, her eyes widened in horror.

“Unbreakable! B-but, how are we going to get out of here?” She cried, becoming more and more hysterical by the second.
Instead of Button responding, another voice came.

A voice indescribable to anyone who hadn’t played Minecraft, a voice that’s owner instilled fear and dread, as it would gaze upon them with piercing purple eyes. Button, of course, knew never, ever to look and Endermare in the eye, that if one did so the Endermare would hunt them relentlessly.

Sweetie Belle, did not know this.

So there was nothing Button Mash could do as he watched her; almost in slow motion, look over into the living-room-turned-cave, and into the purple eyes of an Endermare.

A chill ran down Sweetie’s spine and she trembled lightly, staring back into the gaze of the beast as it met her gaze in response, neither one of them looking away from each other. Staring into one another’s souls.

Button opened his mouth to warn Sweetie, to tell her not to look away, but the words he managed to utter only drew her attention over to him, breaking the stare.

“Sweetie Belle…don’t-“

“Huh?” She turned and looked at him, as if coming out of a trance.

There was a sudden and growing noise, an unearthly and terrible growl that grew until it was all they could hear. The Endermare’s jaw opened unnaturally wide, stretching down and bearing it’s sporadically placed teeth, a purple tongue writhing about in its midnight black mouth.

Time to run...again.

“Run!” Button grabbed Sweetie Belle by her front leg and lead her over to the staircase as fast as he could, the Endermare right on their heels, still growling and snarling unnaturally.

Button slammed into the wall to stop himself and then turned to make his way up the stairs, dragging Sweetie Belle close behind; who was only screaming once again in horror.

“NEVER LOOK AT AN ENDERMARE!” He cried, frustrated with how much they had been running recently. This entire situation was insane, first Minecraft decides to spew out of the computer, then they get chased by a zombie-pony, then a Skeleton-Pony, and THEN they find out they are trapped in the house, and as if that wasn’t enough, one of the most horrifying creatures in Minecraft was now hot on their heels. Would they ever catch a break?

It could be worse though; at least there weren’t Creepers…yet.

“Button, where are we going?” Sweetie Belle cried, just before letting out another scream as the Endermare swung a long, black foreleg at her and missing by a hair.

“My room…I hope!” He replied, seeing the Endermare attack out of the corner of his eye.

If this was anything like actual Minecraft; and so far it appeared to be, Button couldn’t let Sweetie get hit by the Endermare. They did massive amounts of damage and Sweetie had already taken damage from the zombie earlier. 

The way Button saw it, if they flashed red when they got hit, and so did their enemies. They must have an unseen health bar which meant they could only take so much of a beating before they made like a mob, keeled over and went “poof.” Of course this was just a theory, but with everything that was happening, having an unseen health bar wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen that day.

Button spotted the door to his bedroom, whizzing past his mom and dad’s room and barely catching a glimpse of what it had become.

His parents bedroom was now a dungeon, a mob dungeon to be exact, the walls and floor were made entirely out of cobble and mossy cobble. Exactly what kind of spawner room it was was soon made apparent by the trio of Spiders that poofed out of the air and landed on the ground, looking around and inspecting their new surroundings as he ran by.

Sweetie Belle screamed again, now clinging to Button’s back as the Endermare swung a second time, nearly hitting them both with its long limbs.

He had to protect Sweetie Belle, he knew the most about this darn game, and it was now his job to protect her!

“Don’t worry Sweetie Belle, I’m gonna get us out of this!” Or so he hoped.

There was the door, now only a few blocks away. 

There was no way he would be able to open it and keep Sweetie Belle from taking damage, he couldn’t do it in time, and he knew that. 
The Endermare wouldn’t fit through the door, and he could only pray that it wouldn’t be able to teleport inside, but he had to do all he could in that moment to save Sweetie Belle.

And so he stopped.

Button stopped so abruptly that it launched Sweetie Belle towards the door. She let out a scream as she flew, plopping safely on the grass that had grown around the door.

The Endermare took a trip of its own as well, unable to properly adjust its course in time, it tripped over Button and toppled down to the ground, smacking its short muzzle and briefly flashing red.

So they could trip then, that wasn’t normal in Minecraft.

“BUTTON!” Sweetie cried out, only realizing what had just happen after righting herself and gazing upon the Endermare now righting itself in a way that could be described as anything but graceful or smooth.

Button looked at the Endermare currently struggling to get up,  with a look of determination, and swung his hoof hard at it, the swing landing on its shiny black rump and making its entire form blink red from the damage.

The Endermare let out a gurgle of confusion, surprise and annoyance. Its purple eyes widened at the smack and it suddenly seemed to regain composure, righting itself and glaring down at Button Mash for a moment before swinging its hoof at him, hard.

It hit him and he went flying over in Sweetie Belle’s direction, she let out a yelp as she was hit and fell back.

Button groaned and sat up, rubbing his head and trying to shake himself out of the daze he was now in, everything was spinning and it felt like his whole body was pulsing softly, almost like a warning…

The next thing he knew, Button had been yanked to the side and was suddenly in a different world.

Instead of the previous dim, stone covered walls of his hallway-cave, he was now sitting on pleasant green grass blocks, patches of grass and flowers swaying gently in a nonexistent breeze, there were still walls around him, but they were made of dirt and grass blocks, a tree sat in the corner of the room and there was a small 2x2 pond in another corner, The sun seemed to shine from out of nowhere and it felt just like he was outside.

Button was just beginning to wonder if he had died, and maybe this was like…Minecraft heaven, but the sound of a door slamming shut behind him soon smashed that theory to pieces.

“Button, are you ok?” Sweetie Belle’s voice hit his ears, and he felt a hoof grab his shoulder and turn him around. Sweetie Belle was staring into his eyes with a look of worry and concern.

“I-I…I’m fine…” He shook his head a bit and tried to clear it, the pulsing feeling slowly fading away.

Sweetie Belle looked anything but convinced, said look didn’t last however. Instead it changed from concerned to annoyance.

“What do you think you’re doing? You almost got smashed into Button bits!” She exclaimed, scolding Button like a mother would her child.

“I saved you…didn’t I?” He said blandly, rubbing his head and trying to will away the pulsing feeling.

Sweetie Belle looked a bit taken back; her cheeks a soft red, she didn’t look annoyed anymore, if anything she looked surprised.
“Y-you…did that for me?” She asked softly.

The realization of what he had previously said hit Button at that moment; he shot up and looked at Sweetie Belle with a blush that matched hers.

“J-just because I don’t know if…uh…if we’ll respawn or anything!” He protested, feeling embarrassed all of a sudden.

Sweetie Belle seemed to pick up on this little moment as well, and her expression of annoyance returned to her face; albeit it was a tad forced.

“W-well don’t so stupid stuff like that! You play this game a lot and if you die I’m in a bad spot!” She said with a stomp of her hoof.
They both stared at the ground for a while. Button felt the pulsing start to fade away completely and then stop all together, only then standing up to look around.

“Where are we…?” Sweetie Belle asked, she herself now observing their new surroundings.

“I think…this is my room…” As Button finished, a horrible thought hit his stomach, made it churn and roll. He zipped over to where one of his most precious possessions should have been.

His gaming console.

Where a gaming console once sat, there was now only coal ore. It seemed to glare back at Button mockingly, as if overjoyed it had taken away his video games.

Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes and watched as her companion mourned over his lost video game collection.

This was going to be a very long day.

> Chapter 3: Taking Inventory
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 3: Taking Inventory



“I am in so much trouble…” Button Mash groaned, burying his muzzle into a grass block that had been a toy chest at one point, the sound of spiders chittering and communicating heard loud and clear through the wall between his room and that of his parents.

“Pretty much, yeah.” Sweetie Belle deadpanned, flicking the tip of her hoof at the 4 x 4 pool of the water that was sitting where Buttons rug used to be, before all this craziness had happened.

“This is…so crazy…” He groaned, falling back onto the grass-floor and sighing, staring up into a sky that was actually a ceiling; as they had discovered after trying to climb over the dirt walls, only to smack their heads on an invisible barrier.

They had to get out of this…but how?

Never in his life had Button ever encountered such a staggeringly large problem, he couldn’t just go to his parents, they weren’t here. On top of that, would they even be able to get in the house? There was supposedly bedrock blocking any way out of the house, and if you mined a few blocks into the wall, you would hit bedrock just like at the doors, so obviously it encompassed the entirety of the house.

No, he couldn’t turn to his parents; he had to do this on his own. Not because he wanted to, but because he had no other choice; well, other than Sweetie Belle, but she really hadn’t much help for anything other than screaming and then screaming some more, followed by, you guessed it, more screaming.

Well…she had saved him from a zombie-pony, but he could have dealt with that on his own; or at least that’s what he told himself.

“So are we just sitting here until we die, or…?” Sweetie Belle’s voice cut into his thoughts like a knife, she sounded rather nonchalant about the whole situation.

“No! I’m not gonna die in here! Just, gimme a second…I need to think.” He weakly waved a hoof around in a dismissive manner, trying to think about where he would even begin formulating a plan.

“Whatever…” Sweetie Belle sighed.

Button watched her trot over to a tree before closing his eyes once again. 

So far, everything seemed pretty close to Minecraft. The mobs, the lava, the trees, even the grass blocks and the noises they made when they walked, the damage; granted, mobs being able to trip over things was new, but that sort of thing was to be expected in such an unorthodox situation.

As intriguing as this all was, he still wasn’t any closer to figuring out a way to fix this staggeringly massive problem.

And his mom.

Oh, Celestia, help him when his mother came home to this mess, An Enderherd might be less scary.

Button let out a frustrated groan and smacked the ground with a hoof; the sickeningly familiar sound of a block being dug reached his ears for a moment, before fading away into the only other audible sound; the spiders chittering amongst one another in his parent’s room.

That was another thing, they couldn’t even get out of his room, it was at the end of the hallway and he had to go past his parents room to get anywhere; he was sure his mom did that on purpose so he wouldn’t raid the fridge at night, One time, one time he had gotten up and drank two dozen cartons of Apple Juice.

He had been really, really thirsty.

But he wouldn’t ever taste Apple Juice again if they didn’t fix their problem, soon.

The sound of wood being punched hit his ears, at first he didn’t think much of it, it seemed totally normal in this crazy house, he perked his ears up and scanned the room, finding Sweetie Belle the culprit of the noise.

Away she punched, hitting the bottom-most log of one of the two trees growing up in what had been the corner of the room where Button’s toys had been stored.

Sweetie Belle didn’t even appear to be really thinking about it, she was simply leaning her head up against the tree and kicking the bottom log with her hoof idly, not doing so fast enough that it would eventually knock it out of place so it could be picked up.

“Wait…” He said softly, unintentionally drawing Sweetie Belle’s attention. She looked over at him with perked up ears, unsure if she had heard him say something.

“Huh?”

Button said nothing; he only righted himself and briskly trotted over to his friend, looking at her for a moment before turning is gaze to the tree. 

“Sweetie Belle…?” He said slowly, gaze still locked on the tree.

“Uh…y-yeah?” She replied, eyebrow raised in curiosity as to what Button was thinking; it was obvious that he was thinking because when he did get into a “deep thought” mode he would get this weird look that made Sweetie Belle feel strange, it wasn’t like…a bad feeling, but she wasn’t sure what to think of it.

Into the “Button Being Button” folder it went.

“Earlier…when you hit that zombie-pony, where did you get the shovel?”

“Oh!” Sweetie Belle smiled and stood up a bit straighter, looking a bit proud of herself. “I just thought about how I wished I had my shovel to hit the zombie-pony, like in the game, and then it was just kinda…there.” Her look of pride turned to one of confusion as she tried to decipher her own words.

“What, really?” Button looked over at her with a look of surprise, could it really have been that easy? He began to wonder if they had been given a sort of Creative mode…maybe if he could just…

-------------

Sweetie Belle watched Button’s pained expression; he had been going at this for about a minute now and hadn’t told her what he was doing.

This face wasn’t like the last one; it was weird, plain and simple. He was all strained and looked like he had gotten into fiber-pills or something like that; Sweetie Belle knew what fiber-pills were after thinking they were candy a few months ago.

Rarity had said something along the lines of. “Too many more of those and it would have been like a freight train trying to get through a drinking straw…”

Sweetie Belle had no idea what she was talking about, but she hadn’t really dwelt on it…Rarity could be weird sometimes.

“Button…you uh, mind telling me what you’re doing?” She asked slowly, just slightly worried about her friend.

“I’m…trying…to…summon…a…diamond…sword…”He strained, apparently deciding to finally respond.

“Uh…what?”

Button groaned and collapsed on the ground, wearing a look of defeat and exhaustion.

“I…don’t understand.” She said.

“You said, you just thought about that iron shovel…right? Then it appeared?” He panted, slowly pushing himself up off the grass-floor.

“Yeah…but, I already had one in the game…so I thought that if maybe everything else is coming out of the game, maybe my stuff did too.”

Wait what.

How had he not thought of that, that maybe only the stuff you had in the game at the time would be transferred into the real world. Oh sweet Celestia, instead he had just sat here for who knows how long and made a fool of himself in front of Sweetie Belle.
Good job Button.

“Well…I wasn’t playing Minecraft when this all happened…so you’re gonna be the one to have stuff in your…er…inventory.” Button said, trying not to dwell on his previous embarrassing blunder.

“Well, let’s see...what did I have in my inventory…” Sweetie Belle inquired of herself, seeming to think about this for a moment, before a look of surprise appeared on her face.

“B-button! I can see it!” She exclaimed suddenly, to which Button raised a confused eyebrow.

“You can see what…?”

“My inventory!”

“What! How?”

Sweetie Belle was silent for a moment, her eyes scanning side to side as if she were reading an invisible book, the look of sheer wonder she wore was unlike anything Button had ever seen.

“It’s like…I opened my inventory in the game, on the computer! I can see all my stuff! But… I don’t think I can move when I have it open.” She frowned, eyes still scanning an inventory Button couldn’t see.

Button wasn’t surprised Sweetie Belle couldn’t move; you couldn’t move with your inventory open in the game, so why would it be any different here? After all, all that had happened was Minecraft had poured out of the computer and transformed his house into a nightmare.

So weird stuff had kinda become not so weird lately.

“Well, what do you have? Is there anything we can use?” 

“Ah! I was hoping I had these!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed, not really listening to Button.

Sweetie seemed to shake a bit and relax, she blinked her eyes and shook her head a bit as if to get her bearings, and then suddenly two torches materialized out of the air beside her head and landed on the ground, hovering a few inches up and rotating slowly.

“Sweetie Belle…it’s daytime in here, how are torches going to be any help?” Button said with a sigh, facehoofing at how much of a newbie Sweetie Belle was at this game.

“Well, we can use them to burn the monsters!” She said happily, looking rather proud for formulating this idea.

Button facehoofed harder.

“Sweetie Belle…you can’t burn monsters with torches…”

She raised an eyebrow at him, looking at him like he was some sort of mad-pony. “What do you mean we can’t burn them? It’s fire!”

“You can’t light things on fire with a torch…” He deadpanned, staring at her with hooded eyes.

“That makes no sense…this game makes no sense, at all.” She said kicking a hoof at the floating torches, and only succeeding at sucking them back up into her invisible inventory; something which didn’t seem to faze her in the slightest. Her mood however had changed drastically, sadness beginning to overwhelm her previous upbeat mood.

“None of this makes sense Sweetie Belle, in case you haven’t noticed.” He said with a defeated sigh, slumping against one of the trees. “I still have absolutely no idea if we’re gonna be able to undo this…for all we know we could be stuck in here for the rest of our lives!” Button exclaimed, flailing his hooves around in frustration. 

Sweetie Belle said nothing in response, not because she didn’t have anything to say, but because at that moment the gravity of what was going on really hit her hard, they very well could be stuck in here all their lives; especially if they didn’t know how to reverse this.

On top of that, she blamed herself for all of it; the way Sweetie Belle saw it this was her fault. She had agreed to play the game, she hadn’t listened to Buttons advice on not going outside at night, she had shot his computer, she had almost got them killed…she felt awful, she hadn’t previously because she hadn’t really had time to think about it, but now that they sat down for a moment and actually slowed down…

“I-I’m sorry…” She said softly, barely audible over the sound of the spiders in the next room, she had returned to her spot by the pond and was staring down into the water with a look almost akin to self-loathing.

Button perked his ears up and looked over at Sweetie Belle, unsure of why she was apologizing.

“Sorry?”

Sweetie Belle turned her head slowly to look at him out of the corner of her eye, barely meeting his gaze for more than a second before returning to the water.

“This is my fault…” She spoke again, barely above a whisper.

“Wait…what?” Button stood up and trotted up behind her, stopping a few feet away, he wasn’t sure what to do in this situation, Sweetie Belle was obviously upset, and she was his friend, he wanted to comfort her.

Problem is, comfort required…contact, of the physical manner.

“I said, this is my fault!” She insisted, stomping a tiny white hoof on the grass in self-frustration.

“Sweetie Belle…this isn’t-“

“Yes it is!” She flipped around rather suddenly, causing Button to recoil a bit as she flailed her front hooves in the air, rearing up on her hind legs for a moment. Now that Button could see her face, Sweetie Belle looked like she was about to burst into tears and have a complete breakdown.

“I was the one who didn’t listen to your advice about not going out at night, I was the one who got scared, I was the one who shot your computer, I was the one who made that Ender…whatchamacallit mad, this is my fault, and now we’re gonna be stuck in here for all time, I’m never gonna see Rarity again, or my friends, and…j-just…” 

Sweetie Belle stopped her rant for a moment, sniffling and trying to rub away the tears that threatened to start pouring out of her eyes at any second. Button hadn’t ever seen her like this, he had seen her cry crocodile tears, “please give me that sandwich.” Tears, and even the kind of tears she would cry like when she had made him watch that weird love story movie.

Never these tears though.

Button couldn’t remember ever seeing her look so crushed…so defeated, he felt the need to comfort her, he wasn’t sure why he felt this way, only that he did, it was an extremely strong desire, he wasn’t sure if he should suppress it and just sit and silently watch the small, crying filly currently sitting a few feet from him with her head hung, or if he should go and like…hug her, or something.

“Sweetie Belle…this isn’t your fault…” He said, opting for the verbal comforting and at the same time wondering if that was the best choice.

She said nothing, simply hanging her head and silently weeping over their plight, a small tear rolling down her nose every so often and falling to the ground, impacting with an inaudible “Plip.”

Oh Celestia, this hurt him to watch. Why did this hurt?

Cautiously, almost as one would be if approaching some deadly animal or a ticking time bomb, Button moved over next to Sweetie Belle, taking a seat next to her and idly kicking at the grass with a hoof. 

“Sweetie Belle…This isn’t-“ Button stopped mid sentence, his eyes widened and his pupils shrunk, seemingly out of nowhere, Sweetie Belle had thrown her front hooves around him and had embraced him in a tight hug, sniffling into the crook of his neck and rubbing her nose on him.

Ew.

Button wasn’t sure what to do, he hadn’t ever exactly had a mare cry on his shoulder before, was he supposed to like, say something to her, or like…hug her back, or something?

This day as a whole had been filled with new experiences, and this was probably one of the more intimidating ones; to Button at least.
Sweetie Belle said nothing, she only sobbed into his shoulder, front legs wrapped tight around him in a shaky embrace, and ever so slowly, after warring with himself over whether or not this was a good idea, to hug Sweetie Belle; and for the first time, he wrapped his front hooves around her, gently and comfortingly stroking her trembling back.

“B-button…I don’t w-wanna die in here…” She whimpered into his shoulder, hugging him tighter.

“We aren’t going to die…” He said, awkwardly eyeing their surroundings as he comforted her.

“Y-you don’t know that.” She sniffled into his shoulder.

He needed something to say, something that would be assuring and maybe brighten his friend up a bit, but what…? It had to be something that would hit home, something that would encourage her to keep on keeping on and not give up…what was something Sweetie Belle wanted most, something she longed for more than anything in Equestria?

Oh, wait.

“Because…otherwise, you can’t get your cutie mark!” He said, inwardly proud of himself for thinking that up.

“I’m not a baby…I know this crazy Minecraft world won’t stop just for me and my cutie mark.”

Well that worked wonderfully…not.

“Then…I’ll stop the world for you!” He said suddenly, wondering why his brain formulated such a stupid thing to say, he wasn’t even sure if that had any meaning to it, it actually sounded kinda dumb, he was super small, how would he stop a planet from moving?

Sweetie Belle said nothing, her shaking had stopped and she had stopped crying, but here eyes were wide in surprise and unbeknownst to Button, her cheeks were a bright red. That had probably one of the sweetest things she had ever heard, of course she knew Button had done it by accident, because he was a dummy most of the time, but still, he had tried, and in doing so he had actually managed to be sweet to her, instead of being all weird like he normally was. Of course, he hadn’t really made her feel better about this all essentially being her fault, but he had been super sweet nonetheless and that did make her feel nice.

“T-thank you, Button…” She let out, sniffling again before gently pulling away from him; or tried to pull away from him, rather.

Button didn’t seem to feel like breaking the embrace, and was hugging Sweetie Belle rather firmly, it wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable, and it was actually nice. It was getting weird though…

“Uh, Button, you can let go now.” Sweetie Belle whispered, as if trying to hide her words from some nonexistent crowd of ponies.
“Oh!” Button’s eyes widened and his cheeks burned a bright red, he quickly released Sweetie Belle and jumped back a bit, barely meeting her gaze for more than a second before looking at the ground; very obviously quite flustered.

Neither of them really said anything for a while, Sweetie Belle stared awkwardly ahead and Button just kicked at the ground idly, if awkward ever needed a description, that moment was a perfect fit. The only sounds were that of the small pool of water, sloshing and splashing despite its motionless state, as well as the sound of spiders in the other room; a problem they would need to deal with eventually if they wanted to get downstairs.

“So…what’re we gonna do?” Sweetie Belle finally broke the silence, her voice had returned to its normal, slightly high pitched and confident tone.

Button sighed and looked over at her, forgetting about their previous moment in the light of the need to solve this staggering problem, such a simple question carried so much weight behind it, so much possible danger and so many problems. What were they going to do?

“I…don’t know…In Minecraft, to beat the game, you have to go to The Nether, find Eyes of Ender, open a portal, and kill a dragon just to get to the credits…” He groaned.

“Well, I don’t see how a dragon would fit in the house…” Sweetie Belle replied thoughtfully, scratching her chin with a hoof.

“No, you go through a portal, and he’s in a whole different dimension.” Button waved his hoof dismissively.

“Well, instead of fighting a dragon, what if we just…turned off the computer?” 

“W-what did you just say?” Button perked his ears up and looked over at his companion.

“I said, what if we just turned off your computer? I mean, this all came out of the computer right, so maybe if we turn it off everything’ll go back to normal?” Sweetie Belle said with a shrug.

“Sweetie Belle, that…might actually work!” Button said excitedly, beginning to bounce a bit as a wide smile came across his lips.
“You think so?” Sweetie Belle replied, beginning to get excited as well.

“Yes! Sweetie Belle, you’re a genius!” He cried, growing more and more elated with each passing second, a plan now beginning to formulate in his brain, this plan was a long shot, and maybe a bit crazy, but still, it was all they had and Button intended to carry it out to the fullest.

“Uh, Button, we still have a problem though.”

“What’s that?’ Button asked, trotting over to one of the two trees; already knowing what Sweetie Belle was going to say.

“What about the monsters?”

“Already got it covered, I know just how to deal with them. It’s risky, but it’ll have to work!” He began punching at the bottom-most log of one of the trees, pixilated cracks spider-webbing through the surface of the log.

“And…how’s that?” Sweetie Belle asked, her tone laced with uncertainty.

Button gave the log one last hit, it made a soft “pop” as it shrunk down and landed on the ground, hovering and spinning for a moment before it was sucked into Button’s “Inventory” He smiled triumphantly and was totally still for a moment, staring into nothingness as his eyes flitted back and forth as if he were reading the pages of some invisible book. A moment later his body relaxed and he turned to Sweetie Belle, now holding some strange block in his hoof, he placed the tiny block on the ground and it suddenly sprung up and tripled in size, revealing it to be a crafting table.

Sweetie Belle had been watching this unfold in silence, and was unsure what to make of it.

“Button…how are we gonna take care of the monsters?” She asked again, eyeing her friend cautiously.

“It’s simple, Sweetie Belle!” He said with a smug grin, already getting to work on punching down the rest of one of the two trees, a moment later another log popped off with a soft “Pop” and disappeared into his inventory, he turned and gave Sweetie Belle the most confident grin she had ever seen.

“We play the game!”

A few minutes later, they were ready. Button had punched down both of the trees in his room and turned the logs into planks; Planks that Sweetie Belle thought looked like chocolate bars, and then he had turned them into tools, he had made sure to be careful with what he made, they had a very finite amount of materials and they couldn’t exactly wait for the saplings they had stuck in the ground to sprout up, due to their food supply also being limited as the tress had only dropped six apples.

“Alright, Inventory check.” Button said to himself, pulling up his inventory and scanning over the contents.

--------@---------

1 Wooden Sword.

Good for smacking monsters into a pulp, useless for slicing anything at all. Has a very small amount of uses before it breaks.

1 Wooden Pickaxe.

Imperative for mining stone; would be needed to make better tools.

8 wooden planks.

Half of the last remaining materials from the trees, they were going to be very, very important if they couldn’t find more. Sweetie Belle carried the other eight.

3 Apples.

Unfortunately not possible to ingest in juice form, Sweetie Belle also carried three.

16 Dirt.

Good for blocking up pathways.

1 crafting table.

Good for making new tools and weapons.

2 Coal.

Mined from what had been Button’s TV and video game system; he had cried as he mined it.

----@----

Button nodded to himself and willed the inventory closed, turning his gaze over to Sweetie Belle, finding she was still looking hers over, her body tensed and stiff looking.

“You got everything?” He asked.

Sweetie Belle relaxed as her inventory closed, looking over at Button and nodding.

“Yep, I’ve got everything! Got my shovel, my pickaxe, my wood, my torches, my apples and my dirt! Oh, and all that nasty rotten flesh from the zombies in the computer…” Sweetie Belle contorted her face into a look of disgust at the mention of rotten flesh, why she hadn’t thrown it out yet, Button had no clue.

“Alright, we need to go over the plan again.” Button stated, walking over to Sweetie Belle and sitting down, they had gone over this plan a few minutes earlier, and Sweetie Belle had a major part in it, it was up to her to keep them alive.

“I got it all memorized!” She said happily, clearing her throat and adopting a position to that of some political speaker before reciting their plan.

“Step one: Sneak into your parents’ room! Step Two: You distract the spiders, while I put torches on the icky spider spawner! Step Three: You kill the spiders while I block up the doorway with dirt so we don’t get murdered by a sneaky monster, and so I don’t have to fight icky spiders! Step Four: Raid the dungeon chests for useful loot and make new tools! Step Five: Profit!” Sweetie Belle stood at attention when she finished, the silly grin on her face ruining her otherwise militaristic look as she saluted to Button Mash; who was pacing back and forth in front of her.

“Good! There should only be two or three spiders, because that can’t spawn too many at once, but you have to make sure to put those torches on the spawner so monsters will spawn slower! Then, after you block up the entryway be sure to break the spawner, so we don’t have problems.”

What Button was hoping for, was that they would find iron or some other ingot in the chests, maybe armor or something they could use to help get downstairs, across the ravine again, and back into the kitchen to turn off his computer and hopefully reverse all this.
“You ready?” He asked confidently.

“Ready as a…a, uh…” Sweetie Belle searched for something cool to say, and it wasn’t working well for her. “Well…yeah, I’m ready.” She nodded, pretending like she didn’t just do any of that.

Button nodded back and turned to face the door, he felt good! He felt like he could take on a whole Enderherd by himself!
Ever so slowly, Button opened his door, forgetting for a moment this was Minecraft and you couldn’t open doors slowly, they opened extremely fast and there wasn’t anything you could do about it.

So of course, when the door swung open with its normal sound effect; just twice as loud, both he and Sweetie Belle were rather startled.
“Uh…yeah.” He said, staring into the hallway with wide eyes, it was dark and the very definition of spooky, the darkness threatened to envelop all who stepped inside of it, as if it were the gaping maw of some monster hungry for flesh.

Sweetie Belle trotted past him and into the entryway of the door, poking her head out and looking down the dark hallway as if it were nothing to her.

“Come on, the coast is clear!” She said softly, not even giving Button a chance to respond before slipping out of the doorway and into the hall.

“Sweetie Belle, wait up!” He hissed, zipping out of his room and coming up next to Sweetie Belle, who was practically belly crawling in her attempt to be sneaky. She looked like a lizard sneaking up on a bug it intended to eat; only she was a pony and the bugs were giant spiders that wanted to eat them instead of vice versa.

“What…are you doing?” He asked in a hushed voice.

“I’m being sneaky! Shhh!” She hissed at him, her gaze locked ahead of her as the sound of the spiders got closer and louder.

Button rolled his eyes and slowly trotted next to her, taking in the sight of the stone around them that and once been his hallway, he noticed the entryway to what had at one point been his bathroom, peering into it for a moment to find where the toilet had been, there was now a small waterfall that poured out of the wall and down a massive hole that took up most of where the floor had once been.

Finally, they came to his parents’ bedroom; Button peered in and scanned the room.

There were two spiders over on the corner of the room, chittering and hissing atop a small platform of Mossy Cobblestone, their multiple red eyes gave off a dim light, each one flitting around every so often before refocusing on the other spider. They restlessly tapped their legs as they hissed, barely visible in the almost nonexistent light of the dungeon. 

In the center of the room was a small cage, inside was the flaming image of a spider, it floated in the middle of the cage, totally motionless save for its slow, endless rotation.

And then he saw their prize, up against the wall of the room, was a chest. This is exactly what he had hoped for; those chests had treasure, treasure that would hopefully aid them in ending this pixel-y nightmare.

“Ready?” Sweetie Belle asked, pulling out her torches and holding them with her magic.

“Ready.” Button nodded in response, pulling out his sword and holding it in his mouth, ready to face the monsters.

“GO!” 

And the fight began.

> Chapter 4: Modern Little Sweetie Belle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 4: Modern Little Sweetie Belle


Button charged ahead of Sweetie Belle, a look of determination on his face as he ran at the two Spiders. They hissed in surprise and made their move, one spider jumped out of the way, skittering along the length of the wall; planning to flank Button. The other one dove straight for him with a screech; eyes glaring angrily as it soared through the air. Its face was illuminated just as Sweetie Belle placed a torch next to the spawner.

In that moment, everything seemed to slow down, Button hadn’t really gotten a good look at the spiders’ beforehoof, and now that he did he found them utterly and completely horrifying.

They were hairy, and much larger than he had though they had been in the darkness, the spider bore two large fangs, positioned on its face in such a way it looked like it had a fuzzy crab claw for a mouth, the fangs were stretched open, revealing a mouth full of unpleasant looking teeth, and as if that wasn’t enough, it was about three times as big as he was.

All this he saw as the first spider hurled itself towards his face.

Whether it was in pure horror, or if he actually did it on purpose, Button wasn’t sure. He simply swung his Wooden Sword at the arachnid-missile and hoped for a result; and a result he got. The spider let out an unpleasant hiss and went flying back into the cobblestone wall and slumping down to the floor, slightly dazed.

Button barely had time to jump out of the way of the second spider; it launched itself at him from the side, just barely brushing up against the top of his head as he hit the deck. It landed a few blocks away and slid to a halt, looking around in confusion as to what had happened; apparently surprised it had missed.

Button looked over to check on Sweetie Belle, as he had hoped she was already blocking up the entryway with dirt and not even bothering to check behind her and see if Button was still alive; he wasn’t sure if this meant she trusted him or of she just wasn’t thinking about it, but he wasn’t able to dwell on it for very long, as the first spider had recomposed itself and the second one was now crawling slowly towards Button.

“Uh oh.”

Button readied himself, glaring down both spiders with a newfound determination and courage, and much to the surprise of the arachnid assailants, Button charged.

He ran at the first spider, swinging his sword down onto its head, the rewarding sound of damage being dealt and a red flash his reward. The spider hissed and stumbled back, shaking its head and looking over at its comrade; who looked about a surprised as a spider could look.

Without skipping a beat, Button swung around and slammed the sword into the side of the second spiders head, causing it to stumble back and flash red.

“Ha ha!” He cried triumphantly, tossing the sword up in the air and catching it in one hoof, swinging it around to club the first spider over the head once again.

The spider let out a weak hiss, but managed to focus enough to try and attack, a venture that proved fruitless attempt which did no more but bring its life to an even quicker end as Button ran the sword through its head.

The spider flashed red and let out a pained hiss before keeling over to the side and disappearing in a poof of smoke: only leaving behind two pieces of string where it once stood. Button made sure to nab said string in case they might need it later.

“Sweetie Belle, you about finished up?” He said, resting the wood sword on his shoulder and looking over at her out of the corner of his eye, turning over to face the second spider.

“Working on the spawner!” She called back, the sound of her pick slamming against the mob spawner reaching his ears as she spoke.
Button hummed to himself and glared at the Spider, it returned the gaze with a burning hatred in its eyes, both it and Button now sidestepping in a circle across from each other, like cowponies preparing for a draw or something of that sort.

Suddenly, the spider let out as much of a roar as a spider could, and leapt at Button. It sailed through the air with fangs bared; ready to latch onto their prey.

Instead the latched onto the hilt of Buttons sword, as he drove it outwards into the spider’s maw, the massive arachnid’s eyes widened as the dull blade ran through the length of its body, flashing red over and over as damage was repeatedly dealt. 

In the last few second of its life, it glared at Button with an undying and unyielding hatred, and then it was no more, it keeled over, off of the sword and hit the ground with a poof of smoke, and was never seen again.

Button stood still for a moment; panting softly, sword now pressed against the cobblestone block where the spider had previously been, two strings and a spider eye now the only remainder of the late spider.

“AW YEAH!” Button cried, swinging his sword up in the air with a heroic flourish, feeling rather proud of himself for kicking-flank like he just had. He hoped Sweetie Belle had seen that, because it was awesome! All he needed now was to shout “I have the power!” and lightning to crash around him or something like that.

“Yay, Button!” Sweetie Belle cried, clapping her hooves and standing next to where the spawner had previously been.

“Ha, yep, that’s how the master rolls, Sweetie Belle, that’s how the master rolls.” Button said with a smug grin, trying to look even cooler than he thought he already did.

“Are you just going to pose all day, or would you like to check out our treasure?” Sweetie Belle let out a soft giggle, the faintest blush coming across her cheeks as Button very obviously tried to impress her.

Button’s cheeks turned red and he quickly returned to all four hooves; returning his sword to his inventory via willpower, and nodding sheepishly at Sweetie Belle.

“Uh…y-yeah, sure.” 

The two young ponies eagerly made their way over to the chest up against the wall of the dungeon, the light from Sweetie Belle’s torches casting their shadows onto the wall in an almost creepy manner as they trotted over to it.

Cautiously, Button unlatched the hook on the chest and opened it, and inside was more than he could have ever hoped to find.
Inside the chest, piled together haphazardly, was a menagerie of different items. There were three diamonds, ten iron ingots, eight bread, two melons, five gold, five gunpowder, and two Redstone.

“What is it, what’s inside, anything good?” Sweetie Belle asked eagerly, peeking onto the chest alongside Button.

Button was about to respond, but he never got the chance to and was interrupted by a rather ear-splitting shriek.

“DIAMONDS!” Sweetie Belle cried, latching her hooves onto the diamonds and pulling them out, knocking Button onto his back in the process.

“OHMYGOSHTHEYRESOPRETTY!” Sweetie Belle was practically bouncing in joy, clutching the diamonds in her hooves as she did a little happy-dance.

“Ow.” Was all Button uttered in response.

“Buttonineedyourcraftingtablerightnowitsimportant!” She blurted almost incoherently, zipping over to Button’s side and bouncing up and down.

“W-what?”

“Craftingtableineeditrightnowiwannamakeasword!”

Button sighed softly and opened his inventory, he didn’t even bother to argue, he figured Sweetie Belle probably needed to best sword anyway, she was the least experienced and all she would really need to do was swing at whatever may attack her and it would “poof” out of existence pretty fast, he’d make an iron sword or something of that sort.

“Don’t lose the sword…” Button said with a sigh, “spitting” his crafting table at Sweetie Belle, not even getting any sort of response before she nabbed the crafting table and zipped over to a corner to begin working; placing the crafting table and freezing up as she opened the crafting menu.

While Sweetie Belle was frozen in place, Button spotted the String and Spider Eye still floating and rotating slowly above the ground, and it gave him an idea, Sweetie Belle wouldn’t get away with shoving him out of the way scot-free, oh no, there would definitely be a return attack, an attack in the form of a scare!

Quickly as he could, Button scrambled over to the floating items, sucking them up into his inventory and then quickly pulling out the Spider Eye, and sneaking over to Sweetie Belle, who had just finished making her sword and was admiring the shiny-sharp blade.
“Oooooh.” She said softly, looking the blade up and down with a look of wonder and fascination.

“Hey…Sweetie Belle, I have something for you!” He said, barely containing his almost evil snickering.

“Huh…?” Sweetie Belle slowly turned around, still fixated on her new blade.

“Catch!” He called, catching Sweetie Belle’s attention just as he tossed the spider eye.

Sweetie Belle seemed to realize what the object was halfway through its flight path, as she let out a yelp and swung her sword blindly at it and; surprisingly enough hit the eye and sent it sailing over to the side, turning to glare at it for a moment before turning back to Button and staring daggers into his eyes.

“Why would you throw an icky spider-bit at me?” She whined.

Button was too busy laughing to respond.

“Button Mash, you’re a butthead sometimes, you know?”

“Oh come on Sweetie Belle, you’re holding a sword made of diamond and just watched me slay two giant spiders earlier, and you’re freaking out about an eyeball?” He said, his laughter beginning to die down.

“Just because I saw that, doesn’t mean I want to touch it!” She stated with a harrumph, turning her nose up at Button.

Button wiped a tear from his eye and sat up on his haunches, only to find Sweetie Belle much closer to him and now staring him down.

“Alright, Alright I’m sorry…” He said, motioning for her to calm down with both his hooves, still chuckling just a little.

“I thought you liked killing monsters, what are you like…arachnaphobic or something?” He asked, raising an eyebrow and not actually realizing that was kind of a dumb and just a teensy bit rude thing to ask, at least it sounded like that to Sweetie Belle.

“No, and I’ll tell you exactly what I am!” Sweetie Belle huffed turning her back to Button, and burying the tip of her new sword into the ground and…wait.

Why was Sweetie Belle bouncing? It was almost like she was…dancing?

Sweetie Belle cleared her throat, as if preparing herself for something, and then spun around with a flourish.

The most unbelievable and outlandish thing happened just then.

Sweetie Belle started singing.

“I am the very model of a modern Little Sweetie Belle,”

“I've information fashionable, small stuffed doll, and magical,”

“I know the Queen of Fashion, and I quote the songs quite wonderful,”

“From Stop The Bats to Water Glass, in order categorical;”

“I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters dictionarial,”

“I understand emotions, both the simple and problematical,”

“About big hairy spiders, Button, I'll tell you here and now,”

Sweetie Belle paused, scratching her chin for a moment and looking like she was deep in thought.

"Here and now...here and now...AH!"

“I really do hate the spider bits, that's Sweetie's solemn vow!”

Sweetie Belle trotted over to Button, instrumental music seeming to come from nowhere as she trotted around him in circles and continued singing.

No way, there was no way this was actually happening.

“ I can draw a kitty cat in form of Abstract or Expressionism,”

“And tell you ev'ry detail of a gala gown, and all its fashionism.”

“In short, in matters fashionable, small stuffed doll, and magical,”

“I am the very model of a modern Little Sweetie Belle!”

Sweetie leaned back and spun around, using her sword almost in the manner of a cane to accommodate her dancing and singing act. The tempo of the background music that had begun playing out of seemingly nowhere began to slow down a bit, adopting a slower and more forceful seeming tone.

“In fact, when I know what is meant by "over-stitch" and "higher pitch",”

“When I can tell at sight a perfect opera from an aria,”

“When such affairs as shindigs and big parties I'm more weary at,”

“And when I know precisely what is meant by "yo bro wubs are where it’s at",”

“When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern dj-ing,”

“When I know more of lyrics than Corbelli and great Moreschi “

“In short, when I've a crescendo of culminating capacity…”

She paused, scratching her chin and very obviously searching for something that rhymed with “Capacity.”

Sweetie Belle looked over at Button; who was still sitting on the floor and looking rather surprised.

“Button, what rhymes with “Capacity"?

“Uh…manatee?”

Sweetie Belle frowned for a moment, then once again brightened up and the music resumed. “I’ve got it!”


“You'll say a better Sweetie Belle there has never sang-a-tee!”

Yep…this was happening.

“For my singer’s knowledge, though I'm outgoing and adventury,”

“Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;”

“But still, in matters fashionable, small stuffed doll, and magical,”

“I am the very model of a modern Little Sweetie Belle!”

The song ended and Sweetie Belle struck a rather regal pose, leaning on her sword and posing almost like you would see those old military ponies that are in the painted portraits.

Once again the room was silent, and Button had been utterly and completely rendered speechless. He simply sat and stared, eyes wide and jaw agape.

Sweetie Belle giggled and took a bow.

“Thank you, thank you!” She said, still giggling.

“I don’t even…how did…” Button tried his best to formulate a cohesive arrangement of words, but could not seem to.

“Oh don’t worry, Button.” Sweetie Belle said with a cute smile. “That’s a common reaction to how fantastic I am, you’ll probably never get used to it.”

Button said nothing, instead he simply stood up off the floor, and trotted back over to the treasure chest; the sound of his hooves echoing throughout the otherwise dead silence.

As he reached the chest, Button leaned into it and pulled the remainder of its contents into his inventory, deciding it best to not even try and comprehend what had just happened.

Sweetie Belle saw this, and happily trotted over to Button; noticeably more upbeat after singing her little song.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Well, we need to turn this stuff into something useful, I was thinking maybe some iron armor for you, and a sword and gold helmet for me.”

“Ooooh, armor!” Sweetie exclaimed, watching as Button trotted over to the crafting table in the corner of the room and began to toil away.

----&----

A few minutes later, Button had managed to craft a decent assortment of gear. He now donned a golden helmet and brandished a shiny Iron Sword, and Sweetie Belle was wearing her brand spankin’ new iron armor; and she adored it.

Button had given Sweetie Belle the better gear, not necessarily because he was trying to be nice, but because, well…he wanted to make sure she was safe, and one way of doing that was to equip her the best he could so that she would be as prepared and as safe as possible should something happen to him.

And that was another thing Button had been wondering, if one were to die in here…would they respawn?

Button wasn’t exactly sure, but he wasn’t exactly going to be happily jumping into pits of lava to get the answer either, until he and Sweetie Belle learned differently, they had one life in this game, and he didn’t have any intention of wasting it.

“Hey, Button?” Sweetie Belle’s voice cut into his thoughts.

“Yeah?” He replied, turning around to see Sweetie Belle once again admiring her sword.

“What should I name my sword?” She asked, curiosity lacing her tone.

“Sweetie Belle, you need an anvil to name your sword…” Button said with a soft sigh; she really was a noob at this game.

“What? I can’t just call it something?” She looked over at him with a raised eyebrow, a look of disbelief across her face.

“W-well…I guess you could, but it isn’t like, official or anything until-“

“OH! I know, I call it SweetieBlade!” She said excitedly, cutting Button off in her newfound desire to name her sword.

Button simply facehoofed, oh that was such a bad name. Sweetie Belle was good at a lot of things, but giving names was not one of them; in his opinion.

For instance, she had wanted to name his computer “Beeper.” When he originally got it, and had nearly succeeded if his mother hadn’t suggested the name “Keys.”

He hadn’t even wanted to name is computer in the first place.

“And, you should call yours…ButtonBlade!” She said happily, practically bouncing up and down in a manner akin to what she had done earlier just before breaking out into song.

Oh, Celestia, please, no more songs. Button’s brain was fragile and he couldn’t take that sort of outlandishness again.

“I-I guess I could call it that.” Button stammered, unsure how to respond to Sweetie Belle naming his sword for him. He pulled it out of his inventory and admired “ButtonBlade’s” gleaming metal, the edge glinting in the torchlight that illuminated the room.

“So what now?” Sweetie Belle asked, trotting over to him and returning "SweetieBlade" into her inventory, eagerly awaiting Button's command.

“Well, now…” Button sighed softly and returned his sword to his inventory, turning his gaze over to the dirt blocks that Sweetie Belle had blocked up the entryway with. 

“Now…this gets interesting…” 

> Chapter 5: Unexpected Swordplay
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 5: Unexpected Swordplay


Button slowly stepped out of what used to be his parents room, taking one last look at the bedroom-turned-dungeon before stepping hoof out into the stone hallway, finding it empty and devoid of creatures with malign intent, save a bat that glared at them from its roost on the ceiling, annoyed its rest was disturbed.

“You see anything…?” Sweetie Belle asked softly, trying to look out into the hallway over Button’s shoulder.

“I think we’re good…come on, let’s go.” He motioned for Sweetie Belle to follow him with a hoof, sneaking out into the hallway and brandishing his iron sword; or rather, “ButtonBlade” as Sweetie Belle had named it.

Sweetie Belle did as told, creeping behind him in her own version of sneaking, looking rather comical rather than simply sneaky.

The bat that had been roosted on the ceiling gave out a squeak of annoyance and fluttered off down the hallway, disappearing down the stairs never to be seen again; The soft flapping of its wing getting fainter as it zipped off.

Sweetie Belle wasn’t expecting this little creature to carry out said actions, so she was rather surprised when they occurred; responding with a very predictable shriek.

“Sweetie Belle!” Button hissed, snapping his head back to her with a firm look in his eyes.

“Sorry! The Bat scared me; I didn’t even know Minecraft had bats!” 

“Just…try to be quiet, ok? I don’t know if the monsters are attracted to sound or not.”

“Right…sorry.”

Now silent as the pixilated grave, the duo of young ponies made their way over to the staircase. They hadn’t exactly made a plan, they couldn’t have honestly. They had no idea what to expect, all they knew was there was most likely an angry Skeleton-pony and an Endermare somewhere down there.

It could be worse though, at least they had some sort of plan to reverse all of this; Turn off the computer this had all spouted from.

Granted, whether or not said plan would actually turn out to be successful was to be determined; still though, it was a goal and now that the two ponies had a more tangible goal to work towards, they had found themselves to be slightly more driven.

“Ooooh, creepy…” Sweetie Belle whispered, laying on the floor next to Button and peering down the staircase.

Creepy, indeed. The sound of bubbling lava was extremely faint, but it was there. It floated up through the impenetrable darkness and into the hallway, which coupled with the occasional squeak of some random bat as well as the fact everything else was totally silent, created a very spooky effect.

“You said it.” Button replied, peering into the inky blackness that lay only a few steps down the now stone staircase. “How many torches do you have left?” He asked in a whisper, turning his head over to Sweetie Belle; who had already opened her menu.

“Uhh…two.” She said after a moment, her previously tense body relaxing as she closed her menu.

“What? Two, Sweetie Belle, you didn’t grab the torches out of the dungeon?”

“You told me not to, so that monsters wouldn’t spawn in the dark!” She replied with a whisper of a whine.

Button groaned softly, he had indeed told Sweetie Belle that, unfortunately she was correct this time.

“Well, we aren’t going to get far with just two torches, what we need is some more coal…” He said softly, scratching his chin in thought.

“What about the coal in your room, we could always get that?” She suggested, motioning back down the hallway with a hoof.

Button hadn’t thought of this, it wasn’t even like it would take five minutes. It was just down the hallway, but in light of recent events a “simple trot down the hall.” Had seemed like such an ordeal.

“Oh…yeah, I guess we could do that…”Button said, crying a little bit inside as he remembered what the coal had been previously; his video game system.

With that Sweetie Belle gave a rather prideful nod and pushed herself up off the ground to return to Button’s room, however as the two young ponies would soon discover, they wouldn’t ever get there.

This was due to the rather imposing looking zombie-pony standing directly behind them; and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it had an iron sword in its mouth; it had most likely spawned in the very back of the hallway, where a torch they had placed in the hall couldn’t reach. It was slightly shorter than the first zombie they had encountered, it appeared to be a mare-zombie, its mane bore different shades of grey and white, milky eyes glaring and searching for prey.

Oh boy.

Sweetie Belle let out a scream and scrambled out of the way as the zombie-pony brought it’s sword down onto the stone where she had been, just barely missing her.

“You stay away from Sweetie Belle!” Button cried, instinctively jumping into action, drawing “ButtonBlade” out and charging the undead assailant. Unfortunately for Button, the zombie-pony saw this coming and swung its head around, slicing the sword into his side and sending him flying into the wall.

Button let out a cry of pain as he flew, letting out another cry as he slammed into the wall. No way was that a normal hit, that sword had to be enchanted or something, he winced and brought a hoof to his ribcage, momentarily panicking after being hit with a sword. His fears of his guts all over the floor were soon disproven though, as he found himself to be wholly intact.

The zombie-pony let out a guttural moan and shambled over towards Button, sword gripped tightly in its teeth and ready to strike.

Just barely avoiding the incoming strike, Button scrambled over to the side and swung his sword at the zombie-pony’s neck; it flashed red and stumbled over to the side, slightly dazed from being hit so close to its stinky, rotten head.

“Go, Button, Go! You get her…err…it!” Sweetie Belle called from the sidelines.

Button jumped back, narrowly avoiding an upwards swing from the zombie-pony that would have sent him flying down the hallway and then tumbling down the stairs.

The enchanted sword gave a “clang!” as it struck the stone floor, this gave button enough time to dish out another slice onto the zombie-pony’s neck; to which it seemed rather displeased, evident by its angry growling.

Button jumped back, putting some space between himself and the zombie. With a triumphant laugh, he tossed his sword up in the air and caught it with his hoof rather than his mouth, standing up on his hind legs and adopting a sort of “en garde” position, the tip of his sword pointed directly at the slightly dazed looking zombie-pony.

With an angry groan through its mouthful of sword handle, the zombie-pony charged straight at him.

Button dug his back hooves in and clutched his sword in both front hooves, waiting until the zombie-pony was just the right distance away before swinging his sword in a strong upwards arc, catching it in the chin and yet again causing it to stumble backwards.

“I’ve got you now…” Button said confidently to himself, charging towards the stunned zombie-pony and ready to dish out the killing blow. He brought the sword up above his head and swung it down as hard as he could, the blade whistling through the air as he brought it down.

“CLANG!”

Clang? Clang wasn’t the sound zombies made; clang wasn’t even really a Minecraft noise! What was this clang and who was responsible for it?

“Oh.” 

To his complete surprise, instead of hitting the zombie-pony directly in the head, he had hit his sword, and what surprised him even further was the fact that he hadn’t hit the sword by accident.

The zombie-pony had shifted to block his swing.

“Well…that’s new.” He said with a sheepish chuckle, staring back into the angry, glaring, milky eyes of the undead equine.

It growled and shoved Button back, it didn’t deal damage but it did serve to put some distance between the two sword-fighters.

Quickly as he could; yet also barely in time, Button regained his balance and swung at the oncoming enemy, only to be blocked yet again, the unpleasant clashing of metal ringing out through the stone hallway.

“Sweetie Belle!” He cried, barely parrying another incoming downwards swing.

“U-uh, yes?” She called, still sitting over against the stone wall and watching with horror.

“Yah!” Button shoved his sword towards the zombie, only for the blade to be slapped to the left by the sword of his combatant. “A little help?” He called, his breathing becoming labored from this unexpected need of physical exertion.

“OH!” Sweetie Belle perked her ears up, she had forgotten for a while she actually had armor and weapons now, and would actually be able to put up a decent fight.

With an ear splitting battle-scream that caused both Button and the Zombie-pony to flinch slightly, Sweetie Belle charged in at full speed, her diamond sword gleaming in the dim torch light.

Unfortunately, Sweetie Belle’s little battle-cry alerted the zombie-pony to the oncoming attack from the side, giving it time to swing around and parry her attack. The force from this action knocked Sweetie from her hooves and onto the cold stone floor, the sound of her head smacking on the stone churned Button’s stomach.

“No!” He cried out, his vision turning red at the sight of this monster knocking his friend over.

The zombie-pony didn’t listen, its attention was on Sweetie Belle now and it had every intent of slaughtering the small filly.

With a speed he didn’t even know he had, Button charged at the zombie-pony and rammed his shoulder into it. The monster let out a guttural moan as it was knocked back a few blocks, dazed by the throbbing feeling beginning to start up in its head.

“Sweetie Belle, are you ok!” He cried, scrambling over to his companion and helping her up to her hooves.

“I hit my head…” She moaned softly, her eyes clutched tight as she sat down on her flank, rubbing her head with a hoof.

Button snapped his head over towards the zombie-pony; who was again shambling towards them for another attack. He wasn’t sure of he’d been this angry before, his vision was red and he could think of only one thing, one thought dominated his mind and body in that moment.

That thing screwed with Sweetie Belle.

With a battle-cry, no, a roar that would put even the most devoted and strong warriors to shame, Button charged straight at the zombie-pony.

He dove to the side just as the monster’s enchanted sword was brought down into the stone, missing him by a hair, and before the zombie-pony could react or even process that it had missed, there was a sword rammed up into its throat, protruding from the top of its neck in a manner that could only be described as gruesome.

The zombie-pony let out a groan and the sound of damage being dealt was heard, it flashed red and then toppled over to the side, sliding off of Button’s sword and disappearing in a poof of smoke before hitting the ground, the only remnants of the beast were the two pieces of rotten flesh it had dropped.

Not even concerning himself with the mob drop, Button scrambled back over to his friend and sat down in front of her, craning his neck in such a way that he could look up at her.

Sweetie Belle was clutching her head in her hooves and moaning softly, massaging the side of her head that had been hit and wincing softy each time she applied pressure.

“Sweetie Belle…?” He said softly, willing his sword away and placing a hoof on her shoulder; the thought of physical contact never even crossing his mind.

“I’m ok…” She whimpered, leaning into his hoof just slightly.

There was another groan, but it sounded louder, like there was more force behind it. It sounded like there was more than one of the creature it came from, and it chilled Button to his core.

Button turned his gaze back down the hallway, peering into the dark end of the hallway and trying to make out if there were actually more zombie-ponies or if the noises had come from elsewhere in the house.

Slowly, they emerged, like creatures of death from the evil and murky blackness, emerged three more zombie-ponies, and as if that wasn’t bad enough.

One of them wore leather armor.

“Oh crap…” Button breathed, the fear in his voice heavy and dominating.

“Button…”Sweetie Belle let out a whimper of both fear and pain, recognizing instantly what the noises were without even needing to look at them.

This was bad, Button knew full well he wouldn’t be able to take on all three alone, not when he was already damaged and fatigued. As if that wasn’t enough, these things actually put up a fight here, instead of just blindly shuffling towards you they would block attacks, they would fight back.

Then, an idea hit him.

It was risky, he might not even be able to carry out this plan before the undead reached them, but he had to try. Sweetie Belle’s life was depending on his success.

With a mixture of bravery, stupidity, and fear for both his life and Sweetie Belle’s, he charged at the zombies; however he had no intention of actually hurting them.

Button willed his dirt blocks out, the hallway wasn’t too wide, he should have enough to block it up, the only problem was would he have enough time?

Eight blocks away, they were eight blocks away and he had only started.

Six blocks away, one layer of dirt was up.

Four blocks away, three fourths finished.

Button placed the last block in the two block tall barricade just as the first zombie-pony prepared to jump through the gap.

Button fell backwards just as he placed the last block, the sight of the undead-equine suddenly up in his face had startled him quite a bit. Thankfully he had managed to get up a barricade before any of them had crawled through.

He sat there on his flank for a moment, breathing heavily and sweating just slightly. He collapsed onto the cool stone floor, chest heaving as he wiped his brow, turning his gaze over to Sweetie Belle, who had seemed to recover slightly, but was still rubbing her head with a pained expression on her face.

“S-sweetie Belle?” he breathed, looking over at her from his spot on the floor. Celestia help them if something decides to come up the darn stairs…

“I’m ok…” She said softly, looking over at him with an exhausted expression. “A-are you ok?” She asked, worry tainting her soft voice.
“Yeah, I’m fine…” Button waved a dismissive hoof, still panting heavily.

Slowly but surely, Sweetie Belle righted herself and trotted over to Button, slumping down next to him and against the wall. She let out a deep sigh and rubbed her eyes with her hooves before looking down at him.

“So…I guess we aren’t going back that way, huh?” She asked, glancing over at the dirt wall; the sound of agitated undead carrying through and over the top of it.

“Uh, that’d be a big, huge, whopping, no.” He breathed in response, slowly beginning to regain his breath.

“Sorry I wasn’t much help…” She said softly, frowning and turning her gaze away from him.

“You tried Sweetie Belle, this isn’t the computer anymore…these things are real, and big, you did your best.” Button said, his voice unintentionally reassuring as he sat up and tried to look Sweetie Belle in the eyes.

He was right and Sweetie Belle knew it, this wasn’t the computer anymore. These monstrosities were very real and very dangerous. The monsters wanted nothing more than to hurt them and they would carry that goal out blindly and without any sort of hesitation or restraint.

“Well…my best wasn’t helpful…”She grumbled, still refusing to make eye contact.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Button said simply, placing a gentle hoof on her shoulder.

Sweetie Belle slowly looked up at him, surprised by the contact. Yet for some reason she found herself not quite minding it. Button was a clueless fool sometimes, dare she say even a full out doofus, but he was a good, caring pony when he wanted to be…and he was right, if she hadn’t done what she did that entire situation could have turned out differently.

If she hadn’t done what she did, Button could have died.

“I-I guess you’re right…” She said softly, looking back into his eyes with a small smile.

Button returned the gaze, smiling back sweetly.

Neither of them really realized exactly what they were doing until about five seconds later, when Button actually processed he was holding Sweetie Belle gently by the shoulder and gazing into her eyes.

His cheeks turned a burning red and he recoiled his hoof quickly, as if he had been burnt, Sweetie Belle’s cheeks turned a deep red and she looked away, embarrassed.

“A-anyway.” Button let out, trying to put the previous little moment behind them. “We should get moving…maybe we’ll find some coal or something downstairs…hopefully.”

“Right.” Sweetie Belle pushed up off the ground and stood on all four hooves, cheeks still a soft red as she watched Button trot over to the edge of the staircase, peering down into the inky darkness.

“Hey, Button…” She said softly, trotting up next to him and following his gaze down the stairs.

“Hmm?” He replied with a hum, still inspecting the darkness below for signs of trouble.

“Thank you for saving me.” She said, before doing something that caught Button even more off guard than the zombie-pony with mad sword-skills, or the trio of zombie-ponies that came after, or even more than this entire situation as a whole.

Sweetie Belle gave him a hug, and now he felt like he could take on this entire crazy world with nothing but his hooves, and with the power of that hug now fueling him with a new determination, he lead his companion down into the dark depths that was the downstairs of his house.


> Chapter 6: They Aren't Supposed To Do That...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 6: They Aren't Supposed To Do That...


Button scoured the room before him with great care, taking into account every block and ore he saw, and making sure they would be somewhat unharmed on their trip down to the kitchen.

Button and Sweetie Belle were crouching on the staircase, eyeballing what had previously been a living room. Now however, it looked nothing quite that hospitable.

Stone formations had grown up in the center and along the walls of the large room, they hung from the ceiling and walls, a few of them even bore ore veins. There was a large formation in the center of the room; where the couches and coffee table had been previously. 

This stone formation dominated the majority of the room, bearing what appeared to be diamond ore on one side as it nearly touched the ceiling. The light from the lava in the hallway-ravine illuminated a small portion of the room, its warm glow unfortunately not lighting up enough where monsters wouldn’t spawn.

They hadn’t noticed this room before, or even really been able to get good look at it at all, due to the fact that at the time there was a rather psychotic Endermare that Sweetie Belle had looked at, resulting in them ending up in his room, then his parent’s room, and now here they were again.

But, where was the Endermare?

Much to Button’s surprise, there weren’t actually any mobs in the living room. Which was strange, he had expected there to be, but then again monsters didn’t always spawn in every dark place so he didn’t dwell on it long.

There were however, bats.

About a dozen, very annoying, bats.

“Button, why won’t they be quiet!” Sweetie Belle whined softly, rubbing her temples with her hooves and trying to ignore the headache she was getting from the constant and incessant “Squeak, squeak, squeak.” The little beasties made.

“They’re bats, it’s all they do.” He said, glaring angrily at a bat that was roosted on the ceiling near them. It gave him only a tiny, shrill squeak before taking off and fluttering to roost in some other part of the house.

“Well, they need to shut their traps; it’s giving me a headache!” She whispered, glaring a bat as it fluttered by the staircase and took up roost in one corner of the room.

“Just ignore them, we’re almost to the kitchen and then we’re never playing this game again.”

Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes. “Why don’t I believe that?”

“Hey, I could stop playing Minecraft if I-“

Button was cut short by a hoof to the mouth. “Spare me. Let’s just go, it looks like the coast is clear.”

Somewhat begrudgingly, Button righted himself and led Sweetie Belle down the stone steps. Their hooves echoed ever so faintly as they trotted down, the noise resounding off of the living room-turned-spacious-cavern, and Button could only hope that there wasn’t some monster waiting to jump them.

“Hey, Button?” Sweetie Belle asked from behind.

“Yeah?” Button replied, jumping off the last step and landing on the cold and unforgiving stone floor with a soft clop of his hooves.

“How are we gonna explain this to your mom, and…the whole town?

As innocently as the words had been asked, they hit like a ton of bricks. Button hadn’t ever thought of that. He had thought of the repercussions of his mother finding out, but he hadn’t ever though what he would say or how he would actually explain it to her, along with the rest of the town.

He still wasn’t sure how this all had really worked. Was the real Ponyville just on the other side of that bedrock? Were his friends and family locked outside wondering what in the hay was going on? Maybe there were news crews outside, and crowds of curious and upset ponies wondering how in the world something so strange had happened.

Button could imagine rather easily, a giant bedrock-encased structure in the middle of Ponyville, and how the town’s inhabitants would react. Especially his mother, who would be flipping her lid and most likely trying to get help from the Princesses; she was like that sometimes.

“Let’s just…cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, we need some coal.” He said, almost dismissively; the last thing he needed to worry about was anything but him and Sweetie Belle and their ability to get out of this horror.

“Oh, Button, there’s some coal!”  His companion squeaked rather excitedly, pulling out the stone pickaxe she had and charging ahead, not even stopping to think maybe there was something over there that wanted to eat her.

“Sweetie Belle!” Button hissed, reaching out to grab her and just barely missing.

Indeed, there was a decent sized vein of coal. It was embedded in the wall farthest from them, the one facing the staircase. There was seemingly nothing standing between it and them save the stone formation jutting up out of the ground like the spine of some massive monster.

Sweetie Bell soon found her way over to the coal, clambering over a few blocks of stone before finally arriving and instantly beginning to swing away with great zeal. The sound of a pick against ore soon filled the room and before Button had even arrived at her side, Sweetie Belle had already mined two coal ore.

“Sweetie Belle, are you trying to get killed?” He reprimanded, willing out his sword and looking around frantically for any approaching enemies.

“No, silly, I’m mining coal! You’re the one who said we needed it.” 

“Yes, but…ugh, just mine the coal; I’ll watch your back.” He sighed, grumbling ever so softly to himself and taking a seat next to his mining companion.

The squeaking of the bats had seemed to die down a bit after they had all found roosts and decided to keep them, and other than the occasional squeak and the sound of Sweetie Belle mining, all was silent.

Button watched the flickering glow of the lava emanating from the stone hallway, it wasn’t like the torch-light that the torches would give off, and it was softer and more comfortable looking. It hadn’t ever looked like that on the computer, but in here; wherever and whatever ‘here’ was, it was much different than in the computer; as it had repeatedly proven time and time again.

As he waited, Button found himself wondering if their plan would work. It had seemed like such a good idea back upstairs in his room, and then he had felt certain that it would work. As he thought about it, however, doubt was beginning to creep into his mind.

What if it didn’t work?

What if they ended up trapped in here for all their lives, doomed to live off of whatever happened to grow in his room until age or a monster brought about their demise?

Button didn’t want that kind of life, not at all. He wanted to live in Ponyville, with his friends and family. He wanted to play video games and hang out with Sweetie Belle, he wanted to wake up every Sunday thinking it was Monday, get all ready for school, and get yelled at to go back to bed. He wanted to find out what his special talent was, and get his cutie mark; he had so very many things he wanted to do in his life.

And if they didn’t get out of here…he wouldn’t ever get to fulfill those wishes.

He wouldn’t see his mother ever again, or his friends, he wouldn’t go to school, or play video games instead of living in them, he wouldn’t be able to drink apple juice every morning, or try and figure out that old game his mom had given him, or ever get to live a normal life, and the same would go for Sweetie Belle…

“Button…are you ok?” Came a familiar voice.

Button shook his head and looked over at Sweetie Belle; who was watching him with a look of concern, the smallest of frowns on her face.

“I-I’m...fine…” 

It was now Button realized he was on the verge of tears. Maybe reminding himself of all the things he would never be able to do if they got stuck in here wasn’t the best thing to have done.

“You don’t look fine…” She said; her town slightly downcast.

“No, I’m fine, promise…”Button cleared his throat and rubbed his eyes; sniffling a bit as he did so. He put on a face portraying at least some level of composure and gave her a reassuring nod. As young as he was and as inexperienced with the opposite sex and all, he did know that having a breakdown in a situation where you were supposed to be the stallion who knew what to do, was not a very good for morale.

“If you say so…” She replied, sounding very unconvinced.

An awkward silence followed and once again the only sounds were that of the occasional bat and the never-ending bubbling of the lava that filled the bottom of a nearby ravine. Both young ponies simply stared in silence ahead of them, neither one seeming to know exactly what to say or do; Sweetie Belle because she knew Button was upset about something, and Button because…well…he wasn’t sure how to react to the fact he had almost cried in front of Sweetie Belle, now she probably thought he was-

“Slosh”

Wait, what?

“Slosh”

There it was again, what a strange sound! Button was sure he had heard it before, but he wasn’t exactly sure where he had heard it, it sounded almost like water sloshing around in a bucket, or like somepony was slapping the top of a puddle with their hoof.

“Button…what is that?” Sweetie Belle piped up; her voice laden with concern.

“I…don’t know actually, it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever head in Minecraft before…maybe it’s-“

“Slosh”

“There it is again! Where is that coming-“

“Slosh”

Button suddenly found himself starting to get an idea of what was making the sloshing noises.

“Sweetie Belle, give me your torches…” He said, motioning for her to relieve them and turning his gaze to the direction the noises seemed to be coming from.

Silent as the grave, Sweetie willed her torches out of her inventory and tossed them to Button. Quickly as he could, he trotted over to the edge of the stone pillar in the middle of the room; hoofsteps echoing throughout the cavern as he did, and placed one of the torches on the stone.

The area around them illuminated instantly in the warm glow of the torches, still soft, but not quite like that of the lava. It was brighter and produced more, brighter light. A few bats screeched in protest, flapping their wings from their upside down roosts before taking off into another part of the living room-turned-cavern. A shadow was suddenly cast on the wall just then, the source of what had actually scared the bats off.

“Slosh”

“Button…what is that!” Sweetie Belle spat, slowly beginning to backpedal.

There; sloshing and wiggling its way around the corner of the center pillar, was a slime. A massive beast composed of, well, slime. It was green and slightly transparent, a deeper green core floated inside its main form and two square eyes and a mouth floated in perpetual suspension on its front, wearing a look of disturbing curiosity. 

The slime burbled and sloshed around the corner, slowly turning to face Button and Sweetie Belle and beginning to slink over towards them without missing a beat. It was easily four blocks by four blocks, almost unnaturally big for what a slime should have been, and due to the fact both young ponies were barely a block and a half, it only made the gelatinous monstrosity look all the bigger and more intimidating.

One thing Button found strange was that it was sliding instead of hopping; like Slimes normally did in Minecraft, there wasn’t time for that now however, because sliding or hopping, it looked intent on doing whatever slimes did to ponies to Button and Sweetie.

“RUN!” Button cried, turning and making to lead Sweetie Belle back towards the stairs in hopes of-

“Sssssss”

The hiss was almost lost in Sweetie Belle’s shriek.

Opposite the slime, was the monster that was the bane of every Minecrafter, the Sultan of Sulphur, the Emperor of Explosives and the Baron of Boom itself, the Creeper.

It looked exactly like one would expect of a creeper. Eyes empty, soulless and black as sin, its mouth hung open in a constant disturbing frown, as if its jaw were agape as to mourn those it were to kill with its suicidal attack. Four legs sprouted from its thick, scaly base, pattering over towards them as it hunched over ever so slightly, blocky head tilted towards them in murderous zeal.
It was more horrifying than the actual game version.

“BUTTON MASH!” Sweetie Belle cried, turning to run away from the Creeper, only to nearly run into the slime; who was burbling and drawing ever closer by the second.

Button looked around frantically, trying to find an out or some sort of exit. They were boxed in, being pushed into a corner by the two monsters. Slowly they backpedaled; Button had his sword drawn and ready to hit whichever got closer first.

“Button, we can climb!”Sweetie Belle cried, pulling her companions gaze from the monsters long enough for him to see her scrambling up a stone formation that had grown up in the corner; almost akin to a sort of pyramid. It rose about six blocks high at the very tip, slowly shrinking down in a rather uneven fashion as it spread out.

He quickly followed suit, scrambling up the blocks as quickly as he could in hopes of getting away from what could certainly spell his doom out in explosive and gooey letters. 

“Here!” Sweetie called, holding out her hoof to Button in an attempt to help him up.

Button gratefully accepted the help, latching his hoof with Sweetie Belle’s and using it as leverage to haul himself up the rest of the way; collapsing on the small stone base on which they now took refuge. That had been so close…he hadn’t actually expected a Creeper to show up; but then again, nopony ever did in this game. Hopefully they wouldn’t decide to start-

“Button, they’re trying to climb!” Sweetie Belle said with a worried moan, backing up as far as she could until the stone wall would allow her to go no further.

As Button peered over the edge, he discovered his companion was indeed correct.

The Slime was pressing itself against the blocks, burbling and sloshing futilely as it did nothing more than squash its own green gooey face against the blocks of stone. The Creeper however seemed more intent of carrying out its purpose of murder, it locked its empty eyes with Button’s and hissed once more before beginning to-

“Come on, Button, you can do this…” He told himself, readying his sword for the walking bomb currently climbing up towards their position; and doing so in a surprisingly clumsy manner at that.

The Creeper glared up at him with chilling, empty eyes, letting out a sickening hiss before doing something that came to Button as much of a surprise as this entire event had.

Slowly; uncannily so, an unnaturally long green tongue slithered out of the Creeper’s mouth as it hissed. It dripped in green slime and seemed to be groping at the air for him, as if that wasn’t enough. The creeper was changing ever so slightly before his eyes. No longer did it have stumps for feet, now it had short, sharp claws beginning to grow out of each foot. The inside of the mouth began to move as well, teeth slowly growing out and down from the gums in a manner most haphazard, not even a hint of an attempt at making them even or ordered appeared to exist.

“W-what, y-you aren’t supposed to do that! W-what are you doing?” Button cried; as if the slowly changing Creeper would respond, his eyes wide in shock and horror at what he was witnessing occur before him.

“Sssssss” Was the only response, empty, soulless black eyes still fixated on their prey.

Button steeled himself to attack; something which took a great amount of bravery due to what he was watching happen. He brought his sword up and held it ready, an idea was beginning to form in his head. If he could wait until just the right moment, maybe he could knock the Creeper back as it was about to explode, knocking it into the Slime! It would explode and hopefully eliminate two deadly birds with one stone; or something like that.

The Creeper drew closer, tongue writhing and gripping at the air in time with its now constant, soft hissing. The monster was only two blocks away now, and as expected the hissing was growing louder, its body began to flash white and it started to grow ever so slightly.
Just before it grew too large to contain its energy any longer, Button swung his sword and hit it square in the side of the head. The Creeper flashed red and let out a pained hiss before tumbling backwards and landing into the massive Slime below; still flashing white all the way.

“sssssSSSSBOOM!”

Button’s plan had worked perfectly, the Creeper; unable to stop its countdown timer at that point, landed on top of the Slime and exploded in a manner quite theatric. Its body expanded until it could hold no more and unleashed enough power to turn a carriage to sawdust. The slime hadn’t even seen what hit it.

Bits of green goo flew everywhere, splattering everything within reach; there was slime on the walls, on the ceiling, on the floors, on the ores and even the bats. Everything within a fifteen block radius was covered in what had previously been a living creature, now looking nothing more that somepony had sneezed a lot.

Luckily for both Button and Sweetie Belle, they had been smart enough to back away from the edge so as not to be hit by gelatinous green shrapnel. Both of them were pressed tightly against the stone wall and lying down; they had tried to make themselves as small as possible.

However, when the sound of slime beginning to drip down from the ceiling and splatting onto the ground reach their ears, they both raised their heads and took in the goo-covered scenery around them; once dull grey stone walls were now painted with green slime remnants.

“Ew…” Sweetie Belle said softly, turning her gaze up to the slime dripping from the ceiling.

“That Creeper…” Button said thoughtfully, not even registering Sweetie Belle’s disgust.

“Huh?” She asked, tilting her head to the side and gazing over at her confused looking companion.

“It...changed…” He replied, sitting up on his haunches and staring off into space.

Sweetie Belle gave him a look of slight worry, trotting over to the edge of their perch and looking down at the mess below.

“I watched it change…that isn’t supposed to happen…” 

“Button…” Sweetie Belle called, her voice tainted with an unpleasantly familiar sense of dread.

“They don’t have tongues…or teeth…” He didn’t even hear her.

“Button….!” She called again, sounding more worried than before.

“I don’t understand why-“

“BUTTON!” Sweetie Belle barked, finally getting his attention and frantically beckoning for him to come over.

Button raised an eyebrow at her, she obviously wasn’t in trouble, so why was she…oh.

As Button came to the edge of their hiding place, he followed Sweetie Belle’s gaze and found the source of her well justified worry.

The slime remnants were moving, wobbling and wiggling ever so softly as they began to pull close to one another, collecting together in dozens of sporadically placed little groupings. They slinked across the stone floor with ease, looking like water running down a window rather than a jello-like substance across stone.

“That isn’t good…” He said, eyes wide.

Slowly, the blobs began to take a more block-like, edged shape. Growing and melding together until after about fifteen seconds, the floor, walls and ceilings were totally clean. In their place, stood about two dozen slimes, each identical to the larger one that had fathered them in appearance and weird facial expression.

“Oh…wait, those are just little ones, they won’t-“

“Squeak!”

There was a frantic, pained squeak instantly recognizable as that of a bat, and the source of the bat’s pain was soon apparent.
As observed before, portions of the slime had latched themselves to bats. So in turn, when the slime began to come alive again and become a living being, it had pulled the bats it had latched onto with it as it reformed.

A bat dropped from the ceiling, a clump of goo wrapped around one of its wings as it moved to mesh with its newly forming brethren. Sweetie Belle and Button could only watch in disgusted horror as it was unwillingly dragged into one of the dozens of small slime cubes.

The bat had time to utter one final shriek of protest before it was pulled into the body of a smaller slime and began to flash red for a moment. Muffled, pained squeaks followed in the last three seconds of its life, before it keeled over inside of its murderer, poofed away in a small plume of smoke, and was no more.

“Ponyfeathers.” Button cursed, silently horrified at what he had just seen.

“Button, I think they want more food!” Sweetie Belle whined, pointing a hoof at the pack of Slimes that now knew full well of their presence.

“Blocks!” Button cried frantically.

“What?”

“Blocks, Block up the sides of this stone so they can’t get in, build a wall, hurry!” 

Sweetie Belle gave an affirming nod and willed out her dirt blocks, beginning to frantically place them against the edges with surprising skill; she had practiced after all in the spawner room, after all.

Already, the slimy swarm was growing nearer, hopping up each block with a frightening ease the slime they were birthed from had never achieved. With each passing moment, the soft slap of slime hitting stone grew louder and nearer. They hopped up with the practice and style akin to something out of that Q-Bert game Button had played once.

“Agh, Button!”

Button whipped around to see a slime at the head of its little pack, wearing that unsettlingly curious expression as it hopped upwards and towards Sweetie Belle, in hopes of attacking.

“I’ve got it, hold on Sweetie Belle!”

Button rushed over and swatted at the slime as it leapt up to attack, bashing it with his sword and sending it careening back down onto the floor; where it impacted with a splat, a flash of red, and then keeled over and disappeared in a plume of smoke, leaving nothing but the small floating form of a slime ball in its place.

Already, more were taking the place of their fallen kin, two small slimes now only one leap away from reaching the top of the stone formation. Button readied himself once again, and was just about to swing when a dirt block appeared in front of him with a “crunch”

“Done!” Sweetie Belle said triumphantly, chest rising and falling ever so slightly from her sudden burst of physical exertion.

“That…was close.” He said with a sigh, willing his sword away and collapsing on his haunches against the newly built dirt wall.

“Those things are really yucky…” She said, glaring over at the dirt wall as the sound of Slimes throwing themselves against it began to reach her ears.

“Those things…aren’t supposed to be like that…” Button said solemnly, his gaze fixated on the stone beneath his hooves.

“What do you mean?” Sweetie Belle gave him a worried look, trotting over and sitting on her haunches in front of him, craning her head downwards in hopes of making eye contact; as if maybe that would help.

“Slimes don’t absorb other monsters like that…they never have, they don’t get as big as that first one was either…”

“Button, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” She replied; her voice laced with a mixture of concern and exhaustion.

“The Creeper did it too.” He deadpanned; gaze still fixated on the ground.

“Button, you aren’t making much sense…”

Button brought his gaze up to meet that of his companion, his eyes filled with a mixture of confusion and the smallest hint of fear, he actually looked…solemn. Sweetie Belle couldn’t remember such an expression ever even making a hint of appearance on his young face.

“It changed, Sweetie Belle…”

Sweetie Belle sighed inwardly, she still had no idea what Button was talking about, but she got the feeling that this wasn’t just ‘Button being weird’, and so she decided she should go and sit by him, let him talk.

“When that Creeper was climbing up…I watched it change, it grew teeth and a tongue and these claws…”

“So…what do you think it means?” She asked, yawning softly and taking a seat next to him.

“I don’t know…but I have a feeling that it isn’t going to be as easy as we thought to get to that computer.” 

Other than the sound of the slimes slamming themselves futilely against the dirt, all was silent, he received no response.

Button was just about to say something, when he turned to find Sweetie Belle, asleep, on his shoulder. She looked exhausted. He hadn’t really and truly actually looked at her since they had left his room. Her mane was messy and wild, were once sat a neatly; naturally, curled purple and white mane, was now nothing more than a dirty, colorful mop, the only evidence of her previous curls being the two or three left in the mess of mane. Her coat looked no better, what was once a pristine white was now covered in splotches of dirt and grime. Making her coat look almost like that of some bovine or something of that like.

Normally he would have freaked out a bit at this; Sweetie Belle had actually…fallen asleep on him. However for some reason, he found himself not minding it at all. In all honesty, she was warm and soft; despite her state of cleanliness. He could feel her warm breath running down his shoulder with each exhale, and despite on this, it was kind of nice.

Button didn’t know if she had fallen asleep out of simply being tired, or had been lulled to sleep by his droning about the monsters transformations, but at that moment he didn’t care. He was exhausted too to be honest, and so he rested his head back against the dirt wall and closed his eyes, forgetting for just a moment of their predicament and letting himself drift off to sleep.

All the while, giving the creatures outside more time to be changed by their new world.

> Chapter 7: No Time To Think
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 7: No Time To Think



“Slap”

Button let out a tired moan, waving his hoof about in the air in front of him as if to ward off a bothersome fly.

“Slap”

Through closed eyes, he let out another huff of displeasure, whatever this slapping noise was it was doing well to bring a restful sleep to a most bothersome and unwanted end.

“Slap”

Button let out a short frustrated grunt and opened his eyes, half expecting to awaken in his room, on his bed on a perfectly normal Saturday morning. He would get up, go downstairs; quietly as to not wake his parents, steal some juice from the fridge, and then spend the rest of the day playing video games.

Not on this Saturday, however; if it even was a Saturday.

Instead of his room, Button was surrounded by the painfully familiar sight of stone blocks, and the slapping noise his slowly awakening mind could now register as the hostile and hungry slimes that were apparently still throwing themselves against the dirt walls, to no avail.

He sighed and closed his eyes once more. Even with sleeping however long they had slept, he still was exhausted; he had every right to be of course. It wasn’t exactly every day one was sucked into a video game and then chased around by horrendous abominations straight out of the mind of some pony named Notch; a pony who Button’s resentment for grew greater and greater the more time spent in this video game-turned-real.

“Slap”

Another moan of displeasure, this one more feminine and as expected, originating from Button’s companion, Sweetie Belle. She shifted a bit from her position against him, her head resting on his shoulder and her hooves otherwise limp as she mumbled strange dream-induced words.

“Then I’ll teach it to fear me instead…” She mumbled, smacking her lips before letting her jaw hang agape once more and drool slightly.
It was gross, but Button found himself not minding, he was dirty enough already so a little Sweetie-Spit wouldn’t kill him; him waking her from her sleep though, might.

“Slap”

How long had they slept anyway? From the unpleasantly familiar sound of the slimes, they had either slept only a few minutes, or the slimes were just extremely obsessive over their prey and didn’t give up all too easily. Although, throwing themselves against the dirt obviously wasn’t working, so either way they hadn’t exactly proved to be amongst the brightest torches in the cavern.

“Slap”

Sweetie Belle let out another bothered moan, shifting a bit more and letting out a short grunt as the noisy slimes did their best to try and get through the wall.

Button couldn’t really do too much to stop them either, seeing as they were on the other side of the wall and he really, really didn’t feel removing that wall to try and get some peace and quiet.

“Slap”

Sweetie Belle jerked a bit, inhaling sharply and suddenly stiffening her limbs out as if she had rigor mortis. This went on for about three seconds before she slackened again, however she was no longer asleep, and was very much upset at being awoke.

“Button Mash, I swear, I’m going to strangle you…” She said sleepily, exactly what emotion she was putting into her words all but undetectable due to her being barely awake.

“Welcome back to the land of the living.” Button said, unable to hold back his grin.

“Slap”

“I’ll be the only one living here pretty soon if whatever is making that noise doesn’t shut it.” She grumbled, yawning and sitting upright to rub her eyes and sniffle a bit. 

“Good luck with that.” Button retorted, taking the moment of not having Sweetie Belle asleep on him to stretch out his limbs, finding his neck popping as he stretched; he already felt like he was getting old and he was eight, oh joy.

“Slap”

Sweetie Belle shot a sleepy, yet loathe-filled glare over in the direction of the dirt wall she rested against.

It was a horrifying look. 

Button couldn’t remember ever seeing Sweetie Belle…grumpy. Granted, they hadn’t exactly spent so much time waking up next to one another, so it wasn’t like he was used to how she behaved in the mornings, nor how she behaved when she was woken up before she wanted to be. However, he could sense that she wasn’t exactly happy at being woken up before she wanted to be.

“How long did we sleep?” She asked; her glare fading as she smacked her lips and turned her gaze over to meet that of her companion, her eyelids half closed.

“Not sure,” He replied with a shrug, resting the back of his head against the wall and closing his eyes, rubbing them as if it would make their situation go away. “All I know is those slimes are still out there, and I don’t think asking them politely to leave is going to do us much good.”

The sound of multiple slimes slamming themselves against the dirt only confirmed what Button had said, they were in quite a spot, a spot they needed to get out of quickly is they wanted to attempt to get out of this horrific place.

Sweetie Belle let out a soft sigh and slowly righted herself, taking time to stretch out each one of her joints and being rewarded with a soft “pop” as she stretch each limb.

“They sound pretty eager to get in here…” She said nonchalantly, smacking her lips before suddenly sprawling out on the ground and contorting her body into strange and unusual shapes.

“Yeah, we’re gonna need a plan if-“ It was then Button turned his gaze to his companion, even in the dim light he was able to clearly see that she was doing…whatever the heck she was doing. His eyes wide and wearing the exact same look he wore that time his toy train spontaneously combusted. “Sweetie Belle…w-what in Equestria are you doing?”

“Yoga.” She stated flatly, balancing on a front and back leg as she stretched the other two towards the stone ceiling.

“Why?” Button stared blankly, unsure of what to think of this alien and unfamiliar sight in front of him.

“Rarity says that Yoga is a good way to make sure that you start your day right, she says…” Sweetie Belle paused to switch positions, doing so with the practice and skill of some yoga master. “That it also helps keep you relaxed and positive throughout the day, so sometimes she’ll wake me up and we do yoga before I have to go to school and stuff!”

“Oh, O-okay then…” He said with uncertainty, eyes glued to Sweetie Belle in a mixture of shock and wonder as she carried out her morning routine despite the fact it may not even be morning.

“Now, we need a plan!” She stated firmly upon finishing her stretching, looking revitalized in just the slightest.

Their surroundings only gave more weight to Sweetie Belle’s statement. The seemingly endless sound of slimes throwing themselves against the outer walls of their makeshift fortress was a constant, other than their voices it was the only other sound that was heard.
“How are we going to get out of here, that seems like a good place to-“

Button was cut off at the sight of Sweetie Belle placing a dirt block down near him; it grew to fill the size of a normal block and served to only make the already tiny space even more cramped.

“Sweetie Belle, what are you doing?” He asked, watching as his companion scramble up the block appeared to be in the process of trying to climb up to the top of their little wall.

“Getting a look, duh.” She stated blandly, as if this were no big deal.

“Well, w-wait up!” Button said, nearly tripping over himself as he scrambled up after her. He was barely even awake and already Sweetie Belle was trying to run off, jeeze.

The sound of hooves crunching on dirt soon followed as Button scrambled up next to his companion, Perched next to her atop the dirt wall that kept their foes at bay previously and was now serving as their lookout. Button’s gaze locked on Sweetie Belle’s at first; she wore the strangest expression, it wasn’t disgust or sadness, it was…horror?

Upon following her gaze, he found exactly why Sweetie Belle bore such an expression, and found out that the expression she wore was very much appropriate.

The slimes were no longer the curious-faced, green blobs of harmless looking goop, slapping around and noiseless, ignorant bliss.

No.

They had mutated.

Of course.

The slimes didn’t appear to have eyes anymore; in fact all traces of the squares of grey that made up their expressions seemed to have disappeared. Now there was only slime, green cubes of slime. They now had very definite mouths. In fact they had mouths so large they took up most of the monsters body, giving it a look of a maw as its own entity rather than a simple slime. 

The slimes were still made of…well, slime. However they looked more ravenous and angry now, their mouths opened and closed in silent roars and moans of a newfound hunger for flesh, teeth and tongues made of slime brandished from the maws of the cube-demons like weapons equipped by a valiant knight; if said night were made of Jell-O or something of that sort.

The floor around their hideout was an ocean of slime, they hadn’t actually ever melded together, although they would press against one another, they didn’t yet appear to be able to re-connect to form a larger, more horrifying creature. However the eyeless gaze of every single one of the slimy, green beasties was turned upwards, right at Button and Sweetie Belle.

“Button…what…?” Was all Sweetie Belle managed to let out.

Button was just as stumped as his companion was. He had never, ever seen slimes like this in Minecraft. First the Creeper from before and its crazy new teeth and claws and all that, and now the slimes had mutated?

Something was going on here and Button had a feeling these creatures weren’t all that interested in letting him get to the bottom of it; not that he really wanted to of course, well maybe he did a little, but saving Sweetie Belle came first, he had to keep her safe!

“Let’s just…figure out a way to get down from here, safely.” He said, trying to dismiss his thoughts of what was happening to the 
monsters.

Both he and Sweetie Belle took a good long look around the room, to be quite honest they were in quite a bit of a spot.

Other than the slimes, the cavern had not changed at all, not noticeably at least. The walls were lined with the same rocky protrusions and outcroppings as before, and in the center of the room the large spire of rock still rose from the ground, dotted with the occasional ore or block of gravel.

Nothing seemed to be changing to help them and everything seemed to be changing to try and slaughter them.

“Sweetie Belle, this isn’t going to be-“

“We should build a bridge!” She cried out suddenly, unintentionally antagonizing the slimes below them even more and startling Button Mash to a great effect, enough so he nearly toppled off the wall and into what would almost certainly be a gooey death.

“Sweetie Belle! Shush, you’re riling them up!” Button hissed after righting himself, finding his breathing just the tiniest bit quicker and his heart beating that much faster after nearly falling.

“Oh, right, sorry…” She said sheepishly, however sheepishness quickly turned back into excitement, and once again she started up. “If we take the stone blocks off the wall, then maybe we can build a bridge all the way into the kitchen! Then we can just avoid the slimes all the way back to the lava pit!” She exclaimed; visibly proud of herself for formulating such a plan.

It actually wasn’t a bad plan, building a bridge wouldn’t be too hard. However there would be very little room for error, a single misstep or miscalculation could bring an end that did well to somber any over-excited attitude that Button could possibly have had.

“We’ll have to be careful…unless you want to become dinner for a bunch of snot balls.” He said with a cringe, turning his gaze down to the horde of slimes below.

“Careful is my middle name!” She exclaimed, already having willed out her pickaxe and began to make her way back down into the four by four square they had spent the night in.

“And I’m the Princess of The Sun…” He sighed under his breath, taking one last look at the freakishly-mutated slimes before heading down after Sweetie Belle, who had already begun mining for stone.

“Button, come help!” She called, bringing her stone pick down onto a stone block and sending pixilated cracks through its surface.

Button wasn’t sure why Sweetie Belle was so chipper all of a sudden, she didn’t seem to even be daunted by the fact there were dozens of monsters that wanted nothing more than to kill them, held back by nothing more than a wall of dirt two blocks high, and that they were essentially boxed in should they happen to break through!

“What’s got you so upbeat all of a sudden?” He asked, willing out his pick and not thinking much of the question.

“Well, you see, I have decided that keeping an upbeat attitude is good for morale, and with good morale we have good attitudes, and with good attitudes we can get stuff done!” She said encouragingly, smiling a bit as the stone block she had been digging at made a faint “Pop,” shrunk down and sucked into her “Inventory”

“Oh…I’m down with that, I think.”

Button was honestly unsure, oh well, mares were strange creatures sometimes.

The sound of pick upon stone soon filled the cavern, rhythmic almost to the point of being hypnotic. It was a nice change of pace from the incessant and unending “slap” of slimes throwing themselves fruitlessly against the dirt wall; though it didn’t drown them out, it did help.

As they toiled, Button found the gears in his mind turning at full speed, trying desperately to come up with a rhyme or reason as to why the monsters seemed to be mutating, and what it meant for the pair of ponies as a whole.

There had to be a reason, monsters didn’t just change, not in Minecraft. 

Then again, if that were the case, why had Button seen that very thing unfold before his eyes?

Button had an extremely extensive knowledge of Minecraft and its workings, he knew there was only a 0.164% chance of a Pink sheep naturally spawning, he knew that occasionally gravity-affected blocks would spawn in a manner that they would remain unaffected by gravity until touched, he knew that a chicken being ridden by a baby zombie-pony, was significantly faster than a normal chicken, he even knew the exact amount of uses an un-enchanted diamond pick held, one thousand, five hundred and sixty two.

This however, was something he did not know, and he didn’t like it one bit.

As if this weren’t enough, he couldn’t stop thinking about that Endermare they had encountered. He couldn’t quite put his hoof on exactly why, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they would end up running into it again.

What if it had mutated too, Endermares were already horrible enough, how much monstrous and vile could it become if it underwent a mutation similar to that of the creeper, what if it had-

“Button…”

Sweetie Belle’s voice was soft and heavily laden with a mixture of both curiosity and worry, enough so it snapped Button to attention.

“Huh?”

Sweetie Belle said nothing; she merely raised a slightly shaking hoof and pointed it in the direction of the slimes.

Without hesitation Button followed her gaze, finding the scene unfolding below very much worth shaking over.

The slimes had stopped throwing themselves against the walls, so that was good. However what wasn’t good was their new source of occupation.

The gooey beasts had converged around a rather nonplussed looking creeper, and were in the process of slowly moving it over towards them. The creeper hissed in protest, bearing newly grown fangs and putting up as much of a fight as it could while being carried like a shipping container upon a freighter.

“What in the name of…” Button wasn’t sure what to think, this definitely wasn’t a normal part of the game. What was the point of them carrying a creeper? What were they trying to achieve, surely they didn’t mean to…

“Sweetie Belle, start building the bridge.” Button said in a grave tone.

“W-what?”

“The bridge, the bridge! Hurry!”

Sweetie Belle gave her comrade a somewhat confused look, then did the same to the creatures below, and a second later she had done well to figure out what was about to unfold.

She let out a nervous laugh and willed out her cobblestone, beginning to place it up against the wall of dirt to start their bridge.

The sound of slimes burbling and gurgling, coupled with the noises of the Creeper were only fuel to the frantic bridge building of the two young ponies. The soft “thunk” of blocks being placed one after the other became rhythmic, and should that rhythm stop, their lives would most likely do the same.

“Ehh…” Button let out a worried moan, glancing back at the slimy bomb-delivery system currently crawling closer to the dirt wall, looking like a miniature siege party. It would have been somewhat comical if it had not been so dire.

“Sweetie Belle, we need to-“

Button never finished his words.

The explosion that occurred at that moment was one unlike ever seen from a Creeper in Minecraft before. Button was deafened and his ears rang with an unpleasant whining noise, followed by the short-lived sensation of falling, and then a painful impact.

He could barely breathe, upon hitting the ground all the wind had been successfully removed from his lungs. He was sure his eardrums had been damaged, he had never felt a pain quite like it before and he was glad he hadn’t had to feel it before.

Yet through all this, his singular thought was Sweetie Belle.

Where, was Sweetie Belle?

Button gasped for air as his vision slowly began to focus, dual images slowly coming together to form the one image they should be. As his sight cleared he was able to make out the smoking crater that was now in the place of where their refuge had once stood.

The explosion had easily spread to a fifteen flock radius, much greater than that of any normal Creeper; even a Charged Creeper didn’t carry that much of a payload.

“Sweetie Belle…?” Button croaked, letting out a painful cough he couldn’t even hear. Button blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision faster.

Luckily the slimes hadn’t apparently been smart enough to think they would be evaporated in the massive blast they had used against the dirt wall, so any traces of the little booger-monsters had been successfully erased from existence, leaving only a huge crater as a grim reminder of exactly what this place had in store for its guests.

It was then Button noticed the pulsating feeling, his stomach did backflips and an unpleasant sinking feeling set in.

He was dangerously low on health.

No, that didn’t matter now. What mattered was Sweetie Belle; he had to find Sweetie Belle!

“Sweetie Be-“ Button was cut off by a sudden and violent fit of coughing, a strange metallic taste filled his mouth and the sound of fluid splattering onto the stone floor was audible, just not to him at that moment.

The coughing did well to ensure Button stayed down a few moments longer, the taste in his mouth would have been puzzling had he not been still focused on the ringing in his ears that was fading away much slower than he would have liked.

As his hearing began to slowly return, the ringing was replaced by a pained moaning, it was deep and unpleasant.

It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t Sweetie Belle.

He hadn’t even managed to right himself; his hearing was barely back, his vision still blurred.

Was this the end?

Another moan, the sound of undead shambling around, hungry for pixilated flesh. It was the only other sound heard in the otherwise disturbingly silent aura of the cavern.

It couldn’t end like this…he had to get up, he had to protect his friend. It was his fault she was in this nightmare; he had a responsibility to get her out!

His head though…Celestia, his head hurt. He hadn’t ever felt a pain like this before, it radiated through his skull in unpleasant pulses, like he was being hit with a hammer over and over.

That didn’t matter.

None of it mattered.

If he couldn’t get up and find Sweetie Belle he would never be able to live with himself.

Fueled by the sound of a moan that was very obviously getting closer, Button shakily pushed himself up, blinking his eyes enough that the double vision wasn’t quite as bad as before, he took a stance that would allow him the best balance and willed out his sword. 

The ringing had almost faded completely now, but his head still hurt like nopony’s business.

Sweetie Belle, he had to find her, and then deal with the undead problem.

Shakily, Button turned his back to the smoking crater that had been their base, the shadow of the few remaining bits of the bridge they had started building casting down, barely visible in the dim light of the cavern.

“Sweetie Belle…?” He said weakly, followed by a short cough that left that strange metallic taste in his mouth.

He scanned the area around him frantically, searching amongst the blocky outcroppings and protrusions.

There she was!

Lying motionless up against a stone formation, covered in dirt, dust and grime, was Sweetie Belle.

Button let out a sigh of relief that turned into a pained cough doubling over and nearly collapsing again as he spewed out that strange metallic tasting fluid, it splattered out onto the stone floor in scarlet red splotches.

Now however, he could see what it was, and it confused him just as much as it horrified him.

It was blood.

You didn’t bleed, in Minecraft.

“Later…” He told himself, he would figure that out later, he would deal with that later.

Button shakily made his way over to his motionless comrade, silently praying to himself she was alright. 

“Sweetie Belle?” He said softly, practically collapsing next to her, gently placing a hoof on her shoulder in hopes of getting some reaction.

Nothing.

“Sweetie Belle…?” He gently shook her, feeling panic begin to build inside of him already.

There was an unpleasant groan, not from Sweetie Belle however, no this groan was from something much larger and much more hostile.

Panic became anger in that moment, Button suddenly found himself furious, he despised this place, everything in it, the blasted monsters, the blocks, he hated them with every fiber of his being.

With a growl that almost matched that of the zombie-pony shambling slowly up behind him, Button took his sword in one hoof and spun around, his battle cry one unmatched in its ferocity in passion.

As he spun around, all Button felt was his sword meeting flesh, a small amount of resistance, and then nothing but air. He hadn’t even gotten a look at the undead equine; he had simply spun and swung, getting lucky before collapsing on the ground and letting out another cough.

As soon as he had collapsed he heard an unpleasant groan, this one was different than before, it was gurgling and less controlled, he began to worry that another zombie-pony had appeared, until he turned his gaze up to look at his attacker.

There was only one zombie, and it was the one that he had just attacked, however the reason for its strange noises; because it already didn’t make those anyway, was due to the fact it no longer had a lower jaw.

Button watched his attacker try to regain its footing, and very obviously try to comprehend how in Equestria it suddenly didn’t have a lower jaw, black sludge dripping out of what looked like a fresh wound. The zombie-pony let out a confused, airy gurgle and gave him a strange look, one of surprise and confusion, a look that said “Where the hell is my lower jaw?”

Button was just as confused as the zombie-pony, maybe it had spawned like that or…?

The zombie-pony let out an airy groan and began shambling over towards him yet again, leaving a trail of black, sludge-like blood in its wake as it dripped profusely from where it’s lower jaw should have been.

Button grunted and pushed himself up, his vision had returned to normal now, and the ringing was gone, but his head was still in excruciating pain and was doing his best to push through it.

“Come on then…” He growled through gritted teeth, holding his sword in one hoof and brandishing it at his slowly approaching attacker, holding his ground until just the right moment.

Closer it grew, gurgling and snarling its breathy snarls in its unyielding lust to kill, rotting hooves sliding against the stone floor and coagulated, thick blood dripping onto the ground. 

Two blocks away.

He lunged, Button drove the sword outwards with all the strength he could muster, driving straight through the zombie-ponies throat.
The monster gurgled and its milky eyes widened, glaring at Button almost frantically as it squirmed on the sword.

Yet, it wasn’t flashing red.

Why wasn’t it…?

The zombie-pony suddenly slid forward on the sword, purposely impaling itself farther to try and reach Button in its mindless need to slaughter him.

Button, surprised and horrified at this, quickly released his sword and scrambled backwards; leaving his weapon firmly embedded through the rotting neck of his assailant, thick blood slowly trickling out of the wound it now bore.

“Y-you…you shouldn’t be doing…I don’t…”

The zombie-pony stopped, glaring at button for a moment before turning its attention over to the limp form of Sweetie Belle, and as quickly as it had ceased moving, it started up again; this time shambling towards Sweetie Belle.

“But, y-you didn’t….Sweetie Belle didn’t attack you…I don’t…”

No, there wasn’t time to no know what to do, there wasn’t time to stop and try to figure this out, and there wasn’t time for him to just stand there.

He had to act, and he had to do it now.

Not knowing what else to do, Button proceeded to carry out the most basic attack one could think of.

Fueled by his need to save Sweetie Belle, and doing his best to ignore his throbbing headache.

He charged in head on, and head butted his foe with everything he had.

And then everything went dark.

> Chapter 8: "Wake Up..."
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 8: "Wake Up..."



A wet scraping was the first thing Button heard. Like someone dragging a wet cloth over stone and then slapping it against it.

As his eyes fluttered open, he tried to comprehend the grey, unpleasant looking scenery in front of him. It was sickeningly familiar, somehow; yet at that moment he couldn’t seem to figure out why he was there.

Why did his head hurt so badly?

He let out a pained moan and flexed his legs, finding them sore, worn and tired. His whole body ached.

Jeeze, his head hurt.

Button let out a painful cough, wincing as his throat burned and his mouth filled with specks of something vaguely metallic. He felt like this taste wasn’t a good sign, but he still wasn’t conscious enough to really process why his body was telling him this was a bad sign.

He blinked his eyes a few times, trying to clear his vision as he rolled over onto his stomach and tried to push himself up. The effort it took to roll over in and of itself was a struggle, so standing up felt almost impossible.

Button winced in pain and collapsed back onto his stomach, coughing again and doing so with enough force, he could hear the fluid fly out and splatter onto the cold, unpleasant ground.

He managed to focus his vision enough that he could process what it was he was coughing up.

Blood.

Suddenly everything came flooding back in, like a tidal wave of memory and information he had gathered and experienced in the time he had been in this wretched place.

The game, the monsters, his house, the strange mob behavior, and most importantly, Sweetie Belle.

“Sweetie Belle!” Button cried weakly; but frantically, finding the words stinging his throat a bit as they came out and sending him into another fit of unpleasant coughing.

No response.

“Come on Button…” He hissed to himself, trying desperately to push himself upright for the second time.
He had to get up, he had to. He had to make sure Sweetie Belle was ok; he had to make sure he got her out of here alive. He wouldn’t ever forgive himself if she…

No, that wouldn’t happen.

She was alive, she had to be. Sweetie Belle was tough, she’d be fine; wherever she was.

“Sweetie Belle!” He croaked again, managing to shakily keep himself upright as he looked around the cavern that had once been his living room. The large spire of rock in the center of the room still stood strong, dotted with ores here and there and dominating the cave.

No response, again.

Button winced as he brought a hoof up to his head, rubbing it gently as his vision began to focus and he caught sight of the blood on the floor. It wasn’t his, and it wasn’t Sweetie Belle’s either. No, it was almost…gooey looking. Black and thick, like you would expect from a-

“The Zombie-pony!” Button whispered to himself; spinning around and almost falling over in the process.

He wasn’t sure if he should let out a sigh of relief, or a cry of horror at what he saw.

There, only about six blocks away, was the Zombie-Pony.

The monster had fallen over when Button had rammed it. It hit its neck on the corner of a stone block as it toppled and apparently snapped its neck. The zombie-pony’s rotting body laid motionless, leaking thick, black blood from its wounds and Button’s sword still impaled through its neck. The head however, was very lively. It lifted and smacked against the ground in frustration, letting out only breathy gurgles due to the fact it was missing its lower jaw.

It didn’t even seem to notice Button. In fact, it actually seemed to focus its attention on something.

It was Sweetie Belle.

Lying motionless on the ground, up against the stone wall of the cavern, was Sweetie Belle. Her mane looked like a dirty mop as opposed to its usual, clean, almost fancy style. Her normally white coat was blackened and tarnished, covered in mud, dirt and grime. Her eyes were shut tight and her jaw slackened.

Button couldn’t tell if she was alive or not.

Whatever was happening with this game, whatever the reason was that things were becoming so strange…he couldn’t help but feel utterly horrified at the thought of a chance at respawn being totally eradicated.

If Sweetie Belle was dead, she should have respawned, right?

The zombie-pony let out a quiet, breathy snarl, slapping its head against the ground as it desperately tried to get at Sweetie Belle; and continually bashing its rotting flesh all over the floor in the process.

“G-get away!” Button groaned, gritting his teeth and limping over to the zombie-pony with the most evil of intent in his eyes.

The undead equine paid him no mind, only continuing to fruitlessly try and get at Sweetie Belle with single-minded determination.

Silent as the grave, Button limped over to the rotting monster in front of him, stopping for a moment and looking down at his enemy with a look that redefined the word ‘Loathing’. Without any hesitation, he grabbed onto the hilt of the sword with his hoof and pulled, putting his entire body weight into his task to retrieve his sword.

As would be expected, this got the zombie-pony’s attention.

It let out an airy growl and turned its milky-white eyes over to Button, glaring at him with a look that was almost akin to surprise, like it wasn’t expecting him to be there, or even like it was…scared.

Yet, Button paid this no mind.

“Try to eat Sweetie Belle…” He said through gritted teeth, jerking the undead equine’s entire body as he yanked at the sword a bit more.

“Try to eat me…” He growled; yanking on the sword again and this time managing to pull it out a bit; to which the zombie pony was only able to let out a breathy hiss and slap its head against the stone floor like a fish.

“I…don’t…think so!” He cried, giving the sword one last yank and finally freeing it from the corpse it had been imbedded in. Droplets of thick blood flew off the blade as Button fell backwards and a small pool of it formed beneath the hole in the undead equine’s neck.

Button let out a pained groan as he fell back onto the cold stone floor, the sound of his sword clattering onto the ground echoing throughout the cavern for a moment before all was silent yet again, all except the slapping of the undead monster a few blocks away.

He laid there for a moment, staring up at the ceiling and trying to regain the least bit of composure, and then slowly rolled over to his side, grabbing the sword in one hoof and jabbing the tip into the stone, using it to help push himself up and then turn to face his hated enemy.

Gritting his teeth and blocking out the pounding in his head, Button limped over within one block of the rotting monster on the ground. Its eyes were wild and the airy gurgles were more frantic. Milky eyes darted around worriedly and it was almost like it was breathing heavier.

This…monster…it was scared.

“You shouldn’t have tried to eat my friend…” Button said darkly, gripping the sword in his hoof and resting the tip against the zombie pony’s head; to which at slapped it’s head on the ground a bit more frantically.

It didn’t take much to penetrate the rotting flesh and decayed bone.

Metal cut through the bone with ease, sliding through the brain, and then out the other side and hitting the stone on the floor. The zombie-pony convulsed, briefly, and then went motionless; thick blood pooling around its head and its eyes ceasing to move any more.

Button glared down at its eyes, those milky-white, terrifying eyes. He had done it…he won.

Yet he didn’t feel like celebrating it.

That monster, it had been scared…video game monsters didn’t get scared, they didn’t have actual emotion.

Real, intelligent beings got scared.

So many different emotions were rushing around in his head like motorcars, all at once, Hatred, joy, pain, sadness, frustration and confusion. Button didn’t know what to think, but right now all he could think of, the one thing that yet again would rise above all other thoughts in his mind.

Was Sweetie Belle.

Leaving his sword lodged in the corpse of the zombie-pony, Button turned and limped over to where Sweetie Belle laid, finding himself on the brink of tears as he limped closer and closer. Her battered and beaten form almost too much for his already near-broken mind to handle.

She looked so…still. 

“Come on, Sweetie Belle…” He said shakily, fighting back a complete breakdown as he sat on his haunches near her limp form.

He couldn’t stop himself from shaking; his whole body quivered as he moved over and rested his back against the stone wall, gently reaching a hoof over to stroke the dirty mane of his beloved friend.

“Wake up, Sweetie Belle…” He breathed shakily; slowly losing the battle to fight back tears.

She didn’t react in the slightest as Button moved himself over and lifted her head up, resting it on his leg as he began stroking her mane.

He had always liked her mane.

“Come on…Y-you’re alright…” He whispered to her, finding his words feeling less and less like fact and more and more like he was trying to reassure himself.

“Y-you’ve got to wake up now…don’t you want to get out of here?” He whimpered so softly it was barely audible; feeling the tears begin to well up in his eyes and threaten to pour forward.

“Y-you…You have to…” He couldn’t say anymore, the pain was too much, the sight of her so motionless, so beaten and battered…his mind couldn’t take anymore.

And thus, the only sound was the silent sobs of an eight year old colt, in the middle of a cave, holding his motionless friend in his hooves.

“I-I tried so hard…” He whispered through his teeth, clenching his eyes shut and hanging his head over his friend; a steady stream of tears, rolling down his cheeks and falling onto that of his friend, washing away the dirt and grime everywhere the small droplet hit.
“I tried so hard to protect you…” He sobbed quietly, eyes still clenched shut.

He hadn’t ever felt so crushed. This feeling was awful. His stomach churned and he felt like he wanted to throw up, he wanted to curl up in a ball and just cry, to forget about the world. He wanted to be home, to see his mom and his other friends. He wanted to go and throw whoever invented this wretched game under a bus…but most of all, He wanted his friend back, he wanted to hear her laugh, her voice, her silly jokes, her occasional dorky moment…he wanted Sweetie Belle back.

“Please don’t die, Sweetie Belle…” He whispered, bringing her limp form up and holding her to his chest, sobbing into her neck and letting out his muffled sobs.

“Don’t die…Y-you can’t…You can’t die.” He sobbed, burying his muzzle into her shoulder and just letting it all out. This was it, this was his breaking point.

He could handle zombies; he could handle Endermares and explosions and mutating creepers and carnivorous slimes…but not this. He couldn’t cope with this. Everything seemed hopeless now, his friend was gone. He had devoted himself so wholly to protecting her, and for what?

So he could fail.

He had failed her.

“I’m so sorry…” He whispered; eyes clenched shut as he shakily sobbed, his entire tiny body quivering.

It all came out.

The anger, the sadness, the confusion, the hatred for this place.

All of it.

“You can’t die…Y-you just can’t!” He cried out angrily, slamming his hoof against the stone wall and sending sharp pain through his entire front leg; which only made him cry more.

“This isn’t fair…” He cried softly, his muzzle still buried into her shoulder. “I-it isn’t fair! Why do you have to…die…I-I don’t understand!”

Slowly, Button opened his eyes. His cheeks stung and his vision was wet and blurry. Sweetie Belle’s neck was soaked in tears and her eyes shut tight. Her jaw hanging slack in the slightest as he clutched her to his chest.

“I’m so sorry…” He whispered softly, looking her face over and bringing a hoof down to gently stroke her mane.

“I-I promised I would keep you safe…and I didn’t…”

The most miraculous thing happened just then. Without warning or previous alert, out of nowhere and at the most unexpected time. As miracles sometimes are, it was unceremonious. There hadn’t been a speech leading up to it, or a kiss, or some unspoken words finally spoken.

A miracle just…happened.

Sweetie Belle, whimpered.
> Chapter 9: Endermare
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 9: Endermare




Button was crying again, rather profusely at that.

Though, hard to believe as it may be, especially considering the circumstances that he and his friend had been put through in the time they had spent in the hellish video-game-turned-real, they were tears of joy, happiness and hope.

Sweetie Belle had moved.

That alone was enough to bring him to tears, in this situation at least.

It probably could be explained away in a more medical and scientific fashion. Though, those sorts of things were bound to have inconsistencies in them, due to the nature of the world they were in.

Whatever the reason, Button didn’t care, Sweetie Belle was alive.

“Button…?” She whispered curiously, her voice barely audible over the sobbing of the very colt holding her.

“You’re alive…” He whispered softly, hugging her form closer to his and even going so far as to stroke her mane before pulling his muzzle out of her shoulder so that he could look at her clearly.

She stared back up at him with a look of bewilderment, as if she was unsure why exactly she was being held by a sobbing eight-year-old who normally shrunk away at the mention of physical contact with somepony of the opposite sex.

“W-why are you hugging me?” She asked softly, wincing a bit as she let out a tiny cough.

“Because you’re alive, you doofus!” Button replied with a soft chuckle, sniffling a bit as he rubbed some of his tears away and smiled down at her.

Sweetie Belle shifted a bit, still unsure as to what was going on; at least until she pulled her gaze away from her companion and unintentionally over to the horribly mangled corpse of a zombie-pony that lie on the floor only a few blocks away from her; a dirtied Iron Sword protruding from the beast’s motionless head.

“The Creeper…it exploded!” She said, speaking softly at first; her voice slowly starting to grow louder in worry.

“It exploded and knocked us both off that bridge, I was afraid you had died…” Button replied, letting out a gentle wince of pain as the unpleasant memory replayed in his mind.

The show of displeasure that Button let out; though only slight, seemed to bring Sweetie Belle out of her dazed state to some extent, and she quickly pushed herself up onto her haunches, eyes frantically inspecting Button; her own seeming somehow unharmed in any non-aesthetic way.

Button Mash, however, wasn’t faring quite as well.

His mane was a mess, his eyes bloodshot and his coat covered in a mixture of dirt and zombie blood. There was a small bit of his own blood caked into his mane, his head had received a small cut after being thrown off the attempted bridge in the explosion and there was a small bit of blood on the corner of his mouth from all the coughing he had done prior to waking Sweetie Belle.

All in all, he looked more worn and battle-weary than any eight-year-old should ever look.

His mother would have near passed out; though she wasn’t there, so instead, Sweetie Belle was having a fit of extreme worry.

“Button, your head! Are you ok? Ohmygosh, you need a doctor, we need to get you laying down and bandage you up and-“

Button coughed lightly and waved his hoof at her, quelling her stream of worry before he wiped away the blood from the corner of his mouth.

“I’ll be fine…” He said with only the slightest hint of self-reassurance; pushing himself up onto all fours and giving his companion a hard, stoic look.

“You don’t look fine!” Sweetie Belle started to protest, she was just about to move closer to him and try to take a look at his head and see how bad it was, when her legs appeared to suddenly give out. She toppled over onto to cold stone floor with a soft yelp of surprise.

“Sweetie Belle!” Button cried worriedly, moving to try and help her up as quickly as he could.

“M-maybe I’m not a hundred percent just yet…heh.” She replied sheepishly, taking Button’s hoof so she could shakily pull herself up onto her haunches; finding herself then met with her comrade’s steely gaze and his hoof on her shoulder in a manner that was most reassuring.

“We’re getting out of here…” He said, his tone comforting and reassuring.

Though, Sweetie Belle didn’t really feel she needed reassurance, she knew they would get out of here, she had always trusted Button to get her out of here. So maybe this was because Button was weird and felt like he needed to reassure her; she wasn’t quite sure.

Button sighed softly and rose to all fours once more, turning his gaze over to the corpse from which his sword protruded and shooting it a faint snarl. He wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to look at this blasted game ever again without a sense of hatred overwhelming him, but right now that was the least of his concerns.

They were getting out of here, he was getting them home, he was not going to let Sweetie Belle get hurt again.

Never again.

These thoughts in his mind, Button slowly made his way over to the motionless form of the zombie-pony and wrapped his hooves around the handle of the sword protruding from its skull. With significantly less trouble than the first time he had tried to dislodge the sword from the undead-equine, Button yanked the sword free with only a minimal amount of effort; sending small specks of blood splattering out onto the cold stone floor as he did so.

Making sure as to not lose his balance upon dislodging the sword, Button stepped backwards and steadied himself, then turning his gaze over to Sweetie Belle; finding her to look just slightly disgusted at what she had just witnessed.

Even through all of this hell, she was still Sweetie Belle, after all.

“What weapons do you have…?” Button asked her; taking note of the armor she still wore for this first time since the explosion.

“Uh…one second.” She replied softly, a look of concentration washing over her face, only to be replaced by a look of confusion a few moments later.

“What’s wrong?” Button asked; his own look of worry creeping across his face.

“Button, I can’t access my inventory!” Sweetie Belle said with the softest hint of a whine; stomping her hoof gently and then wincing from the slight twinge of pain that followed.

“W-what do you mean?” Button let out softly, disbelief lacing his tone as he tried his best to will his own Inventory into existence; he found it a futile venture that left him with a slight headache.

The realization hit him like a ton of bricks, any plan that would have been formulated based off of the gear they had prior to the explosion was now as useless and trying to dig through bedrock. Though while this would certainly put a damper on the ease of which they escaped this mad world, Button decided it best to not let it get him too down.

Too much had happened already for him to let this be the thing that brought him to his knees.

“What do we do now…?” Sweetie Belle said softly; her tone more than just a little worried.

Refocusing his gaze to lie just beyond where his companion sat, Button slowly limped his was over towards the soft, pleasant glow of the lava-filled ravine he had almost forgot was there. The orangish glow illuminated only a small bit of the cavern as usual, though for some reason he felt like it was more…muted, more restrained than before. Exactly why, he wasn’t sure.

“We get to my computer…” He said softly, making his way past her and continuing towards the ravine. “And we shut it off.”

Button knew they would probably have a bit of trouble crossing that ravine. He was already formulating a plan. They could maybe jump across it, or if anything he could always toss Sweetie Belle over and then try to jump over himself. Whatever they had to do to get to that computer and shut it off, they would.

“That actually seems simple enough…” Sweetie Belle replied, moving to follow after Button.

However, much to Button’s surprise and Sweetie Belle’s dismay, her attempt to follow him was met only with a sharp jolt of pain that rocketed up her front leg and sent her down onto the harsh stone floor. 

Button’s ears perked up at the sound of his friend’s pained cry and he snapped around to see she was lying on the ground, grasping at her front left leg with her uninjured right, small tears welled up in the corner of her eyes and she looked nothing if not pitiful.

“Sweetie Belle?”He said sharply, worry overtaking him as he made his way over to her side and ignore his own painfully aching body.

“I...I’m not sure if I can actually walk, Button…” She whimpered, biting her lip to hold back her whines as Button crouched next to her, inspecting her leg.

On the outside it looked fine, but he remembered the time Scootaloo had hurt her leg trying to perform some crazy scooter stunt, on the outside it had looked fine, but once they got to see Nurse Redheart, it turned out she had a severe fracture.

Now that Button thought about it, Sweetie Belle had been thrown off of a rather high point via a force of literal explosive proportions, so it was entirely possible her leg had fractured like Scootaloo’s had; way back when.

But this also meant something else, they didn’t have a health bar any longer…Or if they did it wasn’t measured out like that of normal Minecraft, now they took actual damage. He should have realized it earlier when he had been coughing up blood. They bled now, they could break now.

This was real now, moreso than it had been previously.

“Come on, I’ll help you. We’re on the home stretch, Sweetie Belle!” Button said encouragingly, letting Sweetie Belle put her weight on him as he pulled her up to her hooves. She held her injured leg close to her body, keeping it off the ground so that it wouldn’t be injured further.

She was definitely going to need a hospital as soon as they got out of here.

Slowly, the two young ponies-turned-survivors made their way closer and closer to the ravine. It wasn’t in sight quite yet, but the glow was growing closer and the sound of bubbling lava began to grow louder and louder.

As they moved, Button had begun to try and formulate some sort of plan as to how exactly they were going to get across the bridge, how he was going to get Sweetie Belle’s injured form over the gap safely and manage to get himself over it as well.

Though upon rounding the corner, he found he wouldn’t have had to.

The ravine was almost exactly the same as they had left it.

Almost.

The short stone cliffs still protruded out of the sides of the wall, the stone now looked slightly scorched from the lava bubbling against it; but that wasn’t surprising, and the lava itself still sat down at the bottom, broiling and churning like some evil being waiting to swallow them whole.

What was different, however, was the fact there was now a makeshift bridge built across the ravine.

There were three blocks that had been used to make the bridge itself, two of dirt and one iron ore. 

How was this possible?

Button didn’t build this and Sweetie Belle certainly hadn’t done it, so how was it possible for these blocks to exist in this place where they hadn’t previously; if not for outside intervention? This was an extremely unsettling sight, it couldn’t even be blamed on the world generating new chunks because there were no chunks to update or generate!

“Button Mash, did you…”

“No…” He said solemnly, though he did know what had done it.

The only beast that could possibly be the culprit of this bridge, the only monstrosity that could possibly be responsible for this, was an Endermare.

“We need to go.” Button said flatly, tugging a bit on Sweetie Belle so she would follow along with him.

“Button, what’s going on?”She said worriedly, her eyes filled with uncertainty as they gazed upon the bridge that spanned the small gap.

Button said nothing, he just wanted to focus on putting one hoof in front of the other and getting out of here, getting Sweetie Belle to safety, getting himself to safety and getting out of here before the architect of their newfound bridge decided to show itself…

Slowly, they shuffled across the bridge, Sweetie Belle had latched herself tightly to Button’s side so as not to fall over the edge and meet a fiery doom. Button knew that they could have just gone across one at a time, but Sweetie Belle might have ended up falling with the condition her leg was in and that was the absolute last thing he wanted.

By the time he had started to argue with himself over his course of action, they had already traversed the makeshift bridge and found themselves on the other side of the ravine, safe and as unharmed as they were going to get at that point in time.

Button sighed and set his companion down against the wall; carrying her had been more taxing on his system than he had originally thought it would. He found himself breathing heavier, enough so that he ended up collapsing against the wall rather than sitting down, as he let out an unpleasant cough that sent copper-tasting blood out onto the stone floor and into the lava below; his sword clattered to the ground beside him as he did so.

“Button?” Sweetie Belle said worriedly, using her back legs to scoot over closer to him and put a hoof on his back. 

“Are you alright…?” She asked, after his coughing had subsided.

Button groaned with displeasure and wiped some blood off the corner of his mouth, resting his head against the cool stone behind him and trying to ignore the pain in his lungs.

“I’ll be fine, we just…we need to get out of here, Sweetie Belle…” He said grimly, looking over at her with tired, bloodshot eyes; Eyes that had seen more than they should have at such a young age, though even despite all that, there was still a sense of…strength that lingered.

“We’re going to get out of here, and get home, and we’re going to get you some apple juice!” Sweetie Belle said sweetly, trying to cheer her friend up as she nudged him gently with her uninjured hoof; giving him the best smile she possibly could.

Button couldn’t help but smile back at here, apple juice did sound nice, although just being home sounded much, much more pleasant.

With more drive and determination than he had possessed previously, Button took his sword into his hooves and used it to help himself up onto all fours, then offered a hoof to Sweetie Belle and helped her up onto her hooves, and then, together, they made their way across the side of the ravine and towards their final destination.

As the doorway to the kitchen came into view, Button couldn’t help but feel a sense of hope flood his body. This was it; they were almost there, the home stretch and the end to what had been the most terrifying and bizarre experience of his entire eight years of existence.

They were almost home.

As they duo rounded the corner, they took in the most refreshing sight they had seen since they entered this horrifying world.

An oak tree, standing proud and tall amidst the otherwise stony and unpleasantly cold feeling the kitchen-turned-cave gave off, seemed to almost shimmer as it swayed gently in a nonexistent breeze, illuminated by sunlight from a tunnel in the ceiling that probably stretched on so far it would be impossible to climb out of. Flowers had sprouted up around the tree, red and orange tulips swayed gently amidst the refreshing green grass.

Though as beautiful of a sight as this was, it wasn’t going to be as exciting as the moment Button laid eyes on his computer once more. If it was where they had left it, it would still be on the other side of the tree, which meant that their salvation was only a few blocks away.

“Almost home, Sweetie Belle…” Button said with a relieved sigh.

Though the feeling of relief didn’t last long, because even after everything he and his friend had been through, after all the trials they faced, the bizarre things they had witnessed and the unnatural and unholy abominations they had combated, nothing could have prepared Button for what happened at that moment.

Something, spoke.

“Well, well, well. Finally, you arrive…”

The voice was like silk, almost motherly even. It was too soothing. Like honey, it was as if it could attract flies then kill them with its sticky properties. It sent a chill through the spines of both young ponies and caused them to freeze in their tracks.

All was silent for a brief moment, even the bubbling lava behind them seemed to have quieted down in the presence of this new voice.

“And don’t you look rather worn…” The voice spoke again, female in nature, obviously, though from where it originated, neither Button nor Sweetie Belle could discern.

“Button...who is that?” Sweetie Belle whimpered softly, pressing herself against his side in utter fear, he could feel her form shaking and her breathing getting more and more panicked.

No matter what happened, he would protect her.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you…We haven’t seen each other since our little adventure in the hallway, not since the white one met my gaze…”

“Impossible…” Button Mash breathed, tightening his grip on the sword and scanning the room for what he thought to be the owner of this new voice.

“Not entirely.”

The voice was suddenly directly behind them, right next to their ears, even. Instinctively, Button and Sweetie Belle scrambled forward and fell to the ground.

Both a little dazed from the fall; due to their already injured state, Button Mash and Sweetie Belle slowly rolled over onto their backs and found themselves now face-to-face, with a purple eyed, sleek-looking, alienesque, Endermare.

Though she wasn’t like a normal Endermare, not at all. 

While locking his gaze on the forehead of their new enemy; out of pure instinct from already somewhat expecting this creature to indeed be the one that they were about to face. Button was able to take in the new form The Endermare had taken.

Her face had changed to become slightly shorter, eyes elongated and become less alien and more feminine, the ears had grown out to an almost abnormal length and her lips were parted in a disturbing smile, shiny, white, newly-grown teeth gleaming in the sunlight that shone over the tree in the center of the room; purple eyes scanning them over intently, not with hunger, but fascination and also anger.

Her body was less pony-like now and more hunched over, shiny, white claws had sprouted from her front hooves and The Endermare now stood on her back hooves entirely, able to walk in a bipedal manner much like a Diamond Dog or some Dragons. Her body was a mottled mix of black and grey, and seemingly devoid of any markings whatsoever, as if that all weren’t enough, she was tall; very, very tall. She easily was four blocks tall at the shoulder, making her a colossus compared to the two of them.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting so long for you two to arrive…” She said with a voice as fluid and cool as ice water.

Button and Sweetie Belle both could do little to withhold their horrified cries as they scrambled backwards in the grass, doing their best to push themselves away from this monster that had somehow gained the ability to speak.

“Don’t look at its eyes, Sweetie Belle!” Button cried out, shutting his eyes as he scrambled away.

The Endermare snarled at them for a moment, her face contorting into an expression of hatred, just before she poofed out of view in a small plume of purple dust that floated up into the air and dissipated.

The two young ponies instantly went silent, their eyes wide in shock as to what had just happened. 

Though before they could do much more than think there was a soft ‘Poof’ behind them.

Button slowly turned his head to find The Endermare now behind him and Sweetie Belle both, and yet again the cries of terror ensued.

However, this time, the cries came more from Sweetie Belle than Button Mash. 

Button knew what he had to do, and that was killing this beast. So as Sweetie Belle drug herself away as best she could, he scrambled back about two blocks and pushed himself upright and brandished the sword at their new foe, snarling angrily and locking his eyes on the monster’s ankles as his friend crawled behind him and sat upright.

The Endermare sounded as if she were trying to hold back laughter.

“Hmm, little one, you are awfully confident in your ability to defend your friend with nothing more than a glorified push-pin….” She crooned, grinning in an almost sultry manner as she gazed upon Button’s smaller form.

“How in Equestria are you talking?” Sweetie Belle cried out from behind her protector; apparently finally gaining the courage to do something other than scream profusely.

The Endermare shrugged; seemingly content with holding her ground for the time being “Your guess is as good as mine, all I know is that shortly after I ran you, white one…” The Endermare raised a single, white claw and pointed it directly at Sweetie Belle. “I was…enlightened.”

“What are you talking about?” Button hissed, glaring down at the feet of the beast in an effort to not lock eyes with it for fear of infuriating her, his sword brandished in as defensive of a stance as he could muster.

“I gazed into the eyes of the white one and I was able to peer into her very soul, I was enlightened on what lies outside these bedrock walls…Equestria, Ponyville, these so called deities that seem to rule your lands…All her memories and the things she has seen became known to me.” The Endermare’s demeanor seemed to change; her voice became more and more forceful and less smooth with each word she spoke.

“I want that world for myself…” 

Her voice was suddenly right in front of his face. He could feel her hot breath on the top of his head as she desperately tried to make him meet her gaze. It was all he could do to keep himself from looking up, for some reason he had the urge to meet the gaze of the one who owned the voice, like some unknown need in his brain to give in and look into those deep purple eyes…

“But you two, you two are going to try and stop me, yes? You wish to shut off the source of my existence and the reason I am alive…” She cooed.

Button found himself unable to formulate a plan of response as he felt one of The Endermare’s claws press gently against his lower jaw and start to lift his head up. His body felt heavy and his hooves were suddenly lead, it was like the touch of this creature had turned him to stone.

He wanted to resist, but for some reason he couldn’t. He could only allow what was happening to happen as The Endermare slowly raised his head up to meet her gaze, still speaking all the while.

“I will raise an army of these newly mutated mobs…build a force to escape this bedrock prison and unleash my might into this world you call ‘Equestria’ that lies just behind these walls…I will slay your rulers, burn your towns, slaughter your people…”

Button suddenly found himself looking eye to eye with The Endermare, staring straight into her deep, purple, entrancing eyes. A feeling of longing seemed to overcome him, he suddenly never wanted to stop looking, they were so mesmerizing, so enticing…

“I will burn your world and only when my armies of the undead are feeding upon the flesh of your kind, will I rest…”

The Endermare’s jaw suddenly opened wide, slowly stretching to an unnatural extent as she slowly moved closer to Button Mash, he wanted to move. Every fiber of his being suddenly screamed for him to move away, to not allow this beast to murder him in such a brutal manner…

And then suddenly, the jaws, as well as their owner, moved rapidly to the side, as if stumbling away; accompanied by an unnatural shriek of pain.

Instantly Button snapped out of his trance-like state, looking around him and finding that Sweetie Belle had been the one responsible for saving his life. She had managed to limp all the way around him, whilst their enemy was busy trying to eat him, and what she had done to save him was instantly evident by the small bit of purple blood dripping off her horn.

She had stabbed it in the flank, it would have been comical had the situation not been quite so grim.

“Slime!” The Endermare suddenly roared, drawing the attention of both ponies as she pushed herself upright and faced them both with an angry snarl.

“Button…!” Sweetie Belle let out a startled cry of fear as The Endermare bore her sharp claws and let out an unpleasant roar, then lowered her head and charged straight for the tiny white mare.

Button slipped into attack mode almost instantaneously, he tightened his grip on his sword and held it like a baseball bat, waiting until just the right moment and hoping The Endermare wouldn’t notice what he intended to do.

As hoped, she didn’t, and he swung as hard as he possibly could.

The Endermare hadn’t been focused on him at that moment, too enraged to seemingly care about anything other than slaughtering Sweetie Belle, as a result of this; she hadn’t noticed the edged blade of Button’s weapon as it swung straight for her head until it was too late.

The blade struck true, slicking through the slick-looking, black flesh and effectively ruining her right eye as it sliced through, cutting just deep enough to severely wound but not enough to kill.  The Endermare let out an ear-splitting shriek and teleported in a plume of purple dust almost as soon as the blade had hit her, coming out of the teleport on the other side of Sweetie Belle and slamming into the wall with great force.

Sweetie Belle cried out in surprise and limped away as fast as she could, allowing Button to put himself between her and The Endermare.

“Sweetie Belle, the computer!” He cried, brandishing the now purple-covered tip of his sword in the direction of their enemy, who was; surprisingly enough, recovering from the horrible wound that had been inflicted upon it. It was clutching its right eye with one bloody claw, as if trying to stop the flow of purple blood currently gushing from her wound.

Normally this gore might have had an effect on Button, but recent events had been sure to desensitize him to such sights, she he didn’t even so much as cringe.

“Right!”

“No!” The Endermare suddenly shrieked, removing her bloodied claw from her eye and suddenly teleporting over to the tree, hunched over so that she would fit under it and stabilizing herself with on claw. The other claw was extended out in Sweetie Belle’s direction in a fist that connected with her side, sending her flying backwards and across the floor of the cave; she hit the wall of the cave and let out a pained cry, unable to right herself at that moment.

Again, Button sprung into action, with a roar of fury unlike any he had uttered before, and fueled by both adrenaline and the need to protect Sweetie Belle, he gave it everything he had and charged his foe; not even paying mind to the fact his body was screaming for rest.

Unfortunately, this time, his enemy saw it coming.

She teleported at the last second, leaving Button only able to strike at a faint purple cloud and slam the tip of his sword against the cold stone floor, sending a few sparks flying out from the point of impact.

There was a familiar ‘Poof’ behind him, and Button wheeled around and brought the sword in a deadly arc. Though he only managed to catch a glimpse of his foe before she yet again warped out of the path of danger, sending his sword to strike at nothing but a purple cloud, yet again.

Another ‘poof’, this time to his right.

Button spun around with a passionate cry of fury and managed to do nothing but repeat his previous actions, as yet again, his foe teleported out of the way of his strike.

‘Poof’

Now panting softly, Button turned yet again to see The Endermare now standing in front of the tree under which the computer sat.

Her face was one of pure rage, where a functional eye once sat, now only a dead, purple orb lie. Motionless in its badly damaged socket and gushing purple blood from the long gash that railed from near the base of the nose all the way back to the ear.

“You…you think you will kill me, me?” The Endermare snarled and let out a feral roar.

Button gulped in fear, but held his ground. Running would get him nowhere. Though even now he was formulating a plan…this beast never attacked head on, so maybe, just maybe, if he could get lucky enough to guess where it was going to teleport to….

“I know I can, you pathetic excuse for a monster!” Button growled, wondering if maybe he could have been a bit more colorful with his insults.

Hey, he had been through a lot today. Dishing out good insults wasn’t on the top of his priority list.

“Ha, you will die slowly!” The monster returned, grinning even through the blood that ran down the right side of its face.

It was like something out of the cover of a video game, at that moment. The Endermare charged, claws outstretched and maw agape, showing off its shiny white teeth; half of which were now stained with its own blood.

Button raised his sword and held his ground, trying his best to make it look like he intended to stab the creature directly in the stomach as it charged at him, and hoping that it would interpret his movements that way as well and not catch on to what he was doing.

It didn’t.

The Endermare teleported at the last second, and instantly; making use of the slight delay before she reappeared, Button wheeled around and stabbed into the air behind him.

Just as The Endermare teleported back into reality.

Her momentum was too great for her to try and stop, too fast for her to even try to avoid the blade or minimize the damage to herself as the sword pierced her smooth black flesh and drove itself through her stomach.

She fell forward, half charging and half doubling over from the pain, falling on top of Button and nearly crushing him beneath her surprising weight. For a moment, she writhed on top of him, the sword protruding out of the back of her midsection and dripping with thick purple blood.

She shakily pushed herself up with one clawed hand, the other grasping at the sword in her gut as she stood upright and shakily stumbled backwards, seemingly unable to form any sort of word or cry, save the soft gasp that left her black lips.

Button shakily righted himself, watching as The Endermare struggled to keep herself upright by leaning against the doorway to the kitchen-turned-cave; her free claw grasping at the edge in an attempt to not fall. She brought her gaze from the sword lodged in her gut, to meet the eyes of Button Mash as he slowly stalked towards her, watching as that stalk turned into an all out sprint.

Button launched himself at her with all his might, slamming his shoulder into her knee with enough force that she stumbled backwards, and right to the edge of the ravine.

The look on her face just then was one of shock and surprise, more than pain or fear, and as she stepped back and found naught but air behind her, The Endermare found herself falling downwards into a pit of boiling lava beneath her.

And for a half second, Button thought that it would be the last he ever saw of her.

Until suddenly he was on his side, being dragged rapidly towards the edge of the ravine, along with his foe.

Without any sort of word or warning, The Endermare had managed to latch one of her claws around Button’s tail, as evident by the fact he now found himself rapidly sliding towards the lava filled pit below him. Just as he started to fall, Button; using every bit of strength and willpower he could muster, latched his front hooves onto the edge of the small cliff and held on with all he had.

Yet, even though after all he had been through, and all he had survived.

His strength was not enough, and he suddenly found himself falling.

Everything seemed to slow down in that moment. He turned his gaze down towards the lava in the last few seconds before he would hit it, watching as The Endermare’s face contorted into one of unimaginable pain upon her body touching the lava, instantly igniting as flames crawled across her body like angry orange ants.

This was it then.

This was how Button Mash met his end.

In that last moment before he was about to hit the lava, he found himself able to take peace in at least one thing. He had saved Sweetie Belle; he had protected her at all costs and kept his promise to get her to that computer. All she had to do now was go and turn it off, she didn’t need him.

She would be safe.

The lava was only but a few hoof-lengths away from him now, and he closed his eyes and prepared to accept his fate.

Yet…it didn’t come.

In fact, it was suddenly getting farther away.

Button Mash reopened his eyes to find her was retreating upwards and away from the lava with increasing speed, he watched as the somehow still-living Endermare’s form was yanked from the lava, though she was alive she was burning, she writhed in pain and agony as the unimaginable heat covered her flesh, burning it away and exposing what appeared to be black bone.

Then the lava started to rise after them, and then the blocks that made up the walls seemed to shift and shake.

As he tumbled upwards and slammed into the underside of the cliff, Button watched the pool of lava beneath him suddenly rise upwards and disappear over the edge, followed by the blocks that had resided below it and those that made up the walls.

Not entirely sure what was going on, or why he wasn’t extremely crispy right now, Button could only watch this transpire, and then find himself faced with a different issue as the burning form of The Endermare hit the bottom of the cliff against which the seemingly reversed gravity now pressed him.

She let out the most unnatural, ghoulish scream he had ever heard, he could have sworn she had been screaming ‘Die!’ at him, but at that moment he didn’t bother trying to interpret, he wanted to know how in the world he was going to get away from this monster!

As it turned out a few seconds later, he didn’t need to. The cliff itself began to shake and shudder, and one by one the blocks that it was comprised of were ripped from their places and disappeared over the edge and into the kitchen.

Now Button was moving again, rapidly so. However now he was tumbling over the edge and back into the kitchen, with a cry of defiance he latched his hooves onto what remained of the edge of the ravine and held on for dear life.

There was a white life behind him now, bright and harsh, whatever it was it was most definitely responsible for creating this bizarre Minecraft-apocalypse.

The Endermare unwillingly was dragged up the side of the ravine and now had latched herself onto the edge of the ravine just like Button was, her form still burning and the smell of her flesh cooking filling the air, she roared and turned her charred head over to Button, extending a claw to grab at him, however at that moment the very block to which she was holding shook and shuddered, then came loose and disappeared into the white light now emanating from the kitchen.

And took The Endermare with it, just like that. One moment she was there and the next…gone.

And though, try as he might, with a powerful wind unlike any he had ever seen pushing against him, and the feeling like something was trying to drag him backwards doing its best to overpower him…

Button Mash held on.

Though the block that he had been holding on to, hadn’t, and suddenly he found the world falling away from him as his vision turned to pure white, nothingness.

> Chapter 10: Back To The Kitchen
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 10: Back To The Kitchen


Button Mash awoke slowly. His eyes were foggy, his breathing soft but labored. He let out a soft groan, shifting his vaguely legs a bit as her blinked repeatedly, clearing up his vision.

The floor beneath him was cool, comfortably so. He wondered if maybe it was the stone of the cave, no doubt it would hold some level of cool properties. Light shone down from the hole in the ceiling of the cave, it was unpleasant to look straight at and caused his eyes to water a bit.

He groaned, holding a front leg in front of his face and slowly pushing himself up onto his haunches. He kept them closed for a moment, bringing his hooves up to rub at them. He wiped away the sleep and the tears caused by the light, and then blinked a few more times before getting a good look at his surroundings.

Button wore a deadpan expression as he looked lazily around what he recognized to be his kitchen. He rubbed the back of his neck; cracking it a bit as her eyed his fridge thirstily. He desperately wanted apple juice; it felt like it had been days since he had-

His eyes suddenly widened, pupils shrinking to the size of pinheads. His jaw slackened and he couldn’t help but let out a soft, shaky chuckle. His eyes flitted around rapidly, panic setting in for a brief moment as he scanned quickly around his kitchen.

His panic was soon relieved as he turned around to see Sweetie Belle laying on the kitchen floor; slowly awakening. She was clean, and looked mostly unscathed. In fact she looked exactly as she had before. Her mane fell in its natural curly state. Off-white eyelids fluttered open to reveal bright green eyes, eyes that no longer looked bloodshot or tired, eyes that looked how a filly’s should look.

Button Mash said nothing as Sweetie Belle met his gaze. They both wore expressions of disbelief. They had done it then, they had escaped. The plan had worked, The Endermare’s plan thwarted, the house restored…and now here they sat like nothing had ever happened.

It wasn’t long before Sweetie Belle had pushed herself up and zipped over to Button. She hugged him tightly, breathing a little shaky. She hadn’t ever hugged him like this before, it was new to him. Even when they were in that hell, she hadn’t hugged him like that.
“I thought you had died…” She said softly, the tears rolling down her cheeks were easy to pick up in her words, and she gave him a tight squeeze as she spoke.

Oh, that was why. He had almost died horribly. He had forgotten there for a second.

It took him a moment to actually formulate a response. He wasn’t even really hugging her back, he was just sitting there on his haunches and trying to process this amongst everything else that had happened, and the fact they had actually managed to escape. 

Slowly, his slack-jawed expression turned to a grin, and then a full on smile. He wrapped his front legs tightly around her and squeezed back, looking up at the ceiling and clearing his throat, fighting back tears as he too got a little choked up.

“Yeah, but you saved me, so…I didn’t.” He said with a slight chuckle.

Well, he probably couldn’t have been a bit more poetic with his words but, who could blame him for not being all that verbally eloquent after all of that? Sweetie Belle didn’t really seem to mind though, seeing as she gave him a shaky chuckle in reply as she pulled out of the hug and met his gaze, leaving a hoof on his shoulder.

“Thank you, Sweetie Belle.” He said softly, giving her a nod and a smile as he cleared his throat, trying to remain composed as he could before flitting his gaze off to the side a bit.

Sweetie Belle nodded and gave him a hum, slipping her hoof of his shoulder and bringing it up to rub away her tears. “So…I guess everything was reversed then, huh?” She said suddenly, clearing her throat and changing the topic. Button couldn’t help but notice the slightest hint of red in her face.

He pulled his gaze from her and looked around, confirming that everything had, indeed, been reversed. His refrigerator was right where it should be, no longer iron ore. His sing wasn’t just a hole in the wall any more, the island in the center of the kitchen had been returned. All the appliances were back, his toaster, and the stove, all of it. 

He turned his gaze over beside him now, finding the table standing right where it should be; no longer a tree. On top of the kitchen table, sitting exactly where it had before all this had started, was his laptop. The Minecraft menus still shone brightly on the screen. He almost cringed upon seeing it.

“I...I guess it did, yeah.” He said thoughtfully, turning his gaze to follow Sweetie Belle as she clambered atop the kitchen chair and looked at the computer screen. 

“What exactly did you do, Sweetie Belle?” He asked, eyes flitting between her and the computer.

“I just hit the power button, and then it turned the computer off, and a moment later there was that bright white light…I don’t really remember the details, I was in a bit of a panic.” She chuckled softly, rubbing the back of her neck as she reached a hoof out and closed the laptop.

“Yeah…” He replied, shuddering as he remembered how close he had come to a fiery death.

The two of them sat in total silence for a moment, neither of them really knowing exactly what to say. What was one to say, after going through such an ordeal? What words were there to be shared after two ponies had been through hell together, other than ‘Thank you’? Button wasn’t sure, and neither was Sweetie Belle.

“I guess you don’t have much interest in playing video games today, huh?” Button asked, grinning faintly as he met her gaze.

Sweetie Belle laughed an actual, joyous, legitimate laugh. She looked down at him and smiled brightly, “Maybe another time, Button Mash…I’ve had my fill for today.” She said, slipping down off the chair just as the sound of the front door opening was heard.

Both young ponies turned their gaze towards the entrance of the kitchen, a twinge of fear striking their hearts as the thought of some monstrosity rounding the corner ran through their minds. Oh how relieved they were when they found it to be naught a monster; but Button’s Mother.
She was rather surprised when both little equines rushed at her and hugged her legs tightly.

“Uhh.” Was all she was able to let out, seeing as she had a plastic bag filled with groceries in her mouth. She raised an eyebrow at the two little ones, stooping over to set down the bag of groceries and let out an unsure chuckle. “Button, Sweetie Belle…uh, hi?”

“Momyouhavenoideahowgooditistoseeyou!” Button spurted out, squeezing her front leg tighter than he ever had in his life. Sweetie Belle on the other hoof, seemed to realize that it would come off as a bit awkward for her to remain attached much longer, and promptly pulled away.

“Miss Mash.” Sweetie Belle said politely, nodding her head slightly.

Button’s Mom gave her a polite nod in return, and then brought her gaze to her son once more. “Button…I was only at the store for an hour or so, and you’re acting like I’ve returned from a week-long trip to GriffinStone!” She said with a laugh, leaning down to nuzzle at Button’s mane.

Button’s eyes widened, and he quickly slipped off of his mother’s leg, looking up at her and chuckling sheepishly. “Y-yeah, I just…missed you, is all.” He said awkwardly, clearing his throat and stepping back beside Sweetie Belle.

“Right…” She hummed; giving him a curious look as she stooped over and took the groceries in her mouth, then took them to the counter to unpack. “I didn’t know you were having Sweetie Belle over today, what have you too been up to?” She hummed as she worked on unpacking various fruits and vegetables.

“Oh, we’ve just been-“

“Button Mash and I got sucked into a video game and have spent the past two days fighting for our lives! We almost died, and we fought a big monster, and I almost got exploded but Button Mash saved me!” Sweetie Belle said cheerily, cutting Button off and receiving an ‘Are you insane?’ look from him as she spoke.

“Oh? That’s wonderful!” She said with a bright laugh, turning to the fridge and opening it as she spoke.

Button was a bit astounded that all his mother had to say was that, but when he thought about it for a moment, it really wasn’t that surprising. Of course his mother would think they had been playing pretend. Who would believe either of them if they said that all had actually happened?

“Y-yeah!” Button said with a chuckle, leaning over and nudging Sweetie Belle a bit. “Sweetie Belle saved me too though; I would have burned up in lava if she hadn’t saved me!” He said with a grin.

Button’s Mom sighed happily, giving them both a smile as she became just slightly nostalgic. “I remember when your father and I used to pretend the floor was lava, it’s nice to see you kid’s still play games like that these days!”

“Yeah, well…I’m actually pretty run out on games for today, so…I should probably be getting home.” Sweetie Belle said softly, “Miss Mash, it was nice to see you!” She added in, exchanging nods with the mare before turning and slowly heading for the door, motioning for Button to follow.

“I’ll go and uh, walk her out.” He said quickly, before turning and following his friend.

Once they came to the door, Button couldn’t help but press a hoof against it. It was most certainly wood, not bedrock. He sighed in relief, sharing a chuckle with Sweetie Belle as he sat down on his haunches and watched her open the door.

The cool, winter breeze wafted into the house as the door was open; it ruffled both of their manes softly. Both young ponies couldn’t help but inhale deeply. Sweet Celestia, it felt good to breathe fresh, real, outside air.

They sat there, almost high off the feeling of crisp air, before meeting each other’s gaze once again.

“So...I guess everything really was reversed back to before it happened then, huh?”  Sweetie Belle said softly, twitching her ears gently.

“Yeah…” He replied, looking back into his living room and letting out an inwards sigh of relief at the fact that there was a table there instead of a pillar of stone and ore.

There was another awkward silence for a moment as they held each other’s gaze. Neither of them really knew what to say, it felt so…strange, just going their separate ways after experiencing such an ordeal together. It was a life-changing experience that neither of them would ever forget, that was for sure.

Sweetie Belle then did the most unexpected thing, and Button could only sit stone still as she did. The small filly leaned in and kissed him quickly, and awkwardly on the cheek, then as hurriedly as she could, sat back on her haunches and looked out the door, face a bright crimson.

“Uh, T-thank you, Button.” She said sheepishly, “I-I’ll see you later, yeah?” 

“Uh…Yeah.” Was all he managed to get out, before she gave him a polite nod and trotted out of the house and into the snow. As she made her way out, he could have sworn there had been the smallest grin on her face.

He sat there for a moment, just watching her go. He watched her walk away until she got to the end of the street, at which point she turned and gave him a wave. At that distance he couldn’t tell if she was smiling or not, but he had a feeling she was.

He surely was.

“Button, I feel a draft! Did you leave the door open?”

Button’s eyes widened briefly and he quickly shut the door, rubbing his cheek with a hoof for a moment before turning and trotting into the kitchen, finding his mother just finishing with the groceries.
“Sorry, I was saying goodbye to Sweetie Belle.” He said softly, glancing at his mother before trotting over to the kitchen table and pulling himself up onto the chair.

“I like that filly, she’s very polite. Much less…’rough’ than those other two she hangs out with.” Button’s Mom said thoughtfully, closing the fridge and turning her gaze over to her son, just as he tucked his laptop under one front leg and began making his way out of the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” She asked curiously, watching him with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m going to bury my laptop in the yard.” He deadpanned, before disappearing out of the kitchen.