> Lavender Fate > by Shimmer Dale > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prologue > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -When it comes to video games, Button Mash was basically the connoisseur. Anything digital, hand held, pixilated, it didn’t matter. Button Mash knew everything there was about video games and what they were: He knew the release dates before the game companies knew the release date, he knew the character roster for the game before they even develop characters for the game, and when it came to recolors for characters, you could only imagine who they would call first hand: Button Mash. But there was always one challenge in a video game that scared him, one so heinous and fueled of evil and hatred, that it chilled him to the bone to even think of it: The Lavender Town challenge in both Pokémon Red and Green. Button Mash wasn’t just simply scared of this, he was petrified to even pick up his own copy of the Pokémon Red cartridge and put it in his gamecolt. It had all changed for him after hearing of the rumors on the internet, of colts choking themselves with their own hooves and sticking their heads into their mothers’ ovens. He never viewed Pokémon as quite the same joyful kids’ game it once was to him. Sure, many of his games involved murder and killing of various things like zombies, or enemy soldiers, but they never were quite the same thing as an actual pony life. He never killed outside of the pixelation, and never wished to do so in real life: Especially to himself. To avoid the possibility of it ever happening to him, to ever get the temptation or feel the want for his own blood on his hooves, he has hidden away the cartridge deep within his closet. It was safe there….much rather he was safe with it there…safe from the horrors it held within. But, on a far lighter note from Pokémon, another thing Button Mash loved was dares. He has never backed out on a dare, and really he got a lot from it. On many occasions, he has won a few games and game consoles off of his buddies for doing their stupid dares, and Button was pretty contempt with that. The games were free, and the dares were usually harmless, even fun to do sometimes. One time he was dared to lick a hot pepper, and his friends gave him a brand new PonyStation 1, being that he trashed his old one with some hard core Major League Gaming. But once confronted with his new dare, he knew he may fall back on this. His friends knew very well of his irrational fear to the song (or much rather the whole entire village) of Lavender Town, and the two sacred games that contained it. They always took it into thought that he was simply overreacting, or just being a wuss. The suicide rumors were just precisely that: rumors. Rumors are not real, and normally do nothing but cause trouble as it is. Could you imagine how much money Haytendo lost when these lies came out by CreepySparkle? It was all some ploy to put them out of business for a rival gaming company PonyStationPortable, or so it was rumored. But, as said, rumors are just rumors. They never understood why something so dumb, so radically false, would be so mystifying and moreover terrifying to the young colt. He was never superstitious and was not known for forming his own superstition. They found these actions by Button to be strange, so they decided a dare would be the best way to call him out on it. Button had dreaded it, and didn’t even prefer to talk about it to his friends. He himself had not even remembered how his prick friends would have ever figured it out. They don’t read his journal, and they don’t go snooping through his closet. You could only imagine his confusion, frustration, and over-all hatred when confronted with this new dare: a burning deep within his chest and stomach, a want to lash out and retaliate against them and get back at them for what they have damned him to: A fate without his innocence. In a last ditch effort to ensure he wouldn’t back out of this one, the three foals Hammer Smash, Broken Glass, and Sweetie Belle (He hangs out with the “wrong crowd”) dog-piled on top of him. This was to ensure that the little Button Mash would not escape his new challenge. Really, and in all honesty, this was meant to show him that the game was literally harmless: It cannot physically hurt him, as it was virtual. The weight of the three foals on top of him was not all too pleasant, and after a while of continued pressure on his rib cage, Button Mash was about to give in…that was until Sweetie Belle began to tickle his back hooves with some of Broken Glass’s feathers. This both infuriated and embarrassed him. Secretly he had a crush on Sweetie Belle, but was never able to tell her his feelings, so he always hid his face in his Gamecolt or began blowing off cartridges any time she was around. This kept him safe from an awkward situation. But now he had to buck and kick, as the stimulation within his back hooves was becoming too much: He had to get them off. Upon the first few kicks, he had gotten Broken Glass off, only to be piled on again. With this repeated cycle of kicks and smothering, Button Mash only managed to wear himself out and tire up. He knew that he had to end this before it went too far, but already he was showing that he was not capable of doing so: Prolonged time sitting and playing games had taken the physical part of his body and made it frail, subject to torment from the world around him. As a result he simply laid on the grass now. He closed his eyes and knew for sure his fate was sealed. The ponies on top of him were not going to let him go, they were determined to kill him, and he finally accepted their betrayal. Yes, it hurt to know that they would do this, but he always knew the situation would come one day. He had accepted that this would now be his death: -His new dare was to play Lavender Town > Chapter 1: The Dare > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Quit it guys, I am doing it, so get off!” Button Mash squalled, doing his best to push his friends off from the dog pile they formed on him. He was shocked as it was that they would even dare him to do that, but for them to do this to him to ensure he did it? “I will, just get off!” “You are really doing it?” Hammer Smash asked, lightening his load on the friend by just a bit, flexing his forehooves over so that he may push his chest off of him. “Yes, now get off! This hurts!” Button Mash cries in desperation. It is getting hard for him to breath now, and he was getting scared that if the game wasn’t the end of him, his friends would be. “Okay okay okay, just calm down” Sweetie Belle squeaks, now lifting her body off of the brown colt. Button gasp in relief as his lungs can be fully filled again. “Thank...(Gasp)…You…(Gasp)…Sweetiebelle!” He chokes out, pushing himself up a bit more, quickly shaking the other two colts off of him. They tumbled rather weightlessly to the ground. At 8 years of age, the young ponies most likely weight 50 pounds at most if bulked up. Button stands up fully and flexes his shoulders a bit, allowing his chest some room to expand and take in deep breaths. Now that he was up and the blood was flowing, his face was no longer flush, and his body was starting to cool again from the combined heat of the other ponies. He was calming down and finding his comfy spot to think about the dare. “Button, you need to do this. You need to realize that it is all just superstition. There is nothing here to fear about the game…” Broken Glass pressed, hoping to get through to the irrational colt. “And..and I promise it won’t be bad” Sweetie Belle remarks, hiding her face a bit. She is a bit ashamed to be forcing her friend through all of this. It is obvious that it scared him, and forcing him to do it is just…immoral to her. She was raised a bit better by her sister, and feels that this is a bit extreme for her. “And…I will be here” she says, hoping to lighten the load for him a bit. Putting him through this would probably hurt her more than it hurt him. She really had a liking to Button Mash, and really only tolerated Broken Glass and Hammer Smash so that she could be around Button. The other two were a bit immature for her, and she felt that the quiet and reserved Button Smash was a bit more interesting than the ecstatic and outgoing Hammer and Glass. Button blushes a bit in return to this response. Sweetie Belle would be there for him? Knowing that he would have some pony there to comfort him throughout this helped him to cool down a bit. He sometimes feels that he is singled out among his friends and is the outcast, seeing that he is alone. No pony really tries to "help" and comfort him. This definitely helped to calm him and get him to settle down. He shuffles and adjust his hooves, making a comfortable patch on the ground that he may sit on. Plating his plot, he adjust his weight from hoof to bottom, and looks up to his three "friends". “So…what am I going to do guys?” He asked in a frantic desperation. Even when calmed, he is still scared at the thought of trying to tackle this task, and honestly was still contemplating on backing out of this dare: His first back out. Hammer Smash stands forward, clearing his throat a bit. He is the obvious leader of this group, and would always be the one to approach Button in an authoritative fashion to present to him his dare. This helps to keep the order among the friends and allow for a “healthy” friendship square. After all, what is a clique without order? “You are going to play the whole Lavender Town challenge. You will enter the Pokemon tower and visit the grave site. It’s all very simple, like basic game-play. You will wear headphones so that you may hear the music, and you will only focus on the game. Until you finish with Lavender Town, you will not turn off your GameColt.” The little foal nods to finish off his line. “And then you will be done Mash” He remains sitting, wide-eyed and hopeless. His friends are bringing him to his final outcry, and he was nearly on the edge of breaking. He had nearly forgotten about the Pokemon grave site. The music alone was scary enough that it just seemed to overshadow it, so it must have simply slipped his mind that it was even a part of the story for the game. “The whole entire thing?” The three other foals nod in unison. They have all agreed with this ahead of time, days in advance really, and with that have sealed his fate. Button gulps, closing his eyes to shake his head a bit. “S-so when do I have to do this? Like…I do not have to do this today do I?” This was something they had not considered. Did Button Mash really have to do this today? Maybe later today, or even tomorrow? The three continued to look at each other in confusion, not really achieving anything before Broken Glass had finally stepped forward to take his charge on this. “You have three days to prep up Button. We want you comfy for this, not…unready.” He falters a bit, looking back to his friends. Of the three, Button Mash was really his favorite among his friends, though aware that he normally would be calling Hammer Smash his best friend, and Button calling Sweetie Belle his best friend. He has bonded best with Button, and why wouldn't they? They were both earth ponies, and lived really close by. They have practically known each other since birth, and have celebrated countless victories in multiplayer together. He just didn’t enjoy seeing Button like this. He knew that after this dare was all done and over, it would all be better for him, but Glass still feels some remorse for him and his friends’ actions. “After then, we will have you do the challenge. Okay?” Button runs this through his head, nervously shifting his hooves back and forth….back and forth, such as the pendulum that constitutes his life. At first, his mind was racing at such a speed it was impossible to think rationally and make sense of anything. Over time, it had pulled together perfectly. Three days wasn’t too short. He would be able to close ties off with other friends, clean his room a bit to make his mom happy, and simply make all his wrongs right. He was determined he would leave this world without leaving a negative mark. “O-okay guys,” He stands up, shaking his plot off to clear it of the grass and dust, posing into a square and confident step, making him appear larger and more masculine than his string bean figure would normally be. “I am going to do this. I will do the Lavender Challenge” A smile is forced to crack his lips, not really catching the meaning of the words as they leave his mouth. At this point, he was only going along with the actions and not really realizing what the consequences may be. To his friends, it would simply be nothing. To him, it could be his life. The three foals join around him and catch him in a quick group hug. Button continues to smile, and even rest his head against Sweetie Belle’s shoulder within the hug. He may seem relaxed and smiling on the outside, but deep inside he was screaming from the pain of something being severed from his being. > Chapter 2: The First Night > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Button awoke with a start, bolting upright to the sound of lightning rattling his window. Dazed, he looks over to his alarm clock, only to see that it blank, and has went out. He scoots closer along his plush bed to the nightstand to grab his wrist-watch, still working well in spite of the black-out. He has to squint a bit, using light from his bedside window to see the time: 00:13. This is the third time he has awoken that night in sweats, and the bags under his eyes are evidence of how exhausting it is for him to keep up like this. Button throws off the covers and stumbled out of the bed. The carpet beneath his hooves is rather soft and relieving. He never knew why, but when his mom bought this house, she made sure the carpet she had installed was very thick and fluffy. He could only imagine it was for when he was a young colt crawling on the carpet, so that he wouldn’t hurt his small shaking hooves. He never really knew, but right now it made him happy to have that bit of give into the cushion with each step. Upon looking around, it seems that none of his devices were fried in the black-out, though he could never really tell until he was able to turn everything on to see. It was a bit eerie in his room, and from time to time he would find himself getting shivers along his spine. He never liked being alone in a dark room, especially during the rain. He always had the sinking feeling of paranoia, as if his skin was being tugged gently by little tiny ants in all directions at the same time, carefully tearing him apart. A feeling that something was going to grab him, touch him, drag him away. Right now he is holding all of this at bay. The lighting would light the room every now and then, and the room is relatively danger-free as it is. Button shuffles along to his dresser, pulling out the middle drawer. He begins to sort through his various shirts, looking for something to cover himself up while he went to get a drink and use the restroom. As he starts to slide a shirt over his head and hooves, his ear twitches. What is that? The room stays quiet, though the rain continues. Turning to look around his room again, Button gets the familiar shiver down his spine. He jumps with a start: Nothing. A chuckle fills the air as the colt laughs to himself. “C’mon now Button. There aint a thing here…just your imagination” Shaking his head to clear his mind, he starts to his door. That is when it starts. The eerily held note, only elevating in volume and pitch, and then the four arpeggiated notes. Hooves cover his eyes, his ears, soon cowering on the floor, curled up in a ball. He would move but his body is filled with convulsions and spasms, shivers and gasp. The music only intensifies, distorting to a high roar, filling the room in its entirety. A new moisture is felt on his hooves, thick and warm. This jolts Button to his senses a bit, and he pulls his forearms down to look: it’s fresh blood. Button violently shakes his head, hoping to bring himself back to his sense and get the dull noise of water out of his ears, but only succeeds to splatter the thick saturation of red around the walls and carpet. His mom’s soft, fluffy carpet. The sides of Button’s head is now soaked, staining his brown fur. The walls begin to shape, to morph. Concaving and arching in, and he can no longer recognize that he is in his room. Button turns his head to look, but his vision has blurred. Everything is a dark violet, and the floors lavender. There is an object ahead, shaped to a dome, a tombstone. It is blank, possessing no soul within it or a body under it. Button approaches it cautiously, but only manages to stumble in a stupor. His hooves can’t make a connection with the ground to where he can walk straight. Is there an earthquake going on? He can’t seem to stand still even. When he does reach the tombstone, script begins to crack and etch its way into it, making out a single name with no cause of death: Button Mash. A gasp forces away from his throat, before his mouth is forced shut. Button shakes his head again, scratching a hoof at his lips to pry open, only to find that it has been sewn shut with thick vine. He places his hoof down again, bowing his head in defeat. Something else happens: The tombstone is getting taller. The dirt wraps around his hooves, sucking them into the earth below and burying him alive. Instinctively, Button pulls and jerks, trying to wrench his hooves free of the cool dirt. It reaches up to slink along his body, pulling lower to the ground until it can now touch his belly. Button is sinking lower and lower. In a last shot attempt, he rips his lips apart, forcing a cry of help and desperation to barely pierce over the music, not even hearing himself, as it is muffled through the thick blood filling his ears. That is when Button sees it: The bright white eyes cutting through the violet night, accompanied by the vicious smile beneath them. Before he is capable of reacting, the figure swoops down, heading to Button CRACK! There is no sound: the room isn’t moving, the music has stopped, the face has disappeared. Button is now alone with the tombstone, still slowly sinking. He is motionless, unable to move, but staring blankly. His ears and mouth bleed out, the vine stitching dangling from his mangled lips. Slowly, his head falls from his shoulders. THUD! Hitting the cool earth, before tumbling between his from hooves. It is the last thing devoured into the earth below. Button awoke with a start, bolting upright to the sound of lightning outside rattling his window. Dazed, he looks over to his alarm clock, only to see that it has went out and is blank. He scoots closer along his plush bed to the nightstand and grabs his wrist-watch, still working well in spite of the black-out. He has to squint a bit, using light from his bedside window to see the time: 00:13. “Just a dream…” He sighs, rubbing his face and eyes. “Just…a dream” Button repeats to himself, sure that this will help to calm him down and help him relax to sleep. He doesn’t notice the white eyes staring at him from the end of his bed. > Chapter 3: The First Night (Part 2) > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sweetie Belle churns, clenching her stomach. With each strike of thunder, she curls tighter and tighter. She always got upset stomachs on thundering nights such as this, and anything Rarity gave her never seemed to ease her to slumber. Her dream was very mixed, and unclear. When she gazed, it was through a mist and haze. When she attempts to trot, the normal CLOP of her hooves rapping against the ground is replaced by the cushion of clouds and air. She is neither walking nor floating, but seems to be suspended in place. The area around her is puffy as if she really were surrounded by clouds, though she knows to think otherwise. The land around her is flaked with white puffs, deepening to a light pink towards the middle of each tuft of vapor. In the distance, it all eventually fades into an ambient atmosphere of pink and shadows, showing no beginning or end to the world around her. Each time the lightning cracks in the background, the puffs pulsate and turn a dark black to gray in uniform to the original pink to white. It is all very unstable, and the tufts are constantly moving, shaping themselves into new patterns and designs for her, similar to normal cloud activity. She holds her breath, feeling as if suspended in water, though she never seems to run out. She is weightless yet connected to a floor below her, dragged down constantly as she is pulled deeper into the murky abyss below. As she descends, something begins to egg on to her, piercing through the filtered air around her ears. A soft whisper almost, only seeming to hear the vowels that do touch the inner of her ear. “Elp….Help…..” it cries, louder and ever louder the closer she gets to what she presumes to be the bottom. What was the bottom? Was it when her hooves finally hit a last layer of clouds? Was there a last layer, or just a continuing descending? Her ears twist once again, the pleas now somewhat overwhelming. She finally feels a solid contact with some type of ground below her, and a little opening appears in the clouding mist in front of her. Within this opening, it is similar to a screen, much like a wizard’s magic orb. Images begin to shape and formulate in small waves, ripples in a small pool of water, reflecting similar to a mirror. As the image forms, a dark room formulates, a bed…a dresser…a nightstand….a small lump in the middle of the mattress. What was this? It shivered a bit from time to time, somewhat convulsing as if in constant fear of something. What was it afraid of? There was nothing in this room aside from the dark. Sweetie tries to swim her way closer, to get a better view of this image she is being shown. She can almost make out detail. Brown pelt…a tan mane…a joystick cutie mark. Upon Sweetie Belle’s realization, this is Button Mash. She swims ever closer to the mirror-like pool, wanting to reach out to comfort Button...to touch him and let him know it is okay. That nothing can hurt him now. She was here, she wasn't going to let any-pony hurt her Button. But she only managed to touch cloud, a weightless fluff her hooves sink into. It was cool to the touch, moistening the fur on her hooves. They cooled in the wind. The screen ripples at her touch, dissipating, and fading slowly, her hoof causing the image to break. It was now a golden pool of ripples, nothing more. She can only manage to watch aimlessly as it began to shift and formulate into another image....this one almost hazed and blurred, as if it were recorded on an older camera. In it, she sees a deep purple wall surrounding, lavender floors. The land was bare...except for one tombstone. Then it was Button again. He looked absolutely terrified, his small hooves wobbling as they could barely support his small weight on the ground, his eyes widened in shock from some unseen force to her. Something was terrorizing him, haunting him within his dreams. Button suddenly falls to the ground, covering hooves over his ears. His eyes clenched, Sweetie could tell he was in trouble, but heard no sound. Something was hurting his ears, and she couldn’t hear it. That was when the blood began to trickle. Sweetie gasped, falling back from the screen a bit at the sight alone. Rarity had always taught her that ladies do not play with blood or other body secretions. It is simply not done. But all that was aside, as she saw that Button was hurt...and in pain. He walked forward, splattering his blood everywhere. The walls were painted with his crimson flow. His eyes hazed, glazing over as he began to show exhausting from the pain in his ears alone. He looked sickly, his eyes beginning to sag and bag, his hooves convulsing to even support his weight. Sweetie Belle becomes weak at the gruesome sight, covering her mouth to turn away. She felt the familiar tightening in her throat, the squeezing of her chest, the projection of substance past her neck. She heaved deeply, pushing hard. But no fluid came out. She gasped up a cloud-like vapor, much like what was surrounding her. It bubbled and simply faded away to join with the other cloud around her. *** After some time, she returns her head up, her chest holding a tight pressure. It stung, but she had to know if Button was okay, if he would make it through this gruesome scene. She would watch only to make sure he survives. He...he is struggling, being sucked into the ground, becoming prey to an unseen force. But this isn’t quicksand. The dirt along is grabbing him and pulling him down, the blades of grass extending and wrapping around his hooves, taught and tight. Suddenly, something happens. Button stops, staring blankly at the tombstone ahead of him. Something is different about him. His stare is off, distanced and separate from the world in front of him. It is as if he is looking to the dying soul within the stone in front of him, though it should possess none at this point. His pelt was calm, settled, yet dull and almost colorless. His hooves had stopped shaking, now perfectly still. He wasn’t fighting or resisting his burial fate. He had given in to what was to happen to him. There is a red line forming along the equator of his neck, thickening with each pulse of his small young heart. It overflows, spilling down the sides of his neck, being joined by the river of his ears. *THUD* Sweetie gasp, hearing the deep thump, closing her eyes to clench away tears as the head rolls. She cannot bear the site: The mouth hangs open, his tongue covered in blood. His teeth are yellowed, his ears crimson as the opening on his neck was. His eyes were yellowed, staring into a blank universe in front of his nose. Most ponies look peaceful in their eternal slumber, but Button simply looked...dead. He was already starting to get a green tint to his fur, the ground pulling him deeper in. Sweetie heaves again, a warm fluid spilling from her orifices. Her nostrils are filled with the familiar scent of iron, the metallic taste filling her lips and tongue. She spittles, trying to rid herself of it, but it was already on her hooves. The perfect marshmallow white, now a deep crimson red. The clouds around her shape again, closing in on her, compressing her. She pushes and bucks, trying to keep the opening, but fails. The walls compress her, balling her up. She opens her mouth to scream, but no noise comes out over the gurgling of blood filling her lungs. Her mouth is dripping with it now, staining her teeth and lips. She is overfilling, and her chest swells at the rise of liquid pressure filling her convulsing lungs, her chest heaving violently in the struggle for air. She can feel the crunch of bones within her legs as they shatter, dissipating into sharded dust. The clouds seem dense as lead, giving no resistance to her, no matter how hard she bucked in response. Soon, a shard tears out, ripping jagged flesh. She tries to scream again, only being greeted by the gurgle of her drowning and dying lungs taking their last breath. Her chest collapses, her final breath drawn. Blood freely spills out along her chest and stomach from her gaping mouth, a deep red waterfall to decorate her as a fountain. It goes blank. The pain has disappeared. Sweetie's eye's glaze over, staring blankly in the far distance, though the clouds are directly in front of her. Her lungs have been punctured by her broken ribs, her chest collapsing into itself as an old gold mine, the greatest treasure being pierced by her largest fragment of rib: Her heart pierced straight through, the rib jutting clear through her back. Sweetie wakes, screaming. Rarity rushes quickly to her younger sister's aid, knocking over small shelves in her haste to comfort her young sister. The little filly is drenched, her blankets and pillows thrown all across her room, her mattress looking like a war zone. She smelled of sweat, exhaustion, and adrenaline. She has been fighting something, her calloused and bruised hooves showing to fit perfectly within the holes of her walls. “Sweetie, what is wrong? Sweetie? SWEETIE??” Rarity calls out, grabbing to cradle her young sister in her hooves, rocking her as mommy would, but only failing as Sweetie kicks against her warming embrace. Sweetie Belle kicks sharply, her jabs almost expertly placed in defense of her, resisting Rarity’s grasp. She is still caught in the awful trance. A hoof catches Rarity's jaw, instantly leaving a large red welt in her bleach white fur. “SWEETIE!!” Rarity calls, shaking her to wake her. “What has gotten into you? I could understand a nightmare, but I am your sister. Treat me better than that.” “B-b.....” Sweetie mumbles, rousing from the trance. Her mind is rotting in result of her deteriorating dream. She is unaware of what is happening around her. “Buh? Sweetie Belle, classy mares to not babble....It is not...” Sweetie cuts her off “Button Mash!!” before falling limp in Rarity’s arm. She is exhausted from thrashing about, and has fallen back to sleep. The dream, it seemed so real: Button passing, her compression treatment...it all seemed more than just a dream, a trance. But it was just a dream, not a prophecy, right? Nothing more. It couldn’t hurt her or Button, because it was fiction...imagination, right?