//------------------------------//
// III (Alternate) - Arcade 
// Story: Half-Hoof: A Second Coming 
// by Alfoals Trottenbauer 
//------------------------------//

Button Mash, now a stallion, sat at the cabinet machine at the Marehack Arcade, playing their only game. He laughed when a citizen mare galloped for her life, only to be sliced open by his blades.

Elsewhere, Carrot Top Galloped for her life, she felt the blade cut through her neck. She fell, bleeding on the dirty streets.

The mare next to Button was very high level, she had an entire swarm of Marehacks, she was killing all kinds of Resistance.

Button envied her, he wished he was that good. The graphics of the game were surprisingly exact. Realistic blood.

Elsewhere, Gordon Freemane, Ace Sparks, and an army of Resistance were being rained on by Marehacks, fighting for their very lives.

A stallion threw his hooves up in the air, standing on his hind legs. His screen said:

'Congratulations, you have won the game. Collect your reward at the Citadel.'

Metropolice pulled him out of the arcade, he was being taken for his 'reward'.

"I wish I could beat the game..." Button Mash seemed to lament.

The stallion was forced to the Citadel for his 'reward' of invasive surgery to become a Combine soldier. He was injected with anesthetic and laid on a table. Lasers cut the flesh off his skull. Lower, another laser cut into his chest, opening the heart, a pronged arm modifying it. The upper laser opened the skull, another arm inserting wires into the brain, connecting it to a communication system. He woke as a lobotomy was being performed. He screamed as his vocal chords were being augmented. His scream from the sheer pain echoed into the streets below.

The stallion was raised upright, the mask assembled onto his  bare skull, all that remained was a few ligaments for the jaw and his eyes.

The stallion's blue uniform was removed from him, lasers cutting through them. A heart valve was pressed into the bare chest. A cable was inserted into the valve, pumping raw energy into it, this was his food. The cable removed itself, Combine armor was outfitted. The stallion was dropped off the table, on his knees and hocks. He tried to speak.

"What am I!?" The robotic, muffled voice that was not his own rang out.

He closed his hooves over his face as he was dragged out of the room.

Button Mash was never aware of what he had done to ponykind's only hope, nor did anypony know.

Carrot Top had held critical knowledge of the Citadel needed by the Resistance for their plan to take down their oppressors.