"Cooooooookiiiieeeees..."
"No, no! Stay away!" Rainbow Dash backed into the box pile of unopened cookies. "They're making you sick! You don't want these!"
"But we dooooooo..." zombie Pinkie droned. "We want cookiiiiiiiieeeeeeees...!"
"Nngh! Please! Stop!" Rainbow's head swiveled from rainbow colored mouth to mouth, panic rising in her every fiber of being. "AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHH!!!"
With a shriek, she shot upwards like a rocket and smashed out through the roof, leaving a pegasus shaped hole behind in her wake.
There was a stunned silence as the 'cookie zombies' stood there, still processing what just happened.
Zombie Pinkie then turned around to the others. "Uh, she wasn't supposed to do that, right?"
Rainbow Dash slammed the door of her cloud house shut, her chest heaving as sweat poured down her brow.
"How could this have happened?! Everypony in town is now a cookie craving zombie!"
As she began to pace back and forth, her hoof crunched a box of the prank cookies she had custom ordered. As she looked down, her eyes narrowed on the package as she lifted up to her muzzle.
"This is all your fault! Why would you turn all my friends into rainbow mouthed zombies?! How could you turn all my friends into rainbow mouthed zombies?! You're just a pack of prank cookies from a joke company!"
Her eyes widened and her pupils shrunk as a switch flipped in her head. "But...but what if you're not? What if...what if...
what if the joke company I ordered you from was actually a front for a top secret organization dedicated to horrific experiments in creating living weapons to build personal armies for their own nefarious purposes? The rainbow color in these cookies might actually be a deadly zombie virus that would eventually infect everypony in Equestria, turning the whole nation into somepony's private zombie legion they can lead on a quest for world domination?!"
Rainbow Dash gasped as she dropped the box to the floor. "And I'm the only one left now! The only survivor." Her visage slowly morphed into one of grim determination. "Which means...I'm the only one left who can stop them!"
With a blur into her closet, she began rummaging like a madmare. Odds and ends went flying as she strapped herself with anything she could classify as a weapon or survival gear.
"YES!" She shouted with gusto as she clicked a belt of BB ammo clips around her shoulder, and wiped some rainbow war paint under her eyes. "No way, no how, am I gonna let some creeps get away with turning my friends into cookie craving cannon fodder! I'm putting a bust on this evil operation before they turn even one more pony into their mindless slave!" She picked up the box to read the manufacturing address. "These jerks messed with the wrong pony today, and they're about to get a hard lesson in villain schooling, Rainbow Dash style!"
A whistle blew inside the halls of the Fillydelphia Gag Emporium assembly line as the workers left their stations by the conveyor belt for their unionized break.
A large piebald earth pony stallion sat next to neon red pegasus as they slugged down their coffee thermos.
"So, how's things in the snake can packing area?"
"Can't complain, it's a bit trickier than the whoopie cushion testing facility, but it's a lot less annoying on the ears. You ask the boss about that promotion yet?"
"Nah, he already gave the empty joy buzzer slot to the guy in shipping. Just as well since-"
"YOUR TIME'S UP, ZOMBIE MAKERS!!"
Heads whipped to the ceiling fixture as a lone blue pony commando smashed in through the glass window. With a flap of her wings she zoomed around in a rainbow blur, smashing every machine in sight. She then proceeded to blast nearby workers with a huge pressurized super soaker, the impact smashing them into the wreckage. Some security guards immediately descended into the chaos to apprehend the intruder, but she pulled out an even bigger bazooka and sent them all crashing through the walls with large rubber and foam shells.
In a matter of minutes the entire factory floor was in shambles and all ponies inside were battered, bruised, and some even sporting a few fractures. But our heroine wasn't done yet. There was still the fat cat mastermind of this operation to squash! Zooming over to the other end and up a few floors, she found the door labeled executive office and smashed the door open.
A curly maned unicorn nearly choked on his lunch in mid-bite. "W-what's the meaning of this?" he mumbled with a mouthful of crumbs. He barely had time to register the mare in his busted doorway when she tackled him over his chair and held a hoof to his throat.
"Game over, you sicko! You thought you could get away with it, didn't you? That nopony would ever see it coming until it was too late. Well you made one big mistake, you know what that was? You crossed the most awesome and heroic pony alive, Rainbow Dash!"
She suddenly did a double take, as she noticed upon looking at the stallion's mouth, there was a smear of rainbow coloring. Looking to his hoof, she noticed a cookie in his hoof.
"But...but...you're not a zombie!"
"I should think not!" he huffed, pushing her off him. "And I've got more than half a mind to get the Fillydelphia police department on the line, because if this is some kind of prank, I'm not laughing. And I should know, this is my business after all!"
With a huff, he got up and took a long therapeutic drink from the bottle on his table. As Rainbow watched the rainbow hue get washed away from the purple liquid, another switch in her head clicked. "Of course! That's it!"
She snagged the bottle from his hoof, much to his annoyance. "You're not a zombie because you have the cure! You types always have this stuff just in case!" She quickly read the label. "Concord's grape juice? Huh, who would have thought. Grapes can cure zombism." She gasped with glee. "I can save my friends! They don't have to be zombies for the rest of their lives now!"
She then returned a glare to the unicorn CEO. "I'll be back just so you know, and you'll be lucky the Princesses don't have you banished to the moon for this!"
As she smashed yet another opening in the roof as she left the now ruined factory, the company executive just scratched his head in complete confusion.
"You know, maybe I should put the Fillydelphia funny farm on the line for that mare instead."
"Any sign of her?" Twilight called up the clock tower.
Pinkie stuck her head out of the bell. "Nope! Not so much as a feather!"
"Land sakes, Twi. The whole town's searched every nook and cranny in Ponyville twice now and no luck!" Applejack said, standing next to her. "Applebloom's even gone all the way to Zecora with not even a hair on her mane to be found."
"Oh dear, do you think maybe this time we're the ones who went too far with prank?" Fluttershy worried. "What if we scared her so much, we scared her right out of Ponyville forever?"
"Now Fluttershy, dearie," Rarity assured, "I'm sure she will turn up eventually. Although, perhaps she raises a point, Twilight. In light of these...melodramatics that seem to have escalated, perhaps it's time to call off this charade?"
Twilight sighed. "Yeah, I guess things have gotten out of hoof with this plan. The minute we find her, we're going to break the truth to her nice and easy. And hopefully, she will have at least learned her lesson not to- hey, why is it getting dark so early?"
"Twilight, look!" Spike pointed upwards, and the rest of them looked to see a huge dark purple cloud encompassing all of the town.
"Hang on Ponyville! You'll be right as rain in no time!"
"That voice! Rainbow Dash? What are you doi-"
Twilight's question was cut short as a deluge of grapeness flooded every inch of her coat and mouth. Gallons and gallons of grape juice surged like a river through the streets of Ponyville, soaking into every house and building, sweeping every mare, stallion, and foal into a roaring torrent of purple waves, their screams easily drowned out. By the time the tide receded, every inch of Ponyville, both living and non-living, inside and out, was sporting a loud shade of dark purple.
Rainbow swooped down with a loop-de-loop landing. "Ha! Apocalypse averted! I wasn't actually sure I could load an industrial grade stormcloud with anything other than water, but now that I know it works, there ain't ever going to be another zom-pony epidemic ever again!"
"RAINBOW DASH! WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND LITERATE DID YOU DO THAT FOR?!"
Rainbow Dash smiled as she saw Twilight's not smiling face. "It worked! You guys aren't cookie zombies anymore!"
Applejack grabbed her soggy hat and threw it to the ground with a squish. "We were never cookie zombies in the first place you gall-darn featherbrain! It was just an act!"
The smile slowly faded from Rainbow's face. "Uh, say what?"
Twilight sighed. "We were tired of you overpranking us with your crazy schemes that you seemed to think were funny, so when Pinkie Pie told us about your plan to prank the whole town, she got everypony together to show just how unfunny your recent pranks really are."
"Yep!" Pinkie bounced up, stopping to wring her mane out like a sponge. "But boy, if I had known you had a plan B like this all along I would have gone with my werepony scheme instead!"
As more of the townsfolk regained her bearings and joined the crowd surrounding Rainbow, it suddenly dawned on her just how many scowling faces were on her.
"Sooooooo I just soaked everypony in 10000 gallons of grape juice for no reason?"
"Yes you did," said Rarity with gritted teeth. "And it's going to take just as many gallons of water to get this stain out of my coat and mane!"
"Let's just be glad this is all you did," Twilight finally relented. "At least nopony got hurt from this."
Rainbow Dash folded her ears back as she scratched her neck. "Ehhhh, actually Twilight, there is a little something else I kinda did while I thought you all were zombified..."
Rainbow Dash unhappily trudged through the soaked friendship court in a filly scout uniform with a mop in her mouth, wiping up the purple one sweep at a time.
"800 bits worth of destroyed inventory, 3400 bits for hospital fees, and 50000 bits in property damage?!" Twilight brought the bill down from her face so Rainbow could see her expression. "You're lucky Princess Celestia was willing to hoof the bill on this one."
"Still doesn't change the fact that there have to be consequences for her actions," Applejack said.
"Which is why," Rarity stressed, "she has graciously volunteered to clean up every last drop of grape juice from Ponyville all by herself, isn't that right Rainbow Dash?"
"Three blocks down, another five-hundred and twenty seven to go..." Rainbow groaned softly.
"And," added Applebloom as she, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo wheeled up another wagon full of cookies, "reimburse the Filly Scout Association for every box of cookies she swapped out and ruined by working as a Herd Mother for our troop the next six months."
"Rainbow Dash as my Herd Mother, this is going to be so cool!" Scootaloo said to herself.
Spike took another look at the bill Twilight had received. "This has to have been the most expensive friendship lesson we've ever had," he remarked.
Pinkie bounced up to Rainbow as she emptied her mop into the bucket. "I'm sooooooo sorry Dashie. This wasn't supposed to be how it had gone at all. We were supposed to have revealed it was a prank before you ran away all scaredy, you would have realized it wasn't funny for everypony, and then learn a big lesson on why you shouldn't prank so much or be inconsiderate when you prank, and then we probably would have had a real laugh then and even have a party to celebrate. But my plan didn't work."
Rainbow planted her mop down, and gave a resigned grin. "Well, maybe your plan didn't work Pinkie, but I did learn my lesson. What happened today wasn't funny for anypony, and I'm certainly going to be more considerate of the ponies I prank if this is the kind of trouble I get into for not doing so."
Pinkie beamed, as did the rest of the group until...
*PHHBBBBBBBBTT*
Twilight sat down on her throne again.
Rainbow just cocked an eyebrow as her grin grew into a smirk. "Never did say I going to give up on the classics though."
Despite the full circle, everypony seemed to laugh this time.
