"It's like an escape room game!" blurted the woman, whose purple and cyan hair was put up in a matronly-looking hairstyle.
Rainbow pointed at a sign over the booth. "But your sign says: Human Subjects Needed For Research on Group Decision Making Under Stressful Conditions."
"I know," the woman said with a confident smile. "But isn't it fun to push your limits, to show what you can really do?" She eyed Rainbow's athletic-style clothing. "Like sports! This is like sports, except this is FUN instead of all sweaty and gross!"
Rainbow's eyes narrowed. "Sports are always fun, if you're doing them right."
"What I mean is...this is like sports, but for your mind. 'A sound mind in a sound body,' right?"
"Hmmph. Seems to me, you're trying to say this is like sports, but for eggheads."
"Right! Doesn't that sound fun?"
Rainbow crossed her arms.
The older woman said, "I guess you aren't interested. But do you know anyone who might WANT to have fun solving puzzles in a room with three other teammates?"
Rainbow smiled. "I do know two couples who might want to go on a double date. And this would make a great present for Equestria Day."
"Equestria what?"
"Never mind. Just show me how to sign my friends up. And can you make it look like a gift certificate?"
***
A dark-haired teenager sat on a plastic chair, in an eight foot square room with some odd curios and bits of rubbish in the corners. She fidgeted, looking up at the ceiling and its square tiles. She glanced over at a clock on the wall, an old fashioned clock with hands.
The door opened, and a blonde-streaked redhead walked in.
"Sunset!" The first girl leaped to her feet and hugged the new arrival. "I'm so glad to see you!"
Sunset laughed. "It's only been fifteen minutes, Twi. Didn't you EXPECT to see me?"
Twilight blushed slightly. "It's just...something about this place feels icky and wrong."
Sunset patted Twilight's back. "It's an escape room, right? So maybe part of the fun is making it look kind of scary, like a lab where they do weird experiments."
Twilight snorted. "If that's the idea, I think they're doing too good a job. Everything about this place is exactly like that. Even the sign on the front of the building--"
"Maybe 'Creepy Laboratories' was just named after someone who donated money to the college to build the lab. Josiah J. Creepy. Can you imagine being unlucky enough to be named that?" Sunset chuckled. "But I thought the entry questionnaire was kind of fun. Just some harmless questions and riddles and puzzles--"
The door flew open, slamming against the wall as a girl with long pink hair ran in. "It was so horrible!" she wailed. "How could they?"
Sunset turned towards the new arrival. "What happened? If someone hurt you...I'll punch them in the nose!"
The pink-haired girl sniffled. "'Doctor Glimmer' asked me what my favorite kind of animal is. A favorite kind of animal! How could I pick just one? That's mean to every OTHER kind of animal."
Twilight pursed her lips. "I suppose that's true. But she probably didn't understand just how mean it was. Most people don't understand these things like you do, Fluttershy."
"Maybe not," Fluttershy agreed. "But I don't like this place. I want to go home."
Twilight glanced up at the ceiling again. "But if we don't stay to solve the escape room puzzle, we won't get paid for doing the experiment. And we won't get the gift certificates for dinner at the Swedish Laundry Restaurant."
Fluttershy said, "I DO hear the Swedish Laundry is doing some very nice things with vegetarian cuisine."
"You see?" Sunset said. "I'm sure this will be fun. All we have to do is wait for Pinkie Pie to arrive, and we can get started."
The door opened. 'Doctor Glimmer' pushed a plump, curly-haired redhead inside, and yanked the door shut again. Everyone heard a key turn noisily in the lock.
"Pinkie!" Sunset said. "Now we can get started on the escape room puzzle."
The plump redhead turned her head back and forth, sniffing.
"Pinkie?" Fluttershy asked.
Pinkie slowly staggered forward. "Raarr!" she said.
Fluttershy backed away. "Pinkie, you're making me nervous. Please say something--"
Pinkie pounced, grabbing Twilight's shoulders. She opened her mouth wide, showing her teeth, and put her jaws against the side of Twilight's head. "Raarrr! Brains! I want brains! Raarrr!" Her sloppy, wet tongue licked Twilight's head.
Sunset grimaced. "Pinkie! First of all, stop macking on my date."
Twilight said, "I think it's kind of cute, in a silly fake horror movie kind of way. And it reminds me of Spike. You know how he wants to lick everyone he likes."
Sunset grumbled, "Second, if you want brains, why did you only grab Twilight? I feel kind of insulted."
"That's a good point," Twilight admitted. "Why didn't you grab Sunset too? Or instead?"
"Braaaiins!" Pinkie insisted. She slowly gnawed on Twilight's head, gently enough not to break the skin.
Fluttershy said softly, "Pinkie? Are you ok? Please talk to me, and not like a horror movie monster. Talk to me like your real self."
"Brrraaaaaiins!" Pinkie insisted, licking Twilight's cheek.
Sunset said, "Um...let's just assume this is part of the escape room game. Maybe 'Doctor Glimmer' told her to do this as part of the process. So let's figure out how to escape, and maybe then Pinkie will stop playing zombie."
Pinkie opened and shut her jaws against Twilight's hair. "Rarr rar rraarrrr."
Twilight gestured upwards. "I figured out one way to escape before the rest of you even got here. This is just a hanging drop ceiling. All you have to do is pop a tile up, and climb carefully on top of the walls in the space between the ceiling and the real roof. Any hacker--I mean, I learned about the technique when I was studying computer security."
Sunset patted a large steel box in one corner of the room. "But Glimmer said we were supposed to escape by finding or figuring out the safe's combination, and using the key inside to let ourselves out of the room."
Twilight laughed. "Since when did Sunset Shimmer become someone who follows the rules?"
"You're right, I don't always like to obey rules. But my own kind of psychology tells me, maybe the money and the gift certificates are in the safe along with the key. If we solve the escape puzzle in a way that the 'Doctor' didn't expect and doesn't like, then we won't get the prize. She'll just say, 'Sorry, you didn't open the safe like you were supposed to.'"
Twilight sighed. "That makes too much sense. Some authority figures don't appreciate when someone else is smarter than they are. I could tell you stories...but maybe later. Let's solve the puzzle first."
Pinkie quietly gnawed on Twilight's entire ear.
Twilight turned to move her ear out of mouth range. "Pinkie, would you stop that?" Pinkie ignored her complaint, chewing purple hair instead.
"Fluttershy?" Sunset said. "You're really good with animals, right? Can you get some of your animal friends to help us? Maybe some rats?"
Fluttershy shook her head. "I don't think there are any animals IN this building. I think they only experiment on HUMANS here." She shivered. "In this place, WE'RE the rats they...do things to."
Twilight spun around. "Pinkie, would you cut that out? I'm getting really sick of it, and my ear hurts." She ran as far away from Pinkie as she could, which was about eight feet.
Fluttershy stepped between Twilight and Pinkie. "Twilight is right. What you're doing isn't cute. I can see you're really annoying her. And it's kind of scary, too."
Sunset slowly pushed Pinkie down to the floor, and sat on Pinkie's back. "There. If I can hold her down, her mouth won't be able to reach anyone's head to chew on."
Fluttershy sighed. "So all we need is to get into the safe, right? And then we can leave?"
"Sure," Sunset agreed. "I think that's all we need to do. But...how do we DO that?"
Fluttershy whispered, "I have an idea."
"What is it?" Twilight asked.
"One summer when I was little, my parents wanted an excuse to get me out of the house doing something that wasn't with animals. They took me down to the Fenceman Adult Education Center and Extension College, and asked the registrar, 'What's a good class for someone who's really quiet?' They didn't so much care what the class even was, they just wanted me to be with people more."
"Ok," Twilight said. "So how did that turn out?"
"It turns out, some people like to take classes where everyone is very, very quiet and has to concentrate on what they're doing, like a kind of meditation. It doesn't even have to be a useful skill...or at least not useful for most people, most of the time." Fluttershy shrugged.
"So that's why I spent one summer learning how to crack safes, before the Extension College was closed down by the police for fraud and some other problems. My parents were really embarrassed, and we don't usually talk about it. That was right before my family left Cloudsdale in a hurry, and we never went back."
Fluttershy knelt in front of the safe, pulling a stethoscope up out of her blouse. "This is usually just for doctoring the animals," she insisted.
Fluttershy pressed the stethoscope's receiver against the safe, and twirled the main dial. She turned the dial slowly back and forth several times.
"Brraaaiins!" Pinkie insisted.
"Hush, Pinkie. I need you to be very quiet." Fluttershy moved the dial back and forth for several minutes, until the safe's door swung open.
Fluttershy and Twilight looked inside. "Huh," Fluttershy said. She pulled out a sheaf of papers. "These don't look like a gift certificate, or money."
Twilight reached towards the papers. "May I?" she asked.
Fluttershy nodded.
Twilight leafed through the documents. "These are...plans for brainwashing an entire community to think and act the same. The author calls it a 'utopia,' but to me it looks more like a cult. And the author's name is...'Doctor Starlight Glimmer.'"
Sunset absent-mindedly pulled her slobber-covered hand out of Pinkie's mouth. "I don't think we were really supposed to get into that safe."
Fluttershy whispered, "If this really is a scientific experiment, this room probably already has cameras and microphones and video recordings and...you know, all that stuff. Lots of surveillance."
Twilight replied softly, "We just have to hope she isn't watching the video in real time. Maybe she only looks at the recordings later, when she's analyzing data."
"We can hope," Sunset whispered. "But in the meantime, we should take all of those incriminating papers with us."
Twilight nodded. "You know my brother, Shining?" She didn't bother to remind the others that her brother was a police officer.
"But now," Sunset said very loudly, "since we DON'T KNOW YET how to get the key and get out of the room, we should try to solve the puzzle! The puzzle we HAVEN'T SOLVED YET."
Twilight looked down at Pinkie, slowly struggling beneath Sunset. "What I think is weird is how Pinkie has been playing along by acting like a zombie for so long. Even after..." She gestured at the safe and waved the plans for a brainwashing cult, which she stuck into the back of her skirt waistband, covering the top with her blouse. "Do you think Glimmer brainwashed Pinkie somehow, and now Pinkie CAN'T stop acting like a zombie, no matter how good a reason she has to stop?"
Sunset agreed, "That WOULD be a way of trying to get us to do whatever Glimmer says to do. 'Obey me, or I'll never turn your friend Pinkie back to normal! I mean, back to her usual self!'"
Fluttershy whispered, "Maybe. But if Pinkie keeps acting like a zombie forever, that would make lots of people suspicious. I have an idea." She stood up, walked to the wall clock, and used one finger to push the hands forward by an hour and a half. "Look, Pinkie!" she said. "It's six fifteen! The escape room game has been over for fifteen minutes!"
Pinkie looked up at the clock. "Oh!" she said. "That's good! Glimmer hypnotized me and told me I had to act like a zombie during the game, or I'd be cheating. I'm so glad I don't have to try to eat my friends anymore."
"I'm glad too," Sunset said. "But just in case...any hypnotic suggestions Glimmer might have given you? You don't have to do them. They're null and void. I'm cancelling them." Sunset snapped her fingers, and got off Pinkie's back. Pinkie sat up.
Pinkie asked, "So what are we supposed to do about escaping the escape room, and getting paid for being experimental subjects in a mind control experiment?"
Twilight snorted. "Break the rules. Eat my shoes, Starlight Glimmer!" She ran at the door and kicked it. "Ouch." She hopped around on one leg, holding her opposite foot in one hand. "That didn't work."
"Sssh," Fluttershy said. She bent down to bring her ear near the doorknob, pulled a bobby pin from her hair, and stuck one end into the lock. A minute later, the door opened.
"Be very, very quiet," Fluttershy whispered. "We're sneaking out of the escape room."
Everyone tiptoed out of the room, and sneaked out the building's back door.
***
In a police station, Twilight said, "So THAT'S why we think the police should investigate Starlight Glimmer."
Officer Shining Armor nodded. "I understand why you're concerned. But wanting to set up an evil mind control cult isn't against the law. Not giving you your agreed upon payment for participating in an experiment might be illegal...but you sneaked out of the experiment early. So it's hard to prove she wouldn't have paid you if you'd stayed to the end."
"She hypnotized me to try to eat my friends' brains!" Pinkie complained. "If that isn't illegal, what is?"
Shining said, "Locking you into a room without a proper emergency exit in case of fire sounds like a violation of workplace safety laws. You could talk to the city fire marshal, or a few different state agencies, or even OSHA. Any of those would be a good way to start. If bureaucrats do a 'surprise safety inspection,' they might stumble across all sorts of interesting things."
"Don't you care about my friends' brains AT ALL?" Pinkie wailed. "They almost got eaten. And I'm so hungry."
"I'm sorry. I can't do anything about it tonight, except for taking a police report, which we already did." He shrugged. "I can't take you girls to the Swedish Laundry...but I do get off work in twenty minutes. As Twilight's loving brother, I could informally pay out of my own pocket for pizza. Not brains pizza, though. My budget doesn't stretch far enough for deluxe toppings."
Pinkie squealed, "Sounds like a party!"
Under the table
Pinkie and Twilight hold hands
Mistaken identity
That can happen on a double date
Author's Note
Maybe we can blame Epsilon-Delta for Zombie Pinkie (link), although so far as I know Epsilon-Delta has never written Zombie Pinkie as such.
"Well not anymore." Pinkie shrugged. "But I used to be vicious! Rawr!"
Pinkie made adorable little claws with her hands.
It makes a LOT more sense in context. 
