Rainbow Dash strains herself as she soars through the sky. “Hurry up and find something,” she groans through gritted teeth. “You aren’t exactly the lightest pony in town.”
Below Rainbow Dash, dangling under intertwined legs, Pinkie Pie laughs. “That’s just cuz there’s a lot of me to love!”
“I know, Pinkie,” Rainbow Dash says, “but I’m dying up here.”
“Oh, Dashie, look, look!” Pinkie shouts, pointing excitedly with one of her free back hooves.
“Quit kicking! Do you wanna get dropped?”
“But look! There’s a thingie!”
The two drop from the sky and land next to the thingie. Upon closer examination, they find that it’s more of a statue, crudely carved from stone in the shape of a crescent moon. Inside the empty space of the crescent is an elaborate clock face, hands pointed to 12.
“Well this is new,” Rainbow Dash says. “What do you figure it is?”
“I think it’s a moon,” Pinkie replies.
“Well, duh. But like, what does it do. Twilight said we’d find keys or something right?”
Pinkie hums and fiddles with the clock. “Oh, look!” she says. “You can set the time. I bet that does something!”
“Kay, uh, what time is it now?”
“10:47” Pinkie tells her. “Already tried that though.”
“What about like, dawn? Or dusk?”
“Mmm.... Nope, doesn’t work.”
“Why don’t we just like, turn it through all the possible times? That wouldn’t take that long.”
“Well that’s no fun! We shouldn’t cheat, we just gotta solve Twi- oops, I mean Nightmare Moon’s puzzle.”
Rainbow Dash groans. “Well, we aren’t solving it here. Where else are there clocks?”
“Well, there’s the clock tower.”
Rainbow Dash hits herself in the forehead. “Duh, of course. Okay, let’s go. And no kicking this time!”
Rainbow Dash stares up at the massive ticking clock face with a grimace. “I really figured it would just be stuck at a time that we would copy. Now what?”
“I guess we just look around,” Pinkie offers. “Maybe it’s written somewhere.”
Painstakingly, the two ponies search the clock tower for any hint of something off. Testing every brick to see if it’s loose, pulling every floorboard, lifting every stone. It’s slow, grueling, and ultimately pointless, as they turn up nothing.
“This is boring!” Rainbow Dash shouts. “Stupid clocks.” She flies up to the top of the tower and delivers a swift kick to the clock face. A strong one, too, because the clock shudders in response. The metal groans and bends and, with a pop, the minute hand falls off. A massive thud echoes out as it lands mere inches from Pinkie Pie’s head.
“Dashie!” Pinkie yells. “You broke it!”
“I barely touched it,” she protests.
“Well, now you get to fix it.”
Rainbow Dash sighs and lugs the heavy metal slab up to the clock face. Just barely, she’s able to drag it through the air and back into place. She slides it back to where it was, and then some more, and looking closer she sees that there’s a lot more space for it to take up.
“Hey Pinkie, how do you tighten a clock hand?” She calls out.
“I dunno. Turn it? Maybe like, backwards.”
Rainbow Dash shrugs and starts pushing. As it clicks into place and starts to tighten, she speeds up, flying in a circular blur around the clock face. Time races by as the clock spins, around and around and around again. Then, with a loud snap, the hands stick in place, sending Rainbow Dash careening into the ground below.
“Twilight’s got something coming after this,” a dizzy Rainbow Dash grumbles as she picks herself back up.
“Hey, look!” Pinkie says. “The clock stopped.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Did you not see me getting a concussion?”
“No, I mean, it stopped ticking. Look!”
The statue makes a satisfying click as the hands settle into place, matching the final resting place of the clock tower, and right on cue a small hatch opens in the base. Pinkie digs around inside and pulls out a small piece of paper.
“What’s it say?” Rainbow Dash asks.
“I dunno. It’s just gibberish.”
“What?” She walks over and looks over Pinkie’s shoulder. “Dude, you’re holding it upside down.”
“Oh! Hah, oopsie. Uhh, look like a poem. Let’s see, ‘Though Ponyville is a town of sweets, one food remains the-’”
“Augh,” Rainbow Dash cuts her off. “More puzzles. I’m out, let’s give this to the mayor and find something more our speed.”
Pinkie giggles. “Yeah, sure. I wanna see what other kinda stuff she has in store for us.”