"Wow, I feel... weird."

Cogs staggered over the threshold of the urgent care and into the street, nearly falling sideways as Scratch caught him.

"Yeah, that's prolly the painkillers finally kicking in; I was starting to wonder why you seemed so sober back there."

"So... where, um, where to now?  I..."

Scratch paused, waiting for ending to his sentence; none came.

"Well, when the doc was prepping ya, I took a little stroll outside and met Derpy, an' I asked her to send a message to Rarity about making you a custom jacket.  She came back with an OK, so now it's off to Rarity's!"

"Cu... custom jacket?  What for?"

"Well, you'd get a lot of stares walkin' down the street with those wing stubs on your back 'n' all.  Anyways, ya know what you said earlier about never giving up?"

"Yup!  Pretty deep, huh?"

"Yeah, but I actually wanted to ask you about a particular word you used in that little lecture; I think it was 'people'."

"Beats me what it is; I actually stole most of what I said from one of Lyra's books.  Pretty clever, right?"

A stupid grin hung on the right side of Cogs' face as the two approached the boutique.  He opened the door for Vinyl, who concluded (correctly) that this was the last conscious action he would make for a while.  The bell rung as the door closed.

"I'll be with you in just a minute, darling!"

From what Cogs could tell, there was fabric in every direction as far as the eye could see, stretching out in such disproportionate ways as to cause trying to make sense of it all induce a headache.

"So, I um... where are we again?"

"Rarity's shop.  Just stay still and shut up, 'Kay?"

Cogs gave a weak salute, barely catching himself as he fell without the support of his fourth leg.

"Oh Vinyl, It's good to see you again!  About that jacket, I'd be more than happy to help; is this the subject here?"

"Yeah, an' the doc gave him pain meds, so he's pretty out of it."

"Oh, the poor thing!  Ah well, let's get started, shall we?"

Rarity led Cogs to the center of the room and had him stand perfectly still while she took his measurements, an action taking several minutes; when she was finished, she shooed him out of the way while she sewed the jacket.

As Cogs began to regain his proper state of mind, he thought about how much custom-tailored outfits usually cost.

"Scratch, I just realized: who's paying for this?"

"Finally sobered up, have ya?  But seriously, don't worry, Rarity said it was free."

"Free?  I'm no fashion expert, but it looks to me like she's using some of the highest-grade materials on the market."

"And that's Rarity for ya.  No rhyme, no reason; just generosity and an impeccable taste for fashion."

There was a moment's silence.

"I'm shocked."

"She is pretty amazing."

"Well yes, there's that; but I was referring to the fact that you just used a five-syllable word.  I never thought I'd hear anything that sizable from your mouth."

Scratch elbowed him in the gut.

"What happened to all that fancy chivalry talk from earlier, huh?"

"Well, chivalry is so old fashioned, I'd say it's practically dead."

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

Cogs donned the long, pitch-black coat with pride.

"How do I look?"

The quartet's reactions were mixed.

"Fine."

"Like my grandpa."

"Sophisticated."

"Like a member of the S.S."

The last opinion would have drawn more attention, but the others had long since learned to grin and bear Lyra's eccentricities.

"Well I think Rarity did an amazing job, and free to boot!"

It struck him that the coat was not the only free thing he had received.

"So I was wondering, is there anything that I could to for you guys?  I mean you've been giving me free room and board, so it's only fitting that I do something for you."

"Well, now that you mention it, I remember Octy sayin' that we should hire a backup."

"A backup what?"

"Everything, but then I don't s'pose you know how to play the cello, lyre, saxophone, and work a turntable, do ya?"

"I'm afraid not, but I've always been interested in playing guitar, you wouldn't happen to have one of those around, would you?"

"I think Octy's got one, but it's autographed by some fancy-shmancy guitar player so she prolly wouldn't let ya use it."

Octavia interjected.

"Of course I wouldn't let him play it!  But he can use my flat-board if he wants, that old thing's barely worth the wood it's made of."

"What's a flat-board?"

"Follow and learn."

Octavia's room was as different from the rest of the place as she was from her fellow entertainers.  The walls were grey but not dull, the books on the shelves were arranged by height and lacked even a trace of dust, and on the walls hung various string instruments, almost all of which were autographed.  Upon closing the door, she trotted quickly to a little closet in the corner, out of which she pulled the well-used flat-board.

If one had been looking at silhouettes it would've been indistinguishable from a guitar, but in the light, it resembled more closely driftwood.  It was an inferior cut of wood, shaped like a guitar but lacking the deep, hollow body that was so essential; it also sported several dents and a crudely attached strap.  The only things it could boast were its pristine strings, but even those looked like they would require several minutes of cranking before they produced anything remotely musical.

"Not to sound rude, but this is an instrument?"

"Quite frankly, no, it's merely a device for practicing guitar chords.  Nopony knows exactly what it's origins are, but it's doubtless a very old tradition and as such it should be kept.  I don't play guitar anymore, so you can have this; after all, you don't want to go wasting bits on an instrument that you don't even know you can play."

Cogs thanked her and left the room.  He had originally set off to fend for himself, and yet almost immediately he had fallen into the care of another.  'Well no more of it!' he thought; 'It's time for me to finally stand up for myself.'.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

The others had understood his wishes, and before the day was out he had bid goodbye to them and set off towards the inn at the edge of town, where he would stay his last night (hopefully) as an unemployed pony.  His saddlebags, a gift from Noteworthy, were weighed down with the others' farewell presents: the flat-board with a chord book, a few encyclopedias of ancient equestrian myth, and a pair of fogged sunglasses.  Cogs thought it odd to receive farewell presents after a one-night stay, but accepted them anyway, knowing that a little extra help should always be appreciated.

As he trotted leisurely, he fancied that he felt a pair of eyes on him; three pairs to be precise.

"I know your following me!  Show yourself!"

He had expected a gang of lowlifes, bullies, or even homeless, but not even for a second did he expect three little fillies to pop out of the bushes.

"Did you see it? Did you see it? Right as he turned around his cloak whipped up; you saw it, right?  He doesn't have one!"

"Um, who are you three?"

"Well ah'm glad ya asked, because we are-"

The three took a deep breath and shouted in unison:

"-THE CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS!"

"She's Sweetie Belle, that's Applebloom, and I'm Scootaloo, and we're here to ask you about your cutie mark!"

"But I don't have one."

"Exactly! So that's why, uh..."

They turned and huddled.

"What were we gonna ask him about, again?"

"Beats me, I jus' remember you rushin' off all willy-nilly when Sweetie told us she saw her big sis fittin' a coat for somepony with no cutie mark."

"Yeah, Scoot, if he doesn't already have his then he probably knows even less about cutie marks than we do!"

They broke the huddle.

"So mister, why don' ya have yer mark yet?"

"Oh, that?  I guess I just never found any one thing that caught my interest or that I was particularly good at.  But it's kind of fun, actually; I know that at any second when I'm trying something new, I might suddenly find my true calling."

"It sure sounds nice when ya put it tha' way, mister."

"But since you seem to be trying a more direct approach, let me leave you with this piece of advice: if at first you don't succeed, try again, and again after that, and again after that; and though you may not succeed after ten-thousand tries, you have not failed: you have just found ten-thousand ways that don't work."

Scootaloo turned to the crusaders.

"He's right, so c'mon guys!  We're missing out on our chance at party crashing cutie marks!"

"YEA!"

With that they galloped off toward the heart of town, leaving Cogs in a fit of laughter.

"I tried searching for my mark once, but I never made it far enough to start doing things that obscure."

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

Cogs knew it was late, he knew that he had to rise early the next morning, and yet his mind soldiered on, ceaseless in its quest to unravel all mysteries in heaven and on earth.  He couldn't help but feel that nothing he learned added up; lights, for instance.  When they were independent, the earth ponies used fire, and now that the land was united, everyone used the magically distilled light provided by the unicorns.  So where did the design of the lightbulb come from?  There was no conceivable explanation for the filament inside, no explanation except that it was a remnant from when lightbulbs were used by humans with electricity; but that was ridiculous!  I mean, humans? Really!?  They were just myths created by those who longed for the fantastical.

But then again, was it really that impossible?  Was there really no chance that humans had ever existed?  He recalled one of Lyra's arguments, which said something to the effect of 'so many separate accounts line up perfectly, how could it be made up?'.  He began to think of other devices, like party buzzers and sparkler coils; they stored simple magic for screwing with ambient electrical forces, nothing too fancy or powerful.  'Come to think of it,' Cogs mused; 'that's the most advanced spell I know of regarding lightning, or rather, electricity.'

He felt tired; too tired, in fact, to fall asleep.  His thoughts wandered for a while before settling on the flat-board; he rose from his bed and strode to the corner where he had offloaded his luggage, rummaging around to find the chord book that Octavia had given him.  What he saw inside baffled him.

The various diagrams of dots and lines were nothing unexpected, but what had surprised Cogs was the complexity of the diagrams; many required more than four separate points along the stem to be held.  He suddenly realized why Octavia took such pride in her playing; which amazing as it had been, was all the more incredible because she had done it without magic.  But instruments with plucked strings were difficult to use even with magic, why would anypony design such an instrument?

He pulled out the flat-board, slinging the strap over his neck and gripping the stem with his left hoof.  'This position is perfectly easy to maintain, but to perform chords I would need some sort of wraparound extension from my hoof.' Cogs contemplated exactly what the most fitting extension would look like:

"Well obviously I'd need opposable digits to grip the stem, and then a few more on the bottom to curl around as a whole; probably with three joints apiece."

The image that began to form in his mind was shockingly familiar.

"I guess I know who I'll be spending my free time with for the next few days."

He placed the instrument back into the saddlebags and blew out the candle next to his bed, trying not think of tomorrow's daunting task of job-hunting as he fell asleep.