//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7: Effort 
// Story: Necessary Love 
// by Zurock 
//------------------------------//

	In the east side of town, set within a long row of typical Ponyville homes with their peachy panels and their thatched roofs, was a house that stood out because of its very different and distinctive roof.  It was as if nearly the whole of the top floor had been lopped off to make space for a rooftop terrace.  The simple wooden railings which protected the sides wrapped what would have been a lush garden if it weren't for the changing seasons.  All of the precisely placed bushes had their buds closed tight to endure the coming winter, and most of the short, young trees that sprouted up there were bare of leaves.
Aside from those details however, that roof didn't know the cold sleep of winter.  Small, occupied metal cages of all shapes could be found hanging about, and far more attractive and visible were the wooden birdhouses that also dangled in the naked trees or sat perched in the dry bushes.  They were painted in many vibrant colors and had unendingly diverse designs, crafted with creative perfection.  Each was a quaint home, permanent or transient, for one of many countless families of birds who always seemed to be going to and from the rooftop.  The terrace was a lovingly homemade bird sanctuary of sorts, the likes of which was rivaled only by Fluttershy's cottage.

Miss Nestingwing tended the cages, birdhouses, and rooftop garden of her home, inspecting plants here and laying out birdseed there.  She was a middle-aged pegasus of a creamy color that was somewhere between a peach and a carrot.  By personal preference she always liked to wear a wide-brimmed, flat-crowned straw hat that sported one or two beautiful flowers tucked into it and was tied onto her head under her chin with a loopy bow; she spent much of her time on her sunny rooftop after all, and the flat surface the hat presented made it a swell perch for any of her birds who wanted to rest a spell with her.
She went about her usual work with a sideways eye though, since she had a few guests with her today.  The Cutie Mark Crusaders, including honorary member and otherworldly accompaniment, were there working away on a pastime activity she had given them.  Spread out on the ground in one corner of the garden they labored to assemble some basic birdhouses.
Each pony worked on their own birdhouse; their own simple search for a cutie mark in constructing tiny homes.  Even James was working on one, having been talked into it in no small part by Poppy, who just wouldn't have stood to have seen him sitting aside while the rest of them had all the fun.  Working with flat wood, round pegs, hammers, and glue, the sloppy mess of supplies was everything they would need to build the bird-loving pegasus some fresh dwellings to replace some of her oldest ones.  Occasionally the mare herself would wander over to offer some wise advice or quick encouragement to the eager fillies.
All of them toiled under the watch of Miss Nestingwing's most curious birds, some of who peeped and squawked constantly at the girls in ways that sometimes sounded just a little bit mocking.  One or two particularly boisterous birds chirped so hard that several times their wings didn't save them from tumbling off their branches and rolling on the ground with twittering laughter.  But ever undaunted and determined to see their quest through, the fillies worked away with confidence, brushing on glue, slapping wood together, and hammering away.

At last, all the fillies seemed to reach their finishing touches at the same time.  There were final knocks from the hammers and emergency applications of glue, and then each of them eased back a bit and twisted their finished birdhouses about, inspecting them from side to side.
"So, done!" Scootaloo announced.  "A perfect birdhouse!"
She looked again at her unhealthy creation, with its walls all tilted off in uneven directions.  Its disconnected corners only blocked out the wind coincidentally because of the thick and overflowing globs of now crystallized glue that held the structure together (more than one empty glue bottle lay sacrificed at the young pegasus' side).  The front peg that was meant as a perch seemed to be aggressively crammed into place, causing it to skew upwards at an angle that very nearly had it blocking the entrance hole.
Reassessing her opinion, the filly less-surely chimed, "Well... a pretty good birdhouse anyway...  (I think...)"
Sweetie Belle would have chuckled at her friend's performance but, as she took a look over her own work, she couldn't shirk the notion that she probably wouldn't have been able to pick her birdhouse apart from Scootaloo's in a blind test.  So instead she nodded along and falsely opined, "Yeah.  Yeah, we did pretty good."
"Speak for yourselves," Apple Bloom haughtily snipped at them.  "Behold, the greatest birdhouse in all of Equestria!"  She pushed her eccentric design towards theirs.
"Uhhh...," Scootaloo moaned, unsure of what to say.
Sweetie Belle felt much the same.
Apple Bloom's birdhouse would have easily been considered different from her peers' by anypony with a working set of eyes, but anypony with a working brain would have considered it stretching the bounds of credibility to have called it 'better.'  She had managed to erect (relatively) straighter walls and seal her sides (more) properly with glue, but apparently she had also managed a lot of other things that weren't quite part of the original draft.
"You're only supposed to make a hole on the front side!" Sweetie Belle chastised her friend.  She pointed at the partially swiss-cheesed walls.  "What-... what are all these OTHER holes all over the rest of it?"
"What?" Apple Bloom squeaked in disbelief.  "Can'tcha tell?  They're windows!"
Scootaloo looked into the belly of the beast through its many 'windows' and she asked doubtfully, "Why are there... pegs glued everywhere all over the place inside?"
Again Apple Bloom seemed offended that the purpose of her improvements couldn't be discerned, though the confidence in her voice started to slip.
"They're, you know, for hangin' curtains... and putting up pictures... and stuff..."
"And... the upside down roof?" Sweetie Belle inquired flatly.  What should have been more of an 'A' shape had very clearly been inverted into a 'V.'
"It's-... it's... for the rooftop swimming pool!"
"Eeeyeah...," Scootaloo rolled her eyes.
"Hey!" Apple Bloom defensively snapped right back, "I don't have to justify myself to you.  I'm a genius!"
"You're a something, alright," quipped Sweetie Belle.
"You mind repeatin' that?!" the agitated filly held up a fierce hoof.

A hearty giggling intruded upon their squabbling and they all turned to look at Poppy.
The little Drypony hadn't outperformed them in any respect; there was no question that she would never be a designer of any of Heartwood's tree-borne homes.  But she had given her birdhouse her best effort anyway, and now that she had a chance to see the miserable job they had all done she laughed brightly with her new friends.
"I don't think we did very good, hehe!"
She had not an ounce of condescension in her or a flick of harsh judgment.  She had only a wide and happy smile for the fun their efforts had earned.

By that point Miss Nestingwing had been hovering over them for a short while, reviewing their results.  She might have interrupted their back and forth herself if she had found the appropriate words to comment on their performance with.  As it was, she had needed Poppy's remark to nerviously spring off of.
"Oh, well, girls... you did-... uh, you did your best, I'm sure.  Very-... very worthy effort."
Although Poppy cheered a 'thank you' the rest of the crusaders held onto more reserve.  They put in some effort and managed to give a united, drawn-out, and glum, "Thank you, Miss Nestingwing."
"Oh, my... pleasure?" the mare responded, with her gaze still on their bird-shanties.  She shook her head and then hastily tried to usher the fillies along, "Well, it looks like you're all finished now so I suppose you want to get a move on."
"Aren't we going to paint them?" Apple Bloom interjected, rolling an odd look around at all the finely painted birdhouses that were already up and hanging.
Miss Nestingwing's voice wobbled, "Oh, uh, well, um, painting them is... uh, not-... not STRICTLY necessary."
From under her hat a pool of sweat leaked, and her eyes danced about.  There were many empty bottles of glue which laid sideways on the ground, and the many sticky puddles had been splashed beyond the boundaries of the fillies' work zone!  A nearby tree had strings of dried glue running down its bark, and a few of the bushes had leaves accidentally glued together!  One of her birds had set down on a sticky branch and now couldn't escape, beating his wings and jostling the limb he was stuck to!
"And-... and... we certainly shouldn't be painting them up here in the garden.  Because... reasons," she finished up quickly, straining to keep a polite tone.
The crusaders (save effervescent Poppy) winced.
Scootaloo twisted her flank forwards so that she could get a fast, clean look at it.  The lack of a fresh cutie mark was predictable at this point so she wasn't surprised by the bare butt that she saw.
She tried assuage her friends, "Well... if our special talents weren't in building birdhouses then it's not like they were going to be in painting birdhouses either..."

Hoping to move the fillies along while they were agreeable (and before they got any more bright, destructive ideas), Miss Nestingwing turned at last towards James and said to him, "Sir, if you are finished—oh my!"
The man sat with his legs crossed.  His eyes were squinted and the tip of his tongue was poking out of his lips, and he shifted his completed birdhouse in circles to study it from all angles.
The mare briskly ambled over to him, looking down at his finished work with genuine excitement.
"That looks very good!" she exclaimed heartily.  "Exactly like the picture I drew, in fact!"
James looked up at her, modestly replying, "Oh, well, I tried to follow it as closely as I could."
His was a model birdhouse; the kind seen on the box of a 'Child's First Birdhouse' kit.  Every wall was aligned perfectly straight and connected at sharp corners exactly the way they were supposed to be.  Not an ounce of glue could be seen dripping from the seams yet the strength imparted by its sure presence was easily visible.  The roof fit snugly and securely over the top, looking so homely and quaint that it was hard to not imagine a brick chimney sticking out.  The hole in the front sat exactly where it should have been and the peg underneath rested in place like welcome mat, beckoning any ready bird-groom to carry his bird-bride inside.
The straight, square design of the unpainted wooden shelter certainly lacked a lot of flair, but it was still a completely serviceable and admirably average birdhouse.  It wasn't the dream mansion of a rich bird but it was the perfect little birdhouse on the corner that any bird family would have been happy to own.

Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo all rubbed their eyes and did a double take.
Poppy, meanwhile, leapt over to the man and his creation.
"Wow!  That's so good!  How did you do that?"
"Yes," Miss Nestingwing pressed eagerly, "have you done this before?"
"Oh, no," James dismissed with a laugh, "or, at least, if I have then it was a long, long time ago and I don't remember.  I haven't done something this arts-and-craftsy for years!"
The other crusaders' jaws hit the floor.
Whispering to her cutie mark-less allies, Apple Bloom said, "It must be a fluke.  It's gotta be!"
"Yeah," Scootaloo was fast to agree.  "He-... he probably got lucky is all.  It happens."
"Not to us," Sweetie Belle moaned.

Still speaking to just the older mare and the tiny Drypony, James felt encouraged to smile and shook his head.
"This-," he said softly, then pulled his voice up louder, "this was a lot of fun!"  He looked away and wondered to himself quietly, "Why do so many ponies give up doing little fun things like this when they grow up?  Why did I?  Heh..."
"I told you that you should make one!" Poppy merrily challenged him.
The man reached a friendly hand out and rubbed the top of her head, swishing about her mane.
"And you were right."
Miss Nestingwing pulled his birdhouse closer and gave it another fascinated lookover before she declared solidly, "I know just where I'm going to hang this!"
"What about ours, Miss Nestingwing?" asked Sweetie Belle suddenly.
The mare's eyes popped in panic.
"Oh, I'll, uh...  I'll... find a place for them, girls.  Don't you worry," she... promised?
Pushing up the brim of her hat, she searched the crowd of watching birds for any particularly brave-looking specimens who would have been willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of their species.  Many of the birds fluttered backwards, deeper into the bushes or up towards higher branches, shaking their heads or waving their wings negatively.  A few even retreated into the air, diving away from the terrace.
Confused, Apple Bloom uttered, "I thought you said you were going to take down some of your oldest ones and replace them with our new ones?"
Coughing into her hoof the mare only weakly said again, "I'll... uh...  I'll find a place for them."
Some of her birds weren't THAT picky... or that smart.  Then again, maybe she could have taken up caring for bats?  They were kind of like birds, and they're blind, right?  Also, TECHNICALLY a trash can was 'a place.'

The three gloomy crusaders groaned.  They checked their flanks again just to be sure, and when no cutie marks flashed into existence they held their heads down.
Scootaloo quickly worked her spirit back up and tried to rally her forces, "Well, crusaders... if not this, then maybe the NEXT activity."
Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle picked themselves up as well and exhaled their worries.  Putting on strong, resilient smiles, they resolved to continue.
"Alright!  Onwards, crusaders!"
The three of them turned and raced towards the steps leading into the house, leaving their wreckage behind them.
Poppy laughed, smiled at James, and continued right after them.
James was already just a little weary of keeping his energy as high as theirs, but strangely he found it was becoming more natural to him.  He chuckled as he stood up and dusted himself off.
"Thank you, Miss Nestingwing," he bowed.  "I really had fun.  Take care."
And like that, he was off after them, striding quickly.

The mare trotted to the edge of her terrace and called down a pleasant goodbye to her departing guests as they left.  Then she returned to her collection of new birdhouses and looked up at her watchful birds once more.
"So...," she began cautiously, "... who wants which birdho-"
In a frenzy, many of the birds came swooping down straight at James' birdhouse, fighting to be the first to cram themselves inside and claim it.





Balanced steady, Twilight floated down a plate piled with over a dozen cookies onto the kitchen table.  They were a delicious mix, in varieties far beyond what could have been bought at an ordinary grocery store; some leftovers from an order days earlier at Sugarcube Corner in fact.
"Here you are, Pinkie," she said, pushing the pick-me-up in front of her somber friend.
The unicorn diverted her eyes for just a moment in order to grab the glass of milk that she had also prepared.  By the time she returned her attention to the table she saw that the plate had already been emptied of all its bounty save for a few measly crumbs.  Pinkie Pie's joyless expression hadn't changed at all but she had gained lips smeared with the remains of rent cookies.
"Well...," Twilight set the milk down before her friend, "... I hope that helped you feel better."
The glum pony grabbed the drink and chugged it down without a second thought, carelessly splashing some around her mouth.  Unbothered, there wasn't a hint of change in her mood as her lifeless tongue came out and cleaned her face spotless.
She sighed and sniffled in reply, "... A little..."
Twilight eased herself into the table corner next to Pinkie Pie, offering herself as the most friendly and supportive presence as she could.

She had picked her friend up out of the street and carried her inside.  She had soothed the distraught pony through her most turbulent woes and hugest tears.  And now she had also sacrificed the last of the library's cookies in an attempt at healing.  But all throughout the mercy and mending, while she had been busy hugging, holding, and whispering reinforcements to her damaged friend, the unicorn's mind had been furiously at work elsewhere.
And her most regretful conclusion was that, while of course she should definitely help in all ways that she could... ultimately the problem was not HERS to solve.  It NEEDED Pinkie Pie.

"Pinkie...," she beckoned to her friend, "I can definitely ask James about all this the next time that I see him – to get his take on everything and let him know a little bit about how you feel – but this is something you have to fully work out with him yourself."
"B-But Twilight-!" the pink pony gasped.
"We're all friends, but this is about the friendship between you and him SPECIFICALLY," emphasized Twilight.  "Nopony is in the position to define that friendship except you two.  Anypony you ask to help WILL help, whether through... mediation or so on; I'll gladly do that.  But they're not going to take care of everything for you.  And they shouldn't try to.  It's YOUR friendship."
"B-But-" again came the objection.
"No, Pinkie.  I know you've tried as hard as you could and you've done everything you thought you were supposed to, and that you don't see anywhere else to go... but that's why you came to me, right?  To get some advice and some help?"
The unicorn reached a hoof over the table corner and held it against her friend.
"And my sincerest advice is: you need to sit down and talk with James directly about this."  Compassionately stern, she implored, "And I mean DIRECTLY.  No cakes, no balloons with frowny faces, no teardrop-shaped cookies, no... any other of your more oblique approaches.  I know you can be direct Pinkie; you have been with the rest of us before.  You just need to politely confront him about your friendship."
"Friendship..."
Pinkie Pie struggled, still despondent and overrun with fear.  Despite appearances, her despair wasn't new.  She had been in that hole for some time and had been digging herself deeper and deeper with each day of failed progress befriending James.  Her fallen curls, usually bouncy, hardly waved when she shook her dreary head.
"I don't have a friendship with him, Twilight...  That's the problem!"
She shivered and looked back and forth across the grain of the table.  The thoughts which tormented her were unchanged; all the same as the ones which had been slipping through the cracks of her happiness for several weeks now:
Why had every spark of friendship with the man failed to ignite?  Why had every friendship balloon popped?  Why had every happy loaf – prepared from the dough of sharing and rolled with a pin of love – why had every last one failed to rise when she had so relentlessly tried to bake them in the friendship oven?

And why... FOR HER?

"He has something special with everypony else...," something in her voice came loose, leaving her vacant.  "Everypony... EXCEPT me.  With me, he's-... he's not-..."
For a very short instant the change in her voice spread to the entirety of her ponyhood, pulling away all the colorful absurdities and wild extremes which she liked to clothe herself in, revealing for one unobstructed moment no more than a naked, simple, and true pony.
"... with me he's not... genuine."

The open vulnerability in Pinkie's words pierced Twilight.  Their raw edge, buried under honest and quiet sincerity, triggered a round of absorbed thinking in the attentive unicorn.

A genuine man...?

A complex man.

Like anypony he had prominent aspects to him which were highly visible; his most defining traits, as it were.  But there was so much more also, and to boil him, or anypony, down to a simplified, one-dimensional, readily-coherent being was a disservice to his individuality.  Consider Pinkie Pie, for instance: a very complicated pony when one took the time to really understand her depths, but on the shallower surface the Pinkie-est side of her was very straightforward.
James... was a more fractured individual though.  Everypony got Pinkie Pie's core face; she didn't change when she met others.  But the man was much the opposite: he showed different sides of himself to everypony depending upon who they were.  Why else would Twilight have been so surprised to have found him napping with Rainbow Dash?
The pegasus saw his friendly, competitive face; a face of relaxed friendship and of casual pushing and tugging, loose and fun.  That was much different from the face Twilight saw: a man who swam through grueling philosophical conversations because he was fascinated by seeing the world from different perspectives and concerned with thoughts bigger than himself.  And Fluttershy?  A pony of quiet caring; something the man mirrored right back at her.  She often saw the face of his compassion.
And most recently... Poppy...
The face Poppy saw – the side of him that she brought out – was nothing Twilight had ever witnessed from him before.  It was so joyfully unguarded; so full and whole.  So in love, but not as a romance.  His love of being alive?  The unicorn had only gotten to know him during days of pain; pain which buried such love in forgotten places.  But when that filly was around she shown a light on it easily.

It was almost dizzying how many faces James had and how selectively he showed them.  Almost as if he had a distinct one for each pony he met.
So... what face had Pinkie Pie been seeing?  What part of him wasn't 'genuine?'

The thoughts were very troubling to her, suddenly.

"Pinkie," she swore, "I PROMISE that I'll talk to James a little bit about it; get some idea on his take and introduce him to your thoughts.  But..."  Her proposed solution was unchanged.  "... it's still on you to really sit down and work through your feelings with him, alright?"
It was a long quiet before the pink pony responded, "I don't know if I can, Twilight..."
"You CAN do it, Pinkie.  I've had plenty of difficult and deep conversations with James.  About some real serious things sometimes too.  He can handle talks like that."  Again Twilight reached across the table corner to warmly touch her friend.  "And I KNOW you can, too.  I've seen it before and you're more than capable."
There was another long delay; a thoughtful tactic rarely employed by the spontaneous pink pony.  But it wasn't without meaning.  A hopeful shine started to appear in her eyes.  The corners of her mouth found the strength to lift just tiny little bit.
"... Really?"
"You bet!" Twilight smiled.
It was such a relief to see Pinkie Pie's usual felicity peek through!  To further encourage it, the unicorn on a whim let show just a sliver of her secret.
"And hey!  I have something of a surprise for everypony that I've been keeping.  I was going to tell everypony about it soon anyway but... it's hard to resist spilling just A LITTLE BIT of it ahead of time!  I can really promise you that, very soon, you're going to get a good chance to work things out with James without all the distractions of Ponyville getting in your way!"
Curiosity; friendship; promises.  They hauled the pink pony's beleaguered happiness back up to more Pinkie-like levels.  She rubbed the last sadnesses out of her eyes, drew in her final sniffles, wiggled out her remaining shakes, and then revived her classic form.  The scuffs and stains from her despondent stumble were still visible in small ways but the glory of her bouncing personality took center stage.
Her forehooves stretched across the table corner and seized Twilight with a surprising amount of strength.  Sucking in the startled but not unamused unicorn, she squeezed and squeezed, tearing muscle and breaking bone.
"Ooooooh, you're the best friend a pony could ever ask for, Twilight!  Thank you thank you thank you!"
"Hehe, you're welcome, Pinkie."
After Pinkie Pie at last freed her beloved hostage she whipped back into her sitting position and bobbed excitedly.
"Soooo, a surprise, huh?" she said with a bright smile.  Then she immediately unloaded in a flurry, "What part do you think everypony'll like best?  I think you'll like the boat a lot; that seems like your thing.  Maybe all the history, too.  And Fluttershy'll like the animal ceremony thingy for sure, a whole lot!  Rainbow Dash'll get a kick out of the games and the parties, and I bet Applejack'll just love that thing with the big orchard!  And I think Rarity's going to be into meeting some of the new ponies but I can't say that I blame her; I'm super excited to meet these new ponies too!  And-"
"Woah, woah, woah, Pinkie, how-" Twilight tried to interrupt her friend's flood of rambling predictions.
"Aw, come on, Twilight!" the boundless pony teased.  With a jutting tongue and a winking eye she suggested, "I peeked ahead a little!  Duh!"





Drawers upon drawers upon drawers upon drawers, and shelves upon shelves upon shelves upon shelves, with an obsessive amount of labels covering every inch of them to boot.  If it wasn't possible to find a desired part, widget, knickknack, or thingamadoodle amongst the meticulously cataloged mess then there was always the unlabeled stacks of raw materials in the wayward corner (and more out back).  Then again, it was possible to make what was needed from scratch with any of the numerous cutting, shaping, bending, welding, sanding, sharpening, or smashing tools that lined the room.  Hung on racks that ran wall to wall, or some even just sitting on the floor because they were whole workstations unto themselves, the endless variety of tools simply waited for their opportunities to be useful.  And the whole room smelt of the diffuse dust and scattered soot of their labors.
Such was the workshop of Gadget the repairpony.  Every thing had a place and, sooner or later, every place needed a thing; or so her father had always said.  She had earlier dug through her infinite supplies and had pulled out what she needed a job just a little different today.  It wasn't the usual fix-it-up work.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders and company had been given five identical sets of items, all laid out on a low-set workbench.  Between a precise set of written instructions and the always available brain of the expert who was giving the lesson, they had each endeavored to construct something quite simple and specific as a show of engineering talent: a potato battery.  It wasn't perhaps the beginner's lesson of Gadget's personal choice, lacking some of the more mechanical ingenuity that was her specialty, but it was the one lesson that all the fillies and colts always seemed to have fun with and so it had become her go-to lesson for eager, fledgling foals to sink their teeth into.

It wasn't long before Apple Bloom called, "Uh, Miss Gadget?  I THINK I'm done but... my light bulb isn't lighting up."
"Well," Gadget said as she trotted over to the filly, "that means that there must be an error somewhere.  So a good thing to try would be to go back and review everything you did step by step to look—oh."
She had to stop and rub her almond-colored hoof on her cheek while she tried to figure out just how Apple Bloom had gotten so far off course.  What was supposed to have been a potato battery had somehow become potato surgery.  The electrodes hadn't been inserted but instead had been used to carve the poor spud open and spill its guts everywhere.  From there it had apparently gotten worse and turned into potato torture: many loops of copper wire were tightly wrapped around the mutilated vegetable, maybe in some desperate attempt to hold it together.
"Huh.  Well mark my measure...," Gadget mulled to herself with a click of her tongue.  "I, uh...  I think you're going to need a fresh potato to start from scratch with."
Apple Bloom slunk down in disappointment, giving a low whine.

Just as the repairpony was going to retrieve a new potato Sweetie Belle spoke up hesitantly, "Mine's-... mine's not lighting up either..."
"Okay, let's see," replied the reserved Gadget.  She went and stood over the distantly hopeful filly, bracing herself to witness the monstrosity which she presumed awaited her.
Sweetie Belle's potato was largely more intact than Apple Bloom's, but it looked like she had restarted the experiment multiple times without ever having properly reset it.  The potato didn't have two electrodes wedged into it; it didn't even have four, or six.  Rather, SIXTEEN electrodes were skewering the defenseless vegetable.  Eventually she had built a spiderweb of copper wires around the spikes; a fishnet of metal.  It was actually kind of a surprise that the battery didn't even work by accident!
"Yeah... you might want to clear everything away and start over too," the repairpony reluctantly relayed.
Another failure, and another fallen filly head.

"Ha!  MINE lights up!" Scootaloo proudly declared.  "Cutie mark, here I come!"
While the boastful filly's two closest companions looked over with slight stings of envy, Gadget quickly swiveled towards the reported success with great relief.
"Oh, fantastic!  Congratulations-...  Wait..."
Scootaloo's setup was far from perfect: the electrodes weren't stationed securely, there were multiple holes in the potato from earlier failed attempts, the clamps gripped the electrodes in questionable ways, and it was hard to follow the copper wires as they wove about in dizzying paths.  But indeed, the filly had achieved some form of success because the small, round bulb at the end of the circuit was lighting up.  A soft, red light shined out evenly from it.
Gadget brought her nose right up to the bulb, practically crossing her eyes to stare at it.  Her perplexed gaze went from bulb to battery and back several times.  Finally she grabbed one of the clamps and released it, breaking the circuit.
The red light instantly stopped.  All that was left was the shaded glass of the bulb: very clearly GREEN in color.
"How did you-...?" the repairpony scarcely let up.
She reaffixed the clamp.  Red light again.  She took it off.  Green bulb.  Refusing to believe her eyes, she cycled the power several more times.  Red light, green bulb, red light, green bulb.  She even briefly slid down the goggles that normally rested on her forehead in order to get a good look at the phenomena through their darkened filters but they revealed none of the great mystery's secrets.
At last, somewhat taken aback, she announced, "Latch my ladder!  That's amazing!"
"So... I did good?" Scootaloo wanted to believe.
"Well, it is amazing—ly wrong," the bewildered pony clarified.  She quickly realized how blunt she had just been and daintily tried to soften the blow, "Uh, g-good effort, though.  Very nice attempt."
Carefully she swept Scootaloo's potato battery further down the workbench, telling the now dejected filly, "I'll just set this aside so I can study it later.  You'll-... you'll need to start over too."
A third saddened filly joined the others.

Poppy waved her hoof to solicit some attention.
"Excuse me, Miss Gadget!  I can't get mine to go either!" she said.  But far from any complaint, her buoyant words were an eager request for help.  She laughed in honest admission, "I'm not sure what I did wrong."
"Hm," Gadget grunted, not expecting to find much different with this filly's attempt.  And a quick inspection confirmed it: repeated insertions of the electrodes had lead to a sloppy setup and a damaged potato.  "You may need to start with a fresh potato too."
The little filly's head stayed high, and her eyes were eager.
The repairpony noticed.
She bent over Poppy and pointed out sagely, "You dug out too much of your potato.  See here, how little contact this electrode is getting cause your potato's all torn up?  And you can't have these wires crossing and touching here; it shorts the circuit."
Poppy lapped the knowledge up, or at least what she understood of it anyway.  It could have only helped her get it right the next time!

While Gadget continued to provide guidance to the interested Drypony, the three original crusaders commiserated by their failed projects.
"I guess that's another bust...," groaned Scootaloo.
"Yeah," agreed Apple Bloom quietly.  With some effort, she asserted herself slightly, "We're down, but not out.  There's still a bunch more we got to do today!  Maybe we'll have better luck next time!"
But they both turned towards Sweetie Belle when they heard her moan, "Oh no...  Speaking of luck..."
The bothered filly pointed them to James.

The man sat at the end of the low-set workbench, again with his legs crossed like a child playing on the floor.  His potato was intact, with the two electrodes having been inserted only once each, both perfectly.  His clamps were solidly attached and the wires from them ran straight to his green bulb, which glowed the proper color.  Worst of all (to the three crusaders) was that he seemed to have been finished for awhile now, apparently having breezed through the exercise with ease.  Now he only watched as Poppy absorbed the lecture she was receiving, and his face carried a greatly amused smile.
When she finished her lesson to the Drypony, Gadget looked up and caught sight of his work.
"Well, well, Mr. Man.  Nicely done.  Looks like you got it right," she ribbed him.
"Ah, this was a pretty easy one," he laughed.  Genuinely curious, he followed up, "I'm trying to remember how this all actually works, though.  Like... there's no actual electricity in the potato like a REAL battery, but-"
"Well now it sounds like you're not understanding just what electricity is, and hey, most ponies don't," the repairpony remarked, entertained.  She easily launched into another lecture, spurred on by her delight in dispensing knowledge.  The man followed along, ready enough to learn, and Poppy sprung a bit closer as well, equally enthused.

That same enthusiasm wasn't found in the other three fillies.
"Just great," Sweetie Belle complained silently to her friends.  "If he were a pony, that would be TWO cutie marks he would have now!"
"It still could be just luck!" maintained Scootaloo, though a disguised doubt had crept into her voice.  The others glared straight into her, doubt and all, but she still insisted, "What?  It could be!"
"He's making us look like idiots," the frustrated Sweetie Belle argued back.  She stamped a tiny hoof.  "And-... and... I don't like it!"
Mumbling, Scootaloo slowly pulled her head down and said to the floor, "Well then... maybe we ARE idiots..."
Apple Bloom valiantly tried to carry the team forward.  "Who cares about how he's done?  It's not about him.  It's about us finding our cutie marks!  So we're not birdhouse builders, and we're not electricians, but maybe the next thing is where we'll shine!"
She gestured over towards their new friend, saying, "I mean, look at Poppy!  She already has her cutie mark so she's okay with not being good at all this other stuff because she knows what she IS good at!"  Yellow hooves fell upon the shoulders of the others.  "One day that'll be us!  One day we'll be able to walk around showing off our flanks to everypony so that they'll know it don't matter that we ain't good at all this because we're gonna be super-talented at something special!"
Several quiet moments passed.
"So... next activity?" Sweetie Belle offered gently.
"Next activity," Scootaloo resolved, and the crusaders clacked their hooves together in unity.