Tales From the Trash Bin 19. Flim and Flam, Villains for Profit.

For those of you who don’t know, in the past I posted story ideas that I put up for adoption. A few users have asked to have them and gone off to make their own stories. These are the tales that I tried, and failed, to tell and I thought it’d be nice to give someone else a chance.

If any of you want to take this idea, or any of the unadopted ideas, PM me and they could be yours. Now, enjoy the story of Flim and Flam’s time travel plot.

A series of shorts where the crooked conmen clean up criminals and crack down on crime. Of course, everything comes at a price.

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Chapter 1. When You Wish Upon a Star.

A flame flickered out of the last window in a small town, calling an end to the late evening’s festivities as the ponies inside went to bed. Their humble abode had stayed lit an hour longer than the other homes, but just like the other slumbering ponies of the kingdom, they ignored the portrait of stars that painted the sky.

Princess Luna, diarch of Equestria, stared longingly at the door of the small shack from a distance, hoping for even a moment that the elderly mare inside would poke her head out the window to steal a glance at the night sky. It was a useless hope, nopony in all of Equestria cared for her beautiful night.

Constellations that had depicted heroes and friends that had long passed went ignored, foals shied away from the darkness that wrapped the realm like a blanket, and every morning ponies would praise her sister’s sunny day.

They’d say good morning with bright eyes and good night with meaningless mutters. During Day Court, the nobles and commoners would be fighting over a place in line to speak with her sister, while Night Court was quieter then a graveyard in winter. It was clear to anypony who the favored princess was.

It didn’t matter what Princess Luna did, nothing mattered, they would all look up to one princess and one alone. How could it even be considered a diarchy when one of them was clearly the preferred princess?

As the night began to wear one and the silent town lost any hint of light, the princess teleported to her lonely tower in the castle slid underneath the covers of her bed, preparing to delve into the Dream Realm to aid the ponies who fought off their nightmares. Even then, she would rarely receive their thanks for defending their dreams.

Before she could slip away into another realm and commit to her nightly duties, arcane energy began to swirl around the center of the room, spinning in a vortex as the baritone hum of a unicorn’s horn. Flashes of light shot out of the growing sphere, bouncing off of the stone and carpet as it grew larger.

With one final brilliant flash of light, the swirling sphere erupted, dropping two limp bodies to the floor as Princess Luna shielded her eyes with a wing.

The two intruders groaned as they popped their joints, standing to their abnormally full heights as they rubbed their eyes. Luna would have easily mistaken the two towering twins for a pair of alicorns given their size and long horns, but the distinct lack of wings over their oddly colored vests dashed that momentary thought away.

“I told you that this Time Twirler would work!” The mustached brother said, earning a glare from the clean shaven sibling.

“You said it’d take us back to before Sweet Apple acres!”

“And it did!”

“Really? Then where, dear brother, are the dang apple trees?! You just teleported us to Celestia knows where and—“

“Who dares enter mine room!” The princess bellowed, causing the foundation of her tower to quake as the lanky stallions shied away.

Looking up at the princess, the two quickly disentangled themselves to bow before her hiding their fear a bit better than most of her subjects had.

“P-p-Pricness Luna, we-we didn’t mean to break into Canterlot!” The mustached brother said.

“R-right! Th-this is all a mistake. See, we didn’t want to come to Catelrot we—“

“Silence!” She commanded. “We know not of what this Canters of Lots may be, but we do not care! Thou hath broken into the Castle of the Two sisters, and We shall not let this crime stand!” She announced, rising from her bed as the brother’s both peddled back to the wall. “As the lunar princess of this castle, my word is law!

…..
shared a confused look

….
“Oh, wonderful, it worked!”

“It worked?”

“Yes, Flam, it worked. We’ve traveled back in time to help the princess, just like we planned. Remember?”

“Oh. Oooooh! Yeah, yeah, that’s right! Princess Luna, Princess of Equestria,”

“The Defender of Dreams,” the other brother added on.

“Majesty of the moon,”

“The uh, the Best Princess!”

“Better than Princess Cadence!”

“The absolute Best Princess!”

“I can’t think of any other that could compare.”

…..
“Hello there princess, we’ve come from the future to help chase away your loneliness.”

…..
“My dear, there is one problem and only one when it comes to your art.”

“A small one.”

“Very small.”

“Almost not there at all.”

“But it’s actually pretty big.”

“Really big.”

“But we can help.”

“For a price,” the mustached sibling said, causing his brother to elbow him in the barrel.

“Price is such an ugly word. Think of it as… A favor for a friend, free of charge!”

“Free?!” Flam gasped before Flim clamped his muzzle shut with his magic.

Princess Luna couldn’t hear the pair muttering more than a few words as he pulled his brother close and began whispering in his ear.

“Play along, or do you want to piss off a princess who can give you nightmares, you dolt?”

…….
“That’s easy princess, you have a branding problem.”

“Branding? what do hot irons have to do with me?”

“N-not that kind of branding, Princess. See, your problem is that you’re not selling yourself.”

“Are you telling me to be a whore?” She growled at Flam. Luckily for the mustached brother, Flim was able to step in and clear the air before his brother breathed his last breath.

“No! No, not at all. What my misspoken brother means is that you need something to catch their attention, something that says ‘This is my night sky, look at it!’”

“But most of our subjects can’t read. How would spelling that in the night sky work?”

……
“By this time tomorrow night, everypony is going to look up at the sky and realize how pretty your night sky is.”

“That’s a Flim Flam guarantee,” Flim promised.

…..
Besides, if the ponies didn’t like her night sky, then why should she put so much effort into it?

….
“How can I repay you two?”

…..
“Oh, don’t worry about that right now, Princess. In about a thousand years, we might see each other again.”

“And then you can repay us,” Flam tacked on, earning another elbow from Flim.

“Just take care, Princess. And remember, you’re the best princess!”

….
“A thousand years, thou says… I look forward to meeting thee, brothers Flim and Flum.”

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Chapter 2. Time to Collect.

In the blink of an eye, millennia stretched across a lightyear in the cosmos sapped like a rubber band, flinging a pair of brothers into a familiar time in a strange place.

“Phew, that… that takes a lot out’ve a pony,” Flam groaned, popping his joints as he looked at the golden device in his hooves. “We might need to recalibrate a few things if we want to go back to Sweet Apple Acres. Starswirl may have been a genius, but his hoof writing was uglier than cousin Con’s ex-wife,” he joked.

Only silence met his quip as his brother stared at the lavish room around them.

“… When did we live in a mansion?” Flam mumbled as his brother looked up at a family portrait from their childhood.

“Apparently since we were born,” he said, drawing his brother’s gaze to the wall of paintings and awards from ‘Luna’s Gifted School For the Arts and Innovators.’

“… You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Flam asked, earning a coy smile from Flim.

“We should go see an old ‘friend’?”

“One that’s in a really high place.”

“I do love having friends in high places.”

….
“You’ve returned from your displacement! This is great!”

….
no more medieval Shakes Spear talk, which was already an improvement inn their books.

…..
“I committed myself to exploring art and pushing their boundaries.

….
a shadow of the mare that they saw as colts. Her radiant smile was replaced with a stern frown, and her warm gaze held judgment and contempt.

Her piercing stare only touched the brothers for a moment before she returned to her paper work, pulling papers out of one pile and signing them in a mechanical manner, like a machine stuck on an assembly line.

“These are the two stallions you met a thousand years ago?” Princess Celestia asked in an even tone.

…..
“We have an edge against every antagonist and adversary that even the Elements of Harmony didn’t have. Heck, they don’t even exist here. Princess Celestia and Luna still have the Elements,
….

And that’s everything. Normally I try to put in more work, but this was an old idea and I’m finally dropping it.

Check out some of my other incomplete work to see if any of them catch your fancy.

Good and evil, right and wrong, heads or tails. While many people believe in grays and in-betweens, one criminal only sees the world in black and white. Torn from Gotham and sharing a body with someone pretending to be Harvey, Two-Face forges forward to see what the techno-colored world of Equestria has to offer. Tales From the Trash Bin 3. (Two-Face)

The Dazzlings daring plan to conquer the continent with a concert of chaos isn’t stopped by a band of heroes, but by a corrupt conductor. Can the Dazzlings out preform the sinning singer, or will they join his concerto of crime? Tales From the Trash Bin 5. (Music Meister)

After finally graduating from high school, a twenty year old man is reborn as a high school student in a cartoon. What’s worse, is that he’s become debatably the worst character in it. No, not the villain, not even some random background character. He’s Flash Waifu-Stealing Sentry, and he really hates… Everything at the moment. Watch as Flash Sentry is forced to relieve the nightmare that is high-school while attempting to use what little knowledge of the show he has to his advantage. Tales From the Trash Bin 6. (Flash Sentry)

When you’ve been abandoned by everyone you love, is it wrong to lie to someone so that you can find some small sense of compassion? Sunset Shimmer’s life had taken a turn for the worse. Abandoned by her friends, she finds comfort in a misunderstanding and becomes friends with a group of rather strange humans. Tales From the Trash Bin 7. (My Street)

An Iron Golem’s one job in life is to fight evil and protect their village. Only death can stop these titans from pursuing their objective. Nothing, not even being teleported to a village full of only colorful horses in another dimension, will stop these sentinels from protecting everyone from the forces of evil. Tales From the Trash Bin 8. (Iron Golem)

The tragic end of Anon-A-Miss leads to the ominous beginning of a new threat, Onymous. Will the students of Canterlot High find the perpetrator, or will Sunset be trapped in their claws? Tales From the Trash Bin 9. (Anon-A-Miss)

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life decides to screw you over time and time again, add a splash of vodka to your lemonade to feel better. And when life decides it’s not content letting you wallow in self pity, go to a bar and meet a strangely sympathetic centaur. Tirek may not give you a shoulder to cry on, but he will give you something to wash your woes away. If you're lucky, or if you’re considerably unlucky, then he might even offer a piece of advice as well. Just don't expect it to be free of charge. Tales From the Trash Bin 10. (Tirek)

There’s a mysterious pony with an equally strange life. The mare of mystery, the walking questionable copyright infringement, the hero of all Equestria Mare Do-Well Mystery Mare (For copyright reasons) debuts with a worrying case of amnesia on her mind and a heart thirsting for justice! Tales From the Trash Bin 11. (Mare Do-Well)

Zephyr Breeze liked to consider himself as a normal person. However, after getting amnesia, Zephyr learns about his disturbing hidden shrine to his next-door neighbor and begins to question what kind of sick creep he was. Tales From the Trash Bin 12. (Zephyr Breeze)

Good and evil are not always black and white, despite what one “evil” simian has to say about it. After being defeated once again by a trio of trifling heroes, Mojo-Jojo attempts to return to his evil mountain lair and sulk. However, by some twisted sense of fate, the depressed villain is flung into another world where he crashes into a grey town full of downtrodden ponies. With renewed vigor, Mojo-Jojo plots to conquer the alien planet and return to his own world with an army standing at his side! Will the evil simian be recognized for the evil mastermind he is, or will his villainous plots reveal something else to him? Tales From the Trash Bin 13. (Mojo-Jojo)

A certain villain tries to replace Princess Celestia with a robot. Luna can’t tell which of the two is her sister. Tales From the Trash Bin 15. (Sir Ratagin)

Local Human is trapped in Equestria, and is annoyed that the only close cure to her boredom is reading books. After lamenting to Rainbow Dash, the coolest pony she knows, Rainbow Dash invites her to do something “really cool”. She would have said no if she knew it was cloud watching. Tales From the Trash Bin 14. (Erebus)

Human arrives in Equestria as Berry Punch. Unoriginal hijinks ensue. Tales From the Trash Bin 16. (Berry Punch)

A man arrives in Equestria as Thor, the God of Thunder… Except everyone aside from him can lift the hammer because he’s unworthy. Tales From the Trash Bin 17. (Thor)

A second person story following Kite Man’s adventures with a little communist pony that really likes kites. Tales From the Trash Bin 18. (Kite-Man)

(Displaced Stories)
Tales From the Trash Bin. (Dani Phantom. Pt. 1)
Tales From the Trash Bin. (Dani Phantom. Pt. 2)
Tales From the Trash Bin. (Scott Howl)
The First Tales From the trash Bin. (Pearl)