A gentle breeze swept through Sweet Apple acres on a calm morning.
The sun was high in the sky as Granny Smith, the matriarch of Sweet Apple Acres, reclined in her rocking chair to admire her orchard.
Her seat gently swayed back and forth smoothly, like warm butter on a knife. There wasn’t a single squeak or creak after her two oldest grandkids fixed her old rocking chair. Even the floorboards of their patio were nice and tight, a sturdy piece of work that made her swell with pride at their work.
She just wished that they didn’t add all of the weird buttons to her foreleg rest, though.
Granny Smith had no idea why she would ever need to press a button to warm her seat or make it shake like their broken blender. If she needed to feel warm, she’d grab a blanket, and if she wanted a massage then she’d get one of them to do it. There was a method to doing things, a tradition that the brothers felt almost driven to ignore whenever they were left to their own devices.
And, as if the universe decided to provide their grandmother with an example of their stubbornness, a loud explosion from deep in the orchard rang out in the air, shattering any semblance of a peaceful day as a pillar of smoke began to rise in the distance.
With a reserved sigh, the green mare got out of her seat and began marching into the orchard.
“Darn colts and their toys, always blowin’ somethin’ up. Musta gotten it from their father, I swear.”
An aggressive roar pierced the air as a tall metal monstrosity began to shake violently.
Below, a lanky yellow coated unicorn stallion with a red and white peppermint mane froze the wheels in place with a spell. “Flam! Any day now!” He called out as he struggled against its pull.
“I know!” A voice inside of the machine yelled back. “Just… Need ta… There!” he exclaimed.
The aggressive metal monster suddenly slowed to a crawl, savoring what few seconds it had left before falling silent. Flim, after releasing a breath e didn’t know he was holding, let go of the wheels and fell to his haunches as he took a few labored breaths.
Shortly thereafter, a stallion who looked exactly like him, with the exception of a red mustache on his upper lip, crawled out of the inert machine with a frayed mane and a stained coat. He sat next to his brother, staring at their creation for a few silent moment before he began to chuckle.
“Heh-heh- Hey, look on the bright side. At least it didn’t—”
An explosion suddenly cut off the mustached twin as the machine’s internal combustion engine shot into the sky.
“Blow up?” Flim asked with an annoyed tone.
“I was gonna say, ‘tear down too many trees.’ But hey, at least it’s all still mostly in one piece! All it needs is a new engine and some paint, and it’ll be good as new~!.”
“Really? That’s wonderful! But there’s a problem with that, Flam.”
“What?”
“We don’t have bits to buy the material we need!”
“Oh… Well… We uh… Look on the bright side?”
“Which is?”
“… I got nothin’,” Flam relented before the machine suddenly shook again, as if to cling to whatever life remained, and deployed an olive-green parachute decorated in hoof-sewn apples that fell over the broken machine.
“… … Why did we add a parachute again?” Flam wondered aloud.
“It must’ve been left over from the biplane we tried to make.”
“But I thought we used most of that for the tugboat.”
“We did, but we were pulling junk out of the wreckage pile to build this. I guess we accidentally grabbed a few parts left over.”
“Parts left over from what?” Granny Smith asked.
“Well, there’s the tractor, the—Granny!” Flim cried, turning to meet his grandmother’s accusatory eye as Flam turned alongside his brother.
“Granny! What uh… What are you doing here?”
“I was thinkin’ about bucking a few trees and get some work in.”
“But Granny, you shouldn’t be…” Flam trailed off, hoping that Flim could take the lead and convince their grandmother.
“You should just go and rest. Flam and I can pick these trees clean in only a few hours.”
“Oh?” She stated with a raised brow, taking a glance at the big green tarp behind them. “And how are ya gonna do that? Hm?”
“Uh… Honest hard work and a harder pair of hooves?” Flam answered nervously.
“Exactly. Now, what’s under that there tarp?”
“What tarp? I don’t see a tarp, do you Flim?”
“Nope. All I see is green leaves and an open orchard.”
“We’ve never even heard of a tarp before,” Flam concluded, earning an elbow from his brother as they wore tight smiles.
A long and quiet glare from their granny was enough to break the two, as they dropped their shoddy facade and lifted the tarp to reveal… Well, she wasn’t sure what it was, but it smelled like trouble.
“You’re tinkerin’ again?” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand.
“Okay, fine. Ya caught us, Granny,” Flam admitted. “B-but just listen! It’s an apple picker that can make cider faster than a pony can say, ‘Cider please.’ Right there, at their hooves, and—”
“Nope,” she interrupted firmly. “You two are Apples, ya hear? We do things by tradition on this farm. That means ya use yur hooves and ya work”
“But Granny—”
“No butts, except yours in the field bucking trees. Got it?”
“Yes Granny,” they chorused.
“Good. Now, take yer toy to the shed and keep it there. Celestia knows what’ll happen if Bloom tries to play with it,” she ordered, earning a pair of sad nods from the duo before she gave them a surprise hug.
“And don’t ya dare try ta do somethin’ dangerous, ya hear? I know ya can handle yerselves, but… Well, I’m old. I earned the right ta be worried about you two. Got it?”
“Yes Granny,” they answered in unison.
“Good. Now, get ta work. Lunch’ll be in an hour and I expect ya to be there on time.”
The two brothers nodded, a hint of solemn sadness still in their features as they trudged off to the shed with their latest failure in tow.
Granny Smith simply stared as her grandchildren slinked off, her eyes instantly drawn to their emerald colored magic as they both worked to lift it away. Her gaze soon fell to the ripe apples that hung off of the tree branches around her, each one begging to fall into a basket and feed hungry ponies outside the farm. With a final dejected sigh, Granny Smith began trotting back to the house as the brothers got to work.