Villains United

by juststeph

Flim and Flam's Story

The next meeting started with two unicorns passing mugs of cider to the others in the room. The ponies took the mugs easily, and couldn’t help but laugh at the dragons dangling the handle off a claw or the diamond dogs clumsily wrapping their paws around the mugs. The two unicorns smiled as everyone tried the cider, and murmured that it was “pretty good”.

“This cider brought to you courtesy of Flim Flam Fields!” one unicorn announced.

“Owned and operated by the world famous Flim Flam Brothers!” the other unicorn, distinguishable from his brother by his mustache, added.

“Of course, we don’t own the fields yet, per se,” Flim admitted.

“But we have the machine-“

“And soon the profits!” His face darkened. “But there were those ponies.”

“Those Apples.” Flam frowned. “And their friends.”

“They ruined our plans!” Flim slammed his front hooves down on the seat of a nearby chair before he continued.

--

FLIM AND FLAM’S STORY

We are not conponies. We have a good, honest trade. We invented this wonderful machine that can make cider faster than anypony! And it’s delicious, too.

We traveled across Equestria, from Fillydelphia to Trottingham, just plying our trade. We would strike up an agreement with local apple farmers. They sell us the apples, and we sell the town the cider. We stayed for a few weeks each cider season before moving on.

It worked out best for everypony, until we got to Ponyville. Cider season was just starting that year, and we knew the best place to go was an orchard owned by the Apples. We’d worked with other branches of the family before, and they were almost always willing to work with us. There was a bit of trouble in Appleoosa when the buffalo rioted over our cider…but everywhere else, ponies have loved it.

When we saw that the poor ponies of Ponyville didn’t have enough cider to go around, we decided to change our marketing strategy. We could bring everypony in with some samples of the cider and a demonstration of the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 7000—6000 then—and split the profits instead of paying for the apples.

The Apple family didn’t agree with our proposed profit plan. They thought our cider wouldn’t taste as good. Their granny gave it a try, but she refused to admit that it was indeed delicious. Not that it mattered—we still had the apples from our demonstration and could sell some cider with those. Once those Apples saw how we could outsell them, they would agree to our partnership.

The next day, the Apples sold out of cider, as they always would. Then we came in and started to sell our leftover stock. Those Apples refused to allow it, so we did have to challenge them to keep our selling rights. We are businessponies, and we know a good contest will drum up attention.

We rested up the night before the contest, but of course we weren’t going to lose. We are in the cider business, after all. We make more barrels of cider in an hour than any apple farmer can make in a day.

The contest was in our favor at first. Then those Apples decided to cheat. My brother here allowed it. I know—he wasn’t paying attention. We were going to win until then.

The Apples weren’t our only opponents in the end. We were making cider against the Apples and the Elements! Two unicorns against a family of earth ponies is fair. Two unicorns against a group of friends of all the races is not!

We had to skip quality control in order to win. And of course, we want to reassure you that this is not something we plan to do again—your cider is perfectly safe, folks. But our tactic worked, and that’s what mattered. We were the legal and rightful owners of Sweet Apple Acres.

Unfortunately, our lack of quality control resulted in a bad batch of cider. The first barrels we made were perfectly good, but everypony refused to try them. It didn’t matter that we were the legal owners of the apple fields. The ponies wouldn’t spend one bit on our cider, and we were forced to move on to the next town.

We’ve never had trouble selling our cider anywhere else. We’re bringing in those bits, and when there’s enough, we will own Sweet Apple Acres again.

--

“So you see, we would have Flim Flam Farms by now,” Flim told the crowd, who’d tossed their empty cider mugs on the ground and across the room.

“But those ponies cheated!” Flam added, stomping a hoof on the ground.

Flim just nodded, and then waved his hoof in an arc towards the audience. “You all have been cheated too! The Elements of Harmony are nothing but a bunch of no-good, dirty, cheating liars!”

There was a murmur in the room as the others realized just how right the brothers were.

“If you would like to help fund our revenge against the Apples, we’ll be passing around our hats,” Flim said, taking the hat off his head in unison with his brother.

Nightmare Moon stood before the hats could be handed off. “I think perhaps it is time for somepony else to speak.”

Comments

[NightmareDash]

Just curious, do you think King Sombra could say anything beyond growling, grunting, and "Crystals!" ? If so, bring him on here!

[juststeph]

1935649
I think there's a lot more to him than was shown in the episode. You'll see when I get there.

[Inferno demon Dash]

I think you mean hoofed off not handed, but other then that.....hmm....I like Film and Flam and in all honestly yes, they did win, everyone knew that but Hasbro could not allow two villians to run off the Apple family not to metion the Element of Honesty, that would have runied the show. So as harsh as it is....they had no choice but to leave......damn, how sad