Opportunity

The familiar clanks of the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 were the only sounds that were heard on the barren trail between cities. Atop the train-shaped machine sat a flustered Flim and Flam, opposite of each other.

Every few minutes, one of the two ponies would look backwards to see if the other was doing the same. They never were.

About a half hour of that passed before Flim finally broke the silence.

"Was it worth it?"

"Was what worth it?" asked Flam, still staring out into nothingness.

"What we did, brother. Back there in Ponyville."

"You'll have to be a little more precise, I'm afraid. Was it our gambling for the rights to sell there? Our turning off of the quality function of our lovely machine? Or was it our insistence that everypony would still consider our cider edible when half of it consisted of twigs?"

"No need to be rude," Flim said. Flam sighed in return.

"I'm sorry. It's just... I'm tired of this, Flim. We've been chased out of every city we've tried to make some sales in. And after Ponyville was the first to even approve of the idea that our machine could make cider... it seems that we've missed out on an opportunity ourselves, as it were."

"As it were," Flim repeated, a small smile finally on his face. "Perhaps we should have put less effort into our sales pitch and more into making sure we could make a profit in the first place."

"I'll agree with you there," Flam responded.

Another small silence between the brothers occurred, which the two ponies took advantage of by repositioning themselves so they faced each other.

"Where did we go wrong?" This time it was Flam who broke the silence.

"It's your turn to do the clarifying, brother."

"Our machine and what it can create are fantastic. I know this, you know this. So why do we have this insistence on being the only creators of quality cider?"

"It has to do with speed, brother. We've been able to outdo families with the creation of our cider that has even or improved quality."

"Yet our complaints are mainly from families that hand-produced their cider for years."

Flim chuckled. "A bit ironic, isn't it?"

"Indeed," Flam responded, a small laugh coming from himself as well. "Our cutie marks tell the story all too well."

It was a modest farm. Nothing stood out, but it could create quality products for the rest of the town, and they even did a bit of exporting during the colder months.

Everypony in town knew of Jonathan and Honeycrisp, the stallion and mare that ran the farm with a bit of assistance from their twin boys. Jonathan's strength, surprisingly large for that of a unicorn, made him a prime bucker of even the toughest trees, and Honeycrisp's magic and eye for detail made sorting and preparation a breeze. The colts were in charge of the smaller tasks such as holding the buckets during the bucking season and storing the harvest away during the winter.

Flim and Flam were the spitting image of their parents, the townsfolk said. They had inherited their father's red and white-striped mane and their mother's ivory skin (and, after leaving town, Flam would grow a mustache very similar to that of Jonathan's). They were bright and curious, and always looked for a way to help their parents out with their jobs.

Over the years, Flim and Flam had starting working on an idea to make an automatic cider creator, as the beverage was a specialty of the family. As more rare fruits such as the Zap Apples were far from what they could find, the autumn treat found an audience with its simplicity and warmth, especially during winter. Jonathan and Honeycrisp made the task look like blinking with their teamwork, but it left them exhausted of both physical strength and magical power after the last barrel was filled.

The machine’s first version was a rough design, but still very functional. While the apples had to be inserted manually (or, in the case of the brothers, by magic), once the machine was powered it could do the rest. The apples were peeled, squished, and turned into cider which exited through a separate tube, easily poured into an awaiting barrel.

Once the layout was finished, the brothers eagerly showed it to their parents one evening.

"Boys, I don't think you understand the most important quality in a good cider," Jonathan said with a thick accent that the brothers didn't develop. "Sure, you can make the apples go in and the cider come out, but that's all you'll be getting."

"What your father is trying to say is that there's more to cider making than... well, just making cider," Honeycrisp added. "When you make cider, it's like telling a story. If you make it the way you are, you're leaving out a lot of the story that won't be told."

The brothers were shocked at this. How was there more to making cider that they weren't taught? Weren't they going to inherit the farm from them someday, and make cider themselves? Why not just change around the process a bit?

"Tell you what, boys. Next fall, you can take half of the orchard, and we'll take ours. We'll each sell our half of the cider, and we'll show you just what you'll be missing," Jonathan said, extending his left foreleg.

The brothers nodded, and hooves were shaken. The challenge had been accepted.

A small gathering of the townsponies had appeared outside of the farm, staring both at Jonathan and Honeycrisp, who had their standard tools, and the twin brothers, who had a wooden box with two funnels.

"The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy is the first step..." Flim began.

"...To the future of cider creation!" Flam ended.

The ponies stifled laughter as they looked at the box. Aside from the funnels and the crudely-drawn downward arrows upon them, it looked like the experienced couple's cider would again be the standard for the next few months.

The mayor, an elderly pegasus with a beard longer than either of his wings, blew a whistle to start the competition.

As Jonathan started bucking and the apples rained down into awaiting baskets, Flim and Flam ran over to each tree to inspect each apple individually before magically plucking some and putting them through the first funnel.

A hideous noise erupted from the box as it started manipulating with the inserted fruits. Several ponies covered their ears and averted their eyes to the much nicer and natural sight of the bucking and sorting of the elderly ponies.

As Jonathan began to juice the apples, the familiar sound of pouring liquid replaced the cacophony of metallic sounds from the side of Flim and Flam.

Everypony's jaw had dropped. Before Jonathan and Honeycrisp had even began, Flim and Flam had finished their first barrel of cider.

The process continued in a similar fashion afterwards; Flim and Flam looking at every tree for the quality apples, putting them into the machine, waiting out the horrid sound, and filling and replacing barrels. For every three containers of cider the fillies had filled, Jonathan and Honeycrisp had barely filled up one.

The mayor approached one random barrel from both sides, and filled a mug with cider from each. They looked exactly the same, and tasted exactly the same; a delicious, familiar taste of autumn.

Even with a futuristic gadget, the Flimflam Brothers Cider had rivaled the Jonathan and Honeycrisp classic the town was familiar with. It ended up outselling the standard due to being able to produce more of the product itself; the brothers had gotten permission to use up three-quarters of the orchard, as half of the elder's trees were untouched when the younger's trees were barren, save for the handful of bad apples that were left to rot.

Beaming with pride, the two fillies were even prouder as their cutie marks appeared in a flash of light on their flanks. Honeycrisp hugged her sons, and Jonathan gave a little smile, knowing that his old ways had been replaced.

"And now we're here," Flim said. "We developed the Super Speedy Cider Squeezy over the years..."

"With this one being the sixth of its kind," Flam finished. "Heh... some things never change, eh, brother?"

"Not at all, brother."

Another short silence.

"Say, Flam?"

"Yes?"

"Why was it that we challenged that family? We’ve never done anything like that before."

"We never did, did we?"

Flim nodded. "I guess they reminded us of the old times, and we thought it would be just like that."

"It turns out you can teach an old pony new tricks," Flam commented.

“We should go back someday and apologize.”

“Maybe with some free cider?”

“From our own apples, of course!”

The ponies shared a good laugh for a few seconds.

"Let’s say that the next town, we just stick to making great products, eh?" Flim asked, holding out a hoof.

Flam smiled, and shook.

And as the sixth version of the machine that changed the preparation of cider forever moved on to their next generation, a curious pony in Ponyville found a barrel of cider made by the brothers before they turned off quality control.

She poured herself a mug, and took a sip.

It was delicious.