4 Unattainable
“Let me know if any of you see any large, scary animals,” Amber told the others as they headed deeper and deeper into the forest without difficulty. “Like, say, a manticore or something.”
“I’d like to see a manticore,” smiled Fluttershy. “They’re like big kitty-cats.”
No manticores. Their journey was only made difficult twice. First they ventured under a dark canopy of trees. They started bumping into each other, stepping on each other’s hooves, stepping in mud but not knowing it at first… but no one saw any trees with scary faces. After that, they had no problem crossing the shallow river, making Amber feel more and more like something was wrong. Their second bump in the road came in the form of a collapsed rope bridge. It was a job for Rainbow Dash.
“If you see anypony there,” Amber called when Rainbow flew to the other side of the chasm, “don’t let them distract you!”
“Who do you expect to be there?” asked Rarity.
“Nightmare Moon?” shuddered Fluttershy.
“Somepony,” said Amber. “I expected something to try and stop us from getting to the castle.”
“Guess we’re just lucky,” smiled Applejack.
Amber began to wonder if her actions had improved the outcome of their trip through the forest.
I’m better for the job than I thought, she thought.
Rainbow Dash had no encounters when she secured the bridge, so now they were all making their way to the castle to find the Elements of Harmony.
“Here they are!” Pinkie Pie called when they got in.
“Rainbow, Fluttershy, would you mind taking them off those pedestals?” asked Amber.
The pegasi carefully picked up each stone slab and placed them in a circle in front of Amber, who couldn’t wait to put them to use.
“Hang on a sec, one of em’s missing,” said Applejack.
Amber looked. There were only five elements. She looked around the statue. There were no other slabs. Rarity and Pinkie Pie looked in the corners of the room. No other slabs. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy flew around the castle searching every room, cell and tower. No other slabs. Applejack and Amber sprinted around the castle walls. No other slabs.
“I’ll have to use my magic,” said Amber after their fruitless search led them all back to the circle of elements they found. “My horn can guide me anywhere, it should help me find a lost item too.”
“It ain’t too bright, is it?” asked Applejack. “We don’t to get spotted.”
“No, it just shines a path on the floor and the ground,” said Amber. “It’s like a trail with torches set up along either side.”
But Amber had never tried to find something that was unattainable before. The element they were looking for, Magic, was completely insubstantial. So when Amber tried her navigational spell to find the sixth element, the light from her horn seemed to explode. There was a flash of light the size of the castle itself, punctuated by a loud bang like a fire cracker. The six adventurers all had ringing ears and cloudy vision for over a minute.
“Did Twilight blow up?” asked Rainbow Dash, whose vision hadn’t come back yet.
“I don’t know what Twilight did,” Amber said quietly.
Then Rarity gasped. “The elements! They’ve shattered!”
The others squinted in the direction of the circle of elements only to see piles of dust settling at the hooves of…
“Nightmare Moon!”
“How dare you disrespect my beautiful night?!” bellowed the Mare in the Moon. “I didn’t spend a millennium trapped in the moon to give you all a gift and have you try to spoil it!”
“What did you do with the sixth element?!” Rainbow Dash demanded.
And, not even waiting for an answer, she charged at Nightmare Moon. But before she could strike, there was another flash of light. Not from Amber, but from Nightmare Moon.
The bright flash of light was followed by complete darkness.
“What- where am I?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“Where all all of us?” came Pinkie Pie’s voice.
Amber lit up her horn and felt panic consume her. She and her companions were in an enclosed, circular, rocky place. There was no doubt where Nightmare Moon had taken them.
“We’ve been imprisoned in the moon ourselves!” cried Amber.
Pinkie Pie immediately took a bite out of the wall. Her face contorted.
“Yuck! This stuff isn’t cheese!” she groaned, spitting chunks of gravel out.
“So how do we get outta here?” asked Applejack.
“I could try teleporting us to Ponyville,” said Amber, hoping with every cell in her body that it would work.
They huddled together and Amber tried the teleportation spell. But it didn’t work at all. They didn’t go anywhere. Amber began to tremble.
“How did this happen?!” she shrieked. “How did this go wrong?! Why were there only five?! I didn’t take forever to accept you all on as my friends! I did everything right!”
“Apparently not,” Rarity replied, shaking quite a bit herself. “And things were going so well, too.”
“No they weren’t! Everything was all wrong!” burst out Amber.
“I thought the forest wasn’t bad,” said Fluttershy.
“Wasn’t bad?! We never got held up by anything! There was no landslide, no manticores, no spooky trees, no weedy sea monsters, no Shadowbolts, no problems at all! Where were they?!”
“What are you talking about?!” demanded Applejack. “Just what were you expecting?”
“I was expecting trials and triumph, not a safe journey and a magical element shortage!”
Amber was falling to pieces. She was curled up in a ball crying her eyes out.
“Alright, calm down,” said Rarity.
“Calm down?! Are you crazy?! We failed! We’re stuck! What did I do?! I can’t believe this!”
“Hey, it wasn’t your fault,” Pinkie Pie said kindly.
“Yes it was! I…” Amber gulped. “I’m not Twilight Sparkle! I’m Amber Aldis!”
And it all came out so fast that they could barely keep up with her as she babbled about travelling in time and invading Twilight’s body.
“You mean you tried to take the real Twilight Sparkle’s place because you thought you could do better than her?!” exclaimed Rarity.
“You were just acting for us?” Fluttershy leered.
“You’re a fraud?!” snarled Rainbow Dash.
Amber couldn’t speak anymore. She just nodded and buried her head in her hooves.
“Well,” Rarity sniffed, “Thank you for letting us take the fall with you, you charlatan!”
“I don’t care if the real Twilight Sparkle was anti-social,” frowned Pinkie Pie. “At least she had Equestria’s best interests in mind. At least she took Nightmare Moon’s return seriously!”
“You’re right,” Amber sobbed. “I don’t understand why, but she did do it right the first time. How could I have left her paralysed on that cloud?”
Twilight was completely immobile.
“Help…”
Her breathing was deep and heavy, yet quiet.
“Please…”
It hurt to open her eyes and even more to speak.
“Help me…”
Even so, she constantly heaved a cry for help whenever she could summon enough strength.
“Can anypony… hear me…?”
“I can hear you!”
Twilight’s right eye shot open and when the pain subsided, there was Rainbow Dash flying up to the cloud she was marooned on.
“Holy jumping jockeys! What happened, Twilight?!”
Twilight shut her eye again and tried to raise her scratched hoof, but it only quivered feebly.
“I need… water…”
“Water? I’ll be right back,” said Rainbow Dash.
She took off and before Twilight could breathe, she came back with a small raincloud. Twilight gave one big effort and stuck her hoof out. Rainbow Dash grasped her raincloud and gave it a squeeze. Water shot out of the end and doused Twilight’s wound. Overwhelmed with refreshment, Twilight opened her eyes and stood up, taking a deep breath and sighing with great relief.
“I can’t thank you enough, Rainbow Dash.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rainbow smiled. “Me and my super hearing powers would never leave a princess hanging. So what happened?”
Twilight told her about Amber.
“She infected herself, too?!” Rainbow was dumbfounded. “How would that help her take your spot?!”
“She read about Dystopia going back in time and taking over Egg Banjo’s body to try and change the past and fend off the Venomodo,” Twilight told her. “But she didn’t know it was made up.”
“Made up?”
“I was too weak to tell her. That book she read was about myths from olden pony times. She thought it was my guide to Venomodos. But there was no pony called Dystopia. Starswirl the Bearded never asked for somepony to be a guinea pig. It was all a legend.”
“So what did that apple do to her?” asked Rainbow Dash.
Twilight looked very concerned. “Eating apples infected by Venomodos causes hallucinations. She fell out of the sky when she stepped off the cloud.”
Twilight and Rainbow Dash feared the worst as they flew down to the ground in search of the infected Amber Aldis. Before long, they found her. She was lying on the ground sobbing, but she was completely unharmed.
“How in Equestria did see survive that fall?” Twilight was amazed.
Rainbow Dash looked around. “She must’ve had a soft landing. Look over there. Fluffle Puff’s out sleep walking again.”
Twilight looked where Rainbow Dash was pointing and there was Fluffle Puff staggering around completely asleep.
Amber began to wail. “I’m so sorry! I was wrong! I kicked Twilight out of her body and tried to do what she did, and all I did was get us all stuck in the moon! I doomed Equestria! I’m so stupid! I couldn’t figure out how…!”
“Ugh! Can’t we shut her up, somehow?” asked Rainbow Dash. “What’s the cure?”
Twilight shook her head.
“There’s no cure?!”
“No, Rainbow,” Twilight sighed. “Egg Banjo and his friends couldn’t find one.”
Amber stopped crying for a second. “Did… did any of you just hear something?”
Rainbow and Twilight looked at her. Amber winced. It seemed that in her mind, somepony had snapped at her.
“I just thought I heard Twilight’s voice.”
Twilight blinked, and gestured to Rainbow Dash to keep quiet.
“Yeah…” Amber squeaked. “The real Twilight. Maybe it’s her ghost.”
She paused, looking around.
“Are you there, Twilight?”
Twilight knelt down to Amber.
“Yes, it’s me,” she said into Amber’s ear.
“It is!” Amber exclaimed. “Twilight’s ghost is here! Twilight, please, can you help us? I’m sorry I took control of your body. You can have it back if you want. I sure don’t want to be in it anymore. I’ll take being a ghost to being stuck in…”
“Calm down, Amber,” said Twilight. “You may have made a big mistake, but I won’t let you rot in there forever. I can help you, Amber. I can take you back to before you went back in time.”
“You can?!”
“Yes. I can take you back to where you came from,” Twilight said.
“She can help us!” Amber cried with delight. “She can fix everything!”
Amber began jumping gleefully. It was safe to assume that everypony in her head was doing the same.
“What are you going to do?” whispered Rainbow Dash. “You can’t use magic on her. She’s infected.”
“I’m just gonna try and make her hallucinate what we’re seeing right now,” Twilight replied quietly. “If I can make her think I’m transporting her back to Ponyville, maybe she’ll see this place as it is.”
Rainbow hoped she would. Twilight leaned back to Amber.
“OK, now close your eyes,” she said in Amber’s ear. “After you hear a bang, open your eyes. You’ll be back in Ponyville safe and sound.”
Amber shut her eyes tightly. Rainbow walked up to Amber’s other ear, Twilight counted to three, and they both blew into Amber’s ears causing her to hear a bang.
Amber took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She looked around.
“Twilight!” she exclaimed. “Rainbow!”
Amber leaped into the air full of happiness and relief.
“I’m back! I’m back!”
She turned to Twilight and bowed her head.
“Twilight- I mean, Princess Twilight. I want to apologise for what I did. I could have ruined Equestria’s future. Please, could you tell me how you found the sixth Element of Harmony? I promise, I won’t try that again. I just can’t figure out where I went wrong.”
“You mean after you poisoned a princess and…!”
“Stop it, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight hissed. “She means it. She knows she was wrong.”
Rainbow reluctantly subsided.
“You see Amber, the book on the elements said that a spark would make it appear and I tried to make a spark out of magic,” Twilight told Amber. “And it didn’t work and Nightmare Moon shattered the stone slabs. But when I heard the others coming and calling for me… when I realized I wasn’t on my own anymore… I felt a spark ignite inside me. And that’s what made the Element of Magic come to me.”
Amber looked away. “That’s why Princess Celestia chose you. You had to learn about friendship the hard way to create a spark and bring back the missing element.”
“Look at me, Amber Aldis,” said Twilight.
Amber, more ashamed than worried about what Twilight might do to her, looked the princess in the face.
“You’re still infected,” Twilight told her bluntly. “You wanted to focus more on your magical abilities than your flying abilities, but if you use magic now, you’ll… you’ll…”
Amber shook and began to tear up again.
“I suppose you punished yourself,” Twilight added.
“Wait, you mean you’re not gonna throw her in prison?” asked Rainbow Dash.
“Hey, didn’t you hear her?” Twilight chuckled. “She already was imprisoned in the moon. Now she’s trapped in a magic-free life. I don’t think she should go to prison.”
Amber smiled weakly. “You’re too kind, Twilight.”
“I do have a request, though,” said Twilight.
The following morning, Princess Celestia received a letter from Ponyville.
“Dear Princess Celestia,
How right you were when you said Princess Twilight still has a lot to learn and to teach others. And last night, a very valuable lesson was learned about learning lessons. It doesn’t matter when you learn something important, whether you figure it out a long time ago or had to be taught by somepony wiser than you. Knowing more about something than somepony else doesn’t make you better than them. It doesn’t matter when you learn an important lesson, just as long as it’s not too late.
Your faithful subjects,
Twilight Sparkle and Amber Aldis.”
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The plan doesn't work.
oh, god, that OC.
5293212
What? You don't like super bland alicorn OC's that have a very weak backstory connection to one of mane 6? With maybe some sort plan to take her place during the Summer Sun Celebtraion, which would make her the element of Magic instead of Twilight and the friend of the other mane 5?
Coz...That's my kind of fic!
5293298 The plan doesn't work.
5293352 I can't read that...my IPad doesn't support that feature, it's just black lines for me.
5293357 OK. The plan doesn't work. Amber Aldis more or less stabs herself in the hoof with her plan.
5293359 Even knowing that I'm still hesitant to read this, Alicorn OC's tend to be hated beyond belief by everyone, hnce the high dislike ratio. Why couldn't she just be a unicorn?
5293368 Because storywise, she sees no difference between herself and Twilight Sparkle upon reuniting with her, and comes to the conclusion that she could easily have had more success as Celestia's protégé if she had been.
This story's a year old, so I guess spoilers don't matter.
5293382 And just how did she become an alicorn? Without an explanation as to why she is actually an alicorn, the stpry isn't going to take off without recieving flak on the runway.
5293397 Well you know how people say that if the Cakes had had one baby instead of two, it would have been an alicorn? The same goes for Amber Aldis. If she'd been a twin, she'd be either a unicorn or a pegasus.
This is one of the worst things i have ever read.
5293417 I have never heard of that theory ever being stated. At all.
5293818 Pity. It was one of the first conversations I came across after I first saw Baby Cakes.
Sadly, I couldn't tell you where. I've since forgotten.
Wow, much dislike over OCs, and then people expect not to be called a hypocrite when they defend Fallout: Equestria's characters. really liked this, going to read the rest of yours now, expect multiple comments.
5297732 Cheers, dude. I won't pretend I wasn't discouraged by yesterday's events.
5293417
No. You're actually the first person I've seen to ever say that one cake baby could have been an alicorn. A hermaphrodite would have been more likely.
Adventure packed and and awesome story! Faved!
5352797
What about a hermaphrodite alicorn? ;)