The Neon Skulls

by FS713

Story Outline

So the story goes like this: Twilight wakes up in a dark, snowy patch of forest she does not recognize and nearly freezes to death, before being rescued by a mysterious hooded dark figure with a glowing, green skull mask. Said figure later turns out to be Rainbow Dash, but while Twilight recognizes Rainbow, the same is not true the other way around. She bring Twilight to their "base" (an old metal warehouse coated with graffiti) where she is introduced to the other Skulls; most notably including alt-universe versions of Scootaloo, Vinyl Scratch, Double Diamond, and I was also planning to include Night Glider, Cloudchaser, and that Pony with the helicopter from Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 as their transporter, using her helicopter to access the tops of mountains like in the SSX games. (except it would have been, like, a real metal helicopter like in the games and not the tiny pink one she had in the show). The Skulls want to train Twilight in the ways of the snowboard and make her a part of the team, while Twilight just wants to figure out how she got here and how to get back. The ultimate goal of the Skulls at the moment Twilight finds them is to conquer the biggest, most dangerous mountain in the reigon; Tirek's Peak.

Vinyl starts out not liking Twilight at all and severely doubting her position in the crew at first but would eventually warm up to her as Twilight became more and more used to being with the team and her boarding skills grow better and better.

One night, after a major fight with Vinyl where her abilities are questioned, Twilight feels a sudden rush of pride and decides to prove her wrong. While all the Skulls are asleep, Twilight take some of their gear and flies up to to top of a mountain, determined to conquer it. Scootaloo notices Twilight storming out with stolen gear, however, and alerts Rainbow Dash, who laments that it might be too late.

However, through a combination of skills she'd picked up in her brief time with the Skulls, magic, incorporating flight abilities she's learned from "real" Dash, and sheer luck, Twilight indeed makes it down the mountain mostly unharmed. With this, Skull-verse Rainbow decides Twilight has proven herself, makes her a Skull bandana of her own, and inducts her as an official member of the gang. Afterwards, Twi and Vinyl have an extended heart-to-heart that leads to them putting their rivalry behind them.

In the mean time, Twilight begins to notice some... strange magical occurrences. Whenever they fly or ride near the forest Twilight woke up in at the start of the fic, Twilight feels... a disturbance in the force, let's say. Something deeply, cosmically off that she can't quite identify. As the story goes on, strange events begin to occur, such as Rainbow seemingly transporting while the gang is on a ride and ends up in a dark ice cave and the other Skulls have to go in and rescue her. Or things showing up where they shouldn't be, wormholes, and random flashes of magical energy tripping Ponies up, only getting worse and worse. Twilight eventually deducts that this must be a cause of her presence in the wrong timeline messing things up, and explains how Multiverse Theory works and how her moving from one timeline to another caused a tear in the space-time continuum that is only growing, explaining the oddities and disturbances, using [the hologram spell she used in Bats!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1WE8zKiz3U).

From here until the ending is where things get a bit murky in terms of how much I had planned out. The basics are a rival gang to the Skulls makes themselves known, led by another member of the Mane 6 (never quite decided on who it should be), there's violence between them, Twilight concludes how to make a portal back to her own timeline and simultaneously shut the tear in the continuum, while at the same time she grows more and more attached to the Skulls both spending more time boarding and hanging out with them and in their mutual hatred of that rival gang, and after they manage to open the portal the leader of that gang blocks it of, challenging Twilight to a one-on-one race down Tirek's Peak itself, magical disturbances and all, and she can only go back if she wins.

They race, she wins, and the story ends in an extended goodbye scene between Twi and the Skulls in front of the portal. They go on about how much they're going to miss each other, Scootaloo sadly asks "will we ever see you again?" and Twilight answers "I don't think so". Twilight offers her skull mask back to Rainbow, but Rainbow insists she keep it. No matter what the dimension, Twilight's a part of the team, it's hers. And so, with one last goodbye, Twilight steps back through the portal and back to her home.

And there was going to be an epilogue scene where Twilight wakes up in her warm bed in her castle - a parallel of her waking up in the cold snow at the very start of the fic - the day after Hearth's Warming. It's snowing outside, and sure enough, Rainbow, Vinyl, Scootaloo, and Double Diamond show up outside the castle inviting Twilight to go snowboarding with them, down the very same mountain Skulls-verse Rainbow dragged Twilight down in Chapter 1. Twilight agrees, and decides to don her skull bandana on the ride. When she gets outside, Rainbow comments something like "Whoa! Neat mask, where'd you get it?" and Twi comments something like "oh, from a friend". They all go out snowboarding and the fic ends.

Comments

[Cipher800]

This seems interesting.