This is a Petriculture cycle AU taking place 5 months after Pandelirium. In this AU Discord did turn the CMC into stone to make them draconequus’s, and keep them safe while he shook things up. But is using the partially honest cover story that he did it to keep the CMC safe from the fallout from Trixie’s plans.

This AU follows my fanon that the Alicorn Amulet was created by King Sombra to amplify his powers and held a shard of his soul so that if he failed in defeating the princesses, it would call out others and possess them. Thus making them his avatar so even if he should fail he’d get a second chance at world domination. Luna’s fear chapter pt.1 in Journeys for more head canon info].

In this AU Discord Penumbra forgives Discord and he willingly gives her power over him, and slowly works on getting her powers back. Being able to be called into her head at any moment, or his powers revoked. It took 5 months for him to go through the training needed to use his powers to help others, and work through the damage that Celestia caused by cutting him out of her life then imprisoning him in stone. All alone for a thousand years.

Twilight and Pinkie Pie are still Princesses, but they live most of their time in Ponyville. Twilight has royal domain over historical events, magic, and scientific research and development. While Pinkie Pie has royal domain over Pony Relations (ponified HR), and moral support of the Equestrian people. But they have enough free time to have almost normal lives outside of their occasional set duties.

The last bit of AU here is that it borrows elements from Making Friends, in that Scootaloo is an imaginary friend that Sweetie Belle made. But in this AU, Sweets and Scootaloo went on many different types of adventures. From DnD, to Larping, all the way to just making random events and playing in that world of make believe. It was during a LARP campaign that they were going after Angle Bunny,the evil Dragon King, when the dashing rogue, Scootaloo distracted the amazing wizard Sweetie Belle during a spell. The altered spell hit Scootaloo and released her from being imaginary to being real.

Also the reason Scootaloo can glide, but not fly, is because while she was based, loosely after Rainbow Dash, Sweetie Belle didn’t know what flying would be like so never gave Scootaloo that ability. Well that’s all about this AU. I hope y’all enjoy it, and if enough people ask I’ll even make a sequel to this after Golden Wings and it’s sequels.

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Permission to use Petriculture by Kwakerjack. Scootaloo Imaginary Friend idea permission granted by arcum42.