Author's Note

I DON'T KNOW HOW To RHYME I CAN'T WRITE FOR ZECORAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Part 10: Chaotic Explaination

A calm zebra named Zecora slowly raised a stone cup to her lips. She sipped the herbal tea that it contained, humming to herself innocently. She was at peace with nature in the middle of the everfree forest, sitting right outside her hut. Sadly, her peace did not go for long as it was soon interrupted by the ground shaking lightly under her hooves. She was almost thrown off-balance by surprise alone, causing her to quickly set down her mug of tea onto a nearby wooden stool and get herself ready for whatever was coming.

She heard another four loud shaky steps slowly approach her. Zecora began to panic, she knew that there were many dangerous animals in the Everfree Forest, but she had never heard the steps of something like this. She backed up towards the door of her hut, ready to escape.

Silence fell around her, making her feel tense.
"Zecora?"
It was the sudden loud whisper of her name that threw her off. However, Zecora couldn't see where the voice came from.

"I can not see a trace," Zecora called out as her eyes darted between the cracks in the dark trees "stranger, please show a hoof, or a face!"

"I'm up here, Zecora," the mare's voice boomed from above.

Zecora's ears and brows raised in confusion, slowly looking up. There, up in the thick tufts of the trees, lay an immense amount of purple hair with a thin cyan streak in the shape of a large schoolhouse slide. Two pink ears twitched on either side of the head of hair, the thick trees working only too well to hide the rest of the stranger's body. Zecora squinted her eyes up at the moving technocolored hair and ears that poked out of the treeline above her.

"Is this a creature that is new? Do I, in fact, know you?" Zecora asked cautiously. The large mass above shook the ground lightly with a cute little giggle.

"Oh Zecora, it's me, Starlight. I just wanted to make sure you don't get startled. I'm going to come closer."

Zecora was quite confused. She soon saw the large purple mass of hair rise up from behind the trees, revealing the rest of Starlight's face, followed by her long equestrian neck, body and legs, which easily towered over the forest trees. Zecora was frightened, her head having to angle itself at an alarmingly high angle to see Starlight's face. Starlight had become so large, that to any normal pony from the ground, her pink legs and body seemed to bend inwards as they went higher, like a skyscraper.

A massive pink hoof rose from behind the treeline, slowly pressing down and destroying a large group of trees like twigs, giving plenty of time for the little critters to escape from the unfortunate destruction. When it eventually landed safely, Zecora began to register the sheer size and scale of the situation - Her own hut could barely compete in size next to Starlight's hoof alone.

Zecora stared up in awe at Starlight's massive height, speechless. Starlight safely levitated her friends down in front of Zecora's hut with her magic. Twilight was quick to snap Zecora out of her trance.

"Zecora we NEED your help," Twilight cried out in alarm while shaking Zecora violently, "our friend has become really big and we don't know how to change her back!" Twilight bounced around Zecora while flailing her arms and wings haphazardly.

"That is... quite... clear..." Zecora said between breaths, still staggering at Starlight's size, "but.. there is no need to worry, for the solution must be near." Zecora walked back to her mug of tea from the nearby wooden stool, taking a seat again while looking up at Starlight's massive face looming over her. "It will help me to know about your past, how did this start, and how long did this last?"

Starlight thought for a moment and took a careful seat onto a large pack of trees below her, crushing them unintentionally underneath her rump. "Hmmm," she thought, "it all started when I extracted the pure essence of magic from, like, a few poison joke plants..."

"THREE HUNDRED poison joke plants!" Twilight interrupted loudly. "What where you thinking?!" Twilight swooped up in front of Starlight's nose, flapping her wings like an angry little bee, "you could've hurt yourself... or somepony!"

Starlight felt a little annoyed, but she didn't dare get upset with Twilight. "Listen, Twilight, I'm fine, really. You need to... what's that word again, Rainbow? Chillax?"

Rainbow Dash, who had been hovering silently next to Starlight's massive hoof, was about to respond positively until she saw Twilight focusing on her with daggers in her eyes. "Yeaah... I'm not gonna say anything."

Zecora laughed to herself and gently asked them to focus. "Ponies, please, do not fall into a side-track, we must focus on restoring Starlight's original size back." The ponies silenced, and listened to Zecora speak again. "Now I suspect that this poison joke has a magical defect, similiar to Discord's chaotic effect." She held up her mug, showing the round hole on top to the others while pointing at it with her hoof as she continued. "The magic of Poison Joke does not lie within the bounds of reality, instead it uses magic of the... chaotic, speciality."

"So..." Twilight asked calmly, "do you think Discord could revert this spell?"

Zecora shrugged her shoulders lightly. "I do not know, I can not lie, but it would not hurt to try." Twilight pressed her lips tightly while coming up with a plan and then turned to the others.

"Alright, friends," Twilight began, "We've got to find Discord and ask for his help. When we're done with that we've got another problem to deal with..." She stared off at the distraught white unicorn, Rarity, huddled up against Starlight's roof in an almost catatonic state.

Zecora was curious. "What is wrong with her? Was she attacked by a horrific bear?"

"Not exactly," Twilight responded. "Her boutique in ponyville did. That terrible usra major tore the whole roof off and would have destroyed the rest of the building if Starlight hadn't stepped in and saved Ponyville."

"Well..." Starlight said, blushing a bit while carefully rubbing her hoof near the others below her, "it kind of attacked us because I was pretending to be an ursa minor for Trixie's show... so I kind of caused it to begin with..."

"Let's point hooves later, gals," Applejack interruped, "right now we need to find that discord fellow!"

The others silently agreed, but Fluttershy decided to speak up. "But where are we possibly going to find Discord?"

The other ponies stared at her slowly. Fluttershy felt nervous, and, looking up, even saw the same raised-eyebrow look on Starlight's face towering above her making her anxiety increase tenfold. "Wh-Why is everypony looking at me like that?"

Rainbow Dash face-hooofed, jumping next to Fluttershy abruptly. "You're like the only pony Discord actually cares about! I'm sure if you just call out for him loud enough he'l appear out of thin air!" The others nodded silently, and Twilight stepped forward to face Fluttershy.

"Fluttershy, we really do need Discord's help this time, and you might be the only pony who can grab his attention. We need you to call out for him as loudly as you're... comfortable with." Twilight gave an encouraging smile and patted Fluttershy's head. "We know you can do it, Fluttershy, just give him a shout."

"Oh... Okay... I'll try.." Fluttershy whispered doubtfully. She raised her head up, feeling more and more anxious with her friends staring desperately at her. She drew a deep breath, and...

"D-Discord...-"

It was an embarassingly low whisper. The others sighed, Rainbow Dash groaning the loudest of them all. "Come on, Fluttershy, I know you can do better than that!"

"Y-You're all putting me on the s-spot!" Fluttershy squeaked. The pressure was too much and she collapsed into a protective ball, huddling her own hooves and gave out a tiny scared yelp.

As soon as the tiny sad squeak vibrated out of Fluttershy's mouth, a dark blue and purple orb appeared in an instant and the troublesome draconequus landed protectively in front of the cowering terrified yellow pegasus. Discord stood in a tall angry posture facing the rest of the ponies. "If this is some kind of sick joke to summon me by hurting Fluttershy's feelings, then I'll have you know that I'm not amused in the slightest. I may be the spirit of Chaos but there are some lines that shouldn't be crossed." Discord was looming over the other ponies by just a few feet, he hadn't noticed Starlight towering over them all due to her sheer size.

"Cut it out, Discord, this is important! We need your help!" Twilight exclaimed. Twilight began flapping her wings nervously as she looked up at the tall chaotic spirit, a nervous tick she had developed when she wasn't in control of a situation.

Discord still appeared to be annoyed. "I was in the middle of carefully turning each of Celestia's in-door flower-pots into different flavors of cheese, just to see how long it takes for her to notice, and mid-way I end up hearing Fluttershy getting distressed and I've come here to find everypony pitting against her for whatever reason... And then you ask ME for help? What kind of friends are you, honestly?"

Starlight was getting bored of the pointless blabbering happening near her massive hoof and decided to step in, metaphorically. "Discord. Just stop and look up for a second, will you?"

"Starlight?" Discord asked. He looked forward, and couldn't see Starlight. "Wait, wasn't that Starlight I just heard?" He looked left, there was no one. He looked right, no other pony was there... So then he looked up.

Discord felt his grey heart sink as he began to take in the sight. The strange pink wall behind the ponies below him, that he hadn't paid attention to before, was actually a giant hoof. He began to crack his long windy neck just to keep following along the massive mass of pony standing in front of him. He eventually looked up high enough to see Starlight's cute but massive face staring back down at him from way up high in the sky.

Feeling a wave of disbelief, Discord simply plucked out his yellow eyeballs and gave them a very tough scrubbing and then plopped them back into his eyesockets, as if they were glasses. "Starlight...?" He gulped, "is it just me, or do you look a bit different than usual? Have you gained weight?"

"You could say that." Starlight chuckled from far away. "It's a long story, but uh, I was hoping you could help me get back to normal."

"Now now, don't be so hasty, my dear. I'll take a look." Discord said quickly. He flapped his wings and flew upwards to survey the absolute size of this unicorn. He could see that there was a blue pony who had been laying on Starlight's snout this whole time, but he didn't take much notice of Trixie. From Glimmer's perspective, he looked a little like a tiny flying chameleon. She bit her lip to contain her inner giggle.

Meanwhile Discord was investigating the situation much more seriously now. He tugged at his fluffy white beard and appeared to be moving his claws around as if touching some kind of magic aura that the others couldn't see.

The others were watching him anxiously from below. Fluttershy, who had recovered from her tiny breakdown, was watching him intently. "You know, I don't think I've seen Discord look so serious before." Fluttershy commented softly. "I like seeing this side of him. He really does care for us sometimes." She couldn't see it, but the other ponies rolled their eyes at the comment, especially Twilight, but they respectfully said nothing.

"Alright, well, this is an interesting and rare case of something being completely out of my control," Discord announced while slowly hovering down to the other ponies below. Starlight, who was curious to hear her 'diagnosis' kneeled down and hung her head just a few feet away from the heads of the ponies below, casting a big shadow on them and covering their view from above.

Discord leaned on Twilight, to her dismay, and pulled out a notebook and a pen, along with a pair of reading glasses, from behind Twilight's ear randomly. He then sat down comfortably on a nearby rock, writing something down. "It's very complicated, and as much as I hate being straightforward I'll let it slide just this once and put it in simple terms for you lot."

The other ponies leaned in curiously. Discord flapped through his notebook a few times and then began to explain. "I've detected that our friend Starlight here has an overdose of chaotic magic, one that is inherent to Poison Joke. It's a special kind of chaotic magic because it follows a very strict set of rules that allow it to break pretty much any other rule of magic or even... ugh... physics, but only in a very specific way. Unfortunately this means it's powerful enough to overrule even my fantastic abilities. As for Poison Joke itself, it's magic can only cause a physical effect that is ironic to the existence of the victim. In Fluttershy's case, it would be a ridiculously deep voice, because she's shy and doesn't want to be heard, the poor thing. That annoying Pink one that talks a lot..."
"Hey, I heard that!"
"...I imagine she'd get her tongue twisted in some kind of way so she can't speak. It's actually quite specific to the pony's personality and current inner troubles. Now... in Starlight's case, it's quite interesting. From what I heard about her villanous misadventures, she's become afraid of leading anything. She's afraid of becoming a leader because she's afraid that she'l regress into mistreating ponies with her authority. She wants to be a suppportive kind of pony, not a leading one, and she only leads when it's absolutely neccessary. So my guess is that the poison joke's specific effect on Starlight is to make her bigger and stand out more, to be more powerful, just like a leader, for the sole reason that she doesn't want to stand out and that she doesn't want to overpower everypony. Funny thing is, if this happened before she was turned into a goodie goodie by Twilight, the effect would've been the opposite. She would be as small as a cute little plush puppet because back then she wanted to be powerful, so she gets the opposite. Quite facinatingly sad, isn't it?"

The ponies nodded slowly as they processed everything Discord had said, except for Twilight, who understood it immediately, her constant thirst for knowledge making her forget her feud with Discord and instead show legitimate interest in Discord's knowledge. Somehow, it made her respect him more. "Wait," Twilight bounced up suddenly, "so that must explain-"

"The stacked effect of three hundred poison joke plants?" Discord interrupted. "Yes, exactly. I predict she only would've become two feet taller with normal contact with the plant, since effects normally don't stack. Unless.." Discord looked up at Starlight's huge face with a suspicious rise of his eyebrow. "...you forced the magic out of each plant and carelessly absorbed it, didn't you, you silly power-hungry pony?"

Starlight gulped, blushing very hard above them. Discord was sort of right, it was because of Starlight's careless handling of the poison joke plants that got her into this mess. "W-Well.. maybe, but i'm not a power hungry pony! If I was I'd probably would've become tiny instead, like you said!"

"Fine, fine, don't get your giant mane in a twist, Ms Glimmer," Discord huffed, "Bottom of the line is, I can't really help you at all, but I really do love the irony. A unicorn, with already considerably strong magic, not wanting to stand out and definately not wanting to lead with brute power, and then she ends up as big as fifty ponies stacked on each other and has no other choice but to take the initiative of a gentle giant leader and heroine! It's just hillarious! Oh I could cry laughing for days on the irony alone, let alone the absurd magnitude! Oh hoh ho!" Discord wiped a laughing tear from his eye, which the tear itself appeared to have it's own mouth and was laughing tears of it's own, which flew off Discord's face and splashed into the ground.

Starlight's face frowned with increasing sadness as she realized that she might stay like this forever. "B-But.. I don't want to be huge... Discord, please! Can't you make me a bit smaller?" Starlight's lips began to wobble as her hope started to quickly run thin.

"No can do, Starlight." Discord huffed, folding his arms together in defeat. "I just don't have any authorization over the chaotic plants department. Literally nopony does. If it's any consolation to you, poison joke usually wears off in about three weeks, so multiply that by the amount of poison joke and you've got a good seventeen years before the spell wears off. Ten years if you spend all the years bathing in a literal sea of that poison joke antidote remedy stuff Ms Stripey here makes."

Starlight's eye twitched a bit in slight disbelief and mounting sadness. "S... S... Seventeen years..?"

Discord turned to face Twilight below her. "There, I told you everything I know, can I get back to my Canterlot cheddar extravaganza at the castle now? I have a lot of flowers to cheese-inate and I don't want to miss Celestia's cheesy reaction for even a second."

Twilight bit her lip, pointing upwards with her hoof. Discord looked confused, noticing the rest of the mane six backing up away from him and seeking shelter under Zecora's hut, along with Zecora. Discord looked up slowly and before he could turn his neck all the way up, a big heavy five-foot-long droplet of water smacked him right in the face. "What in Equestria just hit me? Wait... Oh no..."

It was too late. Before Discord could react, a terribly sad and loud wailing came from above, quickly joined by extremely dense rain pouring down on the area. Starlight was crying. Discord shook his face from the falling tears and quickly and comically took out a multicolored umbrella out from his white beard, cowering under it and feeling massive splashes splosh against the umbrella and spreading out around him like a waterfall. "Jeez, ease it up with the waterworks, lady!" he yelled. He was barely heard over the hopeless crying of the two hundred foot tall unicorn. Twilight and the others watched carefully below, feeling sympathetic for Starlight. She really was going through a lot right now.

Trixie, who had been taking extremely comfy refuge on the tip of Starlight's nose this whole time, decided to step in. "Awww, don't cry, Glimmy! Trixie thinks Starlight is three hundred times more awesome at this size, while just as gentle and kind as before!"

Starlight's crying slowed down quickly after hearing this. She rubbed her wet snout with her forearm, crossing her sad wet eyes to look at her best tiny friend standing supportively on top of her muzzle. "R-Really? I thought I was causing much more trouble than I'm worth... I was so worried about what Twilight would think, and now she knows that I've super duper messed up, like, really bad!"

Starlight quickly heard Twilight speak up from below. "Starlight, don't be too hard on yourself. You didn't know this was going to happen, it's not really your fault. We just have to be more careful and pay more attention so that we'll all stay safe and happy. That's what's really important. I'm just glad the effects aren't permanent or lethal." Twilight flew up into the air, taking thirty seconds to rise up in front of Starlight's nose. "I assure you that I'm not upset with you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay, that's all. A bit shocked and surprised, you know?."

Starlight sniffed and looked at the itsy bitsy important princess flapping her tiny wings between her eyes. "Oh, Twilght, I was so worried you were going to hate me for messing up. I'm glad to hear you say that, I really am."

"That's what friends are for, Starlight," Twlight announced proudly, "to look out for each other- Eep!"

Twilight quickly found herself surrounded by Starlight's hoof and gently pressed against her chin, like a very minimal hug. Initially bewildered, Twilight quickly felt comfortable against the giant pink fur of Starlight and happily hugged her back. "And it's still good to hear it isn't permanent. Just stay away from poison joke and you'l be fine." Twilight looked over Starlight's massive hoof and called out below. "Thanks for the info Discord, I really appreciate-..." She'd then noticed that Discord had already left. "Huh. Rude. Anyway..."

Twilight disengaged herself from Starlight's massive yet gentle hug, and flapped with her own wing power again around her. "Now that this is cleared, it means we'll just have to deal with Starlight being literally bigger than a town. Besides, we have another ordeal to worry about... We have to help fix Rarity's boutique!"

"I'm so glad somepony remembered about my boutique!" Rarity whined from below, "It's all I've been thinking about right now! Erm, I mean, besides trying to find out how to help Starlight, of course."

Twilight giggled at Rarity's shy honesty. "Well, let's head back to Ponyville. I suppose we've learnt enough here. Come on girls, and Spike, we have a shop to fix!"

"Trrrixie will simply continue to enjoy the view from here," Trixie announced to nobody in particular, as she sat extremely snug and cozy between the massive unicorn's eyes, on the bridge of her nose. She kicked both her feet back and lazily rested her head back against Starlight. "Yes, onwards! We must again ride on the great Starlight Friendship Express!"

Starlight giggled while gently levitating Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack and Spike onto her back and then spoke to Zecora. "Thanks for everything Zecora, you can continue with what you were doing now, I didn't mean to interrupt." Zecora bid them farewell and good luck. With Twilight now leading the way, flying carefully and closely to Starlight's face for close company, they all set off again back to Ponyville to start working on the boutique.