Size Up Starlight

Starlight slowly and carefully arrived near Ponyville by the afternoon. It had been a wild morning, so she decided to lay on the ground next to the boutique just outside of town to rest, while also allowing her friends to safely slide down her mane down onto the ground. Pinkie Pie found it extremely fun, while Fluttershy on the other hand didn't dare slide down at such speed and simply used her wings to gently hover down instead. The group huddled around the lower-half remains of the Boutique, surveying the damage. The roof of the beautiful building had been swiped off entirely, leaving a wobbling weak flight of stairs leading to nowhere. The upper half of the building had been smashed onto a tree next to the boutique, with wooden planks and white pieces of stone garbled into a compressed and unrecognisable mess. Thankfully, the rest of the boutique was unharmed, but Rarity appeared to be worrying about something else.

"Wait!" Rarity exclaimed, "Sweetie Belle was supposed to staying here today... oh dear!" Rarity jumped towards the broken building in horror. "Sweetie Belle, are you in there?!" She was about to run into the building but Rainbow Dash and Applejack were quick to hold her back.

"Hold on there, sugarcube!" Applejack warned, "we don't know if it's safe to go in yet, we don't want it collapsin' on yuh pretty face now!" Rarity sat on the floor, almost ready to tear up. She was about to explode into tears until she heard a squeaky little voice call out from behind the tree.

"I'm over here, Rarity!" the little filly's voice called out. Sweetie Belle, Rarity's little white sister, slowly revealed herself from behind the large oak tree, thankfully unharmed, but visibly shocked. She ran up to Rarity's arms, hugging her in distress.

"Oh I'm so glad you're safe, Sweetie Belle, you poor thing..." Rarity said, rubbing Sweetie's toothpaste-like mane calmly. "Are you okay? Were you inside when that evil Ursa struck?"

Sweetie Belle nodded slowly, "Yes I'm okay... I was playing in my room, drawing stuff, when I heard and felt some really loud shaking, so I looked outside and saw that huge thing walking right towards our home! So I ran outside and I hid behind this tree and I didn't dare move until you guys came!" Sweetie's heart was clearly still racing from the incident, and she quickly buried her face into Rarity's chest in fear while mumbling.

"Oh you poor thing!" Rarity exclaimed sadly, petting Sweetie on the head. "You're traumatized! Well, it was a very smart thing that you left the house, Sweetie!"

"That's very true, Rarity" Twilight added softly as she walked up beside them, kneeling down to Sweetie Belle's level to calm her further. "That Ursa Major was probably attracted by the colourful paint of the Boutique, so it was very wise for you to hide behind a dark tree."

"Yeah!" Rainbow Dash added in while hovering near them, "running out there and hiding for cover was actually really brave of you, well done Sweetie Belle!"

"Great going, Sweetie Belle!" Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Applejack cheered. Sweetie Belle, who had been silently sobbing on Rarity, slowly looked up and gave a sad but uplifted smile. "Really? I did good?"

"Absolutely, you can really take care of yourself, Sweetie! You thought fast and acted quickly in the horrible face of danger!" Rarity complimented while raising her hoof dramatically. She gave a gentle nudge on top of Sweetie's head, making Sweetie giggle a bit. "I'm so glad you're okay!"

Sweetie Belle had been so shocked from the Ursa Major attack that she hadn't even noticed the two hundred foot unicorn just laying casually next to them until the gentle giantess spoke up. "I'm glad to hear you're okay, Sweetie." Starlight said softly. "I'm sorry for the trouble."

Sweetie Belle looked to her right towards Starlight and then froze in her place. When she was hiding behind the tree, she hadn't seen Starlight or how she heroically got rid of the Ursa Major. She shivered, leaping behind Rarity for protection. "Aaah! A monster!"

Rarity gently nudged the back of Sweetie's head. "Don't be so rude, Sweetie Belle, that's Starlight! She's just... ummm... big, now. She saved us from the Ursa Major, you know."

Sweetie Belle couldn't believe her eyes. "Wow! Really?" She bounced excitedly towards Starlight's face, which was resting on the ground. "You're so huge, you've got Trixie just sitting on your nose! And.. and you managed to fight an Ursa Major?? Wow! That's amazing! I gotta tell my friends about this!" Sweetie Belle hopped around in ecstatic circles.

To Starlight, Sweetie Belle appeared like a tiny, adorable white flea that was hopping everywhere. It made Starlight giggle as she lay belly-down in front of them. "Oh, it was nothing, really. I just did what I had to do."

"Nothing?!" Sweetie squeaked loudly, "That wasn't a nothing! That was a huge SOMETHING!" She bounced against Starlight's cheek, hugging her fur tightly. "Thank you thank you thank you sooooo much for saving us!"

Starlight blushed. "First I saved Equestria from a hostile changeling takeover, and now I save Ponyville from a raging Ursa Major. I guess I am a... something."

Pinkie Pie enjoyed seeing Sweetie Belle get so excited. "Hey Glim, maybe this won't be so bad! You're like a real superhero now, Starlight! The Super-Starlight of Ponyville, woo! I bet the other ponies would love to know that they have a massive friend to look over them! Not to mention how comfy you are!"

Starlight blushed, especially from the last comment. She noticed that as time went on, she enjoyed the physical interaction of other ponies more and more. The fact that Trixie was still lazily laying comfortably on her nose supported this theory. Twilight, however, thought otherwise. "Pinkie Pie, that's inappropriate! She's not a funfair ride, she's our friend and we should be treating her as one."

"Naaaah, she loves it, totes can see it." Pinkie retorted with a sly grin.

"No, she doesn't," Twilight insisted, "no-pony wants to become a living funfair ride, and you're embarrassing her!"

"Nuh-uh!" Pinkie Pie replied, now with a slight hint of annoyance. "She totes said so, I ain't lying!"

"You are!" Twilight snapped.

"Could you two stop arguin' and focus on the matter at hand?" Applejack interrupted, moving between the arguing ponies. "We got a buildin' to start re-buildin and it ain't gonna be fixin' itself."

Twilight groaned. "Ugh, fine, we'l discuss that later. What are we going to do about this house? It's smashed to bits!"

"Maybe we could get Hard Hat and the Ponyville Construction Company to rebuild it?" suggested Fluttershy.

"The price would be through the roof," Rarity said with disgust, "especially with how you treated him last time, Fluttershy."

"Oh." Fluttershy whispered to herself. She had almost forgotten the time when she had problems with Hard Hat's opinions on what her animal sanctuary should look like, but that's another story.

The group pondered for a good while until Trixie, of all ponies, spoke up.

"Trixie has barely been paying attention to this boring conversation, but like, Starlight accidentally broke Trixie's performing wagon when she became fifty foot tall, and she used her crazy inflated magic to fix it, so she can probably fix this easily, just saying." Trixie finished speaking and laid back against Starlight's nose, lazily stretching her legs and arms sleepily.

The ponies blinked in a dumbfounded way. Even Starlight hadn't thought of it and was legitimately surprised that Trixie of all ponies would bring up a good idea.

"Oh yeah, her magic has become a lot stronger," Twilight noted while rubbing her chin, "maybe it's somehow scaled with her size.... and she's quite a powerful unicorn at that, so maybe fixing this house would be like putting together a doll house for her!"

"That's exactly what I said..." Starlight whispered to herself. "Okay then. I'll try." She slowly lifted herself off the ground, standing up high above Ponyville, out-sizing even the town hall in the middle of town. The unusual high angle made her feel slightly dizzy, reminding her of how she lost consciousness in her dream from viewing things from far too high. She could easily see the entire town from this angle, every tiny nook and cranny, every paved street and triangular hay rooftop of every building. She also noticed that most of Ponyville's population had stopped to watch her in awe of her immense size. Thankfully it was already clear that they weren't afraid of her, but the attention creeped up on Starlight's mind, making her feel very exposed. Becoming nervous, she gently lowered herself back down to level her face with the Boutique's remains instead. She focused very hard on it, trying to re-imagine how it's parts should be re-assembled back together from their broken remains.

"Don't mind the tiny interior details, dear," Rarity called out to her, not wanting to put too much pressure on the poor giant unicorn, "just focus on fixing the structure." Starlight pressed her eyebrows thoughtfully, letting her bright aqua magic flow through her massive horn and begin levitating the rubble hanging on the oak tree. Piece by piece she put each block and broken piece together, like a little unicorn filly playing with little toy bricks, but she was working hard to fuse each section into each other. The other ponies watched in amazement as the roof of the boutique slowly began to take shape, it's windows visibly holding together securely around the previously mangled structure. Starlight's tongue extruded from between her lips as she concentrated her magic delicately to re-create an almost exact replica of the roof's previous shape, with some slight creative liberty, of course.

The final statues of two ponies, which were thankfully unharmed, were moulded into place on each side of the roof, slid into the fancy winding supporting beams of the building, and the magic subsided as it was finally finished. Starlight sighed in relief and looked down at her friends with a gentle triumphant smile.

"Do you like it?" She asked her friends below. They looked up at her with even more amazement than before, even Applejack's jaw dropped. It looked almost exactly like it had prior.

"Do I like it??" Rarity exclaimed excitedly, "I LOVE it! It's perfect! You even fixed up some of the scratched frames that were there before! You mended it quite beautifully, it's like it was never smashed by that awful brute!" Rarity was so happy she quickly tip-toed on her hooves with a childish gleeful squee. "This means I don't have to pay for repairs!" Rarity bounced towards Starlight's gicantic pink hoof and hugged it with her arms spread wide. "Oh thank you sooo much!"

"It was really nothing..." Starlight said again, but she seemed concerned.

"Is somethin' eating ya, Starlight?" Applejack asked quickly, as she was very good at reading ponies like an open book.

Starlight shifted slightly in her position, now having two ponies, Trixie and Rarity, hugging a tiny part of her nose and hoof respectively, "These are really advanced spells I'm using here. I literally used a spell to morph each broken piece into each other like glue and then let it harden into shape again, that's really complicated for unicorn magic, but, I didn't strain at all."

"As we already discussed, dear Starlight-" Trixie said aloud while resting on Starlight's nose like a beach chair, "your magic is scaled up with your size, bla bla bla, you're strong and powerful now." Trixie rocked her leg back and forth, crossed on the other, as if she were sunbathing.

Starlight looked down at the repaired boutique, it really did feel like she was looking at a toy house from her angle. The roof of the building barely reached up past her knees when she stood up, and she had to keep herself crouched very low to even look at the building properly. It was very surreal for her. She held back all urges to poke and play with the building like a little filly - Ponies lived in there, after all, but it was undoubtedly tempting.

"I will sort out on fixing the interior later, at least I can handle that," Rarity reassured thoughtfully, "thank you so much for helping me, Starlight, I wouldn't want to put you through any more stress than you already have."

"Thank goodness that's over," Starlight huffed to herself. She then remembered Trixie lazily resting on her nose. "Wait, Trixie, aren't you bothered that the Ursa Major destroyed your entire stage? You seem to be taking it a bit too well. I can go fix it now."

Trixie snorted, "Trixie does not wish to further panic and stress her heroic powerful friend just after having Trixie's life saved by her." Trixie looked aside with a careful hint of embarrassment. "Trixie thinks... she has given you enough stress already, so... she is keeping silent for a bit." Starlight, looking cross-eyed at her friend, could see that Trixie certainly wasn't happy and appeared to be trying to hide her face. However, she knew Trixie too well, Trixie almost never admits any kind of fault unless she really feels bad for it, and even then, only when heavily pressured to. Oh dear, Starlight thought to herself, Trixie must be feeling responsible for the Ursa Major's appearance! The Ursa Major was likely drawn out of the forest with the Ursa Minor-sounding noise maker back at the performance. Oops...

"Well, you're more than welcome to continue lounging on my snout to relax, Trixie," Starlight said gently. She rose her free hoof up in front of her face, rubbing Trixie's face with extreme precision and care, so as to be comforting. Trixie couldn't help but giggle faintly as the house-sized hoof gently rubbed against her fur. Starlight is much too precious, Trixie thought to herself.

"Awww, they really care for each other," Fluttershy pointed out from below. "Uhm.. Starlight?" she asked while looking up at the massive pony.

Starlight's ears perked as he heard Fluttershy's faint voice from below. Ever since Starlight had accidentally outgrown Trixie's stage wagon, Starlight had been making an unconcious attempt to hear more carefully to make up for her immense size. She looked down at Fluttershy with a little smile. "What's up, Fluttershy?"

"You are... hehe..." Fluttershy giggled while brushing her legs together, "Well, actually, I really wanted to ask, if, uhm..." the shy yellow pegasus slowly retreated her face behind her long and plentiful light pink mane while nervously rolling the long ends of it repeatedly, "if I could take shelter in your fur for a bit? It really did feel snugly up there..." She squeaked in an embarrassed way as she finished her request. Starlight's heart melted. It was a very strange request, but somehow, Starlight couldn't say no.

"Well..." Starlight said slowly, "sure! Why not?" She lowered down her entire body to the ground, laying on her long tummy and lay only ten metres away from the boutique, which was still dwarfed next to her. Fluttershy meekly walked up to the side of Starlight's body, unsure how to climb up the massive pony hill in front of her. It was then she remembered that she could fly, so she fluttered up silently onto Starlight's front-right shoulder, and hugged it in a comfortable position. She pressed her embarrassed reddened smiling face into Starlight's fur, nuzzling it intently.

"Uh... Enjoying yourself?" Starlight asked with a nervous chuckle. Fluttershy hummed an agreement, too comfortable to respond aloud. "Alright then," Starlight said, "as long as you're feeling comfortable, I suppose. Definitely nothing weird going on here," she commented as she rolled her other free hoof in the air expressively. She looked back down to notice that Pinkie Pie's eyes had widened in complete amazement and intent. "Erm... and I suppose..." Starlight began, but was quickly cut off.

"I wanna try too!" Pinkie said excitedly, hopping her pink little hooves quickly against the ground, "I wanna play on Starlight's massive body!" She then stopped suddenly, looking slightly concerned. "Wow," Pinkie noted to herself aloud, "that does sound strange when you say it out loud." She then shrugged nonchalantly, "ehhh who cares, I wanna, I wanna!" Twilight was standing just a metre away behind Pinkie and was clearly cringing. Starlight remembered what Twilight had said about wanting to respect Starlight's physical boundaries.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt to have just another pony snuggling me," Starlight said with an even more nervous chuckle. She slowly levitated Pinkie Pie onto her back, but the pink pony seemed to have different plans.

"I wanna ride in your hair, if that's like, totally okay with you, Starlight! It looks super fun!" Pinkie Pie called out cheerily, "I wanna ride down it like a slide! Whee!" The enthusiasm for such a specific desire made Starlight giggle a bit. She could already feel a tiny spec hugging her hoof, Rarity, along with Trixie resting silently on her snout, and Fluttershy hugging her neck while resting on her shoulder. She added Pinkie Pie to the collection of ponies adoring her, like an accessory, onto her ear, brushed against massive tufts of purple hair with cyan streaks as big and smooth as a river stream. Starlight felt slightly anxious having to stay more or less still, but at the same time, very happy to be appreciated by her friends. Starlight's ears suddenly perked as she heard a close-up whisper in one of them. Pinkie Pie was arching over the flap of her tall ear to whisper directly into her ear-hole up close.

"Hey Starlight!" Pinkie whispered in a harsh way, "I can tell Applejack down there would love to join in! She's doing that thing where she crosses her legs nervously and places her hat lower down on her face, you should really ask her if she wants to join!" She giggled and then let go of Starlight's ear, falling back onto her surrounding mane, laughing to herself.

Starlight was surprised. Laying on the ground with four ponies hugging her one way or another on some part of her body, she looked over to Applejack who, indeed, was subtly crossing her orange legs just as Pinkie had described. Having no doubt for Pinkie's vast knowledge of her close friends, she decided to ask. "Uh.. Applejack? Do you want to-"

"Yes-" Applejack blurted out, almost stumbling on her sudden words. Wide-eyed, Applejack's pupils shrank and darted from different directions as she regained a very stiff and straight posture. "What is it, Starlight?" she asked carefully.

Starlight raised an eyebrow. "Uh.. I was going to ask if you wanted to join in with the others. You're more than welcome. No need to feel embarrassed about it."

Starlight gave a friendly smile and tilted her head slightly, accidentally forcing Trixie to inconsequently roll over on her snout.

Applejack hesitated at first, and then felt relieved. "Yeah, yer' right... there ain't nothin' wrong or weird with a bit of snugglin' with a big friend who don't mind it." She quickly began jogging past Twilight and rested her face against the side of Starlight's belly, also giving her a tiny hug. The immense warmth and softness that enveloped Applejack seemed to make her much calmer and quieter, as it reminded her of a similiar feeling she felt only too long ago, but she didn't dare tell anyone.

Starlight sighed happily as her friends surrounded her joyfully, and then turned her attention to the last two ponies and friend who hadn't succumbed to Starlight's irresistible snugliness - Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and of course, their baby dragon Spike, who was too focused on Rarity to have any interest in Starlight's size. "I never realized," Starlight began talking to them, becoming a little too lost in thought, "how much I love being hugged by multiple ponies, and it's great, too, because my friends hugging me are having just as much fun, too, and I'm sure it's a great stress reliever for anypony. Isn't that right, Trixie?"

"Ooo, yes, absolutely!" Trixie cooed with a silly giggle, "You've got Trixie's one-hundred percent approval on that. Hugging your big snout makes Trixie's problems and stress just fly far far away..." Trixie rolled over a few times while rubbing the tip of Starlight's nose cheekily, "and honestly, Trixie finds very little reason to stop!"

Starlight tried not to sneeze or laugh from Trixie's naughty tickling, snorting from her snout haphazardly. "Yeah, exactly," Starlight continued, "what I mean is, Twilight, I think I could get used to being like this."

Rainbow Dash seemed pretty neutral on the whole ordeal. She wasn't particularly interested in fuzzy snuggling, the most she'd want to get comfortable with were beds made of clouds. She shrugged her arms while hovering above Twilight without much care. "Hey, whatever floats your boat, Starlight." She then made another look at Starlight, having to look up... and up... and up... just to be able to take sight of Starlight's massive horn towering above them despite starlight lying flat on the ground. She then looked back down at Starlight's cute massive eyes. "Or ship. Or cargo ship. Maybe an ocean liner would make more sense..."

"Don't be rude, Rainbow." Twilight snapped. "And Starlight, you're not thinking about this properly. You need to be able to sleep somewhere safely and comfortably, you're being... dare I say it... too selfless. Not to mention we probably need to figure out how to feed you, among other things. You’ll run everyone in Ponyville out of business if they feed you for free!"

Starlight frowned. She didn't like it when she was wrong and Twilight was right. Letting a massive 200-foot gigantic unicorn live as happily as a normal 4-foot pony was going to be a horribly tricky and resource-intensive task, something an area as small as Ponyville might not be able to fund for free. Thankfully, it was Spike, a practical thinker, that suggested something brilliant.

"Hey, if Starlight's completely fine with having ponies snuggle up around her giant body, why not make money out of it, like some kind of donation-based service?" Twilight stared at him with almost disgust, while Starlight held the complete opposite expression... She loved the idea, her face beamed with excitement. She couldn't deny it, she was starting to absolutely love being able to let other ponies snuggle up with her, as it patched over the many love-less traumatized years from her foal-hood where she had no friends to hug or even talk to. She realized it was possible to encourage other ponies to donate to literally just hug her, while of course knowing that they'd be funding a normal healthy lifestyle for her. After all, if there's one thing a pony loves to do, it's give each other friendly hugs. Who wouldn't want to hug a giant friendly pony anyway?

"I think it's a great idea." Starlight responded. "But how are we going to set it up?"

"Starlight, are you sure about this?" Twilight asked, showing extreme distaste for the idea, "don't you realize you might be looking at this the wrong way? Hugs aren't some kind of thing you can charge for a service, it's an action done between friends! This really doesn't sound right."

"I saved Equestria, Twilight," Starlight said in a cool way, "I think I can be everyone's friend. After all, like Spike said, it's a donation kind of thing, so that they can fund and help me, you know, live. I think that's pretty fair, and all I'd do is just sit back and let them snuggle up on me. It's the perfect plan, and it's a completely and strictly friendly thing. Nothing weird."

"I like the idea." Rarity said while resting her entire body in an adorable way against Starlight's hoof, looking up at Starlight's jaw from below, "As a mare who provides her own services at the boutique, I can tell you that you’ll need to get permission from the Royal council to set up what is technically a profit organization. I'd be more than happy to pitch in and set up the financial side of it, dear, because this feels wonderful and I’m certain ponies would be pouring in for the experience."

"Wait, the royal council?" Twilight yelped. "You don't mean..."

"It's quite unfortunate, darling, it's probably going to be a bit of an issue," Rarity noted, "But you'l have to ask Celestia herself. Formally. At Canterlot."

Starlight face-hoofed slowly. "Ohhh noooooo.... Celestia is going to have to know about this. I hope she takes it lightly... Her student's student becoming a town-sized monster of a pony..."

"Monster??" Pinkie Pie yelled from above, unfortunately very close to Starlight's ear, "more like an amazing pony! We all know Celestia super duper well, I'm sure she’ll love it!"

"I'd probably be a daily customer..." Fluttershy admitted quietly, her face reddening as she rubbed it against Starlight's long neck, "I get really stressed from taking care of all the wonderful animals at my shelter, so this would be a great way to relax..."

Starlight shook her head slightly in confusion, "Fluttershy, it'd be free for you girls, don't be silly. It's more of a donation thing anyway, just to encourage other ponies to help me financially with my new... erm... condition." She tilted her head slightly, resting ever so softly against Fluttershy's entire body that rested on top of her right shoulder. Fluttershy felt herself get gently surrounded by Starlight's fur, making her blush and childishly wobble her yellow hooves in the air while giggling.

"And Trixie will handle advertising," the blue magician laughed while still sitting comfortably on Starlight's nose, "after all, Trixie is very good at being very loud.... and attractive. Attracting ponies to performances I mean."

"Alright." Twilight huffed as she put her hoof down onto the ground. "I still don't fully agree with all this, but I suppose we don't have much choice. We will have to go to Canterlot right away, since it's almost evening and Celestia will soon be done with her duties." Twilight turned around, ready to start walking towards Canterlot, which sat on a tall mountain just over Ponyville. She looked at the white beautiful yellow-crowned city in the distance, high in the sky, then looked back at her massive town-towering unicorn friend with a hint of worry. "I just hope she fits somehow..."