"No! Don't come in!" Fresh Baked stood with her rump against the door to hold it closed.

Outside, Sugar Belle knocked again. "Fresh, I know one of those blobs of growth magic hit you. You don't have to be afraid." Sugar could have ripped the door open with her magic, she could have lifted the whole house up and left her former mentor, Fresh Baked, huddled on the floor (or so it felt to her, her magic seemed wildly powerful), but that wouldn't work at all. "Just let me in, Fresh. I won't judge you at all."

Turning to look at the door, Fresh Baked used one of her wings to smear the tears out of her eyes. "You promise?"

"Of course I promise. I just want to make sure you're okay. That magic did some pretty wild things." Sugar Belle tried the door handle again, and this time it started to swing inward when she pushed.

Opening the door and slipping inside, Sugar made sure to close it after herself. The curtains of the little house were drawn, and it took some time for her eyes to adjust. Slowly, the interior of Fresh Baked's house became visible out of the gloom, and its owner too.

"F-Fresh?" Sugar Belle's eyes made out the form of a young mare huddled in the corner, looking a little younger still because she had a huge pair of wings. "Is that you?"

"You promised…" Trying to hide how small and how odd she looked, Fresh Baked stretched one wing out to shield most of her body.

"I'm not judging you. The plant has done some strange stuff to all of us. A glob of that magic hit Tight, too." Stepping closer, Sugar Belle could see the extent of the changes. "You don't need to hide. This is happening to all of us eventually."

"What?" Folding her wing back to her side, Fresh Baked stood up. "What do you mean?"

"I talked to Starlight Glimmer yesterday, and she said all this magic seems to do is speed up and fuel plant growth. It's like super-magic fertilizer." Reaching out a hoof, Sugar Belle waited for her mentor to take it before she pulled her into a hug.

Letting herself be wrapped in Sugar's forelegs, Fresh buried her face in her former student's shoulder. "Then why did it do this to me?"

Sugar held Fresh Baked to her and gave her a little squeeze. "Because we're all part plant, I guess. Patched said there was something odd it was doing, but I think she will want to see you. She's the best shot we've got for understanding how this works."

"It's just really sudden, and I look like a filly!" Fresh Baked jerked back and gestured to herself with a hoof.

"You look like a young mare. Hardly a filly. How do you feel?" Smiling as openly as she could, Sugar Belle couldn't pick up anything with her plant-sense; Fresh Baked was just speaking whatever came to her mind.

"I feel like a damned young mare. Is this what it wanted to do with us? Why'd it make me younger? I was comfortable as I was!" Stomping a hoof in fury, Fresh Baked was well aware how silly she looked doing it. "I liked being how I was!"

"You know what I do when I feel down?" Sugar Belle smiled as she spoke. She used her magic to open the curtains up, and started walking through to Fresh's kitchen.

"Oh come on! You can't tell me that! That's what I told—" Trotting after her former apprentice, Fresh Baked cut off her grumbling when she saw that Sugar Belle was already making dough. "… you."

Sugar Belle remembered how many times Fresh had used this same technique on to cheer Sugar up. "Come on, downy-duck, let's kneed dough and make some cookies."

Humming a tune happily, Sugar Belle kept her hooves moving on the dough, folding it and kneading the ingredients together. When Fresh came up beside her, she reached out and pulled ingredient tubs closer.

"Did you finally learn not to use your magic?" Fresh stood up next to Sugar after washing her hooves, and started mixing her own dough.

Shaking her head, Sugar Bell felt a surge of comfort working beside Fresh Baked again. "No. I use my magic when it doesn't matter, though. Lifting trays and pans. Mixing dough? Mixing cake batter? Those are things that hooves need to do."

"Took you long enough to learn that. I remember having to tie things onto your horn to keep you from using it." Her own hooves moved as if it were natural for them to knead dough, and after a lifetime of baking it was.

Sugar Belle's eyes flicked to the rose-stem horn that grew from Fresh's forehead. She didn't want to bring it up, but now was the best time for it. "Tight got a horn too. And I saw two unicorns with plant-growth wings. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Ashamed? Ha! I'm the princess of baking!" Fresh Baked's sense of humor was poking through her mood. "How many ponies are like this?"

"Five. Stinky Cheese got hit too. Poor old guy got wings and a horn. Can you imagine that?" Dusting some extra flour on the bench, Sugar Belle kept kneading the bread dough.

Fresh flipped her own dough too, and her hooves dove back to their task. "You said two unicorns?"

"Starlight Glimmer and Banjo Solo. They're the two the plant used to do… this. Can't hold it against them, if the plant wills something we don't exactly have a choice." Lifting her dough up, Sugar Belle put it into a large pan. A cloth over the top was last, and she used her magic to set it up on the cool parts of the big oven in Fresh's kitchen.

"It's not all big wings and unicorn horns, though." Finishing off her own ball of dough, Fresh Baked let out a sigh.

"What?" Sugar Belle had been distracted, and hadn't heard the words Fresh was going to say.

"I was leaking a little milk before. But, now, it's out of control." Holding up her own dough, Fresh felt Sugar's magic take it and float it over to the warming rack.

Starting a new mix, Sugar Belle changed a few ingredients and was working on cookie dough this time. "Sweet?"

Fresh Baked froze. "W-What do you mean?" Her hooves worked on their own, but unlike Sugar, she was making cake batter.

"The milk. Tight's got a similar problem, although it's not really a problem when the milk is so sweet. The way I use it, each cup of milk counts as a quarter cup of sugar as well." Sugar Belle was working away, not seeing Fresh's look of shock. "Oh! We should compare you both, see if it's the same."

"You drink his milk?!" Her hooves still moved despite Fresh Baked's shock. "How can… And you just… You sell that?"

"What?" Sugar Belle turned to Fresh. "No. Of course not. Only Tight, Bright, and myself eat anything made with it."

Like nearly every other pony in town, Fresh Baked had spent a little "cuddle time" with Bright Day. The stallion was positively a cheer to be around, and a perfect gentlecolt when it came to treating a mare right. "Bright knows about it?"

"Bright helps with the milking sometimes. It's perfectly alright. Nothing wrong with a little milk." Sugar lifted the bowl she was mixing in, holding it with one foreleg while the other worked the dough. "How much do you make?"

A little less shocked now, Fresh focused on her work. "A lot. I haven't actually measured it."

Sugar Belle grinned, dipped in her hoof to grab a little of the cookie dough. Tasting it, she got back to finishing the mixing off. "We should take some cookies to Stinky Cheese. He grew up on a farm, I think."

"I'm not a cow!"

"I never said you were." Pulling out a tray, Sugar Belle applied some butter, and then began forming cookies on it. "But if you want relief from that you talk to an expert."

"There has to be a better option." Fresh Baked began working on her own trays of cupcakes, her hooves sure as she performed her trade.

Giggling at a stray thought, Sugar used her magic to lift the cookie trays into the oven. "Well, there is one way. You'd need to find a few ponies who really like milk, and who you don't mind being a little intimate with."

Outrage warred with Fresh Baked's sense of the ridiculous. "I guess Bright Day would go for that. I almost can't tell him no."

"Oh don't consider that a personal failing. He's in the hearts and beds of nearly everypony in town. He just seems to know when somepony needs special cheering up. I'd offer to help too but I'm a little busy with Tight already." Sugar Belle started shuttling cupcake trays into the oven.

While Sugar Belle cleaned up, Fresh Baked prepared the icing for her cupcakes. Talk turned to normal gossip until the cupcakes and cookies were lifted out. Leaving Fresh to ice her cakes, Sugar moved her cookies to a drying rack and cleaned up the baking trays.

Fresh Baked hadn't felt as good in a long time. As a pony got older, little aches and pains settled into joints and old wounds. Her left-rear leg had been paining her a little. But a lifetime of aging had been undone. Her body was trim and fit as if she were starting her cooking apprenticeship again.

Folding up some thick card, Fresh made a little tray to hold six cupcakes, and then filled it. "So. Stinky Cheese, you think?"

"If anypony would know farming it would be him. He's worked with milk all his life." Sugar Belle slipped some cookies into a stack and wrapped a ribbon around them to tie them up. She used her hooves to tie a bow in the ribbon. "So let's go ask him."

Fresh sighed and nodded. "If you tell me one thing, Sugar." She waited for Sugar Belle to nod. "How do you do this? I was ready to crawl into a corner and scream until Doc came to drag me away."

"What keeps a smile on my face all day long?" Sugar Belle levitated the cupcakes and cookies into the air with her magic, the load barely noticeable at all.

"Yeah."

Sugar Belle giggled. "Well. It helps that my husband has a really big—"

"Sugar!"

"No, not sugar. But I think you get the idea." Sugar Belle winked at Fresh Baked and pranced for the front door.

Stinky Cheese knew when he was being buttered up. When the two best bakers in town showed up on your doorstep with cakes and cookies, it meant that he was having plenty of butter applied. That they were the two best bakers in town meant that it was working really well.

Lifting up a cupcake, Stinky nibbled at one edge of it. "So what's it you want from me?" Butter or no butter, he would help if he could.

"We need some advice on milking." Sugar Belle tried not to let her eyes slip to Fresh Baked, but they did. "Certain members of the town are having a problem that seems to be caused by what the plant did to them, and they're in dire need of relief."

"Milkin' you say? That's a mighty specific thing. An' why'd you come to me?" Another nibble of the cupcake improved Stinky's mood even more, they were some of the best he had ever tasted in his life.

"I need some help. I'm—I'm lactating. I'm lactating a lot. Sugar Belle said Tight's having the same problem, and it seems to have something to do with these." Fresh stretched one of her oversize wings out a little before folding it back to her side.

"Well. There's a few ways to deal with that. The first is milkin'." Stinky Cheese nibbled some more of the heavenly cupcake thoughtfully. "Two ways there, somepony can milk you by hoof or magic, or you could get a machine."

"Th-There's another way?" Just the thought of somepony milking her made Fresh Baked shudder in revulsion.

"Well, yeah. Find somepony who really likes milk. They don't have to…" Stinky's eyes narrowed at the groan his suggestion earned. "Thought o' that one already?"

"I don't think Fresh wants anypony else to be involved. I can certainly understand that. You mentioned a machine?" Sugar Belle tried to calm the situation down a little. "Could one be operated by the pony—uh—being milked?"

"Never really thought of that, but I can't see why not. Most of them sorts either have magic driving 'em or a hoof pump. I'll tell ya what. M' family back near Fillydelphia used to use somethin' like that. Frosty's pretty hoofy with machines; I'll get him to try makin' something for ya."

"That's wonderful!" Fresh Baked almost had tears coming to her eyes. "Is there anything I can do to repay you?" When she saw Stinky's eyes drift down to the (now empty) cupcake tray, Fresh actually giggled. "I think something can be arranged."

Author's Notes:

Plant: how soon are you going to implement exponential growth?

The plant reached a tentacle out to grab the asker of the question.

---

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post! They will pick one question per chapter.

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