They look so adorable, in the light of the moon...

And, as I turn to look outside the window for a split second, I realize something crucial.

This neighborhood, which I’m afraid to walk around, even at the light of day, is no place for a baby, let alone fourteen babies.

I sigh and raise from my bed before silently exiting the room.

For the past four years, I've been saving up money I make from selling my artwork.

That's right. I'm an artist.

Not a well-known one, but good enough to rake in a few thousand dollars each month. As in one and a half. It's not much, but...it's a living. Seeing as how half of that has to go to charity per my contract...let's just say I end up getting about five hundred per month. Not great, but not terrible.

Why didn't I spend it all on a better house, in a better neighborhood, you may ask?

Because I wanted to be able to pay off my mortgage in at least a somewhat faster manner.

However, now that I'm in charge of a family, and a rather large one at that...

I know that I need to get a new house, now.

And I also know that I need someone to help me.

So, I pick up my house phone, and dial the man who convinced me to become a brony.

"Pete? Why are you calling so fucking early, man?" The man answers, rather groggily, after about two minutes minutes of the phone ringing.

"Charles, I can't talk too much right now, but there's something very, very monumental going on right now, and I need to move, now. And I want you to live with me."

"Wait, wait, wait...Are you coming out of the closet to me?"

I almost smashed my phone into the wall in a moment of pure rage, but I stop myself. "No, Charles, I'm not. I need your help with something, badly. Come first thing in the morning, okay?"

I hear Charles take a deep breath. "Fine. I'll come over to your house, first thing in the morning."

"Okay."

"I'm leaving now."

It takes a lot of effort for me not to laugh, just so that I don't wake up the foals in my bedroom. I can't believe that I forgot that it's two o'clock in the morning.

"Okay," I say into the phone, immediately placing it down on its receiver.

And then, I remember something.

He lives two doors away.

I won't have time to-

Before I know it, my door slams open.

"Peter? You said you needed something? And what’s with all the boxes outside?"

I sigh, and run my hand through my hair. "Not so loud, god damnit!" I spit at him, silently. More or less, at this point it doesn't really matter.

Charles raises an eyebrow, and shuts the door behind him. "What? What am I gonna do, wake a baby up?"

And then, I hear one of my fourteen new babies cry. "Yep," I sigh. "And I think that that's Fluttershy."

Charles sighs, and runs a hand through his long hair, leaning against the wall of my narrow hallway. "Peter, this had better not be one of your fucking jokes. Is that a soundboard? You and I both know that ponies don't exist."

And then, more crying, muffled by the door.

"Oh, yeah?" I ask. "Well, come and see."

I open the door to my bedroom, and Charles can't help but follow me in, chuckling and shaking his head.

And, like a fucking moron, he slams the door closed.

This, of course, wakes up all of the other foals who hadn't been woken up yet.

Including Trixie.

I look at Charles, who is simply staring in amazement. I can't help but chuckle. "See? Ah, crap, it took ages to get Trixie to sleep...”

Charles simply stares in amazement, surprise, and from the strain of holding his bowels in. “Peter,” he says, breathless, “why didn’t you tell me?”

I simply stare at him, and I finally reach down to pick up the closest of the crying foals, who just happens to be Celestia. “Because last time I thought there was a pony in my house, I was piss drunk, remember?”

He can’t help but chuckle, and neither can I. At that moment, Celestia starts to cry even louder, and I realize why.

“Hold on, Celestia won’t sleep when she’s cradled, unless Luna’s with her...”

Charles nods, scratching his beard with one hand, pushing back his somewhat-long hair with another, re-enforcing his likeness to Sawyer. Otherwise known as James Ford. I believe his number was fifteen.

“It’s okay, you two...Charles is a good person, alright? He just didn’t know you were here...”

Finally, Charles says something that I thought he never would. Well, I knew he would, it was just a matter of time. “Can I...Can I hold one of them?”

I nod, and he immediately reaches down to pick up the baby Fluttershy. At first, she recoils in his touch, and looks to me for protection. I smile at her, and tell Charles that she “doesn’t fully trust you yet.”

Pouting, Charles puts her back down, and, instead, reaches for Twilight, who also recoils in his touch.

“She doesn’t like you very much, either,” I comment.

Once again, pouting, he puts Twilight back. “Well, who does?”

I look into the sock drawer as I place the now-sleeping Princess babies in its warm confines, and I immediately pick up Trixie, who cries even harder as I hold her.

“Here,” I say with a bit of a heavy heart, “try Trixie.”

Charles nods, and gingerly accepts Trixie from my hands. The unicorn calms down, if only by so much, and actually lets the man cradle her, with a smile. I feel just a tiny bit jealous, but then remember that I have eleven more ponies to cradle.

I pick up Vinyl Scratch, Octavia, and Lyra, and cradle all three of them in my arms, cooing to them as I calm them, slowly. Within twenty minutes, all three of them have fallen asleep.

As soon as I place them down in the sock drawer, Charles reluctantly hands Trixie over to me. However, as I look between Trixie and Charles, I realize that he’s the closest she’ll ever get to a father.

“You can hold her,” I sigh. “She likes you much more than she likes me.”

He nods, and smiles, stroking the sleeping unicorn’s mane as he held Trixie close to his heart, cooing to her as she sleeps.

I smile, and pick up Rainbow Dash, whose wings are starting to flap harder and harder in her agitation. I kiss her on the forehead, and coo to her, until she falls asleep.

Replacing the cyan filly in the drawer, I reach for Fluttershy.

And so on, and so forth.

Finally, when they’re all asleep, and I’m left empty-armed, and Charles still has Trixie in his, I lean back on my bed, thinking hard.

“You do know that this is no place for these ponies to grow up, right, Peter?”

I nod. That was the whole reason as to why I had called him: I hoped we might pool our resources.

“That’s why I called you,” I say, absentmindedly letting my hand down into the sock drawer. I smile as Derpy Hooves hugs my fingers, rubbing her cheek against my hand. “I was hoping that we could pool our resources, and buy a pretty nice house somewhere. I have at least a half a million in the bank.”

Charles chuckles lightly, smiling as Trixie hums in her sleep. “You selfish bastard. I asked you if I could borrow one hundred dollars last week, and you said you didn’t have enough.”

I chuckle as well. “It’s my life savings, Charles. It started out as two thousand, but after adding the salaries from my first few jobs, and the pay-off from all of my expos, I’ve added it all up. Also, I haven’t checked it in about two years, so the interest is bound to have made the amount sky-rocketed...or just increased by five dollars."

Charles nods, putting on the thoughtful face that meant he was in economic badass mode. “I want to know how much money we have to work with here. I, myself, have about four hundred thousand in my bank account, from my life savings. I would gladly spend it all, if it means helping make a good home for these ponies.” At the last bit, he smiles down at Trixie, and I know that he’s fallen in love. I'd say it's a bit creepy, if it weren't for the fact that the same thing happened to me this morning.

Scratching my head, I nod as well. “Well, I think we can buy a pretty decent house with that. Can you stay here and watch them for a bit? I’m going to go get some diapers, and check the bank.”

Charles nods, and I get up from the bed, carefully extricating my hand from they grey Pegasus' grasp. I immediately cross the small room to my door, and, after fetching my cars keys from my hiding place under the flowers, (which reminds me that I need to get oats, hay, and flowers,) I get my wallet from my other hiding place, (which I won’t tell you about,) and walk out into the crisp of the morning.

By now, all of the boxes have been taken away, undoubtedly by the drunkards who decided to wear them as hats. Grateful that I had found the ponies before the usual drunk assholes of the morning, I walk up to my car in the almost empty street.

At least there’s one thing about this neighborhood that I like. Parking is so easy, due to all the DUI’s.

I start up the car, and pull away, worry and distress gnawing at my heart as I leave behind my little ponies.