By unspoken, unanimous consent, we didn’t get started on the next generation right away. This was normal – a collective usually laid one set of eggs, then didn’t lay any more until they were grown up and ready to lay eggs of their own. And now we knew why.

This didn’t mean we never had sex, it meant that we had sex virtually after an accelerated full night’s sleep. Usually it was just me and Fire, but Star joined us occasionally just to reassure us that they were still part of the family. We’d spend five or six hours cuddling and screwing and playing virtual games at normal speed, get another accelerated night’s rest, then wake up with the kids for their real-life phase.

We were relaxing as dragons in a virtual lava bath when a guest account logged on to our network. Since there were only three of us (the kids didn’t count yet since they were still locked to educational access), we’d taken to reskinning the main room for this sort of thing, so the Guest1 kobold appeared in the lava and immediately caught on fire.

Guests didn’t feel pain or take damage, so we just sort of laughed at them as they flailed around in panic and then realized that they weren’t actually burning up. “It’s me!” they said, once they settled down.

“Shadowfright?” I guessed. We hadn’t set up a transmission tower, so there was no way this was a legitimate connection from the moon.

“You recognized me!” he said. I hadn’t, it was just that the last time a random guest kobold had shown up it had been him and one other and I didn’t remember the other’s name. “I’ve been trying to get into your dream for a while but it keeps flinging me back out.”

“We’ve been using a lot of accelerated time,” I said. “Maybe that doesn’t work with your dream cauldron?”

“Oh that would explain it,” he said. “How are you doing? Have you linked up with Enny yet?”

“We have babies!” Star said. “But we haven’t linked up with anyone. We had a guest, but he left just after the hatching.”

“Why would we link up with Enny?” I asked. “Did Breeze throw them out of the moonbase too?”

“I guess you could say that?” the guest said, shrugging. “They weren’t sure you’d made it, so they sent down a second team with Enny, Dot, and Skull. I think they’re on the far side of the planet?”

“We really could have used the reinforcements here,” Fire said.

“They never would have been able to join up with us, even if they’d landed in the same place,” I reminded him. “Who knows how far away we were dragged by those parrots?”

“It sounds like you’ve been busy,” Shadowfright said.

“I’ve been keeping a log,” I told him. “Want me to send you a copy?”

“Um… I can’t actually receive files through the dream cauldron?” he said. “You could tell me the story though, and I could pass it on!”

So the three of us spent a while relating our exploits to him. “Parrots are good folk,” he remarked when we told him about the pirate ship. Also, “Oh, stay away from the diamond dogs!” and “Yeah, that sure sounds like a dragon.”

“Oh! That reminds me!” he said, interrupting the part of the story where Ash almost got me killed in the labyrinth. “Luna saw a dragon’s nightmare, and apparently it was full of baby kobolds. She put two and two together and came up to the moon to ask if the kobolds were still here. I told them about your mission, and I think she’s going to come visit.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s, um…”

“Fuck,” Fire said.

“She didn’t seem interested last time,” I said.

Fire snorted. “No, I mean, we’re fucked.”

“Oh you guys!” Shadowfright said. “Don’t be so gloomy. I’m sure she just wants to welcome you to Equestria!”

“The island has a giant flaming skull,” Fire said, pacing nervously. “She’s going to find us.”

“We’re not *in* the skull, though,” I pointed out. “We might have a little bit of warning.”

“Or she might be able to detect our children’s educational program with her dream powers and home in on us like a missile,” Fire replied.

“Our traps are still mostly set up for the dragon,” I said. “That might not be easy for her to get through… but we should assume that she will get through them. Friendly traps only.”

“So just repair the grabby-spears?” Star said.

Fire and I nodded.

Fire turned around and paces the other way. “For weapons, if she gets through and is hostile, we’ve got net guns, tasers, glue bombs…”

“Knives, sledgehammers,” I added.

Star pointed to the wall mount. “Fire extinguishers!”

“Claws and teeth,” Fire said.

“A bunch of baby kobolds to throw at her as a distraction,” I suggested.

“No,” said Fire and Star together.

I shrugged. “Fine, but they’re the only thing that worked against the dragon.”

“We could throw you at her!” Star said.

“I’d throw myself at her *again* if I thought it would work,” I said. “She seems to be immune to my charms. Oh! But I’ve got the warp crystal now so I could try using spells on her.”

“Spells,” Fire said, his eye spots narrowing.

I folded my arms. “That’s what the combat tracker calls them. Crush, Feather Shield, maybe Super Jump could come in handy. Brittle on her weapons if she brings any. She was naked on the moon.”

“She wasn’t naked,” Star said. “She was wearing shoes.”

“Those are probably weapons,” Fire said. “Horses kick.”

Luna arrived later that day, which was enough time to fix the trap at least. We herded the kids into the hatchery and let them go virtual again a bit ahead of schedule so they’d be out of the way. They were still too young to question it, although not too young to get distracted and wander off if we didn’t literally herd them like sheep.

She circled the island a couple of times, then swooped down right towards our cave entrance, blasting the drone – still parked on the hilltop over the cave – with some sort of blue laser from her horn when Fire connected to it and had it point its camera-eyes at her.

Star squeaked in indignation.

Luna took two steps into the labyrinth, and let out a pulse from her horn. I felt the warp crystal squirming against my chest, and put a hand on it to imagine the mindscape. The poor little dragon was desperately clutching at its perch as a blue wind tried to sweep it away… I imagined holding it close and steadying it against the wind.

There was a flash of light, and Luna appeared before us, bypassing the traps with some sort of teleportation. I’m pretty sure that was cheating by anyone’s reckoning.

“Congratulations!” Star said, her faceplate a jaggy mask of aggravation despite her cheery tone. “You got past our traps using a method worthy of a princess. Go you. Normally we’d make you a prize but you got through *so fast* we didn’t have time.”

“And you blew up the drone I was going to use to ask you what you wanted,” Fire added.

“Yes,” Star said, tone no longer cheery.

“What are you doing here, Luna?” I asked, hand still on the warp crystal, trying to comfort it as the imaginary weather continued to be gusty, cold, and overcast.

Luna looked around the lounge. It was kind of a mess, in ways we hadn’t processed after several days of trying to deal with eighteen baby kobolds. The couches and chairs and tables were all in disarray, some of them upended, and toys were scattered everywhere. I’d recycled all the dirty dishes, at least, since I thought those were gross.

She poked at a toy dragon with a hoof, and it made a ‘squeak’ sound. “So it’s true,” she said. “You’ve been breeding.”

“It’s what she does,” Fire said.

“Jealous?” I asked, smirking.

“You shouldn’t be,” Star added. “Children are a lot of work.”

“I think I could make time for a princess, though,” I said. “Princess means you’re a girl, right? Which means you’d be carrying my eggs? So we could get started right away if you wanted, no need to wait for me to lay these.” I patted my rather pregnant belly with my free hand. I was getting a little worried, to be honest – I wasn’t more pregnant than I normally got, but I was as pregnant as I normally got even though there were only two eggs.

“Must we continue this jest?” Luna asked. “I tired of it more than a thousand years ago. It was amusing when Discord offered, but by the time I’d been propositioned by Tirek and Sombra it had already begun to wear thin.”

“And none of them were ever sincere?” I frowned. That sounded awful.

Luna laughed bitterly. “Chrysalis was sincere, I’m sure, but I don’t sleep with *infestations*.” At our silent stares, she backpedaled a bit. “I wasn’t intending to include you in that, but already a second clutch? It’s been less than a year.”

“It wasn’t on purpose!” I said. “I didn’t think I’d be fertile with a dragon.”

“Ah, yes,” Luna said. “And I imagine he didn’t mention the possibility until it was too late. I’m quite familiar with their antics. Still, unexpected… bonuses aside, how long before an army of kobolds is descending on my lands?”

I looked at Fire, who looked at Star, who invited us both to a quick spreadsheet session. We spent ten accelerated minutes modelling population growth and guessing at our descendants’ emigration rate.

“Twenty years,” they said, announcing our best guess rounded to one significant digit, since the confidence was low. “Twenty of our standard years I mean? About two hundred moons.”

“It’ll be a peaceful army, though,” I said. “We’re not warriors.”

“Not on purpose,” Fire corrected, slightly.

Star tapped their chin. “And ‘descending’ is probably the wrong word since they’d be coming on boats.”

“I’m pretty sure armies can descend from any direction,” I said. “It’s a figure of speech.”

“That’s not so long, as alicorns measure time,” Luna said. “How may we forestall this calamity?”

“It’s not a calamity!” I said. “We’re peaceful! And cute and fuzzy even. Most people like that.”

“And yet we may drown beneath the flood, regardless,” Luna said. “I mean to head off this tide while the swell has yet to build to an unmanageable level.”

“Was that a threat?” Fire asked.

“The opposite,” Luna said, holding her head high. “Come with me to Equestria and let us help you control your population. With education and careful management we can find a place for you here, without needing to swarm like locusts across the land.”

“Not interested,” Star said.

“None of you need be harmed!” Luna insisted. “We would stick to voluntary measures as much as possible. If your numbers outpaced our ability to support you –”

“Stop,” I said, noticing my companions’ reaction to her suggestions. “Just stop talking.”

Luna’s tail raised, and her eyes narrowed as she looked at me, but she stopped, at least for a moment.

“I’m going to say some things that you aren’t going to want to hear,” I told her. “Are you capable of listening to them without losing your temper?”

“Of course,” she said.

I nodded. “Fuck me, you dirty whore. Lie down on the couch and suck my dick while Fire pounds you up the ass. Let me chain you to a wall and whip your back red and raw until you stop begging me for mercy and start begging for more. I’m going to stick my tongue in that slippery cunt of yours and make you come until all your self-respect sprays out all over my faceplate, leaving you nothing but a mind-broken slave begging for my touch.”

To my surprise, she stayed calm. Calmish. She didn’t hit me again, at least. “Thou best have good reason to offer such obscene mockery,” she hissed through gritted teeth.

I shrugged. “Now that we’ve both presented our ludicrously offensive proposals, can we maybe talk to each other like adults?”

“I think I’ve heard enough,” Luna said, stomping a hoof. “Know that I will stand by my word – you will not be harmed. Yet by the same token, I will not allow –”

Without even waiting for her to finish her threat, Fire and Star both shot her with their net guns. The nets never reached her – the storm in the warp crystal’s mindscape gave a quick gust, nearly blowing the little dragon out of my grip, and the nets were flung to the side. Her horn glowed, and swung towards Fire, and I imagined a glowing knot of lightning forming over his head. On some instinct, I threw the dragon at him, and imagined it intercepting the lightning, drinking it in and enhancing its power…

Luna’s drone-killing blast swerved in midair and vanished into the warp crystal, which distracted her enough for Star to start spraying her with a fire extinguisher. The spray didn’t reach her, instead outlining the invisible dome of a protective force field.

Luna turned to charge at Star as if to trample them underfoot, the dome moving with her. I tried to make her hoof-boots immovable to stop her, but the warp crystal couldn’t affect anything inside her shield… but Fire managed to get about the same effect by lobbing a glue bomb in her path and letting her charge onto the sticky patch. She stumbled as her hooves stuck fast, and her face smacked into the ground, glued in place alongside them.

Unsure what I could do, I imagined the dragon flying up into the storm, to absorb its fury at the source like it had absorbed the bolt. Luna screamed in agony as blue light started to stream from her horn towards the warp crystal, then she vanished in a flash of blue light, much like she’d arrived.

“What the fuck, Wave?” Fire asked. “Is that what you call diplomacy?”

“I was trying to think of something she’d find as grotesque as her suggestion that we become her neutered pets,” I said. “I’m not sure I managed it. Did you really have to attack her?”

Star looked embarrassed. “I thought it would work.”

“We have to run,” Fire said.

“Run where?” I asked. “Into the diamond dog caves?”

“That would work,” he said. “They’d probably guess where we went, but it’s better than staying here and not even making them search.”

“How about underwater?” Star suggested. “They wouldn’t expect that!”

It wasn’t a bad idea. We’d have to replace our rigs with aquatic gear, but we had plenty of resources, and enough of a fabricator to do at least the water-breathing faceplates relatively quickly, even including the children. All the designs were already there waiting to be printed. Aside from the needing to breathe thing, our bodies were well-designed for pressure and cold. We’d need to rub special oil in our fur, but a full aquatic rig would take care of that for us too.

“But you and Fire can’t swim,” I pointed out. None of us were buoyant, but I at least had some experience submerging myself.

“I guess we’ll have to learn,” Fire said.

Star got to work on the basic aquatic rigs, and I started assembling an amphibious crawler that we could load the kids and the half-built fabricator into so that we wouldn’t have to start all over when we found a new underwater lair. But we weren’t yet ready to move when the airship showed up on the horizon.

We moved anyway. The three of us switched faceplates, the kids (forced once more into virtual reality so they wouldn’t make any trouble) were all stuffed in the crawler, and Star ran back and forth picking the most important pieces of the fabricator to load in with them.

“We have to go now!” Fire said. “In half an hour they’ll be close enough to see every valley in the foothills, and we won’t be able to sneak out.”

It took twenty minutes to get the crawler up to the surface through the labyrinth, and fifteen minutes more to make it to the shore. We had some cover from trees, and the crawler was sort of camouflaged, so we crossed our fingers that we hadn’t been seen as we slipped beneath the waves.

Star was in the back printing out the underwater faceplates for the babies, so it was Fire and me driving – or more accurately, Fire driving while I got out into the water and pulled. The crawler had too much air – we’d had to leave behind too much of the equipment we’d wanted to take – and kept floating up off the sea floor and losing traction. I’d hook the tow rope onto something, work the winch to pull it down, and then Fire would make the crawler flail its legs until he managed to grab on to something to pull it further forwards. Ten meters later he’d bounce up into the water and we’d have to do it all again. It was exhausting!

We were maybe twenty meters down (and much farther than that laterally) when a quake shook the ground, stirring up the muck and reducing visibility to nothing. I tied off the tow rope and swam up through the floor hatch into the cockpit to wait it out.

“Your fur’s dripping wet,” Fire said, taking a towel and scrubbing me off. “You didn’t use enough of the oil.”

I hadn’t noticed when I was in the water, but being in the air – yeah, I was cold. I shivered as he fluffed me all up with the towels, then curled up into his warm embrace while he pulled out the jar of oil and started combing it into my fur.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did they bomb us or something?”

“I left them a surprise,” Fire said, running the comb across my belly. “I tried to make it look like an accident in case any of them survived. With luck, they’ll think we blew ourselves up and stop looking for us.”

“Until Shadowfright finds our dreams and tattles on us, anyway,” I said.

Fire’s faceplate went all jaggy. “I didn’t think of that.”

I giggled. “Maybe we could put up a sign in the garden, right where the guest accounts spawn? ‘We’re playing dead, don’t tell Luna’.”

After a few seconds, Fire nodded. “Worth a try.”

Yes! Finally!