Spike almost felt evil as he lay on his pile of gems, now thinking of it as his throne. He watched his children toil away with hard labor and sat back and ate. Now that their core was properly secured and they had set up a sizable stash, none of his daughters seemed to take him wanting to go out as anything less than a declaration of then failing to meet his needs, only resulting in them working faster and harder, and resulting in more hiccups and mistakes as they worked.

Spike had bargained for them to slow down and work with more care in exchange for him remaining inside the hive until it was time for the second stage of the hive his daughters seemed thrilled for.

That situation had resulted in him lazing around on his gem pile, now taking the shape of an almost decent pass at a poor dragon stash. He figured there were a couple hundred gems in the pile, but since some dragons could build stashes numbering in the low millions, he doubted he was anything special, not helped by his constant munching on the gems.

He attempted to distract himself from the longevity of his current hive, seeing as the deep soils of Equestria could form Gems in only a few years.

These caverns had once held a diamond dog colony well past several hundred large; he doubted his small hive would outweigh the gems so long as he avoided increasing its population too rapidly, an easy task as he was still hoping not to bear more children and deal the guilt of losing track of who was who, doubting the cave produced enough gems for him to come up with twelve more names, much less hundreds of names.

"I wonder if Twilight will let me take maternity leave," Spike muttered as he scratched his chin, knowing that the second his identity was confirmed, Twilight would celebrate his new form with a stack of paperwork a mile high. "I could lie and say I have another egg and just hope it stays a lie,"

With their mother firmly distracted by what they could only guess were deep, complicated thoughts, the three group leaders of the hive met by the water source for an important meeting, with the gem-gathering group having begun constructing doors at every tunnel to help the builders with their job the hive was well on its way of being massive. Still, if they wanted things to pick up, they'd need the next generation to arrive sooner rather than later.

"Mother is giving off the pheromones to try and draw in a female mate," Jasper declared with confidence, "But we won't be able to spread those pheromones out for several more days at this rate; we need to find a proper mate for mother so our workforce can properly grow,"

"Since your team consists of half the hive, I vote Jasper takes two of her followers and begins looking for a suitable breeder for Mother to use for hive expansion," Topaz agreed with Opal's suggestion; Jasper found no reason to fight against the idea and so immediately picked two of her finest warriors,

"Morgan, Moon!" The two scuttled off the doors they were guarding and took position on either side of Jasper, "We'll be journeying to the surface to bring Mother a candidate or two for breeding; we may need to use force, so be ready," The two confirmed their orders, and Jasper took point, asking Opal and Topaz to watch her remaining troops before she began the quest to find a mare for her mother.

Smolder yawned, across the dirt field Ocellus was camouflaged against a rock, using it as a vantage point as she shifted her gaze between two of the three entrances. Smolder was currently lying above the one Spike had originally entered through.

"Couldn't we play like cards or something?" Smolder asked gruffly, the creeping sensation of boredom making her feel dead inside and growing worse by the second.

"Hush," Ocellus called back, louder than she would have liked due to the distance between the two, "We needed to keep an eye out for any Changelings trying to explore outside their nest,"

"You said yourself it'll take three days at least for them to start sealing off the entrances," Smolder complained, "Can't we at least take a little break and get some lunch?"

"We can't just leave, what if they snatch some creature up?" Ocellus snapped back.

"You teleport us to Sugar cube corner, we get out food, we teleport back," Smolder rationalized, "Even if they do leave during that time we'll catch them trying to drag their hapless victim back into the cave," Ocellus was quiet for a short time as she sat on her perch before finally responding,

"No more than ten minutes," She caved in with a sigh as she did a short teleportation jump to Smolder's side, and the two locked hands before teleporting to get their lunch.

As soon as they teleported away Jasper stuck her head out of the Entrance Smolder had been guarding, She and her two companions had been waiting for nearly half an hour by the entrance, having seen Smolder carelessly lazing around the entrance, not that the dragon had been doing much in keeping quiet even if she had managed to stay hidden.

Jasper, Morgan, and Moon had already used the light shining into the cave from the entrance to help adjust their eyes, but the full open sky was still a little too bright.

"How long is ten minutes?" Morgan asked in reference to how long they had until their two predators returned in a bid to try and catch stragglers at the hive entrance.

"Not long enough I presume," Jasper decided, "Mark the other two entrances so the construction team knows to keep an eye out for predators before working on construction in this area," Morgan and Moon did as they were told while Jasper marked the entrance they left from with her pheromones to signify danger in the area.
Morgan finished first and was going to return to Jasper's side for orders before noticing something was making its way towards them through the trees, Morgan rushed towards it and met it just as it became visible through the tree line.

Morgan stopped and stared at it as it, in turn, stared at her in shock.

"Oh," It spoke to her in a kind tone slightly edged with nervousness, "Hello there," It had a basket in one hand but set it down as it got to its knees and offered her hand to Morgan, Morgan approached the creature's hand and, figuring the lose of her own life would at least give Moon and Jasper the time they would need to flee back into the hive and gain plenty of distance, she set her hand in the palm of the creature, who gingerly close its hand around hers and shook it carefully.

"My name is Fluttershy," It told her sweetly, "Are you lost?" Fluttershy knew she was in danger of being snatched away just like Spike, but Starlight knew where the hive was, and if she was the one taken away she had a far better chance of being noticed since she was expected back at the castle within the hour under threat of having a search party sent after her.

"Morgan," Morgan introduced herself firmly upon realizing that this creature was a mare and that finding a mare had quite literally been her only job. Morgan pulled on Fluttershy's hand as she spoke, "Come with me," Morgan's tone was commanding more so than polite, but Fluttershy picked up her basket and followed after her.

"We may need to scrap the mission," Moon told Jasper, who was concerned she was going to have to agree until Morgan spoke up, both Jasper and Moon had been too busy to take count and figured Morgan would scream if she was attacked.

"I found a mare," Morgan informed the duo, who turned at the statement and looked up at Fluttershy, who just waved at them.

"Hello," Fluttershy was slightly nervous but, having already been told that all Changling outside of the Queen were probably only a few days old at best, she figured there was a chance these three had no idea just how dangerous the surrounding wilderness had the potential to be for small defenseless creatures. Since Smolder and Ocellus had seemingly started playing hooky she wasn't going to fly off and leave three small children to run headfirst into the woods, her animal friends were nice, but even a nice animal had the potential to be dangerous if you couldn't talk it down.

"We are successful," Jasper cheered, "Mare, you are coming with us so we may present you to our mother!"

"Ok," Fluttershy did her best to be nice, having already been told by Thorax, who had gotten a few older changelings to talk about Queens, That a Queen usually only had one mate in their life, and would usually go out of their way to seduce their desired partner to, as Thorax had so elegantly put it, Milk them for all their worth. This information had, if nothing else, ensured that Fluttershy was unlikely to have the act of making children forced upon her, at least not immediately, there was no telling if taking too long would result in the Queen assaulting Fluttershy or if denying her advances would result in getting tossed out.

With Smolder and Ocellus still nowhere in sight, Fluttershy allowed herself to be led into the caves so she could meet the new Changeling Queen face-to-face.

Spike wasn't aware that three of his daughters were off finding him a hookup, seeing as only two of them were still in the hive he just figured the others were out foraging or building. The Two stragglers, Aquamarine and Citrine were hard at work, using the cauldron they had crafted on the spot to filter water, the two were trying to filter out the water the best they could, but it seemed that only having two of them was slowing it down, Aquamarine drank from the water source, poured it into Citrine's social stomach, and then went back to drinking as Citrine did her best to spit back up as much of the water that wasn't filtered as possible, then pour out the clean water into the cauldron.

Being the only thing to do other than eat, Spike had chosen to watch them work, and so far the water seemed cleaner, but in being cleaner it only made the sediment sticking to the bottom all that much more clear to see.

"It's still a little earthy," Spike noted after taking a sip, still shivering in slight disgust at the act of trophallaxis, "Maybe you just need a third or even a fourth to get all the muck out of it, this water is dangerously close to being considered mud now," When Spike had first arrived the water had been dirty, but now it seemed the hive excavation efforts had caused a shift in sentiment, enough that their waterway had lost half it's volume for a little while, only to swell back up with a flow of muddy water. "Someone must have harvested gems too close to the waterway somewhere down the way, we're gonna need to find the water source this hails from and work on reinforcing the waterway, if we're not careful it could get sealed off and the backed up pressure could cause parts of the cave to flood,"

Spike watched as the water flowed past them, pondering if this was a problem they should try to fix, or if trying to communicate with Ponyville was worth the risk, he figured they would be less hostile towards his children if he at least told them how to act.

"We should attempt to start a relationship with the town not too far from our hive," Spike informed his two present daughters as they tried to work out how to filter water as a duo, "It would be far more beneficial for us to make friends of them," His two daughters held an air about that that told Spike they'd blindly follow his chosen path without hesitation or much care of whether it was a good path or not.

"So, if you see a pony, don't hurt them unless they start it ok?" The duo looked at one another and then back to Spike.

"How do we know if they're going to start it? and what is it?"

"I hadn't planned on you not understanding that," Spike replied bluntly, "Give me a second I've clearly started too high and I need to work my way down so I can bring you up to my level," His Two Daughters seemed excited at the prospect as Spike tried to figure out how to explain how exactly not to hurt ponies, and when it would be ok to hurt ponies, regardless of how bizarre the situation was telling his kids not to hurt a pony ever could get them killed and that wasn't going to fly with him,"

"Alright so when I said it I was referring to a fight, so don't fight ponies unless they start it, does that make sense?" He watched his daughters talking amongst one another, clearly trying to work out how to reply so their mother didn't think of them as not understanding, a dangerous sign showing off a strong likelihood that his child would say they understood what he was telling them if they felt they understood even slightly.

As he waited for them to tell him if they understood, he heard the entrance open but kept his eyes on the two he was talking to, making sure they didn't sneak a loophole into his orders.

"So if they have a sword and they stab one of us...then we can stab them?" Aquamarine sounded like she was asking a question but she also had an odd air of confidence about her.

"If they have a sword and try to stab you, then stab them before they can stab you, the moment you realize they mean you harm, at that moment you should intend to do them harm," The two went back to deliberating with one another, Aquamarine clearly furious she had gotten it wrong.

"That's a very nice rule," Fluttershy told Spike.

"It's just the basic..." Spike fell silent and slowly looked over to the new voice, Jasper, Morgan, and Moon all standing proud as they presented her with Fluttershy.

"We found a female," Jasper told Spike proudly, "Now we can begin bolstering our ranks,"

"Oh boy," Spike replied as he looked at Fluttershy for a very long moment, "Oh no," he decided as he got up and walked to his new horde, "That's really bad," He decided as he made absolutely sure it was Fluttershy before flopping into the gems, his Daughters hurridly moving Fluttershy into the room and making room for their mother to get to work.

"Hello," Fluttershy said awkwardly, "I'm sorry if this is a bad time, but your lovely children insisted I come for a visit," Spike let out a groan as he took a Gem stone and began eating it before looking back to Fluttershy.

"You ever hear of a Wishing stone?" he asked her as he made the mental preparation for what he would do if Fluttershy didn't belive the story he was about to tell her, "Cause I got a hell of a story to tell you,"

Author's Note

Happy New Years