A Conspiracy of Order

It took three days for the full programming of Stableheart-Drone to take place. Between sessions, he was taken to his office and made to sit with Redheart-Drone so that she could take the ‘orders’ he had for the patients and give them their medications, exams, and more. Or at least, that was the excuse that the patients were given.

In reality, in the time it took for Stableheart-Drone to be infested, programmed, and brought up to the same standards as the other hosts, he was also drained of the knowledge that he had, copied, and then had the same doctoral knowledge shoved into Redheart-Drone. The nurse had his education, his knowledge, and his experience, and could pretend that she had been informed by the doctor of what needed to be done, and what drugs to prescribe for his patients. As for the doctor himself?

Stableheart-Drone huffed, the only remaining bit of the host that reacted to the pleasure of the milking device that was kept pinned to the bottom of his desk. It wasn’t mechanized as some devices down at a farm might have been, as there were no machines that wouldn’t give off a tell-tale buzz in the building, but it did latch tightly to the bottom of his desk, and the artificial sex was pleasurable enough just by rolling his hips forward and back, as if he were constantly ‘breeding’ the hole beneath his work station.

It led down to a jar where his harvested, drugged seed was being harvested, and every so often, Redheart-Drone would appear and some of it would be drained away, added to a drink or the bottle of medicine that one of the patients would be ‘prescribed’ to take home with them for the treatment of their condition. He was aware, as his parasite was, that this was just a means of expanding the addiction that had already spread through the town.

The last couple of days had been used primarily to silence the complaints that had come up from the other ‘addicts’ that had come to the hospital, saying that the trials had gone wrong and that they were feeling ‘off’ from the various things they were made to consume. Stableheart-Drone had been informed that they were on a triple dose of the chemicals, forcing their bodies to get addicted to it faster.

The Mayor hadn’t been allowed to see them, of course – as that would have given away the game – but she was buying the story that the withdrawal from the chemicals was the problem, not the chemicals themselves. After all, they were in a clean facility with no access to them; how could they be making themselves worse?

The story seemed to work for the sake of the conspiracy, and the Mayor stopped visiting after the second day. Stableheart-Drone was able to continue his programming after that.

Now, three days after, it was time for him to return to duty.

Stableheart-Drone pulled his hips back from the desk, feeling the wet slurp of his cock leaving the breeding tube. The sensation of it being dragged at, sucked on as if by a pair of lovers’ flips was quite the intense sensation, but the parasite was already blocking it off, encouraging the nerves around his shaft to go numb and silent so that he could focus on the work ahead. There was a lot of it, after all, and it would require a great deal of attention for a new host to pull it off without being discovered.

And yet, despite the danger, they had to keep moving. The near-discovery with the experiment and Twilight’s temporary imprisonment in the hospital had shown them that they needed caution and expansion in equal measure. They couldn’t take it too fast, but they couldn’t take it too slow, either; without enough hosts, they wouldn’t be able to hold out if they were discovered. It had been pure luck that their limited pool of hosts had been positioned in a place to warn other hosts away from the library at the right time, and in the hospital where they could help effect the rescue.

The Nest – both pieces of it – knew the danger that such a low pool of drone-hosts represented. It needed to expand, growing its workers, its supporters, and it had to do it quickly.

And…Stableheart-Drone agreed. Now that he had been programmed, he could see how much more efficient the work of the Nest was. They all knew what they were supposed to do, and they didn’t clash with each other any longer. The treatment of a parasite to the body could bring someone much more in line with the common order, the common good, and that meant that they had a moral obligation to spread the parasites and the Nest’s command to all of Ponyville.

Of course, it wouldn’t be something that other ponies necessarily agreed with, but that just meant that they had to be handled like more recalcitrant patients. There were ways of getting even the most stubbornly ill pony to take their medicine.

But carefully, and with the right patients, first, the ones that others would like to see brought in line.

Redheart-Drone opened the door as his cock finished shrinking into its sheath, looking at him with her head nominally cocked to the side. It was just an act, of course, just in case there were those in the hallway that might wonder why a nurse would look at a doctor without the greatest of respect on her face. It was the same act that he would have pulled if he had been talking to the head of the hospital.

“Doctor, there’s several patients waiting for you if you have a moment.”

“Yes, yes, I’m coming,” he said.

“You are what?”

Yes. Of course. None of the impatience of the parasite. The drone, the host, would be slightly more compassionate, kinder. The parasite pulled his lips into a kinder smile, bobbing his head.

“Of course, yes, you’re right. I’m on my way.”

Redheart-Drone nodded, stepping inside and moving to the jar. Stableheart-Drone stepped out of the office, leaving her to her devices.

There was something odd about being the youngest of the hosts in terms of how long he’d been part of the Nest, but there was something else there, too, something that made him feel…subordinate. He wondered if it was because his parasite had been immature when it had been implanted in him, and how it had to grow inside of him as well as just melding with him. Perhaps that sense of underling-ness was just part of being ‘younger’ that way, and looking at those that had been infested with ‘adult’ parasites.

The question faded as the parasite pushed it out of his head, dragging him down the hall to work and duty. Stableheart-Drone shook his head, thinking about who he had been scheduled to see this morning.

There weren’t many. A couple of injuries from the farms, a member of the Apple family that had come in for a check-up, and –

“Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!”

And, of course, her.

Stableheart-Drone opened the door to the patient’s room to find Pinkie Pie hopping up and down on her bed, her hooves kicking the blankets off as she hit the mattress again and again. She clearly didn’t have anything specifically wrong with her, at least not physically, but the Cakes sent her in every few months just to be sure that her hyperactivity didn’t mean that there was something hiding deep down inside.

There never was, though Stableheart-Drone had memories of going from amused to downright frustrated that the young woman wouldn’t take things seriously. The constant goofiness grated on him, and there were days when he genuinely wondered if she was listening to what he said, at all. The constant energy had to come from somewhere, and he’d seen multiple times that her energy bursts, hyperactivity, and more all came at a cost of lack of attention and difficulty staying focused on one thing at a time.

If he had his druthers, he would have had her on a gentle downer, something to bring her energy levels down just a few notches, but she had never been willing to accept that, and the Cakes had been unwilling to force her to take it. The result had been a force of genuine chaos throughout the town for years…

But not anymore.

“Ms. Pie,” Stableheart-Drone said as he shut the door. “I hope that you’re well.”

“Oh, hey, Doc! How’s it going?”

“Well enough. Are you going to keep bouncing on the bed?”

“Yep! It’s like a super-duper trampoline.”

That was because it was a very expensive medical bed that wasn’t meant to be bounced on, just used to keep a patient as comfortable as possible as they laid in it. The bouncing was probably wearing out the mattress, let alone what it was doing to the frame itself, considering the delicate machinery built in to adjust to any type of pony that laid in it.

The parasite kept the doctor’s distaste and wince off his face, making sure that the gentle physician smile remained, instead. The yellow-tan unicorn walked around the bed, standing at the foot of it as he looked the mare over.

She was, as ever, a complete picture of physical health. She had lean muscle running from nose to tail, her legs were in fine shape, and her rump had clearly stayed firm from all the bouncing and prancing that she did around town. Despite hopping up and down everywhere, she wasn’t even close to out of breath, and she seemed to be completely fine with keeping in motion while the exam was going on.

Normally, he’d at least make her go still for a blood test of something like that, just to try and get some point across to her that the constant motion had to be at least a little much, but not this time. He had other plans.

“Ms. Pie, there’s been a new drug that’s come down from Canterlot, and I’d really appreciate it if you gave it a try.”

“Oh? Is this a new party thing?” she asked, continuing to boing, boing, boing off the bed.

“No.”

“Ah, then I’m not really interested.”

“Ms. Pie –”

“Come on, Doc. There’s nothing wrong with me!”

And there probably wasn’t, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t things that could be improved. The Nest would give this young mare a focus that she didn’t have, that she’d never had, and more to the point, she’d probably be less irritating to the entire town. She had maintained this status for nearly ten years now, and she mostly did that because of her help when she was younger.

It was time for her to grow up.

Nevertheless, the parasite kept him on an even keel, and Stableheart-Drone smiled as he shook his head.

“Perhaps, but you know how it would make the Cakes feel better.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how it feels when you help someone?”

“Uh-huh?”

“They’ve been trying to help you for years, Ms. Pie, but you haven’t let them.”

“What?”

She stopped bouncing. Finally. Stableheart-Drone continued.

“Each time you come here, they ask me how you’re doing, if you’ll let me help you.”

“…They…they never told me that…”

“I know. They didn’t want you to feel bad.”

“But – am I making – am I making them feel bad?” Pinkie Pie asked.

Stableheart-Drone was aware of being manipulative. The parasite was helping, but the idea had come from him, from all that he knew about Pinkie Pie, and how much she wanted to make people happy. Doctors, for all that they were meant to help others, were also very good at knowing what buttons to press.

It was part of knowing better than others.

It was part of making them better.

“I know you don’t want to hurt them.”

“Oh, no. Oh, Celestia, I’m not, please, tell me I’m not.”

“Not yet, but you could. If you don’t calm down, you could hurt them very badly.”

“…This…this thing –”

“It’ll help you help them. Help you help yourself. And it won’t even do much to you, just make it so that you don’t have to run around all the time, won’t have to bounce around and knock things over.”

“But I don’t –”

Crack.

Bang.

Clatter.

It wasn’t even part of the manipulation, merely karma, that the bed chose that exact moment to break apart. The constant jumping while she was waiting, the damage that it had sustained from bearing an adult mare leaping up and down on the mattress, had finally grown too much for the bed to bear. As it came apart into its constituent pieces, Pinkie Pie barely managed to avoid being pulled down with it.

The mare stared at the mess that she’d caused, her mouth hanging open, while Stableheart-Drone just tsked softly.

“If you’d been on the new drug, that wouldn’t have happened.”

Or, quite possibly, it would have, just not with the same violence, or as swiftly. The drug, after all, was the same as the aphrodisiac fluids that were being passed around to other patients, and it would merely send the mare’s energy into a different direction, making her more like a nymphomaniac than a silly high-energy female. If any male crossed her path, she’d probably completely exhaust them, and then go looking for the next one. Would it make Pinkie Pie into a rapist of sorts? Potentially, at least until she was programmed and infested.

But that would be something else to address, later. For now, he had to get started with this.

“I’ll have Nurse Redheart come back to you with your medication.”

“…”

“Ms. Pie?”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she said, and she looked genuinely apologetic, her eyes wet with tears. “I…I should have listened.”

The parasite knew that the doctor should be sympathetic there, comforting and empathetic for the patient. There was something about Stableheart that had always been that way to his patients, despite his professional demeanor. The doctor himself agreed with that, even here, even with a patient that had screwed everything up for herself and the equipment in the room.

So, they faked it. They turned around and wrapped a hoof and foreleg around Pinkie Pie’s neck, giving her a gentle hug before patting her along the flank.

“It’ll get better from now on,” he said.

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

“Okay. I’m…I’m sorry. I’ll get the bits to pay for it, I promise.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll cover it.”

And soon enough, Pinkie Pie would be on their side. And not a moment too soon; if the Cakes were taken in by Dapper-Drone and the others that still worked out of the library, then it was important that the other member of the bakery wasn’t going to cause problems. Having her converted alongside – or even before – the Cakes would make sure that the bakery was never suspected, never considered a threat to the town as a whole.

That was good.

That was what the Nest needed.

He kept the smile on his face until he reached the door and stepped out of the room. The moment the door closed, his smile disappeared, the parasite no longer bothering. The irritation that he had felt with Pinkie Pie’s stubbornness and the slight sympathy that came for her for her tears died, too, squashed away.

No longer useful? No longer felt.

The doctor considered that sort of experience, and even without his conditioning, he imagined that he’d appreciate the ability to just control his emotions that way. He would have nodded, but the parasite took that from him, piloting him back towards his office. There was more milking to be done.

Nurse Redheart, as the patients called her, was something of a saint in the hospital. She lived there, it seemed, working longer hours and doing more tasks than any of the other nurses, and she always did them with kindness on her face and goodness in her heart. The softness of her touch was legend among the patients, as was her fury for fools and interrupting, badgering relatives that had come to try and interfere with treatment.

That reputation was a great deal harder for the parasite within, and Redheart-Drone herself, to keep up with a new sense of priorities.

Now that her main focus was the Nest and its wellness, her general care and well-wishes for the patients of the hospital was harder to focus on. Sure, they were supposed to be brought in to care for the Nest eventually, and part of her duties were to ensure that they were ready for that, much in the same way that she had been charged with ensuring that they were ready for life after the hospital before, but it wasn’t the same thing. Back then, she’d cared for them individually, wanted to know about them, wanted to be there for them.

Now, as Redheart-Drone, she didn’t care at all. She wanted them to be made better, conditioned, drugged, trained for the Nest as fast as possible, and it took great effort on the part of parasite and host to keep up the charade that they were still the same that they had always been. One way or another, they were going to keep the illusion up.

They managed it for the past three days since bringing Stableheart-Drone into the fold, and the end of the day had become a relief. The parasite had not known that it was possible to feel such a thing, but keeping up an identity so contrary to its own sense of self had become something…draining. Not difficult, frustrating, or even annoying, but merely draining, something to keep an eye on so it didn’t get worse.

As the pony-host walked toward the front door of the hospital, however, they paused. Another pony was making her own departure, and it offered them an opportunity.

“Rarity! Rarity, dear!” Redheart-Drone called out.

The white-furred pony turned, her blue-purple mane falling over one side of her face. She had grown up quite a bit from the business-pony that she had been when she was younger, developing into an attractive mare in her own right. The business that she’d run as a seamstress at the edge of town had developed into something more, a slight conglomeration where she had contacts among the high and mighty in Canterlot, as well as a runway down in Manehattan. The connections that she had were up there with Twilight-Drone’s own, and in a much greater, more varied way.

“Darling?” Rarity asked, cocking her head to the side. “Is something the matter, Nurse Redheart?”

“No, no, but I had a thought, and I wanted to share it with you.”

This facet of the nurse’s identity was easier for the parasite to use, particularly as it was leading to a more direct service to the Nest. It was one thing to ‘care’ for the different patients in the hospital, ensuring that they were on the right track for programming and future alteration. It was another thing, a far more enjoyable thing, to be all ‘girly-girl’ with another mare for the purposes of getting her off her guard.

“Do you have some time to talk shop?” Redheart-Drone asked.

“Well, I suppose I do. No work until tomorrow.”

“Splendid. Let me grab a bottle, and we’ll meet back at your shop?”

“Oh, my. That kind of chat, dear?”

“Mm, I think you’ll like it.”

“Well, it’s been a while. I suppose I can clear my schedule for some wining and dining.”

Rarity giggled as she always did, proper and gentle with just a hint of promise of something else. The seamstress of the town, the famous fashion designer, had never allowed a true scandal to come through, but there’d always been the implication that she might have something of a relationship with someone that wasn’t a stallion. It was never clear if it was true, or if it was just something that she’d curried and pushed as an idea to make people more interested in her, but it had certainly solidified her reputation as a mare of interest to the average pony.

And it meant that there was a possibility there, if she could get the mare interested for the night.

Redheart-Drone ran back to her own little office, pulling out the bottle of apple wine that one of the patients had given her. It was hardly something that she’d drink herself, but her past memories – as well as some treatments to Rarity in the past when she’d come in just a trifle drunk – showed that it was one of the mare’s drinks of choice. She emptied half of it out, pouring it down the drain, before squatting her hindquarters over it.

The parasite was slowly moving her, manipulating her, self-stimulating her inner walls by forcing them to clench, part, and clench again. The constant movement and rippling friction of her inner muscles forced to rub against each other was a rough imitation of sexual intercourse with a stallion, but the pressure, the rubbing, and more weas sufficient to stimulate a little extra fluids from within that particular cavity. The host allowed herself to enjoy it as the parasite pushed them down, grinding their swollen nether lips against the mouth of the bottle. The sweet scent would stain it, allowing the pheromones to settle on, and the thick, heavy blast of drugged aphrodisiacs would settle along the inside of the bottle, too, staining the very top of the glass with a potent blast for the first drink.

Once she had stained it properly, she lowered herself a little more carefully. The parasite reached inside, tendrils inside of her bladder, and she felt the rippling, the stirring, the gentle twisting motions inside. It not only made her feel like she had to go, but it was forcing the tissue inside to spasm, to make her feel it all the more urgently.

And yet, as a host, she had no choice of whether or not she would. The parasite was doing something akin to edging someone, building up an intense need so that when it was finally released, there would be more than enough for their purposes.

In addition, she could feel it ‘treating’ the urine within. Rather than the usual small adjustments, her parasite was not only hyper-treating her urine to make it more potent of an aphrodisiac, but it was also twisting the texture and flavor. They needed it to be as close to the apple wine as possible, ensuring that it wouldn’t be questioned while being drunk, and more, they needed to loosen up and water down the bit of vaginal slime near the top, ensuring that it didn’t become a sticky web.

The warmth was finally released, and she felt the heat spreading down her inner tubing, going down from her bladder to her urethra. The few times that she had been forced to dose a patient with her own urine, squatting over their faces to ensure that it went down their throats, had allowed the parasite to refine targeting and pressure and flow, and it went in easily without a drop going out of place.

The soft hiss that filled the air would have embarrassed most nurses, she knew, but she had become used to it. One did not take urine samples all day without having the utter lack of modesty that she did.

And more to the point, the parasite took most of the shame away. There was nothing but a bodily function there, one that was useful to the cause.

Little by little, the pressure inside faded away, and only when her bladder had been wrung loose of anything that it could let out and the bottle was full did the parasite ease up on the pressure. The tickling, rolling feeling inside of her bladder faded, and the general sense of pressure around it eased off.

There was no sigh, no sense of satisfaction. She merely pulled back, jammed the cork in the bottle before oxygen could make the effectiveness of the mixed fluids fade, and put it into a bag over her side.

It was time to break a designer.

The long walk to the shop was not too terrible for the nurse, though she was tired and vaguely sweaty when she arrived. Rarity, of course, had already pulled a diaphanous robe over herself, answering the door like a lady of leisure.

“Darling, come in, come in,” she said, the unicorn stepping out of the way. “I’ve been waiting for ages.”

“Heh, for less than half an hour, Rarity,” Redheart-Drone said.

“Oh, fine, yes, but it felt like ages.”

“I know, I know, but I promise, this is going to make up for it.”

“Apple wine? Darling, I can get that from the source.”

“But can you get the right vintage?”

“…Oh, you didn’t.”

“Oh, I did.”

“Oh, I must sample it, then. A drink, and – what was this business that you wanted, again?”

“I was thinking that the nurses back at the hospital could really do with a proper uniform. We’ve been using the same ones for years, and I thought, since you might be between jobs at the moment…”

“Between projects, dear, between projects; I am always in demand, so I can never be truly between jobs. But…you’re not wrong,” the unicorn said, getting down a pair of glasses and laying them on a table in her workroom. “Pour, please. And tell me, how many nurses are we talking here?”

“Oh, quite a few. I think between thirty and forty,” she admitted before popping the bottle. “But imagine the improvement of a truly unified appearance.”

“Mmm, I am…and I am loving it.”

That was the point of the lie. There were no plans of getting the nurses new uniforms, but Redheart-Drone had known that it would suffice to get her in the door, and if she could get Rarity drinking the drugged wine, it wouldn’t take long before she was addicted to it. Once that happened, further doses could be brought around by the nurses coming by for ‘fittings’, and that would eventually lead to Rarity wanting to come around for the real stuff…and for programming.

Once that happened, they’d have both the unicorn, her business contacts, and the reach she had to different cities in their pocket. She could become a traveling infester as well as a fashion contact in the different cities. She’d have reason to move around, to infect others, to have private meetings with the high and mighty.

And so, the Nest would expand, again.

“Dear?”

The parasite and the host snapped out of their thoughts, focusing on the moment once more. Rarity gestured with one hoof towards the glass on the other side of the table.

“Aren’t you going to have a drink?”

“Oh, yes. Sorry, I was fantasizing.”

“As was I, darling, but let’s not let a good bottle go to waste.”

Redheart-Drone nodded, lifting it from the table and toasting the other mare, before sipping at the beverage. She had long-since lost any shame at drinking what was mixed with the alcohol; the taste no longer reminded one of any such filth or vulgarities, and even if it did, there was no choice in the matter, anyway. The parasite would make her do anything, go through anything, to make the Nest stronger and more viable. Redheart-Drone would go along with it, too; she had been well-programmed to obey all the instructions of the Nest and those that served it.

They drank for a time, just enjoying the wine and making small-talk, but as they filled their glasses a second, then a third time, the effects became more and more obvious. Rarity went red-faced for an entirely different reason than the wine, and her scent started to change. No longer just the perfumed scents of a rich mare, she started to put off the slightly sour scent of sweat, and under that, something thicker, something warmer and more needy.

Redheart-Drone didn’t smile, but she and the parasite were satisfied, very satisfied indeed. That warmth and need was already settling in, and a few more sips would surely turn it into a full-blown heat.

“So, are you looking forward to this project?” Redheart-Drone asked.

“Mm?”

“The project. Outfitting the nurses?”

“Oh, oh, yes,” Rarity said. “I believe that it will be a marvelous process. The fitting will have to be extensive, though.”

“I’m sure. The mares will be more than ready for it, I promise. They’re all eager to have a new outfit that shows them off better.”

The parasite was studying Rarity throughout the conversation, trying to determine whether the rumors surrounding the other mare were true. They needed to know; if they sent the wrong type of host to infect her at a later date, then there might be a last-minute burst of resistance that might cause harm to the host. It was best to be sure.

And sure enough, there was some response at the idea of all those mares ‘showing off’, so to speak. It wasn’t possible to tell through the drugged state if it was merely the aphrodisiacs making her respond to any sort of sensual idea or genuine preference for mares, but one thing was for certain: Rarity liked the idea.

“Mmm…I’ll look forward to it.”

As the unicorn giggled, tossing her head back and clearly trying to pull herself back to a sober state, Redheart-Drone allowed herself a smile. It fit the moment, and more, it was part of the satisfaction that they felt. The parasite had found a way to expand for the Nest, and it had listened to its host to do it well.

The new programming that had come about due to the initial failure of their programming was working out in the Nest’s favor. Soon, very soon, they would have enough hosts to make a bigger move. The Mayor was the only real source of danger in the local area, considering her authority over the other ponies. Once they had enough of a following, once the Nest had enough back-ups to ensure that the Mayor wouldn’t be missed during the infestation process, they could move on her, and once they had her, the Nest would be safe from any internal threats.

External ones, like Luna, Celestia, and Cadence, were still a possibility, but that would be handled. Bit by bit, they were growing, and the presence of the Nest would become the true power behind everything in Equestria soon enough. All they had to do was keep pushing, patiently but firmly.

“Mmm…I think I like this vintage,” Rarity said. “Do you have any more?”

“Not with me, I’m afraid, but I think there’s a few more back at my office. I could send some with the next mare that comes for a fitting.”

“Mmm, keep sending these, and I’ll give you a discount for the whole service.”

“Done.”

“Now, why don’t you – hic – oh, excuse me, dear.”

“Heh, too much?”

“Oh, not even. Now, let’s start talking about designs.”

Even half-drunk, the designer was still a designer. Redheart-Drone pulled herself together and prepared to talk shop. After all, if she made a mistake, it was still possible that Rarity could notice, and that would bring questions.

She would not make a mistake.