A Conspiracy of Order

Stableheart-Drone continued his duties as a doctor at the hospital, though he was becoming more and more like the Manehattan doctors that were prescribing medicines left and right for their backers and financiers in the bigger city. Ponies came in complaining of minor aches and pains, and he would send them away with some of the drugged goo that the rest of the Nest produced. Some would come in with genuine problems, and he would make sure that they were patched up, but sent home with special painkillers to make sure that the addiction was started and would keep them coming back.

It was a busy way of life, keeping up with everyone that needed treatment. The more that he did for the Nest, the more that he wanted to do, and so he did even more. The spiral was as real for him as it was for those that were getting drugged by him.

The patients were quick to succumb to the new medicine, and those that had been in the hospital for a long time found themselves more and more dependent on the ‘painkillers’ that he dispensed to them throughout their stay. The days passed, and they were slowly released. It was a miracle, some stated, a miracle that they were being released from the hospital after being there for months with various illnesses. Some wondered if the hospital had found a miracle cure, while others were just content to have their family members back.

In truth, the parasites of the Nest were simply that good at suppressing the symptoms of the different ponies that were brought into the Nest. He saw it himself; the parasites not only forced their hosts through the exhaustion that most of the sick equines were suffering from, but had such control over the body that they were able to hold back the symptoms of not only depression, but such great things as cancer.

More than one patient left that had been all but guaranteed to die beneath the hospital roof, and they were welcomed back with happy tears. If the family knew what the cost had been to heal them, Stableheart-Drone had little doubt that they would have paid it. They would have assumed that the family member was just a little odd, yes, but they would have paid it, not caring that they were dealing with a drone rather than a true pony any longer. All that mattered was that they would have that family member back.

And so the days dragged on. He worked with one patient after another, and over the course of a week, he was able to bring more than a dozen hosts to the Nest. They had to do it slowly, in stages, but they were able to do it while the patients were either unconscious or drugged to the gills, unable to remember what had happened to them, only that something had. They were all grateful for the chance to go to the private garden, anyway, happy to be allowed sunshine and air that was better than the rooms in the hospital, and so, they didn’t question what it meant to be there.

It wasn’t until the end of that week that things started getting…interesting.

He was just going back to his office, meaning to hook himself up to the milker once more, when he heard someone shouting his name from down the hall. His parasite turned him to look at the source of it rather than continuing on its appointed rounds, and they spotted the speaker immediately.

It was the Cakes, and they were all but dragging Pinkie Pie behind them, the mare leaving a small trail of slime between her hind legs. Stableheart-Drone arched an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he just opened the door to his office, nudging Pinkie Pie through, and then shut the door behind her.

The Cakes looked relieved, which meant that he’d made the right decision. The parasite and the doctor were of one mind: something had gone off with the medication. The younger mare should have been completely addicted at this point, leaving her unable to think of causing trouble, just thinking of sex.

So, what had gone wrong?

“Doc, I think…I think something’s wrong with our girl,” Mr. Cake said, shaking his head. “I know that you said that this’d help her –”

“It will, if she’s taking it properly.”

There was a flinch, just slightly, on the part of Mrs. Cake. The parasite pulled at the shared information from the last sync with the Nest –

Ah, yes. Mrs. Cake had been one of the first that had been affected by the fluids that Nest helped their hosts produce. Which meant that there was a possibility that something else had happened to the meds.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cake, I promise you that I’ll take a good look at Ms. Pie to make sure that she’s alright, but the medication should be doing everything I said. If she’s not getting better, if she’s not more focused –”

“Well, that’s the thing. She is, most of the time,” Mr. Cake said, shaking his head. “I mean, I see her doing better and better with the bakery. No more mistakes with the recipes, constantly on top of things, not losing orders: she’s like a whole new pony.”

“…But?” Stableheart-Drone asked.

“But then, there’s that time when she just…loses it. And she’s worse than she was. She leaped over the counter and tried to pin one of our customers to the floor, and…and…”

The embarrassment was clear, and the doctor-drone could guess what had happened. He’d known that was a possibility, but the dosage had been such that Pinkie Pie should have been completely locked down, too horny and high to do anything but what she was told to do. The fact that she hadn’t been…

His suspicions were proving more and more likely as Mrs. Cake looked anywhere but at him. He cleared his throat.

“Mr. Cake, could I have a moment?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“I mean, with Mrs. Cake.”

“Wha – why? What’s the matter?”

“She looks rather unwell. Just – give us a moment, please? Just in case.”

“Oh, um…sure. Sure. You okay, honey?”

“Yes, dear, just…just momentary discomfort,” Mrs. Cake said. “I’ll just check with Stableheart for a moment, that’s all.”

The stallion slowly nodded, wandering a few steps down the hall, out of earshot almost immediately, what with the jostling employees of the hospital all around him. Stableheart-Drone turned to her, lowering his voice.

“You took some of the medicine, didn’t you?”

“W-well, just…just a few,” Mrs. Cake said.

“Why?”

“Well, I thought – you know how it is. Sometimes, you worry for your children.”

“That wasn’t the reason.”

Was that the compassionate sort of answer that Doctor Stableheart would have given? Probably not, but compassion could have its hard side, as well, and it seemed appropriate for the moment. The vague dissatisfaction of the parasite for having the plan nearly derailed was showing, but it hit the right note. Mrs. Cake looked down.

“The first time…I swear, it was just to see if it was going to help me, too.”

“…Help you?”

“I have some problems focusing of late, too. I thought, well, if it’s helping Pinkie stay focused on her work –”

“And after that?”

“…It made me feel good. Feel good like…It just made me feel good.”

So, she’d been sneaking doses, or pushing Pinkie Pie to let her have some, and that meant that neither of them were getting properly dosed. No wonder Pinkie Pie had attacked someone, and no wonder she had left a snail trail of pleasure juices as she was dragged into the hospital. She had been completely out of it, but not so far down that people would keep from noticing. If she’d been properly dosed, she would have been no less horny, but her energy levels and her general state of being would have been so subdued that she wouldn’t have caused any trouble. Not for the family, not for the customers, not for anyone.

At least they’d brought her right to the hospital rather than tried to take her out of town. That was lucky.

“Look. From now on, you can’t have any more of those,” he said, the parasite ensuring that his voice stayed even, calm, and caring. He leaned in, almost conspiratorially, and kept his voice down. “I want to help Pinkie Pie, and you do, too.”

“I do. I really do. I just –”

“If you’re suffering from depression and need a booster, we can talk about putting you on the same medication.”

“…We can?”

“There’s a different dose needed for you –” Bigger dose, probably, considering that she kept going on and off it, and was likely developing a tolerance. “– but we can make sure that you get what you need. But you can’t keep taking hers. This medicine is very strong, and if you go off it at the wrong time, you can lose all the progress that you made, and that would mean that she’d have to start over, on a much stronger dose, and perhaps not even feel it. Do you want her to go back to how she was? Or worse, a depressed version of what she was?”

Mrs. Cake was the epitome of a caring mother, it seemed, despite the fact that Ms. Pie was not her child. She bowed her head, nodding in understanding, even as she looked like she was being asked to give up some great treasure.

In some ways, she was. She was being asked to hold off and be depressed without her addictive drugs for a while. It was going to be hard, but it would be doable for her.

“I see…I…I understand.”

“Now, no more stealing her doses.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“And no more pretending that you’re okay.”

“I – I’m not – I’m fine.”

“Dear. You’re not.”

“…”

“It’s okay to be depressed, but you can’t just hide it. Come in with your husband tomorrow, and we’ll get you prescribed something for that. And who knows? Maybe he’ll want to try it, too.”

And it would give them a way in with the Cakes, just in case Dapper’s work fell through. They would have many chances, many layers to the plan of conspiracy. Soon enough, the whole village would be a safe place for the Nest, all those different layers of threats completely negated.

Mrs. Cake nodded. Stableheart-Drone nodded back toward her husband, and she trotted back down the hall. There was some conversation between them, but he’d already tuned them out, turning back to his office.

He wasn’t surprised to find Pinkie Pie masturbating when he walked inside. Her rump was turned toward the corner of his desk, and she was grinding her pussy against it, sliming up the edge and huffing and puffing as she did. Her mouth hung open, her eyes were hazy, and she whimpered with clear need.

“Mmmph…mmm…”

“Ms. Pie.”

“Nnngh…S-sorry, Doc…not trying…to make a mess.”

“You need help.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you need –”

“Can…can you…f-fuck me…Doc?”

Host and parasite hadn’t quite expected that reaction, but it would be a useful one. A more direct application of drugged seed would be better than more of the diluted medicine, and it would be absorbed more directly into her. And after that…

It didn’t take long to determine that her current state all but demanded that she be implanted as soon as possible. The infestation would help her control herself, and she was already lost enough to the drugs that she would have little in the way of self-control or resistance in the garden. As the Nest had grown tall enough to have similar processing power as the one in the library, that meant that she would be able to be taken through this overnight.

A bit of paperwork, some shuffling of other patients, and nobody would be any the wiser by morning.

“Of course,” he said.

“You’re the – mmmph – you’re the best, Doc.”

The pink mare turned around. The medicine had clearly done the job of getting her to be hyper-productive, that was for sure; her slime ran down her back legs, and her pussy was a mess of slippery strings. Her pussy had left all kinds of stains against the side of his desk, but that was something that could be handled later.

The parasite pushed his cock free of his sheath, making it go up with a rapid erection suitable for the way that a stallion should be around his mares. The doctor inside was a little bit trepidatious about outright fucking a patient, but the parasite was there to keep that from bothering either of them. This was for the Nest, after all, and the young mare needed a good dose of medicine to be back to her normal self.

Pinkie Pie swayed her hindquarters back and forth, showing off that puffy pink donut of a pucker as well as that slick, slimy slit. She had been completely drenched, and the doctor would have all the lube he needed for his job.

“Anal, please,” she muttered. “I don’t want to get pregnant.”

“As you wish,” Stableheart-Drone said.

His movements were getting more mechanical, more focused on the point of delivery rather than imitating someone else. He put his hooves on her back, hunching up and over, and his cock slid between her thighs. The large shaft drenched itself in her juices, sliding forward, back, forward, back, before pulling back and up, the flared head sliding towards her other hole. With so much lubrication, penetration would be – and was – easy.

“Oooooooh, yeah…”

It was somewhat amazing that Pinkie Pie was still capable of coherent speech, even something so limited as that. She lowered her head to the ground, her hooves barely keeping her front half lifted up, while her back half arched that little bit higher as his cock went deeper into her asshole. Further, further, further, until his sac tapped gently against her sex, and she moaned all the more for him.

It wouldn’t take long to get her completely satisfied. It wouldn’t take long at all.

The host would have taken his time to get her off, to make sure that she had the orgasm that she needed. If this had been a purely medical fuck, it would have been filled with a sense of technique, of aiming for the pleasurable places, ensuring that she got everything that would get her off. The pace would have been slow, at first, and quiet, ensuring that the rest of the hospital never learned of the rule-breaking going on just out of sight.

That was not what happened.

The parasite wiggled itself around his prostate and pulled on the various fibers and tendrils that connected it to the rest of Stableheart-Drone’s body, ensuring that he felt it all the way through. He thrust in, out, in, out, a pale imitation of actual rutting, before the parasite reached the point of proper satiation.

Squirt.

The first shot went through his sac, up through his prostate, only to be diverted into the parasite. It did something in there, something to alter the fluid, before it was released. The sensation of it coming down his shaft was hotter than usual, but also thicker, almost like his seed had become something more like syrup, more sticky and clinging than before.

Squirt.

Squirt.

Splort.

When it finally reached the end of his shaft and flowed out into the mare’s ass, he felt that, too, and the party mare arched her back as soon as the fluid filled her. It must have been a much higher dose of the drugged fluids she’d been getting, or –

No, the parasite had altered it further, making it more of a direct aphrodisiac. It hit her inner walls and was absorbed almost immediately. The parasite directed the host’s hooves to hold tight, to press in from either side –

And just in time. Pinkie Pie let out a soundless scream, her mouth hanging open as she came, and came, and came again, her orgasms rolling through her as the higher dose hit her hard. It was flowing right into her, drugging her and leaving her high faster than any of the previous medicinal doses would have done. It was no different than upending a bottle of wine into some-pony’s ass, except that it was a much stronger substance than any booze would have been.

Pinkie Pie was subject to a fit almost like an epileptic seizure of pleasure, shaking and spasming, tensing up and then sliding down again. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze went her inner walls, almost like she was desperately trying to suck more of the forbidden juices from his shaft, trying to get higher and higher on her own pleasure.

The parasite and the stallion’s body obliged.

It took less than a minute for her to be completely out of it, for her shaking, quivering self to be completely shattered. She was giddy-eyed, her tongue hanging out, and when his cock popped out of her hole with a ‘satisfying’ squelch, it left all the seed inside. Not even a drop of it passed out of her. The thicker consistency meant that she was effectively slimed all the way through her insides.

A concept-image popped into his head from the parasite. His cum-slime had been altered, made into a sort of conductive, nesting material for the parasite that would be implanted. It would speed up the way that it could connect to the female, allowing it to burrow deep, integrate faster, and be part of her at a much more rapid rate than had happened to the other hosts so far.

The Nest, it seemed, was still evolving.

There was a clear order, now. He would call Redheart-Drone, and they would take the catatonic patient to the garden. There, the final part of her induction to the Nest would take place, and they would have another user of the Elements of Harmony under their control.

Redheart-Drone walked at Westin-Drone’s side, and the pegasus shook his head. Or rather, the host appeared to, and the parasite encouraged it to maintain the illusion of normality as they walked through the streets.

“She is host?” he asked.

“Pinkie Pie is, though it will take a few hours for the full programming to take effect,” Redheart-Drone whispered. “But it has been started.”

It was a good start, then. Westin-Drone was aware that he had a different perspective to the situation than some of the other hosts. Despite his life of debauchery, he had lived with access to money, power, and more, and that meant that he knew what the world had been like before Twilight Sparkle and her friends had done what they did.

He remembered. He understood the power that they could wield with the Elements of Harmony, and he knew that the Nest would need to take care of that.

They’d been partially informed of that with the infestation of Twilight-Drone and the subsequent download of her memories, but the addition of Westin-Drone’s memories corroborating the stories in Twilight-Drone’s mind, combined with the other bits and pieces that had been gathered from a multitude of hosts, had painted a very dangerous picture of what the Elements of Harmony could do if they were ever put to use again. The Nest was mighty, but it was still a being that needed to operate quietly until it had enough workers, enough hosts, enough drones to do what was required.

The best step was to remove the current users of the Elements of Harmony, and Westin-Drone was satisfied to see two of them taken down, and a third already in the process of being removed. That left only Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash, and he doubted that they needed to do anything about the latter. He and the parasite within agreed that Rainbow Dash was the most selfish of the group, and that the small cluster of friends had been the main thing that had allowed her to be the sort of pony capable of using her particular Element. Without them, she would soon cease to be an appropriate wielder.

But they still had the others to take care of, something that they should be able to finish soon.

“Have the tastes of the future-host been determined?” Westin-Drone asked.

“Not yet.”

“One would imagine that she has lost control at least once.”

“This host has not seen it.”

“How long has she been treated?”

“Slightly less than a week.”

“Dose?”

“Moderate.”

“Hmmph.”

“The Nest cannot risk discovery. A slower approach has been deemed necessary for this one.”

The host and parasite understood, but they were both antsy about it. There was still the urgency for the host to have his pleasure, and there was the need for the parasite within to see results. Though their programming had been changed with the advent of greater understanding of what made them efficient, there was something of their original melding left. The parasite had been given the host’s need to see things done in a timely manner, and the host had been given the need to control things the way that he wanted. They were both subservient to the Nest, of course, but that did not preclude vague irritations at delays.

They reached the shop again, and the two hosts paused as the sounds of pleasure rose from within. They glanced at each other, intentionally adopting the more ‘normal’ mannerisms for the sake of anyone watching.

“Was there another fitting today?” Westin-Drone asked.

“There is supposed to be a daily fitting, but –”

“But what?”

“They were supposed to be done.”

“…”

“Let us see what the future-host is doing.”

Westin-Drone nodded, the white pegasus with his red wings stepping forward. He rested a hoof against the front door, pushed it slightly, and when there was no response, shoved it the rest of the way open.

There was the fashion designer, lying on her back, with her mouth open wide as one of the nurses happened to be squatting over her face. Her mouth was filled with a clear fluid, her eyes were wide and hazy, and her sex drooled down over her asshole and the base of her tail, staining them both.

The hosts stepped in quickly, Redheart-Drone shutting the door behind them. The mare over Rarity’s face had no expression, drone-faced as she continued to slowly let loose her drugged stream into the other female’s muzzle. There was no need to speak; it was clear what had happened to everyone involved.

That seems to solve that mystery, Westin-Drone thought, looking down at the fashion designer. The unicorn was completely out of it, but at the same time, she was quite clearly enjoying herself. She at least enjoys mares.

Yet, as he walked around the drugged unicorn, her eyes slipped to him, then down between his legs. Her smile remained, and it was clear that she didn’t dislike what she saw between his hind legs.

Bi, then.

His parasite was content with that. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a great deal better than nothing. A bisexual pony could be played with by any of the drones, fed whatever they needed. It wouldn’t take long before Rarity would be completely ready for infestation.

“Should we take the future-host to the library?” Redheart-Drone asked.

“Not yet.”

“She’s close.”

“Let’s get her closer. And next time, we will come with you prepared.”

“Ah. Pre-infestation?”

“Yes.”

It would require either sending Dapper along with her or modifying another stallion, like himself, to have the right shaft to deliver the smaller worm to the mare on the floor, but it would be easier than guiding a drunk through town. Having her controlled by the immature worm to come to a Nest for syncing and programming would give them far greater cover.

“Remind me.” Westin-Drone turned to Redheart-Drone. “The patients being released from the hospital. The ones that are going to be this host’s ‘entourage.’”

“They are to be released tomorrow.”

“They are already infested?”

“Yes.”

That was the plan to keep the syncing up to date between the two Nest sites. As Westin-Drone was the stallion responsible for both bankrolling Twilight-Drone’s experiments and for the donation to the hospital a while back, he was the perfect person to pass between the two Nests. At the same time, he couldn’t have actually been responsible for carrying all that data alone; if someone else was caught, or if there was an emergency, then he needed to be able to break schedule and do something about it.

Thus, the entourage. They were going to be seen publicly as his assistants, as the ones that carried his schedule and his decisions. More to the point, there would be four of them, each carrying part of the data that would keep the two Nests synced up with each other. Each one would be a faster individual download than the full amount drained from just one pony, and if caught, would not be able to give up the full picture of what was going on under the nose of every other pony in the town.

The idea had come from Twilight-Drone once she’d recovered from her time in the hospital, and it had been approved of by the Nest. The whole situation had been strange to the hosts, and the parasites were not much better, considering that they were ostensibly supposed to follow the Nest in all things, but now…

Now there were two Nests, and that meant that orders were coming from different ones, and there was the distinct possibility that one of them might give an order that the other would countermand if they were not kept in regular communication with each other. The hosts and the parasites were not yet fearful, but there was a general sense of unease from the parasites due to the possibilities, and that unease was slowly bleeding over to the hosts due to just how deeply embedded the parasites were.

Westin-Drone was aware of the fact that this would become more and more of a problem the further that they spread. In-town, there was the chance of keeping the Nests informed of each other. Once they were in multiple towns, however, as the Nest demanded that they spread further and further, then there would be greater problems, depending on what they did.

They could, for example, keep the Nests firmly in Ponyville, requiring that the various hosts go back and forth between Ponyville and their hometowns. However, not only was that going to be obvious, requiring much more travel, it would also rapidly become an expensive venture that not all the hosts would be able to afford, particularly those that were already not well off in their hometowns. Travel would be slow, and it would mean that the news coming back to the Nests in Ponyville could rapidly become outdated, leading to bad decisions on the part of the Nests.

On the other hand, there was the possibility of establishing at least one Nest in every town and city, with more in the bigger settlements. That, however, brought the problem that there would need to be a dedicated syncing team of hosts that did nothing but go between the different cities and towns of Equestria to keep all the Nests up to date with the same information, with progress reports and plans that the other Nests had underway so that they didn’t tread on one another’s toes, and so they didn’t start targeting ponies that were already hosting a parasite and waste their time on that.

The problem there was that the country was big. Westin-Drone had been an inhabitant of Cloudsdale at one point, and he had seen the world from above, and he knew how long it took to get from place to place. Spreading information from Nest to Nest like that would be a difficult task, particularly as they would need to send ponies out in multiple pathways to actually spread the news in a timely fashion, and there would be no way for the Nests to avoid some difference of opinion between them, considering that there would be a time delay between syncs no matter what they did.

Once they finished with Ponyville, the hard part of infesting all of Equestria would begin, and they needed a plan. Westin-Drone didn’t know what they could do to avoid all weaknesses, but he knew that they’d have to find something. Pegasi would be able to move faster between towns than most others, but they’d need a lot of them to keep that network going, and a lot of pegasi just dropping their other jobs to focus on that would be very hard to justify. Ponies would notice.

Westin-Drone had his attention pulled from his own inner thoughts to look out the window again. Just for a split-second, he saw Applejack around the corner down the street. The mare had been staring at the fashion house, and the host wondered how long that had been going on.

A moment later, the host saw Big Mac further down the street. The bigger red stallion had been staring right where Applejack was, a reminder that the Nest had eyes on all of the different mares and stallions of interest in the town. Eventually, Big Mac would take the step that would bring Applejack into the arms of the Nest, and when that happened, they would have access to the Apple Family trade routes. And, more importantly, another user of the Elements of Harmony would be neutralized.

They were slowly, ever so slowly, moving closer to that point of being too big to stop. Once Ponyville was entirely taken in by the Nest, it would take most of Equestria to actually reverse the process. If they were able to take another large city, like Manehattan or Dodge Junction, it would be all but impossible to remove them without getting Celestia, Luna, and Cadence involved in the matter, and those were difficult to stir at the best of times.

“Westin.”

He turned around. Redheart-Drone was gesturing down at the open-mouthed dressmaker, who was still slightly urine-stained around her face. Her muzzle was drenched and her mouth hung open as she let out a drunken giggle, one hoof trying to rub at her sex rather ineffectually as she continued to drip.

“The future-host could use a further dose.”

“Which sort?”

“Seed.”

“Hmm…Help me roll her over.”

It would be a good time to see just how receptive she was, after all; in a state like this, any mare would be more honest about what she wanted. Rarity might have been rather stuck-up and prissy in public, but now that she was all drugged up, they could find out anything that they needed from her, from her tastes to…

Well, anything. All they had to do was give her a little push.

Tomorrow, Westin-Drone thought as he got in position to mount her. Tomorrow, they would come back and infest her, and it would be done.