A Conspiracy of Order

Appleloosa was changing, and changing quick, though most of the townsfolk didn’t know it. Braeburn-Drone was part of those changes, though the host was barely conscious of the changes that his body was making. The happy-go-lucky pony had submerged himself into the Nest’s control so swiftly and so utterly that there was very little of his awareness left, and even the parasite had to work harder than some others did to pull him forward for his memories and past.

But he did his job, and that was what mattered.

It was late night in Appleloosa, the desert around it quiet and still. The average pony was either asleep or too busy drinking cider down at the saloon to be that aware of what was going on outside, but the drone nonetheless kept a good lookout. His eyes flicked this way and that as he walked down the streets, a drugged-out stallion lassoed behind him.

The hunt had gone well. He’d managed to convince a rather eager young stallion to accompany him to one of the bars and had made sure to give him plenty of ‘special cider’ for the night. The bartender had made sure to supplement each pour with a little drugged piss behind the bar, and in just a few drafts, the sandy stallion was so out of it that he barely seemed to remember his own name.

The soft hiss of dragging a limp body through sand was nothing particularly loud, but the parasite within Braeburn-Drone was constantly on the watch of any sign of someone noticing it. While unlikely – the town was more or less dead after a certain hour, and nobody really suspected anyone of anything since the settling of the Buffalo-Orchard war – there was still the chance that someone might be up late at night and wonder if there was a rattler in the streets or something like that. The parasite couldn’t risk anyone finding out.

So, the process of dragging someone through the streets took longer than it should. Slow, steady, hiding between buildings when he had to, Braeburn-Drone slowly made his way to the orchard. Every so often, he would take advantage of one of the breaks between the buildings and ‘top up’ his captive.

This was one of those times. He turned, his sheath undulating as the parasite flexed the muscles between his hind legs. The soft push and squelch of the fleshy thing coming free but not getting hard was still pleasurable to the host, and there was a soft moan in the deep dark depths that Braeburn himself had retreated to. His body, however, was completely silent, and the shaft emerged without any sign of pleasure on his face.

The well-tied stallion groaned, eyes unfocused and barely able to shift his head from side to side. Braeburn-Drone pushed down on one side of his jaw with a forehoof, popping the other stallion’s mouth open before slowly sliding his cock past limp lips. A slow stream of piss followed, the parasite’s control absolute. A little squeeze here, a little clench there, and some of the contents of his bladder flowed free.

Not much, of course; it didn’t take much to keep the drugged state going once it was properly begun, but it did need just a little. And he might need more before the night was done.

Once the stallion was quiet, he went back to dragging him through the silent, darkened streets. Nobody looked out. Nobody questioned him.

Eventually, he reached the orchard and he followed a certain set of twists and turns. Since Applejack had arrived with the sapling almost a month ago, things had changed. While still the center of the town, the orchard was no longer worked by most of the town’s population. Instead, the Apple family and their cousins had taken more of a direct hand in working it, giving people time off, paying them for their breaks, and they’d spent that time changing things up. More trees had been added in one specific corner, and all the other ponies had been told that the new trees were part of an expansion for the orchard and the town. They believed it, and were waiting for the next batch to arrive in a few months.

What they didn’t know was that the new trees were there to hide the Nest-tree as it grew, and to give it more trees to touch, adapt to, and infest.

Braeburn-Drone pushed through the layer of trees around the Nest-plant. Waiting on the other side was one of the buffalos, eyes wide but empty, staring into the distance as he was infested. His mouth hung open, drool coming from his lips, and his muscles tensed idly.

It was nearly done, Braeburn-Drone knew. The infestation had started before noon, and it was nearly midnight now. The host would have been well-conditioned with pleasure, and the parasite would have rooted deep. It was safe to remove him.

The drone moved in front of the newly-infested bovine, and the Nest-tree saw him. The buffalo was made to step forward, the tendril sticking out of him sliding free, and Braeburn-Drone watched him go without a word. The buffalo would go back to his tribe, one of a handful that had been infested already, and would continue to pretend that he was one of them. Sooner or later, Braeburn-Drone or one of the other infested ponies would catch another one, bring them back here, and the cycle would start all over again.

While he knew that he’d need to get his new quarry infested, Braeburn-Drone also knew that he was due for a sync with the Nest. He lowered the rope to the ground and turned around, slowly backing his hips to the tendril. It waited for him, pointed straight ahead, and he speared himself on it without a word, without a sound.

The first shock went right up his spine, and the host went completely still. It was time for the Nest-Orchard – adapted from a single tree to many, infesting the juices of the apples themselves – to get a new update on the town.

“And that, darling, is why you should always come to me,” Rarity-Drone said, affecting a slightly more ostentatious, hoity-toity accent for the richer mare that had come to her rented Manehattan salon. “Not only do I design some of the best garments in all of Equestria, but I provide all the latest gossip and candor. And wine. You cannot forget the wine,” she added, sloshing about a glass as if she was as drunk as her customer.

Rarity-Drone had been doing this for just over a month now. The garments that she designed these days were secondary to the connections that she was making in the big city. They were always wanting to talk, wanting to spend time with someone that would make them feel more important than society said they were. Even those at the top of pony society were regularly coming to her, claiming that she was the only one that understood.

It was quite dull and quite stupid, of course. She was merely a host, someone that was instructed by someone else, but even a ‘free’ pony would have been able to do what she did. Customer service was all about making the customer feel valued, important, and wanted. She just happened to be very good at it, and the parasite made her even better at it.

“Oh, Rarity, I don’t know where we’d be without you,” the unicorn mare, soft-blue in color with a corsage of flowers around one forehoof, said. “I just…I just want them to understand me. Accept me. Surely, they can understand that my life is just as hard as theirs, even if I come from money.”

“Darling, darling, this is what I do. I can make you so stunning that they’ll want to be around you.”

“Can you really do that? Are you…can you…”

“Darling, it’s me. I can do anything with fashion. Now, take a drink, that’s a good mare.”

She nodded at the wine glasses, and her guest took another long drink from it. All for the better. The less that they remembered from these little sessions, the easier it was the please them. They barely remembered anything but the good feelings that they had in her presence, and as far as Rarity-Drone was concerned, that was all she needed.

After all, the more that they drank, the better they felt.

The better they felt, the more that the sessions with her tempted them compared to the rest of their lives.

The more that they visited, the more addicted to the ‘wine’ they became.

And once they were addicted enough, then she could begin the process of bringing them into the Nest. It was that simple.

Of course, this one wasn’t ready for that just yet. She had only had her second session with the fashionista host, and wasn’t ready for a proper infestation. But that didn’t mean that Rarity-Drone had wasted her time. This one, while young, was connected to a very well-to-do pony family here in Manehattan. Get the daughter, then the father, then the mother, and Rarity-Drone and the Nest might have access to some of the factories that the older stallion ran. Get those, lock them down, and infest them from within, and they’d have a whole new crop of laborer-hosts for the Nest.

Everything was going splendidly.

When the wine ran out, the mare left with a happy-cry, waving goodbye. Rarity-Drone waved in return, but the moment that the door shut, her expression dropped. Not into a frown of annoyance or anything of the sort, but merely a face of emptiness and nothingness. Without the need to keep a charade going, she could let it all come down.

One of the potted plants at the back of her apartment salon wriggled. The host walked over to it, turning around and presenting her rump. The tendrils of the smaller sapling immediately pressed against her, sliding forward and between her cheeks.

Unlike the saplings that were given to Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy, hers was adapted to be smaller. It would take in information from her and other clients, and from time to time, she would take the Nest-sapling to the local telegraph line to sync with the growing tree behind it. Nest to Nest, then back to her salon to be updated by the stuff on the Nest-Work.

It was a little less useful than having a great tree that all the hosts came to in order to sync up, but it was a better option in a larger city with fewer parks and private places. Best not to expose themselves until they could afford to go completely public with it.

As the first shocks ran up her spine, taking the information from her day’s dealings to the Nest-sapling, she stared straight ahead. A client could come at any time, after all, and the Nest-sapling needed her senses to keep an eye on the door while it learned what she knew.

Pinkie-Drone was as blank as her sister, Maud, as they walked up to the telegraph station. The Rock Farm had been completely converted over the course of a month, and all members of the family were part of the Nest now. There was no holding back there. It had been as close to a brutal take-over as the Nest had ever done, with a sudden attack after giving the sapling time to grow in the nearby areas. The brutal ground had done something to that Nest, and it had been as dangerous as it had been aggressive.

After the family that owned the farm had been completely infested, the Nest had continued to grow and twist itself about. The natural adaptation of the Nest plant left it too aggressive, becoming more and more defensive of the area, and risking exposing itself for the sake of keeping the farm protected.

In the end, Pinkie-Drone and the rest of the hosts killed it. For the sake of the rest of the Nest-Work, they had to ensure that the work of the parasites remained undetected, and the telegraph office and its Nest was sufficiently close for them to use it, instead.

There was no a ‘free’ pony in the building. The telegraph workers – two stallions and a mare – had the same utterly blank faces that Pinkie-Drone and Maud-Drone had. Nobody bothered to speak; they knew the reasons for the Pie family members arrival. The mare opened the door to the back garden while one of the stallions wordlessly got up from his desk and walked around to the back to keep watch. Pinkie-Drone and Maud-Drone stepped outside to find the tree waiting.

Unlike the rocky, almost crystalline Nest that they’d needed to destroy, this one had grown more down than up. It was almost closer to a flower than a proper tree, having put all its growth into the root system that ran further and further away from the Rock Farm and the telegraph station as a whole. A month’s worth of growing in a single direction had eventually connected it with another station, and while that was still spreading further away to connect to more on the Nest-Work, it meant that they had a message-line almost directly to Ponyville.

Pinkie-Drone and Maud-Drone turned around, facing opposite directions and essentially covering the two directions that the stallion outside the fence couldn’t see. They waited patiently, and in short order, the tendrils rose out of the ground. Little ones, more like flowering vines than deep roots, pressed up between their hind legs. They caressed their sexes, and Pinkie-Drone’s parasite began the lubrication process. A forced arousal rippled through the host, encouraging a dripping between her hind legs, and it continued to swell and build until the flower-vine made soft squelching noises as it slid against her pussy lips.

Once it was wet enough, it slid up beneath her tail. The soft squelch of it pressing against and sliding into her anus would have been arousing or silly to her at one point. This time, Pinkie-Drone had no laughter, no giggle-snorts for the lewd sound. All she had was a simple stare for the distance.

The first shocks stimulated the host’s body, but that was all. No muscle-tension, no sudden spasms, nothing indicated the pleasure that would have brought any ‘free’ pony to her knees. The mare merely stood there, taking it, downloading all the information about the dead Nest and the farm and the Pie’s family plans into the Nest-Work.

Maud-Drone was a doctor. She had patients. They were going to send her out into the world again, tending to those that were interested in someone calm and steady. There would be patients everywhere that needed that.

The rest of the family would continue ‘rock-farming,’ but under the direction of finding the best ones for Twilight-Drone to use in some magical experiments. Perhaps for the protection of certain areas, building up minor fortifications and hiding places for other saplings. There were possibilities there, and it would keep the rest of the less-useful family members busy, keeping them from causing problems by being at loose ends.

The Nest did not like loose ends. They were…inconvenient.

Last of all, the information of the dead Nest was downloaded and gone over again. The fact that a Nest had been planted and, essentially, went mad from the local adaptation was something that the rest of the Nest-Work would have to take into account for the future. Adaptation was good; going native was not. Further examination and planning would be required for certain locales.

But the Nest was overall pleased. The small area had been completely pacified, and there was nothing left of the local ponies that could be a threat to the Nest in the future.

Pinkie-Drone felt the shimmer of information go the other way, into her rather than out of her. The pleasure changed, growing stronger as the Nest orders were implanted.

Come home.

Return to Ponyville.

Await further instructions.

Pinkie-Drone accepted those orders with ease. The host was too deeply-buried to have an opinion, but if it had, it would have been content. Ponyville had long been its preferred home, and this visit, while accepted, had not been pleasant. There was something off about this place, something bleak and austere that put even the Nest off its game. It would have to be examined more closely in the future.

But by other hosts. Not Pinkie-Drone.

Fluttershy-Drone had had an interesting month and a half. The Everfree Forest had been quite the task to bring to heel, but there had been no pony better suited to it than her. The pegasus mare had gone into the woods with the flat stare that would have terrified any and all of the ponies around her in Ponyville, but for the animals, it was worse. The host had felt that through the haze of wet heat that the parasite kept her in, and it had almost felt guilty.

Almost.

But now…

The yellow-furred mare looked down at Zecora. The zebra had come back to her hut after her initial departure. Whether she had come back to get some of her things or to mount some recovery effort was immaterial; she had come back, and that made her a target as far as the Nest was concerned. Fluttershy’s conquests earlier in the month – a few changelings that had been in the area and wanted to have her love – made for suitable assistance in collecting the witch zebra.

Now, the striped mare was on her knees, panting for breath. She shook her head.

“This is not the Fluttershy I know. What has caused you to grow so bold?”

“This is not Fluttershy. This is Fluttershy-Drone.”

“Ah, then the world is not filled with slander and lies. Ponyville, then, has become everything I despise.”

“And you will become such, as well.”

There was no point in keeping up a disguise with someone as strong as Zecora; the parasite inside of Fluttershy-Drone had recognized her power almost immediately, and had done everything short of burning down the zebra’s hut to make sure that there was nothing for the witch to use. Even now, there was a tingle in the air, as if the zebra might do something to free herself.

It would not be allowed.

The changeling-drones pushed Zecora down, rolling her onto her back. Fluttershy-Drone clopped to stand over her, slowly lowering her rump until she had all but swallowed the other mare between her cheeks. The warmth of another person’s breath against her sex and her anus would have felt embarrassingly pleasant at another time, but the parasite was focused on something else.

She rolled her hips forward, positioning her sex directly over the zebra’s stuttering lips. Each movement was precise, focused, targeted for just the right amount of movement without giving the zebra any space to respond to what was happening. A little shift to the left, then to the right, and then –

Yes.

Perfect.

The parasite squeezed down around her bladder, the contents built up over the course of a long day. The sudden stream of yellow between her hind legs went right down a squirming Zecora’s throat, flooding her mouth instantly.

“MMMPH!”

She tried not to swallow, but there was only so long that the zebra could keep herself from clearing her mouth. Fluttershy-Drone’s position was such that she couldn’t get air through her nose, and trying to breathe through an increasingly-flooded muzzle was all but impossible.

Eventually, she gave in.

The first swallow was obvious as the zebra’s body was wracked with a sudden shock of need from head to hoof. Her bared sex went from dry to drenched in the course of five seconds, oozing down to her puckering donut of a hole. Fluttershy-Drone leaned forward, making sure each successive pulse from her insides went right down the other mare’s throat, forcing her to keep swallowing and keep feeling the effects.

The soft hiss continued for nearly a minute. It was more than she would normally give a first-timer, but the parasite knew that this was too powerful a potential host to risk getting away. An intense, powerful dose would scramble her thoughts enough to keep her from making any trouble while they got ready to infest her.

Hsssssssss.

It was the silence, one supposed, that would have been particularly horrifying in that moment. The changeling-drones said nothing, nor did they move. Their wings were still, their heads frozen in place, and they did not shift their weight in the mud and muck. Fluttershy didn’t move, her wings flat against her back, her mouth closed and her eyes staring determinedly straight ahead. Even the wind through the trees and the animals that still called the forest home didn’t make a sound.

Little by little, Zecora’s soft spasms began to die off, leaving her completely still on the ground. Still, wet, limp. She didn’t say a word when Fluttershy-Drone pulled her hips up, didn’t react when the mare looked down at her. The zebra’s eyes were blank, empty, filled with nothing more than the haze of lust and wanton need from the piss she’d been forced to drink.

There was no need to instruct the changeling-drones, either. They had the same instructions as she did: find hosts and infest them. They reached down and collected Zecora’s forehooves in hand, pulling her along to the back of the wrecked hut. The Nest-tree had already grown into the swamp, and it would have plenty of parasites to start the work of infesting the powerful mare.

Soon, they’d have a witch on their side.

Soon, the Everfree Forest would be completely under the Nest’s command.

She had done well.

Fluttershy-Drone stared into the distance, the parasite controlling her face and making it deliver the hard-stare. The animals around her shivered, slowly coming out of the trees and bowing before her.

It was a power that few others would have been able to muster. Fluttershy-Drone had been seen as a potential liability rather than something useful, but her link with animals was more than just the ability to talk with them and understand them. The Nest had come to realize that it was able to command animals with her hard stare and the way that she linked with them.

They were spies, allies, creatures to chase and hunt others and drive them into Nest-traps. There were a hundred ways that they could use the creatures of the forest and the world around it to their advantage.

Fluttershy-Drone looked at the birds. They would go to Canterlot, study it, watch it, see what was happening. They’d learn the schedules of the guards, the habits of those that wandered the streets, and the timing of shops and security. The other animals would have their tasks, but that would give the Nest intelligence that it could use to plan their surreptitious invasion of the capitol in a few months’ time.

Soon.

Soon.

“Rainbow…nnngh…you…you…”

Rainbow-Drone looked down at Spitfire. The mare might have once felt some guilt or even arrogance at bringing down the head of the Wonderbolts for the Nest, but she had been a host for so long that there wasn’t even a sense of pride at the accomplishment. The only sensation she had was a sense of satisfaction that the Nest’s will had been achieved.

Two months. Two months of slowly bringing Soarin in, followed by all the other members of the team. Two months of being seen as that slut by the rest of Cloudsdale, dating and getting fucked by all the other Wonderbolts and other Cloudsdale residents, besides. She had been the easy mare of all the slutty females on the cloudy city, and she had born that for the sake of the mission.

And now, Spitfire was the last one left.

The other hosts on the team – which was all of them – stood around the drugged mare. The pegasus huffed and groaned, trying to stay on her hooves and utterly failing. She groaned as she swayed from one side to the other, stumbling this way and that, huffing through nostrils that were flared wide and sucking in all the sex-scent in the room.

“I’m not…some lesbian…bitch for you…”

“It is amusing that you think that is what is in store,” Rainbow-Drone said.

“Dash…the hell…what happened to your –”

“You will be infested.”

“What…the fuck…”

The other Wonderbolts moved quickly. They ripped the mare’s uniform off, leaving it in shreds on the floor, and pushed her down. One of the stallions – Soarin – moved forward, his cock already falling from his sheath. The first blast of piss hit the mare in the face, but other ponies moved forward, grabbing her head and forcing her mouth open, letting his urine fall into her mouth.

Her protests, weak as they were, fell silent. Spitfire stared upward with eyes that were rapidly glazing over. With the combination of a spiked drink and then the extra blast from Soarin, there was no way that she could resist.

The plan was already in their minds. They knew their tasks. Fuck her. Fuck her and use her until she was unconscious enough for them to claim she needed medical attention. Anyone that came to look would buy the excuse and clear the way to the local hospital.

Rainbow-Drone had placed the sapling there as a gift from Twilight-Drone on the first day that they’d arrived. It was not as good a place for it as the Nest in the hospital back in Ponyville, of course – it lacked the same rich soil, and there was the chance that it would be walked in on, sometimes – but the Wonderbolts needed regular check-ups, and it was a place to make sure that they could sync in private. Now, it would serve as a place for Spitfire to be properly infested.

The last of the Wonderbolts would fall, which would mean that the infestation could spread more quickly through the hospital staff, and then through the other pegasi that called Cloudsdale home. It was…slower than the original plan had been, considering the fact that the winged ponies were more insular and knew each other better than those in the land-bound cities did, so they had to move more slowly with infestation, but it was something. Twilight-Drone would, however, need to be notified that the plan was moving slower and they’d need to do something to either speed up Cloudsdale, or slow down everywhere else.

But that would be handled by Gilda-Drone later. For now, they would take this one to the hospital and see her properly infested and taken in. The Nest would have another flier.

Twilight-Drone sat in the basement of the library, supported on all sides by the extensive roots that the library tree had grown since its proper fusion with the Nest. She had the information of a hundred different ponies pouring through her mind, forced through her skull, and the Nest took back the impressions that she got from the details.

She felt the conquest of Appleloosa happening, the slow taking-in of the buffalo tribe and the complete ignorance of the town of how their prize crop was becoming a corruptive poison.

She saw the rise and fall of a Nest in the rocky farms, and felt the fear of the others as they were reminded of the downsides of the Nest’s systems.

She saw the clouds, the forests, the world from the eyes of so many different hosts, and she was made aware of the sheer breadth and width of the conspiracy to take over Equestria. They had hosts among the changelings, now, both the good and the bad. They had the buffalo on their side, and they were making inroads among the dragons and griffons. Sooner or later, they would have their fingers in nearly everything. Already, almost every ruler of the different settlements and cities had come to the Nest, and while they still didn’t have the raw numbers to perform an uprising across the land, they were more numerous than they had ever been before.

Twilight-Drone could feel the Nest-Work. It spread throughout Equestria, now, going all the way to the borders of the Crystal Empire and interfacing with the tree that Cadance had taken back with her, and spread in a loop around Canterlot. Not every Nest was connected to the Nest-Work in its entirety, but everything had at least a small connection to a telegraph line, which meant that those that weren’t pulsing information back to Ponyville at least sent their information along in another way.

And as she saw all those things, the host gave the Nest its impressions. Filtered through all the learning that the greatest student in the land had done, they knew that the plan could continue on its own, almost without interference, for a few months. While they could move now, trying to take out Celestia and Luna was going to be difficult. Any flaw in the plan would leave them in massive danger should the princesses get away, and could lead to the other alicorns completely destabilizing Nest efforts in various regions.

If they waited, however, they could shore up all the leadership positions that they had taken in Manehattan, in Cloudsdale, in Appleloosa. If they waited for a few months – just a few months – then Cadance would have the jousters ready, and Fluttershy would have a small legion of hunters, and so on. They still wouldn’t have everyone converted, but they would have a significant number of each town brought under them. Even if the princesses managed to escape, trying to dislodge that would be a great deal more difficult than merely dealing with an infestation at the top.

A soft rap at the door pulled the host from its connection, and the Nest pulled out of her. The soft pull no longer dragged at her anus. It closed from the power of the parasite, pulling tight once more, though it was merely an illusion after sitting with something inside of it for so long. The purple mare plodded up the ramp to the main floor of the library and opened the door.

It was Dapper-Drone. The mayor looked her in the eye.

“Timeline?”

“Three months,” Twilight-Drone said.

Three months until they went for Canterlot. Three months would shore up everything that was a little tentative, and improve the chances of everything that was already prepared. Cadance-Drone was currently in talks with Celestia to get a sporting event arranged, and that would require a number of different preparations from different regions. Lasso-throwing from Appleloosa, the Wonderbolts from Cloudsdale, rock-throwing from the Pies, and a number of other competitors would need to be readied for it.

But with that preparation came a far greater number of infested that they could take to Canterlot. They would outnumber the guards at that point, and the knights that were still there and not in the Crystal Empire. By the end of the competition, Celestia and Luna would be as infested as Twilight-Drone herself.

Dapper-Drone didn’t nod. The infested had lost most of their expressions and non-required movements. Instead, he just stared for a moment as the parasite within considered the timeline.

“Doable. Sustenance?”

“The hosts have sufficient, for now.”

“But in three months?”

“…Ah.”

“Logistics. I must sync.”

Twilight-Drone moved out of the way. For all that she was the one that had learned of the entire land and knew Celestia quite well, Dapper-Drone was a merchant, and he was aware of things on different level. Food-stuffs was a thing that the parasites didn’t think about as much, as they were sustained by their hosts. However, should their hosts not be fed, there would be consequences. And there would need to be some hosts that were kept to farming, even in places like Ponyville where the full population had been completely converted.

It showed that the Nest needed the occasional extra point of view that it got from its hosts. While it was brilliant, it was not all-knowing. It was only capable of seeing the sum of all the different pieces, and sometimes, the piece needed to be magnified.

Twilight-Drone flicked out her wings, flying to the front door of the library, then out and up. The Nest had expanded through the town, and the border buildings that lined the edge of the settlement all had a host atop, connected constantly to the Nest building itself. It had learned from Cadance’s attack to have more lookouts across the city, some ponies dedicated specifically to that to the point where some of their muscles had wasted away. The Nest would never be caught off-guard again.

The parasite idly wondered what would happen to it when the Nest had taken over everything. There was little left of the host besides memories and a residual bit of curiosity, and though the body was strong, the Nest had no information for its parasites of how long it would last. Its whole life? A little less? Much less? What did being infested do to the body over the long term?

Those were questions that had no answers. The host and its parasite could only stare toward the horizon, anticipating what would happen in three months’ time.