A Conspiracy of Order

The edge of the forest was a comfort for Dapper-Bit Twist, as much as he could feel comfort in the same way with the worm in his ass. It was a distant thing, something that he could feel being analyzed and processed by his new companion of the Nest, and it would probably be given back to the Nest itself when the whole thing was over and done with, processed further and made into something that was useful for the other hosts.

And there would be other hosts. He was already sure of it.

Ponyville loomed upwards as soon as he stepped through the last segment of the forest path, the once-small town turned into…well, still a town, but thriving, with many different visitors and more of a chunk of it dedicated to those that came as tourists and to visit the library that Twilight Sparkle had put together. The new buildings stood out against the older, more rustic houses and businesses, but they had less charm and character, he’d always thought.

There was less thinking and more planning as he walked in, his wagon creaking behind him. His tail had finally gone down in the last couple of minutes, the parasite within him finally applying that particular bit of ‘fixing’ to the initial orders from the Nest to avoid ‘advertising’ the way that they had with Comet Leaf, so he didn’t stand out among the other traders coming to town. He trotted between them, finding gaps for his wagon as he nodded and bobbed his head towards the other ponies on the street.

Some were familiar. The parasite within pushed forward memories that it had drained from him earlier. Faces – like Mr. Cake at one of the stalls – slid into priority lists, and he turned the wagon slightly to meet the baker with a small smile. The feeling of the parasite taking control of his face and reminding him what he needed to do was strange, but comforting. It was a reminder that he would be taken care of, that he wouldn’t be allowed to make his own mistakes under the control of the Nest.

“Morning, Mr. Cake,” he said.

“Hey, welcome back, Mr. Twist,” the baker said, bobbing his head with a grin. “Long time, no see.”

“It’s been a while, yeah.”

“Anything good for me?”

“Well –”

“Oh, and the wife says hi.”

Wife.

Yes.

There was a memory that the parasite pulled up, or at least, a reminder. Not that they had been intimate with Mrs. Cake, but rather that she had put in a special order for him to pick up while he was out. He would need to make that delivery. He’d almost forgotten.

“I’ll send her round the inn later, eh?” Mr. Cake asked.

“Yes, yes, please do,” Dapper-Bit said.

“Heh, great. Anything you need?”

He looked down, waiting for orders from the parasite. There was a sense of hunger in his belly, but not that great a one, considering that he had been walking along for a few hours. The parasite considered, and he felt the shiver-shakes of it reaching up his spine, testing different parts of his body, measuring it as it had started doing during the day.

Was he thirsty?

Was he really hungry?

If so, how much?

Where were the nearest remembered sources?

All of those things and more were sampled, examined, and sorted out in the space of a few seconds, and Dapper-Bit was made to raise his head, meeting Mr. Cake’s eyes again.

“I think I’m good, thanks.”

“Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

He did, and so did the parasite. Flickers of memory passed before his eyes before the parasite pulled it back again, and he was on his way to the inn.

It was a different day compared to being possessed by the Nest. When the plant itself was controlling him, he felt like he was being, for lack of a better word, piloted around the area. He felt like he was constantly focused forward, without agency, without even much awareness that anything was happening. The two days of being ‘plugged in’ to the plant had felt like he was not even there, as if his awareness was shoved to the back of his mind to allow the Nest full access to his body, thoughts, and even his ability to think.

The parasite was something else. It nestled in his rump, a weight in his stomach, and though it was attached to him by various fleshy roots through his prostate – and he could feel others wiggling, trembling, shivering, shocking in his lower tubing from time to time – it was more a director, a source of control, a thing that followed the pre-assigned rules of the Nest rather than something that took all control out of his head. He was told his orders, expected to follow them like a good drone, and the parasite stepped in when he was unclear, when he didn’t know what to do, or if he was at risk of breaking an order.

It was a unique balance between being emptied of all awareness and consciousness and being allowed to be free. He didn’t want to be free. Not anymore. It was more…more pleasurable, more pleasant, and just easier to be controlled like this, informed and instructed.

So, he didn’t complain when the parasite stopped him several times along the way to the Gilded Saddle, nor did he feel bothered when it made him raise his tail experimentally towards a few of the males that they passed by. It was experimenting with what they’d found out with their experience with Comet Leaf, testing the waters, finding out just how well flirting and sex would work to cover them and make contact with others.

None of the males flashed showed interest, however, and each time, their exposed pucker was only met with a blink, a blush, and a rapid interest in moving on. A shame.

They continued down the street, eventually coming to the sign of the Gilded Saddle. Dapper-Bit had stayed there multiple times in his journeys to and around Ponyville, and he remembered liking both the décor and the company here. The inn was run by a pegasus that had retired from the traveling life, and most of the locals liked to come in for the cider and more.

He stopped at the sign, leaning around the doorway. The pegasus owner – a silver-green pony by the name of Mr. Cumulus – waved one hoof from the bar.

“Dapper! Good to see you, old chum. Room for the night?”

“Mmm-hmm. Space for my wagon, too, if you got it.”

“Course I do. Just go ‘round back and park where you like.”

“Usual spot?”

“Yep. Kept it clear for you,” the pegasus said.

The parasite, if such things could feel, might have felt something like pride for accomplishing its goals of subterfuge as they dragged the wagon around and behind the building. As it stood, there was no such feeling, at least, not in any way that he could feel through his prostate, his spine, and everything else that the parasite was connected to.

But he did feel arousal as he walked around the building, and he could feel the parasite clenching a little tighter to his inner walls, pressing firmly against that sensitive bud. The pleasure, almost but not quite a reward, rippled through him, but –

Soft unless ordered…soft unless ordered…

That was there, too, the command to stay in his sheath, to not do anything. It had gathered enough of his memories to know that a public display of a dropped cock would be commented on. Other subtleties were still being processed, but that one, the parasite had learned, was not one that it could risk so much in public.

They walked the wagon to the back of the inn, where several other carts had been parked. He backed the wagon into place, unhitched himself, and turned to the Nest. The plant was still, quiescent, and showed no signs of movement, as had been the plan. Dapper-Bit Twist leaned under it, nudging the near-too-small pot out of the seat on the front of the wagon, and placed it on his back for transport up to the room.

It trembled, then. The tendrils reached out, almost like they were tempted to hook into him. He flagged his tail obediently, but though the tendrils touched him, they did not take him.

After a few seconds, the parasite got him moving again. The stallion walked in through the back door and was instantly surrounded by the insane noise and persistent pressure of dozens of other ponies.

This…I did not miss…

The parasite and Dapper-Bit were in agreement on that; the feeling of being surrounded by so much chaos did neither of them any good, and the parasite, so used to the feeling of just one – or at most, two – ponies was frazzled. The constant input from Dapper-Bit’s mind, the various sensory blasts that it had to process, were almost too much. They wobbled slightly, almost drunkenly, towards the bar.

Thankfully, Mr. Cumulus was already ready with the room key, and tossed it to them with a kick of one hind-hoof. They caught it on their back and kept moving, heading for the stairs before the sensory overload could send them to their knees.

Clop, clop, clop they went, up the stairs and around the corner. Once the din was gone, they were able to stand up straight again. The parasite pushed them to move a bit quicker, and they did, quickly unlocking their assigned room and stepping inside. Letting the Nest slide off their back and settle in the corner, the parasite turned them around and faced toward the far side of the room.

Then, and only then, did the Nest access them. The pressure of the tendrils pressed against their rump, pushing the cheeks further apart to make their already-puffy hole that much more noticeable, and one of them – thicker, twice as thick as it had been the first time that it had reached inside to program him – slid in deep, the little nodules along the sides of the tendril fluttering against his pucker in a soft, pleasant way.

The tendril made contact with the parasite, and the soft, almost forgotten shocks of access that the parasite made were replaced with a blast of lightning that shot right up his spine. The sheer power of the Nest compared to its offspring nearly knocked him out, but those strange shocks seized hold of his thoughts, keeping him ‘in’ his head rather than knocking him back the way that it had done on the road.

There was an exchange going on, Dapper-Bit was aware. The parasite in him was saying something to the Nest, and the Nest was talking back. Information was passing between them, flickers of…something? He wasn’t sure. It didn’t make sense. They were talking too fast, too furiously for him to make out anything but the presence of –

Throb.

Drop.

Swell.

The Nest’s touch came with permission – no, an order – to get hard. He was made to stiffen up, his shaft slowly dragged out with his blood being redirected, forced down, flowing into his shaft to make it emerge from his sheath. The zapping, burning feeling up and down his spine of the Nest’s utter control hit him hard, and it did what it wanted to him. His mind was its playground, able to be programmed, modified, shifted as it wanted, and it was experimenting now, making his dick rise up.

He felt it, experienced the ‘pleasure’ of a hard-on, but there was none of the usual teasing heat that came with the rising of an erection. Instead of the raw rutting force that had come before when he got hard, there was more…more of an awareness of his erection. The sensation of being hard was underneath it, part of that awareness, but the sensuality of it was lacking.

It twitched.

It throbbed.

Dapper-Bit felt it lunge up, his crotch muscles making the shaft swing up and slap against his stomach, his body made to ‘masturbate’ slightly to test out different things. Then, he felt the parasite do the same, and realized what was going on.

The Nest was ‘teaching’ the parasite in him how to invoke different reactions. It was ‘teaching’ its offspring how to properly control and use that thing, if the need arose.

He was thankful that it was learning. He was more thankful that it would be able to keep him from making mistakes.

It was less sexual, and more a sense of bodily experimentation. His shaft was forced hard, hard as could be, to the point where his flare ached from the sheer tension running through it, only to be forced soft again, dangling, but not quite allowing it to retreat into his sheath. He felt the parasite getting better access to his bladder again, but not releasing, more probing, pushing, testing. He didn’t understand what it was trying to do, but –

The focus of the two – the parasite and the Nest – changed, and he was given a mental image. A picture of his memory of Twilight Sparkle, the purple-haired, lavender-furred alicorn that was meant to be their contact. They made him think of her, and as he did, they plundered his memories.

The shocks split, some going up and down his spine, some going through his prostate via the parasite as the Nest spoke to both of them. There was a refining going on, a re-focusing between them.

Bring the Nest.

Convince her.

Break her.

Impale her.

Infest her.

Bring her into the Nest.

The instructions could not have been more clear, and imagining them as his assignment was incredibly easy. All he had to do was follow what he was told, and the Nest would expand further. He would not be the only one being pushed through a new life. The town around them would slowly expand.

As he understood his instructions and the Nest knew that he did, it began to pull, to suck, to drag the information out of his head and out of the parasite. It was comparing and contrasting the information between what he had seen – the raw sensory information – and what the parasite remembered – the results of chosen actions with the sensory information. Dapper-Bit didn’t know what it was doing, but he didn’t need to. That was part of being a drone for the Nest. A drone didn’t have to think, nor did it have to correct itself. It just had to follow orders and be part of the coherent whole.

Thinking had always been tiring, and it had always left him worrying more than it left him with comfort. This was the better way of existing; submitting himself to the Nest had been the best possible choice he could have made.

The Nest pulled out of his head, and he was allowed to rest. The Nest had him lean his head against the bed, and it began the process of ‘talking’ to the parasite in him alone. The shocks of pleasure were enough to comfort him, leaving his sheath dripping as he closed his eyes and rested.

Unfortunately, his rest was interrupted by a sharp rap at the door.

The Nest withdrew quickly, leaving him completely discombobulated. Thought, action, understanding fled, and his ability to react to the surprising sound were ripped from him.

But not from the parasite.

He was a passenger in his own body as he was piloted toward the door. He wobbled, yes, and he wasn’t entirely stable on his feet, but he was able to keep a smile on his face as he opened it and peered around the corner.

“Hmm? Oh, hello, Mrs. Cake.”

The pudgy mare smiled at him, her fluffy, cotton-candy-like mane flicked back over her shoulders. She giggled.

“Oh, dear, did I interrupt you, Dapper-Bit?”

“No, no, I was just sleeping,” he said.

“Sleeping? Oh. Oh! I’m sorry, I was – I shouldn’t have assumed such things.”

She blushed, and the slowly-refocusing Dapper-Bit had a guess what she’d been imagining. Considering that the room probably had a very distinct ‘stallion-y’ smell to it at the moment from all the programming that had been happening while he rested, it probably stunk of masturbation and self-pleasure. He shook his head.

“No problem. I think Mr. Cumulus just hadn’t had the chance to clean it out before I got here.”

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry. I just –”

“It’s fine. Are you here for your shipment?”

“Is this a bad time? You’re not usually so…”

Grumpy.

Yes.

The parasite was already changing gears, going from one programmed set of responses to another. Dapper-Bit felt it like a change in frequency, the hum of instructions through his ass and up his spine changing to reflect the new focus that they should take, the new tack to their interaction.

“Sorry. Like I said, I was sleeping. Let me get my things, and I’ll be right down to the wagon-yard.”

“Oh, thank you. I just need it for tomorrow’s goods. You understand.”

“Heh, yes, don’t worry. Sorry for the grouchiness.”

“No worries. Sorry for waking you, dear.”

“See you in a minute.”

The mare turned – tail down, the parasite noted, and filed that away – and he shut the door. The moment it clicked shut, the tired smile that the parasite had put on faded away. No, not even faded, but completely disappeared, instantly. There was no reason to wear it when there was nobody around to see it.

Dapper-Bit assumed that they would go down and get the goods immediately, but instead, he felt his sheath filling once more. There was a tightness in his balls, something that he didn’t entirely understand, something that felt…pleasant, yes, but more like something reaching in, like the tendrils that the parasite had let out were slowly stirring up his sac. The grunts of discomfort mixed with pleasure were stifled, and soon, he forgot about making them.

He reached out – as instructed – for the mug on the nightstand that all guests were provided, and laid it on the floor. Walking over it as his shaft dropped, he felt it just…hanging there. For a moment, he didn’t understand.

Then, he felt it.

Pulse.

Pulse.

Pulse.

It felt like a slow clenching of muscles deep down inside, the tubes that connected his balls to his prostate to his shaft squeezing down and almost sucking on the fluid that was kept down there. Like a foal sipping at a straw, the parasite was dragging the juices from his sac and pulling it through his prostate – then through itself – then back through the tubing, sending it out through his dangling dick.

Pulse.

Pulse.

Pulse.

The feeling of being ‘milked’ like this for his seed was strange, but oddly enjoyable in its own distant fashion. There was no twitch to his hips, no sudden thrusts that made him swing his hips around. At least, not after the first one that left a slight stain on the floorboards before aiming down at the cup properly again. It was a long, slow drizzle, like a syrup from a bottle into a foaming drink, but eventually, the cup was half-full.

Dapper-Bit was made to back up, then reach down to take the cup between his hooves. He carefully lifted it up and put it on his back, as he had done with a number of other things, but he didn’t know what it was for.

At least, not at first.

The parasite ‘indulged’ him with a concept-image. It showed him the older mare drinking the fluid, showed him her face going red. It imagined the mare in her home – a place that he had seen, else the parasite wouldn’t have been able to visualize it – and showed her grinding back, teasing herself, indulging herself.

An aphrodisiac?

No. The parasite clarified with a second set of concept-images. This time, it showed two contrasting images. The first showed Mrs. Cake impaled on the Nest’s tendrils, screaming, fighting and pushing against it. The second showed her blushing, red, completely insensate with need, while the tendrils were able to do what they wanted without any hindrance.

Yet, under it all was a sense of experimentation, unsureness, questioning. It took the drone-stallion a moment to understand, and to be privileged with the fact that the parasite had bothered to explain rather than just making him do it.

It was an experiment. They were testing whether this was supposed to work the way that the Nest hoped it would. This was an order, something to further their goals when it came to finding Twilight tomorrow. If this worked on Mrs. Cake, then they had something that they could use with Twilight to make her more inclined to allow the Nest to work on her.

There was no need to nod. Dapper-Bit understood what he was supposed to do.

But there was one more step. The parasite was aware of the goods that he’d carried with him to the room, and there was a bottle of wine that had, at one point, been one of the highlights of his goods to sell. However, it would serve better as a means of masking the seed that he had been milked of. It would disguise just what he was offering, and the rarity of it would make it seem exotic enough that the baker wouldn’t question its origin. He popped the cork of the bottle and poured it in, matching the amount of sexual fluids with the alcoholic beverage.

He walked out of the room and down the stairs. The din encouraged the host and parasite to move quickly to the outside before they could be afflicted by the sensory overload that the Nest had yet to fix, and they were soon outside, standing by the back of their wagon. Mrs. Cake was there, waiting for them, pacing back and forth, but she smiled as soon as she saw them.

“Oh, wonderful, you’re here.”

“Yeah, sorry for the wait,” Dapper-Bit said, the parasite picking his words carefully. “I just remembered something I wanted to share.”

“What’s that? Another rare ingredient?”

The baker’s eyes went wide as she grinned. Memory had told the parasite and the Nest, among many other things, that Mrs. Cake was a great experimenter, always looking for something new, something different, something she could make something new out of. It was why she paid him so many bits to bring her the custom orders that he did, since nobody else visiting Ponyville went so far abroad and touched on so many different cultures across Equestria.

It made for a perfect cover of offering her a cup of pre-cum. He reached over his shoulder, grabbing the mug’s handle with his teeth before placing it on his hoof.

“It’s a rare wine from one of the southern lands.”

“Oh, really? What kind?”

“It’s very different. Vaguely salty, but with a savory undertone,” Dapper-Bit said, pulled to improvise on top of the parasite. It was not that he had been pulled forward to do something that the parasite could not, but more that the parasite was nudging him, encouraging him, pulling on his salesmanship to disguise what it actually was. “It wouldn’t work in, say, one of your sweet cakes, but if you had some pies or something that went saltier, you could bring a great deal of extra flavor to your goods with something like this.”

“Oh, do let me taste it?”

“That’s why I brought you the mug. Go ahead.”

She took it in hoof and brought it to her lips. Even through the control of the parasite, there was no denying the sort of pleasure that came with seeing a mare guzzling down his pre-cum. Thankfully, the parasite was able to hide the drone’s smile, keeping him from giving the game away too early.

Sip, sip, sip, and then one last head-tilt to take the whole thing down. Mrs. Cake groaned, giving him the mug back as she ground her lips against her shoulder.

“Mmmph…that’s definitely…definitely salty,” she said, coughing slightly. “And thick. So…so thick. I didn’t think that they could make a drink like that.”

“Well, it’s not that thicker than hot chocolate, and you make plenty of that.”

“But that’s sweet. That…”

“Is it that bad?”

Their slight ‘fear’ – for though the parasite could not fear, it could feel tense, tight, and it was certainly that around his prostate at that moment – faded as the baker started to go red-cheeked, just as she had done in the parasite’s image-concept. She shifted her hind legs back and forth, biting her lip for a moment.

“Oh…oh, I think it’s…Mm. Okay…maybe there’s something to that one, after all.”

“I’m glad that you find it interesting, at least, Mrs. Cake.”

“Um…Do you have…more of that?”

“Not much, but a few more bottles, perhaps.”

“Is there any chance –”

“Let me see if anyone else wants the chance for them first, Mrs. Cake. Until then, shall I get your shipment?”

“Shipment. Right. Yes. Sorry.”

She was clearly a bit out of it, but that was all to the better for the experiment. Neither the parasite – nor the Nest, he imagined – had thought that it would happen this quickly, but it had. By the time that he had unloaded her crate from the back of the wagon, she was shifting from hoof to hoof almost constantly, and her muscles in her flanks and lower back were straining to keep her tail down. It was almost too funny, in some ways, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that the parasite was keeping his face neutral, he wasn’t sure if he could have managed it.

As Mrs. Cake bobbed her head in thanks, strapping the package to her back, her control slipped. Her tail went up, and he had a brief view of her sex, her pucker, and both of them clenching hard at the need that the little drink had given her. Not quite like a mare in heat – though near enough – but certainly a view that would have enticed any male that happened to be passing by.

She wasn’t, however, without awareness. She realized what she did and immediately yanked her tail back down, whipping herself around on her front hooves. With bright-red cheeks, she shook her head.

“Please don’t tell my husband I did that.”

“Did what?” Dapper-Bit said.

“…Thank you. I don’t – I’m not myself. Was that…was that the drink? Do…do they do, ahem, perverted things where you picked that up?”

“They weren’t when I was visiting.”

“But…do they?”

Dapper-Bit shrugged.

“Oh, dear…maybe…Maybe I shouldn’t…”

“Mrs. Cake. Perhaps it’s just something that’s an initial reaction. After all, wine makes ponies do strange things, does it not?”

“Well…true…”

“And even a pony that’s only had cider – if they have enough of it – could make a fool of themselves, too.”

“Yes, yes. Oh, the things I did when I was younger…”

“This is merely a little stronger. I’m sure that, if you have a few other samples, you’ll quickly develop a tolerance for it.”

The parasite was lying, of course. She would develop a taste, rather than a tolerance, and Dapper-Bit could only imagine what would happen to the normally-conservative baker if she was hit with more doses of his pre-cum, tainted as it was by the Nest and the parasite. But she need not hear that; she wasn’t ready to be part of the Nest, not yet, and she needed time to be brought to that way of thinking.

Besides, they still had their real target. Twilight Sparkle was the first that would fall to the Nest, and that would happen tomorrow, if the plan went off without a hitch. Considering what they’d learned with this, the chances of the alicorn actually seeing through what they had planned were almost nonexistent.

“Goodnight, Mrs. Cake.”

“G-goodnight, Mr. Twist. Oh, goodness.”

The baker turned to leave, her tail twitching as she fought her body. Dapper-Bit had a moment to imagine that her husband would probably have a very fun night tonight before the parasite turned him back to the inn. They had a great deal of reporting to do to the Nest, and the Nest had more to do to them.

However, before they could get far, they were stopped in the common room of the inn by another pony. This one was a doctor – Doctor Stable, as a matter of fact – and he waved a hoof from his table.

“Dapper, my good friend! When’d you get in?”

“Just a – a few hours ago,” he said, stumbling over his words from both the noise and the realization that he hadn’t actually known how long he’d been out. The parasite had had to step in again. “I was just headed back to my room.”

“Why don’t you take a moment? Take a load off your hooves?”

“It’s been a long day. I’m tired.”

“You can sleep in tomorrow. Come on. Let me take a look at you. You never take care of yourself.”

That was a little more true than he cared to admit, and both parasite and host knew what the doctor would see if he got a close look. Sweat, strain, exhaustion: all those things that meant that Dapper-Bit had been pushing himself harder than he should, and possibly more. The parasite had a distrust of the doctor, too, which wasn’t helped by the fact that an ‘exam’ could quickly turn internal if the other stallion didn’t like what he was seeing. And considering where that internal exam meant probing, that would quickly uncover the parasite itself.

No, that was a non-starter. They had to get out of that.

“Tomorrow,” Dapper-Bit said.

“…There’s something serious, isn’t there?” Doctor Stable said.

“What makes you think that?”

“You never turn down a free exam.”

The parasite did not ‘panic,’ precisely, but it was caught on the back foot. Though the Nest had updated them with better instructions and a slightly better tolerance for the constant noise and sensory overload that was the common room of the inn, the parasite and the host weren’t taking it well. They weren’t at the top of their game, and they were making mistakes, forgetting things.

“I promise, we’ll talk tomorrow. It’s nothing serious, but I want to be sure that I’m not making mistakes,” Dapper-Bit said.

“…You’re sure? Nothing bad? Nothing that’s going to make me curse you out and lock you in a hospital because you tried to pretend that you were okay when you weren’t?”

Was it pretending when you were flat-out lying to someone else that nothing was wrong? Or was it telling the truth, when he really didn’t think that there was anything wrong with him compared to how his life had been before? Either way, Dapper-Bit nodded.

“I’m sure. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Alright. Guess it must have been an extra-long walk. You sleep, doctor’s orders, and I’ll see you tomorrow after your business meetings, okay?”

“Okay. That’s fair.”

Doctor Stable nodded, and Dapper-Bit began the ascent towards the upper floor. The second that they were able to leave the din of the lower rooms behind, they felt better, but they also knew that they had a long night ahead. There were a great many ‘updates’ that they’d need to get from the Nest, and something would have to be done about getting overloaded by too many things at once. The parasite in him was just not used to that much information, and needed something to be able to handle it. And future generations would have to be made better in the first place to be able to take it at all.

But that was part of the process. The Nest would evolve, and so would they.