A Conspiracy of Order

As the creature’s tendrils popped loose from her, Twilight Sparkle struggled to stay on her hooves. She locked her knees as she stared straight ahead, her eyes hazed over, her mind struggling to do…well, anything. There was so much there, so much shoved into her skull over the course of the last few…

How long?

How long had she been there?

Long enough for there to be other voices in her head, other pressures, other things that made it impossible for her to think clearly on her own. Long enough for her body to still be in a perpetual state of aftershocks of orgasmic pleasure. Long enough for her to know that there was something besides her in charge of her own body now.

She almost blacked out, the alicorn’s mind struggling to work, almost having to do a sort of ‘reboot’ to be able to do anything at all. Her thoughts were running all over the place, going back over what had just happened.

The tentacles.

The tentacles.

She focused on the tentacles first, remembering the feeling of shock that had come when they’d just rammed inside of her. It wasn’t the first time that the seemingly-innocent librarian had done something pervy, though it had been the first time that someone else had watched it happen to her. She’d summoned enough little ‘helpers’ over the years – and there had been that one time with a Changeling egg – that she had been quite experienced in the matter of something being more ‘intimate’ than one might have initially expected. It had been worth seeing if the plant had something to say, but…

But…

But…

Her brain skipped a beat as it continued the process of trying to turn itself on again, and she groaned as she stumbled forward. Some bits of herself pushed forward, enough to realize that she had…

Had…

Had…

Click. There was the shift again, and she leaned her side against the nearest aisle of books. Her legs were no longer moving, something pulling her to a stop. The programming.

Yes. That was it.

She was finally ‘thinking’ clear enough to know what was going on. The constant shocks, the regular blasts of pleasure and information and electricity up her back had been telling her what to do. The first bit, having it all go down her spine, had been information leaving her mind. Twilight remembered the hyper-focus on memory after memory, how it had been dragged up to the surface, and figured that was the plant –

The Nest.

The Nest collecting everything that she had in her mind for its own personal use. Whatever that would turn out to be, it had it now, and there was no getting it back without cutting it free.

No, that wasn’t right. She still had it. It was just copied. Copied and –

She watched as Dapper-Bit Twist backed up, his tail rising again as the Nest called him with some unseen signal. She had a split-second glance at his rim, stretching almost as if in anticipation for the tendril, before he stiffened just as she’d done while she had been connected to the plant.

What was happening to him, she wondered? Was he getting orders, such as had been slammed into her brain? Was he getting information? Copies of her memories, perhaps, or at least pieces of them that might be useful? Whatever it was, it would be driving him up the wall, she was sure; there was a lot to be transferred.

She wondered, briefly, why she wasn’t running. The answer, of course, had to be the Nest.

She was programmed. She could feel it, feel the layer of other thoughts that went over and under her own, caging and channeling them in the way that the Nest wanted them to go. There was no way to free them; her mind had been utterly re-written. Like a river whose path had been altered by dedicated diggers, her thoughts had been given entirely new channels to follow, and no matter how she might complain or fight it, the thoughts would go where they willed from now on.

Where the Nest willed.

Twilight Sparkle couldn’t even pant or gasp in shock at the realization of her sharp mind being turned to other purposes that way. Her body, her own mortal shell, had been completely reprogrammed. The most that she could do was think about thinking for herself, and even that was limited. Awareness did not apply to using logic to puzzle things out, and that, in turn –

Nnngh. It didn’t feel good.

As she was forced to just lean and breathe, watching as the process continued with Dapper-Bit, she realized that she didn’t even feel angry. The programming had taken that away from her, too, leaving her with no emotions about the forced turn. No embarrassment about her throat being raped, nor the feeling of shame that would have come with being tentacle-fucked in front of someone else. As a matter of fact, emotions in general were rather far away, sealed behind a number of doors.

It was…oddly interesting, in its own fashion, and she wondered if she was fascinated of her own accord, or if the programming forced her to be.

She couldn’t even shake her head, nor did she want to shortly after realizing that she could not. The constant repetition of the same pattern – becoming aware of a restriction, trying to fight the restriction, failing, and then no longer minding – was becoming all too familiar, and she didn’t know where it would end.

As Dapper-Bit continued his download, the rest of the programming started to surface, coming up through the haze of her mental reboot. Commands in addition to the lack of resistance were coming to the fore, pushing into her awareness.

Find a place for the Nest to rest.

Bring tools for moving the Nest to new location.

Move the Nest.

Secure the Nest.

Be implanted.

She was already acting on that before she was aware of it, her body moving, her magic activating. The purple glow down her horn was slightly sickly this time, unpracticed compared to her usual proficiency, but all the power was still there. She focused her magic on the various carts and heavy movers throughout the library, seeking the one that she needed.

The basement was the only logical place for the Nest. It didn’t seem to need the sun, as far as she could tell, and it didn’t tell her of any light requirements while she was looking at it. If anything, it seemed to prefer dimmer places, despite being a desert flower. It would be safe enough in the basement.

And for that, she needed big tools. It was barely sufficiently planted as it was; there was no way that she would risk carrying it with her magic, nor was she allowed; the commands required her to bring moving tools here. Nevermind that her magic would have been sufficient to teleport the plant where it needed to go. It had commanded her to move it with normal tools, and that would be what she used.

Flicker.

Pulse.

Whoosh.

A moving cart appeared beside the table, but she could not move forward to step three just yet. The Nest was still communing with Dapper-Bit, which meant that it could not be moved just yet. The conflict between the two different commands – to wait for the communication between plant and drone-host-whatever and the order to move it to the new place – caused some discomfort in the back of her head, but she had no right to say anything. No ability. Nothing.

Programming caused problems. She could barely think straight, and with the queue of orders waiting to be fulfilled, being unable to do anything about them was agonizing. It caused no physical pain, but it left her mind jarred, unable to entirely finish a process, and it wanted to move on rather than staying stuck.

Finally, Dapper-Bit stepped forward. He looked at her –

“Help me move it,” she said.

“You have –”

“Help me move it. Help me move it.”

She was in a loop, and the awareness of the loop, the frustration of being unable to break out of it, and the acceptance that she could not and that it didn’t matter, all happened once more. Twilight was starting to hate that process, and then, that was taken from her, too.

After all, the process was of the Nest, and one could not be allowed to hate the Nest.

Dapper-Bit did what he was told, helping her lower the plant to the cart. He cocked his head to the side as she started pushing it, trying to offer help. She would have accepted, but the orders in her head gave her no flexibility for that, no option to actually accept it rather than fulfill the order to do it on her own.

She felt stupid.

She felt idiotic.

She hated it.

“You are hosting anything?”

“No,” Twilight said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

There was so much more that she wanted to say, so many theories that she normally would have proposed, but the programming took up so much space in her brain. It was forcing her to keep moving, to follow the orders, to get things done. She didn’t have a choice in how to do them; everything had been brute-forced into her skull, rammed in so fast and so deep that there was so little of her left, and every time that she was forced to acknowledge that things that she wanted were impossible, but that wasn’t really so bad, it only got worse.

The alicorn wanted to scream.

She couldn’t scream.

Well, maybe she didn’t want to scream, anyway.

And so it went.

Twilight was becoming more and more aware of her own limitations as they walked along, feeling less and less herself as they reached the basement door. The stairs had long-since been replaced with a ramp for the purposes of carrying things down to it, so the cart didn’t need to be left behind. The Nest voiced no complaints as it entered shadow, nor did the tendrils reach out to stop her or make Dapper-Bit do the same. Her thoughts, earlier, of the Nest being fine in the dark seemed to be accurate.

As she descended, she was more and more aware of how her personality, her desires, and everything else were completely subsumed within the programming. It had been wrapped so tightly around her mind, so firmly around her core, that she had nothing that didn’t involve the Nest in her head any longer. The desire to read only fed the desire to know more about how to help the Nest. The urge to use her magic was only there inasmuch as it would help the Nest to be better, more powerful. The want to know more about the Nest itself would only serve to break the boundaries that life had placed on the Nest, and give it a way forward.

But even those expanded desires were nothing, nothing, against the programming to do her current job. The most that they could claim was the possibility of being added to the queue later, and imagining what her life would be past the queue was almost impossible. The demands that the programming on her mind exerted required that she think of the queue, and ‘daydreaming’ of something beyond it wasn’t allowed.

She pushed the cart down, down, down, and soon, they were in the basement, surrounded by shadow, old books, and the roots of the library tree. Her horn glowed, giving them a little light to see by, and she stopped the cart at the edge of the biggest root.

“Here?” Dapper-Bit asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it will grow.”

The root here was almost dead, long-since damaged by an old fight with some of the villains that used to plague Ponyville. There would be no competition with the bigger tree down here, nothing that it would have to do to keep itself fed. It could even choke out the other, healthier roots of the tree from this point, if the Nest was so inclined.

There was no guilt at the idea of killing her long-time home for the sake of the Nest. It demanded much, and she would deliver.

Twilight and Dapper-Bit carried the pot off the cart, then dropped it. The shattering clay went all over the place, but freed the roots of the Nest. They were massive, thick things, and as they writhed, she saw that some of them were hollow, open at the ends, and she wondered – then didn’t wonder – then forgot her wondering – what they were for.

As the Nest started slotting itself into the dirt, she felt the different commands fading slightly. She knew that she had to be infested soon, but didn’t know how that was supposed to happen. The commands, the obedience, they were rolling over each other, bashing against one another in conflicted fashion, and she groaned under her breath in frustration as she realized just how inefficient the whole system was, and how much she could have done to revise it if she was allowed.

But she wasn’t.

She was only a drone, after all, and drones followed their prescribed orders. If the programming had been a bit looser, less restraining, or if there had been something else to allow various translations of the rules and requirements that governed her life, perhaps she would have felt better, but –

But –

But –

Twilight felt that complaint getting squashed, too. The whole thing left her feeling stupid, lost, inadequate, and then the feelings were pulled away, too, leaving her feeling, more than anything, empty.

Dapper-Bit turned to her again. His face was different now, far different compared to the many memories that she had of him as an occasional business partner. Rather than the sly or grinning expressions that she had become used to, he was the picture of neutrality, completely blank of any feeling at all. He looked at her, then at the plant, then back at her.

“Are you…planning…anything?”

His speech was stilted, as if he was coming up with things as he went rather than having any idea of what he wanted to say. She shook her head.

“No. No plans. Yet.”

“The Nest…”

“It must be protected.”

“I know. But there are so many Hosts.”

Hosts. The idea of having them there, of other ponies seeing the Nest and learning their place, should have been horrifying. Once, it would have been, but the programming had already changed that part of her. Instead of fear, there was joy. Instead of hate, there was eagerness. She wanted to see it happen, needed to see it happen, and her thoughts wanted to go down those carved-out channels in her brain to figure out how to make it happen.

But they couldn’t, because she hadn’t finished her other orders yet. The frustration-no frustration-acceptance cycle repeated again.

“You are…different. Not like me.”

“I am not infested,” Twilight said.

“…This is…slow.”

“Painfully.”

“I feel…”

“Stupid.”

“Wrong.”

“Incomplete.”

They both nodded. It was not empathy, but it was a related sensation, a ‘comfort’ that they understood the wrongness of the ‘slow’ life that they were both exposed to. Twilight had always been quick, possessed of a brilliant mind and a genius intellect when it came to magic, theory, and anything that required logic and slowly thinking something out. Now that she had been exposed to the Nest, however, with its vast mind and its ability to think through so much at once – and not just think, but process and communicate those thoughts – she felt as dull as a block of clay compared to that. She felt not just stupid, but idiotic.

This time, the frustration of her own incapableness fading away was more welcome. Vaguely, but it was.

The Nest finally finished rooting itself in place, and the infested stallion and the programmed mare were dragged a little closer to it by her instincts. The programming told her to turn around and lift her tail, and she did, her juices already flowing as the programming rammed her arousal centers as hard as possible. Her juices started flowing before her purple tail was halfway up, and by the time that it was curled up and off to the side, her vaginal juices were streaming down her hind legs, running down to her hooves.

The tendrils returned. They were not gentle like a lover might have been, but rather, quick and to the point. One rammed into her sex, curling to rub over her clit, wiggling deep into her womb. The other jammed into her ass, and it was the one that held her attention.

Shock.

Spasm.

Tighten.

In a micro-second, she was completely attentive again, hooked up to the Nest. Its thoughts traveled up her mind, going to her core, feeling her out. It had already downloaded most of her memories, most of the things that made her Twilight Sparkle, but it was doing something else, this time. It reached…deeper, almost down to the core of her, where the things that were not thought, but rather just done, were located. The place where subconscious breathing was managed, the place where the heartbeat was kept, the place where her body’s breeding abilities were locked away.

That last one was opened, different pieces of information pulled out and examined. She could feel those sliding out of her, and for the briefest flashes, she had understandings of her own body that she had never realized. The connections of estrus and the need to breed were obvious, of course, but the specific ways that her body managed it without ever being instructed were fascinating. If she had been herself, the number of notes that she’d have been taking at that moment would have shocked most.

But she was not herself, and so she did not. She did nothing but let the Nest take the information, and wonder what the information was for. Surely, it did not need other ponies to reproduce, if it was creating parasites to shove in others.

It was a question for another time. More downloading was done, and then, an upload. This time, it was not a command, but a memory, information that was seen from a different point of view. Dapper-Bit’s point of view, as a matter of fact.

She saw through his eyes.

She viewed his efforts at the Gilded Saddle.

She saw Mrs. Cake getting drugged, and saw the near-instant effect that it had.

She saw everything that he had done since coming in, and she realized that the Nest was putting a problem to her to solve. It could not create hosts without drugging them, but the constant public nature of the entire town meant that it could not easily create a situation where it would freely be able to convert and infest them.

The Nest wanted her to solve it. She felt…proud, inasmuch as she still could through the layers of programming. It was a far cry from the feelings she remembered from when she was dealing with professors and teachers and others that had told her that she had done well, but it was a shadow of a shadow of a thing.

If it wanted her to think, then Twilight Sparkle would think.

She put her mind to it, and with the connection to the Nest channeling her thoughts away from the impossible – of going to the Mayor and declaring an opening for new types of ponies, or of reaching out for the remnants of the Changelings, or of making contact with the dragons and taking them rather than ponies, as many of them lived in solitary lives – she reached a proper solution.

It rolled out of her brain as a concept-image, just like she had been given. She had learned what the Nest used, and she passed it back in kind. She sent it an image loaded with context, of her setting up an experiment that could be sold as a means for younger adults to make money now that the apple-bucking season was more or less over, or means for the older ponies to come down and supplement some of their retirement money with something easy. She had done it a number of times with other magical experiments, and the town was used to it being weird and different, something that nobody talked about.

The Nest paused, then gave her a flash of approval. It felt the idea was sound.

It was a different sense of appreciation than the shadow of pride that had come through a moment ago, but no less wonderful. If anything, it was more wonderful, because it came from the Nest rather than herself. A drone-creature could not, should not feel the same sense of pride as someone ‘normal.’ They were subordinate and they only did what they were told. If the Nest approved of her, however, then it was right that she felt honored.

She did not smile, but the glow remained as the tentacles started pulling back. The one in her sex slid out first, leaving a string of feminine slime dangling from her vaginal lips, but the other stayed just barely inside of her. The connection remained to the Nest, and she felt something else.

Prepare for Infestation.

Twilight nodded, raising her tail that much higher. Having an audience for this was no longer embarrassing; they were both members of the Nest, and to have someone else witnessing her proper finishing touches was nothing worse than having someone watch her graduate from her school. This was right. This was proper. This was allowed.

The tendril finally came free, leaving her with a feeling of being spread wide open. It rested against the ground as a root broke out of the plant, pushing up against her. The thicker thing spread her wider than the tentacle had, and as she waited, she could hear something traveling up. The crick-crack of the root spreading, expanding, and the flow of fluid rushing into her rump made her sure that she was about to be infested, and fear – banished from her mind through the extensive programming – had no place for her. Instead, she felt…not even excited, just…ready.

Ready for her new life.

Ready to stop being stupid.

Ready to be more like Dapper.

Ready to be…whatever the Nest needed her to be.

So, when the bulge finally reached her hole, she didn’t fight. She didn’t moan. She didn’t do anything but hold herself as open as possible. The weight of the parasite pushed past her rim, and then fell into her, its own size sending it further in than she expected. There was a rolling feeling along her anal walls as it slid further in, sliding towards her gut for a moment before hooking itself into her inner flesh. It wasn’t biting, but she could feel something stroking, hooking, sliding into her skin in there, anchoring it.

An odd sensation, but not unwelcome.

Twilight breathed evenly as it connected with her, giving her a similar, if weaker, feeling of having it connect to her mind. It spread through her spine, little shocks running through her, before going down further. There was a clench, a tension, and then, a very strange feeling of being aware of her own bladder in a way that she had never been before. The tendrils running through her piping went somewhere else, grasping around, and then further down, running just over her clit.

For a split second, micro-thin tendrils forced her urethra open, flicking back and forth along her clit. Her sex twitched, clenching at the sensation, even if the rest of her showed no reaction. She felt a hint of confusion from her parasite, only for it to try and adjust to the new body.

New body.

It was meant for a male, she realized under everything else. She almost thought at the parasite, stopped, and then turned it into an invitation, an open-mind, offering the parasite a chance to look in at a thought bubbling to the surface. A complete mental diagram of feminine anatomy was held in her mind, contrasted against the secondary chart of male anatomy that this one was probably used to.

The tingling along her spine told her that the parasite had taken it, and she hoped that it would find it useful.

The tendrils slid back inside of her, but the awareness of her bladder didn’t fade. The parasite moved her legs, and she shifted from side to side. The rolling feeling of her own urine inside of her washed over Twilight’s senses, and the parasite made a simple decision that the mare never would have done on her own.

There was no ‘pardon me.’ There was no ‘one moment.’ There was nothing but the simple movement of walking across the basement to the drain off to the side and squatting down. Dapper-Bit – no, Dapper-Drone, as the parasite told her, as she was Twilight-Drone – didn’t stare at her. He merely marked her movement, then nodded in understanding. Didn’t look away, either.

As she lowered her hips ever so slightly, her urine began to flow. Fast, faster, fastest, draining away to relieve the discomfort that the programming had ignored and her own mind had been blinded to. The lack of orders to take care of that had begun to mess with her biological requirements, and now, it was being taken care of. The parasite forced it out, flexing its control over her body to make the muscles down there wring out everything that remained in her bladder, holding her tubing open so that it sloshed out and down the drain without a concern for modesty or shame, neither of which seemed to exist any longer for her.

The only thing that it did note was the sheer force of it and the physical relief that should have been there. It had been too long, and it was a reminder that hosts needed time to be taken for relief from time to time. Their biology demanded it, and limited them, and the Nest would need to be informed.

Casually as if she had just taken a drink from a stream, Twilight-Drone pulled her hips back up. The last droplet fell to the drain, leaving her completely free of the weight that had been pulling at her. The parasite ran through her body, almost scanning her with its senses, as if trying to find anything else that needed seeing to.

Twilight-Drone was impressed. It was far more efficient about looking her over than the Nest had been, but then again, the Nest had been more focused on ensuring that she would obey, that she would not fight, that she would be useful. The parasite? It was something else, more focused on ensuring the viability of the host so long as there was no danger involved to the Nest as a result of caring for said host.

It would be interesting balancing that. There were only two of them.

The parasite flexed again, and Twilight-Drone flicked her tail up, turning her rump back towards the Nest. Dapper-Drone was doing the same, and the pair of them backed up toward it. They could not glance towards one another, but she imagined that they were both thinking the same thing. The Nest had need of them, and they would fulfill the need.

As soon as they were close, they were both invaded, and this time, she was only filled anally. Just as when the Nest had demanded that she form an answer to the question that it posed to her, she felt it push questions at her again, but this time, it was guiding her. There was…there was a connection, as if she were both in her head and in the Nest itself at the same time. She could feel the information that the Nest had taken from her, the near-clone of her personality and sense of self, and beside it, she could feel something else.

It had to be Dapper-Bit, rather than Dapper-Drone. Just like the one that had been her was Twilight Sparkle, and she was Twilight-Drone.

The memories, the copies, were held close together within the Nest, not quite mingling, but near enough that both of their memories could be touched at once. The information slotted between them, passing into her head and through Dapper-Drone’s, and as they both processed the information, given free access to the lives of two ponies at once, that processing was harnessed by the Nest itself.

Twilight was along for the ride, and she could feel the raw power of the Nest’s mind. It did not lack brains, nor intelligence, but merely experience, information. Its ability to process and decide and logic through so many different situations was more than Twilight had seen from any other pony, past even her own, though she could at least understand where it went. She could not have done what it did, but she could follow it, see where it went, how it arrived at its various conclusions, and she admired the plant for what it did.

It was making plans, alright, using her brain and Dapper-Drone’s for extra speed and power. It used their memories and experiences to make up for the lack of its own. Whatever they had been, it had access to, and it continued to build from there.

From her, it took the idea of the experiment, and found the problems. The possibility someone could run off. The possibility of discovery. The lack of funding to explain it. Complaining individuals wanting compensation.

From Dapper, it found solutions. It found Mr. Westin Regalis, a wealthy pegasus. It found advertising knowledge. It found money.

And it found problems there. How to get Mr. Westin Regalis. How to ensure that he was safe. How to make sure that he didn’t screw them over.

And from her, it found more solutions. To bring him here. To use her and Dapper in shifts to boost the Nest’s power to convert him quickly.

Back and forth, back and forth they went, creating and refining a plan. Twilight-Drone could feel her skull heating up from the process, but with the extra presence of Dapper-Drone to take some of it off her when it was getting too much, Twilight-Drone managed to make it work. It could hurt her over time, she was sure, but as long as she got breaks, it would work out just fine.

And the pleasure…

There was certainly pleasure there, pleasure that she had been able to ignore while she was standing, while she was infested, but now, she was allowed it. It burned through the barriers that the Nest and the parasite had been keeping up, leaving her hot and wet, her fluids running down her legs and pooling beneath her hooves. She was a horny mess, unable to do anything about it save to suffer it as her libido and her pleasure were cranked up, completely mentally, with each passing second.

She would cum, soon. She would cum and it would splatter over the floor and it wouldn’t matter. The pleasure would climb and it would happen again, and again, and again as the Nest planned for the future, and this…

This would be her reward.

This would be what she asked for.

Because this…this reminded her…of one thing that she still missed from her pre-Drone life.