A Conspiracy of Order

The next day dawned with a mix of hunger, focus, and a great deal of determination on the part of the Nest to get things done. That determination was filtered down to the drones via their parasites, and from there, they were given their jobs for the day.

Twilight-Drone was sent to the mayor’s office with the plan to organize some experiments, get the right to advertise for the different subjects that they’d need for it, and make sure that the paperwork and permits were properly handed in. The last thing that they needed was for the mayor to come investigating because someone hadn’t crossed all their t’s and dotted all their i’s.

Dapper-Drone, on the other hand, had to take up the rest of the work. The fact was, they were short on finances. He would be able to bring in some greater bits with all the stuff that he had on his wagon, but for the moment, the most that they could afford was a down-payment on the permits and everything else. Twilight-Drone was confident that they would be able to bargain the mayor down to allow for the start of the experiments, at the very least, but the Nest wanted everything backed-up. It kept their minds copied inside itself for a reason, and that same caution extended towards ensuring that everything else was properly backed up.

Dapper-Drone’s memories had been tapped, and those tapped memories had brought up a name: Westin Regalis, a rich pegasus from Cloudsdale that had come down from the heights to work his ‘magic’ with various investments among the earth ponies. More than once, he’d been convinced to put his money to work with Dapper-Drone’s various ventures, and he had always had plenty of bits to throw around. As a wealthy heir to one of the greater families up there, he could tap more bits than the average pony outside of Canterlot or Manehattan ever could.

The Nest wanted him, and what the Nest wanted, it would have.

As he walked back to the Gilded Saddle, dragging the rented cart behind him, Dapper-Drone was in and out of consciousness. The constant barrage of programming for the parasite and the use of his mind as a secondary booster to the constant thoughts of the Nest had scrambled him to some extent, and the parasite, thus empowered, was the one that ran everything. He felt almost like he was asleep, half the time, even when he was walking through the streets, pulled forward only when there was a social situation that benefited from him being more conscious than out of the way.

It was strange, almost like…like he was secondary to the parasite, now. His presence had been managed, before, but now, it was almost like he was not entirely needed, like his shell was all that the Nest had ever required. It was…odd.

Not odd enough to keep him ‘awake,’ of course, as he was completely lost to the control of the parasite and he was happy enough that things were being taken care of, but odd enough for him to notice. He only thought of it when he was pulled forward and things were different, but that was often enough.

Like now.

The last that he had been aware of the world, they’d been leaving the library tree, with Twilight-Drone hitching him to the cart and sending him off. Dapper-Drone had been focused on the other ponies waiting for their chance to enter the library, only for the concern about being forced to talk to them to be unfounded. After a day without the library, the other ponies had been more interested in getting back to the books.

Time faded. He was outside the Gilded Saddle, and there was no awareness of the time that had passed between leaving the library and arriving here. The disorientation was handled by the parasite, requiring him only to stare through his own eyes at the pegasus in the bar part of the inn.

Confirmation?

The parasite had his memories, it knew what he knew, but there was still the slight awkwardness in social situations. It was learning, still figuring things out, and that meant that it still needed him. For now.

What would happen when the Nest had perfected the parasites, he wondered? Would the hosts be allowed to be aware of anything that happened around them, or would they merely be kept in the back of their own heads, trapped there just for the worst-case scenario? Just how far did the Nest plan to take things with the various ponies that it managed to pull under its umbrella?

The question went without answer. He was not asked for his opinions. He wasn’t there to think. He was there to be a drone, and a drone he would be.

Confirmed, he thought back.

There was no mistaking Westin Regalis for any other pegasus. The stallion had deep red wings, so large and broad that they looked utterly cumbersome even for someone of his bulk, but he managed them well enough. White hairs ran down his flanks and sides, and his mane and tail were the same deep red as his wings. Rather than dressing for flight, he dressed for style, with his mane braided and off to one side, and his chest and neck covered with a fine coat that bespoke to his origins.

He dripped with the image of money, and he knew it.

The parasite took control again, though Dapper-Drone was allowed to stay in the forefront. They unhitched themselves from the cart, stepping into the inn. Mr. Cumulus noticed them immediately.

“Ah, bringing the cart back?” the other pegasus asked. “That’s another day’s rent.”

“I know, I know.” He walked up to the counter and put a couple of bits down. “I’m sorry for the delay.”

“Long as you pay.”

The bits disappeared almost instantly, and the earth stallion turned back to his occasional benefactor. The white-red pegasus smiled as their eyes met, nodding his head in invitation. Dapper-Drone took it, trotting over to the table and getting comfortable.

“Been a little while,” Westin said.

“Some weeks, yes.”

“Been trading well?”

“Profitable enough, I suppose. It’s been a while since I saw you; been investing elsewhere?”

“Oh, chasing down interesting tales, seeing what sort of excitement I can dredge up.”

“Found any?”

“A couple of fine pieces of tail, but that’s as far as it’s gone.”

Dapper-Drone’s parasite pulled his lips back into a small smile, wry and knowing. Yes, Westin was not above using his bits to get under the tails of other ponies. Mostly males, it must be said, but there were some mares that held his attention, too. Fewer, of course, and most of them rather strange and depraved to begin with, but that was what the other stallion really wanted: something different, strange, and new.

As Westin waved to the bar, calling for a drink for his good friend, Dapper-Drone reached around to his flank. His saddlebags were still around him, and he knew that there’d be no greater opportunity than this for getting Westin prepped for the Nest. The rich pegasus blinked as he laid a vial on the table.

“What is this?” the other stallion asked.

“Just a little thing that I picked up on my travels.”

“Hmm, and what might that be, eh?”

“Let’s just say that you don’t want to be caught with that in Canterlot.”

“Mmm, contraband? You naughty stallion.”

“I do what I need to for a profit.”

“I’ll reward you handsomely if this is any good.”

It would be. The Nest had milked him and Twilight-Drone both extensively throughout the night, pushing them to the edge of their bodies’ endurance to make sure that they would have plenty of altered fluids for the purposes of drugging potential hosts. Some of it had been drained urine, as that was useful enough for a weaker purpose, but for a proper drugging, seed and vaginal slime had been all but required.

His was watered down, of course; there was little point in giving another stallion raw seed, as they would detect it almost immediately, but with a few cocktails that Twilight had in her library and lab – who knew that the mare had such an assortment of chemicals and alcohol? – they had managed to put together something that would pass muster. Hopefully.

As Mr. Cumulus brought them a bottle of clear fluid – one of the better bottles of the libations that they had off to the west, flavored with the juices of the cactus as well as standard booze – Westin rolled the vial between one hoof and the other. He cocked his head to the side as he looked at the liquid inside.

“So, just how much is this going to affect me?” he asked.

“Fairly hard.”

“Enough to need a room?”

“Oh, I can take care of that,” Dapper-Drone said.

“I would expect you to.”

“I know your ‘expectations.’”

“Relax. I’ve already drained those. I won’t need that again. At least, not until tomorrow, ha.”

He uncorked the vial. It was clear from the lack of reaction in the inn that he had done this at least a few times without Dapper-Drone being present, and Dapper-Drone honestly wasn’t surprised. The pegasus’s money and reputation meant that he could do a great deal more than the average stallion and get away with it, and that meant that he generally did. He just enjoyed himself in the process.

As he added the vial to a glass of the booze, Dapper-Drone’s parasite was already making plans. It shouldn’t take more than a few cups to get the pegasus completely hammered, and when he was, they could gradually drag him back to the library. Once there, they could begin the process of converting him, and all those bits would be able to further the plans of the Nest, taking them further towards their goals.

The parasite was pushing it further and further, thinking of the future, and Dapper-Drone could feel the frayed nature of the parasite’s thoughts and plans as it tried to look past the immediate moment. Everything more than a few days out started to fade in the parasite’s vision, and the thought-concepts that were coming up his spine, most of them done almost without intention, showed him a vision that didn’t really encapsulate the far future. There were wishes and whims, of a sort, but they weren’t the sort that a pony would ever really think of. No dreams, no aspirations, just a vague idea of the future being completely ruled by the Nest.

And even there, there was no idea what the future would actually be like. Just…the Nest. The Nest, in charge of everything, taking care of everything, ordering everything around and ensuring that things got done.

Dapper-Drone no longer even knew what that meant. He wondered – then he didn’t wonder.

No need for that.

No need for any of that.

“So, Dapper-Bit. Anything you’re looking for?” Westin asked.

“Hmm?”

Focus. Yes. They couldn’t take their thoughts off the moment. They had to focus on him, rather than fantasies of other times.

“Heh, you don’t usually come looking for me unless you want money, Dapper-Bit. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you are like.”

“Ah, well, you caught me.”

“Splendid. You’ve never failed me yet. And you bring a bribe. Oh, you know me so well.”

The parasite made him nod, even though it was just going along with this. Dapper-Drone could feel it tapping him, pulling at his memories, rapidly sorting through what it needed to know to be believable while still just playing for time.

After all, they didn’t have a real business plan. They were hoping to move him to the tree and have the Nest take care of that as soon as possible, but if they were going to be at the table –

“So, what are you going for this time, dear Dapper?” Westin asked.

“Well…there’s an experiment going on with Twilight Sparkle, one that I’m looking to sponsor myself,” Dapper-Drone said, still trying to sort himself out.

“Mm, investing now? I didn’t think that you had the funds for that.”

“Not nearly as much as I would like; just getting the permits nearly has me wiped out.”

“Ah, so you’re coming to me for the actual advertising and such?” Westin chuckled. “Oh, silly Dapper.”

The pegasus chuckled as he shook his head, tossing his head back and taking the first mouthful of the tainted drink. The parasite was eager, he could feel that, but there was no immediate sign.

Of course there wouldn’t be. He knew Westin, and he knew that the stallion was more than a little bit of a party animal. He had gone through so many different substances and drinks over the course of his life that it would take a miracle to knock him out with just one sip. He’d need a good bit more than that to overcome his natural resistance to the drugged seed in his booze.

Keep talking…keep talking…

“Silly, perhaps, but I know a profit when I see one.”

“And that, good stallion, is why I keep investing in you.”

“So, invest in me again.”

“Patience, patience. Sell me on it, man, come on. You know how this goes.”

Dapper-Drone did, and the parasite, hooked into his memories directly at this point and sucking on every hint that it could get, was starting to get the picture. The long memories of drinking with the pegasus over an inn table, working through idea after idea, spinning tale after tale of what they could do with Dapper’s business acumen and the pegasus’s money and trust, were some of the better ones. Drunk and more than slightly hazy with time and alcohol and the subsequent hangover, yes, but they were good, happy, better times.

There was a small piece of the subdued stallion that almost missed those. The push for that success almost seemed worth the uncertainty, sometimes.

But that was gone, replaced with the certainty that the Nest provided. He was told that it was better, and he agreed.

“We’re going to be spreading some new substances to the different ponies that sign up for the tests.”

“Clinical trials? Goodness, that sounds like something better suited to Manehattan,” Westin said.

“Well, yes, and no.”

“Hmm?”

“They’re going to be registered as medicinal, but…”

“…Oh, ho ho, you sly stallion.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You’re going to be drugging half the town, aren’t you? Oh, that naughty little Sparkle girl. And here I thought she was nothing but a bookworm.”

She was, but the two were, apparently, not incompatible. Then again, Dapper-Drone supposed that it was entirely reasonable that someone that spent most of their life covered with books would need some sort of distraction or a way to relieve stress. Drugs seemed as good a way to do it as any.

They had hooked the other male, though, and he grinned as he downed the first glass. The first hint of red sprouted in his cheeks, and he poured himself another glass.

“Tell me more about this ‘substance.’ I’m very curious now…”

Dapper-Drone nodded, and he was pulled a little further forward, back to his own skull. After all, the parasite needed everything that it could get to weave a believable story for the other pony, and that meant keeping him forward rather than buried. For a time, at least, he would be useful.

Two hours passed, then another as the drink finally seemed to be taking effect. Westin took his time sipping through glass after glass, and only the stuff that he added with a second, then a third vial seemed to actually affect the other stallion. At one point, he ‘dropped’ beneath the table, his cock throbbing in plain view, but nobody really commented, and Dapper-Drone did the same thing that he always did, letting it go by without comment.

Finally, after three hours of wining the pegasus, Westin finally gave in. He slumped forward, giggling, and the blue-black stallion nudged the glass that he’d been drinking from out of the way. He waved Mr. Cumulus over, and the other pegasus gathered the bottle and the glass.

“I was wondering if he’d ever finish,” the innkeeper said.

“He’ll be done for a while.”

“You’re taking responsibility?”

“I have a place for him.”

“Good. I don’t need him going loopy here.”

“Money’s not so good anymore?” Dapper-Drone asked, feeling a spike of concern.

“Oh, the money’s always good. But the mayor’s starting to crack down just a bit. She’s getting up there in years, these days, and she’s aware that the town’s not as…clean, you might say, as it used to be. She wants to bring it back before she ends her last term in office.”

That was a useful piece of information, and one that Dapper-Drone stored in the back of his head. The tingles of pleasure of that information being stored both in his skull and down in the parasite passed almost unfelt, and he got to his hooves with a nod of thanks.

“I’ll keep him on the straight and narrow.”

“Not too straight, nor too narrow.”

“Just enough,” Dapper-Drone promised.

“Good man. I’ll take the cart around back.”

“Thank you, and sorry.”

“No trouble. As long as you take care of him.”

Dapper-Drone nodded. That would be simple enough.

With Westin giggling and rolling his head from one side to the other due to the drugged cum and booze wrestling with each other through his veins, it was easy enough to nudge him towards the door. The pegasus had a hard time staying on his hooves rather than just falling over, but Dapper-Drone was used to pulling a heavy cart behind him. Dealing with a drunk socialite was easy in comparison.

He dragged the other stallion towards the back alleys of Ponyville, taking his time to avoid the bakeries, businesses, and other places that might need to see Westin as a more respectable pony in the future. No need for them to remember the drunk winged stallion in the state he was in.

As they walked, Dapper-Drone was shoved backward again, pushed further and further back into the depths of his own skull. Awareness of the town started fading, and soon, he was alone in the dark, and time no longer mattered.

Twilight-Drone was in the library when the other two showed up. She was in the process of directing the pens over parchment, making sure that the advertisements were properly spelled and the notices properly notated when the door opened. She turned her head toward the two stallions spilling in, and she immediately knew that the operation had been successful.

There was no need to tell them to go to the basement, or to tell them that she would meet them there. That had been decided by the Nest during the night while they had all been hooked up. Her programming and the parasite within her took charge, leaving the pens and parchment hooked up to a sustaining spell.

“I’ll be back later,” she told one of the under-librarians. “There’s something downstairs I have to take care of.”

“Oh, sure, Twilight. You do that.”

“Make sure that nobody goes down there.”

“Oh? Why –”

“Magic.”

“Oooooh!”

The bouncy unicorn that was being trained to replace her one day giggled, all but hopping on her hooves in eagerness, but Twilight-Drone had already turned away. She had other concerns, other things that needed her attention.

She followed the pair of stallions a minute behind, and when she arrived in the basement, Dapper-Drone was already in the process of turning his kidnapped colleague around. The future host’s tail was already flicked up and over his hips, exposing his pucker to the Nest.

It was quite a different Nest to the plant that had infected her just the day before. It was now nearly ten feet tall, growing rapidly, and its trunk was wider than her and Dapper-Drone put together. The various tentacles – no longer tendrils, but actual tentacles – that hung from the top truly made it look like a virile, powerful weeping willow, now, and there were dangerous ends to those tentacle tips. Each one ended with between five and fifteen strands, making them look like floggers rather than purely penetrative tentacles, and those strands each ended with a strange, humming point, like they were all generating some sort of electricity.

The old Twilight Sparkle would have been endlessly fascinated with the biology of the Nest, but Twilight-Drone was not there for that. Her brainpower was reserved for the use of the Nest, not her own curiosity, and that meant that she would not be wasting it when she was not plugged in.

Unfortunately, without being plugged in, they were forced to resort to the same sort of speech patterns as the unprogrammed and the un-infested. She groaned as she trotted over to the stallion.

“How aware is he?” she asked.

“Barely; he knows that I am here, and little more.”

The clinical speech of the other parasite was a marked departure from the way that its host talked when they were around the un-Nested. It was more elaborate and yet more blunt at the same time, extended and abrupt, contradictory. They were trying to be as quick as they were while connected to the Nest while also dealing with the inherent need to explain further as their words were not enough compared to the image-concepts that they could send while they shared a connection.

It was a uniquely frustrating situation.

She helped Dapper-Drone drag the new host to the Nest proper, keeping that tail up with her magic while kicking his legs further apart. One of the tentacles reached up, and the Nest slithered it past the stallion’s waiting rim. He giggled, too drunk-dumb to know what was happening to him, more than likely.

The first shock, one that had taken her by surprise in the past and had sent her standing straight up, made him laugh. He sounded like a foal being tickled rather than a stallion getting his pleasure. She glanced at Dapper-Drone. No expression, but the mere act of turning her head was a greater expression of the parasite within being confused than a wide-eyed, mouth-agape expression on another pony. Dapper-Drone shook his head.

“This host believes that this one will take a while. His mind is washed out with various tolerances. He will take all night.”

“We do not have time for that.”

“We will have to risk it.”

“…It is a greater risk. There are many above.”

“Can you not seal the door?”

“This host could, but it would be suspicious. There are those that saw this host coming down.”

“That is careless.”

“We are learning.”

“So are we. Yet, we cannot afford to make these mistakes.”

“…We will have to risk it.”

Their ‘guest’ groaned under his breath, and both hosts turned back to him. Twilight-Drone stepped forward, driving by the parasite, and pushed one hoof down on their guest’s head. The pegasus grunted, pushed low, lower, lowest, until his head was beneath Twilight-Drone’s stomach.

The parasite pushed on her muscles down there, and the flow began. Not of her other juices, but an altered version of her urine. The various tendrils of the parasite had reached deep inside of her bladder, and throughout the night, the parasite had been changing it. It was not so deeply drugged as the vaginal fluids that came when called by the parasite, due to the sheer volume of it and the parasite’s inability to alter so much volume at once, but it was clear, and different in taste, rather than the bitter fluid that it would have once been.

“Mmph! Nnngh? Nnn…nnn…mm…m…”

She did not take pleasure in the slow showering of the rich pegasus, nor did she believe that it was particularly vengeful, as her memories showed her from past literature. If there was any pleasure at all, it might have come from satisfying the demands of the Nest, but even that was minor. Instead, it was merely a means of ensuring that he stayed out of it, unfocused, entirely drawn in by the chemicals in her urine.

It didn’t take long before his mouth was open under her sex, swallowing what she offered. There was no shame, no pleasure. It was merely a mechanical moment, a means of offering the drugged fluids to the pegasus before he could start working his way out from his trance and realizing where he was and what was going on.

Of course, due to the state that Westin was in, the application of her urine was hardly neat and tidy. By the time she pulled away, bladder drained, half of it had dribbled out of his mouth, along his muzzle and neck, even down to his chest. The stains were, without question, filthy, but he was sufficiently out of it that he did not say a word, and the hosts could not complain.

“This host did not expect that,” Dapper-Drone said.

“This host had many books of erotic literature. She had pleased herself to them multiple times. It was a means to an end.”

“Was it pleasurable?”

“There is no pleasure.”

“None?”

“No longer.”

“This host…has been curious.”

“This host has her curiosity suppressed. She is eager to be used by the Nest, to feel pleasure merely for thinking.”

“This host requires…distraction. Suppression.”

“Is not your host the first? Should it not be controlled?”

“It is controlled. It is merely…questioning. It is currently asleep.”

Twilight-Drone noted that information. It would be useful for the Nest to know that there was a new program that it would have to start working on. If the hosts grew too aware of the dangers of being infested, of the direction that would take them, then there might be some attempt to push back. It was unlikely, of course, and there were no minds that could stand against the Nest – Twilight-Drone was one of the few that could come close, and she was nowhere near capable of that – but the Nest would take all risks seriously. It would not allow any potential host to escape.

Twilight-Drone and Dapper-Drone glanced down at the impaled pegasus. The Nest would have him partially changed in a few hours, they were sure, changed enough to not expose the Nest itself or the other hosts, though not necessarily obedient. They could gradually speed that up by either weakening him with their various fluids or by plugging themselves into the Nest’s tendrils to give it more ‘processing power’, but either way, it would take a very long time.

“This host will take the first shift,” Twilight-Drone said.

“This host will ensure that he remains out of it.”

Twilight-Drone nodded, turning around and lifting her tail. As she backed up, the creaking sound of the Nest bending down to touch her asshole filled her ears, and a moment later, the Nest filled her.

Just as before, she was completely saturated with the thoughts of the Nest, the drone’s mind pushed to the back of her skull and her brain left to the devices of the Nest proper. The pressure to completely download, program, and convert Westin was high, but Twilight could already feel her mind being turned to the task, the firing neurons in her skull aiding the powerful Nest-mind in doing just that.

Little by little, the details of Westin’s thoughts and life were being taken from him, added to the collective of the Nest, filling it and storing those details alongside the greater collective of thoughts and memories taken from her and Dapper-Drone. A possibility existed, she realized, for someone to have their personality completely overwritten, to have a personality of one pony downloaded into the parasite of another. The thought was random, strange, but an interesting one, and it was swiftly squirreled away by the Nest, and Twilight-Drone forgot that she had ever thought it in the first place.

Instead, she thought about what she was told to think about, scarcely aware of the rest of the world. She saw the problem before her – Westin’s mental resistance, his thoughts, his desires of ‘freedom,’ and his life as it had always been – and put her thoughts towards breaking it. The Nest dragged her mind along, and she went along for the ride.

And through it all, her body spasmed, shaking, trembling, shivering, pleasure wracking her from the utter bliss that came from being used. She, Dapper-Drone, anyone hooked up to the Nest would feel like this, rewarded for their service. This pleasure, this bliss, was all that would work for them anymore.

To be of the Nest was to feel pleasure.

To be of service was to feel bliss.

This was their reward.

Dapper-Drone watched, envious inasmuch as a drone could be of what Twilight-Drone was experiencing while connected to the Nest. The pleasure spasms that went through the host was the only sign of the raw physicality that the mare was likely experiencing, though that would change over time. The juices rolling down her hind legs would grow thicker and more copious in mere minutes, and a few drool-lines would likely join the other intense signs of sexual satisfaction that she was getting.

The host glanced at Westin. Every sign pointed to the pegasus being fine for the moment, though likely in need of another, more powerful dose of the mind-altering liquids in a half hour or so. That should be fine; judging from the comments from Mr. Cumulus, it was unlikely that Westin would be missed from polite society for the next day. He had been rowdy, a little less ‘clean’ than the mayor would like, and his general disappearance would probably lead to quiet relief rather than a search party.

Yet, at the same time, as he was slowly being put back into the box in the rear of his own head, Dapper-Drone was quite aware of the fact that things were quickly going to the point of no return. When it had been just him that had been infested and changed, the Nest had been vulnerable, completely reliant on him, and he had been given some chance to think, to work for it, to be programmed to follow orders and to work with his parasite.

Now, Twilight-Drone was part of it too, and their chances were better. She was allowed to think for its purposes, while he was getting pushed further and further back, made more and more redundant.

Now, Westin was being inducted in. Richer than him, better connected, more to offer. What would happen when the pegasus was completely part of the Nest? What would happen to him, after that?

He didn’t know, and he wasn’t allowed to think about it. Once more, he faded back as the parasite took full control, resting until he was needed again.