Banjo Solo woke up with the plants vines curled around him, forming a nest. He remembered using the strange new magic and feeding it, and the explosive growth that had resulted. Yawning, he reached a hoof out to stroke one of the vines. "Ya want some more?"

Not needing an actual reaction to know it did, Banjo began to channel that strange, new energy. The soft illumination in the chamber—from the plant's blue glow—was overwhelmed by green from Banjo's horn. He smiled as he charged up, and then let the magic spill down around him.

There was a feel to the plant, of it growing stronger again, its health and vitality pushed along by magic. The nest around Banjo surged, and he watched as the vines coiled up and over him. The sphere of writhing vines squirmed and shifted around him. Eventually, a gap opened in the bower's wall, revealing a passage leading to the outside.

"Not sure about the others, but I am more than happy with ya." Banjo was stroking a hoof along a vine, and shivered as he felt real emotion seep into him from the plant. It was happy. It was hungry. It wanted more ponies. "I'll see what I can do about it. There's a few more of us older ponies in town."

"Hello?" Double Diamond's voice echoed around a cave that was lush with vines. Only a few days ago the plant had seemed to use up a lot of its strength saving ponies, and now it was flush with growth.

Walking to one of the vines, Double lifted a hoof to poke at a tendril that looked eerily like that of a tomato vine. Before he realized it the tendril had started to curl around his hoof, so he quickly pulled free. "What's going on in here?"

Rising to his hooves, Banjo Solo set his horn aglow with his normal magic, and left the little nest of vines. "Just givin' back what I got." Reaching a hoof up, he brushed something he certainly hadn't seen before in the cave: a tomato.

Double Diamond watched as Banjo plucked the tomato from the vine. "This is amazing. How'd you get it to grow so much?"

"A trick. I think it was something it did in me, but watch this." Turning to face the wall, Banjo changed his magic from normal to the plant magic, charged a powerful flow of green light into his horn, and let it pour into the plant.

Both ponies had to jump back as the thick coating of vines on the wall seemed to come alive. Flowers bloomed, shrank back to buds, and grew into more tomatoes.

"Whoa. So what's with the tomatoes?" Double reached out, his hoof touching one of the fruit gently before plucking it free.

"That's probably my fault. Before I came up here last night, I was—" Banjo cut off his words, blushing like the colt at the hooves of his first love. The memory of what the tomato vine had done at his urging was bright and hot, and he knew it was going to get him a little worked up if he thought about it too much. "I was working on my tomatoes."

Biting into the tomato, Double Diamond found the most delicious taste and amazing sweetness. He gave a happy little groan and kept working at the fruit until he was done. "Wow."

"I grow the best dang tomatoes in town, and don't you forget it!" Banjo lifted his hooves into a trot, aiming towards the exit of the caves. "If'n you'll excuse me, I'm going to ask the other oldies like me if they want to know the secret of feeling like a colt again."

The light in the cave dimmed as Banjo left Double alone. Looking around at the softly glowing vines, Double Diamond gave a sigh. "I was wrong. You really are helping ponies." Memories of his times with Patched and Night caused Double to blush, but he couldn't deny that he enjoyed having Patched ride his back.

"You just do it in weird ways. But I guess that is part'n parcel of what you are." Reaching up with a hoof, Double let the little tendrils twirl around his limb again. It didn't squeeze or try to restrain him. "You just need us to hold you up while you grow?" A little grin creased Double's cheeks with a smile.

Patched Scrape hated paperwork, but because of the hefty response that Manehatten had sent she had to do it. What made it worse was that she was horny, too. Each of the case files for every pony who had been poisoned by the oil in the water supply needed to be followed up, which meant there was nearly sixty such forms to fill out.

Most of the patients had started getting better the moment they were put on clean water. Nonetheless, Patched had met with every resident of Out Town a week after the sickness, and made sure each was truly getting better.

The foals were the worst. Little fillies and colts coughing was something that always tore at Patched's heart. She plucked the right set of notes out and sat them on her desk. Opening the folder, she found the town's cheese-maker, her husband, and their two foals.

Spilled Milk—an earth pony—and her family had weathered the sickness rather well. Spilled and her foals had fallen ill, of course, but her husband had been one of the lightest affected. Short Fuse—a unicorn—was the exact opposite of his name. He was always calm, if a little overworked during the crisis, and raised their two foals while his wife worked.

Curds was their little filly. She—like her brother—took after their mother for race, and like her brother they tended to get into more trouble than any other foal in the town.

Patched started filling in the basics on the form, names, ages, races. A knock at the door stole her attention from the papers. "Come in." The moment she spoke four ponies (two adults and two foals) piled into her office in a rush.

Short Fuse leaned to the side and peered out the front window. "Nopony saw us. We should be all clear."

"Thank Celestia." Spilled Milk breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Patched Scrape, please help us!"

Patched's attention was locked on the two foals. Neither showed any signs of the aftereffects of oil poisoning (cough, dizziness), but the oddest thing was what they did have. Horns. "Curds, Whey, can you come over and let me have a look at you?"

Whey looked to his big sister (who was standing beside their dad's flank) and sighed. Trotting forwards, he lifted his chin bravely to face the bearer of needles. "I don't know what the big deal is. Dad's got one."

As the colt neared, Patched's blood ran cold. The horn wasn't quite a horn. "Short, you still grow roses, don't you?" Lifting the colt up, Patched was suddenly less interested in her paperwork: Whey had a rose thorn shaped horn. Touching it gently with a hoof revealed it to be quite attached to his head, and without a doubt plant matter. "When did you get this?"

Spilled strode forward to back her son up. "It appeared two days ago. Just started growing up and—" She halted when Patched gave her a sharp look.

"Curds kept coughing, and it hurt her when she coughed. We saw the ponies you took up to the cave come back feeling okay, and thought we would do it too." Whey looked back at where his sister was hiding, and then poked his tongue out before turning back to Patched. "We wen up to the cave, and there was this strange fruit."

"Fruit?" The sidetrack of the conversation confused Patched. "What sort of fruit?"

"It was kinda hard, and a little bitter, but we figured it must be what saved all the old ponies. So we gulped one down each." Shrugging, Whey's eyes turned up and inwards. "And now we have horns, and Curds isn't coughing at all!"

Patched's magic plucked up a pencil, and she started scribbling notes, theories, and ideas. "Interesting. Any other things happen? Growing wings? Really hungry?" She wrote "infection type related to sexual maturity" and underlined it several times. It had been a worry, and apparently one unfounded.

"They have been eating more than usual." Short Fuse picked his daughter up with his magic and set her on his back. It was her customary position when she wasn't feeling her best. "They are eating everything I put in front of them."

"The good news is they will be fine. The plant that is doing this is—is friendly. That it used the method it did to infect your foals is a relief. Whey was correct, though. The plant is the reason a few of us didn't get sick at all, and we used it to help the older ponies pull through." Patched worked quickly to fill in the forms, painting a picture of a family recovering from oil poisoning. It wasn't a lie, after all.

"S-So, what does it do? You and your 'friends' have been up there, right?" Spilled Milk reached up and hugged Whey to her as she took a seat opposite Patched.

Patched was suddenly in quite the position. She looked between the two foals, inhaled, and sighed. "It's quite an adult matter, but it converts parts of you to plant, and it makes you want to do things." Her emphasis had both parents' eyes widening. "Would I recommend it?" Her own question made her think. "You are giving up a little freedom. The plant implants desires and needs, but for the most part they have been,"—she took a breath to search for the right word—"beneficial."

Both parents stared at Patched Scrape with a mixture of confusion and interest.

"I think Night Glider is baking some cookies in the kitchen." Patched looked from one foal to the other, and in perfect stereo their bellies rumbled. "Why don't you ask her if she has some for you?"

Ignoring her shyness, Curds ran every bit as fast as Whey towards the kitchen—it was where the smell of baking was coming from.

Patched turned back to Spilled and Short. "It makes you horny. Really horny. It will mingle your sexes until you are probably both going to be able to father and mother a foal, and the worst bit?" Both ponies hung on her words, shock written on their faces. "You will enjoy every second of it."

Staring at Patched, Short Fuse walked up and looked to Spilled. "Is this something we need to make a decision on right away?"

Spilled turned and looked up at her husband. "Not getting the yearly sniffles would be good, but if it is such a big effect, maybe we should wait and see?"

This was just the sort of thing Patched thought was the right way of introducing ponies. "I will stress, we have seen a one-hundred percent male to fertile hermaphrodite conversion, and I am sure if Short went in first, you would both end up with, well, stallion bits."

The words were startling in their honesty. "And you are saying we would both be really, uh, horny?" Spilled shifted in place and kept her eyes locked on Short Fuse.

"Horny enough that you wouldn't be likely to think too far beyond getting each other pregnant. And from what I have found mares and stallions are both extremely fertile after infection." As Patched explained, she caught two scents that surprised her: each was the different aroused markers for a male and female pony. She gave a little sigh. "Don't go up there alone. If you want to go through with this we can arrange a foalsitter, and get the order right so that you both get what you want."

Short Fuse's attention snapped from his wife to Patched. "We both want more foals and…" He trailed off, unable to continue. A gentle hoof brushing his cheek made him look to Spilled. "Love?"

One deep breath, then another, and Spilled Milk was able to talk again. "We haven't been able to have another foal since Whey. We have been trying, Patched. And you are telling us that this plant will let us have more foals?"

"That's about its plan from what I can tell. I am not sure if it is doing it merely as a reward, or to breed more of us." Patched Scrape froze after her words as Night Glider pushed the kitchen door open, a tray of cookies balanced on one wing. "Night is what I am calling a guard or warrior. She has a tail that can subdue non-infested ponies—please don't get too close to it—and she can form herself up into quite a formidable fighter."

That Night Glider had both Curds and Whey riding on her back, and chose then to pull a silly face, had Patched groaning. "She's right, and it looks like we have a second like me. Milk Drop's tail has a huge flower bud on it."

"So it changes more than just our—our other bits?" Short Fuse reached up ruffled the manes of both his foals. His hoof trailed over Curds' horn, and he couldn't help but note just how sharp the point was. "We need to talk about this."

"Thank you, doctor." Spilled Milk got up and circled the table to give Patched Scrape a hug, but as she got closer she could smell the scent of "aroused stallion" grow stronger. She froze and put the facts she had been given together. Her eyes widened, but she hugged Patched anyway. "You have given us a lot to think about."

With their business wrapped up, and their fears assuaged, Spilled and Short left with their foals (both of which carrying an extra cookie).

"You're recruiting now?" Night leaned down and kissed Patched on the cheek.

"I didn't mean to, but I might have." Patched looked up at Night. "I don't suppose there are more cookies?"

Author's Notes:

So I do this "Ask x" thing, x can be any pony within the story. You can ask them anything and I they will definitely hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories and of course, I they will answer the best question(s) in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right pony to answer, try and keep it to one answer per post! I They will pick one question per chapter.

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