A Rose, Unnaturally

[four_is_death]

The lockpicks slide against each other with a gentle metal-on-metal sheeee, then click solidly into place.

Sophia smiles beneath her mask. "Got it."

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[four_is_death]

Eyes adjusts the stolen pair of Silencer goggles, tick-tick-tick. The alchemically-treated lenses throw iridescent reflections onto the concrete walls. "Patrol of two, left hallway, thirty seconds."

[four_is_death]

Slab nudges Sophia out of the doorway, then pulls a cosh from his belt. Nodding to her, he turns the doorknob.

[four_is_death]

Slab and Sophia take the room together in a measured rush, each covering the other's blind side.

The room is empty, save for the alchemical apparatuses and technological gewgaws scattered about.

[four_is_death]

"Rose, Eyes, you're up."

[four_is_death]

Rose steps into the room gingerly, careful not to disturb any equipment. "Careful. Light lab. Don't touch anything."

[four_is_death]

Eyes follows her in. "Well yes, obviously."

[four_is_death]

Sophia pulls away her mask and takes a deep breath of fresh air. "Alright, we have some time now. The hard part's almost over."

[four_is_death]

"We still can't afford to be sloppy. Eyes, Rose, start searching. We don't have forever."

[four_is_death]

Eyes lets out a little puff of air. "Yeah, whatever you say, boss."

[four_is_death]

Rose drags him away to start investigating a nearby row of specimen jars.

[four_is_death]

Slab narrows his eyes. "Shh, what's that sound?"

[four_is_death]

Everyone holds still.

Footsteps are coming down the hallway.

The door to the lab is still open.

[four_is_death]

Eyes lunges - directly into Rose, and then into a workbench.

They fall over together with a tremendous crash of breaking glass.

[pythbox]

Mysterious fluids, shards of glass, and pieces of half-built contraptions spray across the room, knocking over and setting off yet more things. A brass canister explodes, shattering several jars next to it. A beaker of green stuff spontaneously overboils as it rolls off its table, and where its pale foam spatters, dark slimy ice forms. Black tendrils of ash erupt from a tray, slamming into the controls of a tall arching gadget, which starts humming and sparking erratically. The spreading ice overtakes the arch, and a swirling portal begins to form between its spindly steel fingers.

All this takes place over the course of a couple of seconds. Then the trouble really starts. The portal stabilizes and begins violently spitting out objects in semirandom directions - a small yellow sponge, a rough diamond the size of a cantaloupe, an iridescent blue sphere that splatters against the far wall like liquid, a bouquet of beautiful long-stemmed roses in a variety of bizarre colours that comes apart in midair...

[four_is_death]

Sophia rolls aside from a gout of sizzling orange phlegm, ducks under a golf-ball-sized shard of black glass, and takes a superficial gash on the shoulder from a flying rose.

[four_is_death]

Rose isn't so lucky. Caught in the midst of the destruction, a good portion of her left side is blown away by shrapnel. Lying in pain on the floor, she's unable to move as the sharpened stem of one of the roses plunges dagger-like into her eye.

[four_is_death]

Shielded from the explosion by Rose's body, Eyes manages to roll clear of the majority of the chaos.

[four_is_death]

Slab ducks behind a sturdy-looking counter and hopes things will stop happening soon.

[four_is_death]

Someone comes in the door, and is promptly hit in the chest with a flying rose.

[pythbox]

The purple rose with the blue stem clings to Sophia's shoulder, winding around her arm and digging in its thorns. Its stem splits and twists and grows, diving insubstantially into her body and leaving deep bruises wherever its ghostly tendrils linger.

The yellow rose with the pink stem burrows aggressively into Rose. Its tendrils are not ghostly at all. The thorny stems wind through her body, and the damage to her side is healed even before they reach it. Durable yellow rosepetal material stretches between winding pink stems to cover her torso like a bodysuit. There is surprisingly little blood, even when the head of the flower pulls itself into her eyesocket and emerges again behind the corner of her jaw. That, too, heals.

As for the person in the doorway, they get a pink rose with a yellow stem, and it treats them much the same. Stems burrow. Wounds heal. Petals grow. Bruises fade, where applicable.

All three of them are soon petal-suited and stem-entwined, while the portal throws larger and larger objects around the room. A loaf of fresh bread, a large dictionary in an unfamiliar alphabet, a cello, a live (though not for long) trout...

[four_is_death]

Ow ow ow ow what the hell get it off!

[four_is_death]

This is actually hurting less than before.
... Okay, where did this sudden prettiness come from?

[four_is_death]

Okay, this hurts, sure, but it's also interesting. The creature looks down distractedly at the flower implanted in its chest.

[four_is_death]

Eyes throws a nearby bottle labelled 'aetheric quintessence' at the rapidly-growing portal. This does the exact opposite of helping.

[greatestgift]

The portal rumbles and groans and spits out a shrieking flailing girl who lands almost on top of the black rose with the white stem. It aggressively entwines her. Her shrieking increases in pitch and volume.