Two weeks goes far faster than any of us would have liked. That Saturday night, the group 'goes to the movies', which I figured was good enough of an excuse to cover two to three hours. I even looked up reviews in case I get interrogated on it later.

I mean, I won't, but I at least feel obligated to pretend my family cares where I am or what I'm doing.

"Are we sure this has to happen tonight?" Garrett asks. "Something bad is going to happen. I guarantee it."

"Something bad always happens. So what? We can't keep holding this off forever. We started above him in terms of power, we only lost because we didn't want to go the distance. I know this is crazy. Honestly, Ignatius seems like..."

"You can't bring yourself to call him a nice guy, can you." I ask.

Karen waves me away. "I am sorry this happened to him. See? Honest."

"Nothing like breaking into houses of nice, ordinary people on the orders of the Goat Ferret Mafia." Amanda says.

"We are ridding this world of a dangerous weapon that twists the psychology of the user." Karen responds, eyes narrowed into her don't-talk-about-it face. "Will, you have a plan, right?

I look up towards the house, whose shingles shine at the top of the hill. The distance between us and it makes it far more menacing than the humble structure could ever hope to be in actuality. "I have the normal plan, we've prepared for the succulents-"

"Are you prepared for him not to be there?" asks Garrett, grabbing hold of a tree and pulling himself up into the backyard. "All the lights are off."

"Are we sure this isn't a trap?" Karen asks.

"What are we supposed to do then, watch an actual movie? I mean, I know some good animated features, but..." Amanda stops. "Okay. Not buying it."

"Will, can you tell if the Diosite is in the area?" asks Karen.

I close my eyes. There's a flicker of energy in the distance, a flash of red against the darkness behind my closed eyes. It's significantly weaker than usual. "I can sense something in the area, but..."

"What, feels too easy?" Amanda asks.

"We are literally breaking into someone else's house while they're not at home!" Garrett says, fingers clenched into fists and shaking.

"Shut up for one moment and we might finally win." Karen shouts back.

"Why are you so okay with this?"

"I'm not! I'm scared as hell, and if anything happens, you can bet every dollar you own that I'm in the most danger here. I'm doing this because we can fight this and there are people out there who can't, and- oh God." Karen holds her head in one hand, like she's facepalming, but her brow twitches beneath it and she holds the a wall with the other, cringing like something hit her in the stomach. "Let's... let's just get this over with."

"Are you okay?" I ask.

She nods. "Kinda hits you all at once."

I look at her, watch her draw her hand over her chest, and I mutter, "Right." Shiloh's presence twists dangerously in my mind.

To my relief, the door is open, with no audible alarm system. However, less relieving is the prickle of inhuman flesh against the ground and the slow series of thumps echoing down the hallways. Cacti, some of whom wear the pot on their head and others whose 'legs' are half-wedged into one, begin trailing down the halls from all sides. Amanda raises her paintbrush. I open the door and dash for the stairs.

"Will?" Amanda asks.

"Trying to be low-impact here! Let's not fight them unless we have to." I say from halfway down the stairs.

"Low-impact sounds good to me." Karen follows me down the steps, followed by Garrett, who isn't meeting her eye.

Amanda lobs some paint at the nearest cactus, which falls over and begins writhing like a ladybug, and swings the door closed. She presses herself against it. "Can cacti open doors?"

It dawns at me that this is what my life has come to. "No." I say. "Well, let's hope not. Question. Do we know Ignatius isn't just in his basement? He wouldn't take his Diosite off his person, would he?"

Diosite can be fractured, depending on how powerful it is, and still function and be remolded with minimal heat. The mean number of fractures is nine, but is unlikely Ignatius has more than two, given his powers-

"No idea," Karen says.

"Wait," I interject. "Getting something from Shiloh. Here, let me transcribe this to you... Diosite can fracture into pieces without losing its abilities, so he could have cut a piece off as a safety net. It's unlikely Ignatius has over two, but it would be best to be wary of him. His abilities may be far more than what we assumed he was originally capable of."

"Woah, Will, trippy. You sound just like him." Amanda says. "Okay, so that sucks. I'm guessing we'll have to aggress him at his house in the future, too, because if you guys haven't noticed, plants are everywhere."

Garrett eyes the door, which the cacti continue to bang on. The rattling noise this creates is one of the most sinister and disconcerting things I've ever heard. "This feels like a trap."

"You don't say." Karen mutters.

Amanda begins scaling the stairs. "Karen. Light."

"I can't just create light. My powers don't-" Karen begins.

"No, like the light switch. It's next to your head."

Karen flicks on the light switch. The light flickers on in the basement, revealing what appears to be a normal gray, unfinished room with a few boilers and a laptop in the corner, but even in the dull light I can see a few dark tendrils hanging off the ceiling and what looks like moss in some corners of the room. There's a pervading scent that wafts through the area not unlike cut plants. The lightbulb gives up on us, sending us back into darkness.

"I am not going down there in the dark." Garrett says.

"What are you, five?" Karen snorts, pushing him down two sets of steps.

"It's a trap! I'm just saying, before we get murdered by some human eating Venus Fly trap, this is very obviously going to kill us all." Garrett argues.

Amanda keeps walking, skipping the last two steps and landing with a thud on the lower floor. Karen raises her hand, so that electricity flickers around it, but it's a poor light source.

Shiloh, any help here?

The cherub is silent.

I run a hand along the wall, feeling for another switch I can slip, and crumple my hand into a fist. When I touch the next switch, at the bottom, it clunks as if it was a dozen times larger, but nothing happens. I move my hand forwards, feeling a doorframe, and close my fingers around the cold bronze. A singular light, white with hints of green, shines in the distance, suspended in the air.

"Found our Diosite."

As I step forwards, I see through the murk that the chunk of stone, no larger than a marble, is illuminating a massive red lily. I raise my shield and it begins to glow, exuding a frosty aura. It shines like the moon on a starless night, just piercing the clouds, and it feels cold under my hand as it did in training.

I take another step and plant matter cracks beneath me. I'm standing on the doorframe, the team behind me, and I inhale like I'm in the middle of a breathing exercise. My heartbeat throbs in time to the cacti upstairs, then it leaves them behind, accelerating despite my best efforts. I want to stand there, between actions, long as possible, but the plant has other plans. A vine swings through the air and I cut through it with my shield, screaming like a ten-year old girl.

Karen shoots a small ball of lightning at another, which makes burnt plant matter burst across the room, and the Amanda bowls us over. "See, no Venus Fly trap." she says, aiming straight for the flower with a nice bright glob of ominous green acid paint. The petals writhe and burn, as if leaving, and from beneath the petals burst sharp thorns, forming a ring around the ruined petals. "Nice," she whispers. "See this man? I'll bet you anything he's a concept designer."

"How," yells Garrett, weedwhacking everything in sight with his halberd, "Would a concept designer afford a house?!"

"Maybe he has a day job?" Amanda suggests, going after the flower with great strokes of fire. It fights back savagely, scouring thorn-laden limbs across her clothes and flesh, but she's too lost in the moment to care. Garrett's halberd is tossed out of his reach by a well-timed slap from below, unbalancing him, and another vine grabs Karen around the leg. I slice through it, but more are bursting out from every angle. When Amanda turns back, just for a second, from her unwavering foe, she begins forming a wide arc with the brush and is thrown against the wall, where she's wrapped in thick, thorned vines. I bradish my shield, moving back towards the door, and trip into some thorns. Before I can move, the flower is right over my face, my hands restrained and the Diosite just inches away. It mocks me with its unseeing eye, and I cry out in pain as the thorns drive into my back.

If I had ever considered horticulture as a career, that option is off the table.

"Everyone, tighten up! I've seen this in the movies, if you relax, it'll just-" Amanda twitches in her constraints, and the vines tighten around her. "Alright! We've eliminated that possibility. Great."

Karen lights up the room with electricity, but she can't seem to concentrate a single blast. It dances harmlessly around the monster plant. "Damnit!"

"Pokemon is about two decades ahead of you on that one." I say.

"No problem. We've got a poison-type!" Amanda says, trying to free one hand. "C'mon... hey, what if I just tried to melt the vines off?"

"Amanda, we are not letting you pour acid all over your face." I say.

"Maybe it doesn't affect me?" she suggests, her face illuminated by Karen's increasingly desperate attempts to free herself in the background.

"Bad time to find out!"

In the distance, a door creaks open, barely audible from down in the basement. My heart stops cold. The lily raises its petals, dotted with holes, and then all of our vines snap at once.

Garrett stands, picks up his halberd, and says, "How's that for defensive portals?" He opens another one, large enough for the lot us us, and says, "This was a trap, and that thing was supposed to hold us here so he could finish the job. If this is a fraction of his power, we can't beat him. Let's go."

Karen looks up, fists crackling with electricity. "It's right there, Garrett! We-"

Ignatius opens the door. "Figures. I wasn't expecting guests... oh wait. I sure was. Hopefully you've been kept well entertained?"

"Drop the fucking act!" Karen yells. She punches the plant stem, and it cracks beneath her, the lily's thorns closing around the stone. The vines carry it over us, across the ceiling, and presumably back to its master, waiting in the doorway with an army of succulents.

Karen dashes out of the room, but Garrett is still standing with one foot in the portal.

"Do you want to die today?"

I look up, look back, hate myself, grab my shield from some loosened vines, and jump through. Amanda and Karen fall back behind me into the Veins. Now that she's completely visible, Amanda is drenched in plant juice and blood, especially across her arms. Karen has a long laceration across her hand. Garrett's glasses are cracked, though that's no real tragedy.

"How'd you get us out of there?" asks Amanda. "The vines, I mean. That was so badass."

"Remember the falling portal trick? That, a really precise portal range, and a halberd. I wasn't sure it it would work," he says, then smiles, "It worked."

"Sure, sure. Worked out great." Karen says. "And we had to go, because our main support was about to evac without us."

"I was trying not to die." Garrett says, swiping his glasses off. His eyes are bare without them, startling in his superhero form even if he's wearing a glorified hoodie and tight pants.

Karen presses a hand into his chest. "You know why you got an escape route as your power, Garrett? Because you're a coward. I get it. It's scary. I can tell you think I'm this brave because I'm just desensitized to violence and frankly, that disgusts me, because it's not true. I'm trying to get this over with, so I can get back to my life, and you're getting in my way."

"I do not- Karen, what the hell? I saved your ass back there! Can you give me a break?"

"I don't need my ass saved!" Karen exclaims. "Screw it, I'm going to sleep. You guys have fun explaining to your family how the hell you got into this. Good night." She leaves in a tempest of fury.

Garrett runs a hand through his hair. "Women. Present company excluded, of course."

"I'd resent that comment, but I'm a little delirious right now and I don't feel like arguing with you." Amanda says.

He sighs. "I don't get what I'm doing wrong here. Valuing my own life? Did I make some comment? Does she really think..." he pauses. "She's okay, right?"

I shrug, wishing desperately that I had any way to help him.

"Right. See you all later." He leaves, too, and I bite my lip, thinking of home.

Shiloh leaps over to us. "Not that good, huh?"

I shake my head.

He licks Amanda's hand, and the wounds begin to shimmer like water with sunlight refracting off the surface. When the spectacle clears, they've all but disappeared, though there are still blood trails with no origin. Amanda sits down and Shiloh gets to work on the other wounds.

"Shiloh?" I ask. "You chose us all for a reason, right?"

Shiloh nods, looking up from Amanda's bloody shoulders. He rolls his tongue back into his mouth. "You are more capable than you realize. You, in particular, but also Garrett and Karen. Capable of great feats of power, but also less... tangible benefits. You have a greater capacity for leadership than you realize, among other things."

Leadership. Not in a thousand years. I watch the walls, trying not to say the wrong thing (which I will, the second anything loses my mouth).

"What about me?" asks Amanda, woozy from pain.

"You know what you are." Shiloh responds, rubbing himself against the healed portion of her arm. "You're a fighter."

 Amanda grins.

I don't have many injuries, but going back to the house doesn't hold much appeal, either, so I sit there for a while, waiting for a compliment that's not coming.