A/N Enjoy the chapter!

Chapter 14: Flytrap fiasco

"What do we do?!" Phoebe asked.

"We kill them of course!" Jake replied as he went to punch a plant, but Fin stopped him.

"Dude! You saw what it did to my hand! Use your brain man!"

"Well, what else do we do?" He demanded. They didn't dare move, not until they had a plan. It made sense to assume that the plant could not hear or see, and seemed to only rely on physical touch to identify prey. It seemed simple: just avoid the plants. However, the almost tropical atmosphere had something akin to its own weather system. There was a dense fog covering their feet, preventing them from seeing the floor. They could easily step on one and have their feet get swallowed up or worse.

"I guess we just gotta be careful. Fin, you can use your sword to poke around at the ground in front of us, same as Mike. Me and the others can watch the walls and ceiling while you're busy with that." Marceline said to them. They thought on this for a few moments. Several things could go wrong here, but as it stood, they had no other options. So, standing side by side, Fin and Mike used their respective weapon to prod and poke at the ground in search of plants laying in wait. Mmeanwhile, Jake and the girls were diligent in scanning the rest of the room for plants clinging to the walls and whatnot. Truth be told, it was a fairly effective system. Turns out, there were plants hiding in the fog, and when they snagged on a weapon, they quickly pulled it out and sliced the plant into salad. The stress, however, quickly got to them so they took frequent breaks. On one such break, Fin glanced at another juicy fruit he saw earlier. However, he viewed this fruit more critically and noticed the jaws surrounding the fruit, ready to snap shut and digest whatever was unfortunate enough to go for the trap. Fin shivered a bit and rubbed his sore arm, but built up his strength and continued going. They cleared room after room in search of the cure, but found nothing but overtaken office cubicles, debris, and general clutter. Their search seemed fruitless up to that point, until they set eyes on the final room: RD.

"This has to be where the cure would be kept." Mike mentioned.

"What makes you say that?" Jake replied.

"RD stands for research and development. If it would be anywhere, it would be there. They used to build those kinds of rooms like fallout shelters. So the cure should be intact. If it's in there."

"There's a lot of guessing in this quest... but what other choice do we have...?" Fin asked no one in particular. "Let's go-" All of a sudden, something wrapped around Fin's leg and caused him to fall under the fog. He was then quickly dragged away into the RD room. Before anyone else could react, the exact same thing happened to them. Kicking and screaming, the group was dragged off and eventually hoisted into the air by massive sentient vines. It took them time to adjust to being upside down, but when they did, they beheld the horror that controlled the vines. In the center of the room, was an absolutely massive unit of a plant that was nearly five times the size as the others. It's massive maw opened up and a vat of acid could be seen inside, ready to render them down to protein goop. If that wasn't enough, the glint of a safe could be seen. No doubt this held the cure they were after. Ubfortunatly, they would have to deal with the plant before getting to it. Instantly, everyone tried to escape from the vines. Phoebe tried blasting her way out, but her flames weren't hot enough to burn the green, water filled plant, not to mention the wet atmosphere weakened her. Jake tried brute forcing himself free by using a massive hammer shaped fist to punch his way out, but he didn't even make a dent, it just bounced right off the plant. Bladed weapons, however, seemed to do the trick, as Fin's sword, Marceline's axe bass, and Mike's scythe made short work of the vines and releasing a pleasant freshly-cut lawn smell. They all managed to land on their feet and took a short moment to celebrate their minor victory. However, they soon saw that the plant was capable of rapid regeneration, except where one used to be, two grew in its place.

"...That's unfortunate." Mike said. They quickly realized they would need a whole team to take this thing down. They hero's that were free focused their efforts on freeing Jake and Phoebe as the hydra plant attempted to grab them again. This plant seemed more evolved than the others and seemed to be able to sense their presence. They ignored this for the time being and quickly cut their friends down. However, this more than quadrupled the amount of vines they had to deal with. However, one of them noticed a pattern... for each duplicate vine the hydra created, it seemed to weaken and slow down. They mentioned this to the others and they all realized what they had to do. It would be hard, having to fight an army of vines, but in the end it would he worth it. So, they all started hacking away at the vines, causing doubles to replace them. Those that couldn't cut, used their talents in other ways. Jake used his massive extended arms to coil around as many vines as he could so the others could chop them off in one quick slash, whereas Phoebe used her flames directly on the hydra to distract it and slow it down. It wss tough, as they thought, but they eventually managed to whittle it down until it was a barely moving pile of weeds. They took this moment to rest and celebrate their victory, but it was too soon. The hydra suddenly began quivering violently as it's support vines on the ground began to quake. The group looked back and saw the plants from before begin to wither away, sending its nutrients to the mother plant. It was then they realized it was connected to the whole city, with an entire city's worth of plants to draw strength from.

"No... This is gonna take too long." Mike mumbled to himself. He stroked his chin in thought for a moment before coming up with a completely insane plan. He scanned the area for something. He soon spotted a small pool of water, which the hydra seemed to drink from like a personal reservoir. Big and deep enough to fit a few people. Perfect. Mike quickly ran over to Fin, Jake, and Marceline and shoved them into the pool. Before they could react, Mike quickly ran back to Phoebe and open-hand slapped her in the face. She gasped in shock, but then it quickly turned to rage. Her flames glowed white hot as she grabbed ahold of Mike's shirt.

"WHAT WAS THAT FOR?! I'LL KILL YOU!" She prepared an attack. Mike could only smile as the inevitable happened. He knew what was coming, but he also knew this would wipe the hydra off the face of the earth. He closed his eyes and braced for the consequences of his actions.