"Finally it is the final time to put our final weapon to the final test."
- That guy from Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla '93 (slight liberties were taken)
Yuna and her babe-ish co-battlers were almost as exotic as the rainforest surrounding them, and they were bound to get exotic-er. Their adventuring had led them to the depths of a jungle said to hide treasure of immense value. They knew the mission paid off when they found an abandoned totem resembling a 5,000-year-old beach ball mounted in the base of a tree. It was just a matter of figuring out how to open the hollow bronze shell so they could gain its prize.
Yuna tried shooting it open. Paine tried slashing it open. Rikku tried to pry it open with the edges of her daggers. Sticking out her tongue as she applied more strength with her wrists, the totem made a springing sound and finally opened its lid.
All three Gullwings huddled around the tree trunk to see what was inside. But rather than a long forgotten cache of jewels, gil, or Spheres awaiting them, they found a venomous flower opening its colorful petals as it reacted to sunlight.
"Huh?" Yuna blinked in surprise.
"Umm…" Paine froze in uncertainty.
"Uh-oh," Rikku muttered with dread.
They each got a faceful of aromatic purple toxins for their troubles, creating a surprisingly large smoke plume from just a single plant. The Gullwings coughed and hacked and wheezed like they had fish stuck in their throats for several seconds, then they dropped into the grass in a sudden impromptu slumber party. The poison itself was harmless, simply releasing relaxants in the victims' respiratory systems to put them to sleep while leaving the rest of their vital organ functions unmolested.
For now.
The branches near the unconscious Gullwings rustled from someone walking through. Leblanc stepped out from her vantage point and looked over the trio while shaking her head. She was flapping her paper fan in front of her face to keep the poison vapors away from her mouth. She had set up this trap with a couple of her goons acting as groundskeepers, and a good dealer knew to never get hooked on her own product.
"Hmph. The only thing you little floozies are good at is going down," she scoffed toward the ground. The rivalry between Yuna's group and Leblanc's was as fierce as any ancient war between long-extinct civilizations.
She knelt into a spot in the grass where all three were within her arm's reach. The swift-handed gambling queen quickly collected the extra Dresspheres from their short shorts, their crop tops, and their fanny packs, leaving them with only the Spheres they were currently wearing so they wouldn't be stuck with Freelancer garb. All the while she was working, the jungle foliage slowly loomed around her as if it was watching her and moved its vines to reveal more poisonous flowers.
Leblanc stood up and brushed her hands off when she was done.
"That's everything I need from these girls," she said to the living plants. "You fellas can do whatever you want with them."
Leblanc disappeared back into the brush before she found out whatever nasty things the forest had planned for the three.
The leaves of the forest reverberated through the air in what almost sounded like slow, low-pitched laughter. The poison-spraying flowers bathed the Gullwings in a second cloud of mist even more potent than the first to guarantee they got a full peaceful rest. Vines slowly grew across the forest floor and crossed paths, spreading their weeds over the dozing damsels. When the dark mist lifted, the forest floor was covered in a dense green net that conformed to the shapes of Yuna, Rikku, and Paine.
Once the forest had the three securely in its grasp, there was a long stretch of silence and stillness on the ground. The tangled outlines of the female adventurers appeared comfortable and safe as they slept, but chemical reactions had already started to take effect on them on the microscopic level. The roots of the forest were in constant contact with their skimpy-dressed skin, drinking their vitality straight through their pores at a leisurely rate. And with their vitality came tiny samples of their genetic makeup.
They weren't awake to know it, but their bodies were already in a battle over competing resources.
After a time where it looked like nothing substantial was happening, three bundles of vegetation started to grow in separate corners of the weed netting. At first they appeared with the same size, shape, and color as heads of cabbage. Once they sprouted up, however, they continued to grow at an almost eager rate. Each one drew its energy from one of the sleeping figures in the center of the net. When they had grown to about four feet tall, the leaves of the cabbages started to peel open.
The reproductive fruit took the shape of three female beauties who slowly uncurled from inside of their pods and walked out on their strikingly human-like toes. The plants had blossomed into fully grown and fully undressed copies of Yuna, Paine, and Rikku. Their faces were bright and cheery as they yawned and took their first breaths with green lungs. Their voices were soft and playful. The hair up on their canopies and down in their shrubs was tangled with small fresh leaves.
They were a version of the Gullwings who had shed the restrictions and corruptions of human society and evolved purely as nature intended. And like all true weeds, they were determined to spread their progeny until all of Spira was their paradise.
Leblanc may have very well gotten rid of one set of enemies only to create another set who were a thousand times more dangerous.
The Yuna grown from plant flesh practiced shooting spores out of her palm. The new Paine altered the organic chemistry of her arm to turn the entire limb into a single massive thorn. She took a few swings at empty air to become accustomed to her abilities. The thief who had stolen Rikku's bare naked likeness tried to weave a miniskirt, a thong, and a bikini top out of grass clippings. She was a garden-grown being separate from the original placental-born Rikku, but she inherited Rikku's curious interest in engineering. She gave up after the top kept scratching the stems of her melon bulbs and the bottom ripped apart from the strain of her hips. Yuna giggled at her and called her a chubby pumpkin.
"Whatever!" she shrugged. It was more of an experiment than something she thought she actually needed. Wearing nothing but her natural skin helped with her photosynthesis anyway.
The three sentient plants replicated the Gullwings in almost every way in a parallel form of life. They were the Gullwings with sugary chlorophyll fueling their veins instead of red animal cells. They were the Gullwings who only needed a few occasional sips of water and an extended sunbathing session to stay fit and energetic. They were the Gullwings with minds that were free from the worries of human civilization. They were the Gullwings from a world where pointless things like fashion and Dresspheres and personal modesty just seemed like a waste of time. They were the Gullwings if the modern amenities of razors and waxes had never been introduced between their thighs.
Their eyes sparkled dandelion yellow. Their skin was vibrant emerald green and glimmered with moist dew. Oh, how they were moist. Some of that moisture came from the healthy forest soil under their feet. The rest came from the stolen nutrients drained from the bodies that shared their genes.
Yuna and her pals weren't so babelicious now that they looked like a bowl of shriveled up purple prunes with parsley spread on top. They never got up from their resting spot under the net of weeds. The three servings of poultry had gone bad from laying too long in heat and bacteria, leaving only their vegan replacements on the plate.
They had died in their sleep for the sake of forest cultivation. Their days of catching rays and cruising waves were long over, but at least their evil plant clones were cute.
Author's note: At this point it's pretty much a given if you're an all-guy or all-girl team going into a forest dungeon in one of my Final Fantasy fics, weird biological stuff is going to happen to you.