John's eyes went wide as he took in the images from the dwarf that were playing on the screen, Victoria unconscious on the floor of her office, so deeply unconscious that he could barely tell that she was breathing, blood on her finger and the spindle by her hand. And Jasper was there too, out like a light beside her. This was totally insane, but the more that he looked, the more the sinking feeling in his stomach telling him that it was real grew. "Okay." He forced himself to speak after a moment. "What do we have to do to get them out of there?" Get Vic and Jasper out of there. He told himself to worry about that first. They had to get them out before he could even let himself worry about what Coulson's girl had said about True Love's Kiss and the need for Vic to get it to wake everyone up. He turned his focus to the wall of thorns covering the building. "Flamethrower, maybe?"

"Apparently those thorns have resisted a dragon before, so I'm thinking it's a safe assumption that anything with fire isn't going to make a dent." Coulson told him. And even if there was a chance that it could work, Coulson couldn't see letting John loose with a flamethrower near Victoria's building ending well, if she ever woke up and found out.

"Dragons are real?" John said. Okay, he had heard some wild rumor about Stark having a dragon working for him, but seriously, dragons were actually real? He shook his head, forcing those thoughts away. He could contemplate dragons once they had Vic and Jasper out of there and awake. "Okay, fire's out then. What about cold?"

"We tried to use liquid nitrogen to break off a sample." Jemma said. "It did seem like it was working, but then the vines lashed out at the probe and almost smashed it."

"Okay, so a probe wouldn't work, but what about a person?" John suggested. "Get a tank of liquid nitrogen and have someone go in and spray those things at least enough to clear a path to a door. That's all we need, right, a path to get in and we can drag Vic and everyone else out. Those things don't look that big. Surely they couldn't take out a person."

That actually sounded like a possibility, which was probably a first for one of John's plans that didn't involve massive amounts of fire. "Okay, how strong are those vines?" Coulson asked Hela. "They could do some damage to the dwarf but could they hurt a person if they lashed out like that again?"

Hela carefully studied the vines before replying. "They're stronger than they look, I'm afraid." And then there was the matter of the thorns. "And I'm not sure if the thorns might not pose their own hazard. Let me contact Mister Gold again before anyone risks going closer. He has vastly more experience with this curse than I do."

John didn't like it, the idea of just standing there, waiting while the Asgardian girl made a call on Darcy Lewis's phone, doing nothing while Vic and Jasper were trapped in there. He looked at the images on the screen again, frowning fiercely at how still Victoria was, the slow flutter of movement of her chest the only sign of life. "How long can they last like that?" He knew Coulson's girl had said something about a hundred years but that was from the fairy tale, not real life, wasn't it?

"Hela said a hundred years. I'm assuming it causes some sort of stasis effect." Coulson said before something alarming occurred to him. "Hela, you said there have been people who've been affected by this thing before. Were they regular people, or gifteds?"

"I…." Hela paused, realizing that she didn't know how to reply. "They have magic. I'm not sure how they would fall under that classification, to be honest. I'll ask. Yes, Mister Gold. I have a few more rather urgent questions." She said into the phone as it was finally answered.

"Alright." After a few minutes of hurried talk Hela ended the call. "Mister Gold isn't totally sure at the moment, but he believes that the thorns might be toxic. He's not entirely sure the effect that could have on an average person, which actually isn't something he had considered before. He's going to consult with the dragon that designed this particular spell and he'll call back. As for whether the people he knows of who have been affected by this spell would count as gifted or not, and if it might make a difference in the effect, he wasn't sure of that either. I think he might be leaning towards the effect being stronger on your people, but he's going to do more research."

"A stronger effect." That did not sound good. "What could a stronger effect do?" Coulson asked.

"Mister Gold didn't seem to be sure, but possibly a stronger effect might mean that the curse won't end naturally once the hundred years are over." Hela told them.

"Could it kill them?" John demanded. Whatever thing this was not wearing off in a hundred years if they didn't figure a way to reverse it was bad, but that was something distant that he wasn't going to let himself think about. But if whatever this thing was could possibly endanger Vic's life and the others…..

"It's possible. Mister Gold's researching it, but honestly, I'm not entirely sure he's ever even met someone who wouldn't likely fit the definition of gifted so the research might be a bit difficult since he lives in a town where the entire population is from any number of magical realms. Unless we hear differently, we should probably assume that we have a limited time to rescue your friends and reverse this before the worst happens."