hwango

Professor Samuel Reuben allowed himself a tiny smile as he crushed the life from his prey. He paused only to wipe the tweezers clean on the corner of his handkerchief, and then he resumed the hunt, peering through a large magnifying glass at the stems of his neomarica variegata. There! Another aphid scurrying out from under a leaf! It shared the same fate as the dozen that Reuben had already slain. Victory might yet be his, and the plant saved. Perhaps the day wouldn't be so bad after all. He sipped some tea as he scanned the plant for his next target.

Reuben heard from behind him a polite tapping at the door to his office, but did not look away from his grisly work. He made little shooing gestures at the door with the tweezers.

"Go away!" he called, "I am currently occupied as the Angel of Death for some deeply misguided aphids who have chosen the wrong lily to infest, and cannot be disturbed."

"Sorry Sam, but it's a bit of an emergency," said a voice from the doorway.

"Ah, Flint," Reuben said, still not turning around. "I'm afraid I can't handle any more bad news today. First I found out that Carlsrugh got tenure - that smug bastard. Then I step into my office and find my lily has been invaded by these wretched demons."

"I'm afraid this is rather more serious than aphids," said Professor Flint. "Sam, do you remember that article in the paper last week about those great winged things from another dimension terrorizing Pickly Street?"

"What? Ah, yes, I believe I recall the article to which you refer."

"I think there's one on the roof of Greenhouse H."

Reuben froze, the tips of the tweezers hovering a fraction of an inch above an unsuspecting aphid. He held that position for a long moment, expecting a laugh or some other indication from Flint that he was joking. But now that Reuben thought about it, Flint had sounded quite concerned, and the ominous silence continued unbroken. Reuben straightened and turned to face Flint. Flint, deathly pale and quivering with terror, nodded.

"Not Greenhouse H!"

Reuben nearly knocked Flint over as he ran from his office, both aphids and tea quite forgotten.

* * *

The Burgton Academy for Botanical Research was not a place that one would expect to find many weapons. However, ever since that unseemly business with Doctor Inferious a few years ago, the world had become a rather more dangerous and alarming place, and so it was not unheard of to find that a person might happen to have something along the lines of a revolver loaded with silver bullets stashed away in their desk drawer. Because of this, Reuben was only mildly surprised to discover that a quick call for suitably equipped volunteers among the faculty and staff had resulted in a full half dozen individuals carrying all manner of firearms.

He stood before them now filled with pride in the devotion of his fellows. He felt that a speech was in order.

"It fills me with pride to see all of you here, ready to do battle with whatever dreadful thing it is that's taken up residence on Greenhouse H. But, truly, could we do any less? Could we idly stand by as otherworldly invaders threaten the only specimen of rosa utopia on this continent – nay, in all the civilized world - and still call ourselves botanists? And still call ourselves men?"

"Ahem," interjected Professor Carmine Oller.

"Or ladies?" Reuben added hastily.

"Women," corrected Oller.

"Or women?"

"I think, actually, that I prefer 'lady,'" said Professor Lucilla Hunter.

"Regardless," said Reuben. "Can we still call ourselves botanists?"

"Actually," said Mr. Cassowary, "I'm a groundskeeper, and Vale is a cook."

"…We are, I believe, straying somewhat from the point that I was trying to make."

"Goodness! I hadn't realized that there was a point," said Professor Hunter. "Do continue, please. In the meantime, I believe I shall begin shooting at the monster, if you don't mind. Excuse me." She gave a quick nod to the rest of the group and then headed off towards the greenhouse.

Flint directed an inquiring eyebrow at Reuben.

"Yes, alright then. Let's get going."

The little army hastily made its way to the southwest corner of Ashfort Hall, a nicely solid-seeming brick building from behind which they could get a look at their target.

"Good God, man, you might have mentioned that it was twenty feet long!"

"Shh!"

"Does anyone besides Flint have any practical combat experience?" Reuben asked.

"I was in the war," said Professor Toolf.

"Which war would that be?" someone asked. Toolf considered this for some time.

"I don't recall. But I certainly shot at people," he said.

Reuben found himself wondering, not for the first time, if perhaps they should have declined Toolf's offer of assistance. The man was ancient. The gun that he was holding looked distressingly as if it might be some sort of flintlock. Reuben also felt conflicted about putting the two ladies - or one lady and one woman, or whatever - into harm's way. But Professor Hunter had answered his call for assistance carrying the largest shotgun that he'd ever seen, and Professor Oller had produced a revolver and loaded it with such an obvious air of practice that Reuben felt he'd be a fool to turn them away. The two of them were clearly worth ten of Professor Toolf – any fool could see that.

Looking at the creature again, though, Reuben felt that he could ill afford to turn down any volunteer. The claim that the monster was twenty feet long was surely an exaggeration, though sadly not much of one. Animals were hardly Reuben's area of expertise, but it seemed to him that it sported far more than its fair share of appendages, including an alarming number of legs and tentacles. To Reuben, the wings that extended high above it looked more like fins, and seemed as though they should be insufficient to carry the creature aloft. Nevertheless, the blurry photographs from last week had shown one of the things airborne, and the lawn around the greenhouse certainly showed no evidence that the creature had arrived by any method other than flight.

"Do we have any sort of plan, then, or should we just start shooting?" asked Vale.

"We should surround it!" said Professor Starke.

"What, so we can all be shooting towards one another?" countered Flint. "I think not."

"Are you quite sure we shouldn't wait for the proper authorities to deal with this?" asked Oller.

Then, even at their current distance from the building, all of them heard the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. Reuben watched with dismay as the creature tightened its grip on several more frames, sending a shower of glittering blades down upon the precious specimens below.

"My rose!" Reuben cried. This was a forgivable inaccuracy. Technically, of course, the rose belonged to the Academy, or even more broadly, to Science. But Reuben had discovered it and brought the only specimen back to civilization, and as a result he felt a somewhat more personal attachment to the plant in question.

A tentacle wormed its way through an opening and emerged again almost immediately, bearing with it a long, leafy branch. It held this prize in front of what seemed likely to be the creature's head, then tossed it carelessly onto the lawn below.

"Oh, that is it," said Professor Starke, who clearly recognized the branch as one of his own grafts. He raised his rifle and fired. Either he missed, or the bullet had no effect. Regardless, the noise certainly attracted the monster's attention. Though the thing had no visible eyes, suddenly everyone present could unmistakably feel that it was looking at them.

Mr. Cassowary ran, but the rest of them opened fire. Reuben himself was unarmed, and wished that Cassowary had at least dropped his gun before he fled. Reuben had never actually held a gun in his entire life, but this seemed as if now might be a good time to give it a try.

Reuben was greatly relieved to see that the creature wasn't bullet-proof; several of their bullets were reaching their target with obvious effect. But while they had clearly wounded the monster, they had evidently also made it angry. It shrieked, hurled itself into the air, and flew directly towards them.

"Run!" shouted Flint, quite needlessly.

The next several minutes passed in something of a blur for Reuben. There was a lot of running, a great deal of shouting, but also an encouraging amount of gunfire. In the end, the creature finally crashed to the earth and lay still, while the Burgton Academy for Botanical Research suffered only minor injuries to its staff and faculty, serious damage to three of its buildings, and the tragic loss of one quite promising experiment in grafting. Paranormal Biology was still a young field, but a later examination hesitantly attributed the final cause of the creature's death to be a lead ball from a flintlock pistol lodged in the largest of its brains.

For Professor Reuben, however, the battle was not yet over. Grimly, he once again took up his weapons. Those aphids were turning out to be relentless.