The sky flashed a brilliant blue, like a giant bolt of lightning arcing through the clouds. The sound, that of a bomb going off in mid-air, soon followed.

People looked questioningly up at the sky, frightened by the noise and strange light, but when it did not repeat itself, they went about their regular business.

Kodachi ducked instinctively when she heard the tinkle of glass from overhead. It had become second nature to duck when she heard that noise while working in the greenhouse. Many a time, vandals had found it good sport to throw rocks. Even as far away as the wall that surrounded the property, they managed.

Looking up angrily for her position below a workbench, she looked for the hole in the glass where the rock had come through. The police did not like to hear such reports from her. She could tell in their voices that they didn't believe her, that they didn't really think she should be bothering them.

But this time, there was no gaping hole of shattered glass. Kodachi remembered ducking as the sound came from... She looked up and saw the single broken pane. Whatever it was, it had come from the sky. And at a high speed.

Hunting, on hands and knees, she looked under all the benches and on the floor until she saw it off in one corner. It looked like a rather large walnut. It wasn't quite the size of her closed fist and had a rough dark brown-grayish exterior.

It was a seed of some sort.

Kodachi stood, absently dusting herself off and looking at the seed. Never, in any book she could remember reading, had she seen anything like this. She wondered what it was...

There was only one way to find out.

A gray slime seemed to ooze up from the soil she had planted the seed in. Frowning, Kodachi first tried to scrape it off, but when she had returned later, it was there again. A plant that gave off a slime like that was something unique to her knowledge.

Well, when it started to sprout, she would get a better idea of exactly what type of plant it was. Until then... Her nose wrinkled at the slime, then she gave it one shot of pesticide before she left.

As the poison struck the slime, it appeared to retreat back into the soil for a time, until it started bubbling up once again, more violently than before.

The next day, Kodachi was surprised to see a blackish-brown sprout pushing up through the soil and the slime. It looked very much like a large thorn to her, and when she roused her courage enough to touch it, it was indeed solid. There was something very unplant-like about it.

It looked like a thorn, but something made her think of a horn instead. It was a distinct possibility that this was some strange carnivorous plant and this was some sort of... defense, or lure. That would almost explain the slime. She couldn't tell, but it could have been attractive to insects...

Furrowing her brow at the plant, Kodachi left to see if she could find any information on a rare carnivorous plant. And if not, then she would have a find on her hands.

The thorn didn't grow very much taller over the next few days, but fatter. The slime was now spilling over the sides of the pot and leaving a sizable puddle on the bench. Several tiny cracks worked their way up the side of the pot, and the thick sludge oozed out of those as well.

Dark brown vines grew from the soil, thin and whip-like, working down to the bench and across it, worming their way through the slime. Again, there was that feeling that they weren't wholly botanical organisms, that there was a definite intelligence guiding them.

It needed a bigger pot. Kodachi eyed the plant critically, wondering just how she would actually move it. First, she didn't really feel like getting her hands in that junk spilling out, whether it was something the plant was supposed to be doing or not. Second, the many vines that snaked out of the pot seemed rooted to the table.

She had first attempted to move the plant to a different bench, farther away from one of the vents, fearing the slime was a fungus. It had proven an impossible task. The vines held the entire pot down as secure as any glue, like a hand gripping the bench.

"My mysterious plant, you are troublesome indeed," she said to it quietly, holding a larger pot, but not having any clue how to transfer it over.

As if in response to her voice, another thorn-like sprout pushed up out of the dirt. This one was a pale gray in color, and looked rough, almost like it was dried out.

The speed and force with which it grew surprised Kodachi and made her take a step back. That was definitely something she had never seen, and while there were instances of plants changing states fairly quickly, overnight for example, nothing this fast was known about.

She set down the larger pot and said, "Mysterious indeed." She picked up a spray bottle with a slightly shaking hand and gave the plant a spritz of water. If it was dried out, then perhaps it needed water, and that slime... So much of it. Surely it couldn't be that beneficial.

Kodachi hurried out of the greenhouse to consider the latest growth of the plant. She locked the door, unwilling to let her brother get anywhere near her plant, and went to wash her hands. The idea that her hands had even been near that fungal growth was disgusting.

No longer would it be confined to the small pot. A tangled, worm-like mass of something that could have been considered roots burst through the already cracked clay. Dirt spilled out, and the root system immediately expanded, spread like liquid.

Wherever the slime had spread, the roots spread as well, punching their way through the wood of the bench. The initial growth, the large thorn sat prominently on the bench, ballooning in an instant to the thickness of a man's thigh.

The secondary growth, looking like the claw from a movie monster, was joined by three more, ringing the main growth. The vines that had been barely the thickness of a piece of yarn, were now as big around as bottle caps, and they stretched the length of the bench, twisting around the other plants, punching their way through the bench to droop down closer to the floor.

Kodachi entered the greenhouse a day later and was dumbstruck. The strange little plant was now testing the constraints of the greenhouse's roof. No longer was it a strange little plant, but now a large, dare she consider, frightening plant.

It had caved in the bench and was sitting directly on the floor; that disgusting ooze now coated the entire floor of the greenhouse and was over an inch deep.

Kodachi could only stare at it as those vines, which she could no longer confidently refer to as vines, spread out in all directions from the base of the plant... of the thing. One had even been sitting up against the door and was now falling outside of it.

No, she wouldn't call them tentacles, though they acted very much alive, but they were not simply plant growth to anchor and retrieve nutrients. These were much more intimidating.

Breath caught in her throat as another "vine", this one dark red and covered with bristly hairs, suddenly advanced on her, Kodachi took a step back, meaning to leave the greenhouse. Her path was blocked.

"Sister, what is the meaning of this monstrous plant causing such a disturb..."

The sound of her brother's voice had surprised her, but his sudden silence was more disturbing. Kodachi turned, slowly, body feeling like it was mired in concrete, and saw him standing there, as rigid as a statue.

One of those vines was wrapped around his leg, and she could see, stuck through his hakama into his leg, was a long white barb.

Releasing a strangled cry, she meant to push past him and run, but the vine she had turned her back on latched on to her ankle as well. There was a painful stinging sensation in her calf and then she could not move.

She was quite conscious, had all her faculties about her, but she could not move, not even to speak. Her muscles were locked into position, not like paralysis at all. When she was lifted and moved to a position closer to the main... body... Kodachi could not help but think of this as an animal, no longer a simple plant.

Looking at the body, forced to look, unable to move her eyes away, she saw, vaguely, her brother be placed nearby as well. To her horror, and her sudden wish for unconsciousness, the body of the beast split open, the thick outer skin opening like a clam shell to reveal the creature inside.

The scream would not release itself from her throat.

Something that looked like a rosebud pushed up from out of the floor that she could see in her peripheral vision. Its "petals" opened slowly, revealing their true size. Once they were fully open, the colors revealing themselves to be a sickly fleshy color, veined with deep purple, she was placed in the center of them.

The situation was the same for her brother, and that was the last thing she saw as those petals closed up around her.

There was darkness. Sweet, warm, comforting darkness. He was in a place he couldn't remember having ever been before. But there was a part of his mind that recognized the place as being very much like the womb.

Warm liquid pulsed around him, through him, and his head ached with the unfamiliar pressure of it.

Was that it? The process of being born... Would he have to suffer that again? Before he could consider such a thing, conscious thought left him once more.

~...awaken?~

A voice, one he recognized as his sister's.

~...shall in time.~

A deeper, unearthly voice that he also recognized.

He shifted in the comfort of his womb, feeling it give way to his movements.

~...moving...~

His sister again, but he couldn't so much hear it audibly as sense it, feel it. It was in his mind.

~...time shall be...become one of us...~

The voice he was compelled to answer. No longer could he hide, no longer could he stay in the safety his womb.

His walls of security wilted around him and there was light, so much light, and cold...

The somehow animalistic, yet plant-like pod peeled open and dropped the body of Kuno Tatewaki to the floor amidst a flood of viscous, ochre gel.

He stood slowly on trembling legs, blinking rapidly in the bright, natural light. He looked first at the naked form of his sister, the way her flat yellow eyes regarded him, the strange and exotic blue and green markings that decorated her skin.

That made him look down at himself to find he was in a similar condition. He didn't feel any different except for the whispering in his mind, the relentless whispering that marked his every moment of existence.

"Brother..."

He looked up at her, the world in complete clarity around him. "Yes?"

"What are..."

"You are the first of many."

The Kuno siblings both looked up at the towering form. It's single eye regarded them as if they were the insects and it was the magnifying glass.

"You are but the first of many, and when our numbers are sufficient, this planet will be ours. There are none that will stand against the Zerg."

...