So there.
    Eclipse concentrated, blanketing the area in darkness.
    Scott could feel his internal batteries activate. At least he had brought a flashlight with him into the ventilation ducts, so he had a good while before this really bothered him. He called the floorplan of the building to active memory to help him navigate. Cedar picked himself up from the ground; his boss lay behind him, unmoving. "This is—I'm so SICK of this. That's it, you're gonna get it!" he ran back into the lab, then stopped short. "I'm feeling a pulsing in my body. We must leave now!"
    Geranium ran over to the side room door and pulled it open, revealing only darkness. "Dammit! Wait a minute. Someone must have remembered being in here once.... There!" She reached out for the transformer.
    Scott covered the door behind her.

On the other side of the building, a bell rang. "What?" an irritable security guard responded.
    "Late night delivery!" a cheery voice replied. A delivery person was holding a pretty-without-being-effeminate arrangement of flowers.
    "Late night delivery?"
    "Yes, after the completion of your successful project, your bosses decided to send you this FTD bouquet package!"
    "Oh. That was nice of them," responded the member of the crack team. "We got flowers, cool. I don't think I've ever seen these—"
    The delivery guy grabbed the lower half of his own face, yanked up, and revealed himself to be the REAL Phil Chlora, in full Venus-fly-trap costume.
    "That's because they're EVIL flowers," he informed the guard, as said flowers filled the room with pollen.

Back at Lab 7, Eclipse picked up a chair and whacked Geranium upside the head with it. She flew across the room and lost her grip on the steel suitcase holding the transformer, which skittered across the floor toward the other door.
    "Shoot!" she exclaimed, and hastened after it, her hands feeling out before her in the darkness.

Poplar threw himself over the side of the boat. She could see him thrashing in the water; people were looking out through the sliding doors.
    "Hey! What's going on?" someone asked.
    "Nothing," she told them. Alchemy's headache had been throbbing recently, and she was undergoing a nicotine fit. She didn't have to work hard to get a threatening edge into her voice.
    "Oh. Nothing's going on. OK." They went back inside. She could hear them muttering. "You think she's on to us?" "I don't know." "Who is that person?" "Don't know her." "Why don't we turn the boat around and go back." "Have you seen the bosses?" "They were out on the—let's just turn around and go back." "Yeah."
    When she glanced back toward the water, she saw a burning jacket floating on the surface, and no sign of the two villains. She tapped her communicator, called the Seattle police and told them to expect the boat and be ready to arrest everyone on it. Grounds? None in particular, but they could use some detaining and questioning on general principles. While they headed in, she searched the ship.

Powerhouse streaked toward the lab, spotted the hole in the side of the building and a man running toward the hedge maze. He didn't seem to be carrying anything. A pile of soon-to-be-compost lay near him, with a big rubber mask atop it. Powerhouse swooped down and almost ran into the building as the running man ducked his attempt to scoop him up.
    Much to Eclipse's satisfaction, it didn't look like Geranium was going anywhere soon. She sat down on her prisoner to make sure she didn't decide to do anything.
    Scott headed for the door, after the suitcase. The motion sensors picked him up and opened. The suitcase slid to a halt at the feet of ANOTHER Phil Chlora! Behind him, the crack security team members were all wearing a slightly glazed look.
    "Hey, what are you doing out here, I just beat you up!"
    "You destroyed one of my simulacrums, nothing more you foolish android," the Master of Evil Plant Life scoffed. "Security forces, deal with this thing." He turned, cape swirling, and strode away with his prize. The security men aimed their guns at Scott and fired several times.
    Powerhouse landed in front of the running man, blocking the entrance to the maze. "Hold it!" he barked. "Who are you?"
    "Er... no one you need to be concerned with?" He tried to sprint past. Powerhouse reached out and grabbed hold of him, was dragged a step back, into the maze. Something with wicked jaws came up of the ground near his foot.
    "And you wanted to run in there?" he asked the man he had collared.
    "It's the only place we'll be safe, you don't understand, you don't know what's coming!" Powerhouse moved him a little closer to the chomping root-thing; it didn't try to bite him, unfortunately. "Where's Phil, and where's the generator?"
    "Phil turned into that pile of stuff and he said that when that happened it meant that something really BAD was going to happen!"
    "One of his simulacra, nothing more, you foolish man. Let's go have a look inside, shall we?"
    "No, you don't want to do that...."
    Powerhouse dragged him inside, noted the unconscious woman, and went to see what was going on.
    Scott, meanwhile, had turned to gas form and filled the hallway; bullets were of no concern to him.
    Phil sighed. "Very well then." He dropped a pile of seeds.
    Satisfied that Geranium was unconscious, Eclipse headed out to see what had happened to Scott and saw the corridor filled by a gray cloud. A bunch of men with glazed eyes fired into the mist; she ducked back into the room just as Phil dropped the seeds. She drenched the corridor in shadows.
    "No!" Phil cried. "The darkness, denying me light that I need to survive! No!"
    Powerhouse rolled his eyes. It was sad to see a grown man afraid of the dark like that.
    The seeds ate their way through the floor and began expanding rapidly, unseen by anyone but Eclipse.
    Phil muttered to himself. "No, I must get out of here before the hyperfast-growing trees I have planted destroy the building and crush everyone within, forcing the heroes to rescue them and allowing me to escape!"
    Powerhouse smiled. Thank you, Mr. Exposition.
    "Super-hyperfast-growing trees, guys!" Eclipse relayed to the others.
    "Where?" Scott inquired.
    "Down there," Powerhouse suggested.
    "I'd do something, but I can't see."
    At the edge of the shadows, Powerhouse put Cedar up against the wall and told him to stay, slamming him halfway into the wall to make it stick.
    Eclipse snuck toward Phil, who was struggling through the shadows. She had some trouble making her way over the giant roots growing through the floor. Boy, that chair was coming in handy. Wham!

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