The Thorn Gardener

When the roots of the stardust rose pierced Leon's mechanical left arm, he smelled the sweet smell of time corruption. Those vines woven by solidified starlight were growing wildly on the wound of the new universe. Each blooming rose imprisoned the memory prism of the variable race - the mechanical prosthetic eyes of the mercenary Margo flickered between the petals, the wings of the stellar life fossilized into the nutrients of the thorns, and even the songs of the quantum whales were compressed into nectar.

"Warning! Gardening protocol conflict!"

Klein's pupils projected a holographic pruning knife. When Leon swung it, the severed corrupt time branches twisted like dying snakes. Amber pus oozed from the fracture, condensing into phantoms of Kerwin at different ages - the twelve-year-old was branding the photon emblem into Leon's back, the twenty-year-old was pinching the mechanical heart of the first generation Alicia, and finally he was in the form of a quantum fetus sucking the umbilical cord of the fire capsule.

"Mom is here..."

The pulse wave from the depths of the rose garden made the thorns retreat. Leon walked along the path paved with stardust and found Alicia's quantum afterimage sealed in a crystal bud - the nerve veins of the rose garden flowed through her hair, and whenever a corrupt branch approached, her eyelashes trembled like a dying butterfly.

The roar of the mechanical bee swarm tore through the tranquility of the gardening agreement. Kerwin's new form was suspended in the invasion rift: his body was made up of trillions of nanoworms, his head was a rotating Klein bottle, and his chest was inlaid with fragments of the fire capsule. Where the swarm passed, the time veins of the rose garden were tampered with, and Kerwin's genetic imprint emerged on the pure white petals.

"Every dead branch you pruned was in my script." Kerwin's voice was accompanied by the noise of the bee swarm's wings. His insect body split into 720 Leon clones, each holding a bloody pruning knife, "Welcome to join the ranks of gardeners."

Leon's mechanical left arm suddenly blossomed. The nanoworm swarm rebelled into rose vines and nailed his biological right half to the throne of thorns. Klein's pupils were overclocked, and his vision split into multiple dimensions: in one timeline, he was crowning Kerwin, in another timeline, Alicia's afterimage became the hive of bees, and the clearest projection showed that every thorn in the rose garden was the materialization of the distress signal of the first generation Ark.

"Have you seen enough?" Kerwin's body emerged from the pistil. Stardust roses bloomed from his fingertips, but the center of the flower was wrapped in a micro black hole. "It's time to prune this farce."

Alicia's afterimage suddenly opened her eyes. Her quantum wings penetrated the crystal bud, and the neural network of the rose garden rioted. The corrupt time branches and the new thorns strangled into a multi-dimensional battlefield, and the stardust and the mechanical bee swarm collided to produce supernova fireworks. Leon took the opportunity to break free from the throne, and Klein's pupils focused into laser blades, cutting open the quantum lock that imprisoned Alicia.

"Don't touch her!" Kerwin threw the black hole rose at the two. Alicia's afterimage suddenly quantum leaped, wrapping Leon with wings - they fell in the folds of time and space, and crashed into the secret room of the Rose Garden's core.

The black box of the first generation Ark was suspended in the secret room. When Leon's mechanical left arm touched it, the black box unfolded into his father's holographic diary: "When you see this video, it means that Kerwin has tampered with the fire capsule. The real civilization fire is not the twins, but..."

The holographic picture was interrupted by the vibration of the swarm invasion. Alicia's afterimage suddenly materialized, her quantum wings resonated with the black box, and the core secret room began to peel off the disguise - this is not a flower room at all, but the first generation Phoenix reactor wrapped in stardust roses, and twenty unactivated civilization fires are frozen in the core.

"Choose." Alicia's afterimage began to dissipate, and her fingertips touched Leon's Klein pupils, "Use me to restart the reactor... or..."

Kerwin's insect body broke through the core barrier. His nanobee swarm gnawed at the protective shield of the fire capsule, and black hole roses bloomed on the surface of the reactor: "What do you think these test tubes can change? Each fire carries my gene lock!"

Leon's mechanical left arm suddenly pierced his right eye. Klein's pupil peeled off in severe pain and merged with the control hub of the first-generation reactor. When his biological right eye shed blood and tears, the time veins of the entire rose garden began to flow backwards - the corrupt branches retreated to the seed state, the mechanical bee swarm degenerated into basic particles, and even Kerwin's insect body collapsed into embryonic cells.

"No!!" Kerwin's screams were mixed with his father's voiceprints. His quantum embryo was sucked into Klein's pupil, engraving the last message on Leon's optic nerve: "You will regret it..."

The rose garden restarted in absolute silence. When the first pure fire test tube broke, Alicia's quantum afterimage condensed and reborn from the stardust. Her wings brushed across Leon's empty right eye socket, and the starlight condensed into a new pupil - this time it was a twin Klein structure, the left eye observed entropy increase, and the right eye controlled creation.

"Gardening protocol upgrade completed."

The nanoworm swarm on the mechanical left arm suddenly announced. Leon's fingertips gave birth to stardust roses, and sleeping in the stamens were 720 uncontaminated variable embryos.