Vine Eats Paintings During Vault Robbery

Four high-society art collectors were taken into custody early this morning inside the flooded vaults of the Grand Lagoon Gallery.

Authorities say the group introduced a fast-growing strain of kudzu to dissolve the heavy metal hinges of the gallery's lower vault. The plant breached the outer grate in four minutes. It then bypassed the titanium wall entirely to consume three original sixteenth-century oil paintings for their organic nitrate content.

Gallery guards arrived to find the suspects attempting to pull the vine off Titian's Portrait of a Young Man.

"It showed complete disregard for the glazing," said suspect Tariq Sterling, speaking through a rebreather while tethered to a police pontoon. "We brought heavy shears, but it preferred the canvas to the vault door."

By five o'clock, the vine had digested two Bellini altarpieces and four square metres of gilt framing.

It grew nine inches per minute.

When tactical divers entered the chamber, the thieves were frantically waving velvet mooring ropes at the central stem to distract it.

Investigator Sunita Chen confirmed the group spent two years acquiring the seed from an off-world orbital garden. They had planned to sell the artwork to an offshore sanctuary.

The vault remains locked.

The door is completely untouched.