As she came back into her hotel room, Amber rolled her eyes and laughed at the memory of the two feuding magicians. It seemed awfully silly to her that they would be fighting like that. Sure, she personally preferred the version of the cake trick where the unsuspecting victim remained alive and aware afterwards, but it wasn't like they were going to last much longer after being changed, anyway. And as she gradually got more and more interested in this transformation stuff, she simply thought that the more Fruit users there were in the world, the merrier. It made life more exciting. She was only disappointed that her vacation was about to come to an end, and she would have to leave this city of wonders and go back home. But life was getting more exciting back there, too.
Of course, she couldn't just pack up and leave, either. As her group's designated human, it was her responsibility to corral all five of her friends together and make sure they got home safely - if "drastically and maybe permanently changed" counted as "safe". That turned out to be an ordeal all its own, eating up almost all of the final day of their beach trip and making her worry they might miss their flight, or be forced to leave someone behind. But, with very little time to spare, she had done it. And she was very relieved to find that the five of them could still fit inside a single piece of luggage, which she was preparing to zip up now.
Maddie had been the first, and by far the easiest, of the bunch to find. Amber had been holding onto her sheet of paper ever since it had been handed to her - well, until she stashed Maddie back in the hotel room for safekeeping. Not that the girl was likely to get up and go anywhere when she was just a drawing - it was just cumbersome to be carrying her around everywhere. Now, she had been rolled up to save space and stored at the bottom of the bag.
The others all required a little more legwork to track down, although it wasn't always Amber's legwork. When she spotted something tiny scurrying straight toward her on the boardwalk, Amber had instinctively flinched. But that was before she recognized the figure as a miniaturized, plastic version of Isabella, who was begging for Amber's help to catch the dollhouse that had changed her before it was too late. She let Isabella ride on her shoulder as they searched, but the Fruit user was long gone. Oh, well.
The girl who had eaten up the most of Amber's time - no pun intended - was Chloe. Finding her was like searching for a needle in a haystack, particularly since Amber had no idea what she was looking for. By the time she started her search, Chloe (knowing her) could have been anywhere, anyone, or anything. It was only by sheer luck that Amber had eventually stumbled across her, literally, and recognized her face on the bright red skin that stood out easily against the sand. The apple and the doll both fit easily into Amber's bag, sitting on top of the rolled-up paper.
Unlike with Chloe, Amber's search for Natasha turned out to be completely fruitless. It turned out she had just been looking in the wrong places - she shouldn't have been looking in any physical place at all. She only discovered her mistake when her phone buzzed and Natasha's new pixelated form emerged from a mail notification onto her screen, looking exhausted.
Natasha had already gotten back home without too much trouble - instantaneously, in fact, straight onto the laptop back in her bedroom. But when she realized she needed to let her friends know where she'd gone, she tried sending herself to the group chat. Big mistake. Hopping between all those different devices had taken a lot out of her. Amber and Natasha agreed that it was easier to just put her onto a thumb drive and let her ride back in the bag along with all her friends. Amber had made sure to put some e-books and a couple MP3 files on there with her, just so she wouldn't get too bored in there.
And last but not least, there was Hwan, who had come running back to the hotel room as fast as her little plush legs would carry her. Amber wasn't quite sure why Hwan seemed so distressed, considering that she was the only one of the five who was going home in the same form that she had when she arrived. "Yip! Yip!" she was saying as Amber prepared to zip the bag up around her and the rest of the group. In the years that she'd known the living fox plush, Amber had learned to understand the meaning of these little noises - more or less. Well, at least, she could come up with a pretty decent guess.
"It's okay, Hwan. I know you were hoping to find someone here who could make you taller, or give you a human voice to speak with or something like that. But I'll always think you're adorable just the way you are." Amber gave the stuffed fox a quick kiss on the tip of her black plastic nose. That always seemed to calm her down.
"Okay, guys," Amber spoke down into the opening of the bag, zipper in her hand waiting to be closed up. "Everybody happy with what they've got? It might be a long time before any of you can get your changes undone..." If ever, she thought to herself.
"Yip!"
"Not you, Hwan," Amber giggled. "I mean the ones who actually got changed in some way."
The rolled-up sheet of paper, the doll, and the apple all made murmurs of agreement. The thumb drive had a small LED light on its side, which blinked a couple times - Amber assumed that was a yes. She smiled as she finally finished zipping the bag up. This was the best spring break vacation she'd ever had.