Mrs. Eichhorn came into her empty classroom. She always looked forward to lunch, the one hour of a teacher's day where she could get some peace and quiet. Eating silently at her desk was the best relief she could ask for from all those unruly kids. Then again, ever since those Fruit things had started to show up in town, there seemed to be less and less students showing up in her classes each week. It made her job easier, but she couldn't help but worry about all the teenagers who had just... disappeared lately. Plus, at that rate, she might be out of a job before long.
Walking to her desk, the teacher couldn't help but notice that something had been left behind on one of the students' desks. Coming up to it from behind, she saw that it was a shiny red apple. She could hardly remember the last time a student had actually done that for her - she was starting to think that gifts like that were only in cartoons. But she appreciated the gesture, whoever it might have come from, all the same. And she was hungry enough to start eating it right then and there.
When Chloe heard the sound of footsteps behind her, she assumed it was Amber finally remembering to pick her up and carry her to the next class. And when she felt a hand grabbing the back of her head-body and starting to lift her up roughly into the air, she didn't worry too much about it. This was just the sort of thing she had to put up with, having no arms or legs and being totally unable to move under her own power. She was starting to get used to it. Nothing about this struck her as wrong in any way - until the moment she felt something tearing into her back, ripping a huge chunk of flesh out of the core of her body. The stinging pain where a part of her was now missing... it hurt just as much as getting disemboweled as a human would.
Mrs. Eichhorn was confused and startled by the sudden scream that rang in her ears. She almost dropped the apple she was eating out of shock, before she realized that the sound was coming from the apple itself. Turning it over in her hand, she discovered a small human face on the other side of the fruit. It wore a pained expression, but something about its features looked familiar. Even with everything that had changed around that face, she could still just barely recognize it as one of her students. One that hadn't been back to class since the end of spring break. "Chloe?"
Chloe's head, which was her entire body, was swimming. She looked up into the giant face of one of her teachers and thought that she might be in the middle of a nightmare. "Help me!", she cried out, struggling to get the words out as life-giving juices dribbled out of her gaping bite wound. Then she realized what the only form of help left for her would be. "Y-you have to bury me!"
"What?", the teacher choked out, still barely understanding how any of this could be happening.
"Please!", Chloe shouted. "I'm going to die! But if you... ugh... plant my seeds in the ground... I can be... reborn! I'll grow back up into a beautiful new tree!"
Sensing that she didn't have much time, Mrs. Eichhorn started to run out of the room and to the building's nearest exit. A thought occurred to her as she pushed the door open and stepped outside. She had just taken a bite out of a Fruit. A Fruit that was also a person who had been changed by a Fruit, yes, but a Fruit nonetheless. Was it going to change her? Had it already started?
As she scrambled down the sloping hill behind the school, her high heels getting left behind her in the grass, she wasn't sure if she could feel herself changing, or if that was just the adrenaline running through her body. She tripped over as she ran, her bare feet catching on something in the rough terrain, and fell to her knees. But this would be as good a spot to plant a tree as any other, she thought to herself. She leaned down and started to dig into the dirt with her bare hands.
Her fingers, she found, had it surprisingly easy as they tore into the earth below. In fact, as she grabbed chunks of dirt and pulled them out of the ground, she could watch her hands beginning to change, her long painted fingernails sharpening into pointy claws. Just as quickly as the hole she was making got bigger, her whole body shrank smaller and smaller. Her attention, though, was focused on the pit. It needed to be big enough to bury Chloe down there, safely, where nothing else could get at her or try to eat her. But she could come back, of course, and dig up the apple to finish eating it whenever she wanted. She was confused by that last part. Why was she thinking like that?
By the time she had finished digging, picking Chloe up and putting her in the hole had become a really heavy lift. The apple-girl looked huge to her now, just like the deep pit she had made, which she was feeling very proud of. And the blades of grass that surrounded her had become tall plants that rose up to her waist and forced her to push through them. She put her furry arms up against Chloe's side and, with all the strength she could muster, rolled the girl into the hole.
That was enough for the Fruit power to kick in. Right before her very eyes, the teacher watched as a thick wooden trunk shot out of the ground and grew up high above her head. Like the squirrel she had now become, she felt compelled to climb. Running straight upward along the bark of the new tree was as easy for her now as running along a flat surface on the ground. She made it to the top just as a giant canopy of leaves and branches - and yes, Fruits - started to sprout all around her.
"I'm alive," one of the Fruits said a moment after it materialized. It had Chloe's face on it, but it looked nothing like an apple. More of a cross between a lemon and one of those lumpy, leathery tropical fruits.
"We're alive," replied a mango with an identical Chloe face. A hundred other Fruits nodded in agreement, and the whole tree shook with a feeling of pleasure and relief.
The squirrel looked all around at this display and chittered to herself. She was not, like so many others were nowadays, a transformation fan. She wanted to be human again. Any one of these Chloes could be the one that would make that happen. And, since they all seemed to share some sort of hive-mind consciousness, she didn't have to worry about the morality of killing one by eating it. The only problem was, she had no idea which one was the right one. Probably even the Chloes themselves wouldn't know. She might be stuck here for a long time...