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A long, sharp knife found itself in the hands of a young woman. With a tight grip, she raised it into the air and recklessly plunged it into her victim's flesh. Fresh juices and viscera threatened to spill out as the knife cut deep.
The second cut was much the same, but only once it was done could the woman pull off a small chunk of the body. Rounded where the flesh once connected to the rest of the body and coming to a point on the sides where the knife had struck.
It was the perfect slice of pumpkin.
"Quick!" Stella whispered in the direction of the satchel at her side. "Romeo, I need you for a taste test!"
The satchel was pushed open from the inside, a little white sugar glider running from it to jump into Stella's hand.
She offered the pumpkin slice to her familiar and he eagerly grabbed at it. It took a moment for his teeth to break off a piece of the vegetable.
Romeo chewed on it for longer than he should have, his nose twitching the entire time. Stella took that as a good sign. Or perhaps she'd just discovered a new favourite of his.
Either way, once he was done Romeo looked towards his owner and gave a subtle nod of his head.
"Good boy...!" Stella praised him, softly rubbing the top of his head with her thumb. "They won't miss one of these, they've got plenty to go around. Just give me a second and our heist will be complete!"
Turning her attention to the remaining 95% of a pumpkin on the ground, Stella grabbed it and closed her eyes, focusing on its shape and surprisingly heavy weight in her arms.
Before long it had disappeared in a puff of pumpkin-sized smoke to be conveniently placed in her satchel, its size and weight significantly reduced.
Before Stella could even think to stand back up, Romeo jumped from his spot in front of her and started gesturing wildly towards the door to the garden with his little grabbers.
"What's the matter, boy? Is it..." Stella trailed off, feeling the energies just beyond the garden revealed everything. The reading she got terrified her and it was only exaggerated by the fact that whatever it was seemed to be fast approaching.
"Oh shoot! It's the garden guardian! We gotta do something before she does her guardian duties all over us!"
Stella frantically looked around to no avail. The garden was full of vegetables which didn't exactly offer much cover to hide in. The only door to exit from was compromised. Her only other option... Jump through the gap where one of Wizard City's aged, stone walls had weathered completely.
She looked back to the ground where the pumpkin had been. If only she could disguise herself.
If only...
Years of classes she should have taken flashed through Stella's mind. Or at least her best approximation of what they might have looked like did. Every gardening lesson she never took had to culminate at this very moment if she wanted to get out of this bind.
Very gently, she placed her hands against the soil.
"Earth spirits, gnomes. I know about those. The generous bounty of plants around me. The fairies, the pixies, the unicorns. And maybe, just maybe if a dinosaur is listening. I need your help. Just to make a little hole in the ground. Stella sized but slightly smaller... please?"
The soil gave way. The ground beneath her hands seemed to simply move downward, shifting almost with the consistency of a slimy jelly.
"Romeo, we've got our hiding spot!"
Stella grabbed the small critter and placed him on her shoulder, then jumped straight into the hole she'd just created without giving a second thought as to whether or not it would be safe.
Her head still stuck out of the hole, her orange hair almost the exact same shade as the pumpkins surrounding her. Stella shuffled just slightly so that her head touched the stem her stolen pumpkin had been ripped from.
"Okay Romeo, I need you to grab as much of my hair as possible and make me look as round as you can. Can you do that? Can you do that for mama?"
Romeo let out the possum equivalent to a sigh and got to work, grabbing bundle after bundle of Stella's hair to try and give the illusion of a pumpkiny shape. Before long she could barely see past the layers of her own hair in front of her eyes.
Thanks to Romeo's hard work and the surprisingly co-operative nature of Stella's hair, he had turned her head into at least a decent looking vegetable visage.
Just in time too, as the garden's caretaker finally made her way through the creaky wooden door. Stella would recognise that terrifying, stocky aura anywhere.
Sabrina Greenstar slowly made her way through the garden. It seemed whatever inspection she needed to give her plants would not be a long one. That would almost be comforting if it didn't mean she was approaching Stella's location much faster than she would have liked.
Stella froze as she heard Sabrina's footsteps stop just next to her. She felt something small press against the back of her head. She tried to move in response only as much as a pumpkin would.
"...Hmm." Sabrina hummed to herself. "A little misshapen. And... hairier than it should be. But these things happen."
Sabrina stood back up and walked away, through the small stretch of garden that remained unchecked. Upon completing her inspection she started to circle around, back towards the door. She stopped again and stomped at the ground.
The relief Stella felt at fooling Wizard City's most renowned gardener vanished in an instant as she felt the ground shift beneath her feet. Before she knew it she'd shot up, her hair coming undone and taking her disguise with it.
Suddenly she was face to face with a very disappointed Sabrina.
"It... It's... th-the miracle of life! The garden has produced a second Stella!"
"Wonderful." Sabrina smirked. "Then you should have no issue taking the place of the pumpkin you stole."
"Wait! But I... I sympathise with the plight of the pumpkins now! During my brief acting foray I really understood what it was like to be one! The stress they go through on a daily basis, the uncertainty about whether or not everything is going to be okay in the end... even the risk of a random theurgist assaulting you! I understand it all now—"
"So perhaps you could also understand how devastating it might be for one of my students who cares for such pumpkins to suddenly lose one? That isn't lost on you either?"
"Uh..." Was all Stella could croak. "Please don't chop me up or turn me into a soup..."
"Wouldn't dream of it, honey." Sabrina's smirk grew, flashing more of her sharp teeth than Stella thought possible. "You've got a debt to pay."
The sun shone brilliantly on Ravenwood's garden. Sabrina watched over her young batch of students, as they tended to all their different plants. Giving them water, playing them... less than stellar music, charging them with magic and even setting friendly bees upon them to pollinate them.
Her gaze drifted to one student in particular, a teenage boy in a corner of the garden, tending to what must have been the saddest, wettest headache of a pumpkin he had ever laid eyes on.
"Ugh." He growled to himself. "What even makes a pumpkin grow hair anyway..."