"Eat your vegetables."
Those were the words Tony spoke as he stared down America from across the table, the uneaten salad pushed off to the side of the garlic bread that had accompanied it.
"But it's gross! Put it in a hamburger, and sure, but in a salad? Blech!"
If there was one thing the alien had learned over the years, it was that humans always seemed to be attracted to the things that were worst for them health-wise. From an evolutionary standpoint, of course, such a thing made sense; way back then, before food was always available, one was attracted to things that were high in calories. However, in modern times, it appeared to kill more people via diabetes than it saved. One would think that sentience would override such primal desires, but from Tony's studies, it was evident that there were a lot of people who just didn't care.
His housemate, for instance.
"You have to eat your vegetables." He said firmly, standing up and putting his own empty bowl away. "The indigestible cellulose will fill your stomach without adding unnecessary calories to you diet."
America shook his head as he munched on the bread. "But it's icky, so I'm not eating it."
Tony sighed. "You're going to get fat if you keep eating like this."
"England said that years ago and I'm still fine."
"The only reason that you're still alive is because you're a nation."
"Meaning that I can eat as much as I want because I can't die."
"You'll be confined to the couch in a few years not only because of an inability to get out the door, but an inability to get up."
"An excuse to play video games all day."
"Have you any self respect at all?"
"I've found that self respect takes the fun out of life."
Tony facepalmed. There was no convincing America to eat the lettuce of his own. Anyone else would have given up, but he was intent to keep his human companion healthy, whether or not Alfred wanted to or not. Clearly he would just have to take a different course of action. And if there was one thing he had learned during his time in the United States...
...it was that all problems would be solved via genetic engineering.
"Live, darn you!" Tony growled at the head of lettuce on the table in front of him. "Get up and realise your purpose!"
Slowly, the head of lettuce rolled over, as if attentive.
"Yes!" It had worked! Step one of his plan was complete! "Now, listen to exactly what I say!"
The lettuce nodded.
"Your job is to get inside of Alfred, personification of America." Said Tony, holding up a photograph of the man, "no matter the cost. I don't care how much he whines, screams, or cries."
Again, the lettuce nodded before pausing and tilting itself to the side questioningly.
"...Right... I should probably give you limbs to fulfill that order too, huh?"
"You could travel the world!" America sang as he vacuumed the hall, an iPod in his pocket while earphones blocked out any noise aside from the music. "But nothing comes close to the golden cooooooooast!!"
From behind, a mutant lettuce monster slowly crept up, the only sound being the ruffling of its green leaves. With no definite shape aside from that of a leafy mass with limbs, it continued foward, hobbling over the carpet in the man's direction.
"California girls, we're unforgettable! Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top!"
Ever so carefully, it began to reach out to the nation's shoulder.
"! California gir- wait, what?" Feeling something touch his shoulder, he turned his head to the right and noticed the appendage for the first time. "L-lettuce?"
Slowly he pulled out his earphones and turned around.
And screamed.
The lettuce pinned him against the wall, tearing his clothes off as it went. Not really sure what to think (It was rather difficult to form coherent thoughts when one was being sexually assaulted by a sentient vegetable, after all.) , all he could do was claw at the... Creature as it quite violently shoved one of its disgusting appendages into his mouth and down his throat. "Gross!" he wanted to shout, but alas, his voice was muffled by the unsavory plant.
Meanwhile, the lettuce began prodding at other areas of the strange pink fleshy thing's body; his orders had been to get inside of the man, right? And while the mouth was the first entrance immediately obvious to it, it soon found that there were multiple holes it could get through. Nose? No, wait, the oxygen... While the lettuce was perfectly content with carbon dioxide and sunlight, the Green Creator had given it knowledge that non-plants essentially did the exact opposite.
What it didn't know, however, was what two holes lower down on the screaming pink thing's body concept were for. Foreign was the concept of waste to the lettuce; photosynthesis didn't yield such things. As such, it decided that they must be more mouths. Some plants had more than one flower, after all; why wouldn't the strange creature have more than one way to take in nutrients?
Yes, the lettuce decided. That was definitely it.
When America felt the leaves prodding his rectum and urinary tract, the first thing he did was panic. It was bad enough that he was being forced to chew and swallow mouthful after mouthful of disgusting lettuce, but that... that was just ridiculous. It really wasn't going to force its way up there, right? Right?
...Oh yeah, it was. Though his mouth was filled, America found that he was still capable of letting out a high pitched screech through his nose as a think vine-ish thing of lettuce forced itself into his ass and began pressing itself against all sorts of places that he really would have preferred not get pressed.
He inhaled sharply as the plant filled filled him up, feeling himself get harder as it did. "Mmf, mm..."
The lettuce was beginning to notice that the pink thing was making all sorts of odd noises, ones unlike the screams of distress from before. Ones it couldn't recognized. Well, noise itself was a new phenomenon to a former head of lettuce, so it supposed it was simply misunderstanding. With that, it stuffed the thinnest of its appendages up the oddly celled creature, only to realize that there was something off about it; the funny looking thing that it had originally thought to be some sort of malformed leg was actually growing and stiffening. How odd indeed. And the more he pushed up those two entrances, the redder the man's face got, until he finally bucked up and groaned, a weird white fluid leaking from the small hole of the apparent malformed leg. Was it a leg? Maybe it was more like a root... Something to take water up with. Yes, that would make more sense...
It was then that Tony chose to walk down that hallway himself, showed by what he saw. Was that Alfred? Getting brutalized by his lettuce creation? Oh dear... "No, wait! Lettuce! Stop!"
Several minutes later, there were three people seated at the table. One was an alien of high intelligence if not lacking in the charisma department. Another was a human of much lower intelligence than most of the other members of his species, quivering and traumatized. The third was a plant, former head of lettuce given sentience by the alien in question.
"Is it sufficient to apologize?" Tony inquired awkwardly.
America just twitched. "I-I'll eat my vegetables now, p-promise..."
Meanwhile, the lettuce just sat contentedly beside each of them. Why was the pink one shaking so much? It was bizarre. Maybe it was another way of obtaining nutrients. And the smaller one of a far more natural color was just staring intently at the table. Perhaps the table was like the sun, and that was why people sat at it when they ate. The lettuce loved the sun. It filled him with energy and felt good against his leaves.
A few months passed since the 'incident.' The lettuce had been content to go live in the backyard, never tiring of the passage time; ever quick to bounce back from his problems, no matter how traumatic, America had eventually been able to recover from the incident, though for quite some time the very sight of any sort of plant sent him to a state of panic. Needless to say, that led to him confining himself to his room for quite some time.
Then, one day as he was getting ready to take a shower, he noticed something dribbling out of his cock; a white, gooey substance, and it surely wasn't cum... "Huh?"
Slowly, the white substance began to collect into a puddle on the floor, and America did what any sane person would do in the light of the circumstances; he screamed.
Halfway across the house, Tony immediately rushed to the bathroom, fearing the worst; wasn't the lettuce outside?
What he didn't expect was for America to barge out of the bathroom, still naked, holding a strange white blob in his hands and screaming. A white blob with eyes.
"It's okay!" The blob said after a moment of silence, pulling a miniature star-spangled banner out of nowhere and somehow managing to hold it up without limbs. "I'm American!"