I awoke to a familiar sensation. In place of the rough canvas that normally comprised my cot, I felt the soft resistance of fabric. Backed by springs that creaked and squealed at the slightest provocation. I was covered by musty blanket, smelling as though they hadn't been washed in a few centuries. Instead of the dark, close dankness of my closet, I was greeted with a more open room. The ceiling was painted a creamy, off-white, and sported small chandeliers for lighting. The walls were coated in ancient brown wall paper, dirtied with dust and age. The floor was covered in equally old carpeting, a drab green and speckled white that'd seen better days as well. The room was furnished in fairly lush fashion with a pair of sofas and a table sat off to one corner and desk with a terminal and several cabinets in the opposite. Along the rest of the walls in the room dressers, wardrobes, and trunks populated the room.

Not believing my eyes, I sat up slowly in the bed. I turned slowly, looking around the room as I did so. My movements felt sluggish, almost like I was pushing against some viscous material. But even as I struggled to move, I knew exactly where I was. I'd spent so many months here that it'd be impossible to forget.

I was in the presidential suite of the Lucky 38.

I was home.

"H-how did I-" I stammered, trying to piece things together. My brain wasn't responding, for some reason as slowed and congealed as the rest of me.

I had no idea how I'd gotten here. My memory was … fuzzy. Nothing wanted to pull together right. Something wasn't right, but I couldn't tell what.

I swung my legs to the edge of the bed and sat there for a second, fighting for stability. Each movement felt uneasy and if I moved to quickly I felt as though I'd start falling.

But once I'd set myself on the edge of the bed, I noticed another thing out of the ordinary.

I was bigger.

My legs were longer and thicker than they had been. My chest a bit wider and my shoulders more broad. My arms were thicker than they had been. Every visible inch of skin was given a fair frosting of hair. I looked over my hands for a moment, assessing what I was seeing. Then I raised one to my throat and gave a rough cough. The gesture elicited a deep, rasping noise. Almost as deep as I remembered.

I was back to normal. I wasn't a teenager anymore, I was a full-grown man again, chest hair and all.

I was also pretty much naked. Stripped down to my underwear. It took me a second to register that this included my helmet.

Even as I began to take stock of myself though, my head began pounding. My train of thought slowed closer to a crawl and my ability to question was becoming less and less tenable. Nothing was making sense. Last thing I remembered was lying down in my closet. Now I was waking up in the master bedroom of the 38.

Then a thought struck me. I turned and looked over my shoulder at the bed.

The bed was empty. Undisturbed except for where I'd been laying.

Cass was gone.

I felt like I couldn't breathe and my heart lurched into my throat. The current situation had just jumped from confusing to terrifying. I didn't know how I'd gotten back here, or how I'd gotten back to normal, but I could wait on those answers. Cass was my priority now.

I lurched up from the bed, stumbling to my feet. The world felt off kilter, every step uneasy and threatening. Whether that was a result of being back to normal, or something else, I had no clue. I used the various bits of furniture and walls for support, working my way towards the bedroom's entrance.

The common area of the suite was devoid of life. None of my companions were anywhere to be seen. Despite that though, I couldn't shake the feeling I wasn't alone. Like someone was watching me. In the background, I could hear radio New Vegas playing. It sounded like Sinatra, singing about how something's gotta give. But it wasn't clear where the music was coming from. I couldn't pick out any specific place. The sounds of music were drifting through the air listlessly and unfounded.

I took a few breaths, steadying myself so I could stop using the wall for support. That's when I noticed the smell in the air. To the untrained, it would be a putrid odor. It would reek of rancid fruit and sulfur, like someone had bottled rotten fruit and placed it in the sun for several days. Containing only trace notes of fermentation, beneath layers of nose curling musk.

To me, it smelled like mash ready to be distilled. Me and Cass had made moonshine enough times that the smell was easily recognizable to me, if a bit off-putting. The smell of fission battery laced moldy fruit was something you'd never get used to. Probably for good reason too.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It was hard to really pin down where it was coming from either. But the only logical place that came to mind was the kitchen to the left of master bedroom and across from the rec room.

Almost as if by magic, once I focused in on that thought, the smell concentrated, almost certainly coming from the kitchen. I half hobbled-slash-stumbled my way out of the bedroom's door way and across the foyer to the kitchen, the smells of sulfur and fruit growing stronger and hotter as I got closer.

I leaned in the entryway of the kitchen for support, and stopped dead in my tracks.

Cass was standing in front of one of the kitchen stoves. A large pot was on one of the burners and a series of pipes and tubes leading out of it. A slapdash still I'd helped her put together some time ago. The pipes leading down a short distance to a condenser, before collecting into whatever bottles and jars Cass had collected. She was turned away from me and towards the stove, dressed mostly how she normally had been, but she'd removed her coat, leaving her pink and white flannel shirt exposed. Her hat was also missing, and she'd let her hair down. Vibrantly red tresses covering what I knew was pale skin. She knelt slightly, tweaking the burners of the stove, keeping the heat right.

My breathing became labored and my blood went cold. Cass was standing in front of me, as though nothing had ever happened. I could feel a lump forming in my throat. My eyes began to sting, either from the acrid gases in the air or because of tears.

"C… Cass?" I asked, voice soft.

Cass stopped moving, save for a small twitch of her head as it turned towards me slightly. Her face still obscured by her hair.

The music disappeared from the background. As if the world had chosen that moment to fade away, to leave me and Cass to our devices. She turned the rest of the way to face me.

"What's up… Boss?" A raspy voice answered

And the world came crashing back in.

Cass turned to face me and all sense disappeared. Her face was melting, skin peeling away to reveal tendon and bone. Her nose had fallen off, leaving a messy triangular hole in the center of her face. Her eyes were pale and milky, covered in cataracts and reflective as glass. Just above her upper lip, sat a neatly trimmed, pencil moustache.

Someone had hacked off Raul's face and stitched it Cass's head.

"What the f-" I stepped backward, almost losing my balance as my foot landing on something that wasn't the floor.

"Ow!" An old voice exclaimed

I gripped the edge of the wall and caught my balance. I looked down behind me and saw what I had stepped on.

Beneath one of my feet, ED-E sat on the floor, tumbling and rolling in place, completely defying physics.

"ED-E?" I asked

"Yea, six, it's me." ED-E answered, his voice sounding like Mr. New Vegas' "Do you mind watching where you step?"

With that, physics kicked in around him again and he rolled into the Rec Room, turning around a corner and disappearing with a beep.

Before I even had time to register that though, there was a *ding* as the elevator door opened. I watched as Boone's upper torso walked out of the elevator. Not in a particularly gory fashion, he was walking as though his feet were visible and connecting to the floor. Instead, the only thing touching the ground was his torso, as if he'd phased into the ground somehow.

"Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter." He said, in a voice most definitely not his own.

The next person out of the elevator was Veronica. She walked out, perfectly calm and fine despite the fact that her arms and legs had been stretched and elongated into shapes that shouldn't have been capable of supporting any weight. They were bent and broken at just the right angles, so despite how impossibly long they were, they still connected back to hands and feet. She turned and walked off towards the guest room.

Arcade followed her out of the elevator. Completely fine except for his head being completely backwards.

The last thing to come from the elevator before it closed was a doggy whine. Then there was a bloody explosion and Rex's head flew from the elevator door as it shut, landing squarely on the pillows of the master bed.

Then the walls started melting.

"Are you ok boss?" Raul asked again

I turned back towards the kitchen and found Raul-Cass face to face with me. I felt my balance begin to fail me and I slipped backwards.

"You don't l-loo-ook so good-ood-ood-od-ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd-"

Without any warning, everything vanished and I was falling. The Lucky 38, my companions, the whole of Vegas. It had vanished, replaced by a flat, bare, and sandy desert that I was now plummeting towards. There were no sounds, even as I raced towards the hard ground. No wind in my ears, no screams despite the feeling in my throat, no nothing. My fall was silent.

As I fell, The world began to return. I could see buildings and streets slowly coming back into being, as though being pulled from a fog.

They were all burning.

The ground loomed closer, and I watched it grow more clear. With the ground, there were two Yao Guai running towards each other. not in the traditional four legged fashion that they should've been though. They were racing on their hind legs, running at an upright and jaunty pace that they shouldn't have been capable of.

The two bears collided into a high-five.

I hit the ground.

…

"Courier Six!" Oobleck shouted

"Aah!" I screamed in manly fashion

A cold sweat frosted me. My vision was blurred and my heart raced as I tried to figure out what was going on.

I registered that I was in a classroom first, one of the lecture halls. But everything about it felt wrong still. Too large to be right. I was seated at one of the large desk-tables that ringed the room.

Professor Oobleck was standing in front of me just beyond the desk.

He was also a midget with an oversized head.

'… Oh you've got to be fucking with me now.'

"I understand that you and Ms. Rose find Saturday detention boring." Oobleck spouted rapidly "But perhaps you should've thought about that before skipping class."

I looked to my right and saw Ruby moping in a seat next to me, a pout on her face as she flicked a pencil back and forth across the table.

She was also a midget with an oversized head.

A feeling of remembrance washed over me as began to recollect the world around me. I looked down at my hands. They were pudgier and smaller than they had been in the dream.

As was the rest of me.

My heart beat slowed down as my fear condensed into indignant rage.

"WHY AM I A MIDGET AGAIN!?"