Snort!
"WOOOOO! You know Friday, when you told that you could make white powder, I thought you were talking about so la sciency thing."
A dark-haired man stacked another brick of the fine white powder onto an already massive pile, taller than himself. More bricks lay waiting, ready to be packaged.
"I an... "white powder?" Why the fuck didn’t you just say it was cocaine—the main ingredient for ntats?"
Sam grumbled, running a hand across the freshly packed product.
Friday Van Graff, incredibly the black sheep of the Van Graff family, hunched over her makeshift lab, barely spared her friend a glance. She was busy refining another batch, her hands steady as she asured out precise amounts of chemicals.
"Not complaining now, are you Sam?"
He quipped.
"Fuck no!"
Sam exclaid, rubbing so of the powder onto his teeth. His pupils dilated almost imdiately.
"This stuff is amazing!"
"Watch it!"
Friday snapped as he reached for another pinch.
"That’s our rchandise!"
"I can afford a taste!"
Sam argued, dipping a finger into another pile.
"Besides, I’m the one actually helping you, not your lazy-ass brother."
"He has a sensitive nose."
"I do too, and that doesn’t stop !"
Sam snorted a thick line, shuddering as the chemicals hit his system. He let out a manic laugh.
"WOOO! That is so good shit!"
"Knock it off! I want every ounce we can get!"
Friday barked.
"This is our ticket off of easy street."
"You an ontoEasy Street."
Sam corrected, still twitching.
"No, off. You won’t have to risk your life as a guard for 20 caps a day anymore after we sell all this."
"Ha."
Sam deadpanned.
Friday smirked but then her expression turned serious.
"...We aren’t telling my family, by the way."
The room was silent for a mont. Then, as things often went when two drug-fueled lunatics were left alone in a confined space, the conversation devolved into a full-blown quarrel.
The next thing they knew, they were hurling cocaine bricks at each other like deranged children in a snowball fight, thick white powder filling the air as they shouted obscenities.
The fight ended abruptly, with a massive object crashing and bouncing off the cabin, making the roof fall apart with a deafening BOOM—an object later identified as Pilar, the invader that had been flung from the teor crash site.
The collapse buried the two in a half-ton of debris and cocaine dust. Hours later, the blizzard-like interior of the ruined cabin was still as the nuclear winter outside settled in. The only sounds ca from the heavy panting of approaching beasts.
A group of Yao Guai, drawn by the commotion—or possibly by the overwhelming scent of the chemically laced powder—sniffed their way into the wreckage. The mont they took their first deep inhalations, their eyes went wide. Their nostrils flared.
Then they inhaled again.
And again.
And again.
—Days Later—
Six kicked the twitching corpse of a Yao Guai, wiping the blood off his Liberator. The thing had taken an absurd amount of punishnt from bullets and explosives with half its head missing before finally dropping. Its mouth was still foaming, its eyes still wild even in death.
Rebecca nudged it with her boot.
"Okay, what the hell was that thing on?"
Jesse, still catching his breath, wiped the sweat from his brow.
"Cocaine’s a hell of a drug."
Roger raised an eyebrow.
"...Co again?"
Jesse sighed.
"Told you soone was ssing with drugs and wildlife. Looks like we found another specin."
Six crouched next to the beast, inspecting its nostrils—caked with dried white powder.
"If this thing was breathing in enough coke to keep fighting after three headshots, then whoever’s behind this has a serious operation."
Raul crossed his arms.
"Ain’t no chem lab in the Mojave pushin’ this much product. Either soone got real creative, or we’re dealin’ with a new player."
Jesse ran a hand through his hair.
"Could be a rogue Van Graff. They used to experint with chems and weapons. Wouldn’t put it past so desperate idiot to try making combat drugs out of coke."
Rebecca scoffed.
"Great. So now we have drugged-up murder bears roaming the Mojave? Fun Fucking tastic."
Six stood up, dusting himself off.
"We need to find the source. If one of these things made it this far, there are bound to be more."
Boone nodded.
"We start tracking."
Jesse sighed, shaking his head.
"I just hope we’re not too late. If these things found a town before we did..."
The thought hung heavy in the air.
Before Jesse could say anything else, a rustling to their left made everyone tense up. Instinct kicked in as the team fell into formation, weapons drawn, ready for whatever fresh nightmare the wasteland had decided to throw at them.
A mont later, a pack of Yao Guai erged from the underbrush, their hulking, mutated forms silhouetted against the snow. Their eyes glowed with an unsettling intensity, their breaths coming in ragged, almost unnatural gasps.
"Hell..."
Roger muttered, lowering his sword.
"I can’t believe I was scared of them."
"I’m still scared of those things guys!"
Raul whimpered, his T-80 armor still dented from their last encounter with the last creature.
"The last one nearly turned into a tin can burrito!"
"So what?"
Roger scoffed, pounding his fists together.
"I’ve fought way bigger monsters before. A bear’s nothing!"
Six opened his mouth to tell him to shut up, but it was too late. The Yao Guai had locked eyes with them.
"Shu, shu, get outta here!"
Roger waved a dismissive hand at the mutated drugged-up beasts.
"Uh, Roger?"
Six started slowly as one of the bears stepped forward, lips curled back in a vicious snarl.
"Could you not do that?"
"Wahaha! I’ll do what I want!"
Roger took a bold step forward, standing his ground, and took a step forward even as the bear snarled, veryreminiscent of the crocodile hunter.
"What, you think this little thing is gonna hurt ?"
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