Stephanie in Theoryland: A GTLive Fanfic

Chapter IV: The Neighbor's House

         IT was Nugget, scurrying slowly back again, and looking anxiously as he went, as if he had lost something. Stephanie could hear him muttering to himself, "Large teacher lady! Oh my nuggets! She will have Nugget killed, as sure as Lilly is pretty! Where can Nugget have dropped them, Nugget wonders?" Stephanie guessed that he must have been looking for the chicken nuggets he had dropped earlier in the hallway. She began hunting for them as well, but they were nowhere to be seen; everything seemed to have changed since her swim in the pool, and the hallway, with the glass table and the little door, had vanished completely.

Soon Nugget noticed Steph and called out to her in an almost angry tone, "What are you doing out here, stranger lady? It is not safe for strangers here. Dangerous things are everywhere, and poor Nugget is soon going to face one of them! Run away now, quick! QUICK!" Stephanie, feeling incredibly startled but Nugget's sudden outburst, ran off quickly in the direction the young boy was pointing.

As she ran, she thought to herself, Dangerous things? What kind of dangerous things? If all I've seen so far is considered harmless, I'd hate to find out what these people actually consider dangerous. Steph turned a corner, and suddenly found herself in front of the largest, most convoluted house she had ever seen. It had to be four or five floors high, painted in a variety of purples, blues, and yellows, and looping all around the roof was what could only be described as a roller coaster track. In front was a red mailbox, with the word NEIGHBOR sloppily written across it.

"No. Absolutely not. Matthew and I spent enough time playing that game to know that going inside that house is a terrible idea." She thought back to their multiple Hello Neighbor live streams and how frustrated and confused that house made them. Going inside would do nothing to help her find her way back home; it might even get her more lost than she already was.

But then, Stephanie thought about what Nugget had said. Could there be something even more threatening here than the Neighbor's house? Stephanie didn't think it could be possible, but she also didn't want to take the time to find out. She walked around to the front of the house and, seeing no car in the driveway, decided it was safe enough to go inside.

The inside of the house looked just how she remembered it to be: several large rooms, winding hallways, and an elevator leading upstairs. Stephanie hurried upstairs, for fear that the Neighbor would return home and find her wandering around his house. She soon found herself in a small room surrounded by cameras- the control room. Large screens displayed views of every room in the house. "I guess I'll stay in here while I think of a plan. At least then I'll be able to see if he comes home." She sat down and tried to think through her situation.

"Okay, obviously the most direct way to get home would be back up the Nugget Cave. But, I'm not even sure where it is at this point, and even if I did, I would have no idea how to begin climbing back up. I drove Mario and his friends away, and I don't think Nugget could help me even if he wanted to." As much as she hated the idea, Steph resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to keep moving in the hopes that she found someone who could help her. It was then that her eyes fell on a small bottle next to one of the monitors.

She picked it up and examined it. There was no label this time, but she was still able to recognize the pills inside as Duotine. "I know something will happen to me if I take one of these," she said to herself, "so I might as well see what they do this time. At least if they make me grow, I'll probably be able to stop whatever dangerous things come my way." With that, she took two pills out of the bottle and popped them into her mouth.

Steph began changing much more quickly than she had expected; before she had fully swallowed the second pill, she felt her head hit the ceiling, and had to duck in order to keep from breaking her neck. Maybe I should have only taken one, she thought nervously. But, by that point, it was too late. Stephanie kept on growing and growing until she finally reached the point where she was close to no longer fitting in the house. She had one arm out the window, one foot up the chimney, one leg stuck in the stairwell, and her head so crammed against the ceiling she felt her neck starting to cramp.