Hi there!

Oh dear, where to start? I`m so excited about this, and I really don`t know what to say. Except that what you are about to read is the first chapter of my first fanfic – ever! It is about my latest crush and obsession, Randall Boggs from Monsters Inc. and Monsters University. I`ve read a lot of good fanfics about him lately, and I felt like trying to write one of my own as well. We can`t have too many Randall-fanfics, can we? Besides, Randall deserves his happy ending, and I am going to give him just that:)

So, this story functions as a sequel to Monsters Inc., and starts up a couple of hours after Mike and Sulley banished Randall to the human world. I don`t want to give away the details here, but I can say that the story will include humour, drama and – you guessed it – romance *blinks*

Just so we`re clear: I do not own Monsters Inc., Monsters University or any of the characters in this story.

But that`s enough from me, now it`s your turn! Read my first chapter and tell me what you think:) I hope you will enjoy it!

Chapter 1: Banishment

Randall Boggs tried to get up. His eyes narrowed as he tried to take in his unfamiliar surroundings; where was he? What had just happened?

He had a terrible headache, worse than the ones he would normally get if he went around without his glasses on for too long, and he could hardly remember a thing; the last event he was able to recall was being thrown through a door by Sullivan and Wazowski, and now suddenly he found himself in some kind of a swamp, his head (well, his entire body actually) aching horribly.

He stood up, only to cause his head to spin and vision to blur, and fell back down again straight away, hurting one of his left knees as well. He cursed to himself as he tightly shut his eyes in an attempt to make the headache go away, while stroking his bad knee with his lower set of arms.

He had to wait a couple of minutes before he tried to get up again, only to experience the same pitiful result – only now he felt nauseous as well.

Randall decided to give it a few more minutes before he would try to get up again. While he was lying there in the wet grass, he tried his best to recall what exactly had happened to him after his express shipment through the door to the human world, but he couldn`t figure it out – he was completely blank, and, when he gave it a closer thought, that was actually okay. He had obviously been beaten up or something, and he didn`t feel the urge to remember any of that after all. His pride was hurting enough at the moment, thank you very much.

Randall`s skin was of the sensitive kind, and his very randomly selected resting place had started to give him some chills. So for the third time he tried to rise and stand up, and in this attempt he actually managed to take a couple of steps before he fell down again – this time he threw up. He was happy no one was around to see him like this, but he still felt so embarrassed – here he was, the second top-scarer in Monstropolis, lying half dead on the ground, without the ability of even standing up properly. He growled and lay down his head - he didn`t feel like trying to get up again only to make a fool of himself, he just felt so tired.

Randall woke up after a couple of hours, freezing; his body was shivering and still aching, and when he opened his eyes, his surroundings spun. He quickly closed them again as he tried to curl himself up in an attempt to save what was left of his body heat.

It felt just like he had caught the flu, except from one tiny detail – when he did have the flu, he had the luxury of knowing that it would go away again after a few days in bed with coffee and a heating bottle. This wouldn`t go away for all the coffee in the universe. He was in the human world, he was beaten up, he was sick, he was lost and there was nothing he could do about it – or was there?

He suddenly thought back; so many things had happened to him during the last 24 hours, and while he was in the middle of it, he hadn`t really had the time to think them all over – but he had now. He recalled that for just a few hours ago, he had helped his boss, Mister Waternoose, banish Sullivan and Wazowski to the human world, but they had returned to the factory after what had felt like five minutes, max.

It wasn`t until now Randall realized what that meant; it was possible to get back to the monster world after being banished - he just had to find a kid`s room with a closet door in it to escape through!

Filled with the new, wonderful idea that he could be back home again in just a couple of hours made Randall stand up and half walk, half run in a random direction. He didn`t even notice that he still wasn`t feeling very well, until he tripped and fell over, twisted one of his ankles - and threw up again. He could just cry, when was this nightmare going to end? However, the idea of getting back to Monstropolis overshadowed everything. He started crawling on all eight, in the same random direction – it had to lead him somewhere.

"Monsters Incorporated out of business!"

"Illegal activity detected at Monsters Inc.!"

"Henry J. Waternoose features in kidnapping scandal!"

The big headlines were all over Monstropolis, shouting out their messages loud and clear from every news-stand in town. The same news rolled over the city`s television screens over and over again, and if you could find a single monster in all of Monstropolis who hadn`t heard, seen or read the latest news, he would be worth a fortune.

Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan sat in their downtown flat over a cup of morning coffee. Sulley was dead tired. The last couple of days had been intense, and the time yet to come didn`t exactly look too promising, either. After Waternoose`s arrest last night, it was obvious to Sulley that all of the newspaper-headlines were right; Monsters Inc. was out of business.

"…the crisis first became clear to the public when a young human child was spotted on a local sushi restaurant"; the television reporter`s voice was loud and nasal, and filled the entire apartment in a very unpleasant way.

"Turn it off, will you, Mike?" Sulley didn`t want any reminders of Boo just yet.

"But I`m watching it, what if our commercial airs again?" Mike replied.

"It won`t", Sulley answered, sounding a bit more grumpy now;

"…they won`t air a commercial for something that`s out of business!"

"Who says the company is out of business?" Mike sounded surprisingly enthusiastic for the occasion;

"Didn`t we plan to get it back on track again? C`mon big guy, don`t tell me you have forgotten about this already? Jeez, your memory`s playing you tricks, you`re getting old!"

Sulley found himself only partly listening to his best friend; not that there was anything unusual about that - in fact, that was what he normally did. Mike was a constant talker, and due to that, it seemed as if all of his friends had developed some kind of a filter, so that they didn`t have to take in all the different utterances that could make their way out of the little, green monster`s mouth.

"Yesterday", Mike continued;

"…when you said "laughter", remember? Laughter is like ten times more powerful than screams! Well anyway, didn`t you mention something about re-opening the factory and power the city with laugh-energy? Come on Sulley, that was what you said, I remember it as if it had been yesterday! Well - this was yesterday, but – but you get the point!"

By now, Mike had finally succeeded in catching Sulley`s attention. However, the blue monster wasn`t responding in the way he was hoping for;

"Well yeah, but Mike, that was just an idea! I don`t know anything about running a company, I wasn`t being serious about it!"

"So I`ll help you!" Mike`s optimism really was worth envying, and today the green monster was on a roll;

"Come on Sulley, we can make it if we work together! Imagine what our lives can be like! We`ll be rich! Famous! Everybody in the monster-world will know my name, and-"

"…your name?" Sulley`s voice was serious, but he couldn`t hide the little smile that was growing on his face.

"Well, our names, then!" Mike didn`t give Sulley`s interruption much thought, and went on;

"We can totally pull this off, Sul! We can do anything, me and you! Just yesterday we dealt with Randall all on our own – and don`t you remember when we blasted open that door from the summer camp in college? This is actually just like that, you know; with you being a negative jerk saying that you can`t do this and you can`t do that, when you really do have it in you! I know it! Come on, let`s go down there now and make ourselves a deal!"

Mike stopped for a moment to draw some air. He was truly determined about this idea, and deep inside, Sulley knew where this was heading; Mike would normally get his will when he was really into something, mostly because everybody had a tendency of giving in to him just to shut him up.

"Okay then, Mike", Sulley finally said, slowly getting up from his chair;

"…let`s go down to the factory and try to make ourselves a deal, then!"

He still didn`t believe it would work, but he thought what the heck, he`d just go with Mike, if nothing else, then at least for the entertainment.

"Great!" Mike cheered;

"…but there`s no need to rush things here, Sul. Will you please allow me to finish my coffee..? Jeez, since when did you get so busy you`d have to skip breakfast?"

Sulley sat down again, and he couldn`t think of anything better to do than smile.

A part of Randall wanted to give up.

He had lived in a messy shed in some garden in the human world for more than a month now, and things didn`t look very good; he had a hard time finding food, he had a constant headache since his glasses were still in Monstropolis, and he hadn`t slept well since he had gotten there. He always tried to close his eyes and rest in the day time, but it was hard to sleep when the sun was up. He also had to deal with the constant fear of being spotted by the humans who owned the garden, so even when he did sleep, he tried to keep one eye open.

When it got dark outside, he always, with no exceptions, forced himself up and out - the nights were important. They were all spent perfectly camouflaged in different bedrooms, staring impatiently at closet doors, waiting for one of Monster Inc.`s employees to enter through one to scare the inhabitant of the room and leave the door open for a few seconds, just long enough for Randall to enter through it and get his life back.

After another lousy night without success, Randall slithered back to his garden shed with the hopes of getting some sleep; although he already knew for himself that it wasn`t going to happen. He had too much on his mind – his headache wouldn`t let go, he was tired, sad, and – God forbid – scared.

Thoughts filled up his head as he entered the shed; why wasn`t anybody coming? He had been in almost every single bedroom in the entire village, but none of them had gotten any monster visits in the night time during the last month. As a former scarer at Monsters Inc., Randall knew that many of the children in this particular village was on the "to scare" list in the factory, and he found it really, really weird that it hadn`t happened while he had been there. What was going on?

Still with the bad thoughts spinning around in his mind, Randall cradled himself up in his favourite corner of the shed - the one that caused him the least discomfort - and closed his eyes; only to open them again right away, as if he had been struck by lightning.

The idea that had struck him caused his blood to freeze and the fronds on the top of his head to rise; what had actually happened to the factory after Sullivan and Wazowski had thrown him through that door?

Obviously, they had told all of Monstropolis about what was going on, Waternoose was probably arrested, and the factory – what had happened to the factory?

Randall could feel the panic crawl through all of his limbs; if the factory was out of business, how the hell was he supposed to get back? No wonder he hadn`t seen any monsters here for a bloody month, all the doors that connected the human world and the monster world were probably still hanging in that darn storage place at the factory!

Randall didn`t know what to do, he almost forgot how to breathe - he had never felt this terrified, alone and hopeless before in his life. He lay down again, trying his best to stay calm; but his hands were shaking, and the terrible idea of him being stuck in the human world for the rest of his days wouldn`t let go. He couldn`t stop thinking about it, his headache was still pounding, and suddenly, as his hopes of being able to return to his home began to decrease, he could feel his cheeks getting wet. He didn`t do anything to try to stop the tears from falling, it wasn`t like anyone were around to see them anyway, and gave in to the first real cry he had had in years.

Randall had it all figured out.

It was late in the evening, and the sun had set a couple of hours ago. Randall hadn`t slept all day, as he couldn`t stop thinking about the possibility that Monsters Inc. could be out of business. His eyes were sore from crying, and he felt as if he had a fever.

However, all of those hours of staring at the ceiling had led to one good thing – he had a new plan. He knew exactly what to do, and he intended to do so this very night – when he was sure there were no humans around to see him. So when he saw that the lights in the house next to his shed were put out, he slithered through the door and onto the lawn. His plan was simple – he would sneak out of the garden, he would sneak out of the village, he would sneak into the forest, he would locate a nice little pond, he would step into the pond, and finally, he would drown himself in the pond. Easy!

As he started moving towards the garden fence, he thought about what it would feel like to die. He wasn`t exactly looking forward to the process, but he could hardly wait for the stillness afterwards. Besides, whatever dying felt like, it had to be an improvement from the last month.

He passed one of the house`s windows, the fence was only five meters away.

He passed another window, but just as he did, he felt like he had to sneeze; he turned his head slightly to the left and raised his arm so that he could sneeze into his elbow. When he turned his head, the corner of his eye caught something happening in the window right next to him. Randall turned around, mouth open, eyes wide; he could hardly believe the sight that met his eyes inside the bedroom he was gazing into.

It was a child`s room, and the child itself, a little blonde girl, was sitting up straight in her bed, smiling with anticipation. On the other side of the room there was a closet (Randall had lost count on how many nights he had stared at it), and in front of the closet door, there was a very familiar figure – a slightly big, hairy monster, with a horn in the middle of his face. The room was dark, but Randall could see that the monster`s fur was striped, in the colours of orange and yellow. The monster held a watermelon under his left arm, and in his right arm he held a rubber hammer.

Randall went over to the window to watch the scene; with eyes wide and mouth still open, he saw how the monster tried to smash the watermelon with the rubber hammer. The little girl in the bed was giggling as she watched him. The monster eventually seemed to understand that the rubber hammer was not the right tool to use when you want to smash a watermelon, and so he tried to get it open by hitting himself in the head with it as well. Now the little girl started laughing, and as the melon broke and the monster`s head was covered in its content, she was laughing so much her eyes twinkled with tears.

The striped monster took a deep bow, before he turned around to face the closet door, reaching for its handle. It wasn`t until this moment Randall realized what was happening right there in front of his eyes. There was an active door to the monster world less than three meters from where he was standing, and it was about to disappear again any second.

While he tried not to allow panic to take him over, he started to look for the quickest way for him to enter the room. He noticed that the window he was looking through was half open, and before he knew what he was doing and what was going on, he camouflaged, swung the window fully open, entered the room and started running like a maniac towards the door, that was now about to be closed.

I hope you liked the first chapter of my story, make sure to leave a review now! I would love to know what you think!