At first, I was going to wait until I got more of this done, but since I've reached the 10,000 words mark on this story, I've decided to finally upload it and release it to all of you. I have not written for so long, I've wondered whether I could again. Please review; I value your comments on my return to the fanfic writing world.

"Define senescence" - the condition or process of deterioration with age.

Randall Boggs knew that his time was here. He balled his bottom set of hands into tight fists and exhaled in an effort to relieve the tension. His vision became less cloudy and his fronds perked in alert. He removed the emblem of his fraternity brotherhood from his shoulders and placed the jacket on the bench. Unknown to him, he would never again be one of them.

Johnny Worthington, grinning from Javier's previous victory turned to look at Randall, his look of pleasure replaced by that of authority.

"Don't disappoint Boggs."

Randall's second arm clutched his wrist and fidgeted and he narrowed his eyes to slits in an attempt to hide his nerves. He averted his gaze from Johnny's, avoiding facing extra pleasure. As Randall paced past Javier, swapping positions with his teammate, Javier shot him his own trademark stern look. Randall ignored him. He met with the start line and looked at his opponent.

"Next up, Sullivan and Boggs." Brock boomed into the loudspeakers.

Sullivan looked at him with a look of opposition before crouching. He looked him up and down, baring his teeth before getting into position. He tried to blank his mind, focusing on the simulator at the end of the field. His hearing peaked, listening for the blast of noise. He tensed his limbs, his second set of arms pushing on the soft grass with his tail curled at frond height.

And off they went, slithering and sprinting across the field. They reached their doors simultaneously. He studied his child's settings carefully, his analytically sound mind pondering his tactic. LIVES IN AUSTRALIA, SCARED OF SPIDERS AND SNAKES. He gave a grin. He thought he had it in the bag.

He flew through the door, closing it behind him with his tail apex. His underbelly greeted the floor as he carefully sauntered in one swift motion over the toys scattered on the floor and up the wall. He focused and disappeared, his scales taking on the pattern of the wall. Waiting. Poised. He bared his teeth in excitement. He'd been just a whisper.

Suddenly he felt the walls shake. The distant rumble of a gigantic roar shook the simulator like an earth tremor. He was in such surprise he lost his padded grip on the wall and yelped. He smacked his jaw on the pink, heart covered rug and pulled his front up steady. Panic. Fresh panic. Out of time.

Leaping towards the end of the bed, he raised his arms and fronds and gave as best a roar as he could manage. As he exited the room, his heart dropped. He knew he'd lost a huge portion of his potential score. His disappointment turned to fear as he thought of the Roars waiting for him.

"Ah tough break for the Roars" he heard as he walked, clutching his hands together back to his place. He turned to glance at the board before colliding with Johnny. The wind knocked out of him briefly.

"Huh?"

Johnny looked ready to kill.

"HEARTS?!"

Randall took a step back, afraid. He parted his hands and looked down at himself. 'Oh shit'. His body matched the rug in the simulator, pink with hearts all over him, sickeningly cute. Deathly unscary. He gasped in horror at himself and his situation. 'You stupid idiot, why didn't you check before the scare!' Everyone could see him. They were all chattering, laughing at his error. He felt ready to cry.

"Way'to go BOGGS" Chet spat whilst the others growled and peevingly looked down at him. Even with his height, average for a monster, he felt incredibly small. Insignificant. He turned to look at the OKs who patted and congratulated their champion of the round.

He felt an intensity of emotion that he had never felt before. Heart ready to dtop to his feet, he saw Mike, the proudest of the group patting Sullivan on the back. Jealously plagued his heart. Just a few months ago, he had been his friend. His. Just them two in an environment filled with a popularity desire. How they had loathed Sullivan's ability to escape consequence. The one who everyone didn't have to judge. The one who everyone seemed to blindly believe, would become a naturally great scarer. Mike had seen this too. He'd never known anyone to work so hard, even he who had studied endless days for his end of year school finals. He had hoped Sullivan would have his comeuppance one day.

Seeing Mike 'betray' what friendship they'd had was a raw pain inside of him. No, it made him realise how naive he'd been. He had abandoned a friendly face for a game of 'you say jump I ask how high'. To hang out with and impress the 'cool kids' who he thought were the answer to his painful loneliness. All he wanted was acceptance.

Hate boiled inside of him. At himself. At Sullivan. He wiped his visible upset from his face and sneered. Gone was his pathetic pink and back was a deeper shade of purple, saturated in hatred. He leaned forward, seething.

"That's the last time I lose to you, SULLIVAN."

The tension left his body and he folded his arms in a defensive posture. He curled his lip as he watched Johnny and Mike take their own places. Turning around briefly to see what the others were doing, he saw his jacket on the bench. His hardened face deflated in sadness. It was splattered with dirt, the material soiled, ruined. Chet laughed as he stomped over it with his claws. He smirked at Randall, raising his head his head in the lizard's direction. Randall turned away again, urging himself to concentrate on the game rather than upsetting himself.

He saw Johnny deliver his performance in one earsplitting sound which belonged in a nightmare. Clearly thinking that the Roars had triumphed again, he slammed the door shut on his exit and raised his claws awaiting applause.

"Johnny, you're my hero!" Chet hollered, amusingly sounding like an obsessed fan. Randall smirked at the thought, before remembering his own failure and he quickly obscured his head from Johnny's view as he sauntered back over, blowing kisses to the audience.

"Looks like we have another trophy here bo-"and he was silenced by the scream of his contestant in his own simulator. Mike scored maximum points on the scoreboard and a cannon of confetti erupted in celebration. Johnny's face was a picture. Randall may have found this amusing if he had been paying attention. His own jaw was agape, staring, puzzled, and trying to figure out just how this was possible. Mike had won the Scare Games for his team.

As much as Randall had persisted with helping him study for their December exam, he had known, rather guiltily, deep down that although Mike had the intellect of a great scarer, his exterior was rather lacking in anything that would reveal fear from a child. Randall, from fear of upsetting his already determined past friend, had thought it be best that he remained adamant with giving praise and encouragement for Mike. After all, Mike's own aspirations inspired him and gave him confidence in his abilities. But to see this result, he was shocked to his core. His own sharp intellect told him this was somehow a fix. But would he let his own rather distraught fraternity in on this instinct? No he would not.

Johnny remained motionless, watching the flood of monsters from the audience bays go to congratulate the Oks. After a few seconds, his mouth finally closed. After a few minutes, when the field was beginning to quiet down, he turned around to face his brothers. No one dared to speak. The silence of their leader told them of his rage. Johnny blinked a few times, before adapting his usual posture and neutral expression and walking towards the exit. Randall did not exactly know what to do. Uncomfortable, he reached for his jacket, it still bearing the stains of his failure. He almost felt like a ghost as people had shoved by him, unchanged by his presence. It turned out he didn't need his blending abilities to feel invisible.

"Boggs." Worthington called. He had stopped in his progress, not even bothering to turn around. Randall flinched and he gave a small gulp. "Pack up your things and get out of the house."

Randall looked round to the others in the fraternity, with trembling hands and sagging fronds. Not that he expected them to say anything at all. His lip quivered as he opened his mouth to speak. Johnny must have interpreted this reaction.

"I don't care what you have to say." He rose his voice. "Roars do not permit failures. You have disgraced our name and the standard of our abilities."

Randall had to hold his breath to hold back the tears creeping into the corners of his eyes.

"We need to savor what we can boys." They collectively agreed, albeit a trembling Randall. "I want you out of the house by tonight."

And then they all left, leaving Randall realizing his worst fears about university. Being alone.

The walk back had been torturous for him. Outside the brightness of the overhead lights in the stadium, everything was dark and bleak. Randall's anxiety had peaked and he was deathly afraid of people ceasing the exciting chatter of OK's victory and then beginning their vicious insults towards him. He cursed his physical differences to the other monsters. If he had the generic looks of other monsters he could have blended in. Now he looked as obscure as ever.

He stuck to the shadows of the trees along the path leading to the amphitheater, and thanked the darkness of the pedestrian bridge as he crossed underneath the road above him. This was taking him longer than it usually did; his steps were slow and cumbersome, rather than with his usual grace. He had neither the energy nor courage to blend again. Terror was a dark cloud as he wondered that if he managed to blend again, those disgusting pink hearts would appear on his scales again. Since this was all he could think about, it would be a huge possibility. He couldn't go through it again. Not again.

Once inside the house, shrouded in darkness, he noticed how different it looked and how it made him feel. The corridors with their arches and marble felt cold. The red of the carpet was angry and hurt his eyes to look at. Portraits which lined the walls with trophies in glass cabinets high above his head were intimidating as they cruelly looked down upon him. He swallowed with difficulty, his throat dry and tried to ignore the various objects.

'Man the hell up. It's nothing.' He told himself, even though his exterior told a different story.

After reaching his room, he pulled the cases and bags from his cupboard, their luxury purple bright against his slightly pale lilac. He began gathering his things, folding them at first, neatly, into rows in each bag. He cursed himself for bringing so much. How many pillows did he really need?

Looking underneath the bed, he noticed the slippers he'd bought along with him and wrinkled his nose at them. He'd thought they were cute. They at least kept his feet warm some.

'Cute like you huh Randy?' he thought to himself.

"Shut the fuck up."

Tossing them into the bag, he looked around at the last few things that were placed in their organized positions. His 'Winds of Change' poster hung high on the wall. Climbing up the hard surface, he grabbed it and stared at it, sighing. 'I can't hear bloody anything' he thought. Finally, he went to the bedside drawer and pulled out his broad rimmed purple glasses.

He fiddled with them in his palms, stroking the rims and smudging the lenses with his fingerprints.

"Lose the glasses, they give it away." He remembered. 'If you'd listened more to Mike in the first place…'

"Well, Mike's gone!" he screamed, throwing the glasses on the floor in rage. The crack of broken glass broke the following silence. "That's just great…" He groaned, taking a deep breath. He closed his eyes and ran a hand through his fronds, feeling them scatter over his head.

He reached down and took them off the carpet. Damn, he'd thrown them with a lot of force. A huge scar ran through the centre of the left circular lens. The right lens was just as bad. Even the frame looked bent. Great, he'd have to ask his parents to buy him some more.

'My parents...' he thought. Oh god. What would he tell them? 'That your son was a failure in front of the whole university?'. They'd ask questions if he called. It's what they always did. No, the glasses would have to wait. He couldn't face having to explain everything to them. He placed them carefully in the top of a bag, almost laughing in irony at the delicacy he did it with.

Zipping the cases up, he grabbed as many handles as he could and pulled with strength he had forgotten he had. Now he just had to figure out exactly what he was going to do. He supposed he would talk to monster at the front desk of the dorms and get some advice. When he had moved into the MU dorms the first time, everything had been organized, planned, just the way he liked it. Even when joining the ROR brotherhood (at which the mere thought now was a punch in the gut), monsters had assisted him in everything from moving his personals to congratulating him on attaining his place. Now that he fully realized the weight of his luggage, he wished they were near.

Finally reaching the gigantic door on frat row, he remembered that he now had the problem of lugging all of it up to the dorms. Without a guarantee he could stay the night there. He sighed, a sudden weakness travelling down his slender body in one long rhythm. One tear dripped onto the concrete and he sniffed with a curse under his breath. He gave one last glance into the Roars house before abandoning it.