"Keep It In The Closet"
(Part Two: "…Somebody's Watching Me!")
When Meagan regained consciousness, she had a massive headache from the blow to the head she received. And as much as she wanted to check her head for any bumps or signs of bleeding, she soon realized that her hands had been shackled to a bar locked right in front of a metallic chair that she had been placed in. Looking up to see where she was, her eyes met with the barrel of some type of large gun that was pointed within a few inches of her mouth.
"Go ahead…scream," said a voice that sounded very close yet Meagan couldn't see whom it came from. "It'll make things plenty easier."
"W-Who are you?" Meagan inquired. "W-What's going…?"
Then, out of nowhere, a chameleon-like creature manifested right in front of her very eyes. It seemed to have been the same purple lizard that knocked her out earlier. There were four arms and two legs on him, with bulbous green eyes and three tentacles protruding from in between them to the center of his head.
"You've got a lotta nerve comin' into our world like this, human." He sneered at her. "We monsters don't take kindly to any strangers like you. We like to keep a nice, decent balance between the two worlds. And now that your door's been shredded, you're practically stuck here, aren't ya?"
Meagan just stared at the eerily intimidating monster, uncertain if he was asking a rhetorical question or not.
"Not in a talkative mood, eh? Well, no matter. Because in a matter of seconds, you won't even be able to whistle…not with the ol' Scream Extractor here." He petted the large gun in front of her with a grin, right before he left her side and went to a set of controls nearby.
After turning a knob and flipping a few switches, the large gun was activated. Meagan shut her eyes tight, believing the machine would fire some kind of laser that would blow her to bits. However, it seemed to have done the complete opposite, as she felt her lips being sucked into the barrel. At first she didn't think it would be that huge of a deal, considering how often she used to play around with her parents' vacuum cleaner.
Unfortunately, this machine wasn't like any vacuum she had ever been around before. Its suction power was so extreme that she literally felt her whole face being sucked right off her skull, even knocking off her glasses in the process. Her lips went deep into the barrel, and she sensed her tongue starting to stick out from her mouth, which went numb in just a mere second.
Meagan was just on the verge of having the air sucked right out of her lungs, before someone came into the room and cried, "Randall! Mister Waternoose! He's coming!"
"What?!" Randall exclaimed in alarm, right before he shut down the machine and left Meagan's mouth to be unplugged from the barrel. Her head fell back and she gasped for air, with her tongue dangling out from the left side of her mouth. Without her glasses on, everything appeared blurry; but after what just occurred, it seemed more so than usual. She heard Randall say to his visitor, "Are you sure it's him and not just some other six-legged Crustacean?!"
"I'm absolutely positive. I just saw him coming down the hall. He's headed right into the locker room."
Randall growled in a mixture of frustration and anger, rubbing his eyes with his pudgy fingers, while staring at Meagan. "Alright! Take care of the kid, while I go and distract him!" And right before he left the room, he sinisterly added, "And, Fungus…don't mess this up!" He vanished from sight and supposedly departed from the area, leaving the visitor named Fungus alone with Meagan.
"Why do I always get myself caught into these situations?" Fungus said to himself, as he went over to the controls of the Scream Extractor.
Meagan's eyes darted towards him, and all that she could make out of his features (through her blurred vision) was that he was short and red. Although she guessed that she was the prisoner of these monsters, she hoped they would at least accept one request from her. "M…Mu…Muh gla…Muh glass…es…," she weakly uttered through her numbed mouth, feeling her own saliva trickling off her tongue.
Fungus heard her slurred speech and couldn't quite understand what she was telling him. "I'm sorry. What?"
"Muh glasses," she spat out (quite literally), pointing to where her glasses laid on the floor.
When Fungus finally spotted them, he dimwittedly exclaimed, "Oh! Of course!" He dashed over to the spot and picked them up, gladly placing them back over Meagan's eyes. "I can actually relate to your problem…despite the number of eyes." Her eyes instantly came into focus, once the glasses were back on, and she noticed how Fungus wasn't as intimidating as Randall was in appearance. He was a small monster with three eyes—hidden behind glasses that had the same number of lenses—and legs similar to those of a chicken.
Yet that wasn't all Meagan noticed, once regaining her sight…
Right behind Fungus were the same two monsters that she encountered in her room, one of which was holding the same yellow canister that Randall knocked her out with. The other one, having quite the nervous expression on his face, took off Fungus's hardhat and exposed his round, bald head.
"Huh?" Fungus uttered, feeling the chilly draft coming over his scalp.
That was when the tall brown monster belted Fungus over the head with the yellow canister, knocking him out immediately. Meagan looked on in surprise as Fungus went down, wondering just whose side this pair of monsters were on—that was, if they even had sides. But she didn't bother pondering over it much longer, as she was just thankful that her life had been spared from this "Scream Extractor" thingamajig.
"Oh, we are gonna get so fired for this!" The small green monster cried.
Meagan smiled, although through the numbness it was hard for her to tell if she was or not. "Tanks youtuhs!"
The two monsters exchanged a look of confusion, after Meagan had given what they could only guess was her sincere gratitude. "Uh…you're welcome?" The tall brown monster remarked, while the green one began unshackling Meagan.
"What're we gonna do with her, Needleman?" The green monster inquired.
Needleman rubbed the back of his neck, looking very uncertain. "Why are you asking me?! It was your idea to follow Fungus here in the first place!"
"Because I knew we couldn't just let Randall have Mister Waternoose find out that we accidentally brought a human into Monstropolis! We could seriously lose our jobs for that, man!"
"Well, we gotta do something, Smitty!"
The two monsters started looking around the room, which they had never seen before in all their years of working at Monsters, Inc. Needleman spotted a nearby locker that had four sets of lab coats and three hardhats—one that looked large enough to fit the head of a huge monster. And right next to it was five paint cans, containing different colors. He looked between the coats, the paint cans, and the canisters that crowded fifty percent of the room, an idea generating in his mind.
"I've got it!!"
An hour later, there was no longer any sign of Needleman, Smitty, or Meagan in the room. The only one left was Fungus, who was still sprawled out across the floor, totally unconscious. There were eight canisters missing from the Scream Extractor machine, all of the lab coats had been removed from the locker (as well as the large hardhat that was inside, leaving behind the two that were already in there), and a huge mess of paint around it.
Randall had finally arrived in the room to see all that had been missing, including the human girl. When he noticed Fungus lying on the floor unconscious, a furious look appeared on his face, and he began to growl. "Creatins!!" He exclaimed, without even realizing the way he mispronounced the word "cretins," just as he vanished from the room.
Several eyes, especially those that had more than one of them, stared in awe and disbelief over the seven-foot, multicolored monster that strode down the halls of the building, with a head that had been completely obscured by an oversized hardhat. It had eight arms draped over both sides of its tall, lanky body and was apparently missing a set of feet, as they were also obscured by its bulbous body. This monster, whatever race it could've been, was nothing that any of the employees at Monsters, Inc. had ever seen before and didn't dare make contact with it. The only two that seemed to have enough guts to were Needleman and Smitty, whom actually knew the truth behind its appearance.
The monster was, in actuality, Meagan Tully in a somewhat convincing disguise set up by Needleman and Smitty. She walked on a collection of canisters strewn together to function like stilts, leaving her to do her best to balance herself out on the way back to the workroom, and she wore lab coats that were sewed together and splashed with different colors of paint. Between her wild costume and the numbness that continued to slur her speech, she made a very believable monster.
Across the hall, other monsters were gathered and murmuring amongst themselves over the new monster in the company. Mike Wazowski and his large, furry blue friend, James P. Sullivan (also called "Sulley" to his friends), happened to have passed by these monsters as they were headed to the workroom. One of them turned to Sulley and said, "Looks like there's a new top scarer in your presence, Sulley!"
Mike and Sulley looked at the monster in confusion, before Mike chuckled and asked, "What're you knuckleheads talkin' about?"
The monster pointed behind Mike and Sulley, and the two turned to see the new recruit that was being escorted by Needleman and Smitty down the hall. Seeing the humungous size of the monster, which seemed to have rivaled Sulley's, made Mike Wazowski's single eye widen in total disbelief. He knew that with a tall, intimidating monster such as that, there would be no doubt in it taking over Sulley's spot as "top scarer."
Sulley, on the other hand, didn't seem quite so challenged by the tall monster's appearance. "He doesn't look like such a bad guy. Look, he's even made friends with Needleman and Smitty, and they're pretty stand-up guys."
"Are you nuts?!" Mike shouted to Sulley. "This schmutz is a threat to your all-time record! I mean, look at him! He's the size of a dump truck!"
Sulley rolled his eyes in aggravation. "Ugh, here we go again. Don't you think you're being a little paranoid?"
"In the line of work we're in, paranoia is a safeguard, my friend." He then grabbed Sulley by the hand and started pulling him further down the hall. "C'mon! We've gotta get you geared up for another night of scaring, buddy."
Sulley rubbed his eyes with great frustration, as he allowed himself to be yanked ahead by Mike. "This is one of the reasons why I could never stand taking a night shift."
It took only a moment for Mike, Sulley, and most other monsters working at the factory that evening to reach the workroom, where Henry J. Waternoose (the CEO of Monsters, Inc.) was continuing his inspection. When Needleman and Smitty arrived there with the disguised Meagan, they panicked, wondering just how they were going to be able to get further with their plan without getting caught by Waternoose. Unfortunately, as they passed through the line of monsters getting prepared for their late night scares, it turned out that Waternoose was the least of their worries, with Randall Boggs amongst the group. He appeared to be still searching for Meagan, heavily intent while doing so.
"M-Maybe we should just turn back." Smitty suggested.
"Yeah, good idea." Needleman acknowledged.
The two turned, along with Meagan, to face the exit of the workroom, which seemed like miles away from them. When they tried to get there before anyone could've spotted them, they heard the brisk, powerful voice of Mr. Waternoose from behind as he said, "Gentlemen! Is it my imagination or do we have a new scarer in our midst this evening?"
Needleman and Smitty exchanged a look of concern for a brief moment, and then they turned to face Mr. Waternoose, masking their looks of concern with a mix of confidence and nervousness. "Uh, why…certainly, M-Mister Waternoose," said Needleman, through a somewhat shaky voice. "We thought we'd assist him on his first day."
"I see," said Waternoose, with a nod. "What is his name?"
"His…name?" Smitty repeated, looking nervously towards Needleman, who looked up to Meagan, seeing past her huge hardhat at the worried set of eyes she had.
From within the helmet, she numbly stated, "Meaguh Trulle!"
Neither Needleman nor Smitty could decipher what she just stated, leaving it up to imagination to give their best guess to Waternoose. "Uh…his name is…Megatron!"
"Megatron?!" Waternoose reacted in bewilderment.
Even Meagan wondered where that assumption came from, as it was far from what she tried to tell the two monsters.
"Um, yeah…his name is Megatron," affirmed Smitty, unsure if their boss would believe in such a bizarre name. (But, then again, Needleman and Smitty were over the scale of weird themselves.)
Waternoose cleared his throat and said, "Well…just don't stand there! Set Mister, uh, Megatron up with a door." The two monsters saluted military style to their boss (for no apparent reason), as he crawled his way past them and headed to the control room upstairs for observation. Once he was gone, they sighed in relief and guided Meagan back across the work floor to set her up with a door that would take her back to the human world where she belonged—although there was a chance it would not have been in the same place she arrived from.
While doing so, they were being observed closely by the still paranoid Mike Wazowski…as well as a heavily suspicious Randall Boggs, who began taking notice the gigantic "monster" in the room.
To Be Continued…