Weeks passed. The Scare Games weren't until January, so Abby had an entire semester to prepare. Not that she needed much preparation. Her mother had taught her extremely well, and she was far ahead of anyone else in her class. Soon enough she had earned the admiration of quite a few lackluster students and had more requests for tutoring than she could count.

Despite this, she was still failing all of her quizzes and exams. Knight couldn't pin her for cheating yet, thanks to her conversation with Dr. Gross, but her grade suffered harshly. She tried not to let it bother her. Once she won the Scare Games, she would be rewarded with the grade she rightly deserved.

Nate rarely came to class anymore, much less talked to her. He was sporting a ROR sweater the last time she saw him, a stuffy (and, according to Arabella, messily-knit) red and gold monstrosity. He barely had the room to fully unfold his wings.

As for Abby, she had slowly but surely come to know her sorority sisters. The first one she became familiar with was her roommate, Sophie. Sophie was a bit of troublemaker, as Abby discovered one morning when she woke up on the ceiling wrapped up in an enormous web. Sophie giggled for a good ten minutes before Abby finally freed her claws to cut herself down. She was brushing webbing from her legs all day long.

Amber was the hothead. She was nearly always working out, toning her muscles into intimidating weapons. No one in the sorority crossed her, and for good reason. Amber would pick a fight with anyone and everyone, even her closest friends. A punch would be her way of saying hello. She often mocked Abby for her thin frame.

Lily was the bookworm. Abby admired her passion for knowledge, but Lily didn't seem to have much interest in practicality. Lily knew, but couldn't do. She was also one of the smaller members, often pushed around by Amber or Phoebe, so Abby understood her desire for isolation.

Phoebe was the president. She had a naturally dominant personality, and didn't like the fact that Abby clearly did not respect her leadership yet. She intimidated the fresh meat, threatening her and daring her to defy the group. Abby avoided her when she could because they often butted heads. Phoebe was a senior, but Abby felt as if she was nothing more than an egotistical freshman.

Lexi was quiet and very shy. Despite her hulking appearance, she often skittered around even her sorority sisters and definitely would not be in a room alone with Abby. The centipede monstress hadn't gotten the chance to know her yet because of this, but the other members seemed to have no problem with her behavior. "It's just her," they said.

So Abby spent most of the time in the library, alone with her books and her thoughts. She often thought of her mother and the factory. She often thought of her brother and sister. She always thought about Dean Hardscrabble, in some back corner of her mind. Curled in a blanket, looking out the windows to the pouring rain, she imagined what Hardscrabble might have been like as a mother if she hadn't rejected her. Would she be proud of her? Would she be critical of her scaring, to the point where there was no pleasing her?

She allowed herself to dwell on these thoughts only for a short time.

Months came and passed, and soon enough December came, and with it came the final exam for Scaring 101. As Abby suspected, Dean Hardscrabble appeared to judge who would continue in the program and who would not. She sat perfectly still in her seat, observing the students performing before her.

"Abigail Flint?" Professor Knight called.

She took a deep breath through her snout, calming the tempest in her stomach. Standing, she approached the simulator stage, her legs clacking along the floor. Before she could even reach the center of the stage, she heard a rush of wings. Dean Hardscrabble landed right in front of her, blocking her way to the simulator.

Abby glanced at her coolly.

"I'm a twelve year old boy in Alaska afraid of bears. Which scare do you use?" Hardscrabble began without even explaining herself. Her amber eyes pierced through Abby's silver ones.

Abby clasped her hands together. She knew the answer immediately, of course. "A particularly powerful Alpha Roar."

"Demonstrate."

The Alpha Roar was one of the hardest scares to learn, and no scare for a beginner in Scaring 101. It was especially hard for Abby, who had been raised by a snake and tended to have a bit of a hiss in even her biggest roars. Even the slightest hiss would ruin the scare in this scenario, as the child would never believe in a hissing bear.

Hardscrabble really wanted her to fail, didn't she?

Abby didn't see much point in protesting the clearly unfair disadvantage, so she steadied herself. Closing her eyes, she briefly recalled her roar training with none other than top Scarer, James P. Sullivan. Or Uncle Sulley, as she knew him by.

"It's no use!" a ten year old cried, scuffing the floor with her legs. "No matter what I do, I still hiss!" Fuming, she planted herself on a step and glared at the ground with her cheeks puffed out. Sulley let her stew for a moment before gently sitting down on the step with her.

"Hey. You wanna know what my trick is?"

"What?" Abby snapped.

"There's a bear inside of me." Sulley smiled at her surprised look. "Yep, it's true. He's in my heart. Whenever I need to roar, I just let that bear out."

"I don't have a bear," Abby replied sadly.

"Nope. You have something even better. Know what that is?"

"What?"

"A dragon."

"A dragon?!"

"Yep. Your mom had a dragon, and you have a dragon, too. A big, powerful dragon with a roar that can shake buildings. It's sleeping inside your heart somewhere. You just have to wake it up."

Abby focused herself. In her heart laid a dragon with a powerful roar. If she could only tap into its power, if she could only tap into herself, she could pull this off. After all, she was the daughter of a legend.

She took a deep breath and gave her best roar.

She could barely hear herself, and couldn't even remember what the roar sounded like. All she focused on was the position of her fangs, the rise of her lungs, and keeping her tongue in check. She roared until her lungs dried out, coughing and gasping for air at the end.

The dean observed her daughter, bent over, hacking and gulping for air, but her face remained as stony as ever. When Abby had gotten some semblance of air back into her chest, Abigail smiled cockily.

"I didn't know bears could hiss," was all she said before turning to leave.

Abby could only stare as she was left alone.

The next days left the centipede girl inconsolable. She holed herself up in the attic of the sorority house, refusing to go to class or even let anyone see her. She spent long hours pacing back and forth, her legs constantly scratching against the rough wood. Sometimes she cried, in the late hours of the night when her sisters were asleep. She cried silently, alone, and never enough to smear her makeup. The rest of the time she spent numb.

One day, a knock came at her door. This wasn't terribly uncommon, but what did surprise her was the voice that came floating beneath the door. "Abby? It's me."

"Mama." Abby instinctively reached out for the doorknob, but only barely held herself back. There was a moment of silence before Bonnie spoke again. "Please, Abby, I just want to talk. Will you open the door?"

Even Abby couldn't disobey Bonnie forever. Her mother had a way of getting her to do exactly what she wanted. Tapping over to the door, she opened it a fraction of the way and darted over to the window as her mother opened it the rest of the way.

"Abby?" she said softly. "Will you tell me what's going on? Nate says something happened, and I got a call from your sisters..."

Abby remained silent.

Bonnie chuckled. "You know, you didn't even tell me you were in HSS. But it doesn't surprise me as much as it should. Somehow I always knew you would end up here. As much as it pains me to say, I think you are far more suited to HSS than EEK."

"Because I'm just like Mother?" Abby asked quietly.

A pause. "No. It's because you are quietly terrifying. You live in the shadows, you shroud yourself in mystery, and you are always watching from the sidelines. Your sisters are like this, too. The fact that your mother had all of these traits is beside the point."

"It doesn't matter anyway," Abby sighed. "I'm like her, but not enough like her."

"What do you mean?"

Abby was silent for a moment before telling her the story of her final exam. Bonnie seemed more than furious that the dean had tested her on such a difficult scare and nitpicked it, but Abby seemed resigned to her failure.

"I'm sorry, Mama. I failed you," she whispered softly, a tear threatening to spill from her eye. "I'll be lucky to be half the scarer Mother was."

"Abigail," Bonnie tutted, approaching her daughter and embracing her gently. "I never wanted you to become a scarer. Well, I should say—I only hoped you would find something of your own to strive for. If that's scaring, that's fine. But I didn't want you to feel like you had to live up to your mother, or even me. You have to make your own path in life, Abby, not take the road I lay out for you. And you could be a janitor and I'd still be proud of you."

"That's not true."

"It is. Abby, you have that choice. Let me ask you this: do you like scaring?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"If your mother wasn't a scaring legend—maybe she was just a trainer, like me. Would you still like scaring?"

"Yes, of course."

"Why?"

Abby tilted her head, looking into her mother's silver pools with her own. "It just comes so naturally to me, Mama," she confessed. "Like it was something I was always meant to do. I can't help but feel like I was destined for it."

"Then chase it, Abby. But not for me, and not for your mother. For yourself."

Abby frowned. "But...I failed. I couldn't do it."

Bonnie huffed. "Okay, for now let's ignore the fact that the exam was obviously biased and unfair and your mother probably made that hissing thing up just so she could nail you for something. You're going to fail in life sometimes, Abby, but it doesn't mean you should just give up. It means you have to pick yourself up and keep trying. Isn't that what you've been fighting for all this time? Scaring means so much to you. You're not going to let your mother take it away from you, are you?"

Abby narrowed her eyes. "No," she snapped.

"That's right. And you're not going to let her win, are you?"

"No!"

"Good girl." Bonnie rubbed her affectionately between the eyestalks. "Now, what's your plan?"

Abby thought for a moment, but then looked at her mother with a fiery determination. "The Scare Games."

Unfortunately, signups were nearly a month away. With the semester over, and her ejection from the scaring program finalized, Abby needed to temporarily choose another major. She sat and listened as her adviser listed several available majors that were close to scaring—scream can design, door technology, perhaps engineering? None of those interested her, so she chose the easiest: scream can design. If nothing else, she could hit up the engineers at the factory for information.

She came back to the house each evening with a quiet expression. As her sisters all studied and had dinner, she barely said a word to them. It was only when she was picking at her grilled liver that Sophie finally spoke up.

"Why so glum, chum?" she tittered, mimicking Abby's desolate expression. "Still thinkin' about that final?"

"Yeah, we made a special accommodation for your mom to come," Amber told her with a full mouth. "Normally we don't allow non-HSS monsters inside the house and leave alive, but...that was pretty harsh of Hardscrabble, and I know my mom makes me feel better when I'm down. Besides, your mom seems cool."

"No, it's not that." Abby put her fork down on her plate, still staring at it blankly. "It's just...I failed. I'm out of the scaring program."

"Like to inform us of something we don't know?" Lily snipped.

"So I should be kicked out of HSS, too."

Silence. Five girls looked back and forth between themselves, exchanging glances. Finally, Phoebe leaned forward and put her hand on Abby's shoulder in a comforting gesture.

"The sisters and I have come to a decision. We're going to allow you to stay and finish up the year. If you're back in the scaring program by the end of the year, well...our doors will always be open for you."

Abby glanced up at Phoebe's one eye and gave a small, gracious smile. "Thank you."

"Yeah, plus, we think you could like, give us a really big advantage in the Games," Amber chortled. Phoebe and Lily sighed as Sophie giggled.

"How do you figure that?"

"There's just something special about you," Lily explained, adjusting her glasses. "And the way Hardscrabble goes after you...you must be really tough. If that isn't the mark of a true HSS girl, I don't know what is."

Eta Hiss Hiss was one of the last sororities to complete their registration-they had a tradition of being fashionably late for increased intimidation appeal. Of course, Slugma Slugma Kappa handed theirs in the minute registration opened, and Python Nu Kappa followed shortly after with giggles.

Phoebe strode up to the booth with the sorority trailing behind her. They were all supposed to carry an air of threat and menace, which was simple for Abby but less so for her meeker sister, Lexi. She studied the taller girl until their eyes met, and she tried to give her a reassuring nod. While unsure of how well it would be received, Lexi did appear to relax slightly.

"We're signing up," Phoebe snapped, slapping their papers down on the table. The Greek Council president sighed, flipped through their paperwork, and then slid a piece of paper towards them. "Sign these."

Each one of the sisters signed, Abby being last. Once she was finished, there was more noise coming from the students than before. It seemed the rally was about to begin. Abby followed her sisters to a place in the crowd were she could clearly see the stage set up in the middle of Frat Row.

And her mother on it.

Abby's silver eyes followed her closely as she approached the microphone, calling everyone to silence. Abigail didn't seem to notice as she went on with her introduction speech to the Scare Games, until she came to her stinger line:

"Good luck to you all—although some of you may need it more than others." And then her gaze shot straight towards Abby. An infuriating smirk played on her lips, making Abby fume with a burning hot rage. Her lips twitched with a retort in her throat, but she kept it down. She could be the bigger monstress.

It was only then that she noticed all of her sisters staring at her. Bewildered, she glanced at each one. "W-What?"

"Nothing!" They all attempted to look in opposite directions.

Sighing, Abby looked towards her mother again. The dean was still smirking at her, her head tilted up ever so slightly to look down upon her.

Abby grit her teeth and stomped her foreleg.

"I'm ready for anything you throw at me...Mother."