Several nights later, the two monsters stood by the first floor bedroom of four year-old Tamira Schultz. It took a bit longer than either of them had wished, however, with time, they were able to track the child from her classroom, to her school bus, to her home. All in all, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the girl. The pastel pink bedroom lined with pony décor was one of a thousand that Randall had seen across his career. Randall was grateful though that she lived in a pretty quiet piece of neighborhood. Thanks to that, he and Tani were able to watch the house from up-close without much fear of being noticed.

It was a weekday too, meaning that most people had turned in early for school or work. Aside from the morning rush, they had plenty of time to work with. They could wait as long as they had to for Fear Co.'s scarer to appear.

Beside him, Tani took a deep, audible breath. She sat in the nearby hedges, hugging herself with her tail wrapped tightly around the worn, drawstring bag at her feet. It was one of the few, rare times he'd ever seen her in such a state—and the only other time he remembered besides when they'd checked their final exam scores in their first semester at MU.

He made a point of opening the window slightly to show her that nothing was stopping them. This time, no one was going to toss her back out as soon as she made it through the door. The kid was already fast asleep and didn't react to the faint noise. "This'll be a cake walk," he whispered.

Although it didn't seem entirely genuine, she nodded in agreement.

Despite his own words, there was one aspect of this plan that Randall didn't like: For a while, he'd have leave Tani here. They couldn't come up with a single way to work around it, not without drawing too much attention to themselves. When the door opened, Randall could sneak by, but Tani would have to wait for him to steal the door's cardkey and reactivate it when the coast was clear. They would need to get her through when the scare floor was empty and the child was at school, but in broad daylight nevertheless.

He didn't like the idea of leaving her alone for that long. Memories of when he lost her flashed in his mind. That had all happened in only a few seconds. If luck turned against them, he didn't want to think of what could happen in a few hours.

He had to ask, "Are you ready?"

Again, Tani nodded along. "As I'll ever be. I'm wide awake," she raised the bag up with her tail, "I've got some snacks. Don't worry about me."

Randall considered reaching out to comfort her, but held himself back. Instead, he gave a determined look, "I swear, I'll come get you as soon as I can. I'm not leaving you here."

She drew her tail closer to herself before responding, "I know that."

He winced to himself at how weak her voice sounded. Then, he steadied his own nerves, matched his scales to his surroundings, and slunk inside. There was no telling when the door would open; he just needed to be ready when it did. Randall hid himself within a corner of the room nearest to the closet. Glancing back at the window, he noticed Tani now tucked along the side of the outer wall, peeking in.

10:00 PM. 11:00 PM. 12:00 AM. The colorful, digital alarm clock on the side of the child's bed marked each and every hour. In all that time, the only being that moved a single muscle was the little girl turning in her sleep, bundled against the small breeze that had begun to filter inside the room. It was almost surreal, watching some brat for that long without trying to scare them.

Randall was stuck sitting there for so long that he felt he could've counted every single, springy curl of dark hair on her head, or timed every break in the pattern of her light snores. He thought he could almost interpret her dreams from the way she murmured to herself every half hour or so. It was obnoxious.

At last, he heard something else: The familiar, muffled buzz of a scare floor suddenly manifesting through the closet door. Slowly, it opened and a short monster with six arms and claws over half as long as his body entered. With them retracted, as they were on his off-time, Kendall Clawsdale seemed to be a pretty feeble monster. With them extended, however—especially in the dark—he was certainly a sight to behold. They made his silhouette almost Lovecraftian in appearance, the way each slightly curled digit and twisted between each other.

Randall appreciated the technique for quick second before slipping behind the other scarer, catching the door before other could properly shut it. Feeling a little mischievous, as soon as his path was clear, the reptile then slammed the door behind him.

There was no way it didn't wake the child up. Now on the Fear Co. scare floor, still staying low to the ground, Randall moved a safe distance away and watched the chaos unfold. There was a scream from the other side, but not as long or loud as it could've been. The nearby canister's energy meter rose, but not by much. Instead, Randall then heard the sound of objects being thrown. Soon enough, Kendall burst out of the door himself.

"What just happened in there?" his assistant demanded, scrambling to send the door off and ready the next.

"I-I don't know! The door moved by itself! The window was open: I think there was a draft!"

With the two distracted over the failed scare, Randall sidestepped over to where the files were stored—or at least, where they should've been… He didn't count on just how differently Fear Co.'s set -up was compared to Monster's Inc.

Unlike the long chamber with brightly-lit windows that made up the latter's scare floor, Fear Co.'s was dim and cavernous, with only a handful of artificial lights to guide the way around it. Doors didn't swing above the scarer's heads, but instead shot from the floor and then swung down into the abyss when they were no longer being used. Almost everything was automated, from the doors to the rotating canisters, and there didn't seem to be much use for the assistants at all. In fact, most of them stayed completely out of the way—only stepping up when there was problem or all of a scarer's canisters had made their rotation.

There were technical feats that Randall could marvel at, but at another time. He bristled as he watched the door swiftly disappear, reminding himself that he could—he would—bring it back. Careful not to make a sound or stand in anyone's way, he took another look at the nearby console. All it took was for the assistant for tap a few buttons to send off and summon a new door. He watched as strings of code moved up along a small screen.

It took a minute for him to realize how it worked. Monster's Inc.'s method of scaring required a ton of personalization. Each and every child was assigned to a specific scarer in order to draw out the best screams. These doors were grouped together: Sets of numbers with no reminder or regard for the children connected to them. What Fear Co. gained in their speed of production, they lost in the quality of their output.

Thankfully, there was a keypad. Randall quickly counted the lines of code back before the one marking the door to Tani could vanish from the screen, devoting it to memory. He repeated the numbers in his head over and over again, silently chanting it like a mantra even as he continued to watch the assistant work. He needed to know how to use those controls later.

Some monster working in the space adjacent to him tripped over Randall's unseen tail. The canister the employee was holding bounced along the ground for a few meters before rolling halfway across the chamber. A multitude of eyes turned in their direction.

Randall instinctively fled, scrambling over the edge of the scare floor and around its perimeter. He watched from afar as the assistant got off the ground and chased after the canister. It could've easily have been excused as a clumsy mistake, but the reptile still made sure that no one had noticed what really happened. Soon enough, the crowd's attention shifted back to their own, individual tasks.

The reptile crawled to a clearer section of the chamber, out of anyone's path. He began repeating the code in his head once more, staring at the door station he came in from. He wasn't going to take any chances by trying to call it to anywhere else.

It was impossible to tell how much more time passed. Fear Co. had a leaderboard, but not a map detailing any additional information such as the hour or what part of the human world they were getting scares from. Again, Randall was forced to wait. When the floor finally cleared for a break between shifts, he was beside himself with impatience.

He scrambled into position and began rapidly tapping at the keypad, hoping that their timing was right. Surely it was morning on the other side of the door by now, but what if the kid hadn't gone to school yet? What if Tani had been spotted or had simply given up after waiting this long?

It took longer than he liked for it to arrive, but he still felt no small measure of relief when the right door shot up and fastened into place. His quick review over the controls had been right on the money. The red light above it flashed to life, the connection between worlds re-established.

"Boggs…?"

Randall froze. He knew this voice: Deep, almost thunderous in sound even when spoken in a calm, suave, tone—like a distant, brewing storm. A powerful voice that quickly took command wherever it was heard. A voice that had both threatened him and slyly convinced him to obey its whims back when he was still a freshman at MU.

He looked at his hands, which were now visible. He'd stopped camouflaging himself because he was too focused on the controls to maintain the ability's effects. Then, he looked behind him.

Sure enough, it was his former leader and fraternity brother: Johnny Worthington.

Randall grimaced. From the depths of the memories, he knew that Johnny had gone to Fear Co. He also recalled hearing about Johnny actually being the former owner's son and inheriting the company fairly recently. However, none of that was anything he ever cared about. A large part of him blamed the horned monster for creating the rift between Tani and himself. He just hated Sullivan and Wazowski infinitely more. That and, being at two different companies, his former upperclassman had long been out of sight, out of mind.

Old sins cast long shadows… Randall couldn't remember where he heard that quote from, but it seemed to fit his current situation pretty well. He couldn't forget how he'd been used and then chucked aside by the RORs after the Scare Games, or how Johnny had knowingly tricked him into helping with that awful, final prank all those years ago. Meanwhile, Johnny clearly hadn't forgotten how his chameleon-like traits worked. The Fear Co. CEO stepped out of the shadows of a side door near the scare floor entrance. He must've seen everything.

"Randall Boggs!" he chuckled with self-satisfaction, "I knew it… You look a little rough, buddy."

"And you've put on a few pounds," Randall spat back, noting his now wider waistline. The other scarer's body had gone from a towering triangle to a somewhat pudgy rectangle. He still carried himself with an imposing air, yet it was also subdued by the impression of a strong family man. It didn't suit him.

A smug grin still plastered on his face, Johnny ignored the comment. "I'll admit, I'm surprised to find you here in my company, of all places. Was there nowhere else in the city to hide?"

Randall's eyes them widened, noticing the flip phone in the other's hand. He hissed through his teeth, realizing how trapped he was all too late. He could try to fight Johnny to prevent him from calling anyone, but even if he won, there were still cameras everywhere and he wouldn't have time to find the security room and delete the footage. He could camouflage himself yet again and just run, but whether or not he made it out of the building himself, he'd end up leaving Tani behind.

The grin on Johnny's face only widened. He waved the phone in his hand, then strangely pocketed it in his suit. "No, Boggs," he said, "I don't want to turn you in. In fact, I'm pretty impressed with all the news coming out about you lately. I figured you'd make it big one day, but I didn't think you'd come up with the crazy stuff you did."

He didn't respond to that.

The other monster motioned for him to follow. "Why don't we talk about the old days for a bit, huh?" he asked, as if Randall had any bargaining power, "Or do you want to stand around until the next shift starts?"

Trying not to let his frustration get the better of him, he seethed, "Maybe after I get this door open."

Johnny chuffed, his expression now alternating from smug to a little curious. With his eyes, he seemed to ask what the reptile was planning. "You're not that stupid. Running back to the human world won't help you, you know that, right? I can just report which door you left from, and some human might just catch you before the CDA can."

"Who says I'm running away?"

"Then what else are you scheming? If you're thinking that you can banish me on your own, I would love to see you try."

His impatience growing beyond what he could bare, Randall finally snapped, "Tanith's behind this door!"

Whether or not he should've admitted that, it did get Johnny to shut up at last. At first, he seemed confused by the outburst, as if he couldn't place a face to that name. Sadly, it wasn't all that surprising, considering how many people always seemed to forget Tani the minute she left the room back at MU. Eventually though, his face lit up with recognition.

"Hartbrooke's daughter…? She's still alive?"

Much to Randall's dismay, he could see the gears turning in Johnny's head. Whatever the former ROR president was thinking, he didn't know; he just knew he didn't like it. There wasn't anything malicious in Johnny's gaze when he'd mentioned Tani, but Randall could still tell that Johnny was already calculating how he might benefit from the news.

That was, if he could believe it. Sobering up a bit, his smug look returned and he raised his hands in an all-encompassing gesture. "Alright. That's just one more person for our much-needed reunion!" he replied, "Let's see her then."