The days beneath Fear Co. came and went the same way for a while. Both reptiles woke up to the loud racket of doors rushing to and from the warehouse and ate whatever food was left over from the previous night. Randall immediately got to work on building the machine. Tani kept watch or went back to sleep. This went on far into the night until the last person finally walked out of the factory and they had the place to themselves, when they would then practice with the scare simulator.

It was an exhausting pattern. The lack of daylight in the warehouse only grew more and more suffocating. Tani had little to nothing to do to occupy the hours that Randall was busy. Randall barely caught any sleep himself. A few times, it even made them snap at each other before they remembered the context of why they were there to begin with and would take a second to themselves to breathe.

Randall tried especially hard to bite his tongue. He wanted to avoid repeating the past by upsetting her. Instead, he shifted that negative energy toward thoughts of Wazowski and Sullivan—of the time that was stolen thanks to their mistake, of their years of undeserved glory, of how they interfered with his plans and hurled him into the human world, and of how they were still causing him trouble. Once things turned around, he would make them pay. And maybe he'd teach that little brat how to fear him all over again while he was at it!

Stopping in the middle of tugging a bolt into place, he snarled as a new thought entered his head. Sullivan's actions with the kid had gone beyond sympathy: Sullivan had terrified countless children without ever batting an eye and then had to get attached to one of his. The hypocrisy aside, it was an outrageous thing for any monster, let alone a scarer, to do.

Their world had been powered by fear for centuries. It would not be on Sullivan's side. Not this time. And Randall wished he could be a fly on the wall when that walking throw-rug realized that.

Just before his mind could drag up any darker visions, Tani ran into view. Her sudden arrival caught him off-guard, but it was the panicked look on her face that made him drop everything and rush to see what had happened. Darting across the ground on all limbs, he popped back up by her side and took one of her hands in his own. Lately, any kind of physical contact seemed to calm her down.

"Someone is coming."

At first, he thought she meant that one of the factory's employees was wandering around the warehouse. Randall began to lead her back to the safety of the storeroom when she stopped him. She pulled him in the opposite direction, around rows of beams, pipes, and lifts until they reached an area where the floor sloped up toward a massive roller door. This was the warehouse's secondary exit, where all shipments of new doors were received. There was a muffled commotion as whoever was on the other side tried to get it open.

Randall pushed Tani over to a nearby maintenance ladder. As she started to climb out of view, he camouflaged himself with the surrounding metal and slithered up to the exit for a closer look. Johnny had assured him that nothing was scheduled to come to the warehouse for some time. What was going on?

With a harsh jerk, the door began to rise. While it did have a manual pulley in case of emergencies, it was otherwise far too large for most monsters to open themselves. Instead, it began to draw itself up automatically once it reached a certain height. Randall braced himself for the worst: Either he would have to retreat back to Tani and they would need to maneuver their way to a better hiding place without being seen or he would have to take down this abrupt and unwelcomed visitor.

He wasn't expecting Johnny to walk through.

"Bring it this way!" the horned monster yelled over his shoulder after looking around the wide space.

One by one, four large shipping crates were rolled down the slope—each one taller than Johnny himself. The beefy monsters that loaded them inside briskly did their task and then left no sooner than they had appeared. As Johnny watched them go, Randall snuck up behind him and revealed himself. The former jumped a little, but then brushed off his initial surprise with an amused chuckle and a shake of his head.

Randall motioned back at the crates, "What's all this?"

"What you asked for!" the other replied as he spread out his arms, "Every odd and end that was on your list."

Confused, Randall looked around until he spotted a crowbar attached to the wall a few meters away. He walked over to get it and then started prying open the lid to one of the crates-the wood creaking with a sickening snap. He had to scale up it to peer inside. Yes, he recognized them straight away: They were the parts he needed...

What he couldn't understand was how Johnny managed to get them this fast. Randall may have designed them, but these individual pieces needed to be sculpted elsewhere. They were a custom-order that needed to pass through different hands and quietly. He'd already wracked his brain trying to figure out if he could create an alternative to them with what he had to work with.

That was why he mentioned to Johnny that they might just have to steal the spare parts that were already available from when he was working with Waternoose. The issue there was that Randall didn't know where the arachnid-like monster was keeping them. If they had been tucked anywhere in Monsters Inc., then there was no reason for Waternoose to keep that fact from him. If they were hidden off-site, they were likely tucked away on some private property. From what Randall understood, his former employer's family didn't have any idea about the Extractor and they had gone completely silent since the scheme involving it had been revealed. Even if they had known about it, they clearly weren't going to let anyone sneak around their home to find anything that might incriminate them. Had Johnny sent someone to hunt for the parts in secret?

He was trying to figure out how the Fear Co. CEO would've managed to even narrow down a location to do just that when he heard a harsh scuttling behind him. A generation ago, it had been a racket that jarred thousands of kids out of their dreams and into a waking nightmare. Hardly three weeks ago, it had been a dull and familiar sound on the scare floor, only intimidating to the poor schmucks who worried that their days working at Monsters Inc. might be numbered. To Randall, who had spent countless nights lurking in the factory just like he was at Fear Co. now, the noise had always alerted him that it was none other than his co-conspirator checking in. It had always signaled that nothing was amiss.

Now, the noise sent a reluctant shiver down his spine. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Henry J. Waternoose standing at the exit.

He looked haggard, to put it lightly; almost as though the already old monster had aged several more years in the short time since Randall had last seen him. He wasn't wearing any prison clothes or his typical suit and bowtie, but a ruffled undershirt with the collar hung loose. Even still, he carried himself not like a criminal, but as someone with all the pride and authority that had been only recently stripped from him.

He had a different kind of charisma from Johnny. Most monsters that met Waternoose—including Randall himself, back in his rookie days—were often taken in by his warm demeanor. He could be a tough boss, but fair: Never holding back a critique, but always civil with those who worked under him. For every one scarer nervous to have their boss on the floor with them, there were many others who admired that he didn't keep himself as a distant figure in a cushy seat

Randall had thought the same—at least, until Waternoose started playing favorites. Until he personally took Sullivan under his wing when the furball had rose through the company ranks. Until the day he'd pulled Randall aside to talk to him privately about his engineering background and entrusted him to build the Scream Extractor. It was after that that his true colors began to show.

What people often forgot about the arachnid was that, before he was their boss, he was someone with a long legacy to uphold. He would do anything to keep it from fading. That and, at one point, he had been a scarer himself. Randall had gotten comfortable snapping back at the other monster from time to time in moments of frustration, but when it really came down to it,Waternoose wasn't someone to trifle with. In the very least, Randall knew that he could never beat him in a direct fight.

Waternoose was the first to speak, greeting him in an eerily steady voice, "Randall."

Unable to help himself, he couldn't quite return the false politeness, "You look rough."

"I've had better vacations. Overall, you look well though."

Waternoose raised his lips in a small grin, but his gaze was seething. It was obvious that he continued to blame the lizard for the child's escape, along with his eventual arrest as a result. Randall held his ground. His former employer looked furious enough to lunge over and strangle the life out of him, but he doubted he would do it with Johnny nearby, even if he could overpower the both of them. That didn't mean Randall wanted to hear him go into another, whiny tirade though, especially given everything he'd personally been through.

"Believe it or not, Boggs had to go through his own share of troubles before he came to me," Johnny eased himself between the two, as if to prevent either of them from giving into temptation and going for the other's throat. He looked around the area searchingly until his eyes drifted toward the beams above them. Then, he called out, "Hey, Tanith! Get down here, will you?"

Tani hesitated, but soon obliged. A strange uncertainty poured over Randall as he watched her descend—no, as Waternoose watched her curiosity, trying to understand who this sudden fourth-party was. If it were up to him, the two of them wouldn't even be in the same orbit right now, and a part of him grew a little upset with Johnny for allowing them to cross paths.

"What is he doing here?" Randall asked in a low, insistent voice.

Johnny shrugged him off, "We have to pull a rush job, Boggs. You admitted it yourself. So, I called in a favor and got Waternoose out on bail if he sided with us in-exchange."

"That's some favor…" his eyes narrowed. Given the weight of the crime, Johnny would've had to tug at some major strings to pull that off. "It's too early. Why take the risk?"

"Because word is that the board over at Monsters Inc. has finally decided to give Sullivan's plan a shot."

While not unexpected, the news was hard to take in. The board of directors may as well have announced that they were officially abandoning Waternoose. Of course, that went for Randall as well. Moreover, it was hard to say what they would need to test laugh power with. Randall expected that they wouldn't need much, not for an initial demonstration. That cut whatever time they had to work on the Scream Extractor at least by half. Public opinion was already against them: It would only get worse as more days passed. The last thing they needed was for the potential of laugh energy to leave any strong impression.

As Tani joined them, Johnny kept introductions short. He didn't go into much detail about her, but it was enough for Waternoose to piece together what had happened to Randall after they had last parted ways and for him to express his condolences to other reptile. He briefly thumped Randall on the back as if to congratulate him on their miracle of a reunion. Whether or not he was being genuine was hard to say.

It was almost sickening to watch him flip between the two personas: The ruthless, relentless businessman and the close, community figure who wanted only the best for monsterkind. Even not knowing him, Tani also seemed put off by the abrupt change of face. As the group continued to talk, Randall subtly made sure to keep her a step behind himself.

The fact that the veteran scarer was willing to act civil despite all that had happened was a good sign though. After all, they didn't have to like each other to work together—if anything, Randall preferred it that way, since it meant that they could draw some hard lines in the sand. Any decisions they made after teaming up would also be purely business, nothing more.