(I adore Randall and little Boo, and with inspiration from many fics and my friend, I've decided to try this idea out. This fic more or less, is going to be a large prologue by itself, and following directly after the events of this, is going to be the main story. This isn't really a redemption fic, but more or less a deeper insight on Randall's character and Boo's as well. It's going to be relatively short, only about three or four chapters. Enjoy~!)

Maria stood there on the sagging porch to the aged, muddy trailer. In one hand she held a large, leather suitcase stuffed to the brim with toys and clothes, and in the other arm she was attempting to restrain her excited three year old daughter as the little ball of energy took in all the new sights.

To Maria, the trailer, mud, and marshy wetlands was nothing short of revolting, but to a three year old such as Boo, it was merely a whole new, large world for her to explore, dirty or not.

"Edith, thank you so much for agreeing to take Mary—ah, Boo for me," Maria professed in gratitude. It was so hard finding a last minute babysitter for her little girl, but when her sister fell suddenly ill and her husband was away at work, this was her only option.

The red haired woman grinned, a yellow tooth poking out from under her lip. "Ain't no need to be thanking me, it's no trouble and we just adore the little bunion!" she crooned, reaching for the little toddler. Boo wrinkled her nose at the scent of pickles and onions on the southern woman's breath.

Maria flashed her daughter a wayward "hang in there kiddo" look, and gave her a good-bye kiss, forcing herself to ignore the all-too common, instant separation anxiety as Boo started to cry from in her aunt's arms.

"Now, now, no tears, little lady!" the woman chirped, nuzzling her large nose against the smaller one. "Yer mama's gonna be back soon, and for now, you get to hang with yer fun aunt and uncle and cousin!" She swerved toward the back deck where her son was, and gleefully called, "Bobby, tell yer father the baby's here!"

Banishment. In the monster world, it meant desolation, miles from any source of civilization and the closets they would possess. No way back. The monster was doomed to live within the human world for the rest of his days, without any form of escape. Unable to return home. Lonely. Never to meet another living, intelligent creature again.

But to Randall Boggs, banishment was met with a shovel to the face.

It had been a hell of a year out in the foreboding wilderness. Food had been scarce to come by, and in the swamp, there was only so much of the kind he could stomach. Berries had been poisonous (he found that out after an unpleasant bout of diarrhea and vomiting when he hastily swallowed several on only his second day here), and any other source of food had to be beaten a few times to kill it before he could eat it.

He shuddered at the memory. There was no more microwavable meals (where he didn't have to worry about the contents in them), no more frothy lattes, and not even some good old, healthy fruit. It had been difficult adapting; he looked like a mutated version of the human world's alligator, but he certainly didn't have the same instincts or diet they did (although he would admit, the idea of snapping off the limbs of the ones that beat him was an enjoyable idea).

For a year his diet had constantly alternated between different bugs (disgusting), to certain birds, and any rare moment he was able to find non-poisonous berries. Blending in was easy enough given how easily he could change his skin color and fade into his surroundings. It made catching food a simple task as well—once he was able to get over his squeamishness, that is.

Then the humans found him. He remembered scrambling away against thick bushes as the loud humans pursued him, slithering through mud- too scared to think about camouflage.

That ended great, he thought to himself. He was so tired...

Light suddenly poured in, blinding the lizard even through the blindfold. He heard as what appeared to be a door pulled up with a loud screeching sound, and suddenly, there were two voices.

"Well by golly, I didn't think it was really true!" a thick southern voice spoke in awe. The loud, rather obnoxious tone made Randall's head pound all the more. The figures began talking back and forth.

"Sure is—told ya, I was there while the thing was caught. Funny lookin' critter, ain't he?"

"What is he?"

"Don't know—some sort 'a gator. The boss thinks 'e just got mutated somehow. Probably all the beer cans ya throw away in the swamp!"

Raucous laughter filled the air, and suddenly the world suddenly shifted, giving a fierce jerk that sent the reptile rolling on his side. A hiss escaped as he slammed into cold, thick bars, fingers digging into the rotten wood of the floor to try to urge his body back into the meager inches of space he had on the other side of the cage. It was a small wriggle of his limbs at most. It was too dark, the blindfold over his eyes tight and itchy against his scales. Jaunty music played in the background as the wheels rolled to a stop, muddled and distorted and horrible to the lizard.

Who knew that humans had circuses? was his last thought before his head thudded against the floor, sending him back into unconsciousness.

Dressed in her cousin's old, tattered nightshirt that nearly reached her ankles, a young three year old girl carefully slid shut the doors to her uncle's trailer. She had learned a year ago that slamming doors (something young children so carelessly did) was never the best idea. It only alerted the adults that their little one was trying to skitter away, and it meant no freedom for her.

So Boo had learned how to close doors carefully, to keep from waking her aunt and uncle (as if anything could wake them anyway once they drank enough from their giant, brown bottles).

She tiptoed out into the cooler evening air, smiling at finally being on her own without pesky grownups near by to tell her where to go and where not to go.

The day hadn't been very fun from her. Her aunt and cousin talked so loudly, it was like they assumed she couldn't hear! And they both smelled, and not the nice kind of flower scents her mommy had. They served strange food too; everything was dug out of a can, even the meat. The worst part for her was they had no chocolate milk. They gave her tomato juice instead!

She scowled at the remembrance and blew a distasteful raspberry into the air as she climbed down the sagging porch and into the grass.

Once a safe distance from the trailer, she went from tiptoeing to a happy skip, her tiny feet padding against the grass, and soon the gravel, as she crossed from the trailer's property to a lot across from it.

"La-la-la-la-la!" she sang happily, hopping from one foot to the other as she neared a large mass she had no idea was the back of a cage. "La-la-la-la-flowers! Kitty! La-la-la!"

Randall stirred against the side of the cage, grumbling as he heard a sound. The night had began to fall, and the air was humid and hot. Not bad for a reptilian fellow like himself, but that was far from a perk in his book.

He finally managed to get that damn blindfold off, shifting eyes that fluttered, heavy with the drugs in his system as they roved the landscape for signs of... he wasn't sure. Where was he? From the sound of all of the voices and strange chirps and that wretched music that faded when the night came, it wasn't in the middle of nowhere. Beady eyes narrowed further, looking around. Trees. Lots of trees. Bushes.

Maybe it was in the middle of nowhere.

"Hmph," he huffed out, groggily rising to a near-crouch, limbs scuffling uselessly in the air as he tried to keep his balance. The tranquilizers were wearing off, thankfully. His claw tapped the side of the bar, and Randall winced at the resulting ping. Tough stuff. His head tilted to observe. Too narrow for him to squeeze through-

Suddenly, Randall's mind finally registered the loud, constant noises that rang behind him, growing steadily closer to his cage.

The reptile froze, fear and instinct making his camouflage react, scales shaping to the environment, shimmering in the air. He grunted as his body shifted between sight and invisibility, the drugs making him unable to hide. The sound was getting closer!

The purple monster twitched, as violent a move as he could make as he turned to see what the threat was...

And he found himself staring, face to face with the little girl who caused all of this mess.

Dark eyes narrowed. Sharp teeth bared in the dim light.

Boo heard something give an unholy hiss, and she instantly froze from where she was pattering along.

"You..."

The hiss was low and guttural, his frills rattling and flaring in reaction to seeing that horrible, bug-eyed THING once again.

It was dark and difficult to see; moonlight shone down on her, and glinted off the silver bars of the cage. She tilted her head at it. Was there a dog inside? Boo had only seen a dog a few times; her cousin's beagle, Monty. She remembered the furry pup peeing on the floor, and he was instantly ushered into a cage like this, only much smaller.

Big doggy? she wondered, trying to peek into the bars of the cage. She didn't know dogs could grow this big. It was only when she lightly wrapped her tiny hands around the bars did she see what was in the cage.

Sharp teeth, malicious emerald eyes glaring dangerously at her, in narrow little slits as the beast gave a low, deadly snarl.

It was him! It was the mean lizard that tried to hurt her, and her friend Kitty! It had been a year, but the incident was forever embedded into her memories.

To her parents, the way she constantly sat in front of her closet for the first few months had been a cause of concern. She'd been taken to many doctors, but none had found anything wrong with her. They simply told them that it was normal for children at this age to make up imaginary friends, especially when they had so little real ones to begin with. She had wanted to hit the doctor and her parents for saying that Kitty wasn't real, but there was nothing she could do to convince them.

Her parents had been told to humor the notion of her 'imaginary friend', and started referring to her as 'Boo' (as she so adamantly wanted to be named). That at least had been a small victory. She liked Boo more than Mary anyway.

The three year old gasped softly and backed up as if the bars were on fire. Her hands flew to her mouth, wide, frightened eyes peering at the creature before her...and what he had been reduced to.

Fear turned to confusion at the network of scars and marks on him. A few of them were dripping and looked awfully sore. 'Blued', she remembered her mother calling the drippy red stuff. She knew that blued hurt terribly, and he must be in pain. "Boo boos..." she murmured, but still kept quite a distance from the cage.

Randall stiffened further at hearing the thing talk, the voice making his head ache.

"Get outta here!" he snapped at the girl, though his throat was dry and the words cracked and sounded much weaker and frail than he ever meant them to. His tail gained a spark of energy from his anger, thrashing against the bars near her to frighten her away, the sound clanging and loud. "Get away!"

She yelped and stumbled back abruptly, sprawling onto her back in front of the cage. She scooted rapidly backwards on her rear, wincing as it chafed her skin as the night gown-t-shirt rode up past her back.

She climbed to her feet, trembling, and yet not moving from the spot she was standing in. The creature, the mean violet lizard continued to snarl at her, his fangs bared in rage and hate. He was bleeding, from the face even. Many parts of his multi-limbed body was either scarred or full of scabs. She glanced down at her elbow, where she remembered getting a fairly large boo boo on the driveway back home. It still had a scar, but it wasn't as big as his were.

"Boo-boo..." she repeated, looking with slight pity now more than anything, amidst the fear and the way she kept trembling How did he get so many? There weren't many places to fall in that cage. "Cage," she said, pointing to the bars, as if she was showing how many words she could say. "You got boo-boo?"

Randall's jowls curled into an even deeper snarl. Why didn't it just go away?!

"Yeah! Lots of boo-boos!" he mocked, tail slamming even harder into the bars, as if trying to swipe that look of pity off the child's face. "Lots and lots! Not from the cage!" Another slam against the bars, the ringing clashing in the air. "From you! All from you!" Another slam, and the pain was beginning to thrum in his tail as the drugs wore off, but he continued, growling with every thrash. "YOUR fault!"

Boo whimpered and continued to back up in fear, tears starting to brim in her eyes. He was scaring her, like he always did. She felt angry with herself for this. She wasn't supposed to be afraid of him anymore, but somehow, even as he lay there full of boo boos and in pain, he was still frightening.

Being three, she hardly understand everything he was saying, only managing to fathom a few things: 'your fault', 'boo-boos'...

Her lower lip trembled, tears continuing to spill in guilt. She didn't do this. She didn't mean to do this. She shuffled on her feet and looked down at a band-aid on her left knee. Her mother had put it on a week ago when she got a splinter. It didn't hurt anymore, so she tugged it off with a whimper, and offered the used, dirty thing to him.

"Want band-aid?"

Randall stared at the grimy, crumbled thing in her hand with revulsion, leaning back against the bars for more distance. She actually thought that he wanted something that had been on her disgusting, dirty human skin?!

"Go away," he murmured one last time, curling against the cage and settling his head in the middle, facing away from her.

And she did, or so it seemed. Everything fell silent save for the patter of her feet as she hurried off. So Randall thought and hoped it was the end of it.

But as fate and fortune was not on his side today, it was not to be.

She was back in only ten minutes, and this time, she had a bunch of things clumsily carried in her oversized shirt. One of them was a piece of bread, which she pushed through the bars. The other, a sweet smelling, fluffy morsel; a cupcake. "Hungry?" she asked quietly.

The monster's head rose slightly as he watched the girl push food towards him, the scent of bread and sweetness filling the cage. His jowls tightened, glaring at the wide eyes that watched him curiously. The bread and cupcake were ignored, tail shoving them to the other side of the bars. They splattered against it.

"What part of 'go away' do you not get?" he hissed, frills flaring again in irritation. "Beat it, shrimp!"

The girl blinked at him, undaunted by his poor attempts to shoo her away. She gazed with a frown at the splattered food. She babbled at him in a stern tone, as if trying to scold him. Randall merely rolled his tired eyes and stayed at the back of the cage.

Boo peered in through the bars at the silent creature, and looked over at a plate and bowl in the corner. The plate had a large, rather old slice of meat slabbed on it, and dripping onto the floor. It didn't look very clean, it wasn't like the yummy chicken and steak her Daddy made for her back home. It looked all...rotted.

Randall could tell by the squeaky breaths through the sliver of his bars that she was still there. He growled to himself, but decided the best tactic to get the little vermin to leave would be to just ignore her. Although an expert on how to traumatize them and their vulnerability, he didn't know much else about children, but figured if he stayed stiff as a board she'd eventually give up.

Exhaustion was heavy on him, the tranquilizers still lingering in his system and making sleep impossible to ignore. He was just about to drift off when he felt it: a soft, warm little touch by a curious little hand, right on the base of his tail.

Immediately, he froze rigid, and reared up just as fast, lunging at the bars with all the strength his exhausted body could muster, snapping at the air were her hand was as a warning.

This time the toddler did finally give a satisfying scream and jumped backward as the monster savagely clung to the bars, warding her off with a dangerous snarl. Boo inhaled a terrified, hiccuped sob and took off running as fast as chubby legs could carry her, until she was out of sight.

Sneering, the lizard slowly slid back down onto his belly into the darkness, and hoped that with the little rat gone, he'd finally get some sleep. And yet even as he slowly slipped into unconsciousness, a part of his brain was awake and rightfully assuming this wasn't the last he'd see of the shrimp.