As the years went on, the Puppets tried their best to keep the studio up and running as best as they could, even though everything was kinda going to hell in a hand basket. They couldn't really do much since they couldn't move around easily. Mortimer, getting tired of crawling, gave Riley a task. Find a way to make traveling the studio easier. And, well, she did!
Hosts.
Her idea was that they could use puppeteers to move around. However, they didn't have any puppeteers. Until one day, it seemed someone stumbled in to their little studio. A test subject for Riley. She decided to test whether or not the whole "host" idea would work. So she tested. And tested. And tested. Until finally, she thought she had to give up. Until she found a certain book, left behind by Owen. A sort of spellbook. Inside, she found one for mind control, which could last until the victim passes. Since Mortimer was the most powerful (considering he was a magician in the show, though it wasn't talked about much), he was the one to perform the spell on the first host (and every host thereafter), and it worked perfectly! Now, they just needed more hosts. So, Mortimer sent out Riley to go find some good hosts, since she was the smartest, she was the most probable to know how to drive.
So, they began collecting more and more hosts, eventually getting a whole MEAT LOCKER full of them. However, the hosts kept dying, as they didn't know how to properly take care of their needs. Like with other things that needed research, poor, overworked Riley was in charge of this. After weeks of research, she still couldn't figure it out! She had tried everything. Food, water, food AND water, sleep, but no matter what, the host ALWAYS died within a week, or were too weak to walk around. Even with the help of her "closest friend" (*cough cough* her girlfriend, Kelly *cough*), she couldn't get it right. But Riley wasn't the only one getting frustrated. Mortimer was aswell. So, he decided to do the one thing that he thought would get her to concentrate better. He took away her beloved Kelly, manipulating and convincing her that Riley was dangerous, and that she shouldn't be around her. Riley obviously freaked out, as she was not only her only way of calming herself, but also she was helping her with this extremely difficult task, causing everything to be far harder for her. She began working harder than ever, not sleeping for days at a time to try to figure it out. The mixture of stress and lack of sleep began to take its affect on her mental state. She became more anxious, more easily angered (which was REALLY bad, considering she already had quite the temper), and the stress had began to make her scratch and dig her fingers into her wood, leaving lots of cuts and scrapes. But she kept pushing, sleeping even less, wanting to get this over with so she could just take a break and see her beloved once more.
Meanwhile, little did Riley know (she had a hunch, but she hoped it wasn't true), every time Riley failed and pissed off Mortimer, he'd take it out on Kelly, both verbally and physically, all the while telling her that Riley would do worse, so this is nothing, and that this was all because of Riley. Because of this, Kelly began fearing the woman that she once loved. Internally, Mortimer knew what he was doing was wrong, but he didn't know how to stop the evil and hatred inside of him from coming out. Eventually, to get it through Riley's head that she needed to hurry up, he gave her a "present". A small box, wrapped in a bow, with a card on top, reading "Since you obviously don't have the brain capacity to understand 'hurry up', here's a little reminder to CHIN up. Next will be her arm, so hurry up if you don't want me to cause her harm. -Mortimer". Inside the box.. was Kelly's bottom jaw, which had been ripped off by Mortimer himself. This is when Riley TRULY snapped. She didn't even care about the experiment anymore. She just wanted her Kelly back. But, in order to get her back, she had to figure out how to keep them alive. And.. she did! She had finally figured it out! She was overjoyed, quickly showing Mortimer her discoveries, and he was just as excited as she was! As a reward, he handed back over Kelly. However.. Kelly was now TERRIFIED of Riley, flinching away from her when she tried to embrace her. Riley soon realized.. she was too late. Her beloved was scared of her. She stormed back to her lab, not wanting them to see her cry. Mortimer felt bad, but.. he also didn't? He got such a sense of power from this all, he was blinded by it. He didn't think he was doing anything wrong. He loved this feeling of overwhelming power.
