Inside Out reImagined

A Lonely Walk

As Riley was pacing home in the cold, unforgiving, possibly acidic Chinese rain, her mind's thought forms in charge had a lot to parse.

There was no denying it — the first impression was an absolute failure, and even though the emotions did get a chance to remedy it and start changing things for the better, they were still very much dealing with the aftershock. Not only was the outlook a lot more grim — why else would Joy push for just hoping for the best without a plan? — the inside had plenty of troubles of its own, which were seemingly just not there, even yesterday.

Yet, slowly but surely, new rules were starting to form in the mind.

Joy, for example, noted that the old form of leadership, partly mixing in commanding other emotions and doing a lot of legwork of her own, no longer worked — primarily because she could neither do legwork of her own anymore nor be all that listened to. Instead, she would have to be a subtle force, appropriately placed just behind the main string-pullers, guiding them with a word or two at most.

Anger, on the other hand, realized that simply opposing Joy, for no good reason than opposing Joy, was actually more harmful than helpful to Riley. He still had problems with Joy's conduct — how could he not, after perhaps the single most unquestionable truth of the mind ended up being questioned? — but he had just learned that any careless movements by him, especially at the console, could lead to absolute disaster on the outside, with outcomes ranging anywhere from undesirable to criminal.

That left Disgust and Fear, whose purpose was rather similar: to make sure that Riley never oversteps boundaries, with Fear primarily concerned about Riley's own boundaries, while Disgust was concerned with society's. Granted, the Chinese society still left a lot of question marks regarding exactly how much could be taken from Riley's American experience, but that could be figured out, especially since Riley could actually talk to schoolkids and teachers in English — even if their command of English wasn't the greatest.

With that much decided, and almost mutually agreed upon by the remaining emotions in Headquarters, they could start settling matters on the outside, especially as Riley needed to begin preparing for the real beginning of school — which, they believed, would come not next Monday, but the Monday after that.

Catching up with the Chineses (or, well, at least Mandarin, to start) was, of course, a top priority, and Fear was already jotting notes on his inseparable notepad as to what homework schedule was the most efficient. It was pretty easy to surmise that the rest of Riley's academic performance hinged on Mandarin knowledge, so he allowed himself not to worry about that for now.

Then, there was the social aspect of school. Even throughout all the doom and gloom — a rather weird sentiment across Headquarters, especially considering who the missing emotion was — there was hope for justice, exemplified by Justice Island and its main contributors, Joy and Anger. If only they actually worked together without resorting to fisticuffs and wrestling, that front could be settled, too.

That only left one avenue where the emotions' legwork would really come in handy, and could be done while Riley was pacing, kind of miserably, from school to home: what to actually make of the people who their girl had talked to so far — namely, both the teacher who may or may not be a vice-principal and the girl in the skull tee who may or may not be Bully Prime.

None of the emotions could believe that the name had already faded from Riley's mind without leaving even a single Mental Note about itself. After all, this only left space for derogatory nicknames, like "Bully Prime", that maybe shouldn't be establisdhed in the mind just yet. That being said, they supposed that forgetting the names of people Riley only met once was a common experience back in America, and the difficulties of learning not one, but multiple foreign languages at once only compounded it.