Joy had officially given up.
The past two days, which were really more like one as Joy had served Dream Duty, had shown her, time and time again, that China was a place where no happiness could be found — at least, none that wouldn't be immediately outweighed by something that some other emotion could find. Even getting rid of one of them didn't manage to do the trick in lessening the negativity, and trying to relieve everyone of duty was definitely a no-go, with numerous objections that either the other emotions or Riley herself would raise.
This was no longer about conserving one's energy for the future, she thought as she returned to her high chair — even though she would really rather collapse on the floor, instead. This was a permanent change to how Riley behaved from this point forward, unless a miracle brought the family back to America or something.
Fear was still trying to do something about the blocked website debacle — namely, recall memories of ads that Riley kept seeing while using the same video sharing website that she couldn't use now, all of which talked about these "VPN" things that could let you browse the web as though you were in a different country, and also helped you stay private or something. Yet, Joy was the one to stop him.
"No. Please don't." she weakly said.
"But we could still go to the website! It's still salvageable!" Fear wanted to insist.
"I said please don't," Joy repeated, letting basically every element of Imagination other than her own control her for once. "There's no point. Even if we do find a new funny video — and I'm sure there's loads — you will still find a way to reason your way out of this, and say: no, actually, it's not funny at all, it's disgusting or it's terrifying. And I am done trying to argue otherwise."
"No, it's okay. If the video is genuinely funny, we can laugh with you, and let you drive." Disgust pointed out.
"And then what? Riley just doesn't react because the console is broken on me? I think I can take a hint from Riley herself... ugh, what's happening to me..." Joy suddenly interrupted herself, as she felt a sudden pain in her stomach and bent over.
It was almost like Joy had felt hungry, even though emotions, as such, didn't really need to eat. Yet, it didn't take her long to realize that she was still, well, able to take a hint from Riley herself, and the reason why she felt hungry was because Riley felt hungry.
"Why didn't we eat at school? Why did we just storm out without touching our food at all?" Joy asked, mostly out loud to herself, as she looked across the Mental Notes to figure it out. None of them were all that visible from her vantage point, however, and she had to get off from her high chair — only to collapse right in front of it.
"That would be because you had a fight with Anger at the most inappropriate of places," Disgust reminded her.
"And I would've won, too, if it were not for that pesky Imagination thing that Joy likes to keep doing!" Anger pointed out.
Joy only weakly groaned. Anger and Disgust didn't even bother to look back, having gotten used to their lead emotion being reduced to a background voice; however, Fear did look back — and what he saw shocked him.
"Guys! I think Joy is really down with something! I'm going to help her right now!" he shouted out, leaving his console post.
"A sick monster is still a monster." Anger noted.
"Excuse me! You mean that a sick emotion is still an emotion! A lead emotion, might I remind you!" Disgust rebutted in disbelief over their leader being dismissed, just like that.
YOU ARE READING
Inside Out reImagined
FanfictionSmack dab in the middle of puberty, Riley Andersen often feels as though she can't control herself. To one's surprise, though, five emotions inside her mind think very much the same; they just can't pull their girl's strings like they used to. As lu...
