Inside Out reImagined

Rewriting the Story

When Sadness woke up, she felt more ready to tackle the day than ever.

Even a quick glance through the window, which she could see as she opened her eyes, revealed that it was still an early morning, making for what, for the other emotions, would be a relatively normal night of sleep. Yet, throughout her tenure in Headquarters, Sadness always found herself wishing for more, and even taking every moment Riley got, Dream Duty notwithstanding, was still not enough to fully refresh her for her day.

But today was quite different. She didn't know if it was a thing with the bed itself, or with everything that had dawned upon her the day before, but she was absolutely ready to seize the moment, return to Headquarters by whatever means came to her first, and make things right.

Was this how Joy felt all the time? Could this mystical "motivation" force, if it were made to last, be useful in her job?

Then, she got up from the royal bed — and immediately noted quite a few peculiar details.

For one, she was wearing a night gown — which she never remembered putting on. Even if there was one provided by the castle, when she went to bed, she was just too tired to even think about putting on something extraneous like that. Of course, she still had some sort of modesty when she went to bed — otherwise, she would have had the energy to shoo Bing Bong and Zhou Shilan's Counterpart away as she was undressing — but this almost seemed like too much.

Yet, this was a "present" too good not to pass up. So, she took off the night gown — which happened to match her aesthetic, being light blue with a soft gray pattern — and put it in her purse, before putting on her usual hoodie and sweatpants.

For another thing, the arm, which acted as a pillow for Sadness to hug throughout her sleep, had changed quite a lot, becoming less emotion-like and more animal-like, with glowing particles having given their way to fur, and the hand looking more like a paw. In fact, now that she thought about it, the fur was marked with distinct striped patterns which she had only seen on Bing Bong before, and even the physique matched him pretty well. And of course, not only did the arm stop looking like Sadness's own left arm, it had also stopped mimicking its moves, becoming, for all intents and purposes, inert.

These sorts of changes, contrasting with Sadness's memory — and indeed, thanks to her getting a boost in her Imagination, her memory was better than ever — would have perplexed anybody else. Yet, this time, she knew the reason: these sorts of things were happening because of her innate Imagination powers, which she supposed she used in her sleep, while essentially knocked out cold.

Yet, the strange arm-pillow reminded her of one more thing: that before she took off for Headquarters, she would still need to take care of a few things — and the first order of business, of course, was to find Bing Bong, and then see if the arm-pillow could function as his actual arm.

Needless to say, the castle was expansive, and if she had started looking for Bing Bong, all by herself, she would immediately tire herself out, no matter how much "motivation" she got. Instead, she allowed herself to descend the stairs, before heading straight for the dining hall — where, she supposed, she would meet the others for the morning.

As she waited, though, the usual negativity that attacked her while alone just... wasn't there. Almost every possible negative outcome at Headquarters, like Joy resuming her routine as a meanie, she could just dismiss by invoking some sort of magic, like a power of love — or, perhaps more appropriately for her, a power of slowing down. Even if she didn't get to do much, she knew she could get the others to start respecting her.

Thus, no matter if it was her own positive attitude or if the waiting time was really that short, she didn't even realize how the Counterpart, being the second to wake up, greeted her. "Hey, Sadness! Is this... are you usually up this early?"