Inside Out reImagined

Resignation

This must have been one of the worst days of Joy's life, and it was evident from the moment she woke up.

For one, she specifically remembered that she wanted to feel the pain of cold water throughout the night. Yet, while asleep, her body seemed to warm the water quite a bit, and as it stood, when she woke up, the water seemed only a handful of degrees colder than how she usually liked it.

For another thing, she had quite a bit more trouble getting hair away from her face than usual.

She could've sworn that she never had this problem before. Despite growing her hair out, usually, when she brushed it away, it would stay away from her face, allowing her to see the full brightness of the sun in the sky, among other things. Yet, for whatever reason, today was different, and the ugly, particulate strands kept interfering with her vision, as well as her desire to not have her face be wet.

Nevertheless, a work day was a work day, and she couldn't be caught slacking off by Disgust — or worse yet, Anger. Although she supposed Anger would probably be more than glad to hear that she was unavailable for the entire day...

Right. That didn't matter. Even if none of the other emotions needed Joy, Riley still needed Joy.

So, she stepped outside of the bathtub with a bit of a stumble, before diving straight for the hanger where her usual outfit hung. She ended up tripping, but in the moment, she also ended up bringing the hanger down.

Wasn't it funny that even at her worst, Joy continued to not just look for, but actually find silver linings?

She then, while still laying down on the floor of her room, grabbed the pants and put them on — a task that required quite a bit of turning in order to get them right. She then repeated the same process with the overcoat — only to notice that both of those started getting wet, both from her soaked body touching the inside and from her soaked hands touching the outside.

Luckily, with a little Imagination, this gaffe was trivial to fix. She just shook herself a bit, flopping like a fish taken out of the water, and somehow, every crevice of her became dry, even though it defied everything humans knew about the spread and evaporation of water.

However, nothing she did was able to manage to fix the "hair falling on her face" problem — not even when the hair in question was fully dry. That being said, as long as it didn't fully impair her vision, she could always work around it — say, by slightly tilting her head so she didn't miss anything on the Consciousness Screen... or on her coworkers.

Finally, she was ready to stand up, correct the slightly crooked smiley face badge on her overcoat, and then, stumble through the door and face another day with Riley Andersen.

When she did, Joy immediately noticed that she was, just like yesterday, the last one to the console. Disgust had already fully coordinated Riley's manner of dress, Fear had already made sure that Riley would not choke on any single bite of her breakfast, and Anger... Joy supposed, was fully focused on whatever his conspiracy entailed.

There was only one slight peculiarity: from afar, she could distinctly see that the console had five distinct sections, and expected five thought forms to operate it. Was Sadness still asleep or something?

Yet, as Joy stepped down to her own position at the console, she ended up realizing that Sadness wasn't there because she was relieved of duty... some time ago, and slapped her face, muffling her laughter of embarrassment.

Who knew that feeling bad throughout the night would lead her to making gaffes like that in the morning?

That being said, as she attempted to take her front and center seat, she noticed that Fear was still crashed in front of it.