Inside Out reImagined

The New Apartment

"Well, there we go! Good ole fourteenth floor," Riley's father spoke, looking at the high-rises of the residential district that he and his family had just arrived at.

Though the sky was white as a pearl, bringing many a green Mental Note to Riley's memory tubes, the rest of the landscape managed to surprise her emotions quite well. It was surprisingly well-kept, compared to what the emotions had known about China, and the ground level was also rather liveable, complete with both trees and shops taking the entirety of the first floors of various buildings. The only immediate problem was that Riley would need to read Chinese to understand what the shops were for; that could potentially have been solved by automatic translation tools, but at the moment, Riley's favorite Chinese tablet was still out of power.

"Well, welcome to China, I suppose..." Joy muttered, clearly out of her own element.

However, while she was still trying her earnest to keep the spirits up at least somewhat, the others had already gotten enough of a taste of it all to jump to conclusions, starting with Disgust. "We're supposed to live here? Like, this is our residence. Our life's core." they snidely commented, still coughing from the impression of pollution.

"You'll just have to deal with it." Anger remarked in return.

Sadness, too, had her own take on the matter. "I don't know... if you lay down in your bed, you might even forget it all..." she suggested.

"I'm sorry, what's that thought?" Disgust interrupted, not paying much respect to anything coming from the ball of blue. "Are you seeking industry dust? Even being outside is too much for me." They kept coughing throughout the entire sentence; judging by the narrowed eyes and shallow breaths, the others were not immune to the same sort of air that Riley was currently experiencing permeating Headquarters, as well.

Joy only knew one way in which this could be salvaged: a Daydream plugged in at just the right moment could always cheer Riley up, even in the darkest of situations. She thus stepped away from the console, looking at where Daydreams, taking the form of thin metal sheets, were usually stashed.

"I'm not sure... maybe this one..." Though Joy flipped through the Daydreams again and again, she could find nothing applicable to Riley's current situation — or that of the week or so to come, for that matter.

Instead of dealing with any Daydreams currently present in Headquarters, Joy came up with a solution, that, perfectly on brand with the ball of sunshine, used Imagination: a thin foam covering the bunch, which she then tossed over her head, in the general direction of the back of Headquarters. She then returned to the console, thinking about how to ensure the friction from the airport didn't return.

As she did, the entire environment got darker, a natural consequence of Riley and her parents entering one of the buildings. However, at the point, Anger felt the need to comment on something he saw right before Riley's entrance: "Why would someone living in a communal apartment like this need fences? Should someone put up fences surrounding the base of Headquarters right now?"

"Oh, shush." Joy responded, before exclaiming, as she threw herself at the console: "Alright, if it's our life, then I'm gonna live it to the fullest!"

"Race me to the top!" Riley suddenly flew forward, with her parents becoming but a distant Mental Note.

"Woah, not so fast! We still have to bring our stuff and..." Riley's mother called, but to no avail, as the teenage girl was already running, as fast as her legs took her. Taking flights of stairs upward was quite a different experience from running out in the open, and sometimes, she needed to hold onto the rail to not fly off into a wall, but eventually, she got the hang of it, barely being able to contain the excitement.