(0.1) Cycle
Joy could feel the suction. It was pulling her up, higher and higher, and then-
*Crack!*
The recall tube split at the base.
For a moment, she floated.
Then, she plunged.
The air rushed past her face.
She squinted her eyes as she burst out of the tube, trying to see. Her light pulsed as she flipped about.
As she glanced up out of the abyss, she caught Sadness's eyes.
The blackness closed in around her, and she screamed.
Riley couldn't feel anything.
To be quite honest, it felt rather exhilarating.
Only objective thoughts. Goals. Steps.
Plans.
Minnesota or bust.
Mom and Dad could stuff it.
The bus pulled onto the highway.
Sadness stared down into the darkness.
Bing Bong had come back at some point during the last five minutes, and was trying to talk to her.
"Sadness? I need you to look at me okay?"
There was no response.
"Look. Please?"
He grabbed her shoulder and turned her head towards him.
Her vacant eyes stared back into his.
"I know it's bad. It's… probably the worst, to be quite honest. But you can't focus on that right now."
A blink.
"You… you need to keep going. You need to find something. Staring down there isn't going to help Joy, and it definitely isn't going to help Riley."
"I…" Her voice petered off, then started up again. "I just make everything worse, don't I?"
"No! Don't think like that. You are important, or you wouldn't be here. I… I'm important too, in some way."
"But… what am I supposed to do? I…" She started crying, falling down onto her rear.
Bing Bong sat next to her. "What you need to do… is be yourself. You'll think of something. That's what I do."
Sadness looked up at him, and smiled slightly through her tears.
Anger slammed his hand down on the console. "This was a bad idea." He glared at said idea, glowing in its protective housing.
"Uh… no duh, Sherlock!" Disgust said, looking distastefully on the blackened console. "What are we supposed to do now?"
"Not panic unlike the stick over there." He spared a glance for Fear, who was currently sitting in a corner the room, muttering nonsense. "Joy isn't here to fix this mess. We can't fix this mess." Anger fizzled at the top. "I mean, fricking damnit, we can't do anything!"
"Wait… that's not true." Disgust looked pensive for a moment. "Can we do anything here?"
"No." He leveled his gaze at her.
"Then we just leave! Try and find Sadness and Joy! It's not like we have other duties anymore."
Anger rolled his eyes. "Fear already tried that, remember?"
"No. He tried to quit. There's nothing to quit anymore."
"What? But that makes no sense!"
"Of course it makes sense, nitwit!"
"Fine! Just fine! Let's leave then. Leave absolutely no one up here in case Riley recovers. Absolutely brilliant!"
"Well what do you suggest?"
Anger thought for a moment. "You go."
"What?"
"We need someone up here in case Riley recovers while you're out. I'm not leaving Fear here by himself, and I'm not sending just him and you off together."
"Well… are you sure?"
"You came up with the idea."
There was a brief lul, and the whispers of Fear grew slightly louder.
"I'll do it."
Riley's mom sat in her chair, unsure quite what to do. They had been in San Francisco less than two days, and she was already missing. Her phone sat to her right, having tried unsuccessfully to call Riley once again.
She placed her head in her hands.
Her husband patted her on the back.
"We'll find her. I promise."
Joy could almost feel the darkness as she fell into the Dump. It pushed around her, raging against her light. The light from above faded as she drew closer to the bottom.
She slammed against the orbs, and nearly went out right then and there. The force knocked the wind out of her lungs, and she gasped in before coughing. The air was thick, almost unnaturally so, and she had to purposefully draw in a breath. She stayed there for a few seconds, just trying to adjust to the weight.
She struggled to her feet, and her eyes immediately cast about. The light she gave off shimmered over the darkened spheres. She made to speak, but broke down coughing.
"No, no no no, no!" Her hands scrabbled around the grey orbs, looking for the purple cloth of a bag that contained Riley's core memories. She rubbed her hand against her forehead. "Come on, stay positive. We couldn't have fallen that far apart."
She stood, and looked about over the dunes of black. One hill over, something shimmered.
She made towards it as fast as she could.
Riley leaned on her window, staring out dispassionately as the trees and cliffs passed through her vision.
Speed. Agility.
She was ready to go.
The bus continued roaring down the highway.
Bing Bong walked next to Sadness as they traveled towards Imagination Land. "Do we have a plan?"
Sadness glanced back at him. "Well, I've only read a majority of the mind manuals, but I've read enough of them to get a major idea of the way Riley's mind works."
"Okay…"
"There's a lot of things in Riley's mind that go through Headquarters. Unfortunately, the Train of Thought carried most of the stuff between parts of Riley's mind."
"And… it fell into the dump."
"Yeah. There's another Train of Thought, but it only goes to Headquarters when it absolutely has to, and most deliveries it makes are between the Factual pieces of the Mind Space."
"Do you think it can take us?"
"No. They're probably busy enough as it is. And unless another recall tube happens to open up, we can't use one of those either."
"So what are we going to do?"
"To make a long story short?" Sadness looked up at him. "I'm going to do something really dangerous."
Anger stood next to the recall tube and looked at Disgust, who was, predictably, fussing over her clothes. "Can you just get in?"
"You know I can. Just let me-" one of the wrinkles in her skirt smoothed out, "-there."
"Just get in the tube."
Disgust came over and stood right over the pedestal. "Are you sure about this?"
Anger glared at her. "About as sure as I am about anything anymore."
Fear's whispering reached a crescendo as Anger slammed his foot down on the button.
