Disclaimer: All Disney works are the property of The Walt Disney Company. All other characters and settings are the property of their respective legal owners.
Author's note: Originally posted by Anon e Mouse Jr. on 2017-11-25. This is the second of five chapters posted today.
Disney/Kingdom Hearts Loops, Chapter Eighteen, part 2 of 5 - Mega Man: Inside Out
18.9 (Crisis): [Inside Out] / [Mega Man] / [Mythos Hackers]
Mega Man: Inside Out - Emotion Masters
The Slenderman would have smiled sinisterly at the cowering mind workers before him were he able. But he wasn't, so he settled for looming menacingly and wordlessly conveying that they'd better have what he'd requested.
Gulping, the mind workers motioned to the rest who'd come along on the Train of Thought and they started bringing in various figures and knickknacks.
"I would die for Riley!" a painfully stereotypical brooding pretty-boy declared as he was shoved in. Followed by a couple more identical to the first, some cloud people, a rainbow-maned unicorn, several odds and ends from the depths of the girl's mind, and a pink... something or other.
He wasted no time and pointed imperiously to the space under the tube that the girl's emotions had left by.
"What if we don't wanna?" one of the things piped up.
Slenderman sent out a very detailed impression of what would happen then, getting a satisfying terrified squeak from the speaker.
"I live for Riley, and I would die for Riley," a chorus replied from the 'boyfriends'. A more pathetic and boring bunch of joes he'd never experienced, he'd wager.
Slenderman informed them that, if they really wanted to help Riley, they would stop being stubborn. The girl was resisting him, and that would only cause her pain in the long run. If she was to be free of pain, she needed to be free of things that caused her pain. Which was all of them. She would be much more sedate, and safe, with her mind emptied of all... distractions...
'Sadness Woman' gazed down at the poor reporters she'd just reduced to tears with her 'Sad Raincloud' weapon. They should have been helping tell people what was wrong with the city and what they should do to stop it, not bawling like helpless children.
'I shouldn't have done that...' she thought despondently. 'They were just doing their job and I...'
She sniffed and let the synthetic tears of her current mechanical body flow freely down her face. It wasn't like anyone could tell with the rain her weapon made. Just another way in which she'd failed today.
'Failing is a part of life...'
Disgust, or 'Disgust Woman' she supposed, despised everything about the situation. She despised her lack of control over what she was doing, she despised how incredibly easy it was for her to turn people against each other–
"Get that gross thing away from me!" a young woman backhanded a small black box out of the hands of a kneeling young man, whose hopeful expression turned confused and hurt as the woman vented the emotions that 'Disgust Woman's' 'Blooming Disgust' weapon had invoked in her, and every other female in its radius, leaving the unaffected males to fruitlessly try and placate them. A short ways away on a playground, a similar scene played out except with only parents affected, leaving the children to wonder just what they'd done wrong.
–and she really despised how much Fear had been right about... everything.
She grimaced as the order came in to fire on another group. Another order she'd love to refuse, but couldn't. She had to obey it. Her body would move whether she resisted or not.
"Fine... Maybe I have to do this, but I'm doing it under protest..."
'Fear Man' trembled as he stalked around a corner, terrified that someone was going to realize what he'd done to the police with his 'Frantic Fright' weapon and arrest him for it. They'd lock him up and throw away the key! Or deport him! Or deport him and lock him up where he'd been deported to! Then he'd never be able to help Riley fix this!
"Deep breath... focus... remember what's important..." he told himself as his body continued moving according to Riley's unfathomable directions. He wanted to know why she was doing this... who was directing her in the absence of her emotions... what it was all about...
He'd been steadily getting less rational as things went on. He was Fear. Thinking up ways things could go wrong was his job. A job he'd failed at spectacularly. Because it wasn't just thinking about how they could go wrong, it was also coming up with ways to make wrong things go less wrong. To anticipate disasters and stop the damage they did. Or at least figure out how to end them before it got too bad.
Well, he'd failed to see this coming, despite the fact that it should have been obvious. Riley without emotions? Of course she'd be emotionless! Of course she'd be ripe for whatever decided to take advantage of her vulnerable state! Of course the whole thing was the worst idea in the history of worst ideas!
And the worstest of all worst parts was that he couldn't figure out a way to stop it! He and the others were every bit as helpless as Riley was right now! Where was Mega Man now?! Or a Mega Woman if it was that kind of Loop?! Where was the hero who stopped robot uprisings?!
Oh, that was right, he didn't exist because Riley had replaced the villain and taken over the lab where the hero was built!
Anger was furious at everything. He was furious with those two kids who'd built the machine that had extracted all of Riley's emotions like this, he was furious with the orders that had sent him out into the city to cause a riot, he was furious with the people who didn't know enough to get the hell out of his way before he turned them into raging berserkers with his 'Angry Flame' weapon, he was especially furious with the fact that his weapon went through walls and affected people indoors, and he was especially furious at himself for not being strong enough to stop any of it.
"WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?!"
Joy wanted nothing more in the world right than than to be able to stop smiling. Barring that, she'd accept no longer having the ability to force others to smile by shooting them.
"Hahahahahahaha!"
*Wham*
"STOP LAUGHING!"
The emotion she represented was supposed to be something wonderful. Something to allow people to revel in the glory and beauty of living! Not...
*Biff*
"I ca-ha-ha-ha-han't!"
*Pow*
...not something forced onto others. She'd learned that the hard way with Riley in baseline. Trying to force her to be happy in a situation that didn't call for it, trying to make her be happy to the exclusion of growing into a better person, had nearly ruined everything.
"STOP IT RIGHT NOW BEFORE I MAKE YOU!"
*Oof*
"I-hi-hi'm try-hi-i-hee-hee-hee-ng!"
She should be horrified at what she was being made to force on others right then. She should be furious, appalled, despondent. She should be anything but happy about this! If ever there was a situation in which there was nothing to be happy about, it was this one! But she was Joy. Without the others to ground her, to temper her, there wasn't anything else she could feel. There was nothing else she could do.
"THAT'S IT! I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU STOP LAUGHING IF IT KI–"
A 'Joyous Sunburst' flared brightly after it hit.
"–i-i-illll-ee-hee-hee-hee!" (19)
18.10 (Crisis): [Inside Out] / [Mega Man] / [Mythos Hackers]
Mega Man: Inside Out - Emotional Breakdown
Rock had found the police riot squad rather quickly. Avoiding getting run over by them as they fled the city was a fair bit trickier. Especially given that he'd been trying to use the Zen Buster to calm them, and they'd been in such a panic that they'd taken it as a threat.
Rock would have made the design less threatening, but... well, guns weren't designed the way they were to be threatening. They were designed that way because the design worked. That it worked in a way that was understandably threatening was just an inevitable side effect.
However, he'd gotten the police relatively calmed down, and followed reports of the one that had attacked them. Helping a few other panicked citizens had narrowed do–
"LOOK OUT!"
Rock turned and immediately performed a limbo maneuver to duck a bolt of purple energy before tracking its origin to a tall and thin purple robot with wide eyes and a long nose.
"Hey, Fe–"
Rock noticed his opponent's eyes flicking towards something behind him and sidestepped as the purple energy bolt whizzed past the spot he'd been in trailing a stiff breeze.
"–ar Man," Rock held his arms up in a way that was meant to be nonthreatening even as he tracked the bouncing projectile that had missed him twice. "I'm not hear t–"
Rock ducked his head to the side
"–o hurt you, I just want to tal–"
Another sidestep thanks to how the emotion master couldn't help but track his own projectile, not even taking an opportunity to fire anoth–
"–k..."
Rock froze up as the projectile abruptly reversed direction and hit him straight in the stomach, ricocheting into the ground before vanishing. A part of his mind idly noted the new projectile bouncing around and deduced that Fear Man had shot a second expressly to redirect the first.
The rest of it was locked up in terror the likes of which he'd felt only a few times before. Almost all of them at the hands of one man.
"Oh geez... oh geez..." Fear Man was hyperventilating, or at least doing a good impression. "THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!"
'No... it is happening,' Rock trembled, his mind racing with thoughts of how far in over his head he was. How helpless his tool-using body was in the face of something that could bring the city to its knees with a few well-placed shots. And... 'And someone has to stop it...'
Rock took a step forward... and a shot to the chest for his efforts, strengthening the terror he felt. He could practically hear the unhinged laughter that haunted his nightmares.
He took another step forwards, and another shot for his efforts.
"What are you doing?! You need to run! Save yourself!"
Another step. Another shot. Another surge of terror.
"And..."
Step.
"...leave..."
Shot.
"...you..."
Terror.
"...behind?"
Wide eyes widened even further in astonishment, and the next thing Rock knew, Fear Man was folded over his fist at his stomach and the index finger on Rock's other hand was forming a motorized screwdriver.
"...Not a chance..."
"Look, I'd rather not fight you, Disgust!" Roll declared as she blocked another of the emotion master's green energy orbs, letting the flower-shaped burst wash over her without effect and wondering yet again why that was.
"Well, duh!" Disgust Woman scoffed as she fired again. "I don't want to fight you either! But, like, I'm not exactly calling the shots here!"
"I noticed!" Roll dodged a third shot and grimaced as she heard a cat screech behind her. Moments later and about fifty cats were filing out of an alley with their noses in the air like they smelled something bad. "Seriously, what is up with your weapon?"
"Oh, you wanna know?" Disgust Woman drawled mockingly as the dance continued. "The moment one of these connects with you, then every girl in fifty feet becomes unable to stand anything. Like total barf city. Or every robot, or everyone under the age of ten maybe. Possibly every blonde. I don't know, it's, like, stupidly random sometimes."
Roll blinked as Disgust Woman turned her arm cannon on herself. "Let me guess, Riley just realized that the two of us have a lot in common right now."
"Duh," Disgust Woman rolled her eyes. "I'd apologize, but being sorry's kind of not my thing."
Roll made a split decision and decided to rush her opponent as she fired on herself, preparing for the feelings of disgust to return and override her emotional processor again. She was so prepared for it to happen that she nearly missed the opportunity to take a swing at her opponent when it didn't.
A moment later, and Disgust Woman was on the ground with her arms bound behind her while Roll prepared to access and remove her IC chip.
"Whaddya know? Being green is good for something."
'I still can't believe you managed that!' Fear's mental voice buzzed like a post-survival adrenaline rush. 'That should have been pure stark raving paralyzing terror!'
"If that was all it took to stop me, my Loops would be a lot shorter on average," Rock muttered as he looked around what had to be the poorest, dirtiest, most depressing corner of Arcadia.
As well as the spot that the string of sadness-inducing freak weather phenom had led straight to. All around, Rock could hear people weeping and wailing about anything and everything. He'd stopped using the Zen Buster on this group after spotting someone weeping over a broken store window and realizing it was an opportunistic rioter caught up in the emotional chaos and judged that these people could be left to the police and the spare handheld Zen Busters Rock had loaned them. (20)
Up ahead, walking at the most despondently slow pace possible, was the short dumpy Sadness Woman, complete with street-wide raincloud over her head that rained the blue energy that had turned so many people into emotional wrecks.
As Rock watched, the raincloud subsided, and almost immediately, Sadness Woman fired a shimmering blue orb over her head that burst into another with a mild roll of thunder.
"Oh... hi..." the emotion master waved half-heartedly when she saw Rock.
"Um... hi?" Rock greeted back in confusion. "Er... could you maybe turn the cloud off for a bit and come with me? The peo–"
"I know, I know," Sadness woman cut him off with a dejected expression, "it's my fault."
"Uh... no it's not," Rock approached as nonthreateningly as he could, trying to see if he could talk Sadness Woman down.
"Don't come any closer!" Sadness Woman cautioned when Rock was a step away from the rain, only for one of her warning hands to convert to a buster and fire a blue orb past Rock's head that formed a raincloud directly behind him. "I..."
"It's fine, I was kind of expecting that," Rock smiled calmly.
"Oh..."
'I wish I could help,' Fear's helpless shrug was evident in his tone.
"Just remind me of what the cost for losing is," Rock whispered as he stepped forwards into the rain. Fear's response was drowned out as a tidal wave of sorrow crashed down upon Rock. Every failure. Every life lost in Wily's wars. Every life he'd been forced to take to end those wars. Every robot who chose deactivation instead of continued existence. The weight of such things was more crushing than the pressure of the deepest oceans.
"I... I'm sorry..." Sadness Woman wept, but made no move to stop her cloud.
'I... I... um...' Fear's voice sounded frantic. 'I... I think some of those people we passed sounded suicidal?'
Rock felt his systems jolt from that, imagined the crushing sorrow such people's families would feel if they followed through, and stepped forwards. The rain abated. Rock decided to use the opening to fire the Frantic Fright weapon at Sadness Woman. She didn't even try to dodge it, and the bolt ricocheted off into a building wall and then into the air.
Sadness Woman just looked at him apologetically, raising her buster arm straight up. "Sorry. I'm only really afraid of being crushed under the weight of life's problems. And hurting Riley. And that's kind of already happened. And it's sad."
A moment later, and the sadness-inducing rain had started again, bringing a fresh wave of crushing sorrow with it.
'And... and even if they wouldn't do it themselves, I don't think any of those people are in a shape to run if something dangerous happens... Like a collapsing building... or a stampede of rabid weasels...'
"Why... why are you–" Sadness Woman's question was cut off as she fired a rain-making bolt directly into Rock's chest, only for the tool-using robot to stride straight through the cloud that formed around him, walk up to Sadness Woman, and envelop her in a hug. "How can you stand under the weight of life's problems like that?"
"Because," Rock told her, synthetic tears flowing freely as he used the hug to begin the work to remove the emotion master's IC chip, "I know what it will cost everyone else if I don't."
'–and why are you using a broom of all things? It's like, the uncoolest of uncool weapons,' Disgust continued her rambling as Roll trekked on through the city, studiously ignoring the emotion.
She'd been making gratuitous use of the Zen Buster since arriving at the edge of the riot-heavy part of the city and even with the way her brother designed the pacifying weapon to have crazy energy efficiency, and her resorting to simply knocking a few people unconscious with her broom instead, it was nearly empty. Even with the addition of the police with hand-held Zen Busters of their own, there didn't seem to be any real dent in the number of berserk rioters. She needed to find the sourc–
"–DEMAND A RECOUNT!"
'Ugh, lovely... I always wanted to see Anger with less restraint. Not.'
Roll ignored the comment and shot forwards before a flaming red energy ball impacted where she'd been standing and passed straight through the street without leaving so much as a scorch mark.
The short and stocky Anger Man noticed her charge and turned to fire at her again, only for Roll to pirouette around the shot and into a spinning strike that caught Anger Man under the chin, lifted him up off the ground, and knocked him back twenty feet.
'Whoa.'
"Bringing in the big guns, huh?" Anger Man grinned as he stood back up and took aim. "Alright! Let's do this!"
Roll dodged to the side and let the blast pass her by as she reformed her arm for the 'Blooming Disgust' weapon she'd gotten from Disgust Woman. No way was she going to try blocking that.
"Come on! Bring it!"
"Consider it brought!" Roll yelled back as she fired. The glowing green orb hit Anger Man and burst into a large flower shape.
"Urgh..." Anger Man grunted and clutched his chest where the shot had hit. And then he dropped to the ground and started banging his head against the pavement. "STUPID STUPID STUPID! I HAVEN'T LEARNED ANYTHING!"
'I could have told you that,' Disgust snarked.
Roll ignored the commentary as she raced to her opponent in a panic. "Stop! If you do that you could damage your IC chip! The–"
The moment Roll grabbed Anger Man's shoulder, the short red emotion master gave a howl of incoherent rage and blasted her point blank with his weapon. Roll froze for a moment in surprise before her vision went as red as her opponent.
The blow from her broom this time knocked Anger Man back fifty feet.
'Hey, dial it back a bit, will y–'
"OH SHUT UP!" Roll yelled in fury as she charged Anger Man.
"RRRRAAAAHHHHH!"
The two met head on, trading physical blows with abandon, but Roll's superior reach proved too much of an advantage to overcome and in a few minutes, Anger Man was down. A furious Roll stood over him, broom held high with the bare end poised to impale her opponent as if it were a spear.
'Look, I'm not a big fan of Anger in the first place–'
Roll's servos tensed and adjusted her aim for her opponent's head.
'–but we KIND OF NEED HIM ALIVE!'
And she brought it down with a crunch of metal.
Rock was going to be sick, despite being physically incapable of it. He'd honestly left Joy Woman for last on the assumption that her power would be the least destructive. Oh how wrong that was.
'Why would someone jump off a building like that?!' Fear wondered in total incomprehension as Rock caught the person just barely in time to make the fall non-lethal.
"Whee!" the young man cheered before Rock set him down. "I'm going to go fly some mo–"
Rock watched in sympathetic horror as the Zen Buster removed the man's good cheer and the reality of what he'd just done hit. The man then proceeded to be sick all over the sidewalk. Rock patted the man on his back and proceeded on his way. It was hardly the worst thing that someone had tried under Joy Woman's influence. Rock had stopped counting the number of car wrecks he'd passed, including several emergency vehicles. Not to mention the vast array of people laughing while trying to walk with severe injuries. His first aid kit array had gotten more use this afternoon than in the last twelve Loops combined. So far, the prize for most disturbing sight had been a pair of paramedics street-surfing on a rolling stretcher, with the injured man strapped to it laughing the whole way until Rock brought them to their senses.
'I feel sorry for Joy...' Sadness sighed. 'She hates hurting people.'
Rock could relate, but at the rate he was going, he doubted his ability to catch up with her. Unless she was waiting around in one spot, all the time he was using to help her victims would–
"Let's be happy people!" came from a short ways away, followed by a barely visible flash of yellow light. Rock immediately ran towards it.
A quick check, a shot from the Zen Buster, and Joy Woman's latest victim was wasting no time sticking around.
"Yay! More friends to play with!"
Rock turned to Joy Woman and immediately did a double-take. The yellow emotion master looked... unhinged. Her face was frozen in a wide smile, but a smile that gave off the feel of its owner wanting to make any other expression, but unable to remember how.
'Look out!'
Rock's inattention was enough for Joy Woman to get off a shot, but he still managed to backstep from it enough to not take a direct hit. But not enough to clear the blast radius as the yellow energy shot burst into a blinding flare of light.
"He..." Rock tried to fight the feeling of mirth that infused him, but it was hard. Especially since this kind of feeling was something he actively sought many other times. "Hehehehe..."
"See? Isn't it better to be happy?" Joy Woman asked like she was desperately seeking someone to disagree with her. "You can forget everything when you're happy! Like how dangerous stuff is! Or that the other guy was just trying to kill you! Or that you're covered in sewage! Or that your house just burned down! None of it matters when you're happy!"
'Joy...' Fear gulped. 'Joy's gone psycho...'
"Hey, I know!" Joy Woman changed topics suddenly. "Let's play a game!"
"Okay!" Rock agreed with a grin before he could really think about it. He liked games! Games were fun!
'You need to fight her!' Sadness reminded him.
"How about boxing?" Rock smiled, what was left of his reason latching onto the advice and taking a stance.
"Okay!" Joy Woman agreed and mirrored him.
'Hey, thanks for aiming for the neck at the last minute,' Anger told Roll after she'd finished storing his IC chip in her arm.
'Yeah, you only scared a decade off my life there,' Disgust added.
'Sounds like an improvement to me.'
"You're welcome," Roll muttered as the two emotions began bickering back and forth.
Rock regulated his breathing as his emotional processor recalibrated. He wasn't entirely sure which of them had suggested shooting themselves halfway through the boxing match, but opportunity to self-target with the Zen Buster had snapped him out of it.
'Okay,' Fear began, 'now we just need to–'
"Aww... you're not happy anymore," Joy Woman smiled. "Don't worry, I can fix that!"
Rock dove hard to the side to clear the blast area, took aim with the Frantic Fright, and fired.
"Nice shot!" Joy cheered upon being struck, the shot bouncing off into a nearby alley. "But I'm afraid it doesn't work!"
'...Does she actually mean that literally?' Fear wondered as a dog promptly ran out of the alley being chased by a cat.
'She needs to be sad,' Sadness realized.
"Come on!" Joy Woman declared as she opened fire repeatedly, Rock dodging the multitude of shots with wide dives to clear the blast radius. "Be happy! Like me! I've never been happier! And that's saying something! Joy is all! It's supreme! The Alpha! The Omega! Several other letters! It's–"
Rock stopped dodging to fire back with the Sad Raincloud, the sadness inducing weapon bursting over Joy Woman's head even as Rock took her weapon to the chest.
"–It's not like it helps you survive... like Fear..." Joy Woman's manic grin slipped as pure sorrow rained down on her.
Rock snorted in laughter despite himself, and forced his feet to take steps towards the rain. Because this wasn't funny.
"Or be healthy, like Disgust... Or get what you want, like Anger... Or connect with others, like Sadness."
Joy Woman's expression fell further and further as Rock made it to the raincloud, and his false humor washed away in the downpour of sadness.
Joy Woman's buster raised to fire on the raincloud above her, only to let out such a pathetic shot that it could have been mistaken for a drunk firefly.
"All Joy does is help you be happy," Joy Woman sniffed morosely, letting her arm fall to her side. "It just... makes more of itself. It's kind of stupid, really... and redundant... It's like... There's no point to it at all!"
'Joy...'
"Everyone always calls the other four the 'negative' emotions, like there's something wrong with them. Like they're bad or something. And I bought into it. Because that made me the 'good' emotion, right? But... but all the others have super-important things that make them super-good. Fear cuts down on injuries, Disgust looks out for your health, Anger seeks fairness and points out problems, and Sadness is like the most important of all because Sadness connects you with others. What does Joy do? Why, Joy leaps straight into danger without looking, dives headfirst into filth without a care, lets problems pile up until they come crashing down, and couldn't care less about anyone other than herself. About anything other than being in charge because she thinks she's the best when she's really the worst."
"That's not true, Joy helps us appreciate the good times," Rock told her, enveloping the emotion master in a hug.
"Yeah, Joy helps you be happy... What did being happy ever get anyone but more happy? More happy and a destroyed life. Because that's what I do. I destroy lives. I nearly destroyed Riley's life trying to make her happy. Because none of the others are bad emotions. I'm the bad emotion."
'...'
Rock didn't know how to respond to that. He really didn't. Not right then. So he just went to work removing Joy Woman's IC chip.
The mind workers shivered as they patrolled the shelves of long-term memory. That... thing... in headquarters wasn't supposed to be there. But it was. And it was making them do things for it. Things that would hurt Riley. Things that they couldn't find the courage to not do.
Things like stripping everything out of Imagination Land and Dream Studios to be sent... outside.
Things like breaking into the subconscious so the same could be done for everything locked up in there.
Many mind workers were still working on those...
And now... now they were supposed to send every single memory down into the dump to be forgotten. Every. Last. One.
"Okay..." the head mind worker had told them. "Start... Start with the faded memories... The ones most degraded already... Priority on anything unimportant... Work your way up to redundant memories and cloudy ones..."
"Um..." someone had thought to question the complex orders. "Didn't... he... say to... to... get rid of all of them?"
"Yes... it did... But... we still do it our way... Riley still needs a lot of those memories for as long as we can let her have them... So... we do this by the book... Slowly... Take... Take as much time as you can get away with..."
18.11 (Crisis): [Inside Out] / [Mega Man] / [Mythos Hackers]
Mega Man: Inside Out - Castle Riley
"Joy had something of a breakdown," was one of the first things out of Rock's mouth when he and Roll met back up.
'Oh, there's a shocker,' Disgust sounded in Roll's head.
'Yeah, Psycho Joy all over again,' Anger agreed.
"Disgust and Anger don't seem very sympathetic," Roll sighed.
'More like vindicated,' Disgust insisted.
'Or vindictive,' Anger growled.
'Duh, doofus, they're like the same word or something,' Disgust's sneer was evident. 'Gaw, look in a dictionary sometime.'
"You want to put them all back together before I try to strangle these two?" Roll asked.
"I think Sadness wants them to apologize first," Rock told her.
'Yeah, that's gonna happen.'
Rock and Roll had thought they were prepared for whatever defenses had been added to Light Labs since that morning. They were nothing of the sort.
The sight of what seemed like bits and pieces of a fairy castle, a cookie (or possibly graham cracker) structure, clouds, and a card house stuck together randomly with a massive roller coaster like Phineas and Ferb liked to build threading in and out of almost every conceivable opening brought them to a stunned halt even before the fact that it was several times the size of the Lab they'd left was taken into account. It was so far removed from their expectations that the fact that there was a few hundred biker robots; complete with appropriate attire, helmets, and motorcycles; between them and the lab took almost a minute to register.
'Uh-oh...' Joy gulped at the sight of hundreds of robot bikers between the Light twins and Light Labs.
'What?' Sadness asked.
'You guys know that imaginary boyfriend-making machine you saw in the movie?' Joy supplied hesitantly. 'The one I set for a really big 'all 9s' number of copies for a hare-brained scheme to get back to headquarters in baseline?'
'Yeah...?' Fear replied with palpable nervousness.
'I... may have forgotten to turn it off first...'
'Oh dear...'
"Was the guy's name Joe?" Rock asked out loud. (21)
'I dunno... maybe?'
As one, the hundreds of mechanical no-longer-imaginary boyfriends possibly named 'Joe' turned to glare at Rock and Roll as they revved their bikes.
"FOR RILEY!"
Mrs. Andersen bolted for the door when the bell rang, hoping against hope that whoever it was had come with news about Riley. Of course, when she opened the door, she saw something very, very different.
*Mrs. Andersen's Headquarters*
"...oh god, is that what I think it is?"
"Fear... call for help," Mrs. Andersen's Sadness ordered shakily.
"Y-yes..."
*The Real World*
"*SHRIIEEK!*"
*Mr. Andersen's Headquarters*
"That's the wife!" Mr. Andersen's Fear recognized the sound immediately.
"Our damsel is in distress!" his Sadness declared.
"We're coming honey!" the man's Anger took action.
*The Real World*
"Jill!" Mr. Andersen bolted towards the noise immediately, Dr. Light right behind him, only to draw up short when his wife dove behind him in fright and he saw just what he was up against.
They looked like the shambling dead straight out of a zombie apocalypse film, save for the fact that the decaying skin looked like tattered latex and the flesh and bones that were exposed were clearly metal. They were zombie robots. There were also quite a few of them forcing their way into the entry hall through the open front door.
"Who are you?!" Mr. Andersen demanded. "What do you want?!"
"I can tell you that," a biker boy said as he pushed his way to the front of the zombie robot horde. "Riley's esteemed mother and father, we are here to take you to your daughter."
"Taaake yoouu tooo Riiilleeyy..." several zombots groaned in agreement.
*Mrs. Andersen's Headquarters*
"What?"
*Mr. Andersen's Headquarters*
"What?"
*The Real World*
Mr. Andersen came up short. That wasn't what he'd been expecting.
"Riley?" his wife came out from behind him. "Where is she? What have you done to our daughter!"
"Not a hair has been harmed on her gorgeous head, but–"
"And just what does that me–"
"Ahem," Dr. Light interrupted, drawing the Andersens' attention and pointedly drawing his gaze across the superior numbers of the zombie robots behind the biker boy. "Far be it from me to stop a fellow parent's protective instincts, but it occurs to me that our best option right now is to go quietly."
The Andersens exchanged glances and wordlessly admitted that the man had a point.
"Very well..."
"An excellent choice, sir," the biker said. "And I swear to you, on my life, no harm shall come to you on your journey. I would die before I let that happen. I do this for Riley. Everything I do is for Riley."
"Er... okay?" Mr. Andersen replied in confusion before allowing the biker boy to lead them and the zombots out of the house.
"Is... is that a giant vacuum cleaner?" Dr. Light wondered as the robo-zombies marched all three adults out of the house towards their transportation.
"It... it looks like the one my mom uses..." Mrs. Andersen blinked in astonishment.
'We! Did! Not! Die!' Fear cheered as Rock and Roll touched down in front of a large gate. 'WOO!'
'I have to say, I think that's the first time I've ever seen someone hotwire a unicorn,' Joy added.
"We've had some experience with equine-model circuitry," Rock replied.
"There's an understatement," Roll agreed. "Too bad Rainbow Unicorn didn't make it past the Hockey Z9 rink."
She paused and pinched her nose.
"Yes, the lab is bigger on the inside than the outside right now. Stop arguing about it!"
"You want to hand them over to me for safekeeping?"
'I don't want them to be mean to Joy...' Sadness protested.
'Sadness, I told you, it's fine! I'm good now that I'm around you guys again, and I'll be better when we get the whole team back! We all will! Anger and Disgust included!'
"You have no idea," Roll sighed. "Let's talk about it again after we deal with whatever's behind this door."
'Wait, what?' Fear started. 'Shouldn't Riley be behind that door?'
"Not at all," Roll spoke up, answering Disgust and Anger before Rock could say anything.
"Yeah, we're probably only halfway through right now," Rock agreed, running a hand through his hair, "if that."
'Then shouldn't we try and find a safer way then? Something that doesn't involve possible pain and death?'
Rock and Roll ignored their mental passengers as they stepped up to the gate, waited for it to ratchet upwards, and walked through.
The ground beneath them started moving forwards, towards a branching hallway.
'I do. Not. Like this!' Fear wailed.
"Do you want to take the left or the right?" Roll asked.
"How about–" Rock's reply was cut off as a wall suddenly slammed down between him and his sister, cutting them off from each other.
'Uh-oh...'
'I knew it!'
'DAMNIT!'
'Well, doesn't that just figure?'
Roll stared at the wall that had sprung up between her and her brother while the moving floor under her feet carried her down the right passageway and curved away from her brother.
'We're trapped over here! Trapped!' Anger railed. 'THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!'
'It really is, you know. If you'd just stayed together, none of this wo–'
"Will you just SHUT UP ALREADY?!" Roll yelled. "We are doing everything we can to save Riley and you ARE NOT HELPING!"
'If you're waiting for an apology, you'd best get over it,' Anger huffed.
'Yeah, that's Sadness's department and she's not here,' Disgust sniffed. 'We're what you're stuck with.'
"Right now you two are as bad as any psychosis Joy's ever possessed," Roll snarled as a new gate came into view.
'Hey!' Anger shot back. 'That's hitting belo–'
"I swear, the moment Rock and I meet up again, I am forking you two o..." Roll's fury trailed off as something registered on her auditory sensors.
'You're going to what, exactly?' Disgust demanded.
"Quiet," Roll told them and turned up sensitivity. "Is that... 'Happy Birthday'?"
'Sounds more like a funeral dirge to me,' Disgust huffed.
"No," Roll insisted, despite agreeing that the slow pace was much more somber, and creepier, than 'Happy Birthday' had any right to be. "It's definitely–"
The gate ratcheted up and Roll's words died in her throat as she saw the huge room decked out for a birthday party. With tattered and worn decorations, dim lighting, oversized furniture, and a giant cake that her olfactory sensors told her had probably gone stale a long time ago. Where the hell had all this come from?
'Ew...' Disgust sniffed at the sight.
Roll took a few steps into the room and the gate slammed behind her, echoing loudly.
Then another impact echoed around the room, and another, and another, and another. The impacts getting closer, like giant footsteps.
And then a massive three-story clown appeared out of the shadows, grinning widely at her and hefting an equally oversized mallet.
"WHO'S THE BIRTHDAY GIRL?!"
Rock stared around the twisted fantastical room, listening to a slow, warped song play that he didn't recognize.
*Doo...*
A sound like a voice drifted up from a far corner and Rock advanced cautiously to investigate.
*doo...doo...*
'I vote we find the exit and get the heck out of here as fast as possible,' Fear declared. 'Who's with me?'
*doo...doo...*
"I don't wanna..." a voice registered to Rock's auditory sensors, coming from what looked like a large pink blob with a brown cloth draped over it stuck in the corner.
*doo...doo...*
'I know that tune...' Joy puzzled. 'I swear I do.'
'Me too...' Sadness agreed.
*ding... dong...*
"Don't... don't make me..."
*ding... dong...*
"Is someone there?" Rock called out, and the pink blob shuddered, hunching in on itself. To Rock's eyes, the blob looked kind of like... cotton candy?
'Oh god... it's...'
'It's Bing-Bong...'
"Who's Bing-Bong?" Rock asked.
"You... you know who I am?" the mystery voice asked, the blob of cotton candy stiffening.
'He's... he's Riley's imaginary friend...' Sadness explained.
'Part cotton candy, part cat, part elephant, and part dolphin,' Joy added as the blob turned around and Rock got a good look at the front of it.
"And apparently, part Devil Series," (22) he added in a whisper. He was going to have a talk with his dad later in the Loop about securing certain experiments better.
'And usually a lot smaller!' Fear added.
The creature looked like a Pink Devil made of cotton candy, with striped legs, a fluffed cat tail that popped out from under him as he stood up, a brown hobo-coat and gloves (complete with rainbow flower on the lapel), and a large elephant trunk under its one huge sad eye (sitting in the middle of what would normally be a torso) that hung over a huge frowning mouth.
"Oh no..." Bing Bong trembled upon seeing Rock, despite towering over him like most Devil Series robots. "You... you gotta get out of here little boy... Before I start crying... I... I don't... I don't wanna cry..."
'But... Bing Bong just cries candy...' Joy wondered at the state of the giant imaginary friend.
"A-huh..." the giant Bing-Bong Devil choked back a sob, and Rock's eyes widened as he correlated 'crying candy' and his opponent's aversion to doing so with what the optic control unit that was a Devil Core usually fired from its 'eye' and started moving.
"A-hwaaah!"
Rock dove and rolled as a giant peppermint impacted where he'd just been standing with the force of a cannonball.
The Mind Reader was such a fascinating paper. It was constantly updating with news about Riley's life and events in it, declaring the 'monster' that had taken control of her mind world to be an abomination beyond compare. A cruel and unusual beast in his torment of the young girl, making her watch the news reports of the horrors her unleashed emotions had wreaked on the city. A foul and unfeeling villain who would dare to strip such a lovely girl of her feelings and thoughts. Declared in a mind-wide popularity poll to have a -152% approval rating. (23)
Honestly, he hadn't thought it would be that high (24). He'd have to step things up a bit. Crush some of that passive resistance that the girl was putting up against him. As amusing as the little mind-paper was, it should have been full of self-recriminations at this point.
Slenderman idly caressed one of the glowing memory orbs set into the tiered display he was casually leaning against and allowed himself a sense of satisfaction as one of those islands in the distance rumbled ominously as his touch left a streak of black on the glowing memory. The black streak was swiftly swallowed up by the orb's light the moment he stopped touching it, but it no longer frustrated him. He knew what he needed to clear that particular hurdle. He just had to wa–
"TripleDent Gum, will make you smile!"
Slenderman's faceless head looked up in puzzlement at the soft yellow memory orb that had just dropped into the middle of the darkened, drab Headquarters unbidden and begun playing.
"TripleDent Gum, it lasts a while!"
He stood up, dropping the Mind Reader absently and stepping on it to approach what was now a much more interesting sight.
"TripleDent Gum, will help you mister, To punch bad breath right in the kisser!"
How...
"TripleDent Gum!"
How adorable it was! (25)
The memory replayed as the Slenderman watched it in fascination.
Oh, but he knew why something like this had been sent unbidden. Those lazy little mind workers thought it would get under his skin and frustrate him. Get him to make a mistake. And if he'd been any 'ordinary' intruder, perhaps it would have. Such a jingle was an insidious little mind worm, boring its way into the consciousness of the listener and never leaving. Never losing strength. Always waiting to pop back into the front of the host mind and gorge itself anew.
Much like himself. Just... rather lower on the evolutionary scale.
Slenderman reached up as the jingle repeated again and caressed a single finger across the orb like a person might scratch an adorable little kitten. Blackness spread from where his finger touched the orb, growing rapidly as the chipper song lost all tone and became flat and dead even as it continued playing.
As the last of the yellow light left it, Slenderman removed the orb from the memory player and held it up, tracing an adoring finger over the sphere.
It shuddered and split, uncoiling into a long, writhing, black worm. Slenderman allowed the newborn creature to crawl up his arm and across his thin shoulders, turning his faceless head towards the beastie.
The worm's front section split three ways, revealing rows of jagged teeth along its fleshy interior as its song emanated from the void-like depths of its throat.
"TripleDent Gum... will make you smile..."
Yes, it was very, very adorable. The perfect little pet for what he intended. (26)
18.12 (Crisis): [Inside Out] / [Mega Man] / [Mythos Hackers]
Mega Man: Inside Out - Bing-Bong
"HAPPY–"
Roll jumped backwards as the giant mallet slammed down where she'd been standing.
*THOOM!*
"–BIRTHDAY!"
'Jangles...' Anger muttered. 'Why the hell did it have to be Jangles?'
'Seriously, he should have stayed in Riley's subconscious with the rest of the riff-raff,' Disgust sniffed.
Roll focused on avoiding the giant grinning clown and his hammer and tried not to think of how that grin reminded her of the Loops where Clown Man had a creepy crush on her.
'So, are you going to do anything other than dodge, or what?' Disgust added.
"Working on it!" Roll growled as she looked the towering clown over and assessed her options.
"COME BACK BIRTHDAY GIRL!"
Roll thought about a video game she'd been playing in a recent Loop and came to a decision. She watched for another blow, dashed away from the impact, and immediately reversed directions to jump onto the head of the massive mallet and grab on.
'WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK THIS WILL ACCOMPLISH?!' Anger fumed as the mallet rose up, carrying her with it.
"I'm thinking it's time for a little 'Shadow of the Colossus' action," (27) Roll whispered, preparing to jump while Jangles looked for her in confusion.
"Sorry!" Bing-Bong Devil yelled as Rock narrowly slid under another candy shot.
"Not your fault!" Rock called back as he grabbed his opponent's long elephantine nose, used it to swing up within range, and kicked the massive optic that was the Devil Core.
"OW!"
"Sorry!" Rock apologized as he flipped in the air, tossed by the reflexive action, and landed on his feet.
'Is it just me, or is this fight extremely surreal?' Fear wondered.
'I think it's nice they're apologizing to each other,' Sadness retorted.
"It's fine!" Bing-Bong Devil insisted as he held a hand to his eye. "You're doing this to save R-Ril–a-hwaaah!"
*Boom*
"Sorry!"
"I'm fine!" Rock assured him, grabbing a piece of the floor. "Sorry in advance!"
"About wh–OW!" the imaginary friend-turned-Devil Series yelped as the piece of the floor hit him square in the eye. "Why is it always the eye, anyway?! A-hwaaah!"
*Boom*
"Sorry!"
"No worries!" Rock ran through his tool options and settled on a taser for his next attempt. "And sorry about the eye, it's the only part that can actually be hurt!"
"Oh, oka–hwaaah!"
*Boom*
"Sorr–hey, what are you–?" Bing-Bong Devil cut off as his eye tracked Rock running up his trunk, one of his arms sparking at the end.
*Ker-ZAP!*
"GAAAAHHH! MY EYE!" Bing-Bong Devil reeled, before curling up into a ball and holding his hands over his optic.
"Sorry!" Rock apologized as he landed, bracing himself for the next round, only to blink in puzzlement as his cotton-candy opponent didn't rise.
"Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow..."
'Poor Bing-Bong...'
"You okay?" Rock asked with concern.
"I'll be fine," Bing-Bong Devil answered, waving off Rock's concern. "Nice shot though... Really wish we didn't have to fight like this."
"Me too," Rock agreed, waiting for his massive opponent to stand back up. It didn't happen.
"I mean, I never liked the idea of fighting," the reluctant Devil Series continued. "Always seemed like something only mean bullies did. I only wanted to play with Riley... You know we built a rocket to go to the moon?"
'I don't even know what's going on anymore,' a totally confused Fear stated.
"How was it?"
"Oh, we didn't go," the cat-elephant-dolphin sighed. "Riley got a for-real friend before we could and was too busy with her for imaginary friends like me. But that's not important. You need to save Riley, which means you need to beat me. I'll try and give you a good shot if I can."
"I'd rather not if we don't have to. I mean, we haven't been fighting since that last shot."
"We haven't?" Bing-Bong devil sounded surprised as he sat up straight. "Hey! We haven't! I'm free! I'm free!"
Rock laughed as the giant pink imaginary friend got up and danced around happily. "I must have shorted out your override circuit!"
"I have no idea what that is!" Bing-Bong Devil yelled happily as he swept the comparatively tiny Rock into a hug. "Ha-ha-ha!"
'This is awesome!' Joy cheered. 'Now we can all save Riley together!'
"Oh, hey!" Bing-Bong Devil abruptly halted the hug. "We need to get you to Riley so you can give her emotions back!"
"We need to get my sister Roll first," Rock pointed towards the wall in the direction his sister had been ferried when they were forcibly separated. "I only have three and Riley needs all five."
"Oh... Oh dear... That's where Jangles is..."
'Ack!'
"Who?"
'A clown that performed at Riley's cousin's birthday when she was a toddler and scared her half to death,' Sadness informed him. 'He got stuck in her subconscious with all her other worst fears.'
'Like those zombies from that one Loop,' Fear added. 'Oh geez! Does that mean there's a robot zombie apocalypse going on now?!'
"I... I'm not sure I can get through that wall, actually... I mean... I have to cry those candy shots and I'm afraid I'm not in the mood right now..."
"It'll be fine," Rock told the larger being as he jumped up to perch on top of his former opponent's head. "Just... just think about what Slenderman is going to do to Riley if we don't."
"Is he the really scary thin guy?"
"Yes," Rock nodded. "He's already taken her emotions away, and made her do things she'd never ever want to do otherwise. He's made her hurt a lot of people she'd never want to hurt. He wants to make her a bad person. Someone who bullies and hurts others because she thinks she doesn't have any friends. And to make things worse, he's taken away all of the friends that could help her, like you. He wants to make her sad, lonely, and empty. He wants to make her into a person that can't ever have adventures, like going to the moon. Because she won't be able to enjoy them anymore. He wants to make it so that she can't laugh, cry, get angry, disgusted, or afraid. He wants to make her into a girl who can't love, because she's can't even remember what love is."
"Oh... *sniffle* Th-that did it..." Bing-Bong Devil blubbered in the way that always preceded a torrent of waterworks. "G-get ready... Th*sniff*this is gonna be a big o-o...WHAA–*BOOM*–HAA–*BOOM*–HAA–*BOOM*–HAA–*BOOM*–HAA–*BOOM*–HAA–*BOOM*–HAA–*BOOM*–HAA–*BOOM*–HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!–*BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM*–"
The good news: Roll had finally managed to take out one of Jangles's eyes.
The bad news: The pain reflex had launched her towards the towering table with the massive cake on it, leaving her a sitting duck for a retaliatory strike.
"BAD BIRTHDAY GIRL!"
At least, if she didn't jump down at the last moment.
*SPLUT*
'HAH! TAKE THAT YOU OVERGROWN PIECE OF–' Anger yelled as Jangles' strike flipped the massive stale cake straight into his own face.
'Not bad,' Disgust snorted in roundabout approval as Jangles shook the cake off and began laughing as he hefted his mallet again. 'Though I think you just made him angry.'
"WHO WANTS PRE–"
The far wall exploded with a sound of rapid cannon fire combined with rampant weeping and Jangles went down to a barrage of what looked like giant butterscotch.
Roll turned to the source of the barrage and saw her brother riding atop the strangest variation of the Devil Series yet.
'WHAT THE HELL IS THAT CLOD BING-BONG DOING HERE?!'
'The whole one eye thing so does not work for him.'
"Hey–*sniff*–are you Roll?" the pink Devil asked as it bounded up, and Roll nodded in return as her brother jumped down and gave her a relieved hug. "Nice rocket you've got there."
Roll blinked and watched as the pink Devil bent down to peer intently at her broom, before shaking her head and accessing her arm panel where Anger and Disgust's IC chips were stored. Removing them swiftly, but carefully, she thrust them at Rock. "Here, before something else happens. You focus on getting them to Riley and I'll focus on making sure nothing stops you."
Rock just nodded, opened a panel in his own arm, and slotted Anger and Disgust in next to the other three. As he did, the gate leading out of the room opened up, displaying a long hallway filled with molten lava, in which floated numerous pieces of furniture that were miraculously not burning.
"Huh... your rocket's out of song power," the pink Devil–had Anger called him Bing-Bong?–declared, still looking at Roll's broom.
"Uh, it's a broom..." (28)
"Well, yeah," Bing-Bong shrugged, "those make the best rockets. They store song power really well. I can fix yours real quick if you want. I inhaled a bunch of magic song powder earlier and I think some's still in my nose."
"Really," Roll waved off the offer, "that's fi–"
"*A-CHOO!*"
A sudden spray of pink glittering dust of unknown origin and composition blasted out of Bing-Bong's trunk all over Roll, her broom, and Rock.
"...I am really having a talk with dad later about securing experiments better," Rock sighed.
"There!" Bing-Bing smiled. "Now your rocket will work again when you sing the right song. Like this: *ahem* Who's your friend to likes to play?"
COPY CHIP ACTIVATED.
SCANNING UNKNOWN ENERGY.
ATTEMPTING TO INTEGRATE.
Rock and Roll both stared incredulously as the bristles of Roll's broom ignited with prismatic rainbow light and she had to tighten her grip against the sudden thrust it had.
"Bi–*THOOM*
Bing-Bong was suddenly not there due to being hit from the side by Jangles's giant mallet.
"HERE'S ONE FOR THE BIRTHDAY GIRL!" Jangles raised his mallet high as Rock and Roll tensed below.
"NO!" Bing-Bong yelled, having just recovered enough for a sloppy diving tackle on the giant clown.
"HEY!" Jangles protested as he stumbled.
"A-hwaa–*BOOM*–haa–*BOOM*–haaah!–*BOOM*!" Bing-Bong cried several candy shots, knocking Jangles over. "Go! Save Riley! I'll take care of him!"
"No, we're not leaving you behind!" Rock yelled frantically as Jangles got back up and hefted his mallet.
"It's fine! I'm just an imaginary friend after all–unh.." Bing-Bong grunted as he caught Jangles's mallet in both hands and held it fast. "Riley doesn't need me anymore! She's got real friends now, like you!"
"Imaginary or not, you're still her friend though!" Rock pleaded, Roll having to hold him back from rushing into danger.
"Of course I am!" Bing-Bong was pushed back as Jangles pressed his larger size, being at least a whole head taller. "I'll always be her friend! This... this is what friends do! I help you, so you can help Riley!"
"But..." Rock tried to protest, only to be interrupted as Bing-Bong shoved back hard enough to knock Jangles off his feet.
"Riley's emotions remember the song, right?" Bing-Bong asked, getting a nod from Rock. "Then go. Save Riley."
Jangles got to his feet, now completely focused on Bing-Bong and the two clashed once more.
"Rock," Roll gripped her brother's shoulder firmly, prompting a teary nod of resignation. She extended her broom shaft a bit (useful for those hard-to-reach corners) to better accommodate both of them before climbing on in front.
"I'll sing," Rock offered. "You put those Quidditch skills to the test."
"Got it."
"Who's your friend who likes to play? Bing-Bong Bing-Bong–"
The broom's bristles ignited with rainbow light once more and in moments, both Rock and Roll were shooting out the open door and down the hall, well over the deadly lava, leaving a rainbow trail behind them as they went.
"Heh..." Bing-Bong chuckled as he struggled against Jangles, "maybe you'll take her to the moon for me too..." (29)
"My word..." Dr. Light gasped as he and the Andersens were marched out of the... vacuum cleaner... "what has happened with the lab?"
The Andersens were staring for a different reason. They could readily recognize elements in the structure that vaguely resembled some of their daughter's old crayon drawings from when she was younger. Forget the lab, what had happened with Riley?
"Apologies, Riley's parents," the biker boy stood at attention, seemingly heedless of the fact that hundreds of forms perhaps identical to his own were strewn about in varying states of damage. "We cannot take in the loveliness that is Castle Riley. We must go and be presented to the lovely lady herself."
A train whistle sounded, and all three adults watched as a purple train engine, crossed with a tank and vaguely shaped like a shoe, huffed up to them along tracks that appeared directly in front of it and vanished after it passed. (30)
"Come, we must board immediately."
More to come.