As the plane rolled down the runway at frightening speeds, Fear was really the only emotion actively using the console, holding onto it as soon as the plane touched down. The others merely watched from their seats, all of which had slightly jumped up, before rolling towards the console; once they did, though, the others were sure to use the console to push themselves away from it, at least a bit.

This rolling and slowing down lasted longer than Riley's emotions expected, and what was worse, the plane didn't fully slow down at first, but instead, began taxiing, making the loops through the strips of the airport, with no clear end to the car-like driving of the plane — or the shining of the "fasten your seatbelt" light.

Joy was slowly getting anxious. She desperately wanted Riley to just… leap from the seat and run across the plane until she got to the airport, and then run across the airport until she got outside and greeted the open air of Shanghai, and then run across Shanghai until she got to her new home, and then run some more, just for good measure. To Joy, China was the biggest playground that Riley could get, with lots and lots of land to explore and more than a billion friends to make — quite literally.

However, at the same time, Joy wasn't one to lose her head, and still remembered that Riley needed to tag along her parents, as the danger of getting lost in an unfamiliar environment was immeasurably more real. Especially with Fear by her side, Joy would need to observe full caution, and would probably have to save the running idea until Riley was actually familiar with the surroundings, like where her new home and school were, which could take a week or two. But by then, Joy knew that Riley would be running across in excitement, making new friends left and right.

Finally, as Joy was pondering these thoughts, the little sight through the window stopped changing, and the plane came to a full stop. Soon enough, other hallmarks of disembarking from the plane followed, such as the light for the seatbelt going off; as soon as Joy saw it, she hit the console, and Riley was unbuckled and stood up in a heartbeat.

"Hey, there, slow down! We're not leaving yet!" Riley's mother was quick to point out, and likewise, her father remained seated for the time being; although, both of them had also unbuckled their seat belts.

"Well, that's a shame…" Sadness spoke from the far left, being the next one to use the console after Joy, who only groaned at how unfair life was, sometimes. In turn, Joy decided to at least counter Sadness's move by injecting some positivity and excitement into the console, as well; she couldn't let Riley stay feeling down for long.

"Aww… can it be soon, though?" Riley asked her mother, as the whiplash of emotional input came through to her.

"We'll be ready when we are ready!" Riley's father commented, not realizing how stupid he sounded at first. Indeed, he was a bit of a carefree spirit, just like Riley herself, and after a while, he managed to make it through to the plane's aisle, where he was able to access the drawer above the family and pick out a few bags. "But regardless, here's your luggage." he finished.

Riley herself hadn't really brought much, except for her schoolbag containing her favorite Chinese tablet, as she didn't perceive enough emotional attachment. However, her parents wanted to pack as much as they possibly could get away with, and therefore, had full, rather heavy bags of both check-in and hand luggage. That, however, was still very, very far from all the belongings that the family had collected over two decades, making the emotions wonder how the rest of the stuff was transported.

This was a common occurrence among the emotions: overthinking something that had already been discussed. After all, they would need to feel the knowledge more viscerally, and the only way that they knew how was to repeat it, over and over again, until it was as obvious as the color of the sky.

"That can"t be everything! What about everything else?" Disgust thus asked, once again punching code after code, seemingly to recall a sequence of memories in various forms of being processed. Some of those were auditory: little clips of Riley's father explaining, in layman's terms, about folks at his company, who were able to grant him a shipment across the ocean to ensure a smooth moving experience.

The other memories were photographic, depicting the barren home that the Andersens left. For their last days in Minnesota, only the most necessary essentials were kept around, and everything else was stuffed away into wodden boxes, which were then taken out by company folk and went on their long journey. They had a head start of about a month, meaning that they would arrive just in time, and therefore, with any luck, the Andersens could begin unpacking immediately.

Lastly, there was a photographic memory of the yellow minivan, the Andersens' favorite all-purpose vehicle, being left behind in a Chicago parking lot, with Riley's father handing over the keys to unfamiliar people. This was a memory from just yesterday, and therefore, the van would also come in rather late, but it would be making its way there, too.

"All of this looks to be fine," Anger pointed out, "but all this stuff will need to go somewhere. Do we have any details on that?"

"Yeah… I don't think we do." Disgust had to concede. For completeness's sake, she tried to recall something about Anger's inquiry, but came up empty-handed.

The only semi-certainty that Riley's emotions had, at the time, was that they would be living in an apartment, not a house. However, even then, Dad was known to slip up and refer to it as a "house", confounding any and all expectations. There were definitely wrong assumptions to make — for example, that it would be a medieval castle or a gingerbread house — but there was no memory they could recall to set the record straight.

As the typing on the console ceased, and the playback of memories did together with it, stuff was happening on the outside world as well. However, it was nothing terribly exciting: after all this time, the Andersens were still struggling to get out, as the plane, which seemed to be nearly full, had people streaming from all sides, desperate to be the first to get out.

"Ugh!" Disgust groaned, as she was inevitably forced to pay attention to the Consciousness Screen again. "Can these people learn a bit of order?"

"What if… they're excited?" Joy retaliated.

"I'd surely be excited if I were trapped in a box for half a day and could finally get out." Anger growled.

"No, no — excited about China! How many of these people, you reckon, are visiting for the first time?" Joy continued defending her own point.

Unfortunately for her, looking around on the Consciousness Screen, Sadness mostly saw Asian faces, and concluded: "I think many of them are actually returning..."

This was a common type of deadlock, and Joy had no means to resolve it. Thankfully, just then, as though a magic wand had been waved, the Andersens were finally able to step out of their chairs and, luggage in their hands, began walking along the length of the plane, before marching straight through the door, bringing a whole new slew of problems.

Appropriately for a long-distance flight, Riley came across one of the "fancier" ways to connect the plane to the terminal, with an entire corridor, and Disgust appreciated the comfort, which wasn't exactly comparable to getting out through stairs and into the open air straight ahead. After all, the air around was…

"Wait a minute!" Disgust suddenly exclaimed. "What about the smog? How are we even going to breathe? Does anyone have a gas mask?"

It was a very rare moment in the mind, indeed, as Joy could actually use her Imagination for a work-related purpose. She thus let herself Imagine a dark green gas mask with black patterns and a purple respirator — one that would match Disgust's general aesthetic and fashion style — and then handed it over to Disgust. "Here!' she said as she did.

"Why, yes, thank you. Indeed, this is a matter of poisonous radiation that could kill us all." Disgust replied, donning the gas mask; as she put on the respirator, her voice became rather muffled, but still audible.

At first, she regretted the decision. Even though the gas mask looked stylish and in a matching color, the presence of a gas mask, first and foremost, made her look less someone who cared about her appearance and more like a Chernobyl survivor — one with very bad safety practices, one should note, given the exposed skin at her midriff and upper arms. However, at this time, Disgust's desire to avoid physical poisoning, or at least look like she would be able to, overruled any sort of comment that she didn't look "fashionable" or "stylish".

As this all happened, Riley continued following her parents around the terminal. One of the first sights that greeted her, right outside the plane and in the fancy corridor, was one that was familiar to a frequent flyer, but nevertheless exciting to Riley: a poster, taking up the entire height of the corridor and a good chunk of the width, welcoming tourists, expatriates and returners alike to Shanghai, as well as informing them, both directly and indirectly, of how friendly the city was.

"Woah!" all the emotions called out, eyeing every single detail of the poster, as well as racing to see who can fixate it in Riley's memory first.

Then, a slightly more irritating part of the arrival procedure followed: customs checks. The Andersens were separated from each other, being "processed" in parallel, and that made Fear visibly nervous, but at the same time, confident, as he understood the necessity of the process.

"Didn't we already go through checks at home? I mean…" Disgust questioned, before realizing that looking at Riley's passport was also looking at her own appearance, which she prided on maintaining. "Nice..." she uttered.

Unlike her parents, Riley had muted blue eyes and dirty blonde hair; however, in her later life, she didn't particularly like the combination, and instead, came to China in a very light lavender dye job. This confused the customs officer, but in all other respects, this looked to be the same girl, and the matter passed. The length of the hair was on the shorter side, longer than Sadness's but shorter than Joy's, and the only decoration was a dark lavender headband. To complete the outfit, Riley had donned her favorite yellow jacket, brown pants and white and red tennis shoes.

As she grew, eventually, Riley would have to confront her curves and feminine side; the effects hadn't fully settled yet, but they were on the verge of doing so. However, something inside her mind kept pushing the idea away, and wanted her to go for tomboyish outfits for the time being. In fact, said something was visible outside the windows of Headquarters, but that was a story for another time.

While Disgust was pondering these and similar ideas, Anger decided to answer her question, even though she was no longer looking for an answer. "Since one of us clearly can't take her eyes off of Riley, might as well cut to the chase: we did, and it was every bit awful as it was—"

This time, Anger found himself interrupted by Fear. "Completely necessary!" the slender emotion chimed in. "How would you like it if terrorists sent the plane crashing into Pearl Harbor? How would you?"

"You little bastard! I was onto a thing!" Anger blew up.

"And my thing is more important!" Fear countered, and before they knew it, the two male emotions were in a fierce deadlock of power.

"Look! Guys! You're both right!" Joy pointed out, noticing the warfare between the two. "And neither of your thoughts is really 'more important'—"

"Than yours. Got it." Anger finished the sentence for Joy, understanding how she usually dealt with such inconveniences.

"That's not what I meant at all! You'd better take that back!" Joy's expression and pose suddenly twisted, becoming more reminiscent of that of Disgust, who was merely shaking her head throughout this entire encounter.

"Nope! And did I mention you're so funny when you're ticked off?" Anger pointed out.

While three of the emotions were being nuisances as usual and Disgust kept addressing Riley's body to herself, taking mental notes, Sadness took it upon herself to go through the "boring" parts of customs checks; namely, making sure that Riley provided the officials with documents that she carried around, and therefore, didn't get in any trouble. It was a thankless job, but Sadness felt both the obligation and the satisfaction in doing it.

However, once that was done with and not much remained of it other than memories on the shelf-like tube, the Andersens had to move on to what would perhaps come to be known as their least favorite part of their airport experience: the luggage roulette.

It was truly exhausting; looking for your own check-in bag, knowing that it's not that different from the rest, barring the identification tags, as well as that it may take a long time for it to even come up at all. For the emotions, perhaps the best comparison that they could make to a memory of Riley's was that of her, waiting for her parents to pick her up in the rain, looking at every passing car and thinking that they started to look the same, barring the license plates.

"If anything that Mom or Dad brought with them is damaged, I swear to Riley…" Disgust spoke, still having her gas mask on.

"We'll buy some new stuff!" Joy finished the thought for Disgust, trying to get her hopes up, as well as boost the general morale in Headquarters.

Sadness, however, was looking to frame it in a different way. "And we'll have to spend money on it, to say nothing of the fact that our old stuff will still be lost…"

To put it simply, that was one of those thoughts that Joy couldn't tolerate, at all. She could deal with how obnoxious the others got at times, and for the most part, they all were integral to the formation of Riley as a person. Anger would always be there to right the wrongs, Fear was nothing if not prepared for absolutely everything and Disgust injected the self-consciousness needed for Riley to function in the social world.

Yet, Sadness was an entirely different beast. It wasn't so much that Riley needed her — on the contrary, she was a happy girl, and that meant that Joy had to step in so that Sadness wouldn't do anything horribly wrong. However, seeing that lack of purpose, Joy couldn't help but feel pity, and over time, the two formed a bond unlike that of any other pair of emotions. Instead of Riley, it was Joy who needed her, and more likely than not, the reverse held as well.

At least, Joy hoped so; there was no means for her to share any of Sadness's thoughts, and therefore, be completely sure. However, the relationship between the two looked to be roughly on the right track, and as long as that was the case, nothing else mattered.

"Let's… not focus on that, shall we?" Joy thus asked Sadness, as nicely as she could. "Why don't we just follow along and… look for anything that might be familiar to us!"

By this point, largely due to Fear, Riley was pacing around from one end of the "room" to another, still trying to keep her parents in sight, but at the same time, looking at the rolling luggage and getting more and more nervous as she failed to spot anything that was familiar to her.

"Where is it… where is it… it's lost forever!" Fear suddenly let out.

"It's not 'lost forever'," Disgust countered, "it might just be doomed to rot in an airline's warehouse until they throw it away… I don't know the specifics, but if it's not coming our way at this very moment, its fate is far worse than 'lost forever'."

"Now that you mention it… yeah, that's even worse!" Fear reacted.

"Will you stop it?!" Anger and Joy both shouted out simultaneously, before looking at each other, rather confused as both of them had had the exact same idea.

The rest of the emotions got caught up in the moment as well, and Fear momentarily stopped using the console. As a result, Riley also stopped in her tracks, instead simply awkwardly glancing at the luggage that kept rolling in.

And then, as if by a stroke of luck, it happened. Riley herself didn't really recognize what her parents had come into Chicago with, but by their reaction and movement, it was obvious that it was exactly it. Her mother was the first to pick up her luggage, and some ten seconds later, her father followed, making for a happy family that was ready to move forward and establish themselves in China.

"There we go!" Joy called out, as Fear sighed in relief and the others showed similar signs of readiness. "Now, let's go!"

"Alright! Let's!" Fear responded, letting Joy drive for the time being.

And thus, the family strode, as though they had been in this place a million times before; in reality, it was only because it was rather easy to follow the signs, all of which had been labeled in both English and Chinese. As Riley followed her parents around, she only got to take in the rapidly changing sceneries for brief moments at a time.

"Aren't you excited?" her mother asked, out of the blue, in the middle of a pathway that seemed to open to… the view of a highway?

This gave Fear another good startle, making him think that structural collapse, and therefore, the family crashing down onto the streets and being run over seconds later, was imminent. However, Joy was still at her position and ready to take it all the way to Riley's new home.

"You know I am!" Riley shouted out, ever-so-slightly stuttering. "I'm going to make so many friends at school, and everything is going to work out just fine!"

"Now these are words to live by." her mother answered.

"Touché." Joy only commented, while all the other emotions looked noticeably disgruntled by Mom's remark.

The family walk eventually took the Andersens to a subway station, on what appeared to be Line 2 of the Shanghai Metro. Riley's father almost immediately located and started looking at a meter-tall map on the side of a wall, and after some fiddling with scribblings on a piece of paper with a printed-out map (he had been advised specifically against using the phone's GPS, due to some local restrictions), he was able to pinpoint the precise journey the Andersens would need to take in order to get home.

"Alright, I think this will take us one transfer, and then, you'll be ready to see your home!" he commented, before moving on to the ticket booth to get some passes for the whole family.

Joy kept smiling throughout the whole ordeal: getting tickets, descending the escalator and admiring the subway station itself. However, soon thereafter, the train itself arrived, and the Andersens were faced with one of the more unpleasant parts of the trip: being packed like fish, very tightly with nowhere to sit down, as the train marched through tunnels that looked so much alike, station after station.

"When I was informed that 1.4 billion people lived in China, I didn't expect it to be that many." Disgust commented.

"That does not look like billions or even millions and you know it." Anger responded, even though he wasn't exactly asked to.

"No points, Sherlock! It's called hyperbole, okay?" Disgust shot back.

At these words, as well as quiet groaning from Sadness, Joy momentarily dropped the controls. There was no silver lining to be found here; for this moment at least, she would have to relinquish her position.

As hinted by the "transfer" remark, one train became another, coming in just as fast and no less crowded than the last one. The repetitiveness of the situation started driving the emotions mad, but in the end, they all agreed that the situation sucked and kept quiet until the second train's arrival at its destination.

Nearing the journey's end, though, Anger suggested to Disgust: "You know, maybe you don't look stylish at all in that."

At these words, Disgust pulled out a pocket mirror to look at herself; indeed, the gas mask obscured all the stylish and beautiful parts of her face, making her look more like an alien than anything. "Yeah. Ugh…" She began tearing the gas mask off of her own face, and it made squeaky noises as it came off. "Just… put that thing where you pulled it out from…" she told Joy, handing her the mask.

Of course, Imagined objects didn't exactly come from anywhere when they appeared, nor did they go anywhere when they disappeared. When Joy touched the gas mask, it took about a second to disintegrate, spreading particles of Imagination all over, but within a few more moments, those particles were gone, without any telling where the gas mask went.

"Alright! Our new home, here we go! This time, for real for real!" Joy shouted out, pulling at the console's levers and pushing buttons once again, making Riley run up the destination station's escalator.

"And if it's not there, something has gone horribly wrong." Fear said, as though it were a completely normal thought to ponder.

"How can you suggest that a building can just disappear? Let alone, one that other people are living in?" Anger pointed out.

"Yeah… no offense, but even I… nevermind…" Sadness tried to comment, before her own self-consciousness kicked in, making her drop her own thought.

Once Riley had made it to ground level, she waited for her parents to ascend, while taking the time to admire all the other people that were coming up. These were her neighborhood, all made up of potential friends. The possibilities unfolding before her were limitless, provided that she got to her home and figured out where everything else needed for her to function was.

In due time, her parents also ascended, and the three were ready to proceed. However, once they opened the door outside, they were faced with a gust of air polluted with smoke and other types of dust, and instinctively, they all began coughing up.

This sort of smell reverberated to Headquarters as well, and the emotions, caught off-guard, coughed as well. It didn't take Disgust too long to realize one way how it all could have been prevented, though.

"Anger, how dare you!" she pointed out, glaring at the perpetrator from the other side of the console.

Through coughing, Anger smiled. After all, he lived to irritate.