Disclaimer and Author's Note: Thank you all so much for all your reviews!
I do not own the songs used in this chapter. They belong to Andy Grammer and Pitbull. I do not profit from this story.
Andrew was in his car on his way to work. He was currently stopped at a red light at an intersection.
In his mind, all six emotions were seated at their usual spots behind the control panel. Since Andrew was driving, the panel was in driving mode. With the flip of a switch, the panel's controls completely rearranged, the most noticeable difference being the appearance of a steering wheel identical to the one in Andrew's car, which Fear was currently steering.
"Aw man," Fear murmured as he glanced through Andrew's view to the car's clock. "Only fifteen minutes until our shift starts! Are we gonna make it?"
"It's such a drag that we got work today," Sadness moaned. "It would be so nice if we could just stay home all day and play more Skyrim."
"GAH!" Anger hissed. "It's this damn traffic light! We've been sitting here for two minutes! Why does this one always take so long?"
Logic leaned over to look across at Anger. "Anger," he said calmly, "fretting about it won't accomplish anything. You may as well calm down."
Anger huffed and crossed his arms. He knew Logic was right.
Disgust kept tapping one button that caused Andrew to keep flipping through radio stations.
"There's nothing good on!" He whined. When they didn't get static or advertisements, it was still hard to find a song that would fit Andrew's liking.
"I'm happy as long as we don't get static or ads," Anger grunted. "God! I mean if I had a nickel for each time we got one of those…"
Finally, the light turned green, and Andrew drove up the road and onto the highway. Right about that time, finally a pop song was heard on the radio.
"Oh there!" Joy shouted. "This one's good!"
They listened for a moment. Finally a good song they could all enjoy.
"Aw yeah!" Disgust cried. "Now that's what I'm talking about!"
In their excitement, Disgust and Joy jumped out of their seats and started singing along with the song, pretending they held microphones.
"So nah nah honey, I'm good
I could have another but I probably should not
I got somebody at home,
And if I stay I might not leave alone!"
Joy reached out in front of Fear and hit a button on the panel, causing Andrew to bob his head along with the catchy song.
"Um, okay," Fear muttered. "Nothing wrong with that, I guess." He knew what was coming. The same shenanigans always happened whenever Andrew went out driving.
There was little traffic out on the highway today. Lots of space in between cars. Joy seemed to notice this. Still singing along with Disgust, he slid in beside Fear, and pushed another button, causing Andrew to step harder on the gas and accelerate.
"WOAH WOAH! WOAH!" Fear screamed. "TOO FAST TOO FAST TOO FAST!" He shoved Joy away from the panel, and slammed his hand on another button, causing Andrew to break and slow down. They were still quite a safe distance from the next car ahead of them, but Fear would not have anyone taking chances.
Eventually the song ended, and then on came a Pitbull song.
"PITBULL!" Joy and Disgust screamed in unison.
Joy slid up to the panel again. "I love this song! It's one of those songs that I think would go great with a fight scene! Like how about Shadow of Mordor?" He slipped a daydream USB into a slot. On the screen appeared a pop-up of Talion fighting off a band of orcs. It was very similar to Andrew's memories of playing Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor on his 360.
The orcs shouted their familiar curses such as "Man-Swine" and "Man-Filth" at Talion as they surrounded him and he clashed blades with them. Talion danced within the mob just as Joy and Disgust were dancing in the center of the control room.
At the line "swing your partner round and round, end of the night it's going down." Joy and Disgust linked arms and danced in a circle. Meanwhile in the daydream, Talion grabbed one orc in a headlock, swung him around in a circular and sent him smashing into another charging orc, knocking them both down.
"Uh guys," Fear stammered, "this is really distracting. Can we please turn this off and focus on the road?" He was struggling to ignore the daydream and pay more attention to the road.
No good. Nobody heard him. Now Anger and Sadness were also joining in and dancing along with Joy and Disgust. They kept slipping other memories into the slots and pushing buttons to summon other daydreams, most of which were fight scenes or dance scenes from movies and shows. One was of a clip from the second Lord of the Rings movie; one orc shouting "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!" which Joy did a hilarious imitation of.
While the others were having fun, Fear kept his eyes glued to the screen, forcing himself not to even glance at any of the memory or daydream popups. He also gave up trying to talk the others into sitting down. Both he and Logic knew that when they got this wild, there was no stopping them until they reached their destination.
"You know Logic?" He whispered to his side. "It's hard to resist the urge to join in with them."
"You won't though," Logic replied, his eyes also locked on the road. "You and I are both aware that the very second you let go of the wheel, we'll veer off the road, and most likely get into an accident."
"Yeah, that's true," Fear replied meekly.