Angela Richards woke with a shock, her young, three year old mind startled into alertness at the sound of clattering emitting from beneath her bed. She looked around in her dark, pink colored room decorated with all things pink, a color she began to despise even if she didn't know what despising was, and found no trace of any intruder, human or otherwise. But she knew the absence to be false; there definitely was something with her in the dark of the night.
On and on, she kept looking, searching for someone in the darkness. Fun or scary, she didn't care; she knew that monsters won't come to scare her on purpose, so she felt they were mostly fun. She was quite carefree, as energetic as a child woken at three in the morning could be, and she kept on looking, to no avail in the darkness.
Soon, she gave up, opting to return to sleep. That was her first mistake. The moment her eyes closed, a pair of blue furred hands went for her midsection and began to tickle her senseless, loud giggles filling the room for a few seconds before the hands' owner joined in on the laughter. Sully and Angie laughed wholeheartedly, the both of them surprised that Mr. and Mrs. Richards hadn't woken up by then. They laughed and laughed until their sides hurt before the large, horned monster turned for the closet door.
"Ah, see ya next month, kiddo." The blue beast said as he left for his realm, each step as light as his frame could allow. As soon as he was gone, the amber eyed, raven haired child fell back onto her pillow and tried to return to sleep. There was only one thing stopping her.
Sitting back up, the young child looked around once more, feeling a presence right beside her. It was only there for a moment, but that moment was enough to put her back on alert. She looked around for several minutes, a look of light fear on her face, before sleep called to her once more and she lay back on her pillow for the fourth time that night.
Within her mind, Angela's Fear finally let go of the console, her influence barely contained by Joy and Sadness. They all looked at each other for a moment before the blue and purple Emotions followed the red and green ones up to their living quarters.
"G'night, everyone!" Joy exclaimed, an absolutely huge smile on his bright yellow face as the others replied with their tired goodnights. As he waited for a dream to show up, the star-like Emotion went to grab a Mind Manual to pass the time, one titled Personality Island Maintenance Vol. 17. In it, he found wonderful information about the Islands of Personality, of which two existed right outside Headquarters.
The first Island, slightly off-center to the left, contained a large assortment of all things fun and not pink, powered by a happy memory of Angie enjoying a particularly fun game of peek-a-boo with her father. It was obvious that Fun Island was its name, and whenever it was powered up, the Island right beside it, filled with silly contraptions and a wooden silhouette of Sully in the background, powered now by the memory of the girl's third birthday a few hours earlier instead of its original memory of Sully's first appearance, activated as well. Goofball was its name, and it certainly looked like it deserved it. Best part? It wasn't pink!
Thinking on that aspect, Joy couldn't help but laugh at the fact that he absolutely hated something when he liked just about everything else. Pink. Pink! PINK! As much as he liked mom and dad, the yellow Emotion had to agree with Disgust in letting Anger "sic 'em" should they get Angie another pink object.
Returning to his chair at the console, Joy opened the Manual as a dream began to play. Strangely, the dream was of the blonde girl two houses up the street, whose name escaped Joy every time Angie saw her. She lay on a metal bed, like the ones Angela saw at the hospital when dad had broken his leg several months ago, and looked pale, almost sickly. Despite that, she had a smile on her face that made Joy know that she was alright.
Before he turned his focus on the Manual in his hands, the yellow Emotion saw the blonde's hair creepily turn a dark blue and her eyes turn to sapphires, just like his. Her shoulder length hair grew slowly, ending up long enough to reach past her hips by just a bit as her skin turned white, then golden, then back to its original pale color. Scared almost as much as Fear was just moments before, Joy called out for his companions and slammed the Wake-Up button just before a spindly figure tackled him off the console and told Angela to run to her parent's room, the sickening laughter of the nightmare echoing all over the Mind World.
Meanwhile, somewhere in Long-Term Memory, a storm of particles manifested, scaring the wits out of two Mind Workers organizing the day's memories. They stared at it for a few moments, confused at the fact that what they though was an Emotion was manifesting so far out of Headquarters. At the very least, they agreed that the display was mesmerizing, even as it only lasted for a moment, a dark blue haired girl in a rainbow sweater, black jeans and red sneakers walking out of the cloud as it ended.
As she calmly stepped out, the Mind World shook violently, save for Headquarters, which stood unaffected over the Dump. Every step she took caused the quakes to intensify, as if she were the Destroyer and the World knew of her unstoppable presence. Memories upon memories rained down around her as she finished her ten step walk toward the two Workers near her. As soon as she stopped, so did the quakes and the Mind World was calm once more.
Riley looked at the two bean-like beings in front of her, each one shorter than her thighs and trembling in primal fear. Somehow, she instantly knew what they were, as if fragments form her mind buried deep within her current existence pushed the knowledge to her consciousness. She knew that they were part of the world around her and she knew that she also was a part of it, but the knowledge left confusion within her. How could she be a part of someone's mind when she was, just moments ago, about to sleep on her own bed, in a room across the hall from her parent's room in San Francisco?
For that matter, she inspected the memories on the ground, each one of them depicting a child no older than two or three and already heavily faded in color and clarity. A sort of sad worry latched itself onto her form as she examined each memory without paying the blueish purple figures beside her any attention. The worry quickly lost its sadness and obtained much more fear as a realization occurred to her.
Standing up, Riley saw the tall, pearl-white structure that the until-then unknown knowledge allowed her to know as Headquarters. She looked at its incredible height, stared in awe at its unbelievable location and marbled at the wild activity happening by the window facing her particle-made form. The teen's eyes were wide and displayed their original sky color for a second before the sounds of whistle, like those used by gym teachers, pierced through her eardrums.
Upon looking at the source of the noise, the teen saw a sight to behold. Several Mind Workers in police uniforms charged their way toward her, some of them pulling a metal cage. Confusion turned to fear as she realized just who the cage was meant for, her body automatically turning to run toward the nearest floating Island. Within moments of trailing the Cliffside of the Memory Dump, the running teen found herself at an Island filled with strange machinery and goofy contraptions; the perfect place to hide, in her mind.
Using her relatively long legs to gain more ground, Riley crossed the bridge onto the Island and ducked into a narrow alley, taking random turns, but ensuring that she didn't arrive at an edge. Once she was sure she was far enough from the Mind Police, she grabbed onto an overhanging pipe and climbed her way to the second tallest structure on the entire Island, a cartoonish cat with its paw playfully over a ball of yarn, where she hid until it got dark and then hid some more until she was sure that they'd quit chasing her.
After ensuring that she was well hidden, the particle-made teen decided to get some sleep, hoping beyond hope that what had just happened was just a bad dream. Even then, deep down she knew that she was wide awake, or, at least, as awake as she could be. The knowledge within her told her that wherever she was, it was someone else's Mind, but it also told her that the fact that she was there was impossible. Looking at the reflective metal of the cat behind her, Riley saw that her hair had turned blue, the shade of which she couldn't tell in the darkness.
Looking at the starless sky, Riley asked the one question that screamed to be asked before drifting to sleep:
"How could this happen?"