Riley was looking around Headquarters, silently admiring the place the emotions called home. She liked how the place was designed, and how it was colored. She wanted to sit down, as she was kind of tired from all the walking and running she did.
"Uh guys, where can I sit?" Riley asked her emotions.
"Oh, right this way." Joy said, as she dragged Riley by the arm over to the couch, where Anger would sometimes sit when he was reading his favorite newspaper "The Mind Reader". Riley gently sat down on the couch, which gave her a comfortable feeling.
"So, what do you wanna do first here Riley?" Joy asked, in an eagerly excited tone. Riley smirked at Joy and silently laughed at how happy she sounded.
"Well, the first thing I wanna do is find out how in the heck it is I ended up in my own darn mind!" Riley said, in a joking tone. Joy and Anger laughed at how Riley sounded.
Fear decided to be brave for once and asked. "W-well, we were hoping you could tell us what happened." Riley gave Fear a confused look.
"What do you mean by "What happened"?" Riley asked, as she looked in Fear's direction.
"Well, I mean what exactly happened to you to make you end up here." Fear explained. Riley took a moment to think about it. And then she suddenly remembered something from her dream.
"The portal…" Riley muttered to herself in surprise.
"W-what portal? What happened Riley? Are you okay? Did you break anything?" Fear babbled in a worried tone.
Anger grabbed Fear by the neck and proceeded to shake him again, and then said. "Will you please stop overreacting to everything and stop being such a worrywart?!"
Anger then let go of Fear, and he felt super dizzy, as if he was gonna throw up, like Disgust would. Disgust took one look at him and sighed while slapping her forehead.
"Ugh. If you're gonna hurl, go do it somewhere else where I can't see you. I don't need or want to hurl as well!" Disgust yelled, as Fear tried to walk away but then fell down on the ground.
Riley couldn't hold it in anymore and began laughing out loud at the funniness of the situation Fear was in. The other emotions turned and smiled warmly. Riley was happy.
"Do you guys go through this sort of thing every day?" Riley asked while she was laughing.
"Yea, its just an everyday thing around here. Get used to it kid." Anger said while he shrugged.
"He freaks out about literally everything." Disgust said. "And if you think that this is the worst he shows, then you have no idea girl." Disgust said in a sassy tone.
Fear slowly came back to his senses and stood back up, shaking off any floor particles or dust he picked up and rejoined the group with Riley on the couch.
"Oh, come on guys! Riley said she traveled through a portal. We don't know what she went through when she did that!" Fear reasoned, trying to defend himself.
Fear's explanation reminded Riley of what Fear had asked her. Riley regained a straight face and tried to continue with her explanation of how she ended up in Mind World.
"Right. So anyway, I remember having a dream about the hockey game I played earlier." Riley began as the emotions began to remember it themselves.
"Oh yeah! The hockey game! Wasn't that a fun game guys?" Joy asked, excitedly.
"It was fun hitting all of those moving targets. They think we can't play? Oh-ho we showed them who's boss!" Anger said proudly.
"At least this time we managed to not smell like a sewer after the game." Disgust said with a hint of pride in her voice.
"We won." Sadness lamented, trying to find happiness, as Joy had taught her.
"And the gear protected us from harm!" Fear said, in a relieved tone.
Riley listened to them. She noticed that they would say "we", but instead of saying anything about it, she decided to be nice and say nothing about it. Instead, she continued with her story.
"Right. Anyway, I noticed that I seemed to have conscious control over my actions in this dream and I wasn't sure as to why."
Right on cue, as if a switch went off in Fear's head, he remembered something that he had seen while he was doing his turn of Dream Duty.
"That's right! The camera seemed as if it was being controlled by an outside force, or at the very least, was just simply broken. Now it makes sense." Fear explained to everyone.
"So anyway, as I was skating in my dream, and all of a sudden, this portal opened up at the boards, completely out of nowhere." Riley continued.
Joy suddenly had an idea and asked Sadness to go get the Mind Manual she read earlier before Riley arrived.
"When the portal opened up, I noticed it, but no one else seemed to. But before I had more time to think about what to do, about the portal, I was suddenly pushed in." Riley explained.
Fear was now hyperventilating as if someone gave him some really bad news, or someone was telling him a scary story. Anger and Disgust took a step back, away from Fear.
"Calm down Fear. She's fine now." Joy said.
"Anyway, I travelled at some pretty high speed through the portal, and eventually, the portal opened up again and I came out of it, in this place." Riley finished.
"S-s-so, where did you land?" Fear stuttered.
"I woke up surrounded by glowing bookshelves, floating islands, a bottomless pit, and somehow, a train that defies the laws of physics." Riley answered.
The emotions looked at each other as if they were confused as to what Riley said to them. Then, before someone could say anything, Sadness returned with the Mind Manual she read earlier, about what was going on.
"Guys. I think I found out what's going on." Sadness said, feeling somewhat proud of herself at that moment.
Riley and the other emotions turned to Sadness, wearing expressions of surprise, and hope.
"Well don't keep us in suspense Sadness! What does the manual say?" Disgust asked, in a bit of an impatient tone.
"Here, listen to this." Sadness said before starting to read the lines that were on the page.
HOST DREAM PORTAL TO MIND WORLD SCENARIO
If the host is lucid dreaming, they will have conscious control over their actions inside their dreams. It is not dangerous, but it will open a portal inside the dream, which the host will inevitably fall into, which then takes them to Mind World. This is done through the Reality Distortion effect on the camera at Dream Productions. The camera will fire a beam, which hits the Reality Distortion effect, which then opens the portal inside the host's dream.
Sadness finished reading, and everyone looked at her as if she was speaking another language.
"So…you're saying…that I travelled here through some weird Dream Portal?" Riley asked, in a surprised tone.
"I think she is." Fear answered. He wasn't taking this very well. He was sure something had gone wrong during Dream Duty. He hated the fact that he was right about something going wrong, but he wasn't sure how far this would end up going.
"Well…Riley is here now, and we should do what we can to help her to feel better." Joy said, trying to lighten the mood, and somehow, it was working.
"Joy's right Riley. You're here and we might as well take this chance to get to know each other, face to face." Disgust said, in an uncharacteristically happy tone.
"So, what do ya wanna do first kid?" Anger asked.
Riley thought about it for a moment, and then it came to her. She wanted to learn more about the emotions home, as well as what the rest of her mind was like.
"Well, I guess you guys could tell me, or better yet, show me around this place more." Riley said curiously.
"A-are you sure you wanna do that? W-we can always just tell you." Fear asked, trying to reason with Riley and put a sense of reason within her.
"I wanna see more of this place. I went the first 11 years of my life not knowing that there was a secret world in my mind. I wanna see what my mind has. Wouldn't you wanna take this chance if you had it?" Riley countered.
Fear opened his mouth, ready to respond with more nonsense about the dangers of exploring her own mind, but he knew deep down that Riley was right. He would want to do this if he had the opportunity to.
"Alright I guess we can show you our world. But be careful please! I can't protect you right now!" Fear said.
Riley laughed in amusement. She didn't think Fear would be this afraid of literally everything. Despite that, the more time she spent with her emotions, the less she wanted to go back to her own world.
"Okay, so as you know, this is Headquarters. The main base of operations." Joy began explaining.
"This over here, is the control console. This is how we emotions can make you feel, as well as interact with you through, well, making you feel us." Joy said. Riley nodded her head in amazement.
"These over here are the idea bulbs. Depending on how you feel at the moment, we emotions can install an idea bulb into you. But it's up to you if you wanna take it or not." Joy said as she ran over to the bulbs and picked random ones up.
Anger felt a twinge of guilt after hearing Joy talk about the idea bulbs. After all, it was his idea to make Riley away back to Minnesota, when Joy and Sadness were lost in Mind World and Riley's new life in San Francisco wasn't going so well.
"These over here are your memories. The color of the orb depends on what kind of memory is made. Yellow is a happy memory. Blue is a sad memory. Green is a disgusting memory. Purple is a fearful memory. And Red is an angry memory." Joy explained.
Riley went over to the memories and picked one random one up. It was a memory of her scoring the game winning goal from the game a few hours prior.
"You guys really collect my memories?" Riley asked, feeling somewhat touched.
"Of course we do." Joy said happily.
"We do what we do to help you as much as we can." Disgust said proudly.
"We love ya kid." Anger said, in a not so angry tone.
"We've always taken care of you to the best of our abilities." Fear said.
"We know when we're needed for a specific time." Sadness said.
Riley smiled warmly, then turned her head to the view outside of Headquarters. She once again noticed the large, glowing, floating islands. She wanted to know what those were.
"Hey, so what are those…islands out there?" Riley asked, peering out the window. The emotions turned to Riley and noticed her staring out the window to the Islands of Personality. They knew what she wanted to know.
"Oh, those are your Islands of Personality." Joy answered.
"Islands of Personality? What are they?" Riley asked. The more she learned about Mind World, the more she was intrigued about everything else.
"The Islands of Personality are what make you who you are." Sadness said.
"The main Islands of Personality are Goofball Island, Honesty Island, Hockey Island, Friendship Island, and the biggest, Family Island." Joy said.
"Over time, smaller island sections have opened up. Like the Friendly Argument section." Anger said, with a hint of happiness in his voice.
"We all know you love that area Anger. The best one is Fashion Island." Disgust said sarcastically towards Anger.
"Well of course you would like that island, fashion diva!" Anger fired back.
"Well I have my interests while you are just too stupid to do anything besides argue and fight, literally all the time, brick head." Disgust said, roasting Anger.
Anger hissed while gritting his teeth. Riley was chuckling to herself again, She loved how these emotions had somehow made things funny between them, despite their obvious differences. Sadness noted Riley was laughing again and decided to speak up.
"I can see that you're enjoying yourself here." Sadness said. "You find their arguing funny I see." She continued.
"Yeah. This is pretty funny. I can't believe any of this is even possible. It's amazing." Riley said happily.
Sadness feels confident for a second and proceeds to hug Riley, who gladly returns the favor. Joy watches Riley and Sadness hugging. She feels proud of Sadness for finding the happiness, as she had taught her.
"Well as you can see, this is our home, and this is our station inside Mind World. What do you think Riles?" Disgust asked.
"I love this place." Riley said.
Riley and her emotions stared at each other happily. Riley had no idea she would ever experience something like this. The emotions on the other hand never believed this would ever happen. But regardless, both parties were happy.
"You know, for my entire life, I had no idea that any of this even existed. And in my short time here, I have grown to love this place, and you guys. This may be the happiest I have ever been in my entire life." Riley said in a gentle voice.
Sadness was immediately brought to tears (of happiness) and ran over to hug Riley again. Joy quickly followed suit. Even Disgust and Anger felt touched by Riley's speech and hugged Riley. Fear was hesitant to touch Riley physically but was convinced by everyone else doing it themselves.
Somehow, the feeling of Riley's pajamas was warm to the emotions. After a few minutes, the two parties separated.
"You know, a part of me does want to stay here with you guys. But im guessing that's not possible." Riley said jokingly.
"Trust us kid, we would all love it if you could stay here forever. But yeah, that's not possible." Anger lamented.
Then, without warning, Riley began to fade.
