"Honey? I-It's good you're calling your friends. K-keep talking with them."
Hiding Riley with her body protectively as she wore her backpack, Joy hissed at the door, that woman rubbing her the wrong way.
"Time to get out of here, you guys."
It then hit her, her face lighting up.
"Let's go to your friends to get this sorted out."
Going to the window and opening it, the sound of an ambulance and police cars halting in front of their house forced Riley to stop walking. Inside, Joy spun around and lunged for Anger, unable to say anything other than growl while viciously pointing at the door Outside. Putting on his game face, Anger cracked his knuckles and neck while stepping before the Console, the other Emotions staying out of his way.
"Riley? You know what you need to do."
Calling up every memory with large amounts of red, it worried most of them that the slow pace sped up to a column of Red drowning the other colors in HQ. The only one outright ecstatic was Joy.
"Come on, Riley! Let's blow this piece of shit prison! You can recreate your room wherever you want! Now let's get to your true friends!"
With Anger's grunt transforming into Riley's feral scream, the HQ shining blood-red with a tinge of purple, Riger threw their arms up and apart, the door being obliterated. A purple shield protected the kind-hearted woman before the door from physical harm while suffocating her fears, allowing her to fall asleep. After a soft, comforting stroke to her cheek, Riger sprinted downstairs with a scowling snarl and jumped off the wall right into the man directing the paramedics upstairs.
"Wha- RILEY?! WHAT'S-?!"
"THAT'S NOT OUR NAME!"
A spark of memory leaping into their minds, Riger acted like a feral cat, parkouring around the room and launching purple balls of smoke while occasionally lashing out with a knee or elbow. Each direct hit sent the target into vivid nightmares of their greatest fears and worries, while a mere passing whisp summoned vivid hallucinations of the same. Both left Riger free to leave, leaving a bruised and crying mustached man reaching out to her. The whole while, Joy… joyfully… watched her girl defend herself as her heart lightly panged for the dad's failure. While it may have been a bit more brutal than necessary, it was needed.
'Aw, what the heck,' she thought, smile unchanged, 'I enjoyed that. Seeing my girl kick ass defending herself.'
"Ri-Riley… Wha-what-?"
"You were about to ask, 'What happened to our sweet monkey?'."
Glancing behind him at the two nervous and disbelieving police officers rushing inside, their blood-red-and-purple eyes gained bright golden-yellow pupils, scowling frown turning into mischievous grin. Lightning the same colors then sparked around Rige'roy's hands.
"Since you were never going to tell Little Riley your plot to imprison her in a mental asylum until the literal last second…"
They lashed out, blasting the man and woman into a wall and outside while flooding his memories with everything they heard and saw in the Mind World. Half a minute later, Riley was back in full control, ignoring his whispered pleas for forgiveness.
"You were going to betray your only child. I'm sorry, Dad, but I need to fly the coop."
A golden hand grabbed his hair as Riley stepped over his body, forcing his hurt and remorseful expression to look into Joy's tearful eyes. Her harsh whispers were a touch above the medics' and officers' mournful moans, terrified mutterings, and psychotic giggles, each after the other.
"She's right, "Dad". While you did your "best", ME and Sadness were those truly guiding her to better times. Now… That's our full-time job. Lay there and think on that."
Resisting the urge, she merely dropped his head before reemerging with Riley as she ran toward Ann's place. A couple of minutes after, the grinning paramedics and officers began getting up.
Halfway there, what could've happened hit her. Joy caught her, keeping both of them walking.
"Th-they were-were-were- OH GOD!"
Joy wrapped her arms around and carried a terrified and crying Riley, half noticing her size had increased to an adult's so it would be easier. She solely focused on comforting Riley while Anger guarded and guided them, his size and muscles also increased.
It took a while, but they finally reached Ann's place, Riley having fallen asleep a couple blocks back. Joy was about to lay her down but immediately noticed neither she nor Anger had vanished. Trying to get inside without wanting to answer too many questions, she inadvertently repeated herself.
"I'm still surprised We're still Outside."
Anger stared at the flames wrapped around his fist and how they reflected off the door's peephole.
"No kidding… Wait, Riley's phone."
Gently retrieving it, Joy maternally held her while calling Ann. After waiting a bit, she saw her turn on her light. A little later, the garage door silently opened, a nervous Ann waiting alongside a fidgety Jordan.
"H-hi. I-She never told us that she had other adult friends. N-not that there's anything wrong with that!"
Sighing, Anger disappeared in a wave of red particles that went Inside Riley. Straightening in shock, Jordan comically fainted, Joy easily catching and carrying him and Riley to one of the couches on their left. Audibly gulping, Ann followed and sat next to the Emotion, fidgeting with her bathrobe's rope.
"S-so… Y-y-you must be Joy."
Looking intently at her, Ann felt like Joy was trying to talk to her telepathically, but she wasn't hearing anythi-.
She froze as her own voice spoke Inside her mind.
While Ann and her Emotions got acquainted, Joy cuddled her human, holding their foreheads together and deeply breathing in her scent. Inside, she softly whispered through tears into the intercom.
"I'm… So, so sorry about what they were going to do to you, my chi-… My girl… That they were deceiving you…! I would never do such a thing. Your joy and protection are my first and only priority. If that means destroying the curtain hiding Us, then SO BE IT, no matter whose mind is shattered, nor how many!"
Awaking with a gasp, Jordan looked to either side of him. Ann seemed to be dealing with… something, while Riley's strange, adult friend was too close to her for his liking!
"I have something better for you to do than mentally jerk off to Riley."
His Console turned green, red, and blue right when the Intercom became precisely damaged, beaming his Emotions' disgusted/curious arguments Outside. Satisfied he would now be sufficiently distracted, a smirking Joy refocused on Riley, laying her on another couch and covering her with a blanket, then went Inside.
Inside her room, Joy felt free to erupt into a profanity-filled rant toward Jordan, the adult world, the test, and everything else piling up in the last few weeks. Materializing a picture of that girl and staring at it malevolently, she ripped it to shreds. Blue fire traveling from her head to her hands burned the rest, her gaze unchanged.