Joy to all mirror

Paste theme, because fuck yeah Alan Wake https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j9X7Zt-gts

The doctor had been quite clear about two points, above the others.
First: her leg would heal, given enough time.
Second: Until it had at least partially healed, Riley was to stay in Hospital. Alone.

For the first day or so, the fact that she was healing was in and of itself enough to get Riley through the day, but by the third day, the concept of spending another couple of weeks in hospital had truly sunk in and, along with it, came the crushing loneliness of being stuck in the "peeds" ward of San Francisco Central with only a narrow little window where her parents could visit.
It wasn't their fault: they tried their best but Dad's business continued to eat into his spare time and her Mom's day job wasn't much more flexible. Between that and the unfortunate visiting hours they could only really be with her for about half an hour on weekdays.
If not for that, the stay at the hospital would have been far less lonesome, but as it stood, Sadness had now racked up the biggest combo of her life and Goofball island hadn't moved for two days.
The last time somebody started that up, the resulting movements had caused Riley's leg to hurt almost unbearably.
And right now, Joy was just about sick of the constant misery.

She'd volunteered for dream duty that night in order to get her head around a plan.
As Riley had begun feeling deflated in the wake of her accident, so the other emotions had also started to feel glum.
It really wasn't their fault. Both Fear and Disgust had found themselves entirely at a loss for what to do - after all, what cleaner and safer a place could there possibly be than a hospital - and Anger had absolutely nothing to act on either, seeing as all the doctors and nurses had all been exceptionally nice to Riley.
Even Sadness had become uncharacteristically melancholy, having been at the controls for nearly the entire day, she could well be best described as "sadnessed out" which paradoxically seemed to make her more sad.
In short, the other emotions were all going round being miserable and whatever that led to, it couldn't possibly be good for Riley.
The inherent problem she faced however, was quite monumental.
Put simply, Headquarters was a tiny island surrounded by a nigh-inescapable gulf and the only way to get to and from HQ - save, of course, crazy bonkers dangerous trampoline jumps - was on the train of thought and therein lay the rub.
Leaving headquarters alone or with one of the others would obviously leave Riley in a state of emotional imbalance, so she had to go when Riley was asleep, but the train of thought only ran when she was awake, leaving her with only one possible option.
She made a quiet "woohoo" as she arrived at her conclusion: she would take the other emotions on a trip individually over the course of a week, but leave Headquarters five minutes before Riley went to sleep, thus allowing her an entire night to bond with them on a one-to-one basis while minimising the risk of abandoning Riley when she needed them.
She moseyed on over to the console with confidence, dancing exuberantly to a hummed melody before she reached it, whereupon she tapped a bunch of buttons and used the microphone to request that the Long Term Memory team run an extra train of thought at about nine at night.
She then continued to dance about for the next hour or so to whatever music came from the dream, tapping her feet, swooshing her arms around in wide, long and aimless arcs and wiggling her butt every now and then, whenever the fancy took her.
Yes, no matter how difficult tomorrow might end up being, she was going to do right by her fellow emotions.

Tuesday played out much like the previous day had and Joy even had to register a response at the folder full of schoolwork that Riley had been given.
At this point, even ten pages of work on the geography of Canada was preferable to the ceaseless monotony of the empty ward.
But it was Disgust's comment earlier that day about Riley's hospital gown that made it clear why she had to be the first one to get a break.
She'd called the gown ugly and drawn attention to the stars and moons design they bore, objecting to how infantile they seemed, but when Joy had argued that the gown wasn't all that bad, her response was brutal.
"let me have this, okay?"
And so, Joy had made a point of pulling her aside for a moment later in the day to invite her to some kind of surprise and now Riley was starting to slip into sleep, Joy told the other emotions to keep their eyes on Riley as she went over to the delivery hatch with Disgust in tow.
The hatch didn't have any kind of a handle on it,but with a little bit of careful use of Disgust's scarf, Joy managed to open it and went out first and stood on the platform.
Disgust followed, looking a little confused as to why Joy had taken her out above the abyss, but no sooner had she opened her mouth to formulate a question, than the Train Of Thought had arrived, coming to an abrupt halt with a special open-air carriage with just two seats on it now a hair's breadth away from the platform edge.
Disgust's look of confusion quickly fell apart, to be replaced by smug appreciation.
"Classy" she appraised as Joy opened the little gate on the carriage and let her in, "I like it".
Joy let herself on and closed the gate behind her, "thought you would" she replied as she sat down opposite Disgust at the little table imagination land had put together for them.
The train of thought blew its whistle and with that, they were whisked off into the reaches of Riley's mind.

Joy made a little shiver of satisfaction as the train of thought pulled into the station at fashion island: seeing Disgust's face light up made her feel great.
After all, she was the pickiest of them all, so if she was happy then her plan was pretty much foolproof. That and seeing other people being happy made her feel happy in and of itself anyway.
Disgust strode daintily over to the gate and opened it, whereupon a particularly well dressed mind worker helped her down off the platform and the small welcoming party that had assembled all rushed to greet her.
Joy followed out and put an arm around Disgust, watching her all but well up at all the attention she was getting.
As Disgust thanked them all for turning out, the crowd parted slowly and a mind worker dressed all in black - who was short even by mind worker standards - came through and appraised Disgust from behind glasses bigger than Sadness wore.
The worker made a couple of odd faces and finally spoke. "Welcome to Fashion Island Dahling, I run the place, these are my underlings, you are Disgust, I am Edna and I am going to make you Beautiful!"
Joy watched and stifled a laugh as Disgust started hopping about, foot-to-foot, barely able to contain her excitement.
"yes, yes calm yourself dahling I'm only mortal, now, lets see." The worker said, with a measurable amount of smugness in her voice.
She began examining Disgust with the kind of scrutiny an engineer might give aircraft while muttering to herself, "hmm, nothing much to speak of up there dearie, but my word your hips just don't quit"
"Oh come on" Disgust responded, but by now, the little worker had come away with a grin on her face that stretched from one side to the other.
"I shall have a garment prepared for you tonight, in the meantime, you are free to go round the island, try anything you like on and when you depart, I will have you looking like a godess!"
Disgust finally lost control and rushed up to the little worker, hugging her so tight it looked like she might pop her.
"yes, yes, yes, I know I'm amazing dahling, now will you please put me down."
Joy fell about laughing.

Fashion island was far bigger in actuality than either Joy or Disgust had ever imagined: sweeping vistas of silk and cotton broke up dense streets filled with shops selling only the finest clothes of all descriptions.
Hats on poles formed streetlamps and the road itself was cobbled with the soles of thousands of shoes, even the curtains in the shop windows were made of fine lace and brushed cotton.
Put simply, Disgust had found herself in paradise and spent the entire night looking in the different shops, trying on just about everything she could settle her eyes on.
By the time the trip ended, she was carrying nearly her entire bodyweight in clothes and accessories behind her and had traded in her usual style for a rather bold combination of a massive sun hat and a relatively short white dress with intricate gold designs over it.
As they headed back to the station, Disgust's refined little stride quickened in anticipation, with the prospect of the entirely custom clothes waiting for her.
As had been the case when they arrived, there was a small crowd of mind workers by the train of thought's station, ready to wish them a safe journey back to Headquarters.
Except this time, the one tiny mind worker that had spoken to them earlier was standing at the front of the group and was holding a little package.
Joy watched as Disgust's pace now went from a quick but refined little strut to an almost scurrying motion as she rushed up to the crowd as fast as she dared without looking a fool.
Joy had no such problems though and simply sprinted as fast as she could toward the crowd, leaving Disgust to catch up in a little moment.
The little worker looked at her with something approaching dismay, but turned to Disgust the moment she caught up.
"Ah, good, I see you've had time to sample the various knick knacks and trinkets, you look nice by the way, dear" she said when Disgust finally arrived "still, I promised you a new outfit and that is what I give you, so here, put it on when you get back to HQ, oh, and call me some time. I could use a model from time to time"
She handed over the little parcel to Disgust and just by the box it came in, Joy could tell that whatever was inside probably cost more than Riley's entire bedroom: the delicate little red felt-covered parcel tied at the top with a gold ribbon alone would probably cost a staggering amount.
At this point, Not Even Disgust's hard-as-diamonds exterior could prevent her from shedding a solitary tear of happiness and she threw herself at the worker, all but smothering her in an octopus-like hug.
"Oh come now, pull yourself together, you have a girl to keep safe. there's no need for all that" she chided and Disgust finally let go before rushing over to joy and hugging her as well.
Naturally, Joy hugged back just about as hard as she dared.
And with that, they boarded the train of thought and headed off to headquarters as the first lights of a slow and natural awakening gave power to the train and as it pulled away with a cheerful toot of its horn, Disgust waved to the workers with her hat, even going as far as to stand on her tiptoes as close to the railings as she dared just to keep them in sight that little bit longer.
Joy just watched her from her seat.
It'd been years since she'd seen Disgust this happy.

Wednesday was a drag like the days before, but Disgust's new outfit provided an exquisite distraction when everything got too much: the whole thing was made of Lilac silk and hugged her figure from an intricate lacy section that coiled round the whole length of her neck to just below her bottom, where it became a loose fitting length of fine cotton that reached all the way to the floor. Matching evening gloves and a pretty little flower in her hair completed the look and turquoise heels that left the top of her feet exposed only served to make her look like something out of a fantasy.
But now Riley had gone to bed and the emotions were getting ready to head up to sleep themselves and Joy was left to enact phase two of her plan.
"Hey Anger, don't suppose I could talk to you over by the lockers for a bit" she chimed, over the end-of-day hubbub.
He raised an eyebrow and came over to her, glad to have a distraction from the memory counting and Sadness' unending gloominess, "sure, what you got for me?" he replied, but Joy just grinned at him in her usual obtuse and slightly smug way, before heading over to the little hatch that the packages came in from the train of thought through.
"Glad you could join me, Anger, now would you be a dear and kick the hatch right about there?" She pointed to the couple of inches of panel below the bar that the hatch rotated around.
He fixed her with a withering scowl as he went over to it and obliged, giving it a good hard kick and thusly forcing it open, after which Joy caught it mid-swing and, without dropping her cheesy grin, went through the hatch.
He rolled his eyes in exasperation as she went off and grumbled absent-mindedly as he followed her, figuring that no matter how much of a scatterbrain Joy could be at times, she wasn't the worst leader and whatever she was doing, she probably had some kind of plan - dumb or otherwise - that he should probably just roll with.
The short tunnel took them out to the same little platform, except this time the train of thought had pulled up with a massive armoured carriage, complete with a turret on the top.
Anger stopped in his tracks as he saw Joy waving excitedly at it and he felt a grin creeping across his face as she invited him in, even going as far as to rub his hands together and laughing in glee as he contemplated what might lie ahead.
"Come on in, commander Anger" she called from inside the carriage "gunner position's free!"

The way to imagination land was far more intense than last time she'd boarded the train of thought, but Joy welcomed the opportunity to indulge Anger in his particular brand of fun.
For the short journey to imagination land, mind workers flew little planes at the train of thought and attempted to shoot splat cannons at them while Anger used his own gun to try and keep them at bay.
It was strange to see him so happy while firing off countless rounds of colourful sludge with reckless abandon and screaming obscenities; were he anyone else, Joy would swear that such a situation would best be described as "stressful" yet behind the screaming and cursing, he was clearly having the time of his life.
Creating the right treat for Anger was pretty simple: for most of Riley's life, Anger hadn't been able to do an awful lot with total free reign, so it made sense that a situation where he could just completely let rip would be perfect for him.
She even joined in halfway through the journey, leaning out of the carriage with a splat gun to take pot-shots at the one or two workers that came at them from below, finding the experience to be unexpectedly exhilarating.
She could see the paintballs moving up the feed tubes into Anger's turret at a startling rate as he continued his barrage of fully automatic fire, knocking mind workers out of the sky and forcing them to bail, where they were picked up by a specialist team from Friendship Island, who extended massive nets to catch them before they fell into the abyss.
In all, the journey lasted about four minutes, until they got to imagination land, where a single Mind Worker in a uniform stood waiting for them in front of the gates, which obscured some kind of warzone.
Now she felt a little uneasy; She'd told them to completely go to town on it, but she'd not actually specified anything.
For all she knew, giant bugs could come out of nowhere and start attacking them. She was not down with giant bugs.

The few remaining workers now turned tail in their planes and went away, giving her and Anger friendly waves as they did so, leaving them alone with the one worker and Joy didn't think she'd seen Anger move faster in her life.
He went up to the one worker as fast as he could and shook his hand, the worker simply gave him a nod of understanding and began briefing him in preparation for whatever lay behind the doors.
"Hello commander Anger" he began, delivering whatever lines he'd come up with in a precise, clipped and authoritative tone "an experiment in genetics at the old pony princess research lab went horribly wrong at exactly nineteen hundred hours. We've been trying to contain it but the monster has been gaining strength rapidly. We need a special response unit. Come with me, commander. You might just be the answer to all our prayers.
The worker then produced a pair of little suits with all manner of little gadgets on them and handed them to Anger and herself.
"Put them on, you'll need them later, now. follow me."
He then led them through the door into some kind of massive military complex, with metal walls and flashing lights everywhere.
All around, Mind workers scurried about, carrying documents and tapping at tablets while in the distance she could hear massive diesel engines thumping away, presumably providing power to the whole area.
It even smelled of diesel, oil, rubber, rusty metal and sweat; the imagination land people had truly outdone themselves on this one.
Now the worker spoke to them whilst walking backwards, as to keep his eyes on them as he spoke "Please put on your suits, there's not much time for us to brief you on this other than whatever you meet out there, it's going to be big, nasty and probably slimy, but crucially, the longer it's alive, the more powerful it's going to get, so whatever you do, bring it down as quick as you can, okay?"
"With what?" Anger replied as the worker finally led them to a dingy little changing room with two separate little cubicles.
They got in as the worker continued and Joy felt a little thrill as she undressed and slipped on the tight little suit. It was unexpectedly heavy, but she liked it anyway.
"Glad you asked, you've been assigned to Peacemaker-Riley. launch is set to begin in five minutes and the commander wants you in the cockpit in three, is there anything else you pair want to know?"
Joy poked her head around the door of the cubicle
"Yeah. What exactly IS peacemaker-Riley?"

In all her life, Joy had never seen such a maniacal grin on Anger's face, but right now, Joy was too deep in a minor existential crisis to fully take that in.
Throughout her life, Joy had gotten used to everything having one of two scales: that of the outside world and that of the world inside Riley. Things outside were mostly of a scale so massive that Joy simply couldn't fathom any kind of meaningful comparison while those inside were so small as to be less than insignificant by outside standards.
Peacemaker-Riley, though, was quite simply so obnoxiously massive that it refused to be measured by either standards.
Peacemaker-Riley was a robot of colossal proportions, presumably operated from within by herself and Anger and its construction was utterly extraordinary.
For feet it had a pair of claws, with five long talon-like claws that lay flat on the ground but could presumably move by themselves to allow the robot extra grip or stability in adverse circumstances. The legs that led up from those fearsome claws were also magnificently huge, with each one looking as if battleships had simply been strung together and fixed in place to create a leg structure.
Above all that lay the robot's groin area, which swelled out in all directions - presumably this was where the robot's massive powerplant was housed - and was protected by a complex series of mechanisms that appeared to shift around it from the waist above it, like a protective skirt of steel that retracted for speed and released for defence.
All up the robot's back, Joy could see a huge metal spine recessed deep into the back of the robot and covered on either side by armour so thick that Joy could hardly fathom the sheer physics that must go into moving something so heavy.
At the top of the robot, Joy could see a sort of metal collar that raised up from the neck and finally, suspended above the awesome superstructure, was a single control pod that was almost as big as headquarters.
The worker who had been speaking to them earlier led them over to an elevator and soon they were whisked up higher than the top of the statue in family island and led up to the back of Peacemaker-Riley, where a platform from within it raised up from the neck and they were instructed to stand in two specific spots on the platform.
The worker backed out and a heavy mechanical whine started up as Anger began wringing his hands in anticipation.
A whisper of trepidation crossed Joy's mind as she stood there waiting for whatever happened next and she made a quiet little yelp when the platform they stood on began descending again, taking them down below the collar of the massive robot. It stopped with a heavy clunk sound, before a loud siren began wailing and above them, the headpiece of the robot began descending from a series of heavy duty cranes above them.
It made its way down slowly until it reached the collar, where a mechanism of incredible strength engaged, connecting the headpiece to the collar and fixing it in place before a low electrical hum sounded and the headpiece began rotating around them.
From inside the headpiece, they watched as the last of the light from the outside was obscured by the head screwing down until with a final, loud thumping noise, all light was blocked out and all movement ceased.
For a few seconds, Joy and Anger stood alone, the only light in the room being given off by Joy's natural glow, until finally a light shone down from the top of the cockpit, where two harnesses had come down, followed by a rush of light as the robot's cockpit dropped the protective screen that shielded the cockpit's window from impacts.
Around them were banks of computers and instruments that twinkled with little lights and displayed all manner of statistics and information, but by far the most important looking part of the whole set-up was the two harnesses that had a veritable snake pit of cables running from them.
As she got in the harness, Joy felt it tighten up a little around her and she watched as Anger struggled a little against the mechanisms that held him in place, but after a little while he seemed to find himself more at ease.
Now came what Joy assumed was the final stage of launch, as there was a mild tremor from the robot and she felt it lean back just a little as if somebody had just pulled a cord out of the back of it; supporting that theory, all the instruments went dark and everything went deathly silent.
Then a roar like no engine she'd ever before heard kicked up and the robot shook violently, with the lights coming on again as the roaring sound stopped and was replaced with a deep and powerful throbbing drone that indicated to her a sense of power like she'd never known before.
The doors in front of them opened now, groaning as they reluctantly parted to reveal a complete warzone.
And a monster that belonged in Riley's nightmares.

As they walked out, Joy finally managed to get a good look at the monster and beneath the abject dread that prevailed, Joy felt just a little proud of just how much effort Dream Productions and Imagination land had put into making the monster.
Somehow, the designers had managed to take nearly all of Riley's most visceral fears (and a good deal of her more abstract ones) put it into one foul creature.
Its arms were spindly, with thick, leathery skin hat clung tightly to the bone and ended in razor sharp claws, but even with the relatively scarce amount of muscle she could see on them, the amount of damage done to the surrounding area told her all she needed to know of the destructive capabilities those arms possessed. Its body was similarly thin, but unlike its arms, weeping, discoloured lesions peppered its entire torso and legs, with luminous pus dripping from them as it went.
But its face was something else to behold.
Discrete elements of Riley's mother were visible in the patchwork face it had, where a variety of different people and things appeared to have been stretched over a malformed skull that had far more angles than any skull ever should.
Among the other faces in the tapestry of horror was the face of Jangles the Clown, though only his manic eyes and pale skin were recognisable at this distance.
And finally, when it opened its mouth to scare off a bunch of mind workers on the ground, a shaft of blinding light came out of its wretched maw, accompanied by a horrible mixture of sounds comprising of times when Riley's mother had shouted at her, names kids at her old school had called her, howling sirens and the terrible sounds of Grandma's vacuum cleaner; every single sound that Riley feared in some way or another was emitted in one deafening howl by this monstrous creature.
And now, she had to fight it.

Anger made the first move, walking the robot forward slowly, as to gradually familiarise himself with the controls; thankfully he found that walking forward at least, was just about as intuitive as it could be in a giant robot.
As a further test, the moment he stepped clear of the door, he moved his arms forward a little - the robot did likewise with only a tiny delay.
Now Joy tried moving an arm - the left one this time - similarly, it moved in a wide arc as she had done.
It worked. she was piloting a massive robot. The feeling was amazing.
She looked over to Anger and gave him a nod "you lead, big guy. I'll follow"
He gave her a quick thumbs-up (which the robot copied) and finally began marching forward towards the monster. Slowly, the robot picked up speed and gained extra speed once Joy synchronised with him (clearly that was what the second pilots' harness was for, acting as a multiplier for the input from the lead pilot) until they were taking massive, thumping strides that shook the ground beneath them and scattered the few brave remaining workers, leaving the huge creature alone with them.
Slowly, it turned away from the little pocket of resistance and fixed them with a glare that bored deep into their minds before it let out its loathsome shriek and began running at them.
It picked up speed at an astonishing rate for something its size, taking strides that covered vast amounts of distance until it was bearing down on them like a missile. Anger hunkered down a little and Joy did likewise, following his lead as he pulled back his right hand and waited for the monster to finally get close enough.
With a scream and a long, lunging motion, Anger led the motion and Joy followed through, bringing the robot's fist up into the monster's jaw with amazing force, stopping its head dead in its tracks.
The rest of its body continued forward awkwardly, slamming into them and knocking the Peacemaker-Riley back with considerable force as the monster bent back and flailed around to stop itself falling over.
From within the cockpit, a series of little lights had come on, indicating minor damage to some insignificant part of the robot, but now those lights were accompanied by the light of Anger's flaming head as they recovered from the impact and went forward to follow up with another crushing blow.
With a scream, Anger and Joy went in again, swinging a straight fist into the monster's face, but by now it had reassessed them as a credible threat and used a claw to push their blow away and into a nearby building, which crumpled as if it were but a tin can and began falling, forcing the two emotions to back up in order to avoid the incoming debris.
Now the monster straightened itself up and lashed out at them, managing to land a hard scratching blow on the robot's chest, sending shreds of metal and equipment whirling down to the streets below; in the cockpit, the two emotions felt themselves being pushed back and lights all around them now started flashing, emitting a chorus of warning noises.
Anger screamed incoherently as they retreated just enough to get out of the way of the monster's second big swipe, but Joy pulled her left arm out and caught the claw in mid-air and with a quick shout to Anger, pulled hard on it as they both shoulder-barged their aggressor, throwing the whole weight of their massive robot against it with incredible results.
The monster flailed and howled as it went back, falling back into a building, where they used the left hand to hold it there and the right to pound into its body, forcing it back into the building, which then started collapsing around it, burying it in a mass of steel, glass and concrete.
For a moment everything went silent, save for the throbbing of Peacemaker-Riley's powerplant. In their cockpit, Joy and Anger breathed in and out slowly and dared to share a congratulatory little laugh, but the moment a feeling of calm began to finally set in, the howl came again, now more haunting than ever.
The rubble of the building shook and parted to reveal the monster, with bits of its bones showing where its hide had been pierced and rage in its eyes.
Anger barely had time to shout "oh come on!" before it threw its entire body at them, gripping Peacemaker-Riley and screaming straight into its face, blinding Joy and Anger temporarily before it bared its horrible jagged teeth and bit at the robot's right shoulder.
In panic, Joy and Anger both scrambled to get it off them but cancelled one another's motions out, leaving them all but defenceless as lights and displays lit up, displaying damages to the hull and the varying systems that were now being put under considerable strain.
Finally, Anger managed to compose himself enough to bark out orders "run! Now!" he called over the sound of the robot being pulled apart bit-by-bit and hunkered down again.
With visible strain, he began running forward, reaching with his right arm to hopefully grab the monster's head and pull it off them as he did so; after a few strides, he managed to do it but Joy wasn't fast enough to intercept the heavy blow that came to the robot's lower torso.
As they picked up speed, the monster's claws gouged into the torso and exposed the cooling for their powerplant. Another fast strike reached inside it, crippling the active cooling systems as they pressed on hard, fighting now not only against their powerful adversary, but against the failing systems of Peacemaker-Riley.
"We've only got about three minutes before passive cooling gives out!" Joy screamed over the cacophony as they reached their maximum speed, "whatever you're planning on doing, do it fast or we're gonna turn into s'mores!"

In answer, Anger leaned forward even further and shouted "jump"
Duly, Joy obliged and together they dived forward with the monster below them.
As they sailed through the air, Anger braced Peacemaker-Riley's right arm under the monster's neck and when they landed, the force of the impact shook the entirety of Imagination Land.
As he hoped, the entire weight of their robot caused its neck to collapse but it remained conscious, biting snarling and gnashing as it waved its arms at them, forcing the two emotions to get Peacemaker-Riley up as fast as they could, but, realising the temperature the powerplant had now reached, it became clear that they needed to work out a way to dispose of it in case their actions weren't enough to assure its demise.
As it thrashed around in a final attempt to cause as much damage as it could, Joy reached out the left hand and caught its arm, "plan B!" she called out to him and he nodded his approval.
With a heave, they pulled hard and dragged it away from the centre of Imagination Land as it continued to struggle and thrash about.
"Core temperature's at three hundred C and climbing" Joy called out, but Anger didn't seem fazed, instead he just glowered at the edge of imagination land and forged ahead.
Together they marched forward, dragging the monster with them and fighting all the way to keep the increasingly reluctant robot going.
Soon they reached the end of Imagination land, where the edge of the abyss that was the memory dump was visible, just a little way away.
Anger grabbed the monster now, as to relieve Joy and better execute his plan, "come on, just a few more strides, come on, come on!" he growled, heaving and straining against the increasingly heavy and reluctant control systems "how's the core doing?" he called.
Joy flipped a couple of switches and gave him a worried look, "no idea! The sensor melted about a minute ago!"
Anger snarled and pulled the monster forward as he made the last stride, taking them to the edge of the memory dump "alright, on three!"
"One!"
Joy grabbed the monster's back.
"Two!"
They pulled it back a little and prepared.
"THREE!!!!"
Together they heaved as hard as they could and Peacemaker-Riley launched the monster into the memory dump to be forgotten, before turning around and taking a single step forward, then going totally silent.
From inside, the only thing Joy could hear now was the ringing in her ears, before a heavy thump sound from below them signalled that the powerplant had now got so hot as to melt its way through the Peacemaker-Riley's abdominal armour and had fallen to the ground, even boring through the floor until it cooled down sufficiently.
Now the robot made noises again as its computers (and everything else, for that matter) no longer had power and thus all the systems helping it keep upright were now inactive, turning the once immense, fearsome robot into a singular hunk of inanimate metal.
Slowly, it fell forward and gathered speed until it collapsed without grace, crumpling and buckling on impact and leaving its two pilots suspended in their harnesses awaiting rescue from the few brave memory workers that had come out to meet them.
Which suited both of them just fine: they'd had quite enough excitement for one day.

Thursday went by just as before, but now Anger seemed to have perked up as well.
In fact, it was amazing to see just how happy being attacked by a nightmare creature made him.
Still, her plan had two phases left and now, after yet another uneventful day, she pulled Fear over to the little hatch.
She fixed him with her most confident grin and made a long and elaborate motion with her arms to indicate the little handle she'd fixed on it, though as she expected, Fear just raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"I'm sorry Joy, I'm not entirely sure what you're so enthusiastic about the cargo hatch for, besides, y'know, the stuff that co..." He stopped himself mid-sentence as he watched Joy give him a little eye roll and pull open the hatch.
"It's alright, it's all kinds of safe" she assured him as she got down on all fours and crawled into it "say, now I think about it, I think this thing would look far more inviting with a few fairy-lights, maybe a speaker at the end playing some soothing jazz, yeah, that'd really make the whole thing less scary"
She looked behind her and found that her musings had worked, with Fear scrambling through it after her, looking a little tense.
"look, Joy, I love both of those things, well... maybe one point five of those things if you're using old-style fairy lights, those can get pretty hot at times; major fire hazard there, point is, we're in the delivery chute and I'm still none the wiser as to why"
Joy just chuckled a little and gave him her trademark grin as she reached the end and stepped out to let him see whatever crazy modification the train of thought had this time.
He came out of the chute still muttering and murmuring, "And then there's those little LED ones you can get nowadays, they're nice and safe - don't even need a power brick - but then of course there's the tree, with all those little needles and of course one or two can get in your eye and that just sucks and oh my god what did you do to the train of thought?"
Joy felt worried for a moment - after all, if anybody was going to be a stickler for the state of Riley's internal landscape, it was Fear - but she needn't have been, because he promptly followed it up with "my word it looks so soft and inviting, why can't it be like that all the time?"
He didn't even need encouraging; the moment he processed the idea of a fluffy and soft train carriage he rushed towards it with his arms outstretched.
She laughed out loud at his enthusiasm and the inherent comedy that came from the thought that just yesterday the very same carriage had been an armoured battle machine.
By the time she got over to the door, Fear was already fully reclined on the sofa with a margarita glass full of endorphins in his hand.
Naturally, he took his endorphins sans little umbrellas and cocktail sticks, in case he poked his eye with one.
"Aaahhh, I like the new-look train of thought" he said, pausing momentarily to take a sip from his drink "I could get used to this"
Joy sauntered over to the bar and got herself a more simple concoction before she went over to the chaise lounge next to him and proceeded to get comfy.
"Oh, trust me, you're going to like what I've got planned for you"

By the time they stepped out into Imagination land, Fear had got himself dressed in a deep red tuxedo, complete with seatbelt-shaped cufflinks, but Joy hadn't done an awful lot to her look.
As he stepped out, his eyes widened with wonderment as he saw the marvellous surprise that Joy had prepared for him.
His ears were serenaded by a dozen jaunty melodies that battled with one another for dominance and the smell of hot dogs and fresh doughnuts wafted towards him, soothing him as much as they excited him; on the myriad different rides, hundreds of decorative lights of different colours came together to form a rapidly moving galaxy of lights that was almost hypnotic.
She'd only gone and built him a fairground.
Enthusiastically, Joy grabbed his hand and rushed to the admission booth and he happily followed.
The mind worker inside gave him a courteous smile and handed them a big green wristband each, with a polite little "have a good time" to go with it, before he pressed a button, the admission barrier opened and he ran inside as fast as he could.

"It's fantastic" he gasped as he finally got in and took it all in for the first time.
Around him, the fair was positively buzzing with activity: mind workers milled around in their hundreds, music floated out from all the stands, enthusiastic shouts and squeals came from the faster and wilder rides, while whoops and cheers came from the games as lucky mind workers won prizes and celebrated.
From above and all round him, the sound of a massive rollercoaster rattling and clattering around made him gasp, drawing his attention to the carriage full of mind workers being flung and whipped around by the crazy design of the track.
Silently, Joy watched his reaction to it and measured her response.
She knew for a fact he would love that if he got on - Fear was a scaredy-cat for sure, but that wasn't to say he couldn't derive some amount of pleasure from it - but she would have to ease him into it somehow.
"Say, Fear, that looks fun!" she exclaimed, pointing to a particularly impossible part of the rollercoaster; as expected, Fear's expression went from wonder to dread, then to cocky self-assuredness, "oh, sure, if you like the idea of plummeting to your doom, I can see..."
He paused, taking a good look at it and assessing any risks it posed.
"... ooh at least twenty points where that carriage could come off, and then there's spontaneous combustion to take into account and electrical hazzards. I'm sorry Joy, that thing's a deathtr - ooh, hook-a-duck!"
Joy chuckled and followed him over to the quaint little stand with little bath duckies floating in it.
Baby steps, she thought to herself.

The evening proceeded at a leisurely pace, with Joy taking Fear on gradually more scary rides.
After the hook-a-duck, Joy led him to the log flume and from there she took him to the magic swing and from there she worked her way through the whole fairground.
It was around the teacups that Fear started getting a little nervy, but with a little careful coercion she managed to get him on them and after a couple of minutes he came out feeling exhilarated.
From there she'd been a little more aggressive with her approach, putting him on the waltzers and then the cyclone before one of the more tame rollercoasters, noting how he reacted to each of them.
With each successive one he seemed to calm down just a little and he took great comfort in the multitude of different safety mechanisms that secured him in place on some of the later rides, so naturally, that was the angle she went with when she threw out the idea of riding the the biggest rollercoaster there.
"Hey Fear, y'know how you like all the nice safety devices on the big rides?" she asked, injecting a slight note of sarcasm into her opening question that - judging by Fear's response - went entirely over his head.
He turned to her with a wide grin "oh yes, they make me feel so safe, it's like being hugged by a machine" he replied, looking slightly wistful; Joy just rolled her eyes and stifled a laugh at just how dorky he could be at times.
She gestured slowly up to the ridiculously tight loop of the rollercoaster that they were standing over as a carriage full of mind workers rushed past with a loud clattering sound and a choir of screams. "That thing's got tons of safety features. It's got airbags and everything!"
Fear burst out laughing and continued for a while, but then he slowly stopped and fixed Joy with a look of horror "oh" he started, now fully realising what she'd been doing for the last few hours "oh you're serious, aren't you?"
Still grinning like an idiot, Joy nodded like one of the little nodding dogs you get in cars.
Joy Kept smiling as she watched Fear having a little tiny crisis on the spot; she could see every thought going through his mind passing as little twitches and pained expressions on his face.
She could tell he desperately wanted to get as far away from the ride as he could, as quickly as he could, but simultaneously the prospect of riding it now carried newfound appeal and the knowledge that by running away now he would be disappointing her greatly.
The conflicting impulses were something entirely new to him and now, after watching an intense internal struggle exhibit itself on his face, he seemed to stop entirely and resign himself to some kind of unpalatable resolve.
He sighed and put out his hand "Okay. Fine you're not going to stop pestering me until I do this are you?"
Joy just hugged him tightly.

The climb to the top of the rollercoaster was long and arduous and the view at the top was nothing short of breathtaking.
Or nauseating, depending on how you looked at it.
From the little platform, they both got a pretty unique view of headquarters glowing subtly in the night, but whilst Joy was appreciating the beautiful landscape of Riley's mind, Fear was holding onto the handrail with a vice-like grip to help himself feel that bit more secure atop the tower of terror.
With a rumble that shook the tower a little, (causing Fear to grab the handrail even tighter, somehow) the carriage pulled up in front of them and its riders got off, leaving it free for he and Joy to take the front seat.
She practically dragged him on and nodded to the worker controlling the ride to put the restraints down nice and tight before Fear got any ideas about running off at the last moment.
She watched Fear relax just a little bit as the worker put him in his seat so tight as to all but restrict his breathing, then he did the same to her and stepped off.
She looked around to see if any workers had gotten on, but save for themselves, the carriage was entirely deserted, just as she'd hoped.
"Hey Fear, so glad you finally decided to do this!" she called to him over a little whirring and groaning sound that came from below them, though Fear didn't seem in any way comforted by this.
"Well I suppose I've just got to get this over with, haven't I" he replied, before scowling at her a little "I mean, how bad can it possibly be?"
A klaxon sounded and a loud mechanical grinding sound was heard, then, slowly at first, they started moving.
For a fleeting second or so, Fear sincerely thought the ride wouldn't go any faster, but then the front of the carriage pitched down and he felt the most intense, nerve-shredding terror he'd ever experienced.
For nearly half the height of headquarters, the rollercoaster plunged down vertically and sheer physics alone held him in his seat, before it came to the bottom and pulled up sharply before rolling around at the top of the climb, levelling out while they were upside-down and then letting them gain speed again as they went into a downward spiral section.
To his utter horror, the carriage spun about eighty degrees clockwise on approach to the right-hand spiral, placing them on the outside of the spiral as it descended, wrapping ever tighter in on itself as it went down and they gained speed until at the bottom of the spiral the carriage finally righted itself before going into a massive loop, having seemingly lost no energy at all as it went.
The world turned upside down and the sound of Joy's manic cheering and whooping filtered into his ears over the sound of his own incoherent screaming, until they reached the apex, whereupon the world promptly righted itself and the feeling that he was about to fall out of his seat was replaced by the kind of G-force that only fighter pilots were expected to endure forcing him back into his seat.
Still it went on, looping, twisting and swinging them about, with not one part of it allowing Fear any kind of respite against the unending terror, until the rollercoaster came to the one part of the track he'd not seen from afar.
The track had begun a steady descent now, gathering speed heading towards Headquarters and - crucially - the memory dump, where the track appeared to simply end.
If he could scream any louder he would have, but having already reached the peak of his voice, he could now only resort to waving his arms about, with every single shred of his rational mind suppressed by blinding terror.
The carriage continued to gather speed, coming up to the edge of the memory dump before finally revealing a sharp drop into the abyss for a fraction of a second before plunging into it at a staggering speed.
Now even Joy screamed as the horizontal motion turned almost immediately into vertical motion, threatening to hurl them like insects into the memory dump, but their restraints held them in place as the carriage continued its dive, before levelling out and pulling them up to ground level on a single long ramp up, suspended over the memory dump.
When it got to ground level, the motor below them started and pulled them along at a leisurely speed, taking them up at a much more gentle angle now, so that they could get a good look at the fairground and the rollercoaster of insanity that they had just ridden.
It was only halfway up the incline that Fear realised he hadn't stopped screaming since the start of the ride and gingerly apologised to Joy, who laughed hysterically.
And then, to his surprise, he began laughing too.
Together, they laughed like hyenas up to the top of the ride and all the way down the stairs.

By the time Friday ended, Joy had busied herself making covert communications with imagination land and making sure that everything for that night would go exactly to plan.
The other emotions - herself included - had come forward to relieve Sadness of her duties for periods of about half an hour a time or whenever was appropriate; that way at least Riley wasn't feeling permanently gloomy and Sadness got a little break.
With news that Riley's leg was getting better, Joy took the opportunity to play a load of daydreams, showing Riley running around and giving the other emotions a little of her own particular brand of pep-up and with each meal the hospital gave Riley that day, Disgust took great pride in criticising the poor quality of the meat and surgically removing all traces of broccoli from the boiled vegetables.
Likewise, Anger and Fear had began working as a sort of team unto themselves, identifying all the things in the paediatrics ward that could potentially hurt Riley and then being irrationally angry at them.
If nothing else, being intensely angry at a flickering fluorescent tube was a good way to pass the time and Joy figured that if they tried hard enough, Riley might gain superpowers.
But now night had rolled by and the lights had been put out and Joy pulled Sadness to the side like she had with the others, except now, she felt something rather unusual.
She felt tired.
In fact, she'd been feeling tired since Wednesday, but right now, with Sadness looking up at her with a knowing look, Joy finally felt the full extent of three all nighters weighing down on her.
And Sadness had clearly picked up on that.
"Hey Sadness" she began, pulling open the hatch one last time and getting down on her knees to go into it "follow me, I've got a surprise for you"
She quickly pushed herself into the hatch before Sadness could argue and looked behind her halfway through to make sure Sadness was following.
She was, but Joy didn't like the face she was making - it was more like sympathy than her usual gloominess.
Joy continued forward, employing the same tactic she had with Fear, "don't worry Sadness, I've got a nice surprise waiting for you, you're going to love it, I know it." Again she looked back, but Sadness' expression hadn't changed.
Finally she got to the end of the tunnel and stood up on the platform and waited for Sadness, but this time the train of thought wasn't there and she felt a rare moment of frustration - the train of thought usually kept a perfect schedule, but this time there wasn't even the sound of its engines and the clattering of its wheels on the track to tell her it was arriving shortly.
She turned round to apologise to Sadness, but the moment she did so, Sadness gave her a slow, gentle hug.
"I'm sorry Sadness, the train's running late, I might have to..." she began, but Sadness fixed her with a look of deep understanding and said, calmly "it's alright Joy, I told them not to come."

Joy now felt confused: her plan had been working fine, but now Sadness had just gone and ruined it for her.
"What? Why?" She blurted out, reasoning that Sadness must have had some kind of a reason for doing this, but right now that reasoning escaped her and all she could do was flail helplessly at Sadness to try and get her to elaborate.
Thankfully, she did.
"I noticed what you were doing a couple of days ago; Disgust could hardly contain herself after her little outing and I was content to let you take me out whenever you got round to it."
Now Joy just felt stupid. Of course Sadness would notice - she was quiet and timid, not blind.
"I watched you planning each trip out for the others, I watched you running around making sure everything went perfectly. I watched you slowly running yourself into the ground for our sake."
Joy shook her head, amazed by just how attentive Sadness had been and just how much she cared.
"You didn't have to call it all off, I can pull through for you" Joy soothed, but Sadness remained steadfast.
"No, Joy. You've got more energy than all of us put together, but even you have your limits. I worked out you'd arranged the trips so that nobody had to cover dream duty, that means you've got dream duty tomorrow and if you don't just collapse with exhaustion tonight you're going to be up all day and all night tomorrow."
Now Sadness hugged her tighter and went over to the hatch.
"look at yourself Joy, you're barely glowing any more, your hair's a mess and you've been surviving on latte for the past three days. I called it off because you needed to rest. I tried to tell you when you took me over to the hatch earlier, but you went too fast for me to explain."
Joy felt helpless - Sadness had a point and there was no escaping that.
With a look of defeat, Joy got in the little tunnel again and Sadness followed.

By the time they got back, Riley had already fallen asleep and Disgust was handling dream duty.
Sadness quickly reached out to grasp Joy's hand when she saw Disgust lying back in her chair, keeping her eyes on the dream; Joy would take just about any opportunity to do something more active and if that meant going up to Disgust and bothering her, then she would do just that.
She felt Joy pull a little, but a pleading look dissuaded her "come on Joy, leave her to it" she said, putting her other hand on top of Joy's in a tender gesture.
Joy seemed to fight the sentiment a little, but after she pulled herself in closer, Joy finally gave way, realising either that her exhaustion was simply too much or that Sadness' gentle touch was too inviting to turn down.
It didn't matter which, all that mattered was that Joy had now stopped resisting.
Sadness gave her another little hug "come on" she whispered and led Joy across headquarters and up to the bedrooms.
Silently, the door to the living quarters opened itself and Sadness opened the door to her room from inside the little break-room, ushering Joy in first.

Joy looked round with mild wonderment at Sadness' room.
It was nothing like she had expected: she had expected Sadness' room be somewhat poky and just a little messy, instead it was unexpectedly spacious and immaculately well-kept.
Not even Fear's room was this tidy.
Squirrelled away in a corner was a desk with a cute little anglepoise lamp on top of it, while a small wardrobe stood at the other end of the room and a shelf full of books and music of the dense and depressing kind, but the main feature of the room was the large bed that was placed against the wall, with room for two in it.
Sadness shut the door behind her as quietly as she could as to avoid disturbing the others and sat down on the bed, taking her little shoes off before tapping a space on the bed next to her.
Duly, Joy obliged and sat down and felt the thick, deceptively soft mattress give way below her, moulding and sculpting itself around her until she felt entirely weightless.
Sadness took off her sweater and her jogging bottoms, then quickly slipped her underclothes off and lay back on the bed "take your clothes off, Joy. You'll be too hot to sleep in that dress" she said, before wriggling her way over to the top of the bed and snuggling herself in.
Joy smiled; Sadness was too cute all wrapped up like that for her to argue and she was too tired to have any kind of objection to sleeping with her.
Not that she had a problem with sleeping with her anyway.
"Alright, budge up a little" she said as she took off her dress and dumped her briefs on top of it.
Wearily, Joy made her way over to Sadness and slipped herself under her thick sheets, instantly feeling the warmth of Sadness' body as she got comfy.
Sadness pulled the duvet over her a little more and then cuddled up to her, slipping an arm over her and nuzzling her face in her neck as Joy lay looking up at the ceiling, still at some level fighting the urge to just fall asleep.
"Thanks, Sadness, I just wanted to make you happy, that's all."
Sadness smiled at her gently and sat up a little, then reached above her and pulled a book from the shelf that ran above the bed.
Joy momentarily looked worried and began to interject as kindly as she could "aww, that's sweet, but you really don't have to." but Sadness just opened it up and skipped to a part somewhere towards the end of the book and began reading aloud.
Immediately, Joy's objections were silenced as the familiar words drifted over her; she was reading Alice in Wonderland and had chosen one of the book's many fantastical and bizarre sections to read to her. Naturally, there was a good selection of happy memories of reading that book that Riley had stored away in Long Term.
She smiled softly as she let Sadness' voice soothe her to sleep and before she finished the paragraph, Joy had drifted off to sleep.
Quietly, Sadness closed the book and put it on her bedside table and snuggled herself down again, before flicking off the light switch.
"Sleep tight, Joy. You've made me happy enough."