Riley FT. the emotions - Meg

official paste theme, because really, tell me you expected less. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nIkWiIDTXQ

For the first time in her life, Fear and Sadness were pushing buttons with her.
And they had a right to: the news that Meg was coming over for a few days was fantastic, but with that came the guilt over her behaviour towards her when she'd first moved over to San Francisco.
Sure, Joy was now firmly back in control and the new upgrades had made it even easier for her to make Riley happy, but even she wasn't entirely sure that no permanent damage had been done to their friendship, even after Riley had apologised to her.
Profusely.
Still, Mom had sprung the news that Meg was coming over to visit rather suddenly, and that had caused some amount of panic within headquarters.
Anger came over now with a collection of daydreams, pushing Fear aside before dumping the daydreams in font of her.
“Train of thought hasn't stopped since three o'clock” he said nonchalantly “I hope you're all into daydreams where Riley's friendship does its finest impression of the Hindenburg, 'cause there's crates full of that coming in.”
As if on cue, the train of thought blew its whistle behind her and Sadness went to put one of the daydreams in its slot, but Joy reached out a hand gently, to signal to her that she didn't think it was too good an idea for her to put it in.
“I'll take care of that” she said, while simultaneously gesturing to Anger to thank him for bringing over a bunch of daydreams.
Quickly, she inspected them, checking the colouration of the little teeth on the wheels: the ones Anger had handed them were mostly happy, so as to spare Riley all the possibly horrible outcomes.
She put one in and over Riley's day-to-day activities, an elaborate video of Riley hugging Meg and playing hockey with her was overlaid.
She checked the next one and found it had a single green tooth, but she put it in anyway: the resulting few seconds of animation revolved around Riley and Meg going out shopping , whereupon Meg tried on an absolutely horrible outfit and they had both laughed about just how awful she looked.
A quick look over her shoulder revealed Disgust gazing with pride at the screen as she carried yet another box of assorted daydreams, ideas and other mind detritus, the majority of which may well go unused for some time.
The next one had two blue teeth and she was hesitant at first to put it in, but better judgement made her continue. The daydream that showed involved Riley crying on Meg's shoulder about how much she missed her and how sorry she was for that one online chat, but nevertheless, Meg forgave her and in the next scene of the daydream, they were sitting and watching a movie together.
“Bad ideas coming through!” came Disgust's snippy voice from behind as she dragged an entire crate full of ideas across the room and tipped its contents away into a chute that led to the memory dump.
Fear gave her a worried look and she just shrugged, “what, specifically, were those ideas?”
“Bad ones” she replied, but Fear didn't look like he was in any way satisfied with her answer “but seriously, what was in those?”
She shrugged, realising Fear wasn't going to let her off the hook for this one “watching that horrible DVD nan got us two years ago, bad fashion choices, dancing in class and about seventy different variations of kissing that floppy-haired kid in geography class”
Fear nodded, seeing the sense in her disposal of the ideas.
“Thanks Disgust” Joy chimed “we'll have to have a word with imagination land later, in fact, Anger, chalk that up to three on the priorities list for tonight. Top priority is still getting Riley ready for Meg's arrival tomorrow, got that?”
A variety of affirmations came from around the room and Joy felt a little swell of pride.
“Alright then”
She pushed a lever and Riley looked at the clock in her room.
“We've got precisely twenty seven hours until Meg arrives in San Francisco, I want Riley in good shape and contingency plans in place for every eventuality, we good?”
Again, the other emotions chimed their agreement.
“Good.”

Dinner that night was relatively uneventful.
Her mother had prepared a hearty chilli, with thick mince, rich tomatoes, diced pepper and onion and a liberal helping of chilli flakes to give it a good, strong kick.
She could vaguely remember a time when her mother hadn't been so good at cooking and she'd given her chilli for the first time without realising just how hot the meal she'd made was.
Anger raised an eyebrow at the memory. He remembered that one as well. It had been one of the few times he'd won an argument with her – mostly because he'd convinced her to try some herself.
The memory continued, showing Riley's mother gasping for air and swallowing an entire pint of water.
Joy and Fear both listened intently to the over-dinner conversation between Riley's parents for any signs of a complication that might arise.
Conversation that night was, however, mostly regarding relatively dull details concerning the finances of her dad's business. What little did concern Riley directly or otherwise was relatively routine; school proceedings, hockey practice schedules, the occasional probing question about whether or not she'd found any boys at her school that caught her eye.
Disgust made sure to register a strong response to that particular question.
Mom chuckled a little and let her off after she finished her dinner, so Riley spent the rest of the night watching tv or surfing the net until nine o'clock came around and with a relatively uneventful bedtime routine, Riley drifted off to a comfortable sleep.
Only once Riley had fallen asleep, did everything start going south.

The first one to realise something was wrong was Disgust.
She'd been woken by some kind of instinct she couldn't quantify, but one she recognised instantly.
At some point, bacteria had managed to take hold somewhere in Riley's body and now she was experiencing feedback.
Mentally, she ran through Riley's day, hunting down any time where something might have breached Riley's skin without them noticing, but ultimately nothing came up, leaving her to conclude that the source of the infection had either been airborne or in something Riley had eaten.
Of course. The corn dog at hockey practice. She didn't think anything with such a low actual-meat-content could ever harbour bacteria, but the creeping feeling moving to her stomach informed her that whatever infection had taken hold, she had to take action.
With abandon, she rushed into the control room and called to Anger, who was monitoring a dream about dancing unicorns, not caring if she woke the others.
A startled yelp from within the sleeping quarters told her that she now didn't have to worry about that, so she just continued anyway, gesturing for Anger to leave the console as she made her way over to it and jabbed at the nearest buttons she could reach.
The dream stopped and was replaced with a relatively dull looking chart.
By now all the others had come down to join her but she didn't have the patience to explain to them the nature of the emergency in any great detail.
She zoomed in on the chart a little and narrowed her eyes at the gradual rise it was showing since about half five.
Definitely the corn dog.
“What's happening?” Sadness asked and Disgust just thumped a button in response.
“We've got a twenty-three-nineteen, Riley's going to puke in about twenty minutes and there's nothing we can do about it. I'm waking her up so that we might have a chance of making this less horrible than it needs to be.”
She slapped another button and Riley's eyes drifted open.
“This is not negotiable.”

Riley finally stopped throwing up at about six in the morning.
Under normal circumstances, Joy would have let sadness take over and have Riley cuddle up to her parents for the support she needed, but with Meg's visit fast approaching, the last thing she needed was to have Riley's parents stop her from going out because of an illness.
Besides, if Disgust was right about it, then the worst should be behind her right now.
Still, using the hour and a half they had left until Riley needed to start getting ready for school, Joy had put Riley back to sleep so that she and the other emotions could have a strategy meeting.
“Alright team, talk to me. We've got to get Riley through school, not let on that she's been throwing up all night, win a hockey match again the Ocelots and get to central station in time to greet Meg. All on about two and a half hours sleep. Any suggestions?”
The other emotions looked round at one another for a little while and Joy allowed them the time to think before Sadness finally offered a little input.
“Well, I guess hockey's going to mostly take care of itself, so as long as Riley doesn't drift off before then, the tiredness factor shouldn't be too much of a problem.”
And then, she followed it up with “school's going to be the worst though”
There was a murmur of agreement among the others and Fear came in next “I say we avoid school altogether, hide until hockey comes round”
The others shook their head.
Now,  Disgust came forward, looking a little more sure of herself after the discomfort of the night, “we can't just bunk off, as boring as school can be, we've got to go, but we've still got a major food problem right now so I propose that we try and have Riley eat stuff that's as plain as possible until at least lunchtime. After that we can play it by ear.”
The others agreed, to which Disgust added another point “oh, and we need some kind of better alarm or something, how come none of us noticed they turned the heat up?”
Joy took her points on board and mulled them over as she checked the time. She didn't like how the meeting was going right now, but so long as Meg was going to be in Riley's house by nine o'clock, she was ready to make compromises.
“Okay, so, keep Riley awake through school and stay away from eating anything particularly awesome, got it. Anything else?”
Fear cleared his throat and spoke again “What if Mom and Dad work out Riley's been sick? What's our contingency plan for that?”
“We dig our heels in” Anger grunted and Sadness gave him a look of worry, “oh come on, it's easier for them to just foist us off to school than it is to take time out of their days to look after Riley. Obstinacy is our best option.”
Sadness shook her head “I don't know, I think Riley needs the love. I say we open up to them about everything.”
“And tell them that Riley's fine now!” Joy added, sensing a route to happiness through honesty.
Anger shrugged “yeah, I guess that too.”
Joy checked the time again and went over to the console, ready to try and give Riley a nice feeling when her alarm went off.
“Okay team, we're rolling with that. We good to have a little extra sugar on the cornflakes this morning, Disgust?”
She nodded from her station and Sadness gave her a supportive nod.
“Good. Might not stop her falling asleep, but it'll help to have a little extra pep. Alright, here we go. Morning routine. First one to respond to the alarm gets a high five!”
The alarm went off and Fear beat her to it.
Great start.

Breakfast that morning was pretty routine, save for Fear doing his best to make sure that neither of Riley's parents noticed that she looked a little bit off.
As planned, Joy sprinkled an extra spoonful of sugar on the cornflakes when Riley's parents weren't looking and Disgust kept her closest eye on any feedback that Headquarters received, in case anything untoward reared its head.
Thankfully, save for a moment when Riley's mother looked at her with a slight, unreadable curiosity, Joy managed to get Riley out of the door and on her way to school.
From her peripheral vision, she saw Sadness press a few buttons and Fear gave her a subtle look of confusion.
"Riley didn't get to say goodbye properly and now we've got a whole day of school ahead of us."
Joy nodded her acknowledgement and shoved a daydream into the console "come on team, Riley's got this. just think of how hard she's going to rock at the hockey game tonight, we've just got to stay on top of everything and it'll all work out fine, I know it."
The daydream showed Riley smashing the puck into the back of the opposing team's goal from halfway across the rink.
Again, sadness poked a solitary button and Joy countered with a swoosh of a dial.
The ocelots were a formidable team and nobody in headquarters was more acutely aware of that than Sadness, but dwelling on the very real outcome of a crushing defeat wasn't what she needed right now. Riley needed encouragement.
The memory that was kicked out at the end was mixed, but nobody questioned the decision.
Again, Joy shoved one of the daydreams about Meg coming to Riley's house into the console, as if to remind everybody of the ultimate goal of the day.
"School's coming up" Anger grunted while Fear continued scanning the area for cars, loose dogs, quicksand and the like.
Disgust flicked a couple of switches and recalled a memory concerning Riley's schedule for that day. The memory was a little faded so the image that it projected was fuzzy and no amount of adjustments would fix that, but the schedule still showed that there was a double history block towards the end of the day and an hour of long, hard, math.
She glared at it as if it had wronged her personally, or if doing so hard enough would somehow erase the two hours of Mrs Whitney droning ceaselessly about the French revolution.
Now sadness pressed a button and nobody dared counter it.
If Riley was going to fall asleep in anything, it was going to be that.

Miraculously, the emotions had managed to keep Riley awake until lunch break, despite math being just the worst that day.
Anger had been the worst affected by that one, and had spent the entire hour and at least ten minutes of the drama class that succeeded it, repeatedly shouting "LETTERS ARE NOT NUMBERS" until Fear managed to distract him with the promise of pretending to punch somebody in the play they were doing.
Right now, though, Joy had made the call to go with the biggest slice of pie that Riley's dinner money allowed, with a little bowl of ice cream to go after it.
After all, she needed her strength for the day ahead and Disgust informed her that the autoimmune team had everything under control.
Nevertheless, Disgust made sure to do a pretty comprehensive inspection of said food before finally deeming it safe.
For the first ten or so minutes, Riley sat at a table with a bunch of girls that she felt broadly indifferent to and ate quietly.
Joy registered a response to the food with a long and deliberate swoosh of a dial: since the overhaul last month, the cafeteria had started giving out food that was actually pretty good.
All the sounds around Riley served up plenty of data for Fear, Sadness and Anger to pour over, listening out for nasty little rumours, juicy titbits of gossip and any news regarding upcoming events.
But above all those sounds (and the smells, which were pretty much taking up all of Disgust's time), one particular noise caught Fear's attention.
Above the hubbub of the cafeteria, Fear picked up on the sound of footsteps approaching from the right. A slightly longer than usual time between the clack-clack-clack of good shoes on the tiles, together with the manner in which they gained volume instantly warned him of a particularly tall individual. The sound of the footsteps themselves suggested very expensive shoes, probably well-fitted and belonging to somebody with more weight than normal.
Sadness poked a button in response to the sound after Fear had jabbed as wide an array of buttons as were in his reach, with Disgust following up with a subtle slide of a lever.
Those footsteps belonged to Kirsty Bates. None of them were in any mood for Kirsty Bates Right now.
Since the crying incident, Kirsty had singled Riley out as something of an easy target. Sure, the other girls often fell into the firing line of her superiority complex, but Riley was her punching bag of choice.
"Okay, guys, let's not be too hasty now, she might just want to say sorry,or maybe it's just some other kid with really long legs" Joy warned, but the lack of confidence in her voice showed - there had been no new students recently that could fit that description and the day that Kirsty stopped being terrible would be the day that the earth stopped turning.
Now a hand drifted into view and a finger with red nail polish poked into her ice cream, before moving up to the mouth of its owner, who raised an eyebrow at her, challenging Riley to do something.
By the time Joy had worked out something to say to calm her fellow emotions, Disgust had already responded with one of her best glares.
"Hey there Riley" Kirsty began, shooting her the biggest fake grin she could, before dipping her finger into Riley's ice cream again and sucking it off her finger "gee, this is some tasty ice cream you got there, it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it."
Only when she said that, did Fear realise that Kirsty's right hand had been surreptitiously heading over to the bottom of her ice cream dish since the first finger dip and in a frantic attempt to guard Riley's ice cream, he slammed a button and Riley threw out an arm to stop the ice cream from going all over the table, but the pull Fear had expected never came.
With a definite splat sound and a cold, wet feeling that caused Disgust to sprawl over the controls, Riley's hand came down hard on the ice cream, splattering it all over the table and causing Kirsty to laugh at her.
Now a small group of kids had turned around to look at Riley and Sadness started pressing all the buttons she could reach. For a moment, Riley's face crumpled like she was going to cry, suddenly aware of the sheer amount of eyes fixed on her and just how well and truly she had been tricked.
Kirsty hadn't done anything - not directly at least -  it was all her fault, but then something inside her stirred.
Disgust and Sadness were still reeling from the calamity, while Joy just stood there, shellshocked.
None of them had noticed that hockey island had started working, neither had they noticed that all the other islands had dimmed until Anger slammed a fist onto the controls.
All of the other emotions stepped back now, realising what he'd done. in a moment, and without their knowledge, Anger had just weaponized hockey island.
Riley wasn't the biggest kid in her class, but she knew how to throw her weight around.
In the moments before Anger pushed the levers, only Sadness managed to respond, registering a little sympathy response as she considered just how hard Riley was about to lay into Kirsty and how much it would hurt her, before the lights in headquarters dimmed and Riley stood up in an instant, before grabbing at Kirsty's blouse and pulling her in tight so that her nose was mere millimetres from her face and she was forced to bend down to Riley's level.
The emotions looked in amazement at how Anger had somehow not started throwing her around the room. Clearly Sadness' little input had caused Riley to choose powerful intimidation over outright force.
"listen, Kirsty. I don't like you, you don't like me. That's fine. So I suggest you get me a new dish of ice cream and an apology, or I'm going to pound your face into the dirt so hard you'll wish you'd been hit by a bear. Do you understand me?"
Anger made sure that she pulled her again, a little harder this time, to illustrate the point, before letting go.
There was an audible sigh of relief in headquarters as Kirsty backed off, with a face like thunder.
Then, with no warning, Kirsty gave Riley a hard, powerful slap and the emotions all rushed to the controls.
For a moment, the view from the screen rushed to the right before Riley stabilised herself by planting her hands on the table.
Sadness and Fear pushed buttons with abandon and a series of blue and purple memories were spat out into storage, with the occasional green one, before they all stopped and Anger shooed them all away from the console with a glare intense enough to melt tungsten.
Now nobody challenged him, not even Fear or Sadness felt any desire to be anywhere near Anger right then.
Between the others, the decision was unanimous: get as far away from Anger as the confines of headquarters allowed.
All the lights went dim as Anger pushed buttons and Riley pulled herself back up to her full height, leaving only the light from the projector and Joy's subtle glow to illuminate the room.
And finally, with a scream of incoherent rage, Anger pushed the throttles as far as they could go and the room was painted an almost blindingly intense yellow as the flames that erupted from his head blotted out nearly everything that wasn't the projector, which showed Riley throwing her entire bodyweight towards Kirsty in totally uncontrolled fury.
In a single powerful movement, Riley knocked her off her feet and onto the floor, where she proceeded to throw herself down on top of Kirsty, pinning her down before hitting her again and again and again until the staff pulled her off.
Now Disgust came back to the control panel to throw some choice insults at Kirsty, then Fear, as he realised the scope of the trouble Riley could be in, followed by Sadness, who pushed the final buttons, registering a well of remorse as the realisation that Riley had just physically attacked another girl.

Joy didn't come back to the controls until half an hour later.

The ride in Dad's car that afternoon was particularly quiet and it was only about five minutes away from the hockey rink that he spoke up.
"So. I understand you got into a fight today. Tell me about that"
Anger gave the screen a withering scowl "hey Dad, knock it off with the probing will ya? I just got a call in from outer space and apparently the alien landing parties are saying you're making them all look bad"
Joy tentatively pressed a button and gave Anger what she hoped was a look of understanding "he might be about to forgive her, come on, maybe he just wants to know."
Fear led the response now, swirling a dial to flavour Riley's response.
"Oh, yeah... about that" she said through clenched teeth, her eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror, where Dad's expression could be clearly read. Not that it mattered; his face was fixed as if it were made from concrete.
Disgust tentatively pressed a single button to register her feelings on the matter, but not enough to greatly influence Riley's response.
Riley cleared her throat "well, you know that girl I keep telling you about?"
Now her dad responded a little, if only by way of a raised eyebrow at the emphasis she'd put on the words "that girl"
She continued "well... she..." Riley closed her eyes and screwed up her face in fear of her father's reaction "she humiliated me in front of the whole cafeteria and ruined my lunch. I got mad, I wasn't thinking straight."
Sadness moved a throttle up slightly.
"I'm sorry"
Her father's expression now seemed to relax a little, "yeah, she sounds like a piece of work alright. You really shouldn't have gone to town on her though."
Riley felt a wave of relief pass through her and the sight of the hockey rink caused her to relax a little "thanks dad" she said.
He smiled a little at her as he parked up. "c'mon monkey, you've got a game to win, just save up all that anger for the other team next time, okay?"
He let her out and she got her things. Now all she had to do was get through the hockey game.

The cold of the ice rink brought welcome memories of skating on the ice in Minnesota, but the artificial, cloying, chlorine-like smell of the extreme cooling systems required to maintain the ice quickly reminded her of where she was.
The rest of her team had assembled by the entrance to the players' changing rooms and the first dribs and drabs of a crowd had begun to assemble on the lower benches; no doubt the parents and friends of the players.
There was no sign of the Ocelots, but she'd seen their bus outside, so they were probably getting changed into their gear by now.
Riley went up to her team with a fairly confident look, which faltered a little as she scanned the stands one more time. Mom wasn't there. Sure, she'd probably be there when the game started, but right now she wasn't there and that still affected her.

While she got changed, the emotions were busy preparing Riley for the game ahead.
Fear and Joy both played daydreams, one after another, by turns getting Riley excited for the intense match ahead of her and worrying her with the concept of a brutal loss at the hands of the Ocelots' nigh-impenetrable defence.
Sadness was too busy worrying about the fact that Mom was missing to be part of the preparations, but Disgust and Anger were already having talks about what amount of force was necessary for the game without incurring unacceptable amounts of sweaty/ickiness, and just what kind of amount of sweaty/ickiness was acceptable in the first place.
Needless to say, the conversation was fairly heated; arguments between anger and Disgust often played out as demonstrations of just what an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object looks like.
Still, by the time Riley was fully kitted up, her emotions had settled on their tactics and the music had started to turn up.
Joy pounded a whole bunch of buttons as she heard the music and any doubts Riley might have had were pushed to the back of her mind. Hockey island was working at full capacity and the foghorns all seemed as pumped as Joy did right then.
Fist bumps were exchanged, fives were elevated and hugs were handed round.
Then the doors opened and the short walk to the rink began.

Riley noticed that her Mom had sidled in about halfway through the first period, but by then she was too caught up in the game to fully take it in because all the rumours she'd heard about the Ocelots were true. And some.
Sure, the Foghorns weren't bad at all, but the Ocelots were like no opposition she'd ever played against: within minutes, two of their defence had already marked her out as the greatest threat and were all over her like a rash any time she got a chance to get near the puck.
Meanwhile one particular girl was causing all kinds of trouble near the Foghorns' goal and only the stalwart efforts of their goalkeeper kept the score at nil-nil, until the eighteenth minute of play, when three of them totally overwhelmed the foghorns' defence and through sheer brute force, managed to get the puck into their goal.
Sadness poked a bunch of buttons as Riley watched the girl who'd been causing them grief celebrating with her team. Anger also snatched at the console, this time glaring at the name on the back of the girl's outfit.
Morgan. If it were up to him, she would be eating ice for the entire duration of the next period.
The last couple of minutes of play were a badly-coordinated mess, with neither side applying tactics too hard, just rushing one another until the end of play
By the end of the first period, she walked off the ice feeling broadly demoralised.
Too wrapped up in her own disappointment to notice a wave to her from the stands.

The strategy meeting had been a little more bleak than she'd expected, but still, they'd come out with a plan and it was one that Anger was all too happy to go along with.
Tracy Morgan - the girl who'd been causing the trouble and keeping defence all tied up, was to be assigned a shadow. That shadow was Riley. Any moves towards the Ocelot goal would be made by Amy Marconi and Jess Philips with Riley as backup should some assistance be needed.
Getting on the ice for the second time, Riley waved to her mother but was unable to hear her call back over the sound of the music and cheering. By the time her mother started gesturing to the empty seat to her right, Riley was already in the middle of the ice, locking eyes with Tracy.
When the whistle blew, some aggressive shoving and jabbing secured the puck for the Foghorns, with Eleanor Wun-Su - a talented member of the defence - passing the puck forward to Marconi.
Immediately Tracy went after the relatively slight Amy, but as planned, Jess had already swooped in around the back of the Ocelot defence and the moment Tracy sensed the pass was about to happen, Riley gave her a particularly sharp barge, preventing her from reaching the puck in time to intercept the pass.
The pass went a little bit wide but Jess managed to catch it nonetheless, guiding the puck a little closer to the goal before flicking it as hard and as fast as she could towards the very middle of the Ocelots' goal.
Their goalkeeper dropped low, but the puck sailed on through her legs and hit the goal so hard it moved back a little.
Joy whooped and cheered, dancing all over the console as she celebrated, while the other emotions exchanged various other gestures of congratulations amongst themselves. Riley glided over the ice and hugged Jess hard, congratulating her with great enthusiasm.
After that, the Ocelots started treating them like a far greater threat and the entire game began to slowly devolve into attrition tactics.
Their defence was formidable, but between Jess and Amy there was enough of an opposition to keep them worried and any pucks that came back to the Foghorns' side were handled quickly by Eleanor and Lucy, who managed to mostly hold their own against the Ocelots' moves.
With Tracy tied up, the Ocelots' offence was significantly weakened, but with Riley taking an absolute battering every time she moved to keep Tracy down, sooner or later she was going to simply run out of stamina.
Still, neither of the Foghorn defenders had the speed and precision that Riley had, so any kind of forward move in order to free her up would mean putting a substantially weaker player in the firing line against a girl who was more than happy to throw her weight around.

After about twelve minutes like this, Anger began noticing the effects of those attrition tactics beginning to set in.
Riley had begun to show a slight delay between his inputs and her response. At this point it wasn't anything to worry about, but come the third period, the constant exertion would surely catch up with her. By now she was already past Disgust's ideal sweatiness level and plunging straight into what she described as the "grossness danger zone."
The puck had found its way over to her yet again and Fear braced Riley for a hard collision from the right as Tracy - now wise to her tactics - came in fast to snatch the puck away from her. The impact was brutal and the emotions tried their hardest to keep Riley stable, with Anger strengthening her resolve as Riley recovered from the blow and Joy providing a much needed jolt of confidence as Riley realised she'd somehow managed to keep hold of the puck.
With a deft and accurate flick, she passed the puck to Amy, who struggled with one of the defenders before passing it to Jess. Again, Jess lined up a shot but now Tracy had rushed off to her at full speed.
Riley skated as fast as she could towards Jess to help her, but in her panic, Jess passed the puck back to her and a member of the Ocelot offence had come up behind her.
In mere seconds, she caught the puck and took a shot at the goal before a girl about a foot taller than her hit her so hard she had to flail her arms around to stay upright, before physics finally won the battle and Fear had to have Riley brace herself for a fall.
She smacked into the ice hands-first and slid forward a few inches before a hand pulled her up, accompanied by cheering and the sound of her name being chanted by the team.
Looking up now, she saw the puck had lodged itself squarely in the back of the Ocelots' goal and she allowed herself a shout of celebration.
But in her head, Joy was the only one celebrating.

"Water! Sugar! Now!" Fear barked as Riley got to the changing room.
That last blow, coupled with a vicious final few minutes, had taken a serious toll on Riley's stamina.
By now, the fluids lost in the morning, the lack of a lunch and the lack of sleep had all come to a head and the emotions found Riley showing distinct signs of exhaustion despite their best efforts to have her push through it.
Joy let Riley take in the praise her teammates showered her with, but the other emotions were all far more concerned by the twenty minutes of play remaining than anything else.
As per Fear's instruction, Riley headed over to the drinking fountain and swallowed something approaching an entire litre of water while Disgust tried her best to work out a way to keep Riley from smelling quite like a walking dumpster.
The water would help keep Riley going for now and Fear would make sure she kept alert during play, but considering just how hard the Ocelots now wanted Riley out of the action, she'd be burning through energy at an astonishing rate just trying to stay up.
Now the music rose one final time and Joy spun a dial to give Riley a little burst of optimism before she went onto the ice.

From the moment the whistle blew, the Ocelots pushed harder than any of them had expected.
Riley went as fast as she could to intercept the puck but by now the entire team had assembled behind one girl and the defence was impenetrable.
Poor Jenny in goal didn't stand a chance. The puck emerged from the dogpile of players at what might as well have been light speed and whistled past her head, slamming into the goal with a staggering amount of force.
Within a minute, the Ocelots had equalised and now Sadness registered a stronger response on the console; The Foghorns simply didn't have a strategy for that kind of brute force attack.
When the whistle blew to commence again, Anger led the way and had Riley lunge for the puck and pass it back without looking. Any way to get it away from the Ocelots at this point was welcome. clearly the full-team-rush tactic was something they brought out if they needed to get an edge over a difficult opposition and the best way to prevent them from implementing it was to keep each and every single one of them busy.
As before, Tracy had singled Riley out and vice-versa, but now Tracy had noticed her trying to conserve what energy she had left and throughout the next ten minutes, she actively shadowed Riley as she tried to help her teammates.
Every time she went for the puck, Tracy put up a persistent fight, trying to wear her down or snatch it from her before she managed to offload it.
Still, she couldn't move back without having Tracy tear into Amy or Jess and moving forward to join the attacking force would just result in the same vicious defence that she'd come across at the start of the game.
The game continued like this for a couple of minutes, with Riley's strength slowly failing her as she tried to keep pace with the rest of her team, who had now moved to a high speed attack pattern, hoping to overcome their defence with speed instead of positioning.
The puck rushed back at Riley now and she went to catch it but it glided past her stick and straight into the hands of one of the Ocelots' forwards.
Now she had no choice but to head as fast as she could to join the defenders and hopefully shelter them a little from the oncoming pressure.

Lucy managed to get the puck away from the girl who caught it, but fluffed the offload, sending the puck careening across the ice off to the left side of the ring, where Eleanor managed to get it away from Tracy, but the inertia it had gained from Lucy's wild swing kept it going on an unpredictable path.
Riley skated as hard as she could to get over to it before any of the opposition managed to get to it.
She caught it with a wide movement of her stick and guided it away from the wall.
And then she heard something that made her heart skip a beat.
she'd become accustomed to her parents shouting "go Riley" and the like, but there was a new voice in the crowd calling her name, one that wasn't local.
Most of the spectators were local, and their sharp accents showed it, but this voice was distinctly female, young, and had more bass in it than anybody from around here.
Joy swiped at the console and Riley allowed herself a moment to look into the stands to see Meg's wild crop of ginger hair.
That was why her mother was late. She'd been picking up Meg.
Somehow, hearing Meg's voice provided the willpower boost that she needed; as expected, the moment she managed to get clear of the wall, Tracy slammed into her to try to force the puck from her, but with a sharp shoulder barge - courtesy of Anger - Riley threw her whole bodyweight into Tracy, sending her back and drawing the attention of the defence.
She passed the puck to Amy, who had come up behind her and deftly led the rather burly girl who was heading straight for her away, before passing it back to her at blistering speed.
From her position, Riley had a particularly narrow angle to make the shot in, with not a lot of flex in the goalkeeper's position. Taking the shot from here would be almost certain disaster.
She moved right with Jess coming up from behind the goal and moving swiftly behind her to take out the other defender
that had locked onto her.
Now the entire Ocelot team was bearing down on her and her muscles ached, her lungs burned and she felt beads of sweat running down her forehead.
She turned around a little to face the goalkeeper and smacked the puck with all the strength she could muster, before no less than three different players all knocked her off her feet.
But when she hit the ground, she heard the buzzer. The shot had gone in and Jess - who was  the second person in the pile atop her - screamed her name.
The crowd went nuts.
Around her, she heard shouting and cheering, followed by the entire stadium calling out "fooooooog-hooooooooooooorns"
She looked up to the stands. Her parents had entirely lost their minds and were leaping up, waving their flags and big foam fingers.
Inside her head, the scene was similar, with all her emotions whooping and howling in unison as they watched Meg waving as much merchandise as she could.
"Good old Meg" Joy proclaimed from atop the console, "I knew she'd come through" Disgust added and not even Sadness could offer any kind of negativity: With no more than two minutes left there simply wasn't enough time for the Ocelots to equalise.
For all intents and Purposes the match was over. The Foghorns Won. Riley Won.

"g'night Meg" Riley whispered at about eleven o'clock that night.
Meg nodded her agreement "g'night Riley" she replied.
And as Riley's eyes slowly drifted shut, Joy pressed one final button to send her to sleep with the effortless calm that comes with a well deserved nights' sleep.
About ten second after she pressed the button, Riley fell deep into sleep and the emotions all left their stations to run the end-of-day procedures.
With a smile that reached from one side of her face to the other, Joy rushed over to the core memory carousel and jabbed her heel into the button on the floor next to it that flushed all the memories to long term.
"Well done everybody! Another great day!" she called, hugging all the other emotions.
For once, even Anger accepted the hug.
One by one the others filtered on up to the bedrooms once the final memory had found its place in long term, giving Joy little waves and sentiments as they went until there was silence in Headquarters, broken only by occasional murmurs from the bedrooms.
With a long and hard sigh of relief, Joy slumped down on the console a little and watched as Dream productions went live.
It showed Riley and Meg having great times together, it showed highlights from the game, it showed Riley finding buried treasure, but most importantly, it showed Riley being happy.

And that was all Joy needed to see. She let it play.