Author's Note

Well, I think I'm gonna call it now folks. I don't quite think that setting myself for a "chapter a month" quota is going to work, considering I was actually intending to get this chapter out before Christmas before my laptop crapped out on me and it took the entirety of my Christmas break to get the flippedy thing fixed. Think we'll just play it by ear out of fear for more technical hook-ups and my own well-being.

Either way, we're back. I've read every single review of the last chapter thus far, and have henceforth decided NOT to repeatedly return to previous ramblings and end up confusing everybody with revised plot points. Time's a linear beast of burden, and therefore (unlike the wishes of a certain metaphysical mind-sprite in a more canotical timeline) we must move from our pasts and towards the future.

So, let's deliberate for a few more seconds with the help of our disclaimer, shall we?

Inside Out belongs to Disney*PIXAR. If I manage to screw anything up in terms of grammar, characterization, or minor canonical details from the film proper, please feel free to tell me in the reviews or shoot me a PM. I genuinely appreciate your feedback on the story, and would love nothing more than to hear what you think about it.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-

Fear's continued screams, not unlike that of a banshee caught in a beartrap or an acrophobic gentleman strapped to a bungee chord and yo-yoing off of an exceedingly vertical structure of some kind, were continuous, panicked, and most certainly disturbed. In all genuine honesty, this worrysome wail was going rather long for the raw nerve ending of a man. One might say that Fear was 90% lungs and 10% other nifty bits at this point, but that's not the point whatsoever.

Riley stood off, over by the central memory conduit where she had awoken only a few moments prior. To be frank, she was already starting to grow tired of the uni-haired emotion's senseless screaming, having taken a touch more interest in the saccharine-seeming orbs that were shafted to the column before her, the unstoppable glow (almost like the beams that could only emerge from the Sun on a midsummer's afternoon) and vague, almost recognizable images repeating ad nauseum acting almost akin to the light of an angler fish.

Still, as much as she wanted to check these items further, it wouldn't hurt to try to attempt further contact, right? I mean, it WAS a dream after all. Meg had occasionally talked about how her mom had seen somebody that told her that dreams always have stuff in them that stands for...stuff. Maybe it wouldn't hurt?

Riley looks back up at Fear, whose primal wail has toned itself down, definitely.

"...Hey!"

Fear shuts his trap immediately, observing the walking, talking impossibility before him.

"...Are you okay?"

Fear gulped.

Okay, just play it cool, calm, and relaxed. Nothing's wrong, everything is awesome, and you're not currently planning an elaborate escape plan involving digging yourself out of Headquarters using spoons from the Break Room, moving to Imagination Land, and changing your name to Brent!

Fear clears this throat...and promptly starts bombing.

"Me?...Oh...I'm fine...perfectly fine, ab-so-lutely fine. I'm so fine, you could fill a pool with pure, concentrated fine...ness, and I'd still be more fine than that. I'm as fine as a cucumber!"

He slightly walks up to the DNA-esc railing of the upper level connecting to the bedroom, leaning on it and attempting to hide his inner pandemonium as much as possible.

Alright...This is going much better than I thought! We might just make it out of this conversation alive!

Riley looked at him, somewhat confusedly.

"Don't you mean 'cool' as a cucumber?"

Fear looked distressed, backing away from the double-helix railing and pulling his hands closer to himself.

"Well...I...Uhh.."

SHOOT.

Riley tries to help him shrug it off, somewhat waving it off.

"It's fine. Say, what's your name?"

"M-my..name?"

DOUBLE. SHOOT.

Fear tugged at the collar of his nightshirt, sweating bullets as the girl kept being inquisitive of the personification's details. Things were definitely not going well...

"Well...uhh..."

Alright, Fear. You CANNOT tell her your real name. Just think of something cool!

"...Something cool?"

Riley couldn't help but cock her head slightly and pull back a tad. This dream was getting freakier by the second...

"Really?"

Come on! Think of something!

"No!-I mean, it is, but it isn't-but I-"

"Are you sure you're okay?"

Riley starts taking a step or two away from her previous post towards Fear, him pulling back an equal amount. Fear puts a hand on the back of his neck as he starts backing up.

"Uh-uh, yeah! Just gotta go..grab..something-"

A slight "YIPE!" escapes from Fear as he makes a mad dash for the bedroom, the doors behind him blowing in front of him for a moment before quickly returning to their original positions.

Riley couldn't help but raise a brow at the exchange (or lack thereof) she had just shared with the exceedingly odd Mr. "Something Cool." A part of her almost genuinely wanted to go after the perculiar figure, almost like a regular Alice-type, chasing after some irregular irregularity and getting into mischief and schenanigans and what-not. Yet, a part of her was more than willing to returning to her businesses, feeling sure she'd run into him (or was it an it?) again.

So, her mind set, she turns face to lock eyes at the conduit. She starts walking towards the thing, almost as if in a trance, like the thing was practically calling out to her. Come, Riley, the thing metaphorically beckoned. Come, and-

...And it's at this point the author has voluntarily decided to abort the previous hyperbole in the name of good taste. Trust me, you're better off.

Regardless, Riley made her way to the column.

...Huh.

Standing tall above the thing, she immediately couldn't help but notice the piece of the device sticking out from the top, almost akin to a pickle jar lid on a hinge. Of course, it looked and felt nothing like that of a pickle jar lid, yet the comparison stands. She leans in, staring down at the inner contents of the conduit. All that remained within was nothing but a keyhole, a glass casing on a hinge that protected the hole...and a few black specks, almost looking like ash from a freshly-erradicated fire, lingering inside and slightly around the circumference of the opening.

A keyhole? Is this thing locked or something?

She sees the outer lid once more.

...Maybe it shouldn't be open?

She wasn't exactly sure what the purpose of the secret compartment lumped within the structure was (heck, she barely even knew what this thing was to begin with!), yet it looked important. I mean, if at least 10 years of avid TV watching taught her anything, it was that important things usually kept themselves hidden.

Then again, she had also "learned" that most modern monsters were either just a greedy land developer or Old Man Jenkins in a mask, so there's a counterpoint to that. Either way, there was something more pressing at the second...

She leans down to stare at the orbs, all as radiant as the polish of a well-shined shoe, and immediately one stands out to her, among the rest.

The atherial video within contained three figures, two clearly taller than and at the dueling sides of the third, shot from at least the waist-upwards, eating...something, inferringly. The figure front and center was dressed in more vibrant colors than the other two, and looked somewhat almost familiar, yet she couldn't quite lay a finger on whether her mind was playing tricks on her. The figure on the right vaguely looked as if she had been wearing glasses, and the figure on the right had a massive, almost fuzzy-ish mass under his n-OH MY GOD.

A look of inital intrigue draws her closer in to confirm her immediate suspicion. The characters in the orb were clearly meant to be her and her family, the only major exceptions in this case being that A). The being meant to inferringly be her looked to be about 2-3-ish, and B). the whole thing looked like it came straight out of a PIXAR flick; fluid, lifelike movement with softer, more caricaturized people.

Mom?...Dad?

It was freaky, almost like an atherially rotoscoped home video that had never been recorded, yet seemed to be vivid in almost every single detail. A part of her was curious to see if the other orbs within the conduit were different or the same, yet...

...Is this real? Was this something that happened?

The eternal questioning of her own memories rang true for a few seconds. She could vaguely remember portions of her early childhood (and potentially even the events that were running eternal within the orb), yet the quandry still rang true. Is this a reality? A memory long gone? A fantastically realistic construction of her dream? Almost immediately, another thought came to mind...

...Can I...

Riley starts to reach for the sphere wedged into one of the pockets within the conduit, her head cocking slighty to one side out of curiosity and a vague sense of wonder. She touches the orb, it casting a strange sensation of both coolness and warmth at the same time. Almost immediately, a flood of images started to bombard the girl's cerebral cortex.

...Wait...I remember this! It was in March-No, April! Mom had baked cookies earlier that day. Dad didn't help in making them, but then again, he's not the best cook around...

This was...amazing. Simply laying a hand on the thing couldn't help but flood Riley's noggin with positively-charged waves of pure, unadulterated nostalgia for that one moment in time, the sensation was packed with a semi-euphoria almost akin to something along the lines of hearing the content purring of a feline, or the song of the moment that gives one goosebumps so badly that the only logical reaction was to play the sucker fifteen times over to get it out of one's system. Either way, dopamine was running like an Olympian at the Running of the Bulls.

...And you wouldn't believe the assortment she had made! I mean, we've tried better later on, but it was the first time we tried double-chocolate chip! I mean, it was TWICE the chip! You don't just see that sort of thing every day! Riley-

Suddenly, a large thump wrecks itself from the door that Fear had hastily gotten away from moments prior, the sound of what happened after a non-lethal death blow ringing through the atherial atmosphere. Riley can't help but jump back in sheer fright, her hand jerking away from the memory quicker than the average attention span of other kids her age. She backs away slightly, clutching her arms to her chest and trying to be as quiet as humanly possible as she observes the railing above.

A grizzled, almost DeVito-esc voice sounds out as she notices an odd, red mass shambling out of the doors from earlier.

"How many TIMES have I told you NOT to wake us up unless you're completely, absolutely sure that something's going wrong now?"

Anger, obviously, was not in the best of moods upon being woken up in the middle of the night by his coworker, mumbling on about some incoherent, almost insipidly stupid phobia that just so happened to pop into his consciousness that night. A light smoke starts to linger over Anger's head as Fear starts to try to pop his spine back into its' proper position.

"Anger, listen to me! We have a massive problem right now!"

"YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE A MASSIVE PROBLEM IF I DON'T GET BACK TO BED!"

"Hey! What's going on out here? Can't a person get some beauty sleep around here?"

The two feuding emotions pull aside for a moment to view the disgruntled face of Disgust pop into view in the slight window by the doorway. Ironically, the word beauty serves no meaning in this case, considering the "exhalation" mask slathered upon Disgust's face would have likely arisen cries of her namesake in response.

Anger turns over to Disgust, his tone calming down...somewhat.

"Oh, I'll tell ya! Fear had a nightmare, and now, instead of actually getting a decent night's sleep, I'm 'checking his bed!'"

Anger's tone takes a condescending note as he brings up his perception of Fear's predicament.

"I didn't have a nightmare! I'm legitimately trying to tell you that-"

"That what? You wanted to wake everybody up for a midnight game of checkers?!"

"No! Besides, that literally makes no sense!"

"YOU LITERALLY MAKE NO SENSE!"

Disgust makes an audible sigh of pure detestment as she starts making her way down to her collegues.

"Okay! Everybody, just cut it out for one second, please?"

The other two emotions promptly shut up, Anger mumbling one of the few curse words he knew under his beath. Disgust turns to Fear.

"Now, Fear, what's wrong?"

Fear takes a step towards her, his anxiety melting away for a few seconds.

"Thank you, Disgust. It's nice to know that SOMEBODY actually cares about what really matters at the moment."

"Yeah, yeah, just get to what's bothering you so that we can all go back to sleep and pretend that this never happened, okay?"

Fear slinks back down for a moment.

"Alright. I know this sounds utterly insane but-"

Anger chimes in.

"JUST GET ON WITH IT!"

"Riley's-"

Suddenly, a loud, ominious tone emerges from over the core memory conduit. All of the emotions jerk their heads over to find what would be potentially the worst sight humanly possible to see that night.

Riley, the quasi-literal flesh and blood that symbiotically gave them life, standing smack dab in the middle of Headquarters and HOLDING FAMILY ISLAND'S CORE MEMORY.