Felt the Fourth

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Contents 1 Chapter Five (cont.) 2 Chapter Six 3 Chapter Seven 4 Chapter Eight 5 Chapter Nine 6 Chapter Ten

[edit] Chapter Five (cont.)

Rock and Roll watched as the first of the male robots reconfigured itself into a tall skinny form with a purple color theme, and then proceeded to freak out. "AAAHHHHHH!!" 'Fear Man' screamed as he looked around the room. "I wasn't ready yet! What if there were alligators out here! Or jumpropes!" "There are no alligators in the lab, moron," a green-armored 'Disgust Woman' scoffed as she finished the transition. "And we haven't had weaponized jumpropes around here for a few dozen Loops now," Roll added. "Wait, that's a thing?" the short, squarish, and crimson 'Anger Man' asked in confusion as he stepped out of the alcove. "It's not even the most ridiculous one we've had," Rock nodded as 'Sadness Woman' began her transformation. "Dr. Wily's a mad scientist after all. How are you feeling, Riley?" "Pumped!" Riley grinned like a kid on a sugar rush. "I can't wait to finish this!" "No anxiety?" 'Fear Man' asked? "Trepidation? Discomfort? Annoyance that it's not yet over?" "None at all!" Riley grinned, not noticing the dawning looks of horror on her emotions faces as the final download commenced. "In fact, I–oh..." "Oh what?" Roll asked in alarm even as 'Joy Woman' began to take form. "With us out here..." 'Anger Man' began. "The party is getting started!" 'Joy Woman' declared. "No, Joy," 'Disgust Woman' trembled. "With us out here, Riley can't feel..." 'Joy Woman's' happy expression froze and slowly melted into a look of horrified realization. "We have to get back in there," she declared. "No worries," Rock told them hastily. "All we need to do is uninstall your IC chips and we can reverse the process. We'll have this sorted out in a few–" "Who...?" Riley began speaking in a monotone, like she was certain she was supposed to be terrified, but couldn't pull it off. Ah, it was so good to be inside such a user-friendly mind for once. Especially with all the troublesome distractions and resistance so thoroughly removed. Arranging a mindscape avatar was generally tricky even for the best of divine operators, but mental purviews were something of a specialty of his. Oh, dear. Oh, one shouldn’t mind him so much as to speak the words the guide allows one to speak. Erm, quite… Erm, Mythos Hackers are among the most fatally unpleasant Administrators among the Lespiran Race, they stuff certain branches with all sorts of bugs and viruses, They convolte and clutter loops with Variants, they even go as far as to activate certain characters called Malicious Looping Entities or MLEs. Their base of online operations, the Shogoth Channel, is where you can find certain work-arounds to any sort of patch made to the tree by the rest of the Admins who actually give a damn about Yggdrasil's progress. One such workaround coded the activation of a brand new MLE to be the Slenderman's... Friend... "Who... who are you?" the emotionless monotone voice of the mind's owner called out, somehow sensing his presence. Somehow able to sense that his presence was wrong, even absent her emotions. "What are you doing here?" “Just a guy who knows one of your brothers in looping arms all too well…” As he walked over to a bin of lightbulbs, and what a droll way to represent ideas that was, he gave her a sense that everything would be fine. There... There was the idea he knew would be here. The idea that couldn't help but form, especially in a branch like this one. After all, ideas did not form with discrimination about which were bad and which were good. Only their execution cared about that distinction. And with those troublesome emotions gone, there was nothing to stand in the way of this idea. "You're not supposed to be in here..." As he walked over to the console and found the place to put ideas, he sent the impression that such details as him not belonging no longer mattered. He was here now and all she had to do was follow his lead, stop resisting, not cause trouble, and give in to the madness. He inserted the idea forcefully, twisting it in such a way that accepting it would be simple reflex all while letting its inner sludge pour into the control panel, remolding it to fit his own nefarious needs. "THIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE DISASTER EVER!" 'Fear Man' screamed as he ran in circles. It was perhaps a testament to the others' agreement that they didn't try to calm him down. "Hurry!" 'Joy Woman' urged. "If someone's poking around Riley's headquarters while we're not there..." "We're working as fast as we can," Rock and Roll assured them. "Who the hell could even get in there and how?!" 'Anger Man' demanded. "We should have listened to Fear..." 'Sadness Woman' sighed. "Yeah, we shoul–" 'Disgust Woman' cut off suddenly. "Guy–?" Roll began to turn around, and caught a bolt of green energy to the chest that blossomed like a massive flower before collapsing in on itself, leaving Roll to drop to her knees and wrap her arms around herself protectively. "Roll?!" Rock turned to check on his sister, mentally wondering why the energy burst hadn't affected him when a sunshine yellow bolt of energy slammed into him and flared like a flash grenade. "Oh maker, this is all our fault," Roll muttered to herself, shaking and rocking in place with a self-reproaching grimace twisting her features. "We should have never suggested this. It's all our fault. All our fault." "Hahahahahahahahahaha!" Rock rolled on the ground, laughing up a storm at a joke only he seemed to get. "Riley?" 'Joy Woman' asked with a pained smile, her buster arm still pointed at Rock. "Why did you make us do that?" "That was a very mean thing to do, Riley!" 'Sadness Woman' admonished, staring wide-eyed at the girl still in the chair for the new mind machine. "You should feel ashamed of yourself." "I should..." Riley agreed listlessly in her feminine monotone before a masculine snarl was overlayed over that within the minds of their fellow machines. "But I don't..." "Riley, stop this right now!" 'Anger Man' demanded, beginning to move in the girl's direction, but finding that his body refused to act against her. "The override..." 'Fear Man' realized, having gone so far into sheer terror that he was now experiencing a strange sense of calm. "Yes..." Riley confirmed. "You can take no action I do not command, my Emotion Masters... Much like you cannot fight the opponent who is rightfully mine.” “Wait, that voice…” TOM got up from the magnetic cling to the fridge. “Don’t tell me that he’s crawled up in your brain, right?” “Long time, no see, TOM!” the masculine voice’s maniacal laugh rung through the audio transmission receivers of each robot present. “Now go. Conquer the world in the name of Dr. Riley..." "Riley!" 'Disgust Woman' yelled back even as the five marched unwillingly towards the exit. "This is a terrible idea!" "I know..." Riley intoned in her normal voice as the five exited the room, leaving the self-reproaching Roll and the laughing Rock behind. "But I can't seem to stop myself..." Of course, she couldn't stop herself. In the absence of her emotions, she belonged to whomever took command of her ability to feel. In this case, him. "Why...?" the girl asked again. “To settle a score… Yes, a score that’s been waiting since the day I was first activated in these Infinite Loops” Because she was his perfect vessel now without those troublesome emotions. And besides, wasn't it so much better without such conflicting views muddling her thoughts? Besides, it was considered polite to help others, and he was so very much in need of her help. "I don't want to hurt people..." “But I do. No matter how well you hide it, everyone wants to hurt each other, just look at our globalist overlords for Pete’s sake.” The Intruder in her mind had certainly acquired that silver tongue from his most memorable victim. “Isn't it so much better now that you don't have those sweet little lies of polite society holding us back?” "No..." She really needed to stop lying to herself like that. He knew what was best for her after all. She should trust him. He knew how to get what she really wanted. Because what she wanted was what he wanted. As the Slenderman who programmed the loop got exactly what he wanted out of the visiting human, he realized that the visiting machine made a really crappy bad guy.

[edit] Chapter Six

Riley's emotions were breaking down fast in the current crisis. Riley had, for whatever inexplicable reason, decided to send them to conquer the world. And because she had the emergency override for their systems, they weren't able to do much to stop themselves. Sadness was weeping up a storm already, Disgust was muttering a never-ending string of insults at the group in general and herself in particular, Anger was so livid that the override was the only thing keeping him from rampaging out of control, Joy had the most fake and pained grin embedded in her face that had ever been seen, and Fear... Actually, Fear was rather comfortably in his element. Maybe it was just from panicking so much over not being able to think up the problems with this idea before, which had turned out totally justified, or maybe he'd somehow found some sort of zen zone by complete accident. In any case, he was furiously cataloging everything he could and coming up with possible reactions beyond screaming in terror. He was already doing that internally, so there was no need to be redundant. Riley was having them secure Light Labs. Check. They were to begin automated production on more generic models for... reasons. Check, and disturbing in implications. They were then to head out to the city and cause as much of a panic as possible. Check, and definitely something to try and head off if possible. Too bad he couldn't see how just yet. They apparently had weapons that could induce pure emotional states in their targets. It didn't matter that they didn't seem to deal damage, starting a riot would be small potatoes for them at this point. "Oh my god!" Fear exclaimed. "I just realized!" "What?" Sadness sniffed morosely as they all continued on their way. "We're the robot uprising! Oh, this is bad, this is very bad!" "What in the world?" a new voice cut in, giving Fear a sinking feeling as he turned to look. Yep, there was Doc Light at the end of the hall. With Riley's parents. 'WORST! CASE! SCENARIO!' "Riley... no..." Joy strained as the overriding command to neutralize all opposition caused them all to raise their weapons at the three. "That's mom and dad! You can't!" "What's...?" Mrs. Andersen wondered wide-eyed as she took in the sight. "Please!" Joy pleaded. "Don't make me do this..." Oh, but she had to. It was all or nothing. "I shouldn't hurt them..." They were already hurt, one way or another. Either they became casualties like everyone else, or they watched the unfeeling monster she became. “Which is the more merciful option, I wonder?” "I can't..." She could. “It wasn't like you could feel bad about it, anyway. They’re just two more people in my way in the end.” "I won't... Not them..." “Not now, But in time.” Since there’s no stopping things with me at the wheel, I’ll wait til I give TOM a front-row seat! -Jill's Headquarters- "That..." Mrs. Andersen's Joy spoke up after an extended period of stunned silence. "That was another Joy... wasn't it? On the outside?" "I... think she was crying..." Mrs. Andersen's Sadness had trouble taking her eyes off the visual display, as if the current scenery of hurried retreat (being directed by Mrs. Andersen's Fear, who was the only one even barely functional) would offer insight into the supposedly impossible phenomenon that had been witnessed. "I... I think they might have been Riley's emotions..." the woman's Disgust offered, having noted the presence of the other four. "What are they doing outside though?" her Anger wondered, the very concept rendering her incapable of her usual forms of expression. -Reality- "Doctor, what–" Mr. Andersen tried to ask as the man hurried him and his shell-shocked wife away from the strangely colored robots. The ones that had supposedly been begging Riley not to hurt them.

"No time," Dr. Light hurried them through the lab's halls away from the other robots, though not towards the exit. "We have to find our children and get them out of here!" The Andersens exchanged a look and picked up the pace as Dr. Light led the way to the lab that their children had taken over for some personal project or other. Fortunately, no one stopped them on the way, but the sight when they arrived caused all three to come up short. Dr. Light's creations were rocking back and forth on the ground, Roll muttering a string of self-depreciations while Rock shook with uncontrollable laughter. Nearby, strapped into a seat, staring blankly straight ahead, was Riley. "Riley!" Mrs. Andersen cried out and rushed for her daughter, followed closely by her husband. They didn't know what was wrong, or why, and they didn't care just yet. Their only concern was the safety of their dau–

• Bzzzvvvmmm*

Mrs. Andersen collided with an energy field a few feet from Riley and fell backwards like she'd run into a wall, into her husband who barely managed to keep them both standing. "You shouldn't be here..." Riley muttered in a tone that sounded half dead from sheer lack of emotion. "You shouldn't see this..." "Riley!" Mrs. Andersen yelled, pounding on the energy field, the otherwise invisible force lighting up at each point of impact. "Riley!" "Rock! Roll! What happened?" "Em-m-motional Pro-ha-ha-ha-cessing-ee-hee Overloa-ha-ha-ha-ha-d! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Rock managed to wheeze out between laughs. “Long story short, an intergalactic blob creature with an obsession hijacked your daughter” TOM nonchalantly stated. “Sorry ‘bout that.” "We should have known it would go wrong," Roll added in disgust. "We're such failures." "Riley! You need to let us through! We can help!" Mr. Andersen yelled past the forcefield keeping him from his daughter. "I can't..." Riley replied listlessly. "It's the rules... Dr. Riley has to take over the world..." "No you don't, little monkey!" Mr. Andersen insisted. "Riley, what's gotten into you?" Mrs. Andersen cried. "He did... After the others got out of me..." A sudden chill ran through everyone, so pervasive that the concerned Andersens took a step back from their daughter and the robot duo's emotional breakdowns grew silent in response. Five pairs of eyes were drawn to a holographic display floating above Riley. "I... don't recall hooking that up..." Rock ground out as he finally started getting his systems back under control. -Jill's Headquarters- "Is..." the woman's Fear stared at what Mrs. Andersen was seeing. "Is that... a Headquarters??" -Bill's Headquarters- "Are we actually seeing another Headquarters?" Mr. Andersen's Fear finished. "More than that," the man's Sadness added. "I think it's Riley's..."

• The real world*

"What's...?" Mrs. Andersen began before a being of red sludge with a light layer of corroded metal dotting its body and lack of face. "You..." Dr. Light whispered in a combination of stark fear, primal anger, and utter loathing. A sense of dark amusement, the kind found in people who liked to torture small animals for fun, washed over them, as well as a sense of recognition. Whoever, or whatever, this faceless individual was, they were unconcerned with the doctor's ire. And why shouldn't they be? They had already won. Riley was theirs now, fully under their power and beyond anyone's ability to save. "Stop..." Roll ground out. “Not until I find this loop’s designated anchor, and I do think it’ll be a lot easier to find him once this world is mine.” It had already begun, and there was nothing any of them could do about it. Riley only listened to him now. What he wanted became what she wanted. Doctor Light came to a startling realization. “…Brian” "Stop listening to him..." "What?" Mrs. Andersen shook off the paralyzing foreboding that she'd been feeling at the words. Seeing her do so prompted her husband to do the same. The pathetic little robots didn't know what they were talking about. How could they? It wasn't like they were human after all. Not like their monster of a daughter who was going to conquer the world and wreak untold havoc on– "Those thoughts you're getting..." Rock huffed with effort. "That's how he communicates..." They were supremely annoying little robots. But it was no matter. The lab was already under Riley's control, and by extension, his. Soon enough, none of them would be any problem whatsoever. "Dr. Light..." Mr. Andersen shook his head furiously as if that would rid himself of the sinister thoughts invading his mind. As he did, he clutched his wife firmly on the shoulder, though he was uncertain if it was for her benefit or his own. "What is...?" "I'll explain later," the good doctor replied with effort as he helped his children to their feet. "Right now, we need to get out of the lab." "But Riley–" "You can't help me if you're all dead..." Riley stated in an emotionless monotone. ...Fine. They could run like the scared little mice they were, but it would make no difference. There was no saving Riley anymore. There would be no saving themselves either. Why, by the end of the day there would be no saving anyone.

[edit] Chapter Seven

"Doctor, what was that... that... thing?" Mr. Andersen finally asked when the five of them had gotten back to the Andersen household. His mind was a whirl and his emotional state was more unsteady than a land dweller after riding a rollercoaster and stepping onto the deck of a ship in the middle of a storm. "The Intruder," Dr. Light informed the Andersens as he went to check on Rock and Roll, only to be waved off. “Long story short, it’s a giant blob thing that tried to kill me every baseline,” TOM described. “But now that our old pal Slenderman’s gotten him Looping, making him especially dangerous!” "We're fine, dad, really," Rock assured the man with a weak grin. "Finish telling them." "Very well," Dr. Light sighed before turning back to the worried Andersens, Jill having to lean on her husband for support. "The Slenderman is a memetic lifeform, a sapient being manifested from pure thought, and perhaps the most sinister and vile to have ever existed." "A... a what?" Jill asked in confusion. "And how did he get ahold of our daughter?!" "Our fault," Roll sighed heavily. "Rock and I didn't take possible intruders into account when we helped Riley develop a way for her emotions to come outside her head and spend time with her." -Bill's Headquarters- "......." "......." "......." "......." "...A-buh?" -Jill’s Headquarters- "I... what?" "They can... do that?" "Oh god... that thing was in Riley's headquarters!" -Reality- "I think he might have been steering our thoughts away from the problems with the plan, like Riley's emotionless state once her emotions were outside her head," Rock theorized, "but I can't prove it. In any case, we were expecting possible problems with the emotions going out of control with their own bodies and gave Riley the ability to override their controls. And now..." "How do you fight a... 'memetic lifeform'?" Mrs. Andersen asked finally. "With belief," Roll answered. "They gain strength through belief, but they can also be weakened by it. You just have to believe that they can be beaten more than you believe they can't. It's... sometimes harder than it sounds." "How... how do we save Riley?" "First, we have to get her emotions back," Rock replied as he fiddled with the television remote, intending to find the news on any developments. He didn't have long to wait. "–where an attack by unknown machines has started a massive riot," the voice of BNC's news anchor Chest spoke up from the emergency broadcast the moment the television came on. "We not go live to Reporter Ripot, already on the scene." "Thank you Chest," the green reporter bot with helicopter blades jutting from his back said as behind him a crowd of angry people were tearing apart storefronts and fighting each other viciously in the streets with no rhyme or reason. Men, women, rich, poor, old, young, all kinds of people were tearing apart the street and each other in a blind rage. "As you can see, the riot behind me broke out after a short squat red robot fired an unknown weapon into the streets and in moments the scene became what you see here. The police have been dispatched, but I'm told that a tall, thin purple robot intercepted them and all units have fled. As things stand, there is no telling when the violence will subside and–" A roll of thunder was picked up by the camera, and moments later a rain of shining blue washed over Ripot. "–it's just the most heartbreaking thing ever!" the robot wailed pitifully, tears of lubricant seeping out of his optics as the reporter curled up into a fetal ball and sobbed on live television. From the way the camera managed to maintain a partial view of him, and the sound of more sobbing, it seemed the cameraman had succumbed to the same fate. "Uh..." Chest looked disturbed as the news feed cut back to him. "W-we're told that Mayor Dorado has called for the support of the armed forces to contain this disaster, but there is as-yet no confirmed response. Citizens of Arcadia are advised to remain indoors and–" "We have to get out there now," Rock lowered the television volume so he could be better heard. "What?!" Dr. Light objected. "But your current systems aren't designed for–" "We don't have time for you to upgrade us, dad," Rock reminded the man. "We have to get their IC chips back, intact, before something happens to them. As it stands, the military might either fail and become part of the riot being started, or they'll succeed..." "...and possibly destroy one or more of Riley's emotions 'forever'," Roll finished, deciding not to state the likely possibility that any emotion lost would be restored for Riley's next Loop. That wouldn't serve to reassure her parents this Loop, nor would it fix whatever Riley suffered do to a Loop with an incomplete emotional state. "We'll figure it out, dad," Rock smiled. "We both have the Variable Tool System and the Copy Chips installed. We can subdue them and get their IC chips without damaging them in any way." He intentionally left out that their current versions were much less versatile than the weaponized Variable Weapon System and Copy Chip combo, rendering almost all of their looping Master Weapon Libraries unusable, but they would just have to do. They would have to face this crisis without the benefit of being Mega Man or Mega Woman. "You... You can save our daughter?" "Of course," Roll nodded. "Just have faith in us."

[edit] Chapter Eight

The Intruder would have smiled sinisterly at the cowering mind workers before him were he able. But he wasn't, so he settled for looming menacingly and wordlessly conveying that they'd better have what he'd requested. Gulping, the mind workers motioned to the rest who'd come along on the Train of Thought and they started bringing in various figures and knicknacks. "I would die for Riley!" a painfully stereotypical brooding pretty-boy declared as he was shoved in. Followed by a couple more identical to the first, some cloud people, a rainbow-maned unicorn, several odds and ends from the depths of the girl's mind, and a pink... something or other. He wasted no time and pointed imperiously to the space under the tube that the girl's emotions had left by. "What if we don't wanna?" one of the things piped up. “Well…” The Intruder proceeded to swallow one of the mind workers whole and absorb some of Riley’s Intellect. “You can join Douglas here as my next meal… So how ‘bout it?” "I live for Riley, and I would die for Riley," a chorus replied from the 'boyfriends'. A more pathetic and boring bunch of joes he'd never experienced, he'd wager. “If you really wanted to help Riley, you’d stop being stubborn with me. She’s resisting my power, and I have reason to believe that would only cause her pain in the long run.” “If she was to be free of pain, she would need to be free of things that caused her pain... would she” i.e. all of them. She would be much more sedate, and safe, with her mind emptied of all... distractions… 'Sadness Woman' gazed down at the poor reporters she'd just reduced to tears with her 'Sad Raincloud' weapon. They should have been helping tell people what was wrong with the city and what they should do to stop it, not bawling like helpless children. 'I shouldn't have done that...' she thought despondently. 'They were just doing their job and I...' She sniffed and let the synthetic tears of her current mechanical body flow freely down her face. It wasn't like anyone could tell with the rain her weapon made. Just another way in which she'd failed today. 'Failing is a part of life...' Disgust, or 'Disgust Woman' she supposed, despised everything about the situation. She despised her lack of control over what she was doing, she despised how incredibly easy it was for her to turn people against each other– "Get that gross thing away from me!" a young woman backhanded a small black box out of the hands of a kneeling young man, whose hopeful expression turned confused and hurt as the woman vented the emotions that 'Disgust Woman's' 'Blooming Disgust' weapon had invoked in her, and every other female in its radius, leaving the unaffected males to fruitlessly try and placate them. A short ways away on a playground, a similar scene played out except with only parents affected, leaving the children to wonder just what they'd done wrong. –and she really despised how much Fear had been right about... everything. She grimaced as the order came in to fire on another group. Another order she'd love to refuse, but couldn't. She had to obey it. Her body would move whether she resisted or not. "Fine... Maybe I have to do this, but I'm doing it under protest..." 'Fear Man' trembled as he stalked around a corner, terrified that someone was going to realize what he'd done to the police with his 'Frantic Fright' weapon and arrest him for it. They'd lock him up and throw away the key! Or deport him! Or deport him and lock him up where he'd been deported to! Then he'd never be able to help Riley fix this! "Deep breath... Focus... Remember what's important..." he told himself as his body continued moving according to Riley's unfathomable directions. He wanted to know why she was doing this... Who was directing her in the absence of her emotions... What it was all about... He'd been steadily getting less rational as things went on. He was Fear. Thinking up ways things could go wrong was his job. A job he'd failed at spectacularly. Because it wasn't just thinking about how they could go wrong, it was also coming up with ways to make wrong things go less wrong. To anticipate disasters and stop the damage they did. Or at least figure out how to end them before it got too bad. Well, he'd failed to see this coming, despite the fact that it should have been obvious. Riley without emotions? Of course she'd be emotionless! Of course she'd be ripe for whatever decided to take advantage of her vulnerable state! Of course the whole thing was the worst idea in the history of worst ideas! And the worstest of all worst parts was that he couldn't figure out a way to stop it! He and the others were every bit as helpless as Riley was right now! Where was Mega Man now?! Or a Mega Woman if it was that kind of Loop?! Where was the hero who stopped robot uprisings?! Oh, that was right, he didn't exist because Riley had replaced the villain and taken over the lab where the hero was built! Anger was furious at everything. He was furious with those two kids who'd built the machine that had extracted all of Riley's emotions like this, he was furious with the orders that had sent him out into the city to cause a riot, he was furious with the people who didn't know enough to get the hell out of his way before he turned them into raging berserkers with his 'Angry Flame' weapon, he was especially furious with the fact that his weapon went through walls and affected people indoors, and he was especially furious at himself for not being strong enough to stop any of it. "WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?!?!" Joy wanted nothing more in the world right then than to be able to stop smiling. Barring that, she'd accept no longer having the ability to force others to smile by shooting them. "Hahahahahahaha!"

• Wham*

"STOP LAUGHING!" The emotion she represented was supposed to be something wonderful. Something to allow people to revel in the glory and beauty of living! Not...

• Biff*

"I ca-ha-ha-ha-han't!"

• Pow*

...not something forced onto others. She'd learned that the hard way with Riley in baseline. Trying to force her to be happy in a situation that didn't call for it, trying to make her be happy to the exclusion of growing into a better person, had nearly ruined everything. "STOP IT RIGHT NOW BEFORE I MAKE YOU!"

• Oof*

"I-hi-hi'm try-hi-i-hee-hee-hee-ng!" She should be horrified at what she was being made to force on others right then. She should be furious, appalled, despondent. She should be anything but happy about this! If ever there was a situation in which there was nothing to be happy about, it was this one! But she was Joy. Without the others to ground her, to temper her, there wasn't anything else she could feel. There was nothing else she could do. "THAT'S IT! I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU STOP LAUGHING IF IT KI–" A 'Joyous Sunburst' flared brightly after it hit. "–i-i-illll-ee-hee-hee-hee!"

[edit] Chapter Nine

Rock had found the police riot squad rather quickly. Avoiding geting run over by them as they fled the city was a fair bit trickier. Especially given that he'd been trying to use the Zen Buster to calm them, and they'd been in such a panic that they'd taken it as a threat. Rock would have made the design less threatening, but... well, guns weren't designed the way they were to be threatening. They were designed that way because the design worked. That it worked in a way that was understandably threatening was just an inevitable side effect. However, he'd gotten the police relatively calmed down, and followed reports of the one that had attacked them. Helping a few other panicked citizens had narrowed do– "LOOK OUT!" Rock turned and immediately performed a limbo maneuver to duck a bolt of purple energy before tracking its origin to a tall and thin purple robot with wide eyes and a long nose. "Hey, Fe–" Rock noticed his opponent's eyes flicking towards something behind him and sidestepped as the purple energy bolt whizzed past the spot he'd been in trailing a stiff breeze. "–ar Man," Rock held his arms up in a way that was meant to be nonthreatening even as he tracked the bouncing projectile that had missed him twice. "I'm not hear t–" Rock ducked his head to the side "–o hurt you, I just want to tal–" Another sidestep thanks to how the emotion master couldn't help but track his own projectile, not even taking an opportunity to fire anoth– "–k..." Rock froze up as the projectile abruptly reversed direction and hit him straight in the stomach, ricocheting into the ground before vanishing. A part of his mind idly noted the new projectile bouncing around and deduced that Fear Man had shot a second expressly to redirect the first. The rest of it was locked up in terror the likes of which he'd felt only a few times before. Almost all of them at the hands of one man. "Oh geez... oh geez..." Fear Man was hyperventilating, or at leastt doing a good impression. "THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!" 'No... it is happening,' Rock trembled, his mind racing with thoughts of how far in over his head he was. How helpless his tool-using body was in the face of something that could bring the city to its knees with a few well-placed shots. And... 'And someone has to stop it...' Rock took a step forward... and a shot to the chest for his efforts, strengthening the terror he felt. He could practically hear the unhinged laughter that haunted his nightmares. He took another step forwards, and another shot for his efforts. "What are you doing?! You need to run!!! Save yourself!" Another step. Another shot. Another surge of terror. "And..." Step. "...leave..." Shot. "...you..." Terror. "...behind?" Wide eyes widened ever further in astonishment, and the next thing Rock knew, Fear Man was folded over his fist at his stomach and the index finger on Rock's other hand was forming a motorized screwdriver. "...Not a chance..." "Look, I rather not fight you, Disgust!" Roll declared as she blocked another of the emotion master's green energy orbs, letting the flower-shaped burst wash over her without effect and wondering yet again why that was. "Well, duh!" Disgust Woman scoffed as she fired again. "I don't want to fight you either! But, like, I'm not exactly calling the shots here!" "I noticed!" Roll dodged a third shot and grimaced as she heard a cat screech behind her. Moments later and about fifty cats were filing out of an alley with their noses in the air like they smelled something bad. "Seriously, what is up with your weapon?" "Oh, you wanna know?" Disgust Woman drawled mockingly as the dance continued. "The moment one of these connects with you, then every girl in fifty feet becomes unable to stand anything. Like total barf city. Or every robot, or everyone under the age of ten maybe. Possibly every blonde. I don't know, it's, like, stupidly random sometimes." Roll blinked as Disgust Woman turned her arm cannon on herself. "Let me guess, Riley just realized that the two of us have a lot in common right now." "Duh," Disgust Woman rolled her eyes. "I'd apologize, but being sorry's kind of not my thing." Roll made a split decision and decided to rush her opponent as she fired on herself, preparing for the feelings of disgust to return and override her emotional processor again. She was so prepared for it to happen that she nearly missed the opportunity to take a swing at her opponent when it didn't. A moment later, and Disgust Woman was on the ground with her arms bound behind her while Roll prepared to access and remove her IC chip. "Whaddya know? Being green is good for something." 'I still can't believe you managed that!' Fear's mental voice buzzed like a post-survival adrenaline rush. 'That should have been pure stark raving paralyzing terror!' "If that was all it took to stop me, my Loops would be a lot shorter on average," Rock muttered as he looked around what had to be the poorest, dirtiest, most depressing corner of Arcadia. As well as the spot that the string of sadness-inducing freak weather phenom had led straight to. All around, Rock could hear people weeping and wailing about anything and everything. He'd stopped using the Zen Buster on this group after spotting someone weeping over a broken store window and realizing it was an opportunistic rioter caught up in the emotional chaos and judged that these people could be left to the police and the spare handheld Zen Busters Rock had loaned them. (*) Up ahead, walking at the most despondently slow pace possible, was the short dumpy Sadness Woman, comlete with street-wide raincloud over her head that rained the blue energy that had turned so many people into emotional wrecks. As Rock watched, the raincloud subsided, and almost immediately, Sadness Woman fired a shimmering blue orb over her head that burst into another with a mild roll of thunder. "Oh... hi..." the emotion master waved half-heartedly when she saw Rock. "Um... hi?" Rock greeted back in confusion. "Er... could you maybe turn the cloud off for a bit and come with me? The peo–" "I know, I know," Sadness woman cut him off with a dejected expression, "it's my fault." "Uh... no it's not," Rock approached as nonthreateningly as he could, trying to see if he could talk Sadness Woman down. "Don't come any closer!" Sadness Woman cautioned when Rock was a step away from the rain, only for one of her warning hands to convert to a buster and fire a blue orb past Rock's head that formed a raincloud directly behind him. "I..." "It's fine, I was kind of expecting that," Rock smiled calmly. "Oh..." 'I wish I could help,' Fear's helpless shrug was evident in his tone. "Just remind me of what the cost for losing is," Rock whispered as he stepped forwards into the rain. Fear's response was drowned out as a tidal wave of sorrow crashed down upon Rock. Every failure. Every life lost in Wily's wars. Every life he'd been forced to take to end those wars. Every robot who chose deactivation instead of continued existence. The weight of such things was more crushing than the pressure of the deepest oceans. "I... I'm sorry..." Sadness Woman wept, but made no move to stop her cloud. 'I... I... um...' Fear's voice sounded frantic. 'I... I think some of those people we passed sounded suicidal?' Rock felt his systems jolt from that, imagined the crushing sorrow such people's family's would feel if they followed through, and stepped forwards. The rain abated. Rock decided to use the opening to fire the Frantic Fright weapon at Sadness Woman. She didn't even try to dodge it, and the bolt ricocheted off into a building wall and then into the air. Sadness Woman just looked at him apologetically, raising her buster arm straight up. "Sorry. I'm only really afraid of being crushed under the weight of life's problems. And hurting Riley. And that's kind of already happened. And it's sad." A moment later, and the sadness-inducing rain had started again, bringing a fresh wave of crushing sorrow with it. 'And... and even if they wouldn't do it themselves, I don't think any of those people are in a shape to run if something dangerous happens... Like a collapsing building... or a stampede of rabid weasels...' "Why... why are you–" Sadness Woman's question was cut off as she fired a rain-making bolt directly into Rock's chest, only for the tool-using robot to stride straight through the cloud that formed around him, walk up to Sadness Woman, and envelop her in a hug. "How can you stand under the weight of life's problems like that?" "Because," Rock told her, synthetic tears flowing freely as he used the hug to begin the work to remove the emotion master's IC chip, "I know what it will cost everyone else if I don't."

• ) Some of the police wondered where he'd pulled them from, but Rock just winked and said 'secret' before pulling another from his subspace pocket.

'–and why are you using a broom of all things? It's like, the uncoolest of uncool weapons,' Disgust continued her rambling as Roll trekked on through the city, studiously ignoring the emotion. She'd been making gratuitous use of the Zen Buster since arriving at the edge of the riot-heavy part of the city and even with the way her brother designed the pacifying weapon to have crazy energy efficiency, and her resorting to simply knocking a few people unconscious with her broom instead, it was nearly empty. Even with the addition of the police with hand-held Zen Busters of their own, there didn't seem to be any real dent in the number of berserk rioters. She needed to find the sourc– "–DEMAND A RECOUNT!" 'Ugh, lovely... I always wanted to see Anger with less restraint. Not.' Roll ignored the comment and shot forwards before a flaming red energy ball impacted where she'd been standing and passed straight through the street without leaving so much as a scorch mark. The short and stocky Anger Man noticed her charge and turned to fire at her again, only for Roll to pirouette around the shot and into a spinning strike that caught Anger Man under the chin, lifted him up off the ground, and knocked him back twenty feet. 'Whoa.' "Bringing in the big guns, huh?" Anger Man grinned as he stood back up and took aim. "Alright! Let's do this!" Roll dodged to the side and let the blast pass her by as she reformed her arm for the 'Blooming Disgust' weapon she'd gotten from Disgust Woman. No way was she going to try blocking that. "Come on! Bring it!" "Consider it brought!" Roll yelled back as she fired. The glowing green orb hit Anger Man and burst into a large flower shape. "Urgh..." Anger Man grunted and clutched his chest where the shot had hit. And then he dropped to the ground and started banging his head against the pavement. "STUPID STUPID STUPID!!! I HAVEN'T LEARNED ANYTHING!" 'I could have told you that,' Disgust snarked. Roll ignored the commentary as she raced to her opponent in a panic. "Stop! If you do that you could damage your IC chip! The–" The moment Roll grabbed Anger Man's shoulder, the short red emotion master gave a howl of incoherent rage and blaster her point blank with his weapon. Roll froze for a moment in surprise before her vision went as red as her opponent. The blow from her broom this time knocked Anger Man back fifty feet. 'Hey, dial it back a bit, will y–' "OH SHUT UP!" Roll yelled in fury as she charged Anger Man. "RRRRAAAAHHHHH!!!" The two met head on, trading physical blows with abandon, but Roll's superior reach proved too much of an advantage to overcome and in a few minutes, Anger Man was down. A furious Roll stood over him, broom held high with the bare end poised to impale her opponent as if it were a spear. 'Look, I'm not a big fan of Anger in the first place–' Roll's servos tensed and adjusted her aim for her opponent's head. '–but we KIND OF NEED HIM ALIVE!' And she brought it down with a crunch of metal. Rock was going to be sick, despite being physically incapable of it. He'd honestly left Joy Woman for last on the assumption that her power would be the least destructive. Oh how wrong that was. 'Why would someone jump off a building like that?!' Fear wondered in total incomprehension as Rock caught the person just barely in time to make the fall non-lethal. "Whee!" the young man cheered before Rock set him down. "I'm going to go fly some mo–" Rock watched in sympathetic horror as the Zen Buster removed the man's good cheer and the reality of what he'd just done hit. The man then proceeded to be sick all over the sidewalk. Rock patted the man on his back and proceeded on his way. It was hardly the worst thing that someone had tried under Joy Woman's influence. Rock had stopped counting the number of car wrecks he'd passed, including several emergency vehicles. Not to mention the vast array of people laughing while trying to walk with severe injuries. His first aid kit array had gotten more use this afternoon than in the last twelve Loops combined. So far, the prize for most disturbing sight had been a pair of paramedics street-surfing on a rolling stretcher, with the injured man strapped to it laughing the whole way until Rock brought them to their senses. 'I feel sorry for Joy...' Sadness sighed. 'She hates hurting people.' Rock could relate, but at the rate he was going, he doubted his ability to catch up with her. Unless she was waiting around in one spot, all the time he was using to help her victims would– "Let's be happy people!" came from a short ways away, followed by a barely visible flash of yellow light. Rock immediately ran towards it. A quick check, a shot from the Zen Buster, and Joy Woman's latest victim was wasting no time sticking around. "Yay! More friends to play with!" Rock turned to Joy Woman and immediately did a double-take. The yellow emotion master looked... unhinged. Her face was frozen in a wide smile, but a smile that gave off the feel of its owner wanting to make any other expression, but unable to remember how. 'Look out!' Rock's inattention was enough for Joy Woman to get off a shot, but he still managed to backstep from it enough to not take a direct hit. But not enough to clear the blast radius as the yellow energy shot burst into a blinding flare of light. "He..." Rock tried to fight the feeling of mirth that infused him, but it was hard. Especially since this kind of feeling was something he actively sought many other times. "Hehehehe..." "See? Isn't it better to be happy?" Joy Woman asked like she was desperately seeking someone to disagree with her. "You can forget everything when you're happy! Like how dangerous stuff is! Or that the other guy was just trying to kill you! Or that you're covered in sewage! Or that your house just burned down! None of it matters when you're happy!" 'Joy...' Fear gulped. 'Joy's gone psycho...' "Hey, I know!" Joy Woman changed topics suddenly. "Let's play a game!" "Okay!" Rock agreed with a grin before he could really think about it. He liked games! Games were fun! 'You need to fight her!' Sadness reminded him. "How about boxing?" Rock smiled, what was left of his reason latching onto the advice and taking a stance. "Okay!" Joy Woman agreed and mirrored him. 'Hey, thanks for aiming for the neck at the last minute,' Anger told Roll after she'd finished storing his IC chip in her arm. 'Yeah, you only scared a decade off my life there,' Disgust added. 'Sounds like an improvement to me.' "You're welcome," Roll muttered as the two emotions began bickering back and forth. Rock regulated his breathing as his emotional processor recalibrated. He wasn't entirely sure which of them had suggested shooting themselves halfway through the boxing match, but opportunity to self-target with the Zen Buster had snapped him out of it. 'Okay,' Fear began, 'now we just need to–' "Aww... you're not happy anymore," Joy Woman smiled. "Don't worry, I can fix that!" Rock dove hard to the side to clear the blast area, took aim with the Frantic Fright, and fired. "Nice shot!" Joy cheered upon being struck, the shot bouncing off into a nearby alley. "But I'm afraid it doesn't work!" '...Does she actually mean that literally?' Fear wondered as a dog promptly ran out of the alley being chased by a cat. 'She needs to be sad,' Sadness realized. "Come on!" Joy Woman declared as she opened fire repeatedly, Rock dodging the multitude of shots with wide dives to clear the blast radius. "Be happy! Like me! I've never been happier! And that's saying something! Joy is all! It's supreme! The Alpha! The Omega! Several other letters! It's–" Rock stopped dodging to fire back with the Sad Raincloud, the sadness inducing weapon bursting over Joy Woman's head even as Rock took her weapon to the chest. "–It's not like it helps you survive... like Fear..." Joy Woman's manic grin slipped as pure sorrow rained down on her. Rock snorted in laughter despite himself, and forced his feet to take steps towards the rain. Because this wasn't funny. "Or be healthy, like Disgust... Or get what you want, like Anger... Or connect with others, like Sadness." Joy Woman's expression fell further and further as Rock made it to the raincloud, and his false humor washed away in the downpour of sadness. Joy Woman's buster raised to fire on the raincloud above her, only to let out such a pathetic shot that it could have been mistaken for a drunk firefly. "All Joy does is help you be happy," Joy Woman sniffed morosely, letting her arm fall to her side. "It just... makes more of itself. It's kind of stupid, really... and redundant... It's like... There's no point to it at all!" 'Joy...' "Everyone always calls the other four the 'negative' emotions, like there's something wrong with them. Like they're bad or something. And I bought into it. Because that made me the 'good' emotion, right? But... but all the others have super-important things that make them super-good. Fear cuts down on injuries, Disgust looks out for your health, Anger points out problems, and Sadness is like the most important of all because Sadness connects you with others. What does Joy do? Why, Joy leaps straight into danger without looking, dives headfirst into filth without a care, lets problems pile up until they come crashing down, and couldn't care less about anyone other than herself. About anything other than being in charge because she thinks she's the best when she's really the worst." "That's not true, Joy helps us appreciate the good times," Rock told her, enveloping the emotion master in a hug. "Yeah, Joy helps you be happy... What did being happy ever get anyone but more happy? More happy and a destroyed life. Because that's what I do. I destroy lives. I nearly destroyed Riley's life trying to make her happy. Because none of the others are bad emotions. I'm the bad emotion." '.....' Rock didn't know how to respond to that. He really didn't. Not right then. So he just went to work removing Joy Woman's IC chip. -Speil on IC Chips- The mind workers shivered as they patrolled the shelves of long-term memory. That... thing... in headquarters wasn't supposed to be there. But it was. And it was making them do things for it. Things that would hurt Riley. Things that they couldn't find the courage to not do. Things like stripping everything out of Imagination Land and Dream Studios to be sent... outside. Things like breaking into the subconscious so the same could be done for everything locked up in there. Many mind workers were still working on those... And now... now they were supposed to send every single memory down into the dump to be forgotten. Every. Last. One. "Okay..." the head mind worker had told them. "Start... Start with the faded memories... The ones most degraded already... Priority on anything unimportant... Work your way up to redundant memories and cloudy ones..." "Um..." someone had thought to question the complex orders. "Didn't... he... say to... to... get rid of all of them?" "Yes... it did... But... we still do it our way... Riley still needs a lot of those memories for as long as we can let her have them... So... we do this by the book... Slowly... Take... Take as much time as you can get away with..."

[edit] Chapter Ten

"Joy had something of a breakdown," was one of the first things out of Rock's mouth when he and Roll met back up. 'Oh, there's a shocker,' Disgust sounded in Roll's head. 'Yeah, Psycho Joy all over again,' Anger agreed. "Disgust and Anger don't seem very sympathetic," Roll sighed. 'More like vindicated,' Disgust insisted. 'Or vindictive,' Anger growled. 'Duh, doofus, they're like the same word or something,' Disgust's sneer was evident. 'Gaw, look in a dictionary sometime.' "You want to put them all back together before I try to strangle these two?" Roll asked. "I think Sadness wants them to apologize first," Rock told her. 'Yeah, that's gonna happen.' Rock and Roll had thought they were prepared for whatever defenses had been added to Light Labs since that morning. They were nothing of the sort. The sight of what seemed like bits and pieces of a fairy castle, a cookie (or possibly graham cracker) structure, clouds, and a card house stuck together randomly with a massive roller coaster like Phineas and Ferb liked to build threading in and out of almost every conceivable opening brought them to a stunned halt even before the fact that it was several times the size of the Lab they'd left was taken into account. It was so far removed from their expectations that the fact that there was a few hundred biker robots; complete with appropriate attire, helmets, and motorcycles; between them and the lab took almost a minute to register. 'Uh-oh...' Joy gulped at the sight of hundreds of robot bikers between the Light twins and Light Labs. 'What?' Sadness asked. 'You guys know that imaginary boyfriend-making machine you saw in the movie?' Joy supplied hesitantly. 'The one I set for 999 copies for a hare-brained scheme to get back to headquarters in baseline?' 'Yeah...?' Fear replied with palpable nervousness. 'I... may have forgotten to turn it off first...' 'Oh dear...' "Was the guy's name Joe?" Rock asked out loud. 'I dunno... maybe?' As one, the hundreds of mechanical no-longer-imaginary boyfriends possibly named 'Joe' turned to glare at Rock and Roll as they revved their bikes. "FOR RILEY!"