Chapter Text
The setting? Well, the air was crisp and the skies were as clear as water. A rather gaudy river raced through the middle of an advanced town, and the frequent khaki speckled lily pad would swim through the waters of it hastily. The roads were paved with smooth rocks, and trees were dotted here and there. It was—overall—a pretty environment friendly city if you ignore the few cars.
Here, Curiosity would lean on the black railings, that blocked emotions from falling into the river, and ponder about things before an emotion or two would run into them and complain about something — and that would get them curious about one-too-many things. The emotion was on break, from work- well, i suppose no emotion has a clear job… but… Curiosity likes teaching things, they’ve been doing this for a while. They do this so that some, keyword: some, emotions don’t go running around yelling ‘Our world is flat!’, though sometimes it doesn’t work.
“Hey, Curiosity!”
An emotion with spiky hair, almost like a porcupines, calls out from the back of the class. His voice practically boomed, and you could clearly tell that this one stemmed from Anger.
Curiosity turned away from the board they were pointing a laser at and looked at the other emotion, who was somehow now holding a box of something for some apparent reason. This was Hatred, he doesn’t like anyone… ‘But what can I say? I’d hate everything too if I were raised by Anger of all emotions.’, Curiosity’s rather rude thought echoed throughout their question-filled mind — Though they quickly shut off that thought.
They trailed off for a moment, forgetting Hatred’s call and curiously picking up a pink note off of the floor:
‘Hey Xx
Wanna hangout tonite? Xxxx
-Luv’
Curiosity was… confused, for once in his long life. Why was Love writing like a British chav from the 2000s?- Nevermind that, he was quickly snapped out of his thoughts by Hatred yelling his name once more.
“Curiosity!!-”
They turned around and was met with the oh-so-wonderful sight of a certain loathful emotion tossing a box full of sharp ass pencils at him.
‘Hey, Curiosity. Did you hear about what the humans are up to?’
A figure clad in grey and numerous other colours approached Curiosity, who still leans on that black railing. Curiosity almost immediately whipped their head to face the emotion as they were snapped out of that scarring memory, almost like an owl — If an owl was a knowledge-obsessed emotion, of all things. But, nevertheless, Curiosity silently beckoned the other to continue with a single gesture of a gloved hand.
The emotion, wearing a cheery smile on their face despite being slightly startled by Curiosity’s abrupt head-turn, chimed in with an amused tone.
“Apparently they’re… Making a bunch of atomic bombs! Crazy, crazyyyyy, right?”
Curiosity blinked, frowning slightly, and replied in an uncharacteristically bemused tone,
“Really, Jealousy? You know they’re all gonna kill themselves, right?... It’s important to me that you know that.”
The latter, now known as Jealousy, let out a small scoff,
“Every emotion knows that they’re gonna use that to fight each other, it’s common sense.”
Curiosity let out a small huff and straightened up, patting off the non-existent dust particles from their adventurous clothing. They shot the other a look as a bit of awkward silence dawned on the two of them.
. . .
. . .
“... What?”
Jealousy finally decided to break the silence with a question, Curiosity responded with another — it was rather vague, though.
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“The humans–! Why’d they do that?”
“Hm… Go to headquarters and ask about it.”
Curiosity gave the other a deadpan stare and turned around, already walking off, only for Jealousy to call out once more,
“Hey, Curiosity- wait-”
Curiosity, meanwhile, was halfway down the street but managed to hear Jealousy’s embarrassingly high-pitched call. They turned around and yelled back with much less enthusiasm(geez.)
“What is it?”
Jealousy went silent for a moment, as if he were reminding himself of something, before blurting out,
“Aren’t you supposed to be teaching some other emotions about something?-”
Curiosity stared once more in utter silence.
“... I’m… on break?”
The former swiftly left after bluntly stating that — acting more like a know-it-all than a curious lad, but i suppose having to deal with Hatred throwing a pack of sharp pencils at you, and Love sending love notes to people in class, would cause any impatient emotion –like Curiosity, here– to be mildly annoyed.
Jealousy watched in slight surprise, then let out a small and unnoticeable groan of disappointment.
“Gosh darn it- I was trying to get him to like me… Lucky Joy, get’s everyone to like them so easily-”
The feeling of something plopping onto his shoulder made him startle a small yelp — it was bird poo.
“Ah!- Eugh! No-”
What followed after this horrible incident featured Jealousy falling into the river, Anger managing to witness the spectacle and storm in getting all pissy as Boredom -the emotion she is- records this in slight tediousness.
— — — — — — — — — — — —
Curiosity’s walk to the Emotion headquarters was interesting — to say the least. They had accidentally bumped into Joy and Sadness (what a duo), who had dragged them into their(Joy’s) questionable choice of therapy, well, out of Curiosity’s own curiosity. They can’t really help it.
And after that, he had watched three emotions fall down a flight of stairs courtesy a random shopping trolley — you’d really think that some of the emotions would speak up about… I don't know, getting some sort of police department, like the humans?- Actually, the wrong type of emotions would somehow manage to get their way in.
But, alas, most bad things come to an end, Curiosity had finally managed to get to Headquarters to get a single question answered:
Why do humans like destruction so much? Is it out of pleasure? Out of apathy? Out of not worrying what the lower-to-middle class thinks about this?--- Oh, they’ve managed to answer their own question! Actually, nevermind, they wanted to meet up with some other emotions.
The HQ was a rather flamboyant building, it had this sort of rococo style to it that really made it look like a renaissance marvel. It was towering, like Olympus mons(not really.)
It had a wonderful stained glass dome-like roof that made the building look like the inside of a kaleidoscope.
((for reference of how the building looks like because i suck ass at describing things, think of St.Paul's Cathedral in London.))
Entering the building was rather comforting because of the colourful lights that littered the floor from the ceiling. The interior was carved intricately and there were multiple illustrations of older emotions on the walls and floor, it felt like a sacred place — but in reality, it was just a workplace full of discussions and questions. There were a handful of emotions there, but most of them were here to take a break from things and talk to others because usually they resided with emotions that they were connected to, and, or, branched off of. Like Love with Joy and Trust. Or Confusion with Vigilance and Surprise.
Curiosity’s astute observation lead them into accidentally bumping into one of the primary emotions, Vigilance. The orange-skinned emotion had his back facing them, head held low due to the fact he was talking to someone shorter, and his precious gun, Lee-Enfield, slung behind his left shoulder. Though at the sound of Curiosity’s small -yet loud- shuffle, Vigilance slightly craned his neck to look at the other from behind. He gave the former a salute of his military cap.
“... Curiosity, hey?...”
He murmured slightly, voice loosely tinged with uncertainty. Vigilance never really was good at greeting people, he was more of an observer – based on Curiosity’s assumptions and observations. Curio gave a small wave before stepping away from the other, letting the stress-ridden soldier go back to talking to whoever he was talking to.
— — — — — — — — — — —
After a bit of walking, Curiosity found himself in a meeting room with Indifference (He is, but a lack of emotion.), the x-marked lad was their colleague — standing tall, ignoring all concerns of others as he works in his fancy office. He was in charge of all the reasonable stuff, like passing laws… Arranging things, not doing dumb stuff… compared to some emotions, hm.
Indifference sat at his oak polished desk with his arms crossed and his head held high as Confusion prepared to ask him something after a long and very deep discussion about cats. They straightened out their yellow scarf as they looked Indifference in the eyes,
“I have a question.”
Indifference, as unbothered as ever, looked back — his gaze was cold and detached, as usual, and he had a perfect posture. Too perfect. But Curiosity was never the one to judge someone’s posture, of all things, because there were far more important things to judge and critique.
“Yes, What is it?”
He murmured, gaze never tearing away from the other’s one. Curiosity thought for a moment, thinking of how to word their question…
“How do you… Uh— How do you deal with particular emotions?”
Indifference stared for a moment before letting out a small sigh, not disappointed, not judging, just neutral. Curio liked that, they never really liked getting judged.
But luckily whatever Curio was loosely implying, it seemed to have gotten to Indifference quite easily.
“Hatred, he’s annoying. But I tolerate him enough to not get him exiled or whatever they do.”
He let out a small sigh before adding on,
“Look, Anger’s gonna get pissed if you ignore his sweet little emotion or not — So, just get Hatred out of those lessons and that’ll fix your problem. It worked for me, and Anger stopped sending me angry letters about ‘teaching the young good’.”
