#the concert guitar is so much louder than the electric one (without speaker) and it surprises me every time

[paskariu]

ah ha ha instead of actually learning for my exam tomorrow my dumbass is instead changing the strings on a guitar. lesgo

already changed the broken one and i have the other five too so i might as well change them too and keep the old ones as backup

[pointy-kitty]

We Can Make It

A Wreck It Ralph Fanfiction from five years ago

Chapter Eleven

Descending in the elevator was unnerving. The entire box seemed to shake in the shaft, rattling with the vibrations. The muffled roar of a guitar riff nearing its end became clearer and clearer as she sank, and by the time the ride shuddered to a stop, the music was over, leaving only hectic cheers and stomping feet. Make-It swallowed, not looking forward to dealing with the creepy figures of the fans.

As the silvery doors slid open, her heart drew back just as quickly as she did against the far wall of the elevator. The featureless, pixelated people were packed so tightly in the massive room that it was a wonder any of them could even move, let alone breathe (but then again, she had to wonder if they even needed to). Gazing over their heads, it was impossible to miss what they were all staring at. The room was dark apart from the glaring spotlights that shone on a stage at the wall opposite the elevator, flanked by massive speakers and backed by a thick red curtain.

And, of course, the main attraction himself was prowling around said stage, observing the fans, waving, grinning, bowing, blowing kisses, playing them up any way he could. A shimmering red and white electric guitar hung casually against his belly, and the rest of him looked fit to party. His tangle of hair was even wilder than usual, and the arms of his jumpsuit were hanging at his sides, revealing that slightly stained white wife-beater beneath.  Make-It huffed a bit, smirking, thinking that he could only look greasier if he had hoards of gold and silver jewelry draped over him.  

He found his way back to the microphone standing in the center of the stage and leaned one of his hands over the top of it, the other resting on his hip. “Thank you, thank you, again. You’re too kind, really. Seriously. I’m not joking.”  

The figures screeched as much as ever, and he shrugged with a grin, stepping back to pick up a water bottle. Before he could take a swig, however, he finally managed to notice the open elevator doors. He paused, his mouth falling slightly agape as he squinted over the crowd. For a moment, she could have sworn that he looked a little scared to see her, but that quickly broke into a wide, shining grin.

“That’s who I think it is, isn’t it? Someone who finally succeeded in showing up?” He leaned towards the microphone, raising a brow.

She wanted to jump up and be overdramatic, be theatrical, just make a fool out of herself, but the way that the crowd fell silent turned around in perfect synchronization dropped her heart to her navel. Goodness, they were unnerving.

“Well, what’re you waiting for? C’mon, guys, get her up here,” he gestured with a sweep of his hand, and the mob was upon her instantly, apparently trying to lift her up with their box-like heads. She was having no part of it.

“No—No, no, yeah, you shouldn’t touch me—No, seriously, stop—Keep your pixels off—OW! WATCH IT! Cussing—CUSS IT!” She bounced above their reach, landing atop their heads and trotting quickly across the room, leaping for the stage as soon as she could reach it. Shuddering, she adjusted her clothes and stuck her tongue out in disgust before being pulled into an uncomfortably tight side-hug by Turbo.

“If it isn’t our dear Make-It,” his grin twitched a bit, his eyelid quivering. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Should I make appointments from now on?”

“Uh, hahah, no, that’s fine,” he shook her slightly, turning his head back to the crowd. “Remember this gal?”

The forest of pixels bounced and shrieked in glee, earning only a deep, disdainful grimace from said gal.

Turbo snickered a bit, muttering through this teeth. “They love ya, toots.”

“They love anything you point at,” she grumbled. “Well, they scream at it, anyway. Not sure they’re capable of loving. Not really.”

He glanced sharply at her for a second, holding a bit of a loaded glare. “I suppose not. Well,” he grinned again, “I, for one, am glad to see you, finally.” He shook her a bit and gave her another bone-creaking squeeze, making her flinch at the tenderness in her ribs, before finally letting her go.

Unable to keep from smiling, she hopped up onto one of the hulking speakers and dangled her feet off the edge of it. “So I finally get to see a Turbo party? And when your name’s up in lights, no less? I’ve been wanting to hear you jammin’ for a while. You know, when I’m not just mistaking it for an earthquake.”

He cleared his throat, taking that gulp of water he was going for, and set the bottle down. “Yep.”

“Oh,” she swung her legs back, lying on her stomach and propping her chin up in her hands, “I should’ve brought it up when we briefly mentioned music before. But I’ve been talking with Felix about our backstories – well, mine and his - and, apparently, in mine, my parents forced me to learn piano. Can you believe I forgot that? And you know what? I actually really enjoyed playing it. I can’t believe I didn’t remember that. See, I’ve been looking at photo albums and stuff, and I had nearly forgotten about half of my backstory. That’s what I get for being such a cuss and ignoring it, I suppose…” she huffed a bit.  

Turbo was merely staring at her, seemingly in wonder that she could still be talking. “That’s bombastic, toots,” he shook his head briskly, his scruffy mane waving a bit.  

Staring out at the eerily silent crowd, she remarked, “You know, I’m not sure what I expected, but… Why are you partying with these things?”

“Come now, they work hard screaming my praises all day,” he smirked, adjusting the strap on his guitar. “It is really the least I could do.”

“I don’t think they care.”

“Did you go deaf in these past three days, toots?” He rounded on her casually, swinging his legs around, a smug, superior grin on his lips. “Maybe they weren’t screaming loud enough for you.”

She feigned a gag. “Any louder and I’d never come back.”

His eyes narrowed into a simmering glower. “No doubt.”

“But, c’mon, Turbo, you know what I’m talking about. Out of all the lifeless husks of NPCs to party with, why THESE guys?”

He frowned, his lower lip jutting out a bit. “Because cuss logic. Get off my speaker, toots.”

Her head flopped down. “But I wanna ride it…”

He scoffed slightly, pressing his lips together and turning to face the crowd. “Fine. But just for this one song, okay? Then you can make yourself useful and bring me a drink or something. And I guess you could have a few sips if you wanted to.” He gestured towards the left side of the room at which stood a bar: Sleek, red and silver, and seemingly reminiscent of the 50s. Bottles and glasses glistened on the shelves and racks like their own little highly-inebriating light bulbs.  

Make-It pulled half a grin into the side of her face, although she was not feeling it. Something felt off about the whole situation. It felt as if she had just walked in on Turbo performing to an empty room. After all, the fans were not really characters or people. They were just simulated attention. She had to wonder if they even left the bleachers without direct orders to do so.

Suddenly, Make-It just felt very sad.

Turbo disappeared behind the red curtain with a muffled whoosh, apparently making some adjustments, and returned to view not too long after. He gripped the neck of his guitar, stood in front of the microphone, and took a poorly-concealed, steadying breath. The speaker seemed to breathe with him, letting out a low hiss in anticipation.

Make-It immediately found herself gripping the edges of the speaker as hard as she could, the whole room suddenly shaking with the blaring, rumbling babble of the electric guitar. The crowds leapt up in excitement as he strummed away, and an uppity, bouncing rhythm started. After a few beats of steadying herself on the jumping speaker, a voice sang out through it.

“Deep down in Louisiana, close to New Orleans,

Way back up in the woods, among the evergreens,

There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood…”

Make-It’s brows immediately shoved together. The voice booming out of the speaker beneath her was most definitely not what Turbo sounded like. Anybody else might have been fooled, and so would she, if not for the time she listened in on his lazy shower-songs. Muffled and warped as his voice had been, it was enough.  

That little cuss was lip-synching!  

“Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode,

Who never ever learned to read or write so well,

But he could play a guitar just like he’s ringin’ a bell…”

She observed his long, rounded fingers dance across the neck and strings, shaking her head incredulously and wondering if he was even playing that gorgeous instrument. For a moment, she was amazed that he was not simply blasting the sound of his own voice and manic guitar strumming no matter how horrible it might have been, but, looking at the scene, the stage, the splendor, the fans, the theatricality of it all, she figured that any attention at this degree would have made his ego leap jubilantly.  

But what difference would faking his own concert do? She pressed her lips together as he mimed the chorus, her eyes drifting towards the heavy crimson curtains.  

Making sure Turbo was not looking before she moved, she slipped from the top of the speaker and twirled nimbly behind the drapes without so much as a rustle. The room she found herself in was surprisingly small, lit by a single hanging light bulb, the walls black and lined with loose, dark curtains of their own. The scuffed and scratched floor was fairly clear apart from the chests, trunks, wires, and cords pushed up against the walls. On the farthest end of the tiny backstage area, the shadowy drapery of the walls was bulging forward greatly, hiding a decently fat and upright mass behind it.  

She slinked towards it on the balls of her feet, her fingers dancing curiously, and pushed its cloak back to let the fabric fall softly to the floor. What stood before her was an absolutely beautiful and polished jukebox, constructed with deep mahogany, lined with a gold shine from top to bottom, accented with glistening and glittering red and purple neon. It looked like it had been stolen right out of a 50’s diner. The more she considered that idea, the more she thought that could very well be the case, knowing Turbo.

Her fingers ran gently against the sides of it, getting to know its shape and crevices, smiling at it like a lover. As she let her gaze drag slowly up and down her new mischief machine, she spotted a microphone mounted just in front of the box’s metallic grate that hid the speaker. She froze, suddenly very aware that any sound she made would be broadcasted throughout the entire room behind her.  

This was a very beautiful and enlightening revelation.

She took a brief glance back towards the stage, and considered it a great crime that Turbo’s own groovy, jazzy, fantastic voice was not barrelling from the speakers and nearly breaking the walls down. His little façade could not end soon enough.

Her eyes darted to the window showing the turntables, scanning the shining keys below it. With a wicked grin breaking across her face, her fingers caressed the stop button for a moment before giving it a very deliberate and cheerful tap. The music choked out immediately as the needle lifted.  

A few dull, metallic strums from outside of the red curtains punctuated Turbo’s realization and confusion. The screaming crowd hushed, muttering unintelligible, unintelligent grunts of concern. She could practically hear him putting two and two together, his shoes scraping against the stage, his footfalls suddenly beating furiously in her direction.  

Seeing that sparing a moment would earn her a guitar broken over her head, she snatched up the microphone from the floor and leapt atop the jukebox. When the crimson drapery was thrown back and the irate racer’s bared golden snarl appeared, she was perching proudly, the microphone held just a breath away from her beaming lips. Turbo froze, his fist clenching against the curtain. His mouth fell slack, dumbfounded, and his eyes warned her as loudly as they could manage.  

She heard them, too. But it did not stop the words from bursting through her mouth.

“Hail to the chief we have chosen for the nation,

Hail to the chief! We salute him, one and all!”

Her gut gave a bit of a groan at the sound of her own singing voice, which she never thought to be too pleasing. All the less pleased was Turbo, his skin visibly searing red, his breaths coming in bloodthirsty gasps.  

It was definitely time for Make-It to move.  

He lunged for her without a thought for the jukebox, knocking straight into it as she leapt away with a cheery boing and landed just short of the curtains. Stuck in a stance of half-climbing Make-It’s prior perch, his fingers digging against it like claws, holding tightly lest he be swept up in the tide of his anger, he stared at her. Not merely stared, but commanded, demanded, that she not set one pixel onto that stage.  

She pulled a sideways grin and goose-stepped out into the open. Given only the shortest moment to register the shriek of the fans, the strangled, furious yowl of the racer, and the imminent suffering hidden in the fingers that tore through the drapery for her, she bound once again into the air and whipped the rockets in her shoes to life. Not a moment after spiraling upwards did the cord of the microphone fall short and yank out of its socket. Confound it all, she was muted, hovering above the crowd, watching Turbo get tangled up in the curtains and curse rabidly.  

“GET HER! GET THAT FLYING SACK OF SCRAPS! DON’T JUST SIT THERE!” He stumbled, tumbled, and rolled onto the stage, scrambling to his feet. Thrusting a finger in her direction, he barked to the crowd again, “USELESS BUNCH OF PIXELS, GET HER! GRAB HER, JUMP, DO SOMETHING, JUST—DON’T—STOP—AUGH, STOP STARING AT ME, GOD DAMN IT!!”

The fans were thoroughly confused. Rather, they would have been confused, had they a thought to contemplate and not make sense of. Instead, they sat there, dormant, watching Turbo and waiting for any trigger to start screaming.  

“DRAG. HER. TO. THE. FLOOR. AND LET ME AT HER!”

Nothing.

“AUGH, CUSSING WASTES OF CODE!!”

She should have been laughing. It was hilarious, after all. She stood in the air, her arms folded, the dead microphone dangling as she held its cord, and just the ghost of a smirk with the bubbles of a giggle tickled her chest. There was just too much about the situation that struck a cold, sickly note in her heart.  

“And—And—AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST STANDING—FLOATING, I DON’T KNOW, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” He wrenched the guitar off of his body, making to throw it, but paused just enough to let it down gently.  

“Good. If you threw that gorgeous piece of work, I’d slay you,” she called to him, strafing in a small circle.  

He shuddered with anger, throwing his gaze to her again. “I. WILL SLAY YOU. IF YOU DON’T GET DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!”

She sneered a bit. “Nah.”

A deep, stuttering breath filled his lungs, slowly exhaled with a jagged quake. He spread his fingers out, followed by his arms, gesturing to himself with a bit of a bow. “Just put the muted mic down… and come over here… and we can talk.” His teeth clenched upon the last few words.  

“Eh,” she scrunched her nose. “Nah. I wasn’t done!”

“Good luck finishing with that,” he jabbed a finger towards the microphone.

With a shrug, she slacked her grip on the cord, letting it all fall to the floor. It knocked a fan right in its square, featureless head, and it toppled like a cardboard cut-out. The figures surrounding shifted back a bit, watching the struck one flicker out and disappear.  

Make-It blinked. “Oops.”

Turbo was smiling now, a horribly forced, closed grin, as he hunched over slightly, his eyes wide and irate as he watched her. “You offed one of my fans, toots. Bravo.”

“Uh,” she lowered slightly, “they grow back, right?”

“Grow ba—No, toots, they don’t ‘grow back’,” he hissed scathingly. “…They do, however, spawn back in the bleachers…”

The whole room seemed to warp and change before her eyes. What was once a fake concert was now the world’s best shooting gallery, all the stupid targets just begging for what was coming to them.

Oh, she was going to enjoy this.

“In that case,” she called to him, a positively evil smirk breaking her features, “can I speak with you a moment—” she painted a megaphone and a baseball bat out of the air, “—privately?”

“Priva—oh my God.”

“No, don’t move, sourheart,” she sang, “I’ve got it.”

And with a deafening scream from her shoes, only made worse by the megaphone that she held to her face, she shot down into the crowds and tossed them up like waves with each swoop of her bat. Their blank shapes flew everywhere, knocking over stools, bumping speakers, sticking to the ceiling, breaking booze bottles. Turbo himself would have taken an adoring fan to the face had he not ducked down in a panic, hiding halfway behind the curtain.  

The words from her unfinished song spurt out from her mouth in jubilant, triumphant yells, falling in a horrible harmony with the wreckage that shook the mansion.

“HAIL TO THE CHIEF AS WE PLEDGE COOPERATION,

IN PROUD FULFILLMENT!”

She swung hard.

“OF A GREAT!”

Harder.

“NOBLE!”

Harder still.

“CALL!

YOURS IS THE AIM TO MAKE THIS GRAND COUNTRY GRANDER,

THIS, YOU WILL DO! THAT’S OUR STRONG, FIRM BELIEF!

HAIL TO THE ONE WE SELECTED AS COMMANDER!”

The room was nearly cleared. Only two idiotic little sprites bounced on the spot, too ignorant to even get out of the way. Make-It tossed her bat aside to snatch one of them up by its head, zipping straight up to the narrow windows towards the ceiling.  

“HAIL TO THE PRESIDENT!”

She spun hard, hurling the fan straight through the glass like a flying disk, the shrill crackle of the shards falling stirring up a righteous fire in her belly. As her spirit set itself ablaze, she twirled back down to drop the megaphone and take up her bat in both hands, setting her hungry eyes on the last target. It awaited its demise stupidly, helplessly, indifferently.  

“HAIL TO THE CHIEF!”

The last full-bodied, overhand strike brought itself down hard on the last fan’s head, nearly splitting it in two before it vanished, leaving only a windswept, panting, grinning psycho of a girl behind. She stood flat-footed in her place, her knees quivering, clutching onto the bat that was now stuck halfway through the floor.