Chapter Text
"I can't believe they left us behind to go to the store." Axel said, carrying his electric guitar into the apartment room and setting it on the bed. "Yeah! I know, right?" answered Puff, who was setting his microphone and the equipment that came with it down. "Besides," he stood up again. "It's not like we're in desperate need of new groceries, like check this ou..." his words completley died off as he opened the fridge, which was completely barren, except for an expired jug of milk, an empty bottle of orange juice, and a slice of moldy bread. "...well, maybe we do need to do some shopping, but it's still pretty shitty that they left us behind to unload all the things from the bus."
After walking back out the door, down the stairs and outside to said bus, Axel opened the doors, which revealed the drum set, Deejay's mixer, and Benatar's keytar.
Axel scratched his head. "Did the guys say to take everything in?"
"No, I think just the stuff we can carry." Puff answered, even though the truth was, he didn't know if they said everything or not, but since the drumset and the mixer were both pains in the ass to carry, he wasn't taking any chances.
"Well, I guess that leaves the keytar, then."
"Yup."
Although they could easily pick up the keytar and take it inside, both guys were kind of reluctant, mostly because of Benatar.
Benatar loved his keytar, he'd probably go to the ends of the earth for it, and both Puff and Axel knew that if they even so breathed incorrectly towards it, Benatar would have a cow. They've should've known- there had been time after time where where they'd try moving the instruments to wherever they needed to be and all they could hear was Benatar yelling at them to "please be careful" with the damm instrument. Oh well, maybe if they carried it in just right, set it down just so and made no other contact with it whatsoever, His Royal Highness would be satisfied for once.
Puff was the one to pick it up, holding onto it with a death grip as if the keytar going anywhere. He had to admit- it was pretty nice-looking and probably very costly. Jumping a little when Axel loudly closed the bus doors, the two friends slowly walked inside, and up the stairs, but down the hall, just before they got to their room, Puff couldn't help but hear a voice.
Drop it.
Drop the keytar.
Now, this was a voice Puff recognized. It was the one that always told you to do the things you obviously weren't supposed to do. It was the same voice that tells you to crash the car while you're driving. It was the same voice that tells you to push someone down the stairs. It was the same voice that tells you to murder your friend in his sleep because he ate your leftover chicken macaroni salad. And now, it was the voice telling Puff to drop Benatar's keytar, promptly destroying it. Surely, no matter how many times it repeated in his head, it couldn't possibly win Puff over and have him give in, could it? There was no way he'd do something so stupid as that. Continuing walking until he finally made it to the door to their room, Puff tried thinking those thoughts instead. There was no way he'd do something so stupid as-
"Hey, Puff!"
He jumped again, angrily turning around to see Axel laughing quietly. "Don't do that!" Puff yelled. "You almost made me drop the-" he quickly stopped talking, and he could hear Axel's laughter die off, as well, as both guys looked down to see....the keytar, dropped on the floor keys first.
After a few seconds of standing there in shock, both men started screaming.
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!" Puff Puff ran straight into the room and placed the keytar on the bed. One of the buttons were pressed in and two of the keys were sticking out. "Dude, Benatar's gonna kill us!" Axel looked down towards the bed where the object laid. "Kill us? He's gonna kill you! You're the one who dropped it!" Puff turned towards Axel, resisting the urge to slap him in the face. "He's not gonna care, asshat! He'll walk into this room and see us, the broken keytar and put two and two together!"
Instead of insulting Puff back, Axel took a second to think. "Wait, man, that's it! He can't kill us if he doesn't see it! Quick, we gotta hide this thing!" He quickly picked up the keytar once again and frantically ran around the room looking for a place to put it.
Too panicked to think of another solution, Puff decided to look for a place to hide it as well, until he heard his phone vibrate. Taking it out of his back pocket, he saw that he got a text message from Deejay, in which he was saying that he and Benatar were literally walking up the stairs and up to the hall. "Oh my god, they're almost here! Axel, give me that!" He snatched the keytar out of Axel's arms, and quickly set it on the bed and underneath one of the blankets Puff found on the floor from last night.
"Dude, that's an awful place to hi-"
"Shut the hell up, man, act natural!"
They could hear footsteps getting closer until they could hear the turning of a knob, and then-
"Hey! We're back. Come help us with these groceries, will you?" Benatar said, opening the door. Puff and Axel both nervously took groceries from the other two guys, and walked towards the kitchenette to set them down. As they did, Deejay called towards them. "Did you guys get the stuff from the bus?"
"Oh yeah, we, uh, we got everything!" Axel called back. "We had to leave the mixer and the drums back on the bus, though." Deejay nodded. "That's fine, at least you got everything else."
"Speaking of everything else..." Benatar chimed in. "...were you two careful with my keytar?" Axel and Puff both felt their hearts stop. "Uh...y'know, I bet everyone's hungry, maybe we should try making dinner-" Puff started, trying desperately to change the subject.
"No, seriously! You guys know how important that keytar is to me." Benatar looked around, and walked towards the beds, in which he was quickly stopped. "Wait, no, you don't want to do that!" Axel quickly said.
Benatar looked skeptical. "...why not? Is there something you two are hiding?"
Puff shook his head. "No! Not at all! It's just that it's so...much better over there! We can look for your keytar for you, Ben, just go back over to that side of the room!"
Benatar slightly pushed the two guys aside so he could go past them. "No! I need to know where you two put it, you can't just set it up onto any old place and- " He noticed the blanket on the bed and went to pick it up. "Oh, I didn't see that there. But look, what I'm saying is, you gotta be a little bit more careful with these kinds of- AHH!"
And there it was, the keytar in all its damaged glory. Benatar only stood there for a few moments, completely frozen. "What. Did. You. DO?!" Puff backed away in fear. "It- it was an accident! Honest!" Axel nodded. "Yeah! We wouldn't go out of our way to break it or anything!" Benatar walked closer to them, his hands balled up into fists. "I don't CARE if you guys didn't mean to break it! You still did! I gave you ONE JOB!"
With nowhere else to go, Puff tried to look past Benatar for Deejay. "Deejay- help! Stop him, please!" But, unfortunately, he was gone elsewhere, leaving the two unfortunate men to fend for themselves.
"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU TWO- I mean, it's such a SIMPLE TASK and you guys can't even do THAT?!"
Turning his head and pinching the bridge of his nose, Benatar went on and on about how incompetent Axel and Puff were, and how they couldn't be trusted alone for five seconds, and a bunch of other similar things. Noticing that he was distracted doing all that, Puff and Axel made their escape from the lecture by slowly walking and then quickly running out the backdoor. Hearing it slam, Benatar quickly remembered what he was doing and felt the anger inside him boil once again. How dare those two leave while he was talking to them! And they never even apologized once! He looked back towards the door, filled with fury, pettiness, frustration, and spite. "You two think you can leave for now..." he said to himself, since he was also feeling particularly evil. "...but when you come back....I shall have my revenge!" This was soon followed by some malicious laughter, but it was quickly interrupted since Benatar suddenly had to cough. Oh well, he meant what he said, and he was sure that evil laughter or none, it sounded pretty intimidating.