Hello!

I'm back again! Sorry it's been over a week since my last update, I'm pretty busy at the moment so I haven't gotten the chance to do a lot of writing but I did manage to throw this together. So I hope it's not too bad. It's a little bit more manageable than my last chapter though because it's about a fifth of the length. Also, quick question, do you prefer the longer chapters or shorter ones like this? I'm interested to know.

Anyway, no more rambling, here's the chapter!

"Mack…" Brady said slowly, sauntering through the front door to find Mack sat at her kitchen table.

"Brady?" the brunette replied, shooting him a questioning look as she lifted her gaze from her tutoring schedule.

"Would you care to explain to me why my rash guard was flying from the flag pole?" Brady asked, holding the bundled up piece of yellow fabric in his hand. Apparently Brady had discovered the result of the dance number that accompanied the two surfer boys secretly fixing his car.

Mack just blinked at the object in a state of shock. "I have no idea," she eventually managed to utter.

"Well it didn't get there by itself," Brady said as he made his way over to Mack.

"I think I might know who helped it get there though," Mack replied, sending the blonde a knowing glance.

"You think one of the surfers or bikers did it?" he asked.

"Well no one else lives here," Mack shot back with a hint of a chuckle.

"Right, then I'll have to be having words with them about keeping their hands off my property," Brady said with a sigh as he tossed the rash guard onto the table.

"Hey, watch it," Mack retaliated with a smile, picking the heap of yellow up off her notebook before throwing it onto the kitchen counter. "I'm trying to work here."

"Re-writing your tutoring schedule does not count as 'work'," Brady smirked as he sat down at the chair opposite Mack. "It's called a distraction or more likely: procrastination."

"You know me too well," Mack chuckled, spinning her pen between her fingers as she gazed at the blonde.

"Look, I know that you're super busy with your 'work'," Brady started, his tone screaming sarcasm. But rather than being mad, Mack just laughed at his comment. "But can you put a little bit of time aside for us?"

"When?" Mack asked quizzically.

"Now."

"Aren't you supposed to be working too?" Mack asked, furthering her inquisitive look by raising one of her eyebrows.

"Why do you think I'm here, you goof," Brady chuckled.

"That's not answering my question," Mack fired back.

"I just finished my shift," Brady replied. "And the first thing that I did was come here to see you."

"Gee, aren't I lucky?" Mack said, matching Brady's sarcastic tone from earlier.

"I'd say so," Brady chuckled jokingly.

"What's this about 'us time' then?" Mack asked after a lull in the conversation.

"Well I should start with the fact that we have none," Brady said with a laugh.

"Yeah, apparently having ten movie characters from the 1960s running around your house doesn't give you a lot of free time," Mack said. "Who would have thought?"

"We have some free time now," Brady said with a smirk. "And there's not a surfer or biker in sight."

"Thank god," Mack chuckled. "Getting them those jobs was the best idea you've ever had. Not only does it give them something to do but it means that they're someone else's responsibility for once."

"And since they don't come back for another couple of hours…" Brady said, the smug, yet almost encouraging, look still twisting his lips into a grin.

"What are you implying?" Mack asked, raising one of her eyebrows. But Brady's smirk had spread to her face too.

"That we enjoy some time together, just the two of-"

But Brady never got to finish his sentence because, as if on cue, the front door flew open with a bang and Struts, Giggles and Tanner all stumbled inside, looking very dishevelled, slightly shocked and extremely sheepish.

"Oh, hey Mack, hey Brady, fancy seeing you here," Giggles nervously chuckled, giving the pair an awkward wave as she shuffled from foot to foot and played with a strand of her slightly damp, blonde hair. But this just puzzled Mack and Brady further because her hair wasn't supposed to be wet. It was like it was trying to be but not quite fully getting there. Almost as if she was halfway across the boundary of movie character and real person. And that thought was too scary to think about right now.

"What are you guys doing here? Your shift doesn't end for another two hours," Mack said, jumping out of her seat and hurrying over to the shamefaced trio.

"Yeah, about that…" Struts said, chewing on the corner of her lip and toying with the ribbon of paper that was draped over her shoulders. Presumably it was from the cash register at the store they were working at, or were supposed to be working at. "We don't really have any more shifts."

"What?" Brady asked, moving to Mack's side.

"Uh, yeah, we kind of got…fired," Tanner admitted with another sheepish smile and a chuckle to try to counter the weight of the comment.

"You what?!" Mack cried, not daring to believe what the three teens were telling her.

"We got fired, the boss lady threw us out of the store," Tanner clarified, obviously not picking up on the fact that Mack was shocked rather than confused.

"She what?!" Mack cried again, not knowing whether to be outraged or dumbfounded…or both.

"What did you guys do?" Brady asked.

"Oh, funny story," Tanner nervously laughed.

"Uh…is it?" Giggles questioned, shooting the tanned surfer an unsure look.

Now, when Veronica (the woman who owned the shop that Tanner, Struts and Giggles were working at) told them that she was leaving them for an hour to attend a meeting, she left the two teens that had been working there long before the three movie characters had in charge, so all seemed well. And things continued to run surprisingly seamlessly until it got to 3:20pm, which was when Jay and Becky both finished their shift. And Veronica didn't get back until 3:30pm.

This may not sound bad at first but when you realise that three teens from the 1960s are being left in charge of a modern-day store for ten minutes, totally unsupervised…then you can start to come up with various, disastrous scenarios that could take place. And believe me, every single one of them happened. Well, apart from setting the building on fire. That's a plus, I guess.

I've got to give the guys some credit though because it did take them a solid minute and a half of being alone in the shop for something to go wrong and at least it was only a small thing at first.

The gasp from Struts was the earliest sign of anything going slightly pear-shaped. And it flew from her mouth because whilst she was taking inventory of the store's stock (since she had the 'prettiest' handwriting of the three) she had been lazily spinning the pen between her fingers, which resulted in her drawing a big black line across the fabric of a nearby t-shirt.

"What's wrong?" Giggles asked, scurrying over to the brunette. She hadn't thought to put down the mop that she had been using though, so it snaked a line of water across the plastic-y floor behind her.

"That Veronica chick's gonna kill me!" Struts exclaimed, her eyes widening in horror as they fixed on her accidental graffiti.

"Yeah, I don't think that she's going to be too happy about that," Giggles agreed, much to the biker girl's dismay.

"What? Aren't ya supposed to tell me it'll be fine or somethin'?!" Struts demanded.

"Well I was just being honest," Giggles said with a crooked, slightly scared smile.

"Look, maybe it'll wash off," Tanner said, having walked up to inspect the damage that Struts had inflicted on the item of clothing himself.

"With what?" Struts asked.

"I don't know. Water?" Tanner suggested.

"Just water?"

"Well we can at least try it."

"Ok, fine. You go get some," Struts ordered, pulling the top off its hanger and taking it over to the cash register so that she could see it in a better light.

But as Giggles was following her, she was too busy focusing on the defiled t-shirt that she didn't see the mop bucket she had previously been using, which ended in her tripping and falling flat on her face with an, "Oof.". With the mop bucket upturned, not only did it leave the surfer girl sprawled across the floor but it meant that the slightly dirty water it had contained was seeping its way across the store too.

"Giggles!" Struts hissed, staring in horror at the surfer girl. "What d'ya think you're doin'?!"

"Well at the moment I'm just lying on the floor," Giggles replied flatly.

"I know that!" Struts bickered. "But how did ya get there?!"

"I fell over the bucket."

"Why?!"

"Well it's not like I meant to!"

"What's going on now?" Tanner asked, running out of Veronica's office with a glass of water in his hand. But then his gaze fell on the blonde surfer girl and that answered his question. "Giggles, what are you doing on the floor?"

"I fell over, ok?" Giggles cried before attempting to push herself up off the floorboards.

"Tanner, where's that water?" Struts barked.

"Oh, here you go," Tanner replied, hurrying over to the biker girl and setting the glass onto the counter beside her.

"Thanks," Struts said, letting out a sigh of marginal relief. However, because she was so flustered, as she reached out to pick up the glass, she ended up knocking it over. Luckily, the glass didn't smash but the contents of it came rushing out and seemed to snake towards the cash register, which was definitely not a good thing considering that it was electric. "Oh my god!" a distraught Struts cried.

"Struts!" Giggles exclaimed, running up behind the pair at the checkout area. But during this process, she managed to get her foot wedged in the bucket that she had previously tripped over, and she couldn't get it out again.

"Quick! Do somethin'!" Struts shouted before scuttling around to try to salvage the cash register.

So on impulse, Tanner grabbed a handful of clothes from the rack beside the checkout and threw them onto the puddle of water on the counter. But because of the frenzied movement, the tanned surfer boy ended up making the entire frame collapse on top of him.

"Tanner!" Giggles squeaked in alarm. She tried her best to run over to the boy to help him up but then again, the bucket stuck on her foot proved to be a bit of an issue when it came to that.

Whilst all this was happening, Struts was wildly hitting the cash register, which had started to beep loudly and flash at random intervals. And on one final whack, it started churning out all of the receipt tape, which was the last thing that Struts needed at this point. "Guys! Can I get some help here?!" she cried as she tried to move the paper ribbon out of the way.

"What have you done now?" Tanner asked as he fought against the clothing rack to get back to his feet.

"I'd like to know the same thing," Veronica barked from the front of the store, which was now in ruins. All three teens' gazes were drawn to the seething woman who owned the shop that they had just wrecked and almost instantly their expressions turned to just blank embarrassment.

"Oh…no…" Struts trailed off. But just as she finished speaking, the upturned glass rolled off the counter and shattered on the floor beside her.

"Would you care to explain what's going on here?" Veronica asked, her perfectly plucked eyebrows knitting together above her eyes, which were symbols of pure fury.

And just to top it off (as if everything that had already happened wasn't enough), water had started snaking into the main part of the store from Veronica's office, thanks to Tanner unintentionally leaving the tap running and flooding the sink in there.

"Uh…not really," Tanner said awkwardly.

And that is when Veronica launched into her whole "you're fired!" spiel, as Struts put it.

"So she just fired you on the spot?" Mack asked, still in utter disbelief that so many things could go wrong in such a short space of time.

"Yeah, and she kicked us out of the store…" Giggles awkwardly admitted, shuffling her feet again.

"We're not allowed back either," Struts added, not quite as awkwardly as Giggles had though. Apparently she didn't care about getting in trouble as much as the surfer girl next to her did.

"Great," Mack said sarcastically, punctuating her comment with a bright, yet incredibly false, smile and a sigh.

"Sorry, Mack…" Tanner trailed off, trying to lighten the mood with one of his winning smiles, despite feeling like a complete loser.

"It's fine," Mack sighed as she stood up from the sofa. "I just need to talk to Brady for a second though so…talk amongst yourselves."

"Uh, ok," Giggles said as Mack grabbed Brady by the arm and dragged him out of the room.

"Ok, so maybe getting them jobs wasn't the best idea you've ever had," Mack grumbled as she slammed the door to her grandfather's workshop behind her. The only reason that they were in there was because it was the one place that they knew they would get a little bit of privacy in. And they were going to need it now that three of the ten teens from the 60s would be stuck at home all day.

"Well I didn't exactly plan on them getting fired," Brady shot back. "And anyway, you agreed to it."

"What are we going to do? We can't leave them at home all day, I've got people coming over tomorrow that I have to tutor," Mack cried, completely ignoring Brady's comment even though technically she had prompted it.

"I don't know, I'll try to fix my lifeguard schedule so that I can keep them out of the way for you," Brady replied, coming up with the most logical solution at this moment in time.

"Really?"

"Of course, I know that you need to keep this tutor job. It'll fine, my boss won't mind," Brady answered with a smile.

"You're so sweet," Mack sighed with a smile as a light blush formed on her cheeks.

"Yeah, well, I try," Brady laughed. "And I kind of landed you in this mess so the least that I can do is help out."

"You've got that right," Mack chuckled before quickly kissing him on the cheek and reaching for the door handle. "Come on, we can't leave them alone for too long. Who knows what they'll do? And after what they've just told us, I don't think I can trust them ever again."

"Yeah, let's just hope that the others are a little less destructive," Brady laughed as they returned to the kitchen, where the three Wet Side Story characters were marvelling at a rather modern blender.

Oh Brady, how wrong you were.

I hope that you liked it!

I started off having a rough idea for this chapter but no clue what would actually happen in it, so it took me a while to get into writing it but hopefully the end result is ok. I'm actually pretty happy with this chapter, which, if you know me, never happens. So this is quite a big deal.

Also, thank you so much for all of the feedback on my last chapter; I'm so glad that you enjoyed it! And thank you to those who gave me feedback on my 'Coral with short hair' idea, I'll definitely be using your ideas. It just might take me a while to actually get around to writing it.

I just wanted to give you a heads up that I've got a few pretty busy weeks coming up with things like school trips and exams, which means that I might not get a huge amount of writing done. So if I don't get another chapter posted any time soon then don't worry, I haven't gone anywhere, I'm just busy.

Ok, I think that's all that I have to say for now!

Thank you so much for reading and supporting my stories, you never fail to put a smile on my face!

-cherrygorilla