"We will play one song," Fergus was saying as they approached the junkyard gate. "Then we will go our separate ways. I do not care what you peons do as long as I reclaim my Ampichu."
"Yeah whatever." Terrence was having a little trouble juggling his guitar case as well as his amp and the cymbals from Chick's drum set (who knew she actually had one?). Behind him Angry Flute Guy was having similar problems with his flutecase and the set's snares. Tailing the group was Chick, toting her drumsticks and the cumbersome bass drum. Up in front Fergus was having an easy time of it, as he had refused to carry anything but Ilsa Adelsbjorn (the accordion still bore scars from its bout with the Vice Principal's engine). To boot, he was in full Polka regalia.
"Hey, what're we gonna play, anyways?" Terrence asked brightly.
"Something loud," retorted Fergus. "The louder the better, if I know those cavemen."
"Awesome!" yelled Terrence. "Let's play some NOFX! No - Voodoo Glow Skulls! Hey Chick, can you chant?"
"Chick can't even say her own name," snapped Fergus as they reached the closed gate. "Now shut up and let me do the talking." He knocked.
The small window slid open, revealing Gatekid's narrowed eyes. "Hey, I know you guys," he drawled. "You were all banned. Beat it."
Terrence jumped in front of Fergus before the other could stop him, dropping the cymbals loudly. "But you gotta let us in!" he blurted. "We're the band!"
Gatekid started to retort something but stopped short. "'The Banned,' huh? Hey, that's kinda clever. You get points for that. Okay, fine, you can come in, but you'd better be good." The window slid shut and the door opened.
As Terrence picked up the cymbals Fergus shoved past him, sending the cymbals flying again. "I said to let me do the talking," the short boy shot over his shoulder. Terrence, scowling, managed to gather the cymbals up and hurry in after the others.
"Who're you guys supposed to be, the Polish Dropkick Murphys?" Gatekid sneered, jerking his chin towards Fergus and Ilsa as he led the "band" deeper into the junkyard.
Fergus opened his mouth but Terrence stepped in front of him. "No, the Murphys are older than us, duh," he said. "Plus they're from like, Germany or something."
Fergus opened his mouth to insult Terrence when something stopped him: it was the sight of a large wooden crate near the Extremasaur fighting arena. His scowl turned to a smug grin as Gatekid led the group to a structure made from pieces of chainlink fences.
"All right!" enthused Terrence. "The Cage!" He managed to free a finger to wipe away an emotional tear. "We're finally playing the Cage...after all we've been through together..."
"You idiot we've never even played once - " Fergus stopped short when he spied the Gatekid looking at him. "Oh, uh, I mean...Yes. The Cage. We'll just set up now."
As Terrence and Angry Flute Guy assembled the drums (Chick was too busy inspecting a speck of rust on the fence) Fergus went over the game plan:
"One song," he said again. "Then while everyone else is distracted throwing garbage or whatever it is that these morons do I will give my Ampichu the signal to get inside Ilsa and we will make our escape." He demonstrated how the end of the accordion opened, revealing enough room to hold the small Extremasaur.
"What song?" asked Terrence.
"I don't know," Fergus shot back tiredly. "As if you can even call the noise these animals enjoy songs..." He fingered Ilsa's keys. I'll just start and you can back me up."
At that Terrence scowled. "Hey!" he blurted. "No way am I playing back up to you and your stupid accordion! I wanna be lead!"
"Chick," said Fergus, and Chick obediently swung around and whalloped Terrence in the head with her drumsticks.
A crowd was beginning to gather outside the Cage. "What the heck is Fergus doing here?" one kid wailed in protest. He pointed a shaking finger at Ilsa. "Oh no," he wavered. "It's...it's..."
"Ilsa," whispered another kid, and the boys bunched together in fear.
"Hey!" yelled a big kid in the back. "We don't wanna listen to Fergus play his stupid accordion! And weren't those other losers banned?"
"Get off the stage!" yelled a skinny girl with a partially-shaved head. "Boo!"
As random objects started to smash against the cage, Fergus nodded to the others. "It's now or never," he said. "Remember: just make it loud."
Terrence brightened. "Awesome," he said.
The other kids actually quieted down as it became apparent that the band was going to play; Angry Flute Guy stepped up to the mic.
"HEY YOU FREAKS!" he shouted amid plenty of feedback. "THIS IS OUR SONG! SO...LISTEN TO IT!"
Fergus rolled his eyes, and promptly started to play a polka.
The crowd listened to that for about three seconds; and then a plethora of junk started smashing against the cage as they all booed loudly.
"Play, you idiots!" Fergus snapped over his shoulder.
Terrence pouted and put his hands on his hips. "Not if you're going to insult us," he replied. Chick drove the tip of a drumstick into her ear and Flute Guy just stood there blinking.
"Play something now!" screamed Fergus as bits of motor oil from a busted engine spattered all over the stage.
"Oh, all right all right, keep your klompen on..." Terrence adjusted his guitar strap and stepped forward, slamming out a test riff. Everything vibrated. Satisfied, he started playing. Chick, thus motivated, started hitting things (usually the drums), and Angry Flute Guy started shouting out random lyrics into the microphone.
Now from that description, you probably think that they sounded horrible. Well, that depends on your point of view. As it turned out, Gatekid's Dropkick Murphys call wasn't really all that far off: replace the bagpipes with an accordion, and perhaps shave a bit of rhythm off of the guitar and drums; and lastly replace Al Barr's fairly coherent yelling with a fourteen-year-old boy's unintelligible screaming, and you get the general idea. Not Mozart, sure, but not bad for a first effort. At least, as far as Punk Polka goes.
Slowly, the audience stopped booing and starting cheering. Kids jumped onto the outside of the Cage and clung there, beating on it with their fists in a show of exuberant appreciation for fine music. When Angry Flute Guy produced his flute and started playing the bridge, everyone just went wild.
The Banned was a huge hit.
Terrence was ecstatic at the reception; Angry Flute Guy was just wired on it. Chick could have been alone in a giant snowglobe from the completely detached way she ignored her surroundings.
Fergus for his part didn't care one way or the other if the junkyard kids liked them or not. He hadn't come, after all, to entertain. Neither was he there strictly to retrieve the Ampichu. He had bigger fish to fry. All those stupid, brain-dead teenaged wastoids...how dare they seize his prized Extremasaur and throw him out of the junkyard! Well, thanks to his own brilliance, he was back...and he had a plan.
As the song came to a somewhat clumsy finale and the crowd burst into a round of apechants, Terrence whalloped Fergus jovially on the back. "Nice work with the old Yankovic, man!" he crowed. "We're gonna be famous!"
"That's what you think, you spectacular gaffe of Nature," Fergus snapped back, shoving roughly past Terrence to stand beside Flute Guy, motioning for the microphone to be lowered to his level. Flute Guy paused, contemplating a rebuttal; but even he was overwhelmed by the euphoria of their reception and finally just did as the redhead requested.
"Enjoying the show?" Fergus said into the mic, cocking an eyebrow.
The crowd concurred loudly.
"Do you want more?" Fergus went on slyly.
The reply was unanimously positive.
Fergus's eyes went cold behind his thick glasses. "You fools!" he barked in an angry yet superior tone, glaring out over the crowd. "You dared to ban me - me, Darryl Fergus, creator of the greatest Extremasaur this world has ever known? Did you think you would not pay for such treatment? Did you?"
The crowd, now deathly quiet, gaped back at him. Silence reigned for a few moments; there was a cough or two. Finally, someone in the back yelled, "Play some Skynard!"
"Oh shut up already!" Fergus snarled back. He held his accordion up over his head. "What you morons did not know," he went on, "is that I trained the Ampichu with this very instrument! I taught him exactly two hundred and thirty-seven different commands, all in response to a different series of notes played on my talented Ilsa! And now I shall play the sequence that will send him into a blind rampage! Farewell, you sniveling idiots!"
Terrence leaned close to Chick, who was cleaning under her fingernails with a rusty cog she had picked up. "Does this mean we're going to do an encore?" he whispered to her.
Fergus lowered Ilsa as the crowd gaped at him; he expanded the accordion and played a short series of notes. But his expression quickly went from vengeful to horrified.
"No," he murmured. "That's not right..."
The huge crate by the Extremasaur arena suddenly began to shake and jump violently, accompanied by loud crackling and the crisp smell of charred wood. The junkyard kids, looking at once frightened, scattered, yelling, in all directions.
"Hey, what's that?" Terrence asked cluelessly of no one in particular. Fergus stood on the stage, clutching Ilsa, mouth agape.
"Ilsa!" the short kid whispered hoarsely to the accordion. "You've betrayed me! No - No, it wasn't you..."
The crate suddenly fell apart, revealing a small yellow and brown chinchilla-like animal with bristling fur. It twitched its adorable nose twice, then suddenly bared its sharp little teeth and started bounding straight for the Cage.
"...It was them! Yes, it was they who are to blame!" Fergus was babbling now, caressing Ilsa nervously. "That horrible female threw you in that car and you were damaged..."
The Ampichu was gaining ground fast. Hey You There Chick got up boredly and wandered out of the Cage's door.
"And that bigmouthed troll is the one who chased off the old band in the first place..."
Angry Flute Guy went as white as milk and scrambled over the Cage wall.
"But it was that single-brain-celled hominid who led us here! It's his fault!" Fergus whirled on Terrence, who was standing, petrified, just behind him. The taller boy had had a sudden memory jolt when the Extremasaur got loose, and recalled that "Ampichu" equals "ow." In a sudden, rare burst of intellect, he got the heck out of there.
Fergus turned back around just in time to see the Ampichu melt a hole through the Cage and land on his face, both it and he squealing. Streamers of electricity whipped all around the Cage, creating a stunning effect when the bolts hit some multicolored bottles stacked against the metal fencing. Multicolored light, and shards of glass, went everywhere. And amid all this, a new sound could be heard, emanating from the very heart of the chaos.
"Hey!" exclaimed one of the junkyard kids, stopping in his tracks and looking back. "What...what's that?"
"It's...awesome," whispered another boy. Everyone stopped fleeing and stared at the Cage.
"Oh my gosh," sighed the girl with the shaved head, clasping her hands beside her face. "It's so...pretty!"
"HEY!" shouted Flute Guy in awe, pointing. "LOOK! IT'S FERGUS!"
The sound was indeed coming from Fergus. And from Ilsa. And in fact, from the Ampichu as well. More precisely, it was coming from a combination of the accordion, boy, and Extremasaur: the Ampichu's energy was channeling through Fergus - who made an excellent conductor - and into Ilsa, who had never sounded better.
"That's so freaking cool!" screamed Terrence; and everyone flocked back to the Cage. "Dude!" Terrence went on, entering the Cage and stepping up to Fergus. "That kicks! I didn't know your stupid accordion could do that!"
Fergus stood stock still, his muscles refusing to do his bidding, the Ampichu bristling on the top of his head. He rolled his eyes in Terrence's direction and grunted through gritted teeth: "Help...me..."
"You heard the man!" Terrence called over to Flute Guy and Chick, who obediently resumed their places onstage. The crowd gathered close, cheering anew.
After belting out a verse he had made up on the spot, Flute Guy leaned in towards Terrence. "HEY!" he shouted conversationally, "I FEEL SORRY FOR FERGUS. YOU KNOW, I DON'T THINK ANYONE REALLY LIKES HIM!"
Terrence shook his head at him. "I dunno," he said doubtfully. "Anything becomes a billion times cooler once you add electricity to it. Wish I'd thought of it."
The Incredibly Awesome Terrence is copyright Craig McCracken or somebody. Technically Darryl Fergus, the Ampichu (though obviously both their names are mine) and a few of the Junkyard Kids are his, too. Hey You There Chick, Angry Flute Guy, Vice Principal Healey, and Ilsa Adelsbjorn are all copyright (c) me. I stabbity people who steal them.