Chapter Text
“Okay. Name. Naaaaaaame…” Kai massaged his forehead, shutting his eyes and forcing himself to think. Jett tried staying focused on the road, while also trying to tune into the band’s conversations as much as possible. Alfred and Matthew sat in the back seats, leaning over each other and thinking as hard as possible. After ten seconds of straight thinking, the band groaned, flopping pathetically.
Alfred let out a hearty chuckle. “Man, how are we going to think of a band name if we’re this stumped.” He perched his legs up Kai’s seat, forcing Kai to lean forward a bit.
“How about…“ Matthew started, pausing for everyone to give him attention. “…we take a bunch of keywords that relate to our band and mix and match them until we find the perfect name?” Matthew rummaged through his bag to find a notebook and pen. He clicked it one and laid the book on his lap. “I’ll write down the words and after we come up with words we can try to combine some of them.
“Aw, yea! That’s a great idea!” Kai complimented. “Ok, we are definitely funky—“
“Aliens! Space!” Alfred interrupted, loudly yelling a random barrage of words. “Groove! Stardust! Cosmos!”
“Funk... Aliens... Space…” Matthew scribbled the words down in his notebook. “…Stardust… coooooosmos!” Matthew lifted his pen to his chin, he clicked the pen on his chin a couple times while he hummed in thought. “How about… galaxy!” He quickly wrote it down, not wasting a second. “Meteor—“
“Rangers!” Jett yelled. When Matthew gave Jett a weird look, he said, “Y’know? Like the Power Rangers?” Matthew shrugged and wrote it down.
“Might as well add crusaders then,” Kai added.
“Why crusaders?” Alfred asked.
“Sounds cool.”
“Focus!” Matthew pointed his pen directly at Alfred’s nose, chuckling as he clicked the pen on Alfred’s nose.
“Right!” Alfred smiled.
The band listed more words, objects and even names (Albert Einstein, Jett said he invented space and the three didn’t know if Jett actually thought that or not) and after ten minutes they had three pages worth of words. Skimming through the book the band chose words and combined them in an attempt to create a name.
“Stardust Rangers?” Kai suggested.
Matthew shook his head. “Nah. Sounds weird.” Everyone made sounds of agreement.
“Oh!” Alfred piped up. “How about Funk Fighters?”
“Hmmm… We’ll save that one.” Matthew lazily scribbled in down.
“Space Ninjas!” Kai announced.
“Why did we add ninjas in the first place?”
“Wait, go back. What was Alfie’s suggestion?” Jett asked, clicking his finger as his arm laid on the car door.
“Funk Fighters?” Matthew reminded.
“Funk… Funk… Groove…” Jett pursed his eyes in thought, groaning angrily when he couldn’t solidify his thoughts. “Go through the word list again, just call out the first words you see?”
“Uhh…” Matthew flipped back through the pages. “Stardust, meteor, crusaders?”
“Ahah!” Jett yelled causing the other bandmates to jolt in surprise. “I got it! Groove Crusaders! We’re the Groove Crusaders!”
“Oh, that’s perfect! The Groove Crusaders!” Alfred giggled, softly kicking Kai’s seat. “Good job, bro!”
“Yeah, Jett! Groove Crusaders is a cool name!” Matthew cheered. He quickly turned to a blank page and jotted down their new band name. “Awesome!”
“What the hell, Jett? When did you start getting good ideas?” Kai asked.
“I’ve always had good ideas!” The rest of the van was silent, Jett pouted. “Hey! I do!” The van remained silent. “Whatever, mates! I came up with our really cool band name, you should be grateful.”
A few more hours on the road, gushing about their band name that helped their motivation shoot through the roof. They wrote down lyrics for a theme song, planning to make up something once they made it to Alfred’s house. Once they got to his house, they rushed their instruments into the house, immediately switching and tuning everything as soon as they got into the house.
“Are we just improvising?” Matthew asked, playing random keys on his synth.
“I mean, that was the plan.” Alfred plucked the last string of the guitar before he strummed to check the tuning. “Improvise a theme song with the lyrics we wrote? We kind of had a rhythm it was like…” Alfred began lazily humming a tune, improvising a bass line at random intervals. “Yeah?”
“Okay, sure!” Matthew shrugged as he finally hooked up his talkbox. “Uhh, Jett give us a beat!”
“You got it, mate.” Jett played a simple rock beat that worked with the rhythm Alfred hummed before.
Second to join was Kai. Normally when they improvised, Alfred would join in with his guitar second but because they had discussed that the bass would be more prominent in the song, it was implied that he would have to figure out his bit earlier.
“Oh, yeah! This sounds awesome!” Alfred laughed. “Uhh… You go in next, Matt.”
“What about you?”
“Ah, this sounds like a cool first verse bit, doncha think?”
“Mm. I guess.” Matthew mumbled before sticking the tube into his mouth and reading off his notebook. Selecting random keys, he started, “We are groove crusaders, making lovers out of haters. We are groove crusaders, front line of the disco war. We are groove crusaders and we're gonna even up the score.”
Alfred finally joined, he was a bit shaky but it didn’t stop them from playing. “Oooh, the time has come. Oooh, the time is now. Ooooh, it is now time for the groove crusaders!”
Jett instinctively hit a tone block residing beside him. One, two, three, four— “We rule in the name of fun! We will groove as one! Against boredom! Won't stop 'til we are done!” As the chorus repeated, Matthew took the time to take in the sync, the groove, the fun. He smiled widely as he sang into his tube. “Against boredom! Won't stop 'til we are done!” Finally, Matthew threw the tube out of his mouth, yelling like he won a battle to the death. His bandmates stopped playing to stare at him as he uncharacteristically let out his war cry while he spun around the living room.
“Oh my god! That rocked!” Matthew cheered, laughing loudly. “Ohhhh, my face hurts from smiling!”
“Dude, if this gets him riled up I can’t even imagine what performing this would do to him!” Alfred pulled Matthew into a hug, initiating Jett and Kai to hug their brother too.
They continued playing until they finally decided to pass out, too tired to be hungry. They all flopped to bed, reminiscing on the day that had past.