Hey this is another excerpt from the Sky High Zach x Magenta WIP that I never finished (hence WIP).
It’s a Mall!AU where the characters are kids with summer jobs at the mall. No powers and it’s set around the time the movie came out- 2005.
Part 1: https://bluefirewrites.tumblr.com/post/636284063233327104/sky-high-mallau
Would be Rated T and there’s excessive use of language throughout.
This excerpt would be Zach’s perspective working at the music store at the mall. Enjoy!
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Zach booked it down the mall, zooming past the crowd gathered at Sonic Boom, the music store
The music store he worked at.
The one he was supposed to be at right about now.
He pushed through the crowd, getting to the front where his coworker was working the register, seeming to throw the albums at the customers because it was that busy.
Zach loved his job... on any other day. He was a total musichead and he thought it was a long shot to even snag the job, considering it was common knowledge that it was run by Boomer who was a total hardass and pretty unforgiving to those who he deemed had shitty music taste.
He had seemed to wow him enough during the interview, which had been merely them talking about the music he listened to. Thank god, he had just enough of an eclectic music taste that he was able to keep up with whatever soft rock ‘80s classic question that Boomer threw his way.
The Black Eyed Peas album just dropped today and everyone had been clamoring to get in to grab it, so it meant all hands on deck. But only the hands that Boomer could afford to pay right now, so it was only Speed there at the moment.
Zach leapt over the counter, shedding his jacket to reveal his shirt already sporting his name tag, “Yo, is Boom here yet?”
“Cutting it close, freshie,” The senior looked like he wanted to throttle him for leaving him hanging longer than he should have. But it was only like 5 minutes, and Zach had been rushing from summer school to make it home, get ready, then come straight to the mall. He did the best he could.
“You know you can stick a hat on it right?” Speed ruffled his hair while tapping his own cap, messing up the gel that he had put in there before he came to the store and greasing up his hands in the process.
“Hey!” Zach cursed him out for deflating his hair as well as making him pick up the slack while Speed wipes off the hair gel.
Speed always pulled shit like this on him. He hated having shifts with a guy who loved to pick on him, and not in the friendly-joking way that he was used to.
For the next couple of minutes, the two of them were able to go ring up the crowd quickly, even shrunk down the amount of people in the store to half of its capacity. It was still busy, but it was more manageable than before that it actually freed up Speed to do his laps around the store, trying to quell the crowd and mitigate whatever problem came up that would have resulted in calling in the manager.
20 minutes later, they both had a lid on the situation. Only because they were pretty much no more copies of Monkey Business. Zach was about to check if they had more when he realized that the store was eerily quiet. He had just noticed that the TVs around the place were turned off and no music was playing in the store.
Zach went for the sound system dial towards the back of the store but Speed came from behind and beat him to it, “You snooze, you lose, freshie.” His coworker sliding in a Snoop Dogg CD he had snagged from earlier.
He groaned. Zach didn’t mind Snoop, but Speed would play it almost nonstop every time Zach can’t reach the dial fast enough. Speed had almost no taste, always playing chart toppers and whatever cute girls would request (which usually would be chart toppers).
Speed waltzed over to the records, getting high-fives from a couple of customers on the way over, “It’s what the people love!”
“Not Boomer,” Zach pointed out, whilst walking over to the main displays up front. The crowd had kept bumping to the table so he had to make it look tidy.
“But Boomer ain’t here. He’s never here,”
Zach looked up and caught a glimpse of his hair on the main monitor that was supposed to feature the Black Eyed Peas music videos. Shit. It was sticking out in weird places and looked deflated in others. He ran his hair through it and tried to zhuzh it up with his fingers but nothing seemed to be staying.
“Aww.You’re still pissy about your hair? Did you a favor, dorkwad,”
Zach rolled his eyes. Normally, he would try to steer clear of Speed and try not to notice him. But his co-worker seemed to be in such a talkative mood today, “It was fine the way it was, Speed.” He finished resetting the table cloth and arranging the display how it was supposed to look before turning around to help a customer find a Celine Dion CD.
“Stop being such a tryhard,” Speed said to him as he passed with the customer, “The ladies like it when you’re chill.”
“How would you know that?” A new voice added. Once Zach successfully helped the customer, he whirled around to find his buddy, Will. He took notice of the blue shirt and gray khakis and figured he had work today at Champs. He barely saw Will anymore due to Zach having summer school and their schedules never seemed to match up.
“Shut the fuck up, Stronghold,” Speed sneered at the newcomer.
Will paid him no mind while he shook Zach’s hand before bringing him in for a quick hug, “Zach-Attack!”
“Will, like it’s not great to see you, cuz it is. Great. To see you, that is,” Zach kept on the lookout for Boomer while walking towards the register because Speed had left it unattended, “Kinda not a good time right now, man.”
Will greet a few other people he knew around the store. He scanned the big displays and the cardboard cutouts on the front, “BEP?”
“BEP,” The blonde confirmed, “And I’m already on Boomer’s bad side for fucking up with the Mariah Carey launch.”
His friend clicked his tongue, recalling that certain incident. Zach remembered that Will had been working his shift downstairs when he heard Boomer let him have it. He had heard Boomer all the way from down there- that was how bad it was.
“How were you supposed to stop a bunch of nimrods from defacing her cut out?”
Zach shuddered at the thought of all the obscene Sharpie marks all over Mariah Carey’s cardboard figure, “I swear, Speed had something to do with it. That guy has got it out for me ever since I started working this joint,” he whispered.
“It’s because out of everyone here, you’re the customers’ favorite. You actually know your shit,”
Zach figured that it was somewhat true. They would get regulars pretty often and they always seemed to gravitate towards him. Zach did enjoy making connections with everyone no matter what their music taste was.
One time, this one guy came in, all in orange, who had been tentative in asking where the classical music selection was. Luckily, Zach got to him first before Speed could roast him. And good thing too, because that guy became one of his favorite regulars. He might be working at Radio Shack, the last he heard from him.
“Thanks, man,” Zach really appreciated it. Sometimes he couldn’t help but get all up in his head at his job. He wanted to do really well and hopefully one day he would have worked enough hours to save up for a car. He had been getting real tired of having to rush on his bike everywhere and being constantly late.
“But seriously, scatter. Don’t make me have to kick you out.” he joked to his smaller friend.
“Yeah, Stronghold. Go back to dealing with smelly feet all day,” Speed yelled from his side of the store.
“You’re just jealous because I got the job and you didn’t,”
Zach had to hold back a laugh seeing Speed getting worked up so quickly. He had heard Speed bitching about being passed over the job at Foot Locker constantly. The guy had been a total sneakerhead so it had been a crushing blow to his ego that a freshman got the position while he was stuck working for cantankerous Boomer.
“Whatever, man. You probably got it because you’re a Stronghold,”
Will shook his head, the jabs of his dad being the Mayor never really fazing him much anymore, “Remind me again, how did you get the name, Speed, again?”
The rotund bully growled. Everyone knew that there were two stories that could have explained how Speed got his infamous moniker. One was because all the joyrides in his Jeep that resulted in property damage. The other well… had to do with distributing contraband. Bringing up either, was cause for a beatdown.
Speed advanced towards Will, ready to punch him square in the face, no matter how many onlookers in the store gathered around to watch the debacle. Zach had to vault over the counter, to get in between the two when all of the sudden a resounding yell broke through the clatter that made all parties involved wince and cover their ears.
“Ladies, enough!”
Boom strolled in, aviators perched on his crooked nose, commanding the attention of the room- as if his voice didn’t do that already. He came up beside Zach, poking at Will to step backwards until he was out of the store,“Shouldn’t you be downstairs, Stronghold?”
“Yes, Boomer,” He shouldered his bag before throwing a passing glance at Zach. Good luck, he seemed to emote.
Rightfully so because all of the sudden Boomer marched over to him, “Why if it isn’t Superstar, here to grace us with your presence,” His eyes landed on the BEP display and noted the dwindling number of albums, “Restock those will ya? And Speed” he turned to the older boy, “you’re relieved of your post.”
Speed looked up to the heavens, “Thank fuck.”
“Language!”
He straightened up, “Sorry, sir,” Then he ducked for the back, switching off Snoop Dogg as he did so. Zach followed suit to where they did inventory and found another box of the albums and hauled ass back out to replace the albums on the display.
“Now, get to that, will you,” Boomer ordered while counting up the till to see if everything was where it should be, “And if I see a hint of Sharpie on either of those cardboard figures, your ass is mine, kid.”
Zach almost let out a laugh but remembered it was Boomer. He meant everything to be a threat, “O-okay,” he managed to get out without laughing. Then he saw Boomer closing up the register and heading for the door, “Wait? You’re leaving already?”
“Yeah. I’m the owner. I can do what I want,”
“I mean, since I’m like the only guy here and it’s a pretty busy day- I thought-”
“You thought what? That you need help?” he seemed to project the full force of his voice at him that Zach cowered against his better judgement.
“Listen, I started this shop to fill it with music,” His boss went off, “Real music. Not what passes off as music these days. Those hip grinding degenerates are showing up by the boatloads today and I don’t wanna be here when they do.”
A little boy approached the man, tugging against his cargo shorts, “Excuse me, where are the Eminem CDs?”
Boomer looked at the kid with disgust and shimmied him off, “That’s my cue,” He scrounged his pockets for the keys and tossed them Zach’s way, “Here, you’re closing up today.”
“What the-?” Zach nearly fumbled with the keys, “Again?” He had been closing every night this week, despite not actually being allowed to, with him being 15 and all. But Boomer had an arrangement with Ron Wilson, security guard who patrols at night.
“Don’t mess this up for me, Blondie!” His boss yelled just an influx of people arrived at the store, hungrily grabbing the CDs off the display he had just finished restocking.
“I’ll try,” he responded, knowing full well that Boomer could not hear him. Speed sped by, sticking his tongue at him on his way to freedom. The line of people had started forming and Zach cracked his knuckles- no choice but to face them on his own.
Hey, this is an excerpt of something I started for Sky High a while ago but never got around to finishing. I’ve been thinking about this particular work because I might rework it for Julie and the Phantoms one day because it has so much potential. Thought it would be cool to share.
So this is an AU where the kids don’t have powers and they all work at the Sky Shopping Center. It’s a Zach/ Magenta centered story with side Warren/Layla.
It would be Rated T and there is use of language in here. Enjoy!
Magenta didn’t hate her job. But she could admit that it gets pretty tedious at times.
She really shouldn’t complain. It was a huge step up from working at the pet store. At least, here she didn’t have to clean up after guinea pigs and trying to stop kids from eating dog treats.
But it was a summer afternoon and here she was rearranging the wacky greeting cards at the mall book shop when she would rather be at home, maybe catch whatever’s on TV- really anything to keep her mind off of a certain someone...
“Why the long face, Maj?” The purple haired girl snapped out of whatever daze she was in when all of the sudden her best friend, Layla, bounced into the shop, donning her signature pigtails and wide smile.
“Did you scare a customer again?”
“No,” Magenta scrunched her face, taking the excess cards in the box and moving it to the register, “Why does that happen often anyway?”
Layla trailed behind her, maneuvering through the shelves and a couple of customers, “Maybe it’s because you just creep up behind them before you ask if they needed help.”
“Oh good, I thought it’s because I dress like this,” She gestured to her combat boots, ripped stockings, and well of course her half-dyed hair. Magenta knew her outfit didn’t scream, ‘Customer Service’, but she was always down to help a customer find a book. She had pretty much devoured half the books in there, and had reccs from her fellow book-nik friends in case she encountered the other half.
“You’re lucky though. At least, you’re not forced to wear a uniform,” Layla worked at this organic juice bar in the mall food court so of course they would have made her wear something to prepare whatever smoothies they make. The redhead did a little twirl to show off her all green attire, from the shirt, to the pants, and even her blueberry-stained apron tied at her waist.
“But you look so cute,” Magenta tilted her head and pinched her friend’s cheeks, “Like happy broccoli.”
Layla gently brushed away her hand, pouting, “If I wanted to be patronized, I should have stayed at school. But come on, I’m off now. I just wanted to see when you’re on break,”
“Got another hour,” Magenta normally would have been off by now, but she ended up taking the evening shift this week. She wanted to change it up, for reasons that may or may involve avoiding someone who she knew worked the mornings.
“I’ll wait,” Layla leaned against the counter for a second before jumping up, eyes wide, “Oh, did it come in yet?”
Layla was referring to a gardening book that she had put in a request for some weeks ago. That girl had a green thumb through and through. Ever since they were younger, Magenta had the pleasure of sharing her strawberries that her family had grown in their backyard garden. Always the freshest, sweetest thing she had ever tasted and Magenta refused to eat any other strawberry to this day.
“Oh yeah. I think Warren got them in this morning,” She threw her head back to yell at her coworker who was stationed on the opposite side of the register, “Yo, Peace?”
If Magenta scared the customers, then Warren Peace straight up terrified them. The older guy was somehow wearing a long sleeve red shirt, slashed at the elbows, and leather, fingerless gloves on this June afternoon and seemed to glower over at everyone who would dare interrupt him from his latest reading.
At least, Magenta would smile at the patrons and actively tried to assist them. He mainly stayed behind the counter and rang people up and would occasionally restock the shelves that were a little too high for either Magenta or their manager, Jeannie, to reach.
She liked working with Warren. He knew just as much about books as her and it was fun to go on and on about their favorite authors, which of the classics were just over-glorified insights of the white man’s mind- stuff like that. Also, she was pretty sure that Warren had her beat with snarky remarks and could keep up with her sick sense of humor.
The long haired dude looked up from the book he was reading, eyes squinting at the two girls. “Purple. Hippie,” he addressed, annoyed to be ripped away from George Orwell.
Layla waved, dismissing his souriness, “Where’s the stuff from this morning?” Magenta asked.
“In the back. Where it’s supposed to be,”
Magenta pursed her lips, “Oh sorry, I mean, can you be a doll and get it for us?”
“No,”
Layla leaned over to rest her chin on the counter, “Please, Warren?” she batted her eyelashes for good measure.
Warren looked into her brown eyes and Magenta knew it was over. The boy growled before uttering out a “Fine!”, slamming his book on the table and stalking off to the back room.
Magenta whistled, impressed, “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Get him to do stuff,” This hadn’t been the first time Warren did something un-Warren like for Layla’s sake. Magenta could count with one hand how many times Warren would actually do what was asked of him, and most of those times involved Layla in some way.
“I ask nicely. You should try it,”
“I didn’t think Hothead over there responds to nice,” Magenta noted a customer waiting to pay for their books and hopped over the counter to reach the register,
“...Has a stick so far up his butt that if you’d lip lock with him, you’ll get splinters,” she winked in Layla’s direction, “And I’m pretty sure you wanna do that regardless,”
Her friend flushed instantly at the insinuation, “Shut up.”
“Make me, Broccoli,”
She took the books from the customer and began ringing them up. The man looked to be a regular so she knew he was used to her weird antics around the store. Magenta thought for sure the stick up the ass comment would have repulsed any other old man. He merely chuckled at their interaction.
Magenta was beginning to catch on that Layla was crushing on her coworker, but figured that what was stopping her from pursuing it had been the fact that Warren is friends with her ex, Will. Her and Will were on good terms, of course, having known each other longer than Magenta had known Layla. But like, Bro Code and everything- she didn’t want to make it weird.
“Okay, someone has a bit of an attitude today. Something’s up,”
“Have a nice day” Magenta bid the customer a goodbye and handed him his bag of books before turning to Layla, “and no, I’m fine.” She shut the drawer till harder than intended which earned a side eye from the red head.
Warren emerged from the back room with a big book, sliding it over to Layla on the counter, “Here you go, Hippie. One, Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition.”
“Thank you so much,” Layla sent a grateful expression his way and Magenta swore that the brooding boy’s lips almost quirked into a small smile… like a real one.
Layla pulled out her wallet and handed the money over to Magenta, rattling off ecstatically about this book she was dying to get, “Been trying to get a hold of this forever. Trying to do a more polyculture type of gardening because I learned it would soon develop an environment where there’s no need for pesticides,” she glanced at Magenta, “You know how I feel about pesticides.” At which, the purple-haired girl nodded.
“I heard the whole, line by line, neat way of laying down crops is just Euro-centric, colonizer bullshit anyway,” Warren remarked which made Magenta raise an eyebrow.
“Since when do you know shit about gardening?”
Her co-worker waved her off. Layla appeared to be surprised and a bit impressed that Warren knew something about her field of interest, “Warren is right though. The whole polyculture gardening is much more sustainable and we do look to Indigenous cultures for that technique.”
Then, Magenta watched as her two friends were engaged in some sort of awkward stare-off, with one of them breaking the gaze to either tuck a hair back or just to switch between looking at the other or looking at the floor. It was cute.
It made her sick.
She groaned out loud, “Do you guys have to do that here?”
That brought them out of that, Warren hurried off to his side of the counter, back to his book and Layla turned to her friend, exasperated, “But seriously though, Maj- what’s up with you today?”
“Nothing,” she gave Layla her change and the receipt for the book, making a move to get away from the register.
“Maybe it’s because she just saw her ex walking around with a new girl,” Warren casually remarked as he turned a page.
Traitor!
Magenta whipped around to glare at him, but alas he was too preoccupied with Big Brother at the moment.
Layla’s eyes widened, mouth gaping, “No,” she turned to Warren, “Where?”
“Food Court,” he replied, sounding disinterested but Magenta knew he was taking some sick pleasure from this.
“Are they still there?”
“Jesus, Layla. I don’t know!” Magenta threw her hands up in the air.
Thankfully, the store was clear for now. They honestly didn’t get a lot of traffic around this time. She wouldn’t be too stoked for everyone in the store to know her relationship woes.
“I’m fine though. It’s no big deal.” she tried to assure Layla, but her friend was not having it.
She placed her hands on Magenta’s shoulders, “I know it’s been months, but you don’t have to be over it just yet. It’s gonna be hard seeing him with someone else, of course,”
“It’s not hard seeing him. Just annoying,”
“When Will and I had ended things, of course it was good and it was for the best, but like seeing him with his girlfriend was weird at first. But I got used to it,”
Magenta sighed, getting where Layla was coming from but it was different, “Yeah, but you and Will played out differently. Lash and I… we crashed and burned.”
She had dated Lash for a good while, like around 5 months. It had been the longest relationship she had been in, and it had started off so well. They had even met here at the mall when she had first started working at the book shop and he started at the skate shop.
They had a lot in common back then, never minding getting up to mischief and always doing spontaneous things with him. Things that she certainly was not proud of and had earned her a certain reputation at school.
But Magenta could admit that she had been a different person back then when she was with him. Someone she didn’t want to be again. But still, seeing him again after the breakup, with another girl still stung. Even though it was her who broke it off.
She should have known what it was gonna be like, dating an older guy- an incoming senior now- but she thought it meant he was gonna be more mature and that he was gonna be more upfront with her. It unfortunately had meant the exact opposite.
“You can’t help it. You like bad boys. Been that way ever since I met you,”
“I just like people who don’t take shit from people. They just happened to be wearing chains on their jeans and maybe sporting a juvie record,”
Magenta seemed to have a preference, but all for good reason. If she ended up with some goodie two shoes, it was gonna be this morality contest where he would end up judging all the shit she had done, like her own couple stints with the law. She’d rather hang with people who didn’t judge her, and that meant those who have done things just as bad or even worse than her.
“Then how come you haven’t hit up Warren yet?” Layla asked, with mild curiosity.
“He reads Hemmingway, And likes it,” Magenta’s face scrunched up in disgust, “Also, there’s a thing as being too on brand. I just know that it’s not gonna work. We’re too much alike.”
“Nah. Warren’s so much nicer,” Layla’s hands were still on her shoulder and she playfully swatted them away, “You know what? I’ll catch you later. I don’t wanna sit in here for an hour in my own stickiness.” she gestured to all the fruit stains all over her clothes just as a family came in to browse the store.
“Ew, Layla. There are children in here,”
The redhead gave an unamused grin at the innuendo before walking out of the store, calling out to Warren,“Make sure she doesn’t do anything reckless while I’m gone!”
“Not my job,” The long haired boy called from his seat, “Not like I can stop her.”
‘Fuck you,’ she mouthed at her coworker before going off to see if Jeannie needed her to do anything else around the shop. It was only 4 o clock but she knew it was gonna be a long rest of her shift.
5 times Magenta visits Zach via the bedroom window and the 1 time it happens vice versa
'It wasn't until he heard a small high pitch chime right behind him that he instinctively did what was probably his third anxious 180 that night and immediately stomped his foot on wherever he saw movement, letting out an impromptu battle cry, his voice cracking and his makeshift bat raised in the air. But to his surprise, his foot caught onto a purple composition book rather than the cape of a mysterious assailant and -even more to his surprise- seeing a small black guinea pig with purple highlights dragging the book along'...
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Hey guys, pandemic hitting real hard so I ended up making a Magenta x Zach fanfic. I honestly think that Sky High is the best movie Disney has ever produced. And having one of the top largest movie fic category on FF.net is pretty great, but we don’t see too many fics about these two (and solely these two), and I seek to fix that.
I also petition for the ship name to be GuineaGlow? If the ship name hasn’t been established yet.
Anyways, please check the story out. And also, I think they cute.
*UPDATE* Recently put the same story on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24778843
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sky High (2005)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Magenta/Zach (Sky High)
Characters: Magenta (Sky High), Zach (Sky High)
Additional Tags: Vent adventures, Bonding, sneaking around the school, both panicking because they’re 14, Set during the movie, During Canon, Awkward Flirting, Mutual Pining
Summary:
Where did Magenta and Zach go once they disappeared into the vents while the others fought Penny, Lash, and Speed? And how did the group obtain the school blueprints that would lead them straight to the anti-gravity device? This fic explains the events leading up to that discovery. ZachxMagenta GuineaGlow
your guineaglow stories on ao3 are so perfect, i love them so much! <3
oh my god thank you so much! i remembered the total sky high brainrot i had at the time. i still maintain that the movie is the best thing disney has produced and that magenta and zach would have been a fun pairing to see develop if they ever did go along with the sequels
