A/N Go Rock Quads need some lovin' people! Garret is my favourite (with Tiffany as a close second) but I thought Billy would be a more entertaining perspective to write from. And more logical, since he's the leader.
Full summary: We all know Solana's and Lunick's story; the seven letters your MC sent to Spenser with the single minded hope of becoming a pokemon ranger. But what about the other side? Billy has gone through life with a single ambition; to prove that he can lead the most influential rock band since the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Led Zeppelin. His ambitions burn with more passion than any ranger's, which is why he'll do anything to make them come to fruition. Just watch him.
This disclaimer counts for the entire story: I do not own pokemon, or the characters created by the Pokemon Company. I'm merely using them for my own (and hopefully yours) entertainment. I also do not own any songs mentioned in this story; they are owned by their respectful bands.
"Clyde, that's my spot," snapped an irritated looking Garret, who had just walked back into the T.V. room after going to get himself a drink. While he was gone, Clyde had quickly heaved himself off the floor and taken Garret's seat, since there was only three chairs to split between the four of us. It usually ended up being Garret and Clyde fighting over the final seat, since Tiffany point blank refused to sit on the ground in her dress (and would whine if we tried to make her) and my siblings knew better than to try to force me onto the floor.
"You didn't call it," Clyde replied, giving his older brother a self satisfied smirk.
"That doesn't matter! We had already fought over that seat, and I won, meaning its mine for today. Do you have no morals whatsoever? All I did was get a pop! I never steal your spot when you get up to do something."
Clyde mulled this over for a second. "Yeah…you do."
"No, Clyde, I don't. You're being completely immature. Now move before I dump my pop on your head!"
"Like hell you will! That'll make me all sticky."
"Who cares? As long as you end up off my seat; you don't even really need it. You're closer to a pokemon than a human, I think you would do better living outside."
Ugh, the bickering. I could never stand the bickering. What's the big deal with sitting on the floor anyways? It was carpet, so it wasn't like it was completely uncomfortable. But I knew neither of them would come to that conclusion or give in; Garret could moan and rant about something for hours if you let him, and Clyde was just plain stubborn.
"Clyde, Garret was there first. Get off the chair. Garret, shut up and sit down." Both of them did what I said; neither of them liked going up against big bro Billy, and would rather just go along with what I wanted. That's the way we've always been. Though Clyde did huff angrily as he got up, and Garret was looking rather smug, and seemed about to say something- despite me telling him to shut up- until I shot him a glare. He looked away and peace finally settled again in the room. Tiffany, who was sitting in the armchair across from me, sighed slightly and went back to watching T.V.. Normally, I wouldn't have been so blunt as to tell Garret to 'shut up,' but I remember feeling rather exhausted, and didn't feel like expressing myself in my usual cool manner.
We had spent most of the day rehearsing for our band. We were having trouble deciding what baseline Garret should be playing during a particular portion of a new song. After about fifteen minutes of Garret and I talking, Garret trying various approaches to the segment on his bass guitar, and me making everybody play that segment over and over to see if what he was doing would fit, Clyde and Tiffany had began their usual whining.
"This is boring; let's do something else and come back to it later." This was Clyde's usual approach- if it's hard, procrastinate.
"Let's do a cover song! How about…'Flow' by Cage the Elephant? We all love that song." Tiffany was actually the only one who had a real passion for that song.
I gritted my teeth, trying to stop myself from snapping at them. I only liked to use other people's songs when we were warming up; everything else should be completely original. Because no one ever gets famous from imitation.
"Tiff, you know how I feel about cover songs. And Clyde, this is what rehearsal is for. We will solve this problem now, because leaving it won't do any good." My voice wasn't rude or a yell, but they knew me well enough to hear the irritation behind my smooth words. Clyde huffed impatiently, and Tiffany pouted a bit, but neither of them said anything else. I looked at Garret, who seemed to be thinking to himself and ignoring the scene that had just happened. I couldn't blame him; it was one of many.
"Hmmm…maybe, could you guys play a few bars before our, ah, trouble spot- without me playing at all- and then just lead into it? I'll listen, and just try to figure out how to fit in," Garret suggested. I was very relieved to have him around during those rehearsals; he seemed to be the only other one- apart from me- who actually took the band seriously. I could tell he wanted to make it too, and it was a huge relief to have someone around to share my ideals with, as opposed to having to deal with a band of lazy idiots.
Not that Clyde or Tiffany were bad musicians or anything; they just never took it seriously, and it was starting to get on my nerves. Clyde could be so full of passion and musical innovation…when he was in the mood. Tiffany could have some very unique ideas about human nature and emotions, but only when she wasn't focused on when her next shopping trip would be, or whether her make up was just so. Garret, on the other hand, always paid attention during rehearsal, and he was a damn good guitar player. It seemed to be just him and me that lead the band and came up with the good ideas; I sometimes thought that if I wasn't around, he would have ended up playing electric guitar, as opposed to the bass he played now. He probably also would have lead the band himself, seeing how committed he seemed to be to it. But that's not how it was; I was born first, so I got the electric guitar and the role of leader, while he ended up with bass and the label of 'middle child'. Not that this seemed to bother him; he was always willing to go with my final word without much complaint, and he was an absolute genius with his bass guitar.
"One, two, three, four," Clyde counted us in, and we began to play, this time without Garret. He closed his eyes and listened, and once we were done, requested that we repeat the process. We did it once more after that, at which point he joined in with some, admittedly jagged, notes that complimented Tiffany's violin nicely. After about an hour of practicing, the bass was flowing smoothly and we could continue with retouching and improving on the rest of the song.
It had been a long practice; and Tiffany and Clyde's continuous whining only made it more so. But, however irritated I was with them, I couldn't deny that this particular tune was beginning to flow rather nicely. I wanted to put lyrics to it, but that was a whole new problem to tackle, and I decided that for the time being we would focus on the instrumental half.
I looked at the T.V. with unfocused eyes, my mind still fretting over our current project. My fingers played idly with a button on my black jacket, and I tuned out my sibling's chatter. I wasn't too pleased with them- well, Clyde and Tiffany specifically- and I hadn't been for a while. They didn't seem to see the band as something that could really be taken seriously. I had known for a long time that the only thing I wanted to do with my life was to live with music always around me; it was why I made my younger siblings learn how to play, it was why I forced them into practicing through all hours of the day and night, and it was why I analyzed how the media chose its stars and what those stars did to get that attention. While music was my only passion, I knew that if I wanted to spend my whole life doing it, I would have to catch and maintain media coverage so I could continue getting gigs and fans to pay for the basic needs of life.
Clyde and Tiffany were both all with me there; Tiffany would have loved nothing more than to be a famous celebrity and have the whole world tell her how on her fashion sense was, though she didn't seem to care about what she was famous for. Clyde, though not as concerned with fame itself, would literally salivate over the idea of becoming a rich rockstar. Though the bit he always focused on was 'rich' rather than 'rockstar'. Garret was the only one who seemed adverse to the idea of attracting media attention; to his mind, he was a smooth talking gentleman, and he saw media coverage as shallow and meaningless. He was going to have to grow out of that soon though, or he and I would have a talk.
"Ugh, guys I'm hungry," drawled Clyde from the floor. Oh no, I knew exactly what this was going to start.
"You're such a pig," Garret told him from his lofty position on the armchair. And here we go again… I thought to myself. "We've already had lunch and a snack after rehearsing. Surely you can last until supper time?"
"Hmph. That depends; when's supper?" Clyde grunted, completely oblivious to his older brother's taunting, for now.
"When Dad gets home, just like always. We're not going to change the schedule just because you're a glutton."
"I'm not a glutton! It's been, like, two hours since I ate." Arceus, why couldn't they just get along?
"Dear brother, since you don't seem to know, I'll inform you that most people are still quite full two hours after they eat."
"Yeah, well, most people-"
"Enough," I interrupted. I was so sick of their bickering, of their lack of commitment, of their utter immaturity that I was letting myself snap and snarl at them more and more lately. I just couldn't understand their laziness; Clyde and Tiffany refused to apply themselves, and Garret wouldn't bother trying to find a gig or preparing a song when we landed one, he just wanted to jam. Didn't they know that to really make it as a band you had to actually work at it, just like everything else in life? I remembered the saying that my father repeated to me when I told him I wanted to be a rockstar.
"Just remember boy: rock and roll eats its young." It was a term that referred to all the teenagers that became obsessed with rock and started their own band in hopes of being famous, only to end up as a deadbeat stoner with no real job that would most likely OD by the age of twenty five. I swore that I wouldn't let this happen to me, or my siblings, since they were the only ones I deemed good enough to play alongside me. I kept myself well away from dangerous drugs, and watched my siblings like a fearow to make sure they did too. Clyde seemed to be the only one interested in experimenting with the dangerous stuff, and I was constantly having to pull him away from dealers and the like at parties.
Not that we never did anything we weren't supposed to; we had all tried pot, and I let the other three drink underage when we were out. Though Garret wouldn't be underage for long; his birthday was the next week, and he would be turning nineteen, so he was pretty excited to be able to go out and buy his own booze for the first time. Since he'd be turning nineteen on the nineteenth he would be buying champagne to celebrate his champagne birthday. That promised to be a fun day, hopefully with as little bickering between him and Clyde as possible.
I checked the digital clock that glowed from the DVD player: 4:55. Dad usually came home at around five, though he sometimes stayed until five thirty. I wasn't sure why, but lately he'd been more irritable than usual, muttering things under his breath and locking himself in his room for hours at a time. I assumed it had to do with his work, since he was always grumpiest right after he came home. He worked in downtown Fall City as a scientist (and a slightly mad one at that). His job was to work alongside the famous Professor Hastings and the Ranger Union to produce an improved styler for the rangers. The rangers did already have a styler, but it was rather shoddy and ran on battery power, meaning that occasionally during captures the battery would die and the ranger would have to abandon the capture and go back to base to recharge it.
Back then the Union was still rather unstable on its feet, with Fiore being the only region that actually had bases in it; if another region needed rangers they had to be shipped over from one of the four Fiore bases, most likely Fall City, since it was the biggest. Though I use the term 'biggest' in relative to the size of the other three bases. With the production of the new styler, the ranger population exploded, but back then the Union had a grand total of around fifty rangers under its belt, compared to the three hundred that were around after the new styler was made, during our time in the Go Rock Squad. A year after that, the total climbed to near five hundred, if memory serves. Needless to say, being a ranger became a more popular ambition after people knew there wasn't the chance of the styler's battery dying, leaving a ranger to fend for themselves against a potentially murderous pokemon. I think it was during that time the partner pokemon came into style, actually.
Though of course I knew none of that at the time. All I really knew about the Union then was that it was what my Dad worked for, and it had something to do with preserving nature. Nothing I really cared about.
It was almost six by the time my Dad came home that day. We had started cooking supper at around five thirty, when it became obvious that he was going to be late, so we were just finishing setting up when he arrived. And he had a bombshell of a surprise for us.
"Kids," he said as we all sat down at the table. "I've quit my job at the Union." We all froze what we were doing- even Clyde- and looked at him. It had been a pretty normal day; Dad went off to work, we slept in, had rehearsal, and listened to Clyde and Garret bicker until Dad got home. Needless to say, we weren't expecting him to tell us that he was unemployed when he did. Tiffany was the first to speak.
"So, we're, like, poor now?" she asked.
"No, Tiffany, we're not poor. I have quite a lot of money socked away; I've been saving for a while."
Another few seconds of silence. Then it was my turn to ask a question.
"What the hell, Dad?" Though it wasn't worded to ask what I actually meant, it got the gist across. Dad looked at each of us in turn, and then answered.
"You all know that I work with Professor Hastings and the Ranger Union, yes? Well, they have mocked and undermined my talent ever since I started working there. Apparently Hastings finished the styler last week, and didn't bother to tell me. I was still working on the blueprints when an aide- an aide mind you- happened to mention that the plans for the new styler were ready to go. They have insulted me time and time again; and it's about time I got my own back. I will create my own Union, and it will completely destroy all of that arrogant Hastings' creations." I thought he was being rather hypocritical as to call Hastings arrogant, but there were more pressing matters to deal with.
"So, you quit your job to replicate a business that took almost ten years to become fully established and is loved by the general populace?" It was Garret that asked this, and I was happy it was him and not Clyde or Tiffany. He was the only one with the sense and demeanour to keep and criticism out of his voice; our father tended to be rather touchy.
"No, no. We won't replicate it," he told us, and I could sense all of my siblings freeze when he used the pronoun 'we'. The crazy old man was planning on getting us involved in this too? "The Union took that long to establish because it had to jump through all the legal hoops to make sure it was legitimate, and figure out a way to convey emotions, which requires exceedingly complicated technology. What I'm planning- I have all the plans in my room, I've been thinking about this for a while- is to use the black market to obtain what we need and deal simply with controlling pokemon for our use, rather than befriending them." He continued to tell us his plans, and I had to admit, it sounded intriguing. Hastings' next project was the super styler, which apparently would be three times more powerful than the one he just created. We would steal the plans for the super styler and modify it to control pokemon rather than befriend them. With that styler we would capture the legendary beasts and use their power to wreck havoc, overloading the Union and making the citizens hate them. Afterwards, our organization would swoop in and stop the destruction, playing the hero. The Union would be destroyed and our organization would take over.
I was actually quite interested in these plans. He seemed to want to create some kind of syndicate, and I started to form my own plans for gaining the band media coverage through it. Syndicates always gained a lot of press coverage, and if we were the higher ups in this organization, and if we made sure to always have our instruments then our band would get a lot of coverage. It may not be positive coverage, but media was media, and you could get famous off positive and negative media attention. It was a perfect opportunity for us, and by the end of his explanation I was all for starting this thing up. Apparently, I was the only one that was convinced though.
"That's my plan," Dad finished. "I'll leave you four to talk amongst yourselves and decide how you feel." He got up from his chair and left, leaving his supper untouched and us alone at the dinner table.
"He's lost it," Clyde said as soon as he was gone. "He's finally completely lost his mind."
"Our dad…is a legitimately mad scientist." Garret agreed, sounding almost awed by the fact.
"How are we going to get shopping money once his savings run out?" Of course, all Tiffany could think about was how this would affect her shopping.
"Guys, really, compared to some other organizations, his plan is really quite sane. It's not like he's trying to rule the world, he's just destroying a business, something that is happening constantly." They all looked at me, apparently surprised I seemed to be for this idea. "And think about it; imagine how much press coverage a criminal rock band would get. It's the perfect opportunity to get our band off the ground. I say we go along with this; he's obviously got it well planned."
There was silence for a few seconds as the other three mulled my words over. Clyde was the first to speak.
"It would be a nice break in the monotony," he said; I was a little surprised to hear the word 'monotony' come from his mouth- he was usually one for small words- but didn't interrupt. "And you're right. Let's go for it."
"I heard once that successful syndicates have a lot of money; I'm in," Tiffany said. Garret was the only one left. He looked at Clyde, Tiffany and I, and I could tell he was still not for this. Forming a criminal organization was another no-no in his way of thinking, just like media coverage. I could see he thought of it in the same way he thought of media; shallow and meaningless. But the rest of us were for it, and there wasn't much sense in defying all three of us. He didn't want to be left out.
"Fine," he said. Just 'fine'. Garret was opposite to Clyde in that way, he leaned towards big words, so this was uncharacteristically short of him. But that didn't matter. Because now we had decided; we were going to be a part- a big part- of a criminal organization. And so it began.
All because I said so.
Oh Billy, you control freak. This took a while to write; I always have a hard time deciding on the narrative, and I had to write the outline for it too.
Garret will give a big thank you speech to whoever votes in my poll; it's located in my profile. I don't know whether I should write my own songs for these guys, or use pre-existing ones. I have never written a song before, but I feel like they deserve some originality. But that would really slow down updates, and I don't know how good I am. So help me out, and vote in my poll! Because who doesn't want to hear Garret give a thank you speech? *Tell me in a review if you voted if you want to be mentioned specially*
Also…anyone wanna beta this? PM me baby!