*Okay, as promised, here's the prologue to Money Talks, delivered on time, I might add! ^_^ Now, none of the original characters are involved yet, but this prologue does do its job in setting up for the interfic. The characters that you've submitted will appear in the next chapter, which will be part one of, um, Part One, which is the whole Lance/Pietro/heavy metal rock band section of the interfic.

*Which brings me to another interesting point. I'll be doing the Lance/Pietro section first, the title's...actually, I don't wanna spoil it by giving the title away, but anyways, I still need a helluva lot more characters for the heavy metal section, so can people please submit some characters to be the front man, base player, drummer, producers, managers, etc--and make them as outrageous and crazy as possible, since this is a humor fic and everything? I swear I'll be good to them; hey, if you need any reference for how this section's gonna turn out, just check out my Creed ficcie, Oh, The Horrors Of Teenypop (and drop a lavishly praising review while you're at it! ^_^). Still, shameless plug aside, that should give you an idea to the degree of craziness that the fic is gonna be, so submit more charas for Lance and Pietro, and make them as crazy and outrageous and wacky as you can (hey, if watch FX, think along the lines of Son of the Beach!). Okay, enough of my rambling, on with the prologue!


Prologue: They Worked Hard For The Money

The sturdy, army-green Jeep pulled over in front of a modern supermarket, and two teenage boys hesitantly stepped out. Lance Alvers and Pietro Maximoff exchanged uncertain glances as they stared at the glass sliding doors leading to the grocery store, before Pietro consulted the shopping list that Mystique had thrust into his hands.
"Um...how are we supposed to carry all these things?" Pietro muttered uncertainly, staring boggle-eyed at the thirty-plus items listed on the single sheet of paper and never once taking notice of the nice, neat rows of shopping carts lined up to his left. Lance snorted, and flexed one of his arms.
"Well, I don't know about a scrawny eighty-nine pounder like you, but someone as lean and toned as me, who spends at least two hours at the gym each day, should have no problem carrying as many groceries as Mystique and the Blob need," he huffed proudly, sticking his nose into the air. The supposed leader of the Brotherhood strutted arrogantly through the glass sliding doors...and promptly smacked right into a gigantic, fearsome beast with fiercely glowing eyes, eyes that had come straight from the depths of Hell! Lance took one good look at it, and decided within a nanosecond what the most manly way to react to such a dilemma should rightfully be.
"AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEE!"
Pietro snorted.
"Dude, you so totally scream like a girl," he remarked, and the curious fact as to why Lance would yodel so at the sight of Happy the Hot Dog never even crossed his mind. Meanwhile, the kid dressed up as Happy blinked, before thrusting out a flyer and mumbling in a monotone that would have made Wanda seem sweet and cheerful, "Come to Happy's Hot Dog Palace, where all of our meals are served with love, and an extra dose of Happiness."

Lance and Pietro split up, after Lance had recovered from the trauma of being attacked by a giant wiener (Ew! Not that kind of wiener, you perverts!) and had insisted that he'd let out a manly warrior's cry, not a sissy girlie scream. Pietro agreed to go to the bakery to fetch the thirty-two sugar-honey-and-marmalade cakes that Freddy had ordered, while Lance wandered off to the butchers to purchase some manly frozen meat. Seven hours had passed (Lance had spent five of those wandering aimlessly around, and the other two waiting in line for the butcher to prepare his order), and as Lance was busy yelling at the stupid butcher to hurry the hell up, a rather disturbing ringing sound started emanating from a strategic place in his pants. The ringing continued, and as people in line started to gawk at Lance, he snorted impatiently, reached into his jeans, and pulled out a...cell phone!
"What?!" he barked into it, sounding rather grumpy and impatient.
"Dude, I'm in India!" Pietro's frantic wailing came across sharply through the other line. Lance chose that moment to show off his extremely impressive vocabulary, as he screeched out in a keening, abrasive shrill that would have made Axl Rose proud, "WHAT?!"
"I'm in India!" Pietro wailed. Lance, upon hearing those words and having his fear confirmed, reacted by repeating his greeting...only with a little something extra added.
"*BLEEP*-ING WHAT?!"
Ahem, the authoress has decided to very graciously edit out that part, seeing as how she wants to keep the story's PG-to-PG-13 rating.
"Lance, will you stop doing that?" Pietro whined. "You sound like Robert Plant on crack."
"What the hell are you doing in India?!" Lance, having snapped out of his What-ing phase, screeched out, loud enough to wake up the dead.
"Well, I saw this sign next to the bakery that said Deli, so I naturally assumed New Delhi, and so I hopped on the fastest flight to India--paying with (and maxing out) Mystique's credit card, naturally," Pietro bawled in a panicked voice. Lance grunted.
"Fine, fine, I'll come pick you up," he grumbled, as he huffily stomped out of line and began making plans to catch the next flight to India.

Seven Hours Later...

"...Bienvenidos a México..."
"Oh, *bleep* *bleep* *bleep*! How stupid could those Spaniards have been to mistake Indians for Indians?!"

Seven More Hours Later...

"Wah! It's so good to finally see a familiar face!" Pietro shrieked, as he instantly latched himself onto Lance's legs. Lance snorted.
"GrumblegrumblegrumbleGetoffmyleggrumblegrumblegrumble," he muttered grumpily. As the two started heading toward the airport, Pietro spoke up.
"Hey, how'd you pay for all those airplane tickets? I know we're all beyond broke, and I took all of Mystique's credit cards with me to New Delhi," he wanted to know.
"I stole all the credit cards from the Mighty Chrome Dome in the Sky, okay?" Lance mumbled.



Two Weeks Later...

The Mighty Chrome Dome in the Sky--um, that is, Professor Charles Xavier, pulled open a mammoth of an envelope, scanning across all the figures strewn over the bills. He needed take one good look, before his eyes rolled way back into his head, and he fainted dead away. Scott and Jean, meanwhile, observed their mentor and guardian slip into a shock-induced coma.
"What's gotten into him?" a concerned Jean wondered. Scott thought for a while, and then snapped his fingers, remembering.
"Well, it can get to be rather expensive having to feed and house twenty students, plus pay for the Brotherhood's impromptu trip to Asia," he reasoned.


"I need to make a business trip to an undisclosed location and clear up all those money problems and lawsuits," Mystique spoke earnestly into a cell phone.
"This doesn't have anything to do with your screwed up recruits, by any chance, does it?" the person on the other end of the line asked. In response, Mystique sighed.
"Unfortunately, it does," she muttered, growling. "They've been racking up such a high credit card bill, and I've been getting sued for their raucous behavior so often, that it's making a number of the creditors and supporters of our mission quite nervous. I'll have to go over and clear things up with them. It could take anywhere between six weeks to six months."
The other person nodded sympathetically.
"Good luck," he said. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Actually, yeah," Mystique mumbled. "Would you mind hiding all my credit cards and checkbooks? I don't want to have to worry about paying more bills while trying to convince my sponsors that the Brotherhood is indeed highly efficient and very discreet."
"Don't worry," her confidant assured her. "I'll watch over them."
"Thank you," Mystique mumbled gratefully.



Three Days Later...

Jean glanced up from her magazine, stunned by the words that had just come out of a nervous-looking Scott's mouth.
"What do you mean we have to get jobs?" the statuesque redhead wanted to know, a note of alarm creeping into her usually calm voice. Scott scratched his head, apparently every bit as confused as she was.
"I mean the Professor and Storm have left to settle a lawsuit against him brought forth by Air India," he mumbled. "Apparently, Lance and Pietro bought First Class tickets, but because they looked like the dirty rotten scoundrels that they are, they were bumped back to Coach."
"And Air India's now suing the Professor why...?" Jean let her voice trail off questioningly. Scott looked uncomfortable as he prepared to utter the next part of his explanation.
"Um, before I say anything, will you promise not to get all squeamish on me?" he muttered nervously. Jean shrugged.
"Sure," she agreed pleasantly. Scott cleared his throat, fidgeting around, but finally coughed up the answer.
"Well, it turned out that the Toxic Twins had snuck aboard enough alcohol to knock out the U.S. Navy, got ridiculously drunk, and turned into Grade A assholes," he muttered. "And while Lance harassed the stewardesses and started throwing plastic cups and plates around, Pietro, who then apparently discovered that he can't handle any liquor, found out he had to relieve himself--really badly."
"Oh, no," Jean groaned, clapping her hand against her forehead and already knowing what was about to happen.
"Yes," Scott growled, pulling at his collar. "The bathrooms in Coach had long lines, and he tried to convince the stewardess to let him into the First Class bathroom--but she refused, and Pietro, who couldn't hold it in any longer, decided to relieve himself in the next best place."
Jean gasped.
"You mean..." she started to guess, and Scott nodded dismally.
"Yes," he moaned. "Pietro proceeded to take a piss in the kitchen sink!"
"Oh, my God..." Jean lamented.
"And since they'd charged the tickets to Professor Xavier's credit cards, guess who gets the blame?" Scott muttered bitterly.
"So, about the lawsuit..." Jean started to say.
"The Professor and Storm have to travel all the way to Air India's headquarters in D.C., and since they've been sued for millions of dollars, they can't afford to pay for our expenses back home," Scott explained. "Hank's going to be in Manhattan for the next several months, Logan's God knows where, and it looks like we're going to have to fend for ourselves for a while."
Jean shrugged.
"Well...if anything that being one of the X-Men's taught us, it's to be resourceful," she murmured comfortingly. "We'll pull through." Getting up, she added, "I'll go break the bad news to the other guys."
"Right," Scott replied. "I'll go buy a bunch of newspapers, and we can all start looking for jobs right away."


Meanwhile, over at the Brotherhood home, the newly-dubbed "Toxic Twins" and Co. were going through the same dilemma as the X-Men, having just found out their supposed guardian had ditched them and left them penniless. Unlike Scott and Jean, however, the Brotherhood was handling being completely broke a bit harder than one would expect.
"Did you find them?" Pietro asked anxiously. Lance shot him an annoyed glare.
"No," he gritted out through clenched teeth.
"Well, keep looking!" Pietro fretted, and continued on making a complete mess of Mystique's immaculate room. Just then, Wanda emerged from the basement.
"Not there," she grunted coldly. Pietro groaned, one of Mystique's leather tops tangled all over his silver hair. He looked hopefully at Fred and Todd as the latter returned from the kitchen, but Todd remained silent while Freddy remorsefully shook his head and bit into a jelly-filled donut. Pietro wailed.
"What are we gonna do?" he fretted in a shrill, high-pitched voice. "We still can't find Mystique's stash, and we've already gotten our gas and water cut off! The electricity's bound to be next, and I don't know what I'd do without my hair dryer to make my gorgeous silver mane as perfect and lustrous as it rightfully should be!"
"Why don't we do what logical, normal human beings would do?" Wanda suggested. Pietro shot her a stupid look.
"You mean apply to welfare?" he asked hopefully. Lance blanched visibly at the thought.
"What! No way! What will Kitty think of me if I have to seek financial help from a bunch of soccer moms who worship Martha Stewart?!" he bellowed. Wanda shook her head, looking disgusted with both's reactions to her words.
"No, not welfare," she grunted, and was about to say something more when her oh so charming brother cut her off again.
"You mean rob Baldy for all his cash?" he guessed. Lance looked like he would have a heart attack if that were to happen.
"What! No way! What will Kitty think of me if I have to mug some crippled know-it-all bald guy who just happens to be her guardian?!" he shrieked. Wanda's eyebrow twitched.
"No, not Xavier either," she muttered, but before she could say anything else, Pietro cut her off again.
"You mean--" he started to say, then eeped when he found himself staring down at Wanda from his so very relaxing position, a good ten inches off the ground and being throttled by his furious sister.
"Pietro, shut up!" Wanda growled, nearly strangling her twin in her zeal. Pietro's blue eyes widened, but for once he stayed silent. Wanda, satisfied that she could at last continue, finally brought forth her suggestion.
"What I was going to say," she began, "is to get jobs."
Dun dun dun!


*Okay, now that the prologue is over, remember that you can still submit as many characters as you want, for any of the sections. I'll be officially closing the "auditions" for Lance and Pietro on Wednesday, which is when I'll have picked the characters and posted the cast list, but aside from those two, submissions are still as open as ever for the other characters, all the way up until their section in the interfic is up. So submit away, especially for Lance and Pie-Pie--um, I mean, Pietro (thinks she's been hanging around the other crazed fangirls for too long!)--cause I still need characters for that section of the interfic, especially for the managers, producers, and reporter. And, since I tend to write crazy, senseless humor fics, make them as outlandish and wacky as possible; normal people aren't fun to write about! *pouts*