Part One: (A) Motley Crew (No, Really!)
"I can't believe my ultra-scary
twin sister is making us get jobs!" Pietro huffed, grumpily working his
way through a high stack of newspapers. Lance, sitting across from him
on a tattered red couch and holding a bright orange marker, glanced up
from his own cluster of Classifieds long enough to scowl and snap at the
frazzled silver-haired youth, "Shut up, will you? You're the one who got
us into this, maxing out Mystique's credit cards and then sending our only
source of money scramming by pulling an Izzy!" Pietro stopped looking at
his normally flawless, now ink-blackened hands in terror for a few seconds,
long enough to scrunch up his perfect nose and demand in a confused voice,
"Don't you mean pulled an Ozzy?" Now it was Lance's turn to look puzzled,
as he repeated deliberately, "No, I mean pulled an Izzy." He paused for
a while, before further explaining, "You know, Izzy Stradlin' of Guns N'
Roses? He was always the real quiet guy, totally press-shy...and then you
find out he was also the Gunner who's pissing in public and shit like that!"
Pietro frowned.
"My, my, don't tell me you
try to kiss Miss I'm-So-Pure-And-Wholesome Kitty Pryde with that potty
mouth of yours," he clucked distastefully, like a scolding mother. "And
anyways, isn't Ozzy Osbourne the guy who bit off the head of bats and relieved
himself on historical monuments in public?" Lance irritably slashed a bright
orange streak across a possible job option, before grunting, "Okay, fine,
so you pulled and Izzy-slash-Ozzy. Now, can we get back to looking for
jobs?"
"Fine," Pietro grumbled,
settling back to his newspapers and scanning across the many positions
available listed on the Classifieds section. "Hey, how about professional
stuntmen?" Lance glanced up from his own newspapers, and rolled his eyes.
"How many times do I have
to tell you, Maximoff, we're not looking for a challenge here," he snapped.
"Listen, I had to work back in Chicago to pay for my last semester of school
there, and it wasn't a pretty thing. I've got experience with that working
crap, and believe me, the last thing you want to do when you're trying
to get some quick cash is to get a challenging job!"
"Really, why?" Pietro wanted
to know, confused.
"Because a challenging job
is just a nice way of saying a hard job, and we don't want to begin our
professional careers yet, we just need some money to survive! Now, Wanda's
already found herself one of those job things, right?" Lance demanded,
changing the subject. Pietro shrugged.
"I think so," he mumbled.
"We're not exactly on the best of terms, ya know, but I'm pretty sure she
muttered something about having found herself a nice office job where she
would be earning good money by helping out clients."
Lance's eyebrows nearly flew off his forehead when he heard those words,
as he gasped, "No way! You mean she's a lawyer?!"
"Eh, who knows," Pietro
muttered, before whining, "I don't care; can we get back to our pathetic
non-existent careers now?"
"Sure, sure," Lance grumbled,
before his eyes lit up as he zoomed in on a particular job listing. "Hey!
How about fry cooks at the local Happy's Hot Dog Palace? We'd get free
hot dogs!"
Pietro scrunched up his nose, thinking about it.
"Naw," he finally said.
"I heard they just merged with Chubby's Cheeseburger Castle, and are now
cutting back on a lot of stuff--including real beef in their hot dogs and
hamburgers, meaning we'd be sucking on thawed-out meat-like patties if
we accepted their free employees' meals. Besides, the pay really sucks,
anyway."
Lance shrugged.
"Okay, then," he muttered.
"Well, keep looking; there's bound to be something good out there!"
Cue over to a shocking pink,
two-story stucco apartment complex, overlooking a poorly-attended swimming
pool and surrounded by a badly rusted chainlink fence and a few sickly-green
trees scattered here and there. Suddenly, from inside the apartment marked
666 (-_^) in peeling metallic blue paint, a balding little man with a growing
pot belly and a hideously tacky brown plaid coat bearing the tag of Apartment
Manager slammed the cracked yellow wooden door wide open and darted out
as fast as someone of his weight possibly could, screaming bloody murder
and followed by a torrent of horrible screechings of a half dozen electric
guitars and literally an avalanche of bottles of cheap wine and beer cans.
A slim, pretty brunette, her long chestnut hair swept back and wearing
a dark pink tank top and ripped denim shorts, glanced out helplessly after
the terrified apartment manager, giving a tired sigh, before turning to
the cordless phone cradled between her shoulder and cheek and deciding
that her current conversation was more important than appeasing the landlord.
"All right, all right,"
she murmured soothingly into the mouthpiece, sounding like a mother trying
to hush down her scared child. "Listen, I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Hudson,
I swear it won't happen again, please, just give the band a second chance,
they're on the brink of signing a record deal, and--" She paused, as the
person on the other end of the line abruptly cut her off. Listening to
his angry words and tiredly blowing away a piece of hair that had fallen
into her eyes, she began to apologize, "Yes, I know they showed up two
hours late and stoned out of their minds, but once they took the stage,
even you have to admit that they blew the crowd away! I mean, the
fact that they later got horrifically drunk and proceeded to start a riot,
scare away the go-go dancers, loot the liquor cabinets, set fire to the
stage, and destroy half your club shouldn't mean too much if they're
able to draw sell-out crowds night in and night out!" She paused again,
allowing Mr. Hudson to blow off some more steam and threaten to sue their
asses off for the ten millionth time, before realizing with a tiny degree
of satisfaction that even the irate club owner had to admit that the band--despite
its drunken rioting ways--was the biggest draw to have ever graced his
rock & roll bar for the last ten years.
"I'm giving you and your
pyromaniac madmen one last chance, Miss Falls," Mr. Hudson finally growled.
"I mean it; don't blow it, or else the band is fired! Again!"
"Of course, of course,"
Jennifer Falls hastened to reassure him. "Don't worry, Mr. Hudson, this
time, I promise you the band isn't going to be trying to burn your bar
to the ground or anything!" Switching off the cell phone and realizing
in dismay that, out of all the times the band had been fired over the last
six months since they'd been employed by Mr. Hudson's rock & roll bar,
Valentino's--and that meant at least once every other day--the frazzled
club owner probably meant it this time. Jennifer sighed, and ran a hand
through her hair, thinking to herself that at the rate things were going,
she'd probably end up with a headful of gray tresses before her twenty-first
birthday. She turned around to face the band, stumbling drunkenly about
like stoned frat boys after a particularly rough weekend party, and thought
about how to break the news to them that this time, it was absolutely necessary
they behave at their gig.
It didn't take Jennifer too long to realize that getting the band to behave was a lost cause. Lead singer and front man Rikki Stixx--and, as far as Jennifer knew, that was his real name, seeing as how she'd never heard anyone, not even his older sister whenever she visited (which was about once in a blue moon) call him by another, more normal name--was standing in front of a cracked full-length mirror, admiring himself. Specifically, his hair, which Jennifer had heard was originally a very pretty blonde color, before Rikki had gone ahead and gotten a horrendous dye job, and then proceeded to dump about a gallon of hairspray and mousse on top of his now steel-black locks in his pathetic attempt to style it like one of the guys from Mötley Crüe. Naturally, he had failed miserably in his quest, and wound up with a headful of crappily dyed black hair that looked as though someone had set off a bug bomb in it. However, Rikki wasn't quite aware just how ridiculous his hair looked, and was now displaying his mini-planet-sized ego by preening in front of the full-length mirror, striking rock star poses and hollering at the top of his lungs, "I'm the King of the World, bay-bee!"
Then there was bassist Morgan Williams, a female, sixteen-year-old Mini-Me of Tommy Lee--except with purple hair and an unending disdain for blonde bombshells who skanked around with rock stars and had their breasts augmented each year. Sometimes, the quietly thoughtful Jennifer winced just by looking at Morgan--her punkish, dyed purple hair, her numerous tattoos of anything ranging from the Van Halen logo on the small of her back to the brilliant black-and-gold Chinese dragons snaking around her lower arms, to the silvery piercings all over her face and body, including three on each ear, a tongue ring, a silver bar on her belly-button, pierced nostrils and eyebrows, and God only knew where else. What was especially scary was the fact that Morgan Williams stood at barely an inch or two over four foot eight. In other words, she was a shrimp, but given a choice of who could better scare off a lowly mugger on a dark alley, Jennifer would readily pick Mini-Me Morgan over Rock Star Rikki any day.
She would have gone with drummer Jericho Locklear--at six foot five, he was tall, tanned, and lean, with nice muscle definition, and looked like he could more than hold his own in a street fight. Of course, there was also the fact that Jericho suffered from what Jennifer called Diamond Dave Syndrome--it seemed as if he had not only inherited the former Van Halen front man's famous golden locks of the early eighties, but had also gotten the whole flamboyant pretty boy clown personality as well. As far as Jericho went, in most people's opinions, he would probably make a better front man that Rikki Stixx would...but then said people would hear Jericho singing in the showers (most of those people turned out to be groupie wannabes who would sneak into the pigsty of an apartment to try and get a peak of General JoJo--served them right, Jennifer always said), and their opinions invariably changed to that of Rikki being the far better choice for the lead singer.
Jennifer shook her head.
She must have had taken far more pity in this motley crew than was good
for her health. Making a mental note to never feel sorry enough for pathetic
screwballs to try and help them out again, she turned around to face the
band, scattered all over the trashed living room, cupped her hands around
her mouth, and hollered, "All right, listen up! I smoothed things over
with Mr. Hudson over the phone, and the band's going to perform at Valentino's
tonight at nine o' clock!" Jericho turned around from where he was standing,
admiring his perfect tan and brushing his perfect long blonde hair in front
of a full-length mirror that Rikki wasn't hogging, a huge boyish grin on
his face as he cheered, "Hey, way to go Jacqueline!" Jennifer bristled.
"My name's Jennifer, you
blonde bimbo!" she fumed, wondering how someone could be so airheaded that
he couldn't remember a simple, perfectly normal name after living with
her for the past two years. Jericho, meanwhile, flashed another boyish
grin, chirping, "Gotcha, Jasmine!" Jennifer didn't know whether to slap
the living daylights out of him, or slap her own forehead in frustration,
before Morgan, ever the hyper-active little bundle of energy, darted up
from where she was, struggling to balance her heavy bass guitar across
her tiny shoulders, and started jumping up and down on the ripped, dirty
pink carpet, squealing, "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I can't believe we got
a gig, this is so cool, I've hella got to call Trina, and Bry-Bry, and
Dany, and Sly, and Amber, and Dee, and..." Jennifer interrupted her before
Morgan worked her way through all the people she'd ever met.
"Listen, you can call your
friends later, but right now, I really need to lay down some rules about
your gig tonight...Hey! Wait a minute!" Her face scrunched up as she suddenly
thought of something. Going over the list of names that Morgan had gone
through--all of them former band mates who'd gotten scared away from the
band for good--Jennifer wondered out loud, "Morgan, kiddo--since when did
you know someone called Dee?" Morgan stared back at her with wide blue
eyes, an expression that would have been adorable, especially on someone
of her size, had it not been for all the piercings and tattoos.
"You know, Dee Snider of
Twisted Sister?" she chirped. "The Sisters also hailed from New York, so
I figured we'd all have something in common with them--except for the clown
makeup, big hair ('cept in Rikki's case), glam gimmick, money, success,
and...oh, yeah, the whole eighties thing, where they're all old and wrinkled
now, ew!" Jennifer sighed, beginning to feel an incoming migraine.
"Never mind, I'm sorry I
asked," she mumbled. Clearing her throat and trying to steer the topic
back to the gig at Valentino's that night, she added, "Listen guys, Mr.
Hudson's giving the band one last chance, and if you get fired right now
while you're on the brink of signing a record deal, it's not gonna look
too good on your resume, especially since the whole heavy metal movement
died out in the eighties, and you're lucky you can draw such a huge crowd,
which is the only reason you haven't been permanently thrown out of Valentino's
yet. Therefore, please, please, please show up on time tonight,
no drinking or drug-taking or sleazing around with groupies--at least until
after the gig when you're back here at the apartment--and try to keep the
swearing down to the vocabulary of a Long Island truck driver's."
"Blah blah blah," Rikki
snapped rudely from where he was, still preening in front of the full-length
mirror.
"Hey, don't worry Giselle,
we'll be fine," Jericho spoke up lazily from in front of his own cracked
mirror. By then, Jennifer had already given up on Jericho ever learning
her name.
"Fine, fine, so I'm Giselle
now," she sighed. "But still, this is really important, I mean, all the
record executives will be watching your performance tonight at Valentino's;
this gig could literally make or break you, and...and I've just realized
that not all of you are here. Where are the guitar players?" Jennifer placed
her hands on her hips and tried to look stern, as she scrutinized each
and every band member. Rikki peered boredly at his nails, muttering something
under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "All hail the King of
the World, bay-bee!", Morgan eeped and peeked up at their manager from
underneath her dark lashes, and Jericho just stared stupidly back at the
pretty lady who always seemed to be trying to tear her hair out in frustration
for one reason or another.
"Wait a minute...All right,
what happened to the guitarists?" Jennifer demanded, after searching the
entire pigsty that the band called an apartment and detecting no other
hint of life that could possibly survive underneath the mountains of unwashed
black leather pants and empty beer cans.
"Um...you mean Amber?" The
guilty-looking Morgan seemed to be the only band member who had a remote
idea of what Jennifer was talking about. Jennifer crossed her arms over
her chest.
"Yes, I mean Amber, as in
your lead guitarist Amber Crowley?" she hissed through clenched teeth.
A frightened Morgan babbled out, "Well, you see, she and Rikki were secretly
going out, but then they broke up when Rikki stole her hairspray for a
local magazine photo shoot, and then they got into this big fight, and
then Amber started pulling on Rikki's hair, and then so Rikki tried to
choke her with her cape thingie, and then I tried to get Jericho to stop
them but he was afraid to muss his perfect hair, which by the way, I have
to admit really is awful pretty; you know, it's not fair that a
guy has prettier hair than me, I mean, I'd sell my soul to have long, pretty
blonde hair like Jericho's, and did you know that he spends at least two
hours in the showers? Yeah, he uses like this special shampoo that smells
like coconut, and then this conditioner, and then he uses kiwi extract,
and then papaya extract, and then he rinses, and I know it's a lot of hard
work, but hell, if I had hair like that, I'd love it to death too, and--"
"Morgan!" Jennifer broke
into the tiny bassist's rant. "Yes, I know Jericho has gorgeous hair and
all that! Now, what happened between Rikki and Amber?" Morgan looked a
bit confused, the way she always did when someone brought her back from
one of her Spaz Moment trips, but then shook her head and lit up as she
remembered the topic at hand.
"Oh, yeah! That!" Remembering
what she'd been saying earlier, Morgan proceeded to explain. "So, basically,
Rikki and Amber claimed that they couldn't work together anymore, and gave
Jericho and me an ultimatum between the two of them, and so we did the
whole Eeny Meeny Miny Moe thing, and it turned out that we had to kick
poor Amber out!"
Jennifer sighed. Well, there went their twelfth lead guitarist down
the drain. But that still left the rhythm guitar player.
"What happened to the other
guitar player?" she wanted to know. Now Morgan looked as confused as Jericho.
"Huh?" she wanted to know.
"You mean there was another one?"
Jennifer decided that if she sighed any more times, she'd end up sounding
like a deflating balloon.
"Never mind; it looks like
we're going to have to find two guitarists--again," she muttered. Rikki
finally stopped loving himself--at least for a few seconds--long enough
to glance up and point out, "Well then, you'd better do it fast--the gig
at Valentino's is tonight, and I don't think all those record label execs
are going to be too impressed if we show up lacking a guitar player."
"Right, right," Jennifer
grumbled, before picking her way amongst all the empty beer cans and dirty
clothing to a tattered old desk and scrounging around the drawers. She
promptly emerged with a poster, advertising for two positions available
to play lead and rhythm guitar and sing backup vocals in a highly successful
hard rock band.
"I'll go over to the Xerox
place across the street to make some copies, and you hang them up all over
town. Hopefully by tonight, we'll have found our two guitarists," she muttered
darkly.
Lance and Pietro wandered
around downtown, following the address that Lance had scribbled down on
the palm of his hand. Pietro sneezed irritably, before grumbling, "So tell
me again, oh Earthquake God, just why exactly are we applying for jobs
as high school janitors?!" Lance sighed in annoyance, before gritting out,
"For the last time, Maximoff, it's an easy job that nobody wants, meaning
we'll be shoo-ins for the positions!"
"Right, right," Pietro muttered.
Suddenly, a gust of wind blew a stray piece of pink paper forward, smacking
the ad flat into his face. "Ow! Oh, no, I think I got a paper cut on my
perfect cute nose!" Lance reached over, plucking the paper away from Pietro's
face while rolling his eyes, before the bold black lettering on the ad
caught his attention and he paused to read the message.
"Hey! Hold on a minute,
Pietro, I think I may be on to something," he murmured, reaching out and
grabbing his fellow Brotherhood member by the collar just as the latter
was about to walk off in the direction of the janitor job.
"What?" Pietro muttered
grumpily, and Lance thrust the ad into his face. "Hmm...Wanted: Two youths
in their late teens or early twenties, to play lead and rhythm guitar in
a successful local hard rock band. Very good pay, free beverages at whichever
club the band's playing at, possibility of getting signed onto a record
label and recording rock albums."
"Well?" Lance was grinning
like a Cheschire cat. "What do you think?"
Pietro shrugged.
"It sounds great. But..."
He deliberately let his voice trail off.
"But what?" Lance demanded
impatiently.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
And then, without allowing Lance time to continue, Pietro snapped, "We're
not exactly the next Eddie Van Halens, if you catch my drift!"
Lance scowled, before waving his hands casually back and forth.
"Doesn't matter; they sound
desperate," he muttered, carelessly brushing aside the fact that neither
he nor Pietro had ever even seen a guitar, let alone played one,
let alone played one well. "We'll be shoo-ins for the jobs."
Pietro still looked unconvinced.
"Hey, making a fool out
of myself isn't exactly on my agenda--" he started to say doubtfully, when
Lance uttered those magic words.
"Think of it as a challenge,"
he said casually, and a light seemed to go off in Pietro's head.
"Hey, what are we waiting
for?" he chirped. "Let's go audition!"
*And...Stop! Okay, the first chapter's finished. In the next chapter, Lance and Pietro will actually get to meet the band and learn how to pick up a guitar and all that lovely stuff. Now go review the first chapter. Please? Did you love it? Hate it? Oh, and the people whose characters I've used, did you like the way your characters were portrayed, or would you prefer I tweak around with their personalities? Drop me a line, will ya?
