*Hey, it's the first chapter of Money Talks, officially kicking off my interactive fic! Yay! Anyways, this first chapter's just to lay the ground work for Part I and introduce all the original characters, since...well, I can't really expect to throw in a bunch of OC's and just expect the readers to immediately warm up to them and know everything about them ^_^. So...enjoy! And please review.


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?