It was what every frat boy
called his humble abode, and what every parent deemed a hideous nightmare:
tattered furniture scattered sparsely here and there, a worn and ripped
fuzzy pink shag of a carpet, mountains of beer cans and wine bottles, posters
of half-naked swimsuit models and guitar gods serving as wallpaper...and
even two teenage boys passed out cold on a tattered old couch, bottles
of cheap vodka and even cheaper wine still lodged in between them. Suddenly,
the door to Apartment No. 666 slammed wide open, and an uncharacteristically
furious Roxy Oyama stormed in, glaring murderous daggers as she surveyed
the scene and ignoring the horrendous screeching of someone belting out
showtunes in the showers. Her eyes settling on the two boys slumbering
peacefully amidst the beer cans and Jack Daniel's, Roxy let out a little
growl, before she stalked purposefully toward the duo and seethed furiously,
"All right, you two little jackasses! Up! Up! Get up if you know what's
good for you!" And without waiting for the drowsy boys to fully recuperate
from their previous night of heavy drinking, partying, and hell-raising,
Roxy grabbed both by their ears and pulled them up painfully.
"Ow! Owowowow!" Lance and
Pietro whined, as the enraged Roxy dragged them up and through the sea
of empty and crushed beer cans. Jericho, wearing only a towel and nothing
else, stopped trilling out his atrocious version of "(Oh) Pretty Woman"
as he peeked out curiously from behind the bathroom door, as Roxy shoved
Ömega's own Toxic Twins out of the apartment.
"Ow! Hey, watch the hair!"
Pietro grumbled, as the furious producer roughly dragged him out of the
apartment. Lance winced, before muttering, "Yeah, what's your problem,
Rox?"
"Hey, maybe it's that time
of the month again," Pietro giggled into Lance's ear, trying to keep his
voice down but unable to do so due to still being rather wasted from the
previous night's drunken escapades. Lance laughed loudly, even though had
he been sober he wouldn't have graced such words with much more than a
snide smirk or two. Unfortunately for the Toxic Twins, however, Roxy was
in no mood to be hassled, as she turned around and promptly bitch slapped
the living daylights right out of the duo.
"Ow!" both echoed at the
same time, raising hands to identical red marks slashed across their cheeks,
before Pietro pouted, "What was that for?"
"That was for insinuating
that I had PMS," Roxy seethed. She then raised one of her spiked-heel-adorned
feet, and kicked them in the shins. As Lance and Pietro hopped about and
sulked, Roxy added, bristling, "And that was for what you two did
to my car!" Lance and Pietro stopped amidst their kangaroo imitations,
blinking wide clueless eyes, before Lance echoed stupidly, "Your car?"
"Yes," Roxy hissed, "my
car!" And she swept her hand to her nice, new, steely black Mercedes SUV,
which, over the course of the night, had somehow wound up halfway submerged
in the dinky pool, trailing pieces of the chainlink fence and pine trunks
behind it, motors still running and radio blaring Nirvana at ninety decibels.
"Oh." Lance and Pietro turned
to look at the ravaged car, before bursting into giggles. Roxy glared at
them incredulously.
"What the hell are you laughing
about?!" she steamed. Lance stopped laughing for a second, long enough
to sputter out, "You were listening to Nirvana."
"Yeah, I thought Roxy Oyama,
Super Producer, was far too good to listen to, and I quote, grimy, grungy,
greasy-haired, flannel-wearing, goatee-sprouting Seattle stoners who look
and, more like than not, smell as though they've just woken up from their
beds in the Salvation Army's storage bin!" Pietro snickered, clutching
his stomach. Roxy looked positively incensed, as she screeched at the boys,
"That wasn't me who was blasting Seattle grunge in my car, that was you
guys!"
"Huh?" Lance and Pietro
looked confused for a second, before Lance made a half-hearted attempt
to snap his fingers as he remembered.
"Oh, yeah." Turning to Pietro,
he chirped brightly, "We borrowed the nice lady's car last night to go
to the photo shoot for that local guitar magazine, remember?" Pietro hiccupped,
before nodding.
"Oh, yeah," he drawled lazily.
Roxy bristled, as she hissed through clenched teeth, "Borrowed?!
You two assclowns freakin' jumped into my car while I was unloading the
groceries and took off, yelling, "Jerónimo!"
"Bleh, borrowed, hijacked,
same difference," Lance hiccupped, swatting one hand back and forth as
if to demonstrate the simplicity of the whole thing.
"Grrr..." Roxy looked like
she wanted to strangle Ömega's Toxic Twins.
Fortunately for Lance and
Pietro, Jennifer intervened just in time, as she pulled up in a beige Corolla
and got out of the car, right when Roxy was moving in to kill the Twins.
"Hey, glad to see you two
are up so early," the pretty brunette manager called out, sounding surprisingly
cheerful as she pushed her sunglasses into her hair, especially considering
the fact that only a mere week had passed since she'd had to bail the band
out of jail for assaulting a critic.
"...I'm telling you, that...that...evil
dictator chick, whatever her name may be, is about to kill our new guitar
players!" Jericho's voice drifted over, as the blonde drummer, still clad
in only a skimpy towel, dragged a pissed-looking yet somehow already glammed
out Rikki and a sleepy, pajamas-clad Morgan clutching her psychedelic giant
pink teddy bear out of the apartment. The trio stopped, when they saw Jennifer,
Roxy, and the perfectly unharmed Lance and Pietro, save for one painful-looking
red slap mark apiece. Jericho frowned.
"Hey," he grumbled, "everyone's
still alive!"
"That's right, and it's
a good thing, too, because Roxy has already scheduled publicity appearances
to promote Ömega's upcoming debut album for all five of you today,"
Jennifer spoke up. Jericho scrunched up his perfect face when he heard
her speak, as he turned to look at her, blinking wide innocent eyes.
"Hey...I know you," he mumbled.
Jennifer rolled her eyes.
"Well, I should hope so,
seeing how I've been managing this band for the past two years--against
my better judgment," she muttered. Jericho was snapping his fingers, struggling
to remember.
"You're...Janet...Janine...Geri..."
he murmured, ticking the names off on his fingers. He suddenly lit up,
as he exclaimed proudly, "Oh, oh, I know what your name is! It's Jericho!
Oh, no wait, that's my name!" Jennifer threw up her hands in frustration,
and snapped, "Forget it! You'll never learn my name, you blonde airhead!"
Roxy, meanwhile, who'd forced herself to calm down over her destroyed Mercedes
SUV, had reverted back to her usual take-charge professional attitude,
as she barked out instructions at the band.
"Listen up, all five of
you--especially you, Jericho--go get dressed! Rikki, you're supposed
to do an interview for rock radio station 107.7 WHIP today, Lance and Pietro,
you guys have been booked to drop by the local music channel for their
daily edition of Pop! Goes The Music Video, and Jericho and Morgan, you
two have been granted the cover story in next month's edition of a local
rock & roll magazine, meaning you'll meet with a reporter at the coffeehouse
in about two hours."
"Jeez, all right, all right,"
Jericho grumbled, and began heading back to the apartment, using one hand
to keep his towel around his waist rather than at his feet, while Morgan
chirped brightly, "Aye aye, cap'n!" Rikki glared, discreetly giving the
producer the finger as he retreated to his room, and Lance and Pietro,
still feeling the effects from the previous night's drunken partying, giggled,
hiccupped, and hobbled their way to their rooms to get dressed.
Pietro paced nervously back
and forth in the television station's waiting room, fidgeting around as
he waited for the cue signaling it was Ömega's turn to go on. Lance,
meanwhile, calmly sat on a leather couch, flipping casually through that
month's issue of Guitar World, which sported a cover shot of Creed's
own Mark Tremonti tearing through a six-string amidst a fiery explosion
of red-hot pyro. The dark-haired guitarist barely glanced up as a bored
and antsy Pietro zipped aimlessly around the room, before boredly saying
as a gust of wind breezed through his hair, "Hey, calm down there, little
buddy. It's just an interview; they're not asking you to play to Mystique
or anything like that." Pietro stopped running around, as he fretted, "I
know, and I'm not worried about appearing on live TV or anything like that;
I'm just wondering what's taking them so long! Surely no guest is interesting
enough to go on before me...unless they're actually saving the best for
last!" Lance snorted, before returning to his magazine.
"Sure, delude yourself into
thinking whatever you want," he muttered. Clearing his throat and speaking
in a louder voice, he added, "But stay still, would ya? People are bound
to come in here and notice something's up...and besides, you wouldn't want
to muss your perfect hair right before appearing on live TV, now would
you?" Pietro eeped in a squeaky voice, and obediently sat down, as Lance
snickered and resumed browsing, adding under his breath in an amused voice,
"Sucker."
"Hey!" Pietro pouted. "I
heard that!"
Just then, one of the technicians
peeked his head into the room, calling out, "All right you two, you're
on in five, gotcha?"
"Sure, whatever," Lance
muttered, barely glancing up from his magazine, while Pietro busied himself
with critiquing the awful decor of the studio. Taking notice of the massive
posters of some new pop princess called Alison Blair, Pietro ooh-ed, "Damn,
look at how big and tacky those things are!" Unfortunately for the smaller
half of Ömega's own Toxic Twins, right about that moment, a rather,
ahem, well-proportioned forty-three-year-old producer walked into the room,
just in time to hear the silver-haired rock guitarist's remark about the
Alison Blair posters and assume he was talking about her two bouncing little
friends. Her eyes widened in anger at the rude comment, as she vowed to
do something about it.
"Hey! Ow! Quit it, ya old
hag, I wasn't talking about your drooping thousand-year-old boobs! Hey!
Owie owie owie! What did you do that for?!"
Five seconds later, Pietro was running frantically around the room--at
a painstakingly normal pace, since he didn't want to give away the fact
that he was a mutant--being chased by the furious forty-three-year-old
producer and getting clobbered over the head by her massive...purse (what
did you think I was gonna say?) every now and then, while Lance watched
on in amusement.
"Thanks for dropping that
coffee table on her," Pietro panted, standing gingerly behind the curtain
waiting for his cue to go on. Lance shrugged.
"Hey, no prob," he replied
pleasantly. "That's what friends are for, right? She'll wake up with a
concussion, forget everything that happened, and blame her work schedule
for her pounding headache before going to whichever executive has the pleasure
of working with her to demand a well-deserved vacation."
Pietro gingerly tested out a painful red bump that was beginning to
form on his perfect cute head, and grimaced before huffing, "Not that I'm
not grateful or anything, but did you have to wait until five seconds
before we were to go on to knock her out?"
Lance shrugged again.
"Hey, it was fun watching
you run around with a fifty-year-old grandma chasing after you with her
handbag," he snickered. "Should have gotten it on tape, then I could have
submitted it to America's Funniest Home Videos or something like
that, and made a hundred bucks."
Pietro glared at him, but before a fistfight could break out between
the Terror Twins themselves, a very familiar, Southern-accented, highly
grumpy female voice announced, "And that was that...video..."
"Objection: Tango," her
male co-host filled in, chirping out the words like the excited leader
of the teenybopper army that he was.
"Yeah, whatever, from that
annoying bleached blonde bimbo from Barbie Hell with the ear-grating voice,"
his petulant co-hostess grumbled.
"Aw, you mean the sizzling
Shakira, don't ya?" the guy piped up.
"If you say so." One could
tell with no trouble that his co-hostess was rolling her eyes, without
even needing to look at her. She cleared her throat, as she added, "Anyway,
our last guests for today hail all the way from the rock & roll club
scene of New York. Please welcome the guitar players for Ömega, heavy
metal extraordinaires deemed the next Guns N' Roses--only hopefully without
the in-fighting and eventual break up!"
Silence. Crickets chirped. The grouchy hostess remarked snidely, "Oh,
yeah, I forgot, you mindlessly giggling yahoos have no idea who the original
lineup of Guns N' Roses are."
Lance and Pietro emerged
from the back and onto the makeshift podium where the music talk show was
being shot, greeted by a round of mindless screaming from the hyper schoolgirls
and their spineless boyfriends they'd dragged along with them. The hostess,
decked out in a hideous pink sweater top and bell-bottom jeans and with
microphone in hand, turned around to greet them, before her mouth dropped
open in recognition, as she gasped out, "Oh, good grief! Lance, Pietro...you're
the rock guitarists of underground sensation Ömega?" Lance and Pietro,
meanwhile, gawked in openmouthed amazement at the pink-and-blue-clad hostess,
before Lance squeaked out, "Rogue?!" at the same time that Pietro wailed,
"What the hell did they do to your hair?" Rogue gingerly patted her bubblegum-pink
pigtails, as she groaned, "They said that my regular appearance might scare
the teenyboppers, and then attacked me with pink hair dye and pastel ribbons!"
"Oh, wow! Who'd have thought
you actually have color in your cheeks? I mean, gee, with that pasty white
face and the black makeup, we were beginning to think you were a permanent
KISS groupie wannabe or something!" Lance, having gotten over his initial
shock of finding out Rogue of all people was the hostess of the teenybopper
crapfest, remarked snidely. Rogue glared at him, before gritting out through
clenched teeth, "My, one of these days, you must tell us how you
got into a band without even knowing how to tell a bass from a regular
guitar!" Lance blushed furiously, as Pietro chirped, "Hey, how'd you know
that?" Rogue blinked in surprise, before exclaiming in delight, "You mean
you really couldn't tell a bass from a guitar?!" Lance's face turned even
redder, before he mumbled defensively, "Hey, at least I didn't mistake
a freakin' cello for a guitar!" At this, Pietro began to blush,
as Rogue alternated between staring at Lance to staring at Pietro, olive-green
eyes alive with amusement.
"Hey, it appears as if our
very own Rogue knows these two hard rock guitar players," the voice of
the male host chirped brightly, as Rogue's eyes widened. "Why don't we
give them a great big hearty Pop! Goes The Music Video welcome?!"
At his words, the teenyboppers started screaming their lungs out on
cue, and Rogue's eyes widened, as she moaned, "Oh, no! Not again! Not so
soon!" As Lance and Pietro stared dumbfounded at the shrieking teenyboppers,
Rogue sighed, grouchily snapping, "Yes! Yes, I'll admit it! This is where
I've been working for the past three months!" Meanwhile, her male co-host
was bubbling happily, "Now, since we have two of those nice rocker people
here, it's only fair we even things out by bringing out the one, the only,
pop princess Alison Blair!" Pietro's eyes widened, as he remember the big,
tacky posters--and then the fat dinosaur who'd repeatedly clobbered him
over the head with her purse--as the teenyboppers screamed and cheered,
Lance grimaced and covered his ears, and Rogue groaned, "Great, more of
those yahoos!" Her co-host had one of those stupid grins on his face, as
he shrugged, "Hey, the more the merrier, I always say! All right, guys,
please give a big Pop! Goes The Music Video welcome to the always dazzling
Alison Blair!"
Cheesy, upbeat, tooth-decayingly
sweet music started playing, and it took Lance and Pietro a total of five
minutes to figure out it was actually pop, as a pretty blonde girl dressed
in clear green shades and a ridiculously expensive designer pink tank top
that anyone could have gotten for five bucks at the local thrift store
entered the room. And, just in case somebody didn't know who she was, the
name ALISON was printed in diamond lettering across her chest. She grinned
in that nauseatingly sweet way, blowing kisses to the audience of screaming
teenyboppers as she happily bounced her way onto the stage, while Rogue
muttered grumpily, "Let's welcome the dazzling Alison Blair."
"Now," Rogue's co-host was
chirping, "what we're going to do here is play a very fun game with Ali
and the boys! Yay!"
"Oh, wow, I can't wait,"
Rogue muttered sarcastically, as the teenyboppers cheered and the insanely
bubbly Alison jumped up and down and clapped, and Lance and Pietro just
stared boggle-eyed.
"What we're going to have
to do, is to give you lucky guitar slingers the chance to win a date with
the sexy Miss Blair!" the co-host was chirping. "Now, this is just like
the dating game, in which Alison will ask both of you a number of allotted
questions, before choosing one of you lucky guys to be her date for the
evening! Doesn't that sound totally awesome?!" As the teenyboppers cheered
and a preening and smiling Alison danced her way to her pink chair, blowing
kisses all the way, the dazed Lance and Pietro were shoved into their seats
and handed cordless microphones with which to answer.
"Go ahead, Ali, these wild
rockers are all yours." Apparently, wild rocker in teenybopper language
was two dazed guitarists who'd gone into culture shock upon hearing the
tooth-decayingly sweet teenypop music.
"Um...okay," Alison mumbled.
Turning to face Rogue, she hissed, "What am I supposed to say to them?
I've never hung out with bad boys before!" Rogue scowled, preparing to
tell the teen queen exactly what she thought of her...before an idea suddenly
occurred to her. Eyes gleaming mischievously, Rogue leaned in and whispered
something to the blonde pop tart. Alison's gold eyebrows nearly flew off
her forehead, as she asked, "Are you sure I should tell them that
about me?" In response, Rogue only gave an evil grin, which the pop tart
happily mistook for a reassuring smile, and chirped, "All right, then!"
Clearing her throat dramatically, Alison blurted out brightly, "I'm a size
34C! What about you guys?!" Lance fell off his chair, as Pietro struggled
to remember what exactly a size 34C was, and then fell off his chair.
"Uh, Alison..." The male
co-host quickly rushed up to whisper something into her ear, darting a
nasty look at the gloating Rogue, and Alison finally nodded brightly.
"Oh, okay then," she chirped.
Turning to face the two rockers, she sang out, "Like, um, Hunky Guy Number
One--" Pietro was wearing the number one tag, with Lance sporting number
two, "--from what you can see right here, if you had to describe me with
a type of food, what would it be?" Pietro struggled to return to his seat,
pondering over this subject, but before he could reply, Lance had already
snorted and muttered snidely, "Certainly not a cherry, that's for sure!"
Alison looked offended.
"Hey, just what makes you
think I'm not as cute and sweet as a little cherry?" she huffed, before
clearing her throat and muttering, "Never mind! If you're so smart, then
here's your question: In your opinion, who's hotter: Justin or Enrique?"
Lance stared boggle-eyed at her.
"What kind of crappy question
is that?!" he exploded, as the teenyboppers and the co-host all gasped
at the obscene word, while Alison covered her head and wailed, "My virgin
ears!" Pietro began to look wary.
"C'mon, Alvers, let's get
out of here before they decide to lynch us or something for being obscene,"
he muttered. Lance shrugged, casually following Pietro in exiting the room.
Alison, meanwhile, was staring wide-eyed at the two departing guitarists,
before her lips began to tremble and she wailed, "You...you're standing
me up?" At her words, the co-host gasped, turning to his army of teenyboppers
and saying in a dead serious tone, "This is blasphemy! How could anyone
dare stand the dazzling Alison Blair up?!"
"Uh oh..." Despite the fact
that she usually hated the Brotherhood's guts--especially after the whole
KISS thing--Rogue decided that nobody, not even the Brotherhood, deserved
that cruel and unusual a punishment: Death by teenybopper. The usually
cold and sarcastic young woman quickly turned to Lance and Pietro, and
pushed them off the stage.
"Quick!" she instructed
frantically. "Get out of here while you still can! This is only the first
stage! Run! Get out of here before they take you too!" The two Ömega
guitarists responded with confused and bewildered stares, but one good
look at Rogue's terrified expression, then at the hysterically wailing
and screaming teenyboppers, and the two so-very-tough Brotherhood bad boys
promptly split, getting the hell out of the Pop! Goes The Music Video studios
as fast as...well, as the considerably lighter Pietro could drag Lance
with him. With the angry teenyboppers hot on their heels, the two pulled
the driver out of the nearest car--which just conveniently happened to
be a nice, new red Mercedes Benz--and jumped into it after having sacrificed
the ponytail-sporting owner to the teenyboppers by throwing him into a
ditch to serve as a temporary obstacle for the swarm of schoolgirls and
their pathetic spineless boyfriends ready to put them on trial for standing
up one of their teen idols. Gunning the engine, the two promptly took off
in their second hijacked car in one week (the first being Roxy's prided
Mercedes SUV). Lance glanced back at the Teenybopper Army, and noted with
relief that they were growing smaller and smaller with each car that swerved
out of Pietro's way as he drove recklessly toward the apartment.
"Whew," Lance mumbled, sinking
back into his seat, "guess we lost 'em." He then began patting his pockets,
and a frown knitted his eyebrows, as he muttered, "Oh, great. I think I
lost our keys!" Pietro flushed guiltily.
"Eh heh...that would be
me who lost our keys," he eeped, as Lance turned to him and groaned, "Maximoff!"
"Hey, this is the thanks
that I get for saving you from those teenyboppers?" the silver-haired rhythm
guitarist mumbled defensively. He then shrugged, adding, "Hey, don't worry--I'm
sure Rikki's home by now. He'll let us into the apartment."
*Hey, Random Insanity, I really like your idea for having the old band members--especially the ones who have issues with the current ones--come back and raise some hell! I'm going to incorporate that into Rikki's radio interview next chapter *evil grin*.
