It was Audition Night that Sunday night, there were Phonies much older than he was were lined up along the graffiti walls and old band posters behind the theater. Some had so many piercings on, Roc couldn't tell how much actual face was left on some of them.

Given the nature of Phonies, he couldn't tell if they were all Twice-As-Fancy or if they had the skull biting daggers and roses put on later. The one with the nude human lady on his foreleg was a real headscratcher. Maybe it was one of those shock rock things.

Some of them saw him, almost twice as short as the rest of them, and laughed. Some of them kept trying to tell him to go home, to give up because he didn't have the same amount of years or experience. Well, what did they know?

With his beaten up electric guitar, he walked up onto the stage with the faulty foot lights and the amp everyone had to share. The judges looked like wizened old musicians, themselves, from bands that played so often that they must run gigs in their sleep. Hell, half of them probably did.

"You ready, kid?" asked one judge, in a thick cloud of cigar smoke and a pair of dark sunglasses.

"Yeah," he said simply, and started to play.

(( I wanted to embed the video but Gaia sucks. ;o; ))