DISCLAIMERS:  Maul and Obi are George's, My Apprentice is Siubhan's...hell,
 there isn't an original character here.  All those who own them have the
 credit.  We just had the fun.  (Besides, a list of tedious legalities would
 bore the pants off you and spoil the story.)  Special thanks to Virginia
 Henley's romance novels for providing us with a truly appalling band name.
 This was the result of too many drunken nights viewing Shallow Grave and
 reading SA.

 kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
 

 “So, yeah, um, the band is called Manroot, and we’re not really playing out
 at the moment because we just lost our drummer.”  Maul paused to gauge how
 his potential new flatmates were taking the news before plunging on with the
 really embarrassing information.  “See, our drummer, like, exploded.  And
 now, we’ve got this lawsuit pending from Spinal Tap, and it’s really screwing
 with our creative vibe...”

 A voice hollered from somewhere above him.  “What about corporate buyouts?
 And did they have the exploding drummer bit trademarked?”

 Alex glanced up at the ceiling, carefully avoiding the drift of plaster dust
 that filtered lazily down in a shaft of sunlight.  “Never mind him.  He
 crawls around up there all day, but we’re pretty sure he’s harmless.”

 Juliet smiled at Maul.  “So, this boyfriend you don’t have, will he or will
 he not be stopping by to visit you at all hours?”

 Maul scowled.  “He’s not my boyfriend!!  Anyway, I don’t know.  I’m, like,
 really busy with the band.”

 Alex grinned at him.  “You know, I play drums.”

 “Oh wow, man, that is, like, so karmic.”  Maul felt sick to his stomach.  He
 was beginning to sound just like that aging hippy freak of a Jedi Master.  He
 made a mental note to lay off the yogurt and tofu burgers.  Must have had
 something to do with that special course his Master Sidious had forced him to
 take at Berkeley.  He’d even had to buy a pair of Birkenstocks for the three
 months of torturous philosophical drivel.  They made his feet look enormous,
 but at least they didn’t hurt like those stupid boots that gave him bunions.

 “Well,” Alex smirked.  “What makes you want to room here?”

 Maul twisted his face into a truly terrifying display of rotting teeth and
 gleaming yellow eyes.  “I want to burn it down.  By the way, there was this
 complete idiot loitering on the stairs.  I had to slice him in half to get
 here.”

 “Who, Campbell?”  Alex asked.

 “Cameron.” Juliet corrected.

 “Cameron?  Really?”  Alex shrugged.  “I like that guy but why does he have to
 keep following us?”

 “Anyway, “ Maul continued.  “I have to do remedial Highland studies on kilts
 and stupid Scots’ tricks so I have to stay here in Edinburgh.  Besides, the
 band’s got a gig at the Games next week.  You know, the ones some local actor
 is hosting.  I hear he looks good in a kilt.”  Maul bit back a ravenous
 mental image of his non-boyfriend, Obi-Wan Kenobi, in a kilt.  When he
 stopped drooling, he looked questioningly at Alex.  The guy looked really
 familiar.

 Alex looked at Juliet then back at Maul.

 “Ok, the room is yours.”

 Maul grinned.  “Great!!!  Can I paint it black?”

 Juliet shrugged.  “Why not?  It couldn’t possibly clash with all the rest of
 the horrible paint job around here.”

 David shouted from up in the loft.  “I thought you LIKED the colours.  They
 were all on special at the DIY!”

 Alex rolled his eyes.  “Shut up, David.  Go drill something.”
                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Several days and several trips back and forth from the local bus stop, his
 lame-ass speeder loaded down with boxes, and Maul was set.  The room was too
 clean and devoid of sentient lifeforms bred by years of Pizza the Hut
 deliveries, but he could change that quickly enough.  He tripped over pieces
 of Cameron on the stairs, stubbing his toe (which was exposed because he was
 wearing the purple Birkenstocks), making him drop the box with his
 Playstation II and all of his Jedi Roadkill games.

 Moving was quickly honing his rage to a fine peak.

 His irritation was raised to a magnificent level of rodent-hating,
 Jedi-slicing, gibbering,  spitting fury later that evening.  The band came
 over to practise for their upcoming gig.

 Maul helped to set up the equipment with the Eye, their sound guy and
 all-around roadie.  He was a basket case who couldn’t put three words
 together and no one seemed to have any idea who in hell he was, but he was a
 wizard with electronics.

 Billy, their shy and dimwitted keyboard player, arrived by cherry-picker,
 just in time to collide with the lead singer, Curt Wild, who promptly kicked
 his ass into the next room before passing out in a corner.

 Billy gently coaxed his pigeons into three neat lines to form the
 Pidge-phone.  It was a kinder and gentler Pidge-phone than the one Maul had
 originally concocted.  That one had been fun, Maul thought, mentally
 relishing the memories of squashed pigeon and startled coos erupting into
 avian shrieks for mercy as he battered them with a mallet.    But there was
 something funny about that Dwayne, the way he kept waving his wing around and
 somehow getting Maul to keep the birdseed container full.

 “Alright then, who’s got the fucking lyric book?” Curt mumbled from his
 corner, fixing a bleary eye on Maul.

 “Right, um, I think it’s in one of my boxes,” Maul muttered, turning to stomp
 toward his room.  Ten minutes later he emerged, grimy and irritated, sporting
 a number of paper cuts but with no book in hand.  “I can’t find it,” he
 reported.

 Juliet was just exiting the kitchen.  “Are you looking for kind of a
 scrollish-looking thing?  Kind of rough paper, with calligraphy and crayon
 markings all over it?”  Maul nodded mutely.  “I saw David carrying something
 like that out of your room and into the loft.  I think he wanted to use it to
 cover one of the windows.”

 Maul growled and headed up the ladder to the loft.  He grabbed the lyric book
 and bared his teeth at David,narrowly escaping the hammer and buzzing drill.
 David was his favourite flatmate.

 Meanwhile, downstairs, Curt was leaning heavily on the mike stand, eyes
 beginning to glaze over.  Billy tapped his baton and ran the pigeons through
 a few scales.  A gigantic squawk of feedback echoed through the flat, sending
 the pigeons into frenzied flight.

 “Um, sorry” mumbled the Eye, adjusting the sound levels.

 The front door opened to admit Andy, still sooty and grimy from the colliery.
  “Sorry I’m late.  I lost my horn in a pool game.  I’ll have to whistle.”

 Maul wondered if Andy had a real horn, or if he even knew how to play it.  He
 shrugged.  Not that it mattered:  Andy whistled really good.

 Nick Leeson, their tour manager, showed up with songwriter Christian in tow.
 Christian, of course, was bound and gagged, as usual.  It was the only way to
 keep him quiet.  Otherwise, he drove them all nuts with his eternal
 mumbo-jumbo about truth  and beauty etc., ad nauseum.  He did come up with
 some good lyrics, but it was a pain in the ass to have to knock him cold
 every so often when he went off on another “Love” tear.

 Finally, Robert showed up, his hair perfectly awful in that stupid feathered
 shag haircut he insisted on wearing.  He tuned up the Electrolux by it
 hitting several times with a dry mop.

 “So when’s the gig?” Alex queried loudly, wandering out from his bedroom as
 the band began to produce sounds somewhat akin to large metal pipes being
 flung into a gravel-and-rubber-duck-filled flat bed truck from a great
 height.  Curt howled incoherently into the microphone, deafening the Eye, who
 pulled off his headphones and began mumbling something about his daughter.

 “About a week,”  Maul replied, cursing as a string snapped on his bass and
 recoiled with almost-sentient intent, wrapping wickedly around one of his
 horns.

 “You’ll be needing a drummer then,” Alex announced.  “Shall I set up my kit?”

                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 From the All-Scotland Daily News-With-Nudie-Pictures-on-Page-3, dated August
 21, 2001:

 “There has never been a spectacle quite like it in the entire history of the
 Crieff Highland Games.  In a culture where soccer riots are considered an
 acceptable form of public expression, Manroot’s damaging performance and the
 ensuing mayhem  managed to break all existing records for police activity and
 general hooliganism.  Scheduled between the Junior Step-Dancing Exhibition
 and the Women’s Caber-Toss Finals, Manroot’s performance, if we may indeed
 call it such, sent the crowd into a frenzy that called a halt to this year’s
 edition of the venerable Games.  The honorary chieftain, a local actor, was
 hospitalised with injuries received during the riot.  The whereabouts of his
 kilt remain unknown at this time.

 Taking the stage amidst an oasis of potted plants, courtesy of the cut-rate
 gardening firm of LaRousse & Chrome, the band launched immediately into its
 signature tune, “Wanker”, highlighted by a seven-minute bass solo.  Said
 solo, performed by a Birkenstock-shod Zabrakian (this information still not
 confirmed at press time), may have been the incident that sparked the wave of
 violence in the already keyed-up and beer-sodden crowd.  The set quickly
 degenerated into a bout of gut-wrenching yowling from lead singer and former
 glam-rock star Curt Wild, punctuated by frequent disappearances and the
 sounds of various bodily functions being performed within an ersatz grove of
 tree ferns. The bass player was seen smashing the odd array of pigeons on a
 triangle shaped platform, sending feathers and squawking birds into the
 unruly crowd.  The jumpsuit-clad mute responsible for the pigeons promptly
 cowered behind a date-palm in a state of catatonic terror.

 Worse still was the incessant whistling of a grimy coalminer whose purpose
 onstage was unclear.   Equally puzzling was the badly-coiffed vacuum cleaner
 operator attempting to murder his machine with the help of a mop and several
 sponges.  As the saner members of the crowd sought to flee the venue,
 creating a killing ground near the exits, a very skinny and undoubtedly
 chemically-unbalanced audience member leapt onstage.  He and the notorious
 lead singer disappeared once more behind the plants, clutching syringes and
 large packages of illegal contraband.   A striped cat jumped centre stage
 from one of the rubber trees, caterwauling in accompaniment of the bagpipe
 player, who was wearing all earth-tones. The bass player insisted that the
 fetchingly-kilted piper was not his boyfriend.  The cat evidently disagreed,
 judging from her screeched, “Deniiiiaaal!”.  Or she may have been attempting
 to cover Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Whatever the case, it was, in a
 word, disastrous.

 Bootleg tee-shirts were reportedly hawked to the police vans by a pair of
 disreputable-looking hamsters, also in strange earth-toned clothing.  One was
 seen waving its paw in a suspicious manner, allegedly provoking a duel with
 an aggressive pigeon.  As the cat attacked the pigeon and the hamsters
 skirmished with the cat, the entire stage collapsed apocalyptically under the
 weight of the plants.

 When reached for comment later that night at his office in the local morgue,
 the band’s lawyer, known only as “Martin”, refused to answer questions
 regarding lawsuits arising from the performance.  He did, however, mention
 that proceeds from the sale of any surviving potted plants would be used to
 defray the band’s mounting legal expenses.”
 

                         FIN