3 Recruitment

"So, Jesse, like you have some of that Ice dude?" It was Combo, his real name was Christian Ortega. He was one of my closest friends growing up.

You might know him as the fat guy that gets shot by that kid on a bicycle in the TV Show.

We were in the corner of a Family Diner. I was recruiting my friends to start dealing the fresh batch Mr.White and I cooked. In the Tv Show, Jesse did this whole orientation thingy in his new home, I'm not since I don't have the cash to rent a house. I could ask Mr. White for some money but I didn't want to strain our relationship any further. The whole incident with Tuco did a real number on us.

"Nah you're not listening guys…We're not gonna be samplin any of the stuff. You smoke on your own dime. Gentleman, what I'm giving you is an opportunity to make some dough and of course access to some of the finest meth god ever made." I noticed in the last few days that I'm getting used to Jesse's natural cadence and mannerisms. It helped to make my transition here much easier.

If only I could get rid of his god awful wardrobe. That was the first priority when I received some profits. That and finding a place to live.

"I mean I'm game homes but you know…that new blue shit do be cracking homes!" Skinny Pete laughed along with Badger and Combo. The morons high fived each other.

Finally sobering up when they realised I didn't find any of this funny.

"Okay…how about this- Uh excuse me can you get us some more coffee...yeah that would be good." I informed the passing waitress. It was important to feed them really well, I would create a sense of loyalty if I showed them I was ready to take care of them.

"Look it Yo, who else is selling it right now?" I asked them frankly,

"Shit, you right Jesse… It's kinda dry out there." Skinny Pete saw my point.

"Church, Yo." Looks like Combo was in.

I turned to Badger, who looked hesitant. I looked at him intensely but otherwise didn't say anything.

"Man like, Jesse you're like really Persuasive now..shit count me in."

"That's what I'm talking about." I dapped him up.

The waitress brought the coffee and refilled our cups. Combo and Badger were too busy staring at her ass.

The entire meetup went as I expected. They agreed to start dealing for me and jumped at the possibility of making some quick cash. The real problem was when Skinny Pete was going to get stiffed by those Hobos or when Combo got shot and killed by a kid on a cycle. Of course I didn't plan to let my friend get murdered but I knew that it won't happen for some time and right now I really needed the money. I could not risk dealing it myself, DEA had a profile on me.

After leaving the diner, I pulled out three packages with equal amounts of the blue meth. Their eyes sparkled when they saw the quality of the crystallisation. I had to warn them not to smoke it all. I promised them that if they did then they wouldn't get access to it for their private use later. They were all junkies in the end and the threat of losing access to the purest meth must have scared them straight.

Anyways I left hoping that everything would go as it did in the TV Show.

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It turned out exactly as it did in the TV show. Things went really great for the most part. Other than the fact that Pete was robbed but otherwise we did really great. Well for rookie drug dealers you couldn't ask for more.

At the end of the day I got 30,000, it should have been 2,000 more but since Pete got jumped. It was a miscellaneous cost or collateral damage. I paid Mr. White his share, 16,000 dollars, he threw a hissy fit when I told him about the incident involving Pete.

I tried convincing him, saying that it was..uh….what was the word Jesse used in the show...Breakage! Breakage, that's right.

Mr. White being the egomaniacal sanctimonious self-serving prick that he was, wanted me to take care of it. I didn't. I was not going to break into a random druggie's home and beat them up. What I did do was call the CPS to take their kid away from them.

I knew that it would drive Mr.White crazy but not involving myself here was an important step in my grand plan but I digress.

The first thing I did after I got my share was to go to Clovis's lot. I bought myself a brand new car, a red Toyota Tercel. It cost me 800 bucks and barely worked but it did the job. The next thing I did was buy myself a couple of T-shirts and jackets. Like I said, Jesse's wardrobe was a crime against fashion. It was trashy and really tasteless.

I went looking for home's after that. The problem was that I didn't have employment and the other necessary forms so a lot of people wouldn't rent me. I really didn't want to do it but it looked like I had no choice. I went to Jane's house.

I really wanted to avoid it, I don't want her to get mixed up with me and die.

But that's not an option anymore, I knew that she would give me a place to stay if I cried enough. I could make a story about how my parents kicked me out and how I was the black sheep of the family.

When I first laid my eyes on her, I knew it was over. She was a heavenly thing, dark thick hair and an extremely pale complexion.

Was this love at first sight?

She was smoking on the porch in the middle of the day. Her tattoos and smoky eyes made her look like a fallen angel. She had a sketchbook on the outdoor table beside her. She was sketching something.

"Um, excuse me?" I say,

She turned slowly to see me, she raised her left eyebrow.

Man, she looks exactly like the actress from the Show.

"I read an ad that this place was renting?"

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So I got the house! It took a little bit of acting on my part but I got it. I was paying an extra hundred dollars to her because I didn't have all the documents but for her….I would pay a thousand.

I moved the methylamine and other work related equipment into my new home. I sold the RV for scrap.

Yup, I sold it. I wanted to give it back to Combo's mother, since it was her's and he stole it from her. But that wouldn't do. The damn thing had my prints all over it plus it emitted a weird odour that an old police dog could figure out was drug related.

Jesse was a complete moron for relying on the old machine as the integral part of his revenue. I would much rather avoid being stuck in the desert because I forgot to turn off the key. No, seriously what was this guy thinking? He was earning thousands of dollars and he couldn't afford to buy a better, more reliable vehicle for his 'Drug Laboratory.

Jesse was really dumb.

I bought a new RV. It was used but not older than a few years. It worked and didn't look like its tires were going to fall off any second now. It was spacious and clean, it also had a fridge and everything. I also brought an extra pair of batteries and tires.

Like I said, I really didn't want to be stuck in the desert for days.

After shifting my drug laboratory into it, I parked it on Clovis's lot. It cost me 2,000 dollars a month but it was worth it. We were actually getting along nicely, partially because unlike my TV counterpart I didn't break into his compound and steal the RV.

I would argue that every significant relationship I had was better now than before.

Mr. White wasn't constantly mad at me, my parents didn't have to threaten to evict me, my friends liked that I was a lot cooler than I was before. But that had to do with the fact that I was their boss now and less with me being more responsible.

Healthwise, I was completely off the drugs and gradually starting to lose my dependency on cigarettes.

The sales were good for now but I knew it wouldn't take long before the word got out that my guys were a bunch of softies. I'm pretty sure people would start testing my guys more and more as time continued. Eventually even robbed repeatedly but for now nothing happened. Mr. White was still concerned about how my guy's reputation would start affecting the business. That wasn't the case. We were doing really well and since I always paid him out of my own pocket no matter what he couldn't say anything about the way I ran my crew.

The cash was raking in like crazy and we successfully finished the first batch with no problems.

It was good, it was really good. I had about 22,000 in my bank in total.

Some might say that life was going well for me. Some might say that I was living the best life I could.

Yes, some might.

I was not one of those people. Sure, was everything stable? Yeah for now, sure. But how can I sleep comfortably knowing that the Police and DEA, not to mention other rival drug dealers wanted to know the person flooding the market with blue meth.

The bad guy has to win every single time but the good guy? The good guy needs to be right only once. One mistake and I could be locked behind bars. If one of my guy's ratted on me, then I would lose a minimum of ten years. I remember the episode in which Badger gets caught, that's the one where Saul Goodman first appears. So, it's not like I can just ignore that possibility.

But forget about that, that's still tame compared to the other, worse situations.

If one of the rival gangs or drug dealers realises that I am the head of this whole operation, I could lose my life period. I don't have the reputation of murdering Druggies by crushing their heads with an ATM this time. I would be dead meat, if the word got around that Jesse Pinkman was responsible for the new blue meth circulating in Albuquerque.

I was not going to let the good times lull me into a false sense of security. The brand new RV was the first step against that.

I got a call from Mr. White, he told me the methylamine was going bad and that we had to cook up a giant batch. He even told me how he took four days off to cook it all. This was going to be the motherlode of batches, this was it! The final stage of my plan. This was the final time that I was going to cook. If the rest of my plans worked out I would be out of the game by the end of this coming week. This was the last time I will ever engage in criminal activity.