A/N: Welcome to LotR Goes to Band Practice! This is biased off the marching band that Juniper (Angel) and I are in and if you have any questions on what any instruments are e-mail one of us and we'll do our best to describe it/find a picture and send it over.
Disclaimer: An any and all relation to real people, events or things is absolutely intentional and we don't have written permission from anyone ourselves to do this so don't sue, we're jobless high school students. Enjoy.
LotR Goes to Band Practice!
By Psyco101 and Juniper87
It was 5:00 PM Monday evening, when a freak thunderstorm happened. Lightning struck the ground in the field next to the natatorium and the stadium, where around 160 people were gathering. It was perfectly clear when this happened, which is why this is so unusual.
There appeared thirteen people of various races. Two were elves, four hobbits, two wizards, two men, a dwarf, and a…something.
A red minivan holding three occupants had just arrived, the two girls in the front witnessing the spectacular event, the third, in the back, hadn't. She, called Roxie, gathered her saber and ran out of the car as soon as her sister, Helen, had parked to meet some of her friends.
"Did you see that?" Helen asked her friend, Adrienne.
"Yea."
"What should we do?"
"Go meet them!" Adrienne said excitedly.
"Okay!"
They walked up to the group, who looked confused…not to mention some happy looks being shot between the hobbits and the brown haired elf. Glares were being shot at the white-haired wizard and the thing with big eyes.
"Hi! My name is Helen, who are you?"
"Hello," one of the hobbits responded. "My name is Peregrine Took, but you can call me Pippin."
Soon everyone knew everyone else's' name, even though the thing had two names: Sméagol and Gollum.
"It's been nice meeting you! But we have to go now!" Adrienne said leaving.
"Now what?" Gandalf asked.
The others shrugged. Suddenly Gollum, with a cry of "my precious!" ran to the stadium. The others looked at each other in confusion and ran after him as one.
When they caught up with him they saw what had gotten his attention—one of the wheals of a large object (called a marimba) had a gold line around the edge of one of it's wheals.
They tried making Gollum leave but he refused finally one of the people nearby suggested they all come to practice, since there were all these extra instruments just lying about on the track. They agreed.
They went to the indicated place, Gollum staying behind with the marimba, and saw ten instruments of various sizes and colors lying there.
Legolas went over the saber lying among them and picked it up.
"It's not sharp—and it had some sort of white stuff all over it." He said critically. He tossed it up into the air where it spun around five times before returning back to his hands with a solid snap. "Good balance though…"
"Oh! He is OURS!" Mindy, the color guard captain, said grabbing his arm and dragging him away before any one could complain.
Boromir caught sight of Helen talking to some of her friends and grabbed the instrument that looked like hers, a marching French horn, and went and joined her.
As the rest of the fellowship—plus 'friends'—stood there Andrés Z. came over and said to Gandalf, "You're Gandalf right?"
"Why yes I am." Gandalf said surprised.
"Awesome." He picked up a black instrument. "This is called a clarinet—you'll play this. Come on—I'll introduce you to others." And with that they left.
Over the next five minutes each of the others got and instruments. Gimli chose the trumpet, Aragorn on the piccolo, Sam on the sousaphone (a.k.a. Tuba), Pippin on the trombone, Arwen on the marching baritone, and Saruman on the Bari Sax.
Finally it was just Merry, Frodo, and a big base drum. Merry seized it with a 'HA!' and ran off.
Frodo sniffed, sad that there was no instrument for him. At that moment Kelly T., a drum major, came over and put an arm around Frodo and told him that he could help her and the two other drum majors. Frodo cheered up instantly.
5:15 PM struck and everyone headed for the field, except the Middle-Earthlings, who didn't know what to do.
"Common!" Helen yelled at them beckoning.
They ran onto the field.
"OK…Frodo, go over there with the rest of the drum majors and the rest of you make a line right here." She pointed. "And get in line with the people on your left."
They then warmed-up with the fellowship and company only getting yelled at a little when they failed to say in line with the block.
"All right guys go the Big-inning." Dr. Trent called out.
Everyone ran to his or her spots and the Middle-Earthians followed people with their own instruments. Stephanie, one of the drum majors, counted them off and they started performing. Merry, watching the other bass drums, tried to do exactly what they did, but ended up falling over instead.
They had to go back and start over.
They got further the second time but this time Pippin was having trouble. He couldn't reach anything beyond second position on his trombone!
Steven Ray, a helper who had graduated last year and played the trombone, was going mad. Pippin made the section sound horrible; Gollum wouldn't play because he was obsessing over a wheel of the Marimba; Aragorn, on the piccolo, had somehow gotten across the field to march next to the hot new Baritone player, Arwen. Sam kept staggering off course under the weight of his tuba, almost running over the Clarinets that march near him and terrifying the freshmen beyond belief.
They were marching along when Sam staggered off course and ran into Gandalf.
"Watch were your going Samwise Gamgee! If you don't I'll turn you into a frog!" Gandalf bellowed.
"Hey! No fighting." Travis, the tuba section leader, called to them.
They stopped and took a water break.
"Where do we get water?" Boromir asked Helen.
"You could ask around or go up to the box and get some out of the drinking fountains up there. That's what he's doing." She pointed to a solitary figure going up the bleachers to the drinking fountain.
"I'll go with him."
"Run!" Helen called after him.
Boromir, even being the tough son of Gondor, still only made it to the fountain just to see what they looked like before the girl left to go back down to the field.
'Alright, now I get to experiment.' He thought to himself. As he tried to figure out how to get water from them he got a sudden vision of him and Aragorn trying to work the pump at Sugar Pine State Park.
'Where'd that come from?' He wondered, and then dismissed the thought.
Boromir looked at it and could not see how it was suppose to turn on. 'Maybe it's magical…um…' then he said out loud: "Aqueous."
Didn't work.
"OK, I'll try manually."
He pushed and pulled at all the different parts but couldn't figure out it. He gave up deciding to head back down to see if he could get some water off of Helen, so he gave one last—hard—tug on the part water came out. And it did.
Water went everywhere! In seconds he was sopping wet. He tried to put it out but it wouldn't go. Dr. Trent's voice came over the speaker:
"Alright go to the place where you back up ten in the formation."
"Oh no," Boromir muttered to himself. One he didn't know where that part was and second he still had the water getting all over him. Finally he got it to stop and went to go get his horn and go stand next to Helen.
"What happened to you?" Dr. Trent asked, laughing, when he saw Boromir come around the box. "Did you go for a swim?"
Boromir smiled weakly. "I lost a fight with the drinking fountain."
"Oh, well, get to your spot."
"Yes, sir." Boromir said running to get his horn and get to the spot, on the other side of the field so most of the band could see him.
"'Lost a fight?' I'd say you got creamed." Megan said laughing. The rest of the horns laughed.
They then geared up to do the ending of the second movement. They ran it and they did it well that time—they only had to do the backing up part twice—and reached the end.
"Alright—next movement." Dr. Trent said.
Danny (trumpet section leader) and Jeremy (tenor saxophone section leader) both ran up to the front sideline to do their solos. Legolas had filled the color guard hole on the front sideline and was crouching down picking up his saber after doing the dance moves during the second song.
Well I assume that you've guessed what's going to happen. Danny was running up to the front and WAM! Fell over Legolas.
"Oof!" Danny said, narrowly missing Gollum and hitting the ground instead. He looked up to see what he had tripped over and get onto Amanda for leaving something on the ground for someone to trip over and instead he ended up looking at a blond version of himself. (Danny looks EXACTLY like Will Turner in PotC—exactly, well...save the glasses, but he's still hot.)
"What…?" They both said at the same time.
"Hey you alright, Danny?" Mrs. Villarreal said coming up to him.
"Uh, yeah…" He looked down at his trumpet, "doesn't look like I'll be playing soon though." His trumpet was all bent and dented after falling with it.
They had Shawna come out and play the solo instead and Danny sat on the benches for a while until he felt ready to march again.
Legolas was completely fazed. He dropped his saber on the triple that they did right before the dance moves that the entire band does. He felt like crying. He'd dropped, his hair was messy, he'd broken a nail while attempting to catch the weapon and he'd seen his double.
While the other sabers were confronting Legolas and telling him that it would be alright and that everyone did it sometime, and while Sam staggered off course once again and Boromir was getting little black dots all over him from the false field; the second worse nightmare casually walked onto the field, unnoticed until it was too late. What is this abomination you ask? It is a worse horror, worse than Morgoth or his Balrogs: a squirrel.
A squirrel you ask? Yes they seem harmless, but as Gimli and Legolas knows they are evil. They're just simply a different color than the ones found in Mirkwood and Sugar Pine.
Well this squirrel wandered harmlessly onto the field but then it saw the evil that was Saruman on his Bari sax. It went completely berserk! It started freaking out and running up and down on him, diving into the sax to escape the wizard's retaliation. Gimli noticed the commotion (so did everyone else—they had backed away from Saruman like he was a large bee) and he charged right in yelling a loud Dwarvish battle cry.
He swung madly with his trumpet trying to get it but only succeeded knocking Saruman unconscious. It was then that the authors of this fic stepped in.
Helen and Adrienne stepped out of the crowd of people and Helen yelled "HALT!"
Instantly they did.
"Fellowship and company come over here." Helen continued.
They all came and stood around Gimli and a Saruman who had suddenly woken up five hours he normally would've if he'd not been rejuvenated by Helen's writing.
"We have enjoyed your time here and I hope you have too." She said sweetly.
"Not really." Sam muttered.
"What did you say?" Helen said threateningly.
"Uh…Yes, very fun wouldn't you say so Merry?" Sam stuttered.
"Uh…yes, it was tons of fun." Merry said weakly.
"Better. I know you've made all of our day, especially Dr. Trent's."
"Yes. I had prayed for all the holes to be full but I never expected it like this." Dr. Trent said, having come down the bleaters to pull Gimli off of Saruman himself.
"Can I ask you one quick question?" Merry asked timidly.
"You already asked me one but you can ask another." Helen said.
"Which one are you? I know you're one of the fan fiction authors that have been playing with us for a while, but which are you?" He asked in one breath.
"Don't you recognize me? I'm the nice one." Helen said sweetly.
Merry paled.
"Now get into the box." She said sternly.
"Gosh! This is so stupid!" Came a voice from the crowd.
Helen and Adrienne whirled about to see whom it was. The fellowship and co. didn't move; they didn't want to get into the box even if there had even been one to get into. Helen and Adrienne saw that it was Jennifer, a fellow French hornist and a member of their church.
"So stupid, why'd you do it?" She asked.
"Because we can." Adrienne said. "But you don't have to deal with it very much longer—so be quiet."
"Now," Helen said, "get into the box."
A box appeared covered in purple sequence and pink feathers.
"I don't wanna go in there." Legolas complained. "It smells like Watcher in there."
"Get used to it—you'll be in there. Now, GO!" Helen yelled.
They grudgingly did it. The box closed and the setting sun reflected off it blinding you and when your vision is restored, all you see is an empty football field.
The End
A/N: Yea, I finished it! I hope you enjoyed it (given the success of our last three we've given up on the flame ideas, but you can still flame if you want!). I know I did. We're now starting LotR goes to Six Flags over Texas, so look for it soon! LotR Goes to Band Practice!
Psyco101 and Juniper87