A/N: Cue groveling, sniveling apologies. I intended to have this chapter up two months ago, but foreign plot bunnies began eating my brain and my family life suddenly went pear-shaped. Things have lulled, so now you get another revamped chapter.
Disclaimer: I do not own How to Train Your Dragon. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.
How to Train Your Marching Band
Chapter Four: Stoking the Fire
The rest of the band trickled in the time leading up to nine o'clock. During that time, it occurred to Hiccup that he probably should have added: "Don't corrupt the rookies irretrievably" to the list of things Marie wasn't supposed to do. Sanity might have been overrated, but they were still going to need it when the season ended.
The difficulty was that Marie thought in overlapping stellated icosahedra, none of which were uniform. Down the straight lines, it seemed that her thought processes made perfect sense, but she had a nasty habit of taking abrupt turns and losing in the process everyone who was trying to follow her. After six years of school, four years of band and three seasons as the only two clarinets together, Hiccup knew that his section-mate didn't think quite like other people.
But she didn't need apprentices.
However, no one had told the rookies that.
"God... She just came up behind me... Like a shadow with plus-ten stealth..." Fishlegs was relating his morning scare to Hiccup. "I didn't even hear her. And then she jumped me..."
"Fishlegs, remember. Dark practice room. Funny noises. Closed door. Don't open it." Hiccup reminded him. "That goes in any circumstance, especially when you don't know who's actually in there-- Wait, was it Marie?"
"No!" Fishlegs shook his head. "It was one of the others! She's got minions now! Like the evil overlord with a ninety percent chance of striking a critical hit!"
"Yeah, I know about the minions." Hiccup assured him. One of those minions was from his own section. It was hard not to miss Marie conspiring with Kristen; all whispers and covert evil glances. It was kind of creepy.
Unfortunately for Fishlegs, the other minion was a flute rookie and with Steiny being the conducting drum major, that put Fishlegs in the spot of first chair and section leader for the flutes.
"C'mon, it's almost nine." Hiccup clapped a hand on Fishleg's shoulder briefly and started towards the band room. Fishlegs glanced over his shoulder warily for any sign of the Dark OverLord and her minions. He was going to be a little jumpy for the rest of the day.
The "Dark OverLord and her minions" were in the band room with everyone else, save for a few stragglers. The room already smelled rather strongly of sunscreen and bug spray. No one was quite in their own section; the percussion mingling with the brass and the colorguard mostly scattered amongst the rest of the band. Hiccup couldn't help a small smile. He didn't care what anyone else thought; as far as he was concerned, band season officially began on the first day of band camp.
He stepped around several colorguard girls to get to his seat on the second riser and looked over his section. Marie was leaning forward and talking animatedly to her flute minion, Lauren H. (there was also a Lauren B.) while her clarinet minion had scooted out of her chair to listen in.
Kate and Ashley looked to be having a very serious discussion about something, their voices low and their heads together. Kate was a freshman and probably felt like she had to take a larger degree of responsibility as the technically up-and-coming section leader.
Further down were Amanda and Brittany (who was likely to be known almost solely by her last name, given that the band already held two other Brittanys), who were busy exchanging good-natured barbs with one of the trumpet rookies.
In last chair was Ashlyn, whose face was pinched in a sullen, slightly rebellious expression and she was twisting her charts around a stick of chalk in a nervous manner. She was the only rookie of his that Hiccup was really worried about. He had taken her aside earlier, warning her that every time she was reprimanded by the veterans or the marching instructors or anyone who knew what they were doing and didn't listen, she would be running a lap around tower field. Whether the threat would stick remained to be seen. Hiccup tried not to adopt Marie's pessimistic view regarding Ashlyn and her lackluster performance on the field, but he trusted Marie's judgment as well as his own instincts. Ashlyn had been absent without explanation during the summer sectionals and she had already displayed a frequent tendency to ignore well-meant advice. It was frustrating, but he was determined not to let it get to him. If anything, he had to be the big scary senior until Ashlyn learned that listening and being the best goddamn marcher out there was not optional.
"Alright! Alright! Quiet down, ye noisy lot! Save yer energy for when ye get out there!"
At the bellowing voice of the band director, the chatter came to an abrupt halt and the students settled back into their seats as the director entered the room. A few murmurs went up from the rookie population. He took some getting used to. Everyone called him Gobber. If the man had another name, Hiccup didn't know what it was.
Blond, balding and nine-time winner of the Best Mustache in Berk County, Gobber possessed a thick Scottish accent. Natural, not carefully cultivated over the last decade like Stoic's. He had gone overseas for his college education, became fast friends with Stoic and that was the end of that. He had been a regular babysitter for Hiccup (not some of his more cherished memories) and Hiccup often suspected that it was Gobber who had talked his father into observing marching band with a more open mind.
He used to be dragon hunter, like Stoic, until the loss of his left arm and right leg had forced him into semi-retirement. The prosthetic limbs were good replacements, but they were no substitutes for the real things. Dragon hunting was hard work even for someone with all their limbs and harder for someone who had taken the hands-on approach like Gobber. He did work part-time as an adviser, his experience with dragons making him very good for the position.
What had driven him to become a band director was a story that Hiccup had yet to hear. It was, according to Stoic, something Gobber had decided on during his convalescence, but the reasoning had evidently been lost on Stoic as well. Hiccup entertained the idea that Gobber had gone for the position of band director because he liked music and had discovered that wrangling a bunch of teenagers was a lot like trying to wrangle dragons.
"All of ye, welcome to band camp." he said, looking over his victi-- er, students. "This is the closest yer gonna get to hell week until college. Veterans, ye know how 'tis. This is one of the most grueling weeks in the entire season. Sweat, bugs, yeh name it, it's out there and it's gonna eat ye alive."
Gobber grinned widely, showing off the fake tooth in his lower jaw.
"Rookies, as far as ye should be concerned, marching band takes no prisoners. Ye pull yer weight and then some, or we'll be usin' yer backbones to lash down the pit equipment. We're startin' to run low. Keep breakin' 'em. Darn things are so fragile."
The rookies shifted about uneasily and looked at the veterans for assurance that this was not true. Gobber had a way of telling stories that really made a person wonder about their validity and the band students usually learned quickly not to take everything he said at face value.
Unfortunately, the rookies had not yet learned that. And the veterans took a sadistic sort of pleasure in watching the rookies try and figure out what was true and what wasn't.
"I hope ye all remembered your sunscreen." Gobber went on, rubbing his hands together. "And that ye brought lots and lots of water. It's seventy-nine degrees out there. And it's already one hundred and three out on the tarmac. It's gonna be a hot one today, kiddies."
He pointed to the door.
"Now get out there and be the best goddamn band in Class D! Best goddamn band in the state! Or do ye want them damn trophy-mongers Paolini callin' themselves state champions again this year?!"
There was a roar from the band that shook a bit of dust from the ceiling. It didn't take much to pump up a marching band. Promise them popsicles at the end of practice for a job well done and the band would put on their best show of the night. Inform them that their biggest rivals were going to sweep State Finals for the fifteenth year and the band would be out for blood.
In a manner of speaking, it was like watching a barbarian tribe prepare for battle.
Hiccup wished that Ruffnut -- had it been Ruffnut? Or Tuffnut? But whoever -- had never made that observation, because he still couldn't get the mental image out of his head. His mental barbarians were big muscly Viking men and women about to go off and fight another tribe to the bloody death. It just didn't help that the school mascot was a Viking, the band was known as the Marching Vikings and Gobber easily looked like he could have been a Viking himself. Hiccup felt like was perpetuating something that should not be perpetuated every time he imagined himself wearing one of those horned helmets.
"Hey clarinets! Get over here!"
His section joined him by the bench.
"Okay, I know you're plenty familiar with this," Hiccup said to Marie. "But I'm going to say it again to you guys." He addressed the rookies. "Projected highs are in the nineties all week. Hundred-something on the tarmac. The black tarmac that's going to soak in the heat like a sponge. It's going to be boiling out there in an hour. Don't use the heat as an excuse to slack off. You drink your water. You wear your sunscreen. Don't slack off. Got it?"
They nodded.
"Because if we slack off, Paolini will win State again." Marie said, eyeing the six rookies in a way that made them shrink back. "Here's the thing about the Pride of Paolini. They put on a nice clean show every year, but it's so flat. They have no imagination. No zest, no pizazz. And we're way better than that. We're Vikings, we're tough."
"On that note ladies, can I get a 'hell yeah'?" Hiccup requested.
There was a chorus of "Hell yeah!", but only Marie sounded any kind of enthusiastic.
"Oh c'mon, that was weak." Hiccup groaned, shaking his head. "Are you band geeks or not?! Again! From the diaphragm!"
"Hell yeah!" they shouted. It was a little better, but Marie still drowned the rookies out.
"Again! Use your lungs!"
"Hell yeah!"
"I still can't hear you!"
"HELL YEAH!"
This time, the rookies took it as an affront, of sorts, and bellowed from the very bottom of their lungs and just about deafened him.
"That's better, now are we going to own this season?" Hiccup challenged, fully in the groove of getting his section fired up.
They roared an affirmative reply.
"Then get out there and be goddamn good marchers!"
There was a sort of a scuffle over Marie's gigantic tub of chalk. She had already with-held a shade of bright red for herself and a particularly toxic shade of green for Hiccup, but the tub still had so many cool and interesting colors and many of the veterans had not bothered to bring their own chalk because they knew Marie would have a lot of it.
The barbarians looking for the proper colors to paint their faces in the most shocking shades imaginable to frighten their enemies into thinking they were demons from the pits of Hell itself.
The image persisted even as they streamed out of the band suite in a semi-orderly column and walked almost in step across the commons and down the athletic hallway.
The air was warm and humid. Hiccup was immediately struck by just how much the temperature had risen in just an hour. He had left the house in a light sweatshirt and now part of him wanted to do away with his shirt. If it was already one hundred and three out on tower field at nine in the morning, he didn't want to imagine how hot it would be by the time they went in at noon.
He thought he could already see the wavy heat lines rising up from the marching field.
Tower field, as the band called it, had once been the teacher parking lot until the administration had been granted an expansion when the school had first started to grow. The parking lot had been resurfaced and painted with yard lines and hash marks, and the fifteen-foot tower constructed in front of the fifty-yard line. It was a bit of walk from the school doors; all the way back behind the school buses' gravel parking lot and separated by a thick grassy median.
On the way there, someone screamed.
Nearly the entire band whirled about defensively, coolers and rolled-up charts and chalk sticks ready to be used as weapons. They saw the oboe rookie looking quite faint and pointing towards the parked school buses where a Monstrous Nightmare had stretched itself across the roofs of three buses, its wings spread out to their fullest extent. Large yellow eyes had slid open at the rookie's scream and tongues of flame flickered along the dragon's snout.
"Hey! Don't get your panties in a knot!" Snotlout shouted at the rookie. "That's just Hookfang! He's always hanging out here!"
The oboe rookie did not look relieved by the news and neither did many of her fellows. Indeed, they hurried past the gravel parking lot with their heads down as if afraid to make eye contact for even a second; even while the flickering flames vanished and the Nightmare settled its head back down on the roof of the bus, yellow eyes closing. They weren't used to dragons being so close. Dragons typically steered clear of human-inhabited areas. At least by day. Hiccup had often seen them wandering along the streets after dark.
The veterans, on the other hand, were too used to having the Monstrous Nightmare around that they didn't give it much of a second thought.
"Rookies." Hiccup scoffed to Astrid, who shook her head.
"They'll have to get used to it." she agreed.
There was something about the combination of music and the motion that the dragons found pleasing. Evening practices were often overseen by up to two dozen dragons and that was just the ones who chose to land.
The grassy median turned into a buzz of activity as the band students poured across it to the boundary of tower field; each section staking out a claim on the edge of the grass. There was a shallow ditch in the middle of the median that got squishy and muddy after the rain. It was second nature to avoid it.
"I want to run over the first set of charts before we move onto the new stuff!" Gobber shouted as he made his way over to the tower. "Get yerselves set up in a parade block in five minutes to start stretching!"
"Drink some water and get onto the field. When Gobber says five minutes, he actually means 'two'." Hiccup informed his rookies.
Described in one word, marching band was repetitive. It involved a group of teens from twenty to two hundred or more attempting to hit specific marks at a speed of anywhere between one hundred-seventy and one hundred-eighty beats per minute on a slick grass field while looking like one entity from above and producing the best sound possible.
That was not easy to do. There were all sorts of factors that could foul up a marching band's show; wet grass, mud, dirt clods, inclement weather conditions and sometimes, poor visibility between the band and the drum major. The band had to be prepared for all these things and compensate accordingly. Adjusting to accommodate the poor conditions had to become second nature so the show could take first priority. When the band was out there on the field, putting on the best show was the only thing that mattered.
That was where repetition came in.
A marching band turned repetition into an art form, quite literally. Charting the show was a tedious process of matching the spot on the paper to the spot on the field, then waiting for the drill instructors to smooth out the form before being allowed to mark the chart. In between, they marched from chart to chart to make sure that the transition was smooth. And they did this again and again until they couldn't get it wrong.
On the outside, Hiccup was sure that the whole thing looked intensely boring. His father had certainly thought so. Heck, Stoic thought band itself was boring. He used to drag his son along to the high school football games solely as an attempt to get him interested in the sport as a spectator, but had always left Hiccup to his own devices come half-time. Hiccup had always taken advantage of his father's distraction to get as close as he could to the field to watch the marching band present their show in front of the audience. The band had done a better job of enthralling Hiccup than the heavily padded teenagers bowling each other over for a bit of oblong-shaped rubber. Maybe it was the lack of painful violence.
Whatever it was, it had appealed to his creative side.
Marching band wasn't always about the music and the marching and the performances. It was also about the people you performed with; the camaraderie that developed between band-mates -- the people you spent three months seeing more of than your own family. It was about pouring your heart and soul into a new creation and knowing that you'd been a part of making it come to life.
Marching band was the process of imagination given visual form.
Hiccup didn't think it could ever be boring.
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