Legend Within
Disclaimer: Any similarity to the characters in this fic and members of the band that I attend every morning are completely not coincidental. These are real people, so don't steal them. Names have been changed at my enjoyment. The only one who is not real is Shane.
A/N: Sorry about this chapter. This is the worst one, methinks. But don't worry, Chapter Nine returns to the full fun gooeyness of band warfare. Two words: Duct Tape.
2:30 a. m., Tuesday
Down-world
Team Green Rescue Team
Eve conscripted Laiva to come along on the museum raid, seeing as how Autumn would stoutly refuse to leave Verran's side. She needed another female so that she could use the "I need to go to the bathroom" excuse. So far, this excuse had a 96.3% rate of accuracy. Surely enough, Shane only blinked stupidly at them as they nearly ran from the room.
"What are we looking for again?" Laiva asked as they jogged down the corridor, perfectly in step.
"I read this book of Shane's earlier," Eve explained, "that was talking about a guy named Lewis. I dunno why, but I think he's our ticket out of here."
"What if he's as thick as the rest of the people here?" Laiva panted. They had been running for five minutes and had yet to see a sign or anything that had to do with The Museum of Music.
"Doesn't matter. I think he's some sort of Genie, actually. We have to find one of The Great Music Theory Tomes so that we can summon him. Somehow, I don't think those are phonebooks."
Laiva laughed. "Do they even have phones here?" she asked as they jogged around yet another corner. "Look, sunlight!" Up ahead was a set of glass doors—the two him them and blew right through, not even shooting a second glance at the guard. They were startled to find themselves in the middle of a busy, yet eerily quiet, street. "I don't think—" Laiva began, staring wildly around at the silent people moving along.
"Shh!" Eve shushed her. "Just play the part." And she grunted meaningfully, raising both eyebrows as she adopted Shane's swagger. They walked in silence for a while, grunting occasionally for variety.
"We could escape from here, you know," Laiva whispered as they walked along the street, looking at the confusing signs over each doorway. "We could find the portal and get some help."
"Laiva, you can't even navigate in the middle of a field show, what makes you think you're going to be able to find this portal?" Eve pointed out. Laiva reddened, but didn't say anything. "Look! An eighth-note!" She pointed at a sign over a stooped, gray building, forgetting the disguise. "Hurry! We haven't much time."
They made it through the door with very few troubles (Laiva forgot how to work the door for a moment, but Eve did it for her) and into the museum which they discovered was completely empty. "Do these people even know about locks?" Laiva pondered as they looked around the dusty corridors.
"No, and I'm glad they don't. Help me look." Eve was already peering into dirty corners, rifling through the cluttered displays for the tome. Sighing, Laiva decided to check the other half of the museum. This place really needs a coordinator, she complained in her head. Laiva was good at complaining—she loved complaining and any whining of any type. The museum was about as cluttered as her own bedroom, if not more so. Displays were stacked untidily throughout the store, looking as though they hadn't been touched. After a few moments of futile searching, she found a lead. A number of suspiciously large lumps were covered by purple cloths. She yanked one off and gaped. "Eve! What kind of instrument do you think Lewis plays?"
"Trumpet, probably, they're such glory grabbers," Eve muttered bitterly from where she was going through a stack of paperwork. "Why—oh."
Laiva was still holding the purple dust-cloth in her hand, having unveiled a statue. The statue was of a very tall young man, clothed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt reading "Ben Folds Five." The statue was holding a trumpet in an offensive position, glaring at the world. "Looks tough," Laiva remarked. The statue next to him was a saxophone-player just shorter than Eve and Laiva. "Hey, she looks like Winnie!" Winnie was a friend of theirs who played the cymbals at football games occasionally.
"Wait a minute! I know her! That's Andrea! (A/N: Yes, another Andrea! We'll call her "Andi") These are the old band seniors from my freshman year!" Eve cried, yanking off another dust-cloth to reveal her old idol, Molly. The next statue was Molly's partner-in-crime, Sarah. Eve let out a small squeak and began yanking off dust-cloths, naming each of the legends in turn. "Steve! Emily! Kat! Alicia! Stu! Evan! Chrissy!"
"Figures from our childhood," Laiva muttered, reaching out to touch Emily's French Horn. "Where's the tome? Maybe we can set them free and they'll help us defeat Travis! I mean, didn't Stu sign that 'I hate Travis' list that Jon was passing around your freshman year?"
"Yeah, and Chrissy did, too," Eve mused. "C'mon! Let's find it!" The two set to the search with renewed vigor, grinning as Eve unearthed a very beat up, very dirty copy of Great Musical Theory.
"Jackpot," Laiva whispered.
8:14 a. m., Tuesday
Teacher's Lounge
Team Green
"Checkmate."
Sebras groaned and refrained from pulling hair out. "I can't believe that we're being foiled by TRAVIS, of all people. Every way we turn, it's a checkmate. This war has been going on for a day and we haven't even scored ANY good hits."
Rand looked up from the mass of wires and hardware he was wading through. "No worries," he assured absently. "Once this thing is up and running, we'll have plenty of back up to get Team Puce with. Brorby, our spy, is working on his end now as we speak." He tapped the computer screen beside him, pointing at a blinking "HotChat" box.
"This had better work," Sebras threatened. "We're staking a VERY nice trumpet on this."
"Trumpets-shmumpets," Amethyst grumbled from the "Guard Corner." She, several of the band seniors, and the color guard team were plotting another large attack on Team Puce, more of a recon mission than anything. "If this works," Elyse had assured, "we should be able to get most of our team back. Then we can capture Team Puce."
"And what if it doesn't work?" Sebras had asked. "Why don't we just go after Team Puce and pick them off one by one?"
"That could work. We'll do that!" Amethyst had announced in that perky way she had. Now they were huddled in concentration, using cheerios they had found to map out the game plan. Sebras was quite sure he was going to develop an ulcer from this entire affair. After all, at the moment, his future was dependant on a bunch of cheerios.
Becky, Dude, and Sebras were all gathered around the chessboard, plotting away on ways to capture Travis. The plan was to hold him for ransom, but it wasn't going well so far. Travis had worked quickly to find all entrances to the band room and block them all with cement. They would have to use the regular entrances without the Jock Tunnels or burrow a new tunnel. And though Vanessa had brought them supplies out the wazoo, it wasn't going to be enough.
"No, I'm telling you!" Kelly's voice rose hotly from the Guard Corner. "We just knock them out. One bop to the head and they're down. No sweat."
"This is manhunt, not KNOCK PEOPLE SENSELESS," Rachel argued.
"So?" Lisa asked.
"Hasn't stopped us before," Trisha added.
"You know," Rand remarked quietly, for Sebras's ears only, "with them on our side, who's worried about getting your trumpet back?"
9:17 a. m., Tuesday
Down World
Autumn, Verran, Solan, and Shane
The fact that two of their teammates were missing wasn't going to stay hidden for long.
Shane was still asleep, sacked out across Eve's couch. Eve and Laiva had somehow disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving three very worried friends behind. "You don't suppose they killed them, do you?" Autumn asked.
"Nah," Solan waved that possibility off. "They probably just got lost."
"While dead asleep?" Verran pointed out.
"Okay, so maybe they did kill them." Solan shrugged and picked at the breakfast they had left behind. It was absolutely exquisite, although he couldn't name anything on the menu. "What strikes me odd about this place is that the people dress nice, live nice, treat their prisoners nice—for the most part—eat nice, but they can barely talk."
Shane grunted.
"Yeah, it's kind of like somebody cursed them to not be able to use the English language or something," Autumn agreed as she dug into her own breakfast. "Maybe they're trying to question Eve and Laiva?"
"Or maybe they're shish-kabobbing them with spears," Verran suggested lightly. "What, dear? Not hungry?" Autumn gave him a dirty look.
"Or maybe Eve and Laiva are standing behind you, wondering why you're talking about us like we're dinner on a stick."
Before they could do so much as turn and gape, Eve and Laiva took up the empty positions at the table and reached for what they hoped was the milk. "How was your night?" Laiva asked, pouring herself a glass.
"I hate pink clarinets," Autumn grumbled. "My couch was covered in them."
"It's okay, mine had trumpets on it," Eve pointed out, laughing at Solan's "Hey!"
"So where were you two?" Verran asked. "Shane's still conked out on your couch, Eve, so I'm sorry if you want to go back to sleep."
Eve pulled a face. "We had a long, seven-hour bathroom trip. Only, we discovered that there aren't any bathrooms in the Museum of Music. I thought the place was legendary—"
"Tsk, tsk, Eve," Laiva clucked. "Confusing our dear friends like that! I mean, it would be awful not like your legendary bluntness to—"
"Oh, no, dear friend. I'm quite the legend in the realm of bluntness, but I hold no candle to our good friend Trinity."
"Yeah, I guess she would be the true legend."
Their companions goggled at them. Finally, Verran had the sense to ask, "Um? Am I missing something here or do you two just have an obsession with the word 'legend?'"
"Er—both." Eve and Laiva looked at each other. "You explain," Laiva continued. "It was your quest in the first place."
Eve pulled another face. "All right." She paused, thinking. "Last night, Shane showed me a book. He's got this necklace on that just says 'Lewis,' and I was kind of curious about it. Then it turned out that Lewis saved the band or something during the Great Jock War in '86. So I figured, if he can save the band, why can't he save us? I thought he was a genie of some sort—and he could be summoned with this one book." She reached into her bag and plopped a very dusty volume on the table next to her plate. "Laiva and I went and robbed a museum. We're wanted criminals."
"You bad, bad people," Autumn admonished.
Laiva rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Save it for the press. There can be a public hanging later if you want."
"So are we going to summon Lewis?" Verran asked eagerly, willing to believe anything was possible. His face fell when Eve shook her head.
"We already did."
And like any good cliché in a novel, the door chose that moment to slam open with a great BANG! A tall figure stood silhouetted in the fake movie smoke billowing into the room. The five eating breakfast coughed and waved it away. "Lewis," Eve coughed. "We're glad you could join us."
Gradually, the smoke cleared and they could see Lewis and the Legends clearly. Andi and Stu stood on either side of him, looking vengeful at something. The Legends all filed into the room, standing around a still-sleeping Shane on the couch. "Lewis?" Verran demanded. "How'd—how did you get here? You graduated!"
"The Legends were set to rule the Down-World," Lewis explained, his arms and legs creaking as he moved forward. "But the High Council ousted us. Turned us into statues."
"Ouch, bet that hurt," Verran remarked sympathetically.
"No, really, it didn't," Andi commented. "Just waking up did."
"That's cos Laiva knocked you over while she was trying to read the tome," Eve explained. She gave a pointed look in Laiva's direction and the French Horn-Player reddened. Andi nodded solemnly and magicked a chair from somewhere. She balanced an incredibly shiny saxophone on her knees as she sat down.
"So what's going on? Why'd you guys decide to pull us back from our statue-states?" Chrissy, another legend, asked curiously. "And how come you all can talk? The High Council restricted speech in the Down World."
"Well, we're not exactly from the Down-World," Verran explained. "We were captured because we fell into one of their tunnels. Is that what happened to all of you all?" He looked around expectantly, eyes alighting on Stu as he talked.
"No, we came from the Down-World," Chrissy said, looking confused. "I think you've gotten us confused with our Up-World counterparts. Lewis, what are you doing?" Lewis was standing over Shane's couch, looking down at the guard with a confused expression. "Is that Shane? Oh, my word, what have they done to him?"
"I'm not sure," Lewis speculated. "I think they took away his clarinet. It changed him." He touched the guard's shoulder lightly and Shane bolted awake, shouting incomprehensibly. "Morning," Lewis told him. "Where's your clarinet?"
Shane babbled just as incomprehensibly, but Lewis seemed to understand. After a moment, he said, "Guys," meaning the legends, "there's a lot of trouble. The High Council's been taking this place by force. It's going to take a lot of manpower to stop it."
"High Council?" Laiva interrupted, confused.
"Yes. The High Council—a series of corrupted people who were destined to take over the Down-World. Of course, the legends were formed to stop them, but they backstabbed the legends and took the world by force," Emily recited. Laiva, who had studied under Emily's Up-World replacement as a sophomore, gasped. "Sorry, memorized that from a text book," Emily apologized.
"So the High Council is very bad, then?" Solan summarized.
"Incredibly. I told Leader not to trust Travis like that—" Lewis began, but was cut off by five gasps.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Laiva blinked at him. "You just said Travis! Travis is here?"
"Yeah. He's the leader of the High Council," Chrissy said slowly, unsure of what Laiva was getting at.
"How can he be fighting Team Puce and ruling the Down-World at the same time?" Autumn wondered.
Andi clicked her tongue at them. "Haven't you lot learned anything yet? There are two Travises—one for the Down-World and one for the Up-World."
Her statement was met by a long pause. "First of all," Verran said, "don't ever say two and Travis consecutively in the same sentence—there are only so many heart attacks I can take. Second of all, who let Travis be in charge?"
"Leader O'Malley," Lewis said somberly. He checked his watch, which read "BFF," and sighed. "Guess we'd better get started on saving the day." He started to leave.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Eve said, drawing the attention of everybody in the room. "Can't you help us get back to the Up-World?" she whined to Sarah and Molly. The two legends considered this for a long moment.
"And maybe some weapons would be nice," Solan added quickly. "Travis is really kicking us around up there. The honor of the band is at stake."
He had said something important. Every legend gasped and looked at the others wildly. "Surely we must help!" Alicia piped up. "If the honor of the band is at stake, we need to save the day!" She looked ready to don a cape and hop over the nearest skyscraper.
"Here's what we'll do," Lewis said, shaking his hands as he thought in a very Gone in Sixty Seconds way. "We'll let you have Shane."
The five Up-Worlders glanced dubiously at Shane, who was still babbling on with incoherent words. "Oh, right," Andi said, blushing. She glanced over all of the legends and sighed. "No clarinets? How did we forget a clarinet legend? Methinks the author has something against clarinets."
I have NOTHING against clarinets. It was a coincidence.
"So that's why you have an 'Anti-Clarinet' poster over your bed?" Andi accused.
How do you know what I have under my bed? You're just a character! Stick to your own story!
"Look," Sarah, another legend, interrupted. "I've played clarinet during Marching Season. I'll give him one." Ignoring the bassoon strapped to her back, she conjured up a shiny black clarinet and tossed that to Shane. It bounced off his head, making him blink, and into his hands. After a moment, he smiled widely.
"Thanks, Sarah!" Shane grinned jubilantly and holstered the clarinet. "Lewis, do you think I should take them to storage and get some ammunition? I had one of my men check on the war and it doesn't look like it's doing too well for Team Green."
Lewis nodded sagely. "And hurry."
Eve followed the rest out, looking like her latest dream had come true. "This guy could be promising," she murmured to Laiva, who only smiled and laughed.
