With a sense of nervous forbidding I pushed open the rough screen door of the mess hall, and cautiously made my way inside. To my surprise there were about twenty people there, all of which, unfortunately turned to stare at me as I accidentally let the door slam behind me.

One of the larger kids pushed himself off of the wall and sauntered over to me. He was huge! And not overweight huge either, but tall and broad shouldered huge!

"Well well well, what do we have here? A weakling Newbie?" he asked, smirking. "You might as well drop out girl, you'll never make it in this band. Go see if one of our competitors will take you in, they need all of the help that they can get. Although, I doubt that even they would take a scrawny freshman like yourself." the boy added, an obviously fake thoughtful look upon his face.

"I'm not a freshman, and I'm not dropping out, so leave me alone." I told him, nervous as I looked up into his brown eyes.

"No. I'll do whatever I want to freshman. You have no right to tell me what to do. You might as well quit right now, while you still have the chance." the boy said as he moved closer.

Suddenly a callused hand clapped me on the shoulder and I heard a low voice. "Move on Ralon. You heard her, she's no freshman. And in case you didn't hear her, hear this. Bother her again, and you will face me." The effect of these words on Ralon was amazing. Without another word, he snarled and stalked off, his shoulders firmly set in an angry hunch.

A bit wary, I turned and looked up into the face of my rescuer. He was shorter then Ralon was, but with black hair, and dark gray eyes. Behind him stood a familiar face, topped by green hair, and alight with brown eyes.

The black haired boy broke off his angry glare at the retreating Ralon and spoke to me. "You were telling the truth that you aren't a freshman, right kid?"

"Yes." I responded shyly, "I'm a Junior."

The boy nodded. "Good. My name is Stone, Drum Captain, and I'm a Senior."

"I'm Moth, and, well, I play the Tenor Sax." I mumbled. Moss rolled his eyes.

"Come on you two. They started serving our food. We gotta go up there if we don't want to end up eating what the rest of the band eats." He informed us, and started walking away towards the short line for food. Stone followed him, with me trailing behind.

Because I was new I had to fill out a form stating exactly what I couldn't, or wouldn't, eat. So by the time I finally got through the line, the others were no longer standing there.

"Hey - Moth! Over here!" Moss called from his table across the room. Seeing him, I hurried over, glad that I wouldn't have to eat my meal alone 'till Wren came, and sat down next to him, and across from Stone.

In reality, the food wasn't so bad. We were eating spaghetti, with meatless marinara sauce, and garlic bread. Along with some sort of nameless (and tasteless) red liquid, which was almost sickly sweet and lukewarm. All in all, it was heaven after my last meal of stale poptarts and cold spaggetio's eaten straight from the can.

About halfway through my meatless spaghetti I glanced up, to be greeted by Stone cocking an eyebrow at me, a smirk playing around his mouth. I cocked my own eyebrow and looked at him. Finally he lost in his attempt to hold back whatever he was thinking, and opened his mouth.

"Hungry?" he asked, smirking openly now.

"Shut. Up." I muttered darkly as I glowered at him and continued to eat my now-cold noodles with sauce, somehow causing Moss to choke on his own spaghetti as he burst out with laughter. Needless to say, I glared at him, causing him to lose it even more.

"No." a calm voice replied, Stone by the events accuring around him. For some reason this caused Moss to lose what little control he had left. -Boys- I thought, shaking my head.

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Shortly after these events, the others came to our table with their 'normal' meals, trying unsuccessfully to figure out why Moss was choking on his spaghetti, and why we were blatantly ignoring it.

"Alright - spill it. What happened to make Lettuce here lose it so badly?" Neal finally asked, staring fasinatedly at the sputtering Moss.

"Don't ask." I muttered, not quite sure of the reason myself.

Neal opened his mouth to insist upon an answer, but before he could speak Skink elbowed him hard in the ribs. "Stuff it Firefly. We're better off not knowing."

Next to me, Moss took a large breath and let it out slowly, finally regaining enough conciseness to look around, if not enough to think clearly, and spoke wonderingly. "Hey - where's Rayn anyways? I thought he said that he was going to eat with us?"

The others traded looks. "Umm - he said that he wasn't feeling well and he went back to his cabin..." my cousin trailed off nervously. Her announcement was followed by an awkward silence which I didn't understand. But was swiftly cut off by Stone's cup slamming down unto the table.

Roughly pushing back his bench Stone stood, and gathered his dishes. "Later Moss, Moth." he said shortly with a nod of his head at us. Then he turned and walked away, taking the newly formed thundercloud of tension with him.

"Hey! What just happened? He was happy a couple of minutes ago!" I asked everybody, completely and utterly confused.

Once again the others traded looks, then Firefly broke off his death glare at Moss and answered me quietly. "Stone, well, umm..." he sighed and continued. "He's Rayn's twin brother. But where Rayn is always in the spotlight because of his non-serious and outgoing nature, Stone is more quiet and serious, so he kinda gets pushed into the background. Which was fine with him, because he got to concentrate on what he loved, and the only thing he's better then his brother at, music. He's also sorta shy, which is why I'm surprised to see that you to were getting along so well - he doesn't normally open up that quickly." Neal said, taking a breath, but Wren quickly continued for him.

"But it was all good 'till the percussion parts for this years show got handed out. Well, you know that Stone's the Drum Captain right?" I nodded. "All of the chair auditions are done by blind testing. That's where the auditions are recorded onto cassette tapes and numbered, and no names are put on them, so that everyone has an equal chance, and there's no chance of favoritism. So that's how Stone made captain,"

"It's a position he's well earned!" Skink interrupted hotly, Wren nodded.

"Yes, he has. You see Cous - every year the Drum Captain gets the solo parts in the drum feature. But somehow Riktor decided that Rayn should have the solo parts, even though Rayn got sixth chair, and his brother got first. So even though he didn't ask for the parts, he got 'em. As you can well imagine, this didn't sit too well with Stone, and, well, ..." she trailed off.

After a brief moment in which no one spoke, Neal continued. "They got into a fight over it, and it quickly came to blows. Still neither one was willing to admit that they were wrong about fighting over it. It's gotten to the point that the mere mention of the other can set one of them off." he sighed, shaking his head. "It's hard to be around them without setting them off, but what's a friend to do except hang with them in tough times?"

Suddenly an unfortunately familiar voice crackled over the ancient speaker system in the mess hall. "Attention. Attention. You all have ten minutes to finish your meals. Then find your section leaders. You have sectionals starting in half an hour, so find out where your section is meeting, and what you have to bring to them. If any trash is left in the mess hall, each and every one of you will be running ten suicides on the marching field. No exceptions." Kelter snapped out, looking at Wren as he spoke the last words. His eyes cold and hard as they had ever been. After holding the entire band spellbound for about five minutes by the sheer and utter dislike blazing from his eyes, he turned sharply and marched off of the crude podium and out the door with an almost military precision, letting it slam shut behind him. Slowly conversation spread back throughout the crowded room.

Moss picked up his tray and stood. "I'll see you guys later then, gotta go find my se-le, ttyl!" he said quickly, walking off.

(a/n - 'se-le' is pronounced 'say-lay' and means SEction LEader; 'ttyl' is pronounced 'tile' and means Talk To Ya'll Later, at least in my band it does. Sorry for the interruption!)

Neal stared after him for a minute then shook his head as if to clear it. "Yeah, I gotta go too. Have to round me up some Newbies. Skink - we're meeting in Campfire Clearing. Bring drill charts, pocket charts, flip chart and lyre, and your practice trumpet. Probably water too, spread the word, 'kay?" he finished (Skink nodded) and stood, grabbing his stuff and leaving.

I glanced around , trying to spot Velt, who Wren had (thankfully!) pointed out to me earlier. Finally I spotted his streaked blond hair, he was standing by the door and talking to some boys who were obviously freshmen. Their height and nervousness gave them clearly away.

Quickly I turned to Wren, not wanting Velt to leave before I could get over there. "Hey, I spotted Velt. So I guess I'll see you after sectionals then." I said, she just nodded, craning her neck and trying to spot some of the other Guard, while still eating her spaghetti. Standing, I grabbed my tray and cup, and walked quickly over to the trash can, scraped off my tray, and deposited it and everything else on the dish carts. Then I headed over where still stood, talking to freshmen.

He glanced up when I walked over to the group, and a flash of recognition passed over his face. "Ahh, Moth. We'll be meeting in Tempo Cabin, it's the large guys cabin, in twenty minutes. Grab you sax and join us there. If it's cool with you I'll get your music and drill with theirs and give it to you then." he said, nodding his head towards the freshmen surrounding him.

"That works. Am I even allowed in the guys cabins?"

"Not usually. But we haven't ever had this happen before. So I'll check that out when I get the stuff. If not, we'll move, if so, well - then it's cool." I nodded, then took off to get my sax, knowing that it would probably take me the full twenty minutes just to find the guy's cabin.

a/n - holy cow! long chapter!!!!! ya'll owe me!!!! or not, since i have band camp next week and probally won't be posting 'till afterwords. it depend. we'll see how much energy have left. (it's supossed to thunderstorm severly on monday (the starting day), and tuesday tee-hee poor wittle newbabies (NOT!))

anywho - thanks:

E.P. : hope your shoulder feels better soon!

Anubuss : Welcome back!

BaritoneQueen : still, unfair!!! we have one week!!!! and (our school is doing sever cutbacks (no more colored paper!!!), we're at home on the marching feild too!!! i hope we can get the whole drill down in fourty-five hours! (nine hours a day, five days a week). and i'm glad you guys got yous all memorized. what's your playlist? thanks for your review!

Chramedprincess : Well i'm glad i was able to introduce you to it then! and i'm glad you love my story! (it makes me feel all warm and happy inside - or mabey thats just the coffee... jk!) out of curiosity, how many people are in your french horn section?

Jinxed n Cursed : three weeks!?! okay. i'm mad at you. that's unfair!!!! (j/k - although it is unfair!!!!) we have our marching feild between buildings (compleate with yard lines and markers, well, sometimes anyway). the foot ball feild's across a two-lane (soon to be four lane (hopefully) road). so we're between the band room and the marching feild too.

have a nice band camp every one. and if you already had it, then i hope it was nice! oh, and out of curiosity, what are your playlists? 'cause its always cool being jelious over other peoples playlists!

anywho - night all! and Beware of the Gonkey!!!!

-gryffyn