Drum Major Phoenix
Presents:
"Death of a Drum Major"
The game was over. The Steers, the home team, were victorious, winning the game 21 to 7.
But the most celebrating came from the marching band.
This was the last run-through of their show before they had to go to State the next day. It was a huge success—perfect pitch, timing, not one person messed up in the least bit. Tomorrow was a guaranteed Superior.
The seniors were making the most noise—after all, their last year would be a huge success.
Sakura, the assistant drum major, watched the partying from the front of the room. Her hat rested under her left arm, and her mace rested in her right hand. She felt like the only one that realized that unless the judges were watching that very show and grading them on it, tomorrow and that Superior weren't guaranteed at all.
But she couldn't hide that small, contagious smile that wormed its way onto her face.
When they were dismissed, she cut her way through the now-deserted football field, to the parking lot nearby. She sat down on the cement curb, her hat to her side, her mace in her hands as she absent-mindedly stroked it.
"Too excited to go home, too?"
Sakura looked up. There was the head drum major, Artemis. He was a good-looking blonde senior, sporting the same outfit Sakura had on. He held his hat in his right arm, and his mace was nowhere to be seen.
"Drum Major Artemis. Why aren't you heading back home yet? You've got fifteen miles to drive, best get going," Sakura replied, looking away from her superior and to the emptying parking lot before them.
Artemis sat down next to her. "I don't plan on going home. I'm thinking about spending the night." His voice held a great amount of joking in it, almost sarcasm, in a way. "What about you?"
Sakura still looked ahead of her, not bothering to turn to look at him to reply. "I, unlike you, live right in town, so I can take my time. And I plan on just doing that."
Artemis smiled. "We're both just savoring our good performance tonight."
Sakura smiled in return. "Yes. We both are."
Very few people had actually left the band room. Most of them were planning to spend the night, partying until three in the morning. Right now they were having an unplanned and going-with-the-flow improv piano get-together. Sara, a senior flute player, just finished playing a song—Chopsticks, to be precise.
"My turn!" called out Ray, their senior tenor saxophone player. He took Sara's spot and started playing that famous Jaws music.
As the two drum majors enjoyed their small conversation, someone approached them. They saw the shadow that stopped before them, and looked up.
A buff-looking, sweaty boy stood before them. He looked to be a junior or senior, and sported a football jersey from tonight's opposing team, the Huskies; therefore causing them to assume that he was a football player from said team. He shot a never-ending glare down at the two, and his hand was stuffed in his pocket, holding something, perhaps…
"Can we help you?" Artemis asked the football player.
The Husky started off his reply with a snort, but then spoke English. "Yeah, you sure can. You damn Steers have completely ruined the year for us Huskies."
"So, because we won this game, your year is down the drain now?" Sakura snorted back. How childish, she thought in her head.
The football playing Husky snarled. "No. Your damn marching band! You stole our show, and then got our credit and our scores for it!"
Artemis and Sakura cast glances at each other. They very well didn't steal their show, if anything, just one song. And it wasn't even the same arrangement, for mace's sake.
Artemis replied. "Sir, I think you're overreacting. Perhaps if you calm down—"
The boy pulled out what he hid in his pocket.
Sakura and Artemis shot up. Sakura backed away towards the fence behind them, dropping her mace; Artemis' eyes fired up. "What are you doing?"
The boy looked at him. "Our band deserves the glory! Not you! We can't make our show better, but we sure can hinder your show!"
With that the gun in his hand went off.
"Me next," Sam, their piccolo-playing junior, piped in.
She sat down on the piano bench. "Any requests?"
"How about something lively?"
"La Cucaracha!" someone yelled in reply.
"I don't know that one. What about this?"
She started to play.
Meanwhile, Sakura felt a sharp pain in her abdominal region. She heard a voice call out, "Sakura!" She saw, though quickly-blurring vision, the sousaphone and snare drummer that were dragged along to help clean up the concession stand tackle the football player. A fight, actually, broke out between them, and by the time it broke apart, a slightly bloody sousaphone and snare drummer held captive a badly-bleeding football player.
Her legs started to give out. She nearly hit the ground, but felt someone—Artemis, to be exact—catch her. Setting himself down onto the pavement, he laid her head in his lap.
He looked down at her, before looking away. "Don't just stand there! Go get help!" he shouted off at the two that held the Husky. The sousaphone player shot off, running to who knows where. Artemis looked back down at Sakura. "Hang in there, Sakura," he whispered in a breaking voice, taking her hands in his.
Sakura managed a weak smile. "I can't guarantee anything," she whispered back.
The two stayed there for who knows how long—it felt like time had stopped; but in actually it was only mere seconds. Then Sakura got worse. She started to cough up blood. The blurred vision became worse.
She couldn't see it, but she could feel Artemis growing more and more worried. He held on to her as tightly as he could, as if he could prevent her from heading off to the afterlife.
"It's over for me, Artemis," the soft, barely audible voice of Sakura whispered.
"But at least Marching Band can live on."
Sam's song was a short, slow, kind of sad-sounding song. It somehow spoke of a light tragedy with its melody and tempo. It was like it spoke of a missing love, or even death if you had a vivid-enough imagination. It was a short song, starting off slow, soft and sorrowful, before the dynamics made it sound a little bold. Then the dynamics made it sound sad again, before it slowed down and died.
When she finished, some of the band students scoffed. "What kind of song was that for this moment?" "A sad song! Why play one when we're happy!"
But little did any of them know, that song was played for a purpose.
It accompanied Sakura to the afterlife.
A/N: Updated to fix site issues that were unfixable before, as well as to clean up the story a bit. The song featured in this story is unnamed, but there is a link to the one I had in mind while writing this story, located on my profile.