A/N: This is still my favorite of the existing chapters. I think this was the chapter where I figured out what the hell was up with Marie and where she started to come together as a character. This was also the chapter where I learned that Marie and the twins have probably been really good friends for years. The previous chapters now reflect that.

On the whole, this chapter is virtually identical to its previous incarnation.

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 Nine: De-Nile and the Stupid Pit

It was sizzling hot outside and the unfortunate band members sweated under the burning sun. They cursed the heat and the sweat dripping into their eyes like angry little flies. The chalk was practically melting in their hands and their charts were adhering to their skin because of the sweat. Standing at attention on the hot blacktop wasn't helping matters.

Gobber hadn't called them to parade rest yet. He was busy examining the next few pages of charts and enjoying the occasional breath of wind that being up in the tower provided.

He hadn't noticed the death glares from the older members of the band.

Yet.

"I hope he's not thinking about giving us more closer charts." Hiccup muttered. It would be just like Gobber to do that. Give them the next set of closer charts when they had barely five minutes left in morning drill practice. He didn't care if they were through the entire ballad and had charted a decent chunk of the closer this morning; any more charts could wait until the next stretch of outdoor practice.

"He'd better let us go in soon." Marie grumbled from his left, shifting her weight from foot to foot in the most unobtrusive way possible. "The giant bruise on my ass isn't getting any smaller."

"It's not on your ass. It's on your leg." Hiccup corrected in a hiss, irritation washing through him. "And for the hundredth time, I'm sorry."

"Your bony knees are genetic, you can't help that." Marie shook her head briskly, chasing away a fly. "But you could use some work on your sense of spatial perception. Your knee almost had anal sex with my ass."

Hiccup's brain stalled out just trying to figure out how he was supposed to respond to comment like that or, indeed, if he was supposed to respond at all. Marie was exaggerating; the bruise was high enough on her leg that it was low on her butt-cheek, but it was by no means close enough to validate her comment.

Personally, Hiccup blamed his dad for yesterday's Electricsquirm Debacle, as it was being called now. Stoic had not been excruciatingly clear on just how fast an Electricsquirm really was in the right circumstances and just how hard they were to catch in the dark. The more daring members of the woodwinds had put themselves to good use, there had been a lot of yelling, and those who had participated in trying to capture the small, electric dragon only looked marginally less battered today in comparison to yesterday. Hiccup had not endeared himself to anyone because his plan for cornering the dragon had fallen on its face. Just to be clear, he had not seen the chair until he had tripped over it.

The bony knees were just something he couldn't help.

"Hah! Your knee almost got some!" Snotlout crowed quietly from his spot several steps behind Marie and to the side.

Hiccup grinned at his cousin. "Jealous?"

"You want a matching set?" Snotlout threatened, indicating the non-black eye.

"Hey, we're still at attention! Act like it!" reprimanded the nearest drum major and three seniors lapsed back into silence. Marie continued to fidget and make faces. Hiccup's knee had left a pretty sizeable bruise on her backside.

So they continued to stand at attention and sweat. Hiccup shifted his feet a little as well, just to make sure the soles of his shoes were not melting into the pavement. The black rubbery crack-sealant was a bit soft today and the twins had been stomping their shoes on the sealant every chance they had gotten just to see the tread-marks.

He looked up towards the Ruffnut and Tuffnut, the former halfway between the forty-five and the fifty, and the latter on the fifty. They were being remarkably still and patient, though he attributed that to the fact they were not standing next to each other and therefore could not insult one another out of the corner of their mouths. Fishlegs was off by the thirty-five close to the sideline and if Hiccup turned his head and leaned back a little, he could just see Astrid standing all the way out by her lonesome near the fifteen yard line. She looked about as miserable as Hiccup felt right now.

"Relax!" Gobber called out suddenly and there was a collective sigh of relief as the band all but collapsed into parade rest.

"Well, ye all did good this morning! That was a decent chunk of the closer! And the entire ballad yesterday! I think we could get the whole show charted b'fore the end of the week!" He gave them another one those grins that the band had long since associated with that of a sadistic man. "Who wants to get started on the next set of closer charts b'fore we go in?"

The death glares increased by a factor of ten and so did the groans. This time, Gobber did notice it.

"Alright, alright ye pansies." he relented. "I know better than to get between teenagers an' their next meal. Pack it in."

There was another relieved sigh and the poor teenagers promptly went to slumping all over the place, dropping most semblance of proper posture. They dragged themselves to the sideline with groans and grumbles about what part of their body hurt the most.

"Ashlyn, you got fourteen laps to run!" Hiccup shouted at his nimrod rookie before she could even think about making a dash for it. She had practically flown to the sideline to get her cooler, probably hoping to get out of running out of any laps today. "Steiny's watching!"

Acting like she was being repeatedly stabbed in the gut with a rusty jagged knife, Ashlyn dropped everything and started her third round of laps that week. She was being impossible on the whole 'taking orders from the veterans' business, but at least she would gain enough stamina to survive the season.

Things weren't going to clear up on their own like Hiccup had optimistically hoped for. It was time to talk to Gobber. It was also time to take Ashlyn aside and read her the riot act.

Before Hiccup could get his things, Astrid came wandering up and plopped her forehead solidly on his shoulder with a tired groan.

"Kill me..." she requested. "I didn't get any sleep last night. That damn Nadder shrieked its head off every time I tried to sleep. I chased it off twice but it came back and it didn't shut up until nearly four in the morning and I still couldn't get any sleep because the sun was coming up..."

"I think we're in a hatching cycle, meaning they're going to start looking for mates around this time." Hiccup informed her, making her groan at the thought. "They usually clutch around mid-winter."

"You mean that Nadder's prostituting itself right outside my window?" Astrid growled, anger sparking half-heartedly in her eyes.

"You don't have to say it like that, but... probably." Hiccup shrugged. He didn't exactly pay attention to dragon mating rituals. According to his dad, there was a lot of fire and crazy, low-to-the-ground stunt-flying involved. Not something a sane person stuck around to witness.

"I've got my RenFair ax. Next time that Nadder comes by and starts shrieking, I swear to the gods..." Astrid made several violent gestures with her hands that made Hiccup glad she wasn't holding anything long or pointy at the moment.

She did look like she had spent the night not sleeping and compensated for it with half a pot of coffee. That jittery, not-awake-but-not-exhausted, kept-upright-solely-by-caffeine-and-adrenaline-and -willpower appearance. She wore it unusually well and that was one of the things Hiccup really liked about her. Astrid could go through a windstorm and walk out looking like a million bucks. Even now, sweaty with straggling hair escaping her thick braid and hands colored blue by the chalk, she was still a dream.

"What are you smiling at?" Astrid asked, her mouth curving upwards in response to his smile.

"Air conditioning." Hiccup blurted out, hoping that strange tone in his voice wasn't fear.

"Oh." Astrid sounded disappointed and some of the sparkle in her eyes dimmed. "Yeah, it'll be good to get back inside."

She turned her back to him, grabbed her cooler and started across the grassy median. Hiccup suddenly felt very stupid. No, he was wallowing in stupidity. He had dug himself a nice stupid pit and was up to his elbows in stupid. He grabbed two handfuls of his hair and tried to yank it out, wishing there was a table nearby so he could bang his head on it.

"Air conditioning? Why the hell did I say that?" He couldn't believe his traitorous brain. "You don't say that to girls when they ask you what you're smiling about!" He smacked his forehead with the heels of his hands several times. "I am an idiot!"

"I won't argue that." Marie commented lightly as she passed him. "Even I'd walk away."

"Marie, you're supposed to support me."

"I do support you. You screw up and I tell you where it happened."

"Well, where did I screw it up this time?" Hiccup asked, shaking his head.

"The air-con reply didn't help, but you've kinda taken this as far as it can go, so five words for you." Marie held up the corresponding number of fingers. "Shut up and kiss her."

"That's not gonna help." Hiccup deadpanned.

"Yes it will." Marie shrugged. "Well, it'll help the rest of us when it comes to you making a fool out of yourself. The next time you make a fool out of yourself, we'll be able to look back and say 'at least he managed to bag that Astrid Hofferson chick'."

"And you get twenty-three bucks." Hiccup added, once more scowling over that bet.

"I need a new computer mouse. The touchpad on my laptop is driving me nuts." Marie admitted. She offered him a brief smile. "Don't rip your hair out over it."

Marie's "advice" left Hiccup feeling less reassured, as he should have suspected. As insightful as she could be at times, her advice on romance and crushes often fell rather short of the mark.

And more than once, Hiccup felt like he was too.

Some days he was Mister Smooth; doing most everything right and his jokes were actually funny. Other days, he said dumb things about air conditioning and splashed around in the stupid pit again.

Unfortunately, the days in the stupid pit just about outnumbered the days as Mister Smooth.

Sighing, Hiccup turned around to collect his stuff, only to find Snotlout, Fishlegs and the twins staring him down.

"What are you guys looking at?"

"I just wanna say that I'm really glad I'm not you. Like, really glad." Tuffnut said. He had been holding his marching posture (straight spine, shoulders back, chin up) since leaving the field, but he dropped it over the course of the sentence until he was back in his customary slouch.

"At the rate you're going, your knee is gonna be the only part of you that will have ever gotten some." Snotlout stated with the air of one who had seen the future and didn't like what he had saw.

Hiccup threw up his hands in exasperation. "What is your obsession with me 'getting some'?" he asked. "Actually, what is your obsession with making sure I get together with Astrid?!"

"'Cause I don't wanna tell any future girlfriends that my loser cousin is sharing my apartment because he can't get a girlfriend." Snotlout replied, his tone screaming "duh, moron".

"I am not a loser!" Hiccup snapped as his (traitor!) friends walked past him.

"Yeah, but you're kind of skirting the edge of it. You'll fast-track your way into it at this rate." Ruffnut informed him, her voice so dry it could have caught fire.

"You people have no faith in me! Me and Astrid will be together before the end of the year!" Hiccup shouted, shaking his fists at their backsides in a way that he hoped made him look defiant and menacing, and not like a plucked shrubbery waving in the breeze. "And I'll totally have my own apartment!"

He dropped his arms and slumped, covering his face with his hands and still feeling vastly stupid. He could have told Astrid how pretty she looked even though she was strung out on coffee and no sleep, but nooo! He had to blurt out something about air conditioning!

I blame this on having little to no positive feminine influence in my life. Hiccup decided, ignoring the giggling and sniggering from his fellow band-mates. Grandma's half insane and Aunt Aggie never really twigged to the fact I'm a guy. Mrs. Overland is nice, but her brain is addled somehow, 'cause no one can be that cheerful all the time. And then with Marie and Ruffnut, they're all crazy...

He grabbed his things and headed for the door.

His egg-salad sandwich looked very unappetizing.

Hiccup normally liked egg salad. He didn't have it very often because Stoic didn't make lists when he did the shopping; he just grabbed whatever happened to catch his eye and could decently replace a home-cooked meal. So when eggs did come home, Hiccup tried to do something with them before they went bad.

But today, the egg salad just looked like a pile of yellow-ish maggots in eating something fuzzy and rotten in a trashcan. Making a face, he wrapped the sandwich back up and tossed it back into the cooler. Maybe it would look a little more like food once he got home.

His pudding still looked like something edible.

It was Wednesday and general fatigue over the last two days had caught up to the band members. Hiccup hadn't heard one bad joke, crack about bodily functions or shouted color name in the last fifteen minutes. The twins were considerably less boisterous and Snotlout hadn't even tried to start an argument with Marie; both seeming content to just mind their own business. Fishlegs was buried in the Dragon Manual Vol. 2. Marie's parents had placed an order for two sets rather than one and she was trying to somehow remove the extra copies from her house.

Hiccup had been trying not to look at Astrid all during lunch and he was pretty sure she was doing the same, because she had pushed her cooler between them rather than sit next to him. She was also sitting at an angle. He felt spurned.

I never should have even opened my mouth. Air conditioning... Stupid, stupid!

"Aaah! Dammit." Marie had acquired a half-empty bottle and stain of red Gatorade on her clothes, now spreading down her shirt and soaking into her shorts with startling speed. "I'll be right back." She grabbed her backpack, stood up and headed for the doors.

Astrid watched her walk past with a thoughtful look on her face.

"I'll be right back too." she announced and got up to follow.

"Me too!" Ruffnut leapt on the social cue, literally and figuratively, and trailed after both blonde girls.

"Anyone think it's weird how girls just go to the bathroom in packs?" Fishlegs wondered when they were out of earshot. "Like, one gets up and they all just have to follow? What kind of psychology is behind that?"

Snotlout waved a hand dismissively. "They probably off to verbally abuse Hiccup while he can't hear them."

"What?" Hiccup shot a glare at his cousin.

"Hey, you totally screwed up with Astrid earlier, so they're off to defile your good name and drag it through the crapper." Tuffnut put in knowledgeably. He knew this stuff. He'd shared a room with his sister for six years. "It's what girls do."

"That's not what Astrid does." Hiccup said, both in defense of the colorguard captain and himself.

"Yeah right. But I guarantee they're talking about guys in there." Snotlout said firmly. He turned to Hiccup. "If your name turns up in the conversation, I'll give you my carrot sticks."

"Give me that Swiss cake roll instead and I might consider it a deal." Hiccup haggled.

Snotlout hoarded his Swiss cake roll jealously. "Not unless you can talk my mom out of her health food kick!"

"You know that'll never happen. It's an unfair bet." Hiccup pointed out. "Chocolate or nothing!"

"Okay, okay, I'll buy you something from the mini-mart." Snotlout conceded, though he had no idea why he had at all, seeing as he wasn't getting anything out of this other than the satisfaction that the girls were probably bashing his cousin's name.

When they sat in silence for a moment longer, Tuffnut spoke up.

"So are we spying on them or what?"

Marie wasn't sure why Astrid accompanying her into the bathroom, but she bet it had something to do with Hiccup's epic flub earlier. On the other hand, she hadn't the slightest clue why Ruffnut was tagging along behind them.

Not that she was about to complain. Between the two of them, it would be easier to get Astrid to talk.

Ruffnut must have been experiencing similar thoughts, because the moment the trio exited through the orange doors, they both reached out to grab Astrid by the arms and haul her bodily into the girls' restroom.

"Hey, what-" Astrid started to protest, but the other two blondes were already hustling her through the swinging door.

Astrid slipped a little on the tiled floor, abruptly wishing that she had not taken off her shoes at the start of lunch (even if it felt sooo good not to have her shoes on). She didn't resist much when Marie and Ruffnut pushed her back into the wall of sinks and promptly boxed her in.

"Alright Astrid, spill it." Ruffnut commanded.

"What?" The colorguard captain found herself trying to further the distance between herself and the two girls as much as she could.

"Hiccup flubbed and now you want to talk about it, right?" Marie questioned. "No one pees much during band camp, so you followed me to the bathroom for another reason."

Astrid hesitated before nodding, a tiny gesture. Marie had gotten oddly intimidating in the last couple of minutes and it wasn't the usual "psycho-crazy, but otherwise mostly harmless" intimidating that she normally exuded. This was more like "gun to your forehead, so speak goddammit" sort of intimidating. It was not helped by the stain of red Gatorade, which her yellow shirt made look more like blood than spilled sports drink.

And Ruffnut, who looked frighteningly like she might bounce the colorguard captain's head off a sink if Astrid didn't comply.

"Seriously, do you guys have to look like vultures and me as road kill?" Astrid wondered. She was unnerved a little bit, but she decided to hide it under sarcasm. Eighteen year old colorguard captains who dealt with sore arm muscles, bruises and snot-nosed rookies on a regular basis did not get unnerved.

And if Ruffnut and Marie thought they were getting under her skin about Hiccup just because she was low on sleep... Well, they had another thing coming!

Marie shrugged, hefted her bag and shut herself in on the stalls. Ruffnut slid up in her place and loomed over Astrid with big, wide eyes.

"Can you see the pyramids?" she questioned.

"What?" Astrid blinked.

"Is there a bright blue sky overhead? Is there sand everywhere? Mud? Reeds? Crocs?" Ruffnut grabbed her by the shoulders and started to shake her. "Wake up and smell the hippo poop, Astrid! You're standing knee-deep in denial!"

"I am not in denial!" Astrid shoved the other girl back just enough to reassert the boundaries of her personal space. Sniggering came from the locked bathroom stall. "And you shut up!"

"Well, then you've gotta be PMSing. Marie's stuff for that--"

"I am not PMSing!"

"Ten to one says you are." Marie put in, the scowl all but audible in her voice. "By the end of the week, we're gonna be knee-deep in sharks. Big-ass great whites with rows of teeth. Big teeth." She made a disgruntled noise. "Damn McClintock effect."

"That hasn't been proven."

"Your uterus might disagree with you."

"I'm not in denial and I'm not PMSing." Astrid said firmly, crossing her arms.

"Soo... That leaves us with you walking in here because you wanted to bash Hiccup's name in private." Ruffnut deduced, starting up a slow pace back and forth in front of the colorguard captain.

"I'm not going to bash Hiccup's name. I don't do that to people." Astrid shook her head, but she wasn't surprised Ruffnut would think of something like that. She did want to talk, but this wasn't how she picture the conversation getting started.

"Then what are you gonna do?" Ruffnut asked, trying not to look like she had really, really been hoping to drag Hiccup's name through the mud.

"Astrid, are you seriously gonna deny us -- three teenage girls who make it their business to gossip -- the chance to mock the idiot you jilted you?" Marie wondered from the inside of the stall.

"Hiccup did not jilt me!" Astrid said in defense of the auburn-haired teen.

"He sure did something." Ruffnut pointed out, crossing her arms. "One word about air conditioners and you were stomping away like he gave you underwear for Christmas."

"I was not stomping!"

Ruffnut clucked her tongue disapprovingly and shared an exasperated look with the closed stall door. No doubt Marie was wearing a similar expression on the other side. Astrid's frown deepened considerably. This entire thing felt a little too choreographed to be completely spur of the moment. Which meant a couple of things, but one thing most of all.

They were in cahoots.

If Marie could think up a suicidal plan, Ruffnut would be crazy enough to go along with it. And if Ruffnut could think up a suicidal plan, Marie would be crazy enough to go along with it.

There could be nothing more terrifying when these two loopy nutcases conspired.

And they were clearly out to get Astrid.

"Look, whatever you guys are thinking, I can guarantee that it's the exact opposite." Astrid assured them, though she was not one hundred percent sure of that herself. "Hiccup and I-- We're just good friends."

Marie laughed derisively.

"Hippo poop, Astrid." Ruffnut repeated, her arms still crossed and a frustrated scowl played across her lips. "Do you smell it or not?"

"I don't know why you guys are making such a big deal out of this." Astrid forced a laugh into her voice to show that she didn't think this a big deal at all. "I've known Hiccup since kindergarten. I mean, we've known each other a long time, so of course I like him or else I still wouldn't be friends with him."

Marie sighed heavily, like the colorguard captain was completely missing the point. "Astrid, maybe you could stop being a stubborn bitch for ten seconds-- Holy hell... Where did these things come from?"

"What is it? What did you find?" Astrid wondered, almost glad for the deviation.

Marie didn't reply for a moment, but they could hear cloth rustling faintly. Then: "My boobs."

Ruffnut broke out into sniggers almost instantly.

"Seriously? How did you lose them?"

"Shut up!" Marie snapped, but she was starting to laugh. "C'mon guys, I wasn't exactly well-endowed last year and all of a sudden... poof. How did I not notice a couple of extra inches? Seriously, remind me to go buy new bras this weekend."

"Go buy new bras this weekend." Astrid said in a dull voice.

"I didn't mean now." Marie scowled and let out another sigh. "Look Miss Funny-pants, what I was trying to say earlier was that if you could stop being a stubborn bitch for ten seconds and actually look at Hiccup when he talks to you, you're gonna notice a few things."

It was Astrid's turn to scowl. "Like what?"

Marie took the opportunity to come out of the stall to the sound of a flushing toilet, now divested of her soiled clothes and wearing clean ones. She didn't immediately answer Astrid's question, set her bag by one of the sinks, and ripped a sheet of brown towel off the dispenser. Folding it in half, she covered up the sink's drain and turned the water on, filling up the basin.

"Astrid, every time he feels like he screws up with you, do you know who he talks to?" Marie pointed a finger at herself. "Me. He comes to me and asks where he went wrong." She turned the water off and dunked the stained part of her yellow shirt into the sink. Red immediately began to seep from it.

"He does?" Astrid straightened slightly.

In retrospect, she supposed that the news should not have been too much of a surprise. Hiccup didn't have too many people to go to if he needed to talk, especially when it came to things like his feelings (men didn't talk about those with other men). Marie must represent a good neutral party, to him.

"Oh, you bet he does." Ruffnut said, nodding. "Saw him do it five times in two hours."

"Freshman year. Before the Hardwood Homecoming." Marie added for clarification.

Astrid nodded in remembrance. Hiccup had run up to her five times for two hours, tripped over his words four times and ran off. The fifth time, he had successfully asked if she'd like to accompany him to the Homecoming dance after the game.

If Hiccup went to Marie each time he felt that he had screwed up, then that meant those four times he had stumbled on his words and run off, he had gone straight back to Marie for advice.

"Astrid, you know that smile he had right before he blurted something about air conditioners?" the clarinetist inquired. "That was the stupid smile he gets whenever he thinks about you." She squeezed the water out of the soiled yellow shirt. Most of the red had already faded and was floating around in the sink. "And I know it sounds creepy, but he keeps a little secret sketchbook and doodles pictures of you in it when he supposed to be taking notes. Trust me, I've seen it."

Astrid turned a brilliant red and Ruffnut leered rather smugly. No wonder Hiccup considered Marie a safely neutral party. Ruffnut wouldn't have kept something like that secret for five seconds. Frankly, Astrid couldn't believe that Hiccup doodled pictures of her. It was creepy, from a casual angle, but somehow, it came across her mind as sweet.

But she couldn't figure out where everyone was getting the idea that they liked each other. As in 'more than a platonic manner'. Nothing had stood out in Hiccup's body language. He was a good kid; even-tempered and well-adjusted despite his less-than stellar history with his father. He laughed and smiled and teased her and took her punches in stride, but the relationship didn't feel like anything special. Just a normal, if close, friendship.

"He doesn't like me like that." Astrid said, though more to herself.

"How do you know?" Ruffnut asked, poking her in the shoulder. "I think Marie just threw enough evidence at you to prove otherwise."

"We're just friends." Astrid repeated emphatically, batting the trumpeter's hand away. "You're reading way too far into this."

In order to deter further questioning/conversation (because she didn't want to talk about it anymore), the colorguard captain quickly extracted herself out of the gap between the two sinks and brushed past Ruffnut and headed out the door.

"What are you doing out here?!" she shouted, causing four familiar boys to scarper for the safety of the men's restroom.

The door eased shut, muffling Astrid's stomping footsteps.

"Poor Hiccup," Marie sighed a little dramatically. "If he's not crushed already..."

"I don't think she's smelling hippo poop." Ruffnut commented thoughtfully.

"We gotta do something before I lose that bet."

"I'd help, but..."

"I'll throw in a Hershey's bar for you, if I win."

"Deal."

They shook on it.

Operation: Get Hiccup and Astrid to Shut Up And Kiss was officially on.

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