Chapter Text
There’s nothing like marching around a field for 8 hours a day in what feels like 100 degrees with a 30 pound metal beast wrapped around your torso, hoping you remember where to march to next while you play your music that you spent all previous day and night memorizing. Watching your Drum Major and listening to them yelling when to move and hold as you do a run through of your show you’ve been learning for the past week. Praying that the Color Guard member 3 steps away from you doesn’t hit you with their flag and that the drumline doesn’t deafen you. When the day’s over, you hear the same words over and over again in your head.
“-DETAIL, TEN HUTT!”
“-WITH PRIDE!!!”
“Nine, ten, eleven, twelve-and-move! Two, three, four-and-hold!”
“Can we take a water break?”
“Run it back to set 6! Hustle back!”
And the award-winning “One more time!”
It’s been Dipper Pines’s summer for the past three years, except this is his first year with the metal beast.
But he loves it. He doesn’t know where he’d be without marching band. Stuck to the couch playing video games all day every day for three months, most likely.
He knows all of that hard work pays off when they finish that first halftime show of the season. When that final note ends and the whole band’s eyes are switching between their Drum Major and Director’s faces, tired and proud smiles hurting their chapped cheeks as they catch their breath. Even though they weren’t perfect, they did their best and they all know that.
Dipper lives for that feeling.