Out Here on the Other Side (Of a Jet Black Mirror)
Title: Out Here on the Other Side (Of a Jet Black Mirror)
Pairing: None
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 1281
Summary: Killjoys never die.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not own MCR nor the Killjoys. I have my own Killjoys outfit, that's pretty much it.
Author's Note: My brain is weird. I really have no idea how it comes up with these things. I read this one fic a little while ago, and it kinda got me a little fixated on The Black Parade. So, this happened. Set almost immediately after the SING video.
Sometimes, ideas take on a life of their own. Belief can change the world. Nothing is truly gone as long as someone out there has kept it their heart.
We all know killjoys never die.
The frenzy of the battle was gone now. All was quiet and calm, just as Better Living Industries dictated. There were still traces of burnt things in the air - crisped plastic and cloth, and fried flesh. Burn marks liberally peppered the lobby, scars of dirtied, melted plastic. Easy enough to fix, though.
The bodies had been bagged, tagged appropriately, and delivered to their proper places. BLI would salvage what they could of the fallen SCARECROW units.
The Killjoys however...
They were special. This particular lab wasn’t used quite as much as some others. In the morning the bodies would be processed, cleaned up. Who knows what they could’ve picked up in the Zones, with its dirt and heat and radiation. Nasty brutes, those zonerunners.
Four neat white packets contained the remains of those dangerous terrorists popularly known as the Fabulous Killjoys. Not that BLI would admit it, but there were those in Battery City that would mourn them too.
The young ones, who yearned and searched for something they didn’t really know was missing, but could feel that was needed. Even some of the older people, who remembered what it had been like before, who never could forget their old dreams despite the pills they ate everyday.
Anyway. They were laid out carefully, like silkworms to be unwrapped, taken apart until there was nothing left, and made into something nice.
Stark white light illuminated the room. It was the kind that washed everything out, sapping life as it chased away the shadows.
The opaque white plastic of the body bags began to disintegrate, flaking away in curls of ashy gray. What had before been still was shifting, hands reaching out as if to grasp something, or maybe it was to offer another chance as they tore through the wrappings.
He sat up, brushing off the stringy remnants of the body bag, watching his comrades do much the same.
“Woah. Pa...Gerard! Your hair…” said the tattooed younger man from the table beside him.
Gerard shook his head experimentally. He could feel that his hair was now close-cropped.
“Frank?”
“It’s all white now,” Mikey said from behind him, looking quite at home in the long jacket despite his wild blonde-streaked hair.
“Well damn,” Ray said, absently picking out a stray filament of plastic from his dark curls.
Where had before been color was now black and white. The scavenged casual clothes were transformed into a kind of uniform reminiscent of old-fashioned marching bands - but hardly a uniform really, as each man’s clothing was unique to its owner. Perhaps it was a more formal costume than before, but no less bold.
The foursome that had stormed Better Living’s headquarters merely hours before was up and about again. They made their way unhurriedly to the ground floor. Their presence changed the light around them, as if they carried sunlight with them through the cold standard BLI illumination.
Look closely, and you’d see the black of their clothes wasn’t really so black at all. Under the deep black, just beyond the shades of shadows that contained secrets, the color remained, slick iridescence swirling in impatience to be free. Though it might seem there was less outright color, their presence was no less intense. They carried the same brightness and defiance that they had before.
The leader, his long crimson hair now a pure white, smiled just a little, and laid a couple of black-gloved fingers on the wall as they walked.
The hues ran wild. His fingers left behind a ribbon of bright sunshining yellow, shading into red, then through purple into blue and green and back through the rainbow.
The tattooed younger man just behind him grinned from behind long black hair and added his own jagged lines to the opposite wall, gouges of color now zig-zagging behind them.
Their comrades added their own marks, staccato streaks and dots of colors left behind like a secret code.
Behind them the colors started to bleed, no, to bloom across the black and white walls, spreading into every level of the building, like watercolors on paper.
The elevator trip down was uneventful, despite all the activity that had occurred only hours before. It was well into the middle of the night, teetering on the edge of early morning.
They passed out of the scarred atrium and onto the walkway.
The car was right where they left it.
Behind them the headquarters of Better Living Industries collapsed in a brilliant implosion, falling in on itself starting from the wing where they had awoken. Bright yellow-white flames haloed the building, then fractured into a rainbow of fireworks.
With the heat and light of the flames at their backs they headed towards the plaza at the center of Battery City.
There they found exactly what they expected. A drum kit was set up in the middle of the open space, several guitars and microphone stands arrayed in front of it. A shaggy-haired blonde man was making minute adjustments to the kit.
“Bob!” Ray exclaimed.
The man standing by the instruments smiled. He was clad in a similar sort of uniform as the others.
“Hey guys. I got everything set up. Been waiting for you.”
The other four men surrounded him, embracing to reaffirm the presence of a good friend thought lost.
“Yeah, great, love the hugs, we gonna do a show or what?” Bob asked with good-natured grumpiness.
They all laughed, relishing the feeling of being here and together and about to do something amazing. They took their places, and as the sun rose, began to play.
Nothing you can say can stop me going home…
Awake and unafraid
As the first rays of sunlight filtered through the skyscrapers, it revealed the band wasn’t alone. From all through the city, people were filtering in, hearing the music as a call to something more, a way to find something that they’d been looking for, the ache inside finally easing just a little as they listened.
We’re gonna blow this off and show you what we do
As these things do, it went viral. The InnerNet was streaming live from the center of Battery City within five minutes after sunrise. On a secure channel of course, but there were more in the know than you’d think.
Defiant to the end we hear the call to carry on, we’ll carry on
The music spread just as the color had. In fact, though few really noticed it, the color was coming back into Battery City. The dim grayish hues were becoming brighter, regaining the vitality that Better Living had sapped away. Though they may have looked like avatars of Death, it was life that flowed from the epicenter where the band stood.
The mind-blowing soundwaves rippled outwards, as powerful as an earthquake and just as life-changing. It ran right into the surrounding desert. Killjoys began appearing among the crowd. And now, the city-dwellers and the Zonerunners didn’t look so different as before. Everywhere, there was color and light and life.
The Fabulous Black Parade shook the city down to its foundations, music penetrating into all the cellars and tunnels and walls and steel. They were prisms, lasers, revealing and destroying and creating. For a fraction of a second, a tiny flash, all was gray and dim and made of rubble and spikes. Then everything became as it should be. A place where art and life could flourish, where your true self could be free.
JUST GET UP AND GO!
ETA: Realized I should add a link to the amazing AU that inspired this story: The Fall and Rise of the Black Parade. If you thought my little story was good, this one will leave you stunned.
Pairing: None
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 1281
Summary: Killjoys never die.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not own MCR nor the Killjoys. I have my own Killjoys outfit, that's pretty much it.
Author's Note: My brain is weird. I really have no idea how it comes up with these things. I read this one fic a little while ago, and it kinda got me a little fixated on The Black Parade. So, this happened. Set almost immediately after the SING video.
Sometimes, ideas take on a life of their own. Belief can change the world. Nothing is truly gone as long as someone out there has kept it their heart.
We all know killjoys never die.
The frenzy of the battle was gone now. All was quiet and calm, just as Better Living Industries dictated. There were still traces of burnt things in the air - crisped plastic and cloth, and fried flesh. Burn marks liberally peppered the lobby, scars of dirtied, melted plastic. Easy enough to fix, though.
The bodies had been bagged, tagged appropriately, and delivered to their proper places. BLI would salvage what they could of the fallen SCARECROW units.
The Killjoys however...
They were special. This particular lab wasn’t used quite as much as some others. In the morning the bodies would be processed, cleaned up. Who knows what they could’ve picked up in the Zones, with its dirt and heat and radiation. Nasty brutes, those zonerunners.
Four neat white packets contained the remains of those dangerous terrorists popularly known as the Fabulous Killjoys. Not that BLI would admit it, but there were those in Battery City that would mourn them too.
The young ones, who yearned and searched for something they didn’t really know was missing, but could feel that was needed. Even some of the older people, who remembered what it had been like before, who never could forget their old dreams despite the pills they ate everyday.
Anyway. They were laid out carefully, like silkworms to be unwrapped, taken apart until there was nothing left, and made into something nice.
Stark white light illuminated the room. It was the kind that washed everything out, sapping life as it chased away the shadows.
The opaque white plastic of the body bags began to disintegrate, flaking away in curls of ashy gray. What had before been still was shifting, hands reaching out as if to grasp something, or maybe it was to offer another chance as they tore through the wrappings.
He sat up, brushing off the stringy remnants of the body bag, watching his comrades do much the same.
“Woah. Pa...Gerard! Your hair…” said the tattooed younger man from the table beside him.
Gerard shook his head experimentally. He could feel that his hair was now close-cropped.
“Frank?”
“It’s all white now,” Mikey said from behind him, looking quite at home in the long jacket despite his wild blonde-streaked hair.
“Well damn,” Ray said, absently picking out a stray filament of plastic from his dark curls.
Where had before been color was now black and white. The scavenged casual clothes were transformed into a kind of uniform reminiscent of old-fashioned marching bands - but hardly a uniform really, as each man’s clothing was unique to its owner. Perhaps it was a more formal costume than before, but no less bold.
The foursome that had stormed Better Living’s headquarters merely hours before was up and about again. They made their way unhurriedly to the ground floor. Their presence changed the light around them, as if they carried sunlight with them through the cold standard BLI illumination.
Look closely, and you’d see the black of their clothes wasn’t really so black at all. Under the deep black, just beyond the shades of shadows that contained secrets, the color remained, slick iridescence swirling in impatience to be free. Though it might seem there was less outright color, their presence was no less intense. They carried the same brightness and defiance that they had before.
The leader, his long crimson hair now a pure white, smiled just a little, and laid a couple of black-gloved fingers on the wall as they walked.
The hues ran wild. His fingers left behind a ribbon of bright sunshining yellow, shading into red, then through purple into blue and green and back through the rainbow.
The tattooed younger man just behind him grinned from behind long black hair and added his own jagged lines to the opposite wall, gouges of color now zig-zagging behind them.
Their comrades added their own marks, staccato streaks and dots of colors left behind like a secret code.
Behind them the colors started to bleed, no, to bloom across the black and white walls, spreading into every level of the building, like watercolors on paper.
The elevator trip down was uneventful, despite all the activity that had occurred only hours before. It was well into the middle of the night, teetering on the edge of early morning.
They passed out of the scarred atrium and onto the walkway.
The car was right where they left it.
Behind them the headquarters of Better Living Industries collapsed in a brilliant implosion, falling in on itself starting from the wing where they had awoken. Bright yellow-white flames haloed the building, then fractured into a rainbow of fireworks.
With the heat and light of the flames at their backs they headed towards the plaza at the center of Battery City.
There they found exactly what they expected. A drum kit was set up in the middle of the open space, several guitars and microphone stands arrayed in front of it. A shaggy-haired blonde man was making minute adjustments to the kit.
“Bob!” Ray exclaimed.
The man standing by the instruments smiled. He was clad in a similar sort of uniform as the others.
“Hey guys. I got everything set up. Been waiting for you.”
The other four men surrounded him, embracing to reaffirm the presence of a good friend thought lost.
“Yeah, great, love the hugs, we gonna do a show or what?” Bob asked with good-natured grumpiness.
They all laughed, relishing the feeling of being here and together and about to do something amazing. They took their places, and as the sun rose, began to play.
Nothing you can say can stop me going home…
Awake and unafraid
As the first rays of sunlight filtered through the skyscrapers, it revealed the band wasn’t alone. From all through the city, people were filtering in, hearing the music as a call to something more, a way to find something that they’d been looking for, the ache inside finally easing just a little as they listened.
We’re gonna blow this off and show you what we do
As these things do, it went viral. The InnerNet was streaming live from the center of Battery City within five minutes after sunrise. On a secure channel of course, but there were more in the know than you’d think.
Defiant to the end we hear the call to carry on, we’ll carry on
The music spread just as the color had. In fact, though few really noticed it, the color was coming back into Battery City. The dim grayish hues were becoming brighter, regaining the vitality that Better Living had sapped away. Though they may have looked like avatars of Death, it was life that flowed from the epicenter where the band stood.
The mind-blowing soundwaves rippled outwards, as powerful as an earthquake and just as life-changing. It ran right into the surrounding desert. Killjoys began appearing among the crowd. And now, the city-dwellers and the Zonerunners didn’t look so different as before. Everywhere, there was color and light and life.
The Fabulous Black Parade shook the city down to its foundations, music penetrating into all the cellars and tunnels and walls and steel. They were prisms, lasers, revealing and destroying and creating. For a fraction of a second, a tiny flash, all was gray and dim and made of rubble and spikes. Then everything became as it should be. A place where art and life could flourish, where your true self could be free.
JUST GET UP AND GO!
ETA: Realized I should add a link to the amazing AU that inspired this story: The Fall and Rise of the Black Parade. If you thought my little story was good, this one will leave you stunned.