Welcome to the Black Parade

Thom re-materialized under a night sky, black except for faint colors floating around; stray vibrations. Below him, too, the world was dark—except that was because the air had become so clogged with music that even the colors had blended together, giving the air a thick brown quality, making it impossible to see the City of Rok below.

The School kept Classik neat and orderly, made sure music was contained and did its best to clean up after itself. In Rok, there was no equivalent to the School, no large central organization to care for the city or its citizens. The Order did all it ever did, ensured basic rights and provided necessities such as food and water, but Thom didn't see any evidence that the Order did any more than that. As he descended through the murky air down to the city, bolts of color flashed around him, stray chords yet to dissipate into the fabric of reality.

Rok was a city of cold, hard metal and glass, of straight lines and right angles and strong, simple colors—mostly red, blue, yellow, white, and purple. Everything had an electrical feel to it, a high-energy charge that made you want to jump around with anticipation, but aside from the music, there wasn't much in Rok. It was dominated by small individual bands—nearly everyone was in one—and most people didn't do much, aside from rehearse and perform. Everyone took some time to enjoy others' music, and the better bands could turn out massive crowds. For some performances, nearly the entire city would show up. One of those performances was scheduled for tonight, and Thom would be just in time.

Hertz Hall was the only performing hall large enough to hold the entire population of Rok; about 500,000. Like all performance halls, it was specially built to amplify and enhance the musical effect, and shielded to prevent external interference. Having a stray chord wander in to a performance can completely kill the music, especially if it's in completely the wrong key. Thom took a lift down to the fifth floor from the roof lot and found a seat. It wasn't a completely full house, but there were still several hundred thousand people in attendance.

And then the lights went down and the band began to play.

The first notes grew out of the piano—a sort of glow around it, overlapping colors as the notes changed before the last could fade away, but never mixing them. G, F#, B, E… D, G, C… B, E, A… D… "When I was a young boy, my father took me into the city, to see a marching band." The hall was dark and quiet except for the colors being played on the stage. As the lyrics continued, instruments began adding to the colorful mix of words and sounds. A dry, crunchy snare drum began to beat out a march, adding a yellowish white to the mix, and a guitar came in with dancing lines of glowing color … "He said, 'Son when you grow up, would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?' He said 'Will you defeat them? Your demons, and all the non-believers, the plans that they have made? Because one day, I'll leave you a phantom to lead you in the summer to join the Black Parade." Smells began drifting up—the smell of summer, of ash, and of smoking electricity as the guitar took the motif and ran with it, sending bolts of color lancing up from the stage, which was now enveloped in a murky fog of music. The fog actually enhanced the music, emphasizing colors and sending out the smells. A heavy, deep drum that sent purple balls skittering around the stage in accompaniment to the guitar, and then the lyrics returned, supported by the drum and guitar. "'…Will you be the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?'".

The final chord flashed a golden-white-red electric mix of guitar and cymbal and then hung in the air, suspended, slowly fading, dying out and relaxing. But the music wasn't over yet. As if refusing to let it die, a drum came in, bursting out in beats before before the stage burst into color. A heavy drumbeat accompanying a guitar solo sent color flying, shooting up from the stage and swirling out into the hall, snapping and whizzing. It died down to allow for the lyrics to resurge, and as the drum beat out a quick tempo, they came back in, heavy and thick, emphasized with bursts of guitar in between, flashing green-yellow. The tempo was racing along now, as lyrics and colors and smells flew out of the stage, spiralling and dancing and leaping around the hall. It kept running, chasing a cadence that never stood still—and then it all died down, simplified to a steady snare drum and "Do or die—you'll never make me, because the world will never take my heart."

The pulsing rhythm was so strong, time began to distort, coming in beats rather than an apparent continuous stream, and the song contorted in on itself, becoming black and narrow with dim colors from the guitar's chords, gasping for breath. In a last-ditch effort, one guitar threw itself into a screaming scale on the left that towered out of the chaotic jumble of pulsating black ink as a brilliant double-helix of colors and white—but its effort was not in vain. As the scale died, its partner on the right took it up, and a second double-helix shot up—and the two met in mid air, exploding in a rainbow of white light and color, illuminating the hall, raining down sharp and deliciously sour brilliant chords in unison with stronger, challenging lyrics—"I'm just a man. I'm not a hero, just a boy who wanna sing his song. Just a man, I'm not a hero. I. Don't. Care! We'll carry on!"

Nothing could stop it now. The music was alive, and happy to be so. It roared through the hall, soaring through the audience who was on their feet, drinking it in, laughing with the pure pleasure as every sensory experience was overloaded beyond belief. The hall was glowing brilliantly—not just the music; but also the walls, the seats, the people, as the song shook reality, changing it, making everything a part of it. The building pulsed with the heart of the beat. No longer was the band playing the song, it was playing itself, for the rest of its short life. It was trapped in this building, and not allowed to live for long. The built-in automatic stabilizers of the hall began to kick in. No longer was it racing, it began to slow down. It lost its train of though, and began to repeat itself, persistently but confusedly. Gradually colors seeped out of the building, returning it to its natural black, and they faded out of existence until all that remained was a lone snare drum, doggedly marching on, lost and confused, beating out the same rhythm over and over again until the music finally died.