Starting With Silence
The clock ticked ominously on the wall. Tock. Its coppery hand clicked through each second with trepidation. Tick. Each second was on the brink of breaking. Tock. And there it was– Krono felt the world fall apart, tick, as the narrow hand passed over 12 seconds with a single, resounding click. The dissonance of these disturbances in time did little to worry the Green Guru after all these years. But the feeling of spiraling down into insanity left a slimy feeling across her skin.
Another minute passed without the world crashing down around her. All sixty seconds, accounted for by her trembling fingers. And what did it matter? She had just wasted another minute of her life, staring at the clock, another minute gone, tick-tock, another minute lost in the tormenting storm of time. Whoever said that time was linear was a howling fool. Just as Krono felt the edges of sanity closing in on her fast, the man next to her reached out a hand, and anchored her with his grasp.
Krono tore her eyes off of the clock, and fixed gazes with Kremlin. Her friend’s eyes were weary, shaded by a sickly hue of green caught in the creases of his skin. He reassured her with a tight smile. “The Dark Green gang is on their way up.”
There were never any ‘gaps’ when Kremlin spoke. His voice was strong and solid enough to mend all the tears in the fabric of time, Krono was sure of it. She nodded, and reclined easily in her green, beanbag throne. “So.” She shot her fellow Guru a glance, and kept her eyes off the restless clock. “What do you make of all this… biting tension between the Reds and the Blueberries? It’s obviously more than normal, even for summer.”
“I’ve heard rumors…” Kremlin stared off into space, and rubbed his stubbly chin. “Rumors of betrayal. They say that there’s been a crossover, between some Blues and Reds. But you know how rumors are.”
“I’ve already heard that!” she replied with a sudden, uneasy laugh. “Rumors are rumors are rumors. I want to know what you think of all this!”
Kremlin pinched his chin, and stared out in contemplative silence for a minute. The tick-tick of the clock grew steadily louder as the Guru gear’s churned. Krono shot an uneasy glance at ticking machine, cursing all of its maddening tocks and brittle metal parts that clicked through her head.
“I think…” He parted his lips finally, in a low rumble. “That there will be chaos. I think that something has got to give, and when it does, there’s going to be more blood in the Street Level than any gang has bled before.”
Through the double doors and across a long hallway, the elevator chimed with the beat of the clock. The two metal doors slid open, and the Dark Green Gang stepped out into the green-lit hall. Darc strutted in front, his face poised with intense purpose, his horns jutting proudly out into the air. Ace and Netto followed on either side of him, his icy killer and his brilliant tactician. The rest of the gang shortly followed suit, in an unorganized jumble. Jack lingered in the back, a black guitar case in his hands. They moved in steady silence, past the cracked walls of the hall and through the beads at the doorframe. Darc had told Jack that the Gurus deserved the utmost respect and attention, and the musician couldn’t help but feel a bit intimidated.
The Guru’s room was bathed with powerful, green light, everything reflected in an emerald tint. It radiated from neon lights, and also seemed to pump out of the two figures seated across the high room. Their color chi filled the space with intense power, tangible enough for the gang to feel it glancing across their skin. Darc all but moaned with the smell of it.
Jack wasn’t sure if he was more surprised by the beanbags the Gurus were sitting on and their casual dress, or of how young they looked. The woman had a sharp face, with pale skin and small eyes. She wore baggy, beat up pants and a plain tank top. Her hair was a tangled mess under her beanie. There was nothing innately flashy or powerful about her appearance, but the toxic green glow coming off her was enough to chill Jack’s bones.
The man looked hardly older than Darc, but his hard-jawed face and eyes etched with solemnity made him appear much older. He was a large, muscular man, but he held himself with calm grace, almost Zen-like in appearance. His black eyes coursed intently over the crew.
Darc stepped up before the two Green Gurus. He saluted them loosely, and his hand fell into a sweeping bow. “Kremlin, Krono,” he said smoothly, snapping his head up in a quick smirk.
“Darc.” Affection filled Kremlin’s voice as he gazed upon the gang leader. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Sup?” Krono nodded at the gang. She occasionally glanced at the clock on the wall, and nibbled at her scarred lips.
Darc glanced back at his Greens before speaking.
“I have unofficially accepted a new member into my gang.” He spoke confidently, clasping his hands behind his back. He leaned over his shoulder, and nodded for Jack to come forward.
“Unofficially?” Kremlin’s eyes perked with curiosity. He leaned forward with his elbows against his knees, as Jack moved besides Darc. “This isn’t the news we were expecting.”
Jack looked apprehensively at the two Gurus, and as their eyes passed over him he felt his skin prickle with green electricity. The edges of their auras scraped against each other.
“He’s not a Green!” Krono exclaimed, turning her curious, narrow eyes first to Kremlin, then to Darc. “He’s a… he’s not anything.”
“Or is he suppressing his color?” Kremlin asked.
“No, he isn’t.” Netto stepped forward briefly. “My psychic compass algorithm couldn’t pick anything up. It’s either been suppressed to a point where he can’t use it, or…”
“He doesn’t have a color,” Krono breathed.
“Precisely.” Darc’s full grin was gleaming in the green light. “Since he’ll be staying at the Green Room, I figured you should know. But you’re right. He’s not a Green.” Now he turned his attention to Jack. Although he was still speaking to the Gurus, his eyes stayed locked with the musician’s. “He’s not any other color, at least not in the way that you and I think of the word. So he doesn’t serve under you. He only answers to me.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed as he searched for some sort of reassurance in Darc’s near-black irises. He didn’t realize that this was part of the bargain. And although he didn’t know terribly much about the gang structure, he had the feeling that this wasn’t exactly orthodox.
“You’re willing to take responsibility for him?” Kremlin asked. His stern gaze returned to Darc, but it seemed as though there was another question lingering in his eyes.
“In a heartbeat.” Darc looked back at the Gurus. Out of the corner of his gaze, he saw Ace shake his head somberly.
“Why him?” Krono voiced the question that had been tearing at Jack’s mind ever since he got here. She caught her chin in the cup of her hand, looking Jack up and down, from the base of his boots to the case on his back. “Some kids don’t have color, sad but true. What’s really so special about this one?”
“Show them,” Darc said to Jack, stepping back with the rest of his gang. Jack nodded.
He placed the case on the concrete floor. The zzzzp of the zipper was the only sound that filled the room. He slid his hand down the smooth nape of the guitar, and lifted it up into the deep green light. The polished wood was tinted emerald now, and the metal strings caught wisps of jade from the air. He pulled the strap across his shoulder. The guitar fit perfectly in his embrace.
“Someone very dear to me once said that music always comes from silence,” Jack spoke to no one in particular. The room steadied with anticipating quiet—the bated breath on Crash’s lips, the cold gaze from Ace, the mournful tick of the clock, and of course Darc’s all-knowing grin. But Jack didn’t feel any of it. He zipped his thumb up against a string, feeling the eternal vibrations buzz into life under his skin. “He said that maybe we’re all just wandering notes, trying to find a melody that fits.”
Jack began to play.
The green air gave way to new colors. The walls burst with each strum of his fist, a spray of solid colors filling the room with a rainbow mist. Purples and minor blues mingled with the green tint as he played, slowly at first, then filling the room with a bold crescendo of sweeping rifts. Color poured out of the hollow of the guitar, projected out into the room and against all their eyes. Jack batted the sound out with a slap against the wood. This was why he truly loved acoustic. In between thrusts of music he rapped, snapped and slapped against the guitar, brrra-tatata, stomping his foot with the rhythmic slide of his fingers. Strings were pinched between wooden hilt and fingertip as the colors crashed through him.
The sound built up around him, echoing off of his eyes and reverberating across the floor. The song struck under his flying fingertips. It began to melt up his arms, liquid light casting his body in molten music. Specks of color flew off from his arm to splatter at the Guru’s feet in a sweet glissando. The song was sliding against the walls, solid and tangible, but also sparking in the third eye, spreading to the places behind his field of vision. Jack felt heat rising in the place between his ears and his eyes.
As the song came to a close, crashing in a colorful cadence, Jack felt the whole world connect. Everything around him snapped into complimentary harmony, in the place where the senses met the mind met the soul met the sand met the sea…
Silence swelled. The room returned to soundless green light, the embers of the song swiftly fading into nothing.
It was difficult to see if Jack had impressed the Gurus. Krono’s expression was stationary, her cracked lips slightly parted, her muscles tensed. The only part of her that moved were her wide eyes, whose irises scattered across the room frantically, and her right foot, which ever so slightly tapped out a beat. Kremlin was looking at Darc, as if expecting him to speak.
It was Netto who finally broke the silence. “That’s… beautiful.” She gazed up at Jack, her expression shifting from awe to confusion and back again. At least she wasn’t looking at him like he was the biggest fool in the world. It was a start.
“Where did he come from?” Kremlin asked Darc. At this point, Krono was smiling enthusiastically at the music-tinted air.
“Out of town.” Darc’s sly grin was almost malicious.
“We could use some more color-power.” Ace spoke up from the wall. Jack gave him a surprised glance… he had assumed that Ace didn’t want him in the gang… but Ace had his gaze fixed on Darc and didn’t return the musician’s look.
“Pretty colors…” Krono breathed quietly.
Kremlin leaned towards his partner, and whispered something against her ear. She tilted her head towards him, her eyes now laced with Jack’s. There was something crazed and untamed in those eyes.
“We have a mission for you,” they said in unison. The room snapped back into sharp attention with their melding voices. Their tones and pitch were entirely different—hers high and sharp, his low and rumbling—but their melody of words fit into place perfectly.
“We want you to investigate what’s happening with the Blue Gang,” Kremlin continued, now speaking to the whole gang.
“We have a tip on where a prominent gangster will be tomorrow night,” Krono added. “We want to know what situation we’re dealing with before we get involved. Spy work. Discretion is key.”
“Darc and Crash are off the mission.” Netto muttered quietly. Crash punched her in the arm.
“You aren’t a Green, so we won’t take responsibility for you. But you will be living under our roof, and for that, you have to prove yourself to us.” Kremlin grinned at Jack, and old lines of laughter were visible around his eyes. “You’re perfect for this job, with your conveniently colorless aura.”
Spy work? Jack thought.
“Who’s the gangster?” Darc asked.
Once again, the Guru’s voices matched, creating a deep, purple blue pitch.
“Indigo.”
The clock ticked ominously on the wall. Tock. Its coppery hand clicked through each second with trepidation. Tick. Each second was on the brink of breaking. Tock. And there it was– Krono felt the world fall apart, tick, as the narrow hand passed over 12 seconds with a single, resounding click. The dissonance of these disturbances in time did little to worry the Green Guru after all these years. But the feeling of spiraling down into insanity left a slimy feeling across her skin.
Another minute passed without the world crashing down around her. All sixty seconds, accounted for by her trembling fingers. And what did it matter? She had just wasted another minute of her life, staring at the clock, another minute gone, tick-tock, another minute lost in the tormenting storm of time. Whoever said that time was linear was a howling fool. Just as Krono felt the edges of sanity closing in on her fast, the man next to her reached out a hand, and anchored her with his grasp.
Krono tore her eyes off of the clock, and fixed gazes with Kremlin. Her friend’s eyes were weary, shaded by a sickly hue of green caught in the creases of his skin. He reassured her with a tight smile. “The Dark Green gang is on their way up.”
There were never any ‘gaps’ when Kremlin spoke. His voice was strong and solid enough to mend all the tears in the fabric of time, Krono was sure of it. She nodded, and reclined easily in her green, beanbag throne. “So.” She shot her fellow Guru a glance, and kept her eyes off the restless clock. “What do you make of all this… biting tension between the Reds and the Blueberries? It’s obviously more than normal, even for summer.”
“I’ve heard rumors…” Kremlin stared off into space, and rubbed his stubbly chin. “Rumors of betrayal. They say that there’s been a crossover, between some Blues and Reds. But you know how rumors are.”
“I’ve already heard that!” she replied with a sudden, uneasy laugh. “Rumors are rumors are rumors. I want to know what you think of all this!”
Kremlin pinched his chin, and stared out in contemplative silence for a minute. The tick-tick of the clock grew steadily louder as the Guru gear’s churned. Krono shot an uneasy glance at ticking machine, cursing all of its maddening tocks and brittle metal parts that clicked through her head.
“I think…” He parted his lips finally, in a low rumble. “That there will be chaos. I think that something has got to give, and when it does, there’s going to be more blood in the Street Level than any gang has bled before.”
Through the double doors and across a long hallway, the elevator chimed with the beat of the clock. The two metal doors slid open, and the Dark Green Gang stepped out into the green-lit hall. Darc strutted in front, his face poised with intense purpose, his horns jutting proudly out into the air. Ace and Netto followed on either side of him, his icy killer and his brilliant tactician. The rest of the gang shortly followed suit, in an unorganized jumble. Jack lingered in the back, a black guitar case in his hands. They moved in steady silence, past the cracked walls of the hall and through the beads at the doorframe. Darc had told Jack that the Gurus deserved the utmost respect and attention, and the musician couldn’t help but feel a bit intimidated.
The Guru’s room was bathed with powerful, green light, everything reflected in an emerald tint. It radiated from neon lights, and also seemed to pump out of the two figures seated across the high room. Their color chi filled the space with intense power, tangible enough for the gang to feel it glancing across their skin. Darc all but moaned with the smell of it.
Jack wasn’t sure if he was more surprised by the beanbags the Gurus were sitting on and their casual dress, or of how young they looked. The woman had a sharp face, with pale skin and small eyes. She wore baggy, beat up pants and a plain tank top. Her hair was a tangled mess under her beanie. There was nothing innately flashy or powerful about her appearance, but the toxic green glow coming off her was enough to chill Jack’s bones.
The man looked hardly older than Darc, but his hard-jawed face and eyes etched with solemnity made him appear much older. He was a large, muscular man, but he held himself with calm grace, almost Zen-like in appearance. His black eyes coursed intently over the crew.
Darc stepped up before the two Green Gurus. He saluted them loosely, and his hand fell into a sweeping bow. “Kremlin, Krono,” he said smoothly, snapping his head up in a quick smirk.
“Darc.” Affection filled Kremlin’s voice as he gazed upon the gang leader. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Sup?” Krono nodded at the gang. She occasionally glanced at the clock on the wall, and nibbled at her scarred lips.
Darc glanced back at his Greens before speaking.
“I have unofficially accepted a new member into my gang.” He spoke confidently, clasping his hands behind his back. He leaned over his shoulder, and nodded for Jack to come forward.
“Unofficially?” Kremlin’s eyes perked with curiosity. He leaned forward with his elbows against his knees, as Jack moved besides Darc. “This isn’t the news we were expecting.”
Jack looked apprehensively at the two Gurus, and as their eyes passed over him he felt his skin prickle with green electricity. The edges of their auras scraped against each other.
“He’s not a Green!” Krono exclaimed, turning her curious, narrow eyes first to Kremlin, then to Darc. “He’s a… he’s not anything.”
“Or is he suppressing his color?” Kremlin asked.
“No, he isn’t.” Netto stepped forward briefly. “My psychic compass algorithm couldn’t pick anything up. It’s either been suppressed to a point where he can’t use it, or…”
“He doesn’t have a color,” Krono breathed.
“Precisely.” Darc’s full grin was gleaming in the green light. “Since he’ll be staying at the Green Room, I figured you should know. But you’re right. He’s not a Green.” Now he turned his attention to Jack. Although he was still speaking to the Gurus, his eyes stayed locked with the musician’s. “He’s not any other color, at least not in the way that you and I think of the word. So he doesn’t serve under you. He only answers to me.”
Jack’s eyes narrowed as he searched for some sort of reassurance in Darc’s near-black irises. He didn’t realize that this was part of the bargain. And although he didn’t know terribly much about the gang structure, he had the feeling that this wasn’t exactly orthodox.
“You’re willing to take responsibility for him?” Kremlin asked. His stern gaze returned to Darc, but it seemed as though there was another question lingering in his eyes.
“In a heartbeat.” Darc looked back at the Gurus. Out of the corner of his gaze, he saw Ace shake his head somberly.
“Why him?” Krono voiced the question that had been tearing at Jack’s mind ever since he got here. She caught her chin in the cup of her hand, looking Jack up and down, from the base of his boots to the case on his back. “Some kids don’t have color, sad but true. What’s really so special about this one?”
“Show them,” Darc said to Jack, stepping back with the rest of his gang. Jack nodded.
He placed the case on the concrete floor. The zzzzp of the zipper was the only sound that filled the room. He slid his hand down the smooth nape of the guitar, and lifted it up into the deep green light. The polished wood was tinted emerald now, and the metal strings caught wisps of jade from the air. He pulled the strap across his shoulder. The guitar fit perfectly in his embrace.
“Someone very dear to me once said that music always comes from silence,” Jack spoke to no one in particular. The room steadied with anticipating quiet—the bated breath on Crash’s lips, the cold gaze from Ace, the mournful tick of the clock, and of course Darc’s all-knowing grin. But Jack didn’t feel any of it. He zipped his thumb up against a string, feeling the eternal vibrations buzz into life under his skin. “He said that maybe we’re all just wandering notes, trying to find a melody that fits.”
Jack began to play.
The green air gave way to new colors. The walls burst with each strum of his fist, a spray of solid colors filling the room with a rainbow mist. Purples and minor blues mingled with the green tint as he played, slowly at first, then filling the room with a bold crescendo of sweeping rifts. Color poured out of the hollow of the guitar, projected out into the room and against all their eyes. Jack batted the sound out with a slap against the wood. This was why he truly loved acoustic. In between thrusts of music he rapped, snapped and slapped against the guitar, brrra-tatata, stomping his foot with the rhythmic slide of his fingers. Strings were pinched between wooden hilt and fingertip as the colors crashed through him.
The sound built up around him, echoing off of his eyes and reverberating across the floor. The song struck under his flying fingertips. It began to melt up his arms, liquid light casting his body in molten music. Specks of color flew off from his arm to splatter at the Guru’s feet in a sweet glissando. The song was sliding against the walls, solid and tangible, but also sparking in the third eye, spreading to the places behind his field of vision. Jack felt heat rising in the place between his ears and his eyes.
As the song came to a close, crashing in a colorful cadence, Jack felt the whole world connect. Everything around him snapped into complimentary harmony, in the place where the senses met the mind met the soul met the sand met the sea…
Silence swelled. The room returned to soundless green light, the embers of the song swiftly fading into nothing.
It was difficult to see if Jack had impressed the Gurus. Krono’s expression was stationary, her cracked lips slightly parted, her muscles tensed. The only part of her that moved were her wide eyes, whose irises scattered across the room frantically, and her right foot, which ever so slightly tapped out a beat. Kremlin was looking at Darc, as if expecting him to speak.
It was Netto who finally broke the silence. “That’s… beautiful.” She gazed up at Jack, her expression shifting from awe to confusion and back again. At least she wasn’t looking at him like he was the biggest fool in the world. It was a start.
“Where did he come from?” Kremlin asked Darc. At this point, Krono was smiling enthusiastically at the music-tinted air.
“Out of town.” Darc’s sly grin was almost malicious.
“We could use some more color-power.” Ace spoke up from the wall. Jack gave him a surprised glance… he had assumed that Ace didn’t want him in the gang… but Ace had his gaze fixed on Darc and didn’t return the musician’s look.
“Pretty colors…” Krono breathed quietly.
Kremlin leaned towards his partner, and whispered something against her ear. She tilted her head towards him, her eyes now laced with Jack’s. There was something crazed and untamed in those eyes.
“We have a mission for you,” they said in unison. The room snapped back into sharp attention with their melding voices. Their tones and pitch were entirely different—hers high and sharp, his low and rumbling—but their melody of words fit into place perfectly.
“We want you to investigate what’s happening with the Blue Gang,” Kremlin continued, now speaking to the whole gang.
“We have a tip on where a prominent gangster will be tomorrow night,” Krono added. “We want to know what situation we’re dealing with before we get involved. Spy work. Discretion is key.”
“Darc and Crash are off the mission.” Netto muttered quietly. Crash punched her in the arm.
“You aren’t a Green, so we won’t take responsibility for you. But you will be living under our roof, and for that, you have to prove yourself to us.” Kremlin grinned at Jack, and old lines of laughter were visible around his eyes. “You’re perfect for this job, with your conveniently colorless aura.”
Spy work? Jack thought.
“Who’s the gangster?” Darc asked.
Once again, the Guru’s voices matched, creating a deep, purple blue pitch.
“Indigo.”