Welcome to my new project.
Track 1: Pompeii
And if you close your eyes / does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes / does it almost feel like you've been here before? ...
The book hit the closed door, and fell to the floor with a resounding thud. It had barely missed the wastebasket. Blake looked at the book with disdain before lying back down on her bed. She clasped her hands together on her stomach and stared up at the bottom of Yang's bed. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Weiss looking at her with concern.
What a brutal tale of the destructive potential of Mother Nature, Blake mused. Thousands of people, wiped out and frozen in the blink of an eye, and it just had to be accepted. Why? Why did she have to accept that this was just something that happened, and there was nothing that could be done before, during and after it?
She was being silly, she knew, getting so worked up over a fictional story. But the story represented so much that she could recognize and revile: ignorance, inevitability, oblivion. In a world where she was part of the light, in the unending battle against the darkness, she refused to accept that the flicker could be snuffed out so mercilessly, and at the very hand of the world they were striving to protect.
Weiss walked over and sat at the foot of Blake's bed.
"Not a good read?" she asked.
"It was fine," Blake answered flatly.
"Judging by the force with which you threw that book at the wall, I'm going to say that you're lying."
Blake rolled over, facing away from Weiss and letting the silence answer Weiss's assumption – an assumption which was indeed correct.
"Is there something on your mind, maybe?"
Blake rolled over again, and Weiss saw the doubt in her eyes. She saw the way that Blake's fingers played and pulled at a loose thread on the bedspread.
"Do you have anywhere you need to be?" Blake asked. "Anything you need to do?" Weiss shook her head, and Blake closed her eyes. "Stay there. I want to tell you a story. It's a long one, so if I'll be keeping you from anything tonight, just tell me."
"It's fine," Weiss said, rolling her eyes. "Which story? Have I heard it before?"
"I don't think you would have. It's a very obscure and old tale. About a fictional, ancient city, called Pompeii."
"I'm listening."
Blake nodded, and summoned a deep breath. "So there's this gulf. The Gulf of Naples. Home to several villages. Among them, the city of Pompeii, home to many thousands of people by the time that this story takes place. But the Gulf of Naples was also home to a volcano, of gargantuan size, called Vesuvius. And Pompeii was right under it."
"I don't like where this is going," interjected Weiss.
Blake glared at her. "You know, it's funny, but when you said, 'I'm listening', I assumed that you were going to be quiet while I told this story."
"Sorry," Weiss said, looking apologetic and sheepish. "Please, do go on."
"Thank you. Now, the actual genesis of this story begins several years before the story itself. It begins with an earthquake, a powerful earthquake, which caused sweeping destruction around the Gulf of Naples, and particularly Pompeii. The city was still in a state of disrepair by the time the events in the story take place. Perhaps, the people should have taken it as an early warning. But in the period after the quake, it's almost like they ignored it. Or maybe they just didn't know any better. In any case, that's up to interpretation. The point is, things were taken quite leisurely in this city. And then, a number of years later, in the space of just a few days, the alarm bells were being rung again. Quake activity suddenly shot through the roof, with a series of tremors rocking the gulf again. Springs dried up around the mountain, as magma gathered and gathered within the mountain. Still, no one was really paying attention."
She watched Weiss's hand shoot up into the air, and she raised her eyebrow. "Question?"
"Thank you. How was it that no one seemed bothered by several earthquakes occurring across three days?"
"The point-of-view character in the story says that earthquakes were not alarming due to them already being rather frequent. An increase in that frequency clearly didn't raise any eyebrows in this city."
"Idiots."
"It's fiction, Weiss," Blake said, a slight smile on her face. "And like I said, people knew less in ancient times. Now, can I continue?"
"Sure."
"Okay." Blake swallowed, and lowered her voice. "It all happened suddenly, in the end, one afternoon. The mountain was blown apart. Ash rose into the air, reaching great heights. The cloud was taken by the wind over Pompeii, plunging the city into darkness. It seemed to last forever, as the city had no choice but to surrender its stone and buildings to the ash and rock, which covered all."
"What was the death toll like then?"
"There were few deaths during this particular point, but I'm not done. As hundreds stumbled in the grey desert of Pompeii, only a few realized that the worst was only now upon them. But it was much too late, and the people knew that there was nothing that could be done. Violent quakes, ever more so than anything they'd ever witnessed before, wracked the bay. The sea was sucked back and thrown relentlessly back at the beach. Then the river of death begun to surge toward the helpless city. 'A fearful black cloud was rent by forked and quivering bursts of flame, and parted to reveal great tongues of fire, like flashes of lightning magnified in size,' one of the passages read. Walls were thrown down, columns were toppled. Some were killed instantly by the intense heat, burning through the city with the fire of a thousand suns. And where the heat was less, the deaths were slower, as they -"
"Stop," Weiss said suddenly. "Blake, please. Enough."
"Sorry. What I mean is, Vesuvius didn't take exactly take prisoners, and no man, woman or child was spared. But that's not all. As they died, their bodies were frozen. The final stages of the eruption preserved the shapes of their bodies forever, where they remained, in the ruined streets for centuries to come." Blake paused to clear her throat. "And that's the story. The macabre tomb known as Pompeii, a city of frozen ghosts and pointless waste."
Weiss nodded thoughtfully. She could see that the story was still resonating within Blake, rather emotionally. So she remained silent, and patiently waited for Blake to speak again.
"I guess..." said Blake finally, "the reason that I told you all this tonight, is because I'm angry at what the story means. I mean, more than anything else, what do you see a lack of in a story like that? Hope," she said, not bothering to let Weiss answer. "It is a story without hope. The people have no hope that they might survive. It's like they just laid down in the streets and let death take them. How is that even something one does? I can't understand it."
"I don't know what to say, Blake. It's fiction, like you said... I guess that it was written to serve as an example, of what not to do, or how not to go about life," offered Weiss.
"But there are no characters that serve as the antithesis to the ignorance and hopelessness of the story. Everyone, even the main character, simply seems to accept it once they realize it's all inevitable. This... giving up, it's exactly what we can't do, ever. Our own version of Vesuvius is roaming and sweeping through the wilds outside the cities of this world, waiting to afford the demise of human- and faunus-kind alike. And if we simply go out and accept their offer without a fight, or even an escape plan at the very least, then we're no better than the people of Pompeii. If we aren't careful, or prepared, that same inevitability will destroy us as well."
"What makes you think something like that might happen to us?"
"How do I know that it won't happen? The future is uncertain. If Team RWBY was to go out on a hunt tomorrow, there's every chance that one of us might die. I don't mean to posit that scary thought, but it's just a hypothetical. I'm trying to say that who knows what's going to happen? What if we find out that Hunters all over the world are being wiped out, and the Grimm threat is only growing stronger? Can we guarantee that the resolve of some won't break in such a situation? We do what we do to make a difference. But what if it's too late, and we can only delay the inevitable?"
What Weiss did next, Blake could not have predicted. She shifted over, closer to Blake, and wrapped her in a tentative hug. It felt a little awkward, but Blake appreciated the sudden, unusual gesture.
"It's going to be okay."
Blake's reply was inquisitive. "You think so?"
"I know so. You have me, I have you, and we have Yang and Ruby as well. And as long as that remains the case, it's going to be okay. We're defenders of the light in this world. We stand in front of the darkness, fighting to beat it back. They didn't have people like that in Pompeii. In this world, when this... Vesuvius of our own comes for us, we'll beat it, because we have the hope that they didn't. We'll win, because I know that I'm not just going to accept Beowolves and Giant Nevermores and Ursii just going through the streets and coming after our friends." She backed out of the hug all of a sudden, leaving Blake a little confused. But she asked, "Are you going to accept it, Blake?"
"What? Of... of course not," said Blake, still taken aback. "I'm not going to accept it.
"Can you say it more convincingly than that?" Weiss asked, raising her eyebrows doubtfully.
"I'm not going to accept it," Blake repeated, this time with much more defiance. Then she went on, "You're right. You're absolutely right. We have everything that they didn't. Where they saw inevitability, and a finality, we see hope. We see the determination to make the world better, and guide the light against the darkness." She paused. "I'm sorry. I thought the story wasn't going to affect as much as it clearly did."
It must have worked, because it drew a small smile from Weiss. "It's okay. But that's good," she said. Then, sensing that the topic had run its course, she started anew, saying, "Now, what do you want to do for the rest of the night?"
Blake shrugged. "I don't know. I'm kind of tired. Might go to bed."
"It's only six."
"So?"
"Do you really want to skip dinner?"
"Oh. Okay, then."
"Come on," Weiss said, standing up and offering her hand. "We can go down and wait for the others."
Blake accepted the offer, and let herself be pulled up. Then her eyes fell on the book of Pompeii, where it still lay splayed by the door. "Hang on," she said. "Let me just put this book away."
"I'll wait for you in the corridor."
"Sure," said Blake. Weiss left the door open for her.
She picked up the book, smoothing out the now-creased pages. Without another thought about it, she closed the book and dropped it into the wastebasket.
Here's the concept. I love Bastille's debut album, "Bad Blood". I love it so much that it inspired to me create not only what you'll see in this short story, but in a continuing series of short stories to come.
There will be twelve short stories in total, each based off a song on this record. Each exists in its own state, completely separate to all the other stories that will be in this series.
Here's a serious note, though: Some, I am not specifying how many, of these short stories will contain romance or romantic tones between these two, Weiss and Blake. But unlike other writers who do these projects, I will not sit here and point out which stories feature the romantic pairing and which feature the platonic pairing. Why? Because. It is intended that the reader digests this entire project. I am not writing these so that the reader can pick and choose, and especially not based on something as tritely discriminatory as shipping wars. If you can't handle not being "warned" at the top, then leave. If you don't like the pairing, then leave. Because I'd rather that you not read these stories if that's how it's going to be.
Anyway, after that impassioned rant, I need to close this message by saying that these stories are going to be released in batches at a time. A group of stories released in close time to each other, and then a break of indeterminate, but hopefully not too long, time. This first batch is of three. Let's call this Track 1. Track 2 is coming very shortly.
Truly Yours, Kalico.