Via Negativa
By Prisionero
Summary: There once was a story, about a young man born in an unusual manner and gifted for it. Like all good stories, this one had a girl whom he loved deeply, though probably not in the way you are thinking. Then he met Slade Wilson. And it all went to hell. The girl died. So did he. Years passed and he was forgotten. But now… Fate has decided his path isn't quite done yet. Sequel to 'Children of a Lesser God'.
Night in Jump City.
Strange… We started the last tale with the same line, didn't we? However, tonight's Jump City is noticeably different from the one of that long-past night, when it was relatively innocent to the true rotten realities of the world. Not anymore. The City had now seen true horrors. And though its defenders had managed to fight them off, the mark had been left. The days of the simple bank robberies and the very few truly dangerous villains were over. Now they were all monsters.
One perfect example would be the small group walking along the street. There were five, and they seemed keen on avoiding the streetlights and hiding in the darkness. If they WERE trying to remain unnoticed, they were not doing a very good job judging by the loud noises made by the bulky tools they carried; a closer look identified them as slightly worn out shovels.
Titan's Tower.
"They let Bish out? But he was a maniac!"
"I'm not happy about it either, Vic. Bish--"
"Can we stop calling him Bish? The police found his real name, didn't they?"
"What was it again?"
"Alphonse Esther."
"…Let's stick with Bish."
"IN ANY CASE, he was released after his sadism was supposedly 'cured' through countless of psychiatric sessions. Or so was the testimony of the psychologist that worked with him."
"Somehow I doubt that."
The men turned around a corner and stopped abruptly.
There were two men standing in front of them. One was what some people would refer to as dumb muscle, and is fairly irrelevant to all this. The other was a young man with astonishing good looks, if not a bit effeminate, he carried a small suitcase and a pleasant smile that might drive some girls crazy.
Evidently, the group was not threatened by the blond pretty boy; in fact, they seemed to have expected him seeing as they bowed their heads slowly in respect before joining the pair.
"Well, there was obviously some money influencing his decision. But we have no evidence and nothing to work on, so Alphonse Esther is an upstanding member of society as far as any law-system is concerned."
"We are not just going to stand around and do nothing, are we?"
"We aren't. But we can't really do anything that he could twist against us, like accusations us of harassment or something. We can, however, have him followed. Assuming he really hasn't changed."
"He hasn't. He tried to cut me open. I didn't need to be an empath to know just how much the thought of it exhilarated him. Something like that can't be changed. Therapy or not, he'll always be a sadist."
"It is an honor to see you again, High Priest." One of the men said, walking up to the blond man. "Everything is read--"
The 'High Priest's raised hand made the man pause.
"We'll discuss it later. Let's get to work." He smiled. The walk continued as if nothing had happened.
It only took the group a couple of minutes to finish their trip. Now they stood in front of a metal gate that lead into a big square made of mud, tombstones and death.
Jump City cemetery.
"I'll take your word for it."
"So… What? We just start following him? He's bound to notice."
"Which is why you won't be doing it, Tara. Stealth is not exactly your forte. Or Gar's for that matter."
"Is this a high priority? Do we have to follow him immediately?"
"Well, personal feelings aside… Not exactly high, but it's important nonetheless. Still, I… Yeah, we definitely should immediately. One of us should be doing it right now as a matter of fact."
"Huh. Somehow, I expected something more impressive." Bish commented, his hand passing through his blond hair.
His little group had ignored all the tombstones as they walked through the graveyard. All except one. The one they were standing in front of right now, actually.
It was a simple one, with no real special features. Just a stone with a name and a date on it. Plus a couple of foolish words.
ADAM ALEXANDER MATTHEWS
1982-2001
An errant soul, that now has peace
"Come on, Tim. He's only been out of the slammer for a couple of hours! I mean,…"
"'An errant soul, that now has peace'." Bish read with a smile. "This will not do at all, will it?" He then turned to his followers. "Boys?"
They all responded by standing up straight. Like an army. Bish lazily signaled to the grave.
"High Priest Esther says…" He walked past them. It was not his way to do, or be in the presence of, manual labor.
"'GET DIGGING.'"
"…How much bad could he possibly do?"
John "Prisionero" Guzman
presents…
VIA NEGATIVA
In the midst of life we are in death.
In the midst of death, some return.
Chapter 01: Spitting at God's face.
It has been two weeks since Bish's release and the events following it. Many significant changes had occurred since that day, but none noticeable to the outside world.
For now.
Bish is now making his way through an illuminated hallway that lead to the underground lair where his experiments had taken place. It had been specially hard to find the appropriate place to start his desired work, specially with those foolish children always watching him from the sky. They thought he hadn't noticed. Idiots. It was obvious they would, they were the ones that had put him in prison, after all!
It was hard enough avoiding them so he could reach this place, just as hard as it had been to find it in the first place. But he had managed. He always knew he would, Bish had a hunger for power, as any other man did. Perhaps a bit more powerful, but he deserved it to begin with.
Which is why he had not been surprised when he heard that with High Priests Nickleson's death, he, having been High Disciple, now to his place as leader of their religion. Pleased, but not surprised.
It truly had been a joyous day when the news reached him. From that moment on, everything went his way on the hell house he had been imprisoned in. He had power now. And most of all, he was safe.
From the brutes at that place.
The ones who had… touched him.
Bish quickly amused himself for a moment as he remembered the expressions on their faces as he walked out of jail. He saw their regret. Their fear.
They knew. The KNEW he would be back for them. He would make them pay for what they did to him. For what they DARE make him feel.
For a moment, Bish anger boiled as he shuddered involuntarily. The he relaxed and breathed deeply.
No matter. He would deal with them after his work was done. He now had the means for it. He wouldn't make the mistakes his predecessor did.
He WOULD have a GOD.
The man had finally reached the other side of the hallway and was stopped by an armored door, with a control panel to its right. Twenty inches of steel, countless of defense mechanisms, and a specific way to stop any of the children.
Without the password, no one would be getting past this door.
A password Bish knew, as he input it into the panel. The door then swiftly opened, revealing the most peculiar room inside.
It was circular, with everything glowing in a yellowish color, probably due to the lights in it. Dozens of complicated machinery and computers aligned in the same circular fashion as the room adorned it, along with several men and women in robes operating them with mastery. For a group of would-be monks, they easily knew their way around the advanced technology.
On the very center of the room there was gigantic containment cylinder made of a see-through material ten times harder than glass. The cylinder was filled with a yellowish (though the color might have been, once again, influenced by the light of the room) liquid and was by far the oddest thing in the room. Probably because a boy floated inside of it.
The boy was strange as well, he appeared unconscious and the 'boy' term didn't really apply to him seeing as he looked twenty-ish; wearing nothing but boxers, his body was filled with dirt, which the liquid solution seemed to be working on cleaning, he also seemed in dire need of a haircut (the hair was so long it reached his rear) and cutting his nails wouldn't hurt either. To drive the point of strangeness through, he also had sensors attached to various parts of his body, monitoring his vitals.
Bish stared at the boy with a mixture of excitement and… pride?
Yes. Pride.
Dirt and lack of care aside, the unconscious boy was fairly handsome, especially considering the peculiar hue of his hair: Numerous golden streaks popped out randomly from his otherwise ebony scalp. However, the main reason his dark hair was heightened and noticeable was due to comparison between it and his skin, which had an unhealthy paleness to it you wouldn't expect from anything alive.
Maybe… Maybe he wasn't unconscious.
"Is the reanimation process making good progress?" Bish asked one of the robed men, who was operating the computers.
"Oh!" The man jumped in surprise, he had not seen him coming. "Oh… Yes! Yes, High Priest Esther! We are making amazingly quick progress on reviving him. It's actually incredible that it's happening so fast."
"Not really." The High Priest commented, his eyes dancing on the floating body. "The specimen was never normal. Never human. In life, he showed great amount of supernatural talents. Even in death, those talents make our job easier. How thoughtful of him."
Bish smiled at the convenience of it all. The children were still in the dark, he had managed to rebuild his religion into something far more advanced than anything Dr. Nickleson could have ever hoped, AND he had a perfect core with which he could start creating his people's god ready and waiting. Well… When he was cleaned up, anyway.
Everything was going perfectly.
"High Priest Esther…"
Bish glared in irritation at his disciple, who had broken his delightful daydream. However, his mood lifted when he saw the robed man shrink back, intimidated. God, he loved having power.
"What is it?" He asked.
"…You should probably see this…" The man answered, pointing to his computer screen.
Bish raised an eyebrow and examined the screen. It wasn't hard to see what had worried his disciple.
"Are those… brain waves?" He asked, slightly astonished.
"...It would appear so, master."
"How is this possible? He's been dead for five years!"
"Well… Master… It could be possible that his mind remained intact even in dead… You see, it happened with Vanity and the other six… And considering his special abilities, it doesn't seem entirely unlik--"
"ARGH." Bish yelled, pushing the man out of the way harshly. He began typing on the keyboard just as furiously.
The mood in the room had shifted, all other working men had stopped and where staring between their leader and their specimen, wondering if this was cause for alarm.
"NO." Bish hissed as he worked. "Not after all the trouble I went through. I will not have my work end up simply as another abomination barely capable of following orders! I WILL HAVE MY GOD!"
As much as he fought and cried against it, he couldn't stop it. The brain waves readings kept getting stronger. The brain was rebooting.
And then the alarms went off.
"I lost him."
The man sitting in the dark computer room almost jumped at the sudden voice before realizing it was just his communicator. He grabbed the device and started a conversation with someone he'd rather not see at all.
"What do you mean you lost him?"
"Well, see, it was like this… …Don't go blaming this on me, Noel!"
"SAVIOR." The man hissed in annoyance. "Just because secret identities seem a waste to you doesn't mean I share that belief."
"Dude, I'm in top of a skyscraper next to a freakin' gargoyle! Who'd be listening up on our conversation?"
"You'd be surprised how many names come to mind." Savior replied dryly. "Now tell me what happened, Gauntlet."
"Well, at 9:06 pm, I was following young Alphonse around as he walked around town in circles. At 9:07, exactly twelve birds flew by, two of them leaving their droppings on my hair. At 9:08, I started to hurl when the realization of bird poo on my head finally hit me, At 9:10, I w--"
"GAUNTLET," Savior growled, now very annoyed, "we don't have time for jokes right now. Seeing as Robin is away at Gotham right now, we have to be especially more careful. PLEASE, be serious for once."
"Fine, fine. Man, I swear I'm never getting a laugh out of you… Anyway, I was watching him buy a snack when a small fight broke out between these two guys on the street. I thought it would die out quickly; but then it got ugly, so I had to intervene and stop it. By the time I was done, pretty boy was gone."
Savior remained silent for a moment.
"Gauntlet, where are you?"
"What? Didn't I tell you already? I'm on top of a skyscraper next to a gargoy--"
"That's not what I mean." Savior interrupted. "I meant… Wait a minute, how were you able to see him and the two guys fighting when you were on top of a… Nevermind, I don't want to know."
"Good call."
"WHERE ARE YOU, GAUNTLET? Which part of the city are you on?"
"Right now? Corner of Thomas and Roosevelt, why?"
Savior didn't answer as he checked the previous reports of his teammates when they were the ones following Bish. He made the connection quickly enough.
When he went back to his communicator, it was modified to now send a message to all members, not only Gauntlet.
"Titans, Gauntlet lost track of Alphonse Esther…"
"Who's Alphonse…?" Beastboy's voice started.
"Bish."
"Oh."
"After some double checking, I realized that some of us had also lost him around the same area after something else, usually criminal activities, distracted us. I don't think this is a coincidence, guys. Something's up. I'm sending the coordinates of the place to your communicators right now, those close to it should get there immediately. The rest should do the same when they can."
"I'm very close. I'll be there." Terra's voice declared.
"Good. Savior out."
The signal was then broken.
Savior remained on his seat for a few seconds before making a move for the door. If Bish was gonna be taken down, he wanted to be there to see it.
"SOMEBODY TURN THAT OFF!" Bish yelled. The deafening alarm system was irritating him and causing his work to be sloppy.
"High Priest, perhaps we should consider retreat." One of his men proposed. "We are bound to catch attention should this keep up, we cannot afford losing you again."
The man suddenly found himself being pulled at the face of his master by the collar, and then felt something cold and sharp to his right side.
"We stay." Bish growled, looking like a rabid animal. The captive man gasped as he felt the scalpel poke into his flesh. "Get to work or you'll need a kidney transplant."
He then threw the unnamed man against the computer he had previously been working on, and ran towards the container tube the specimen was in.
"ALL OF YOU!" He roared, as he tried to find a way to stop the boy's mind development. "Fix this! We can't have him have any rational thought! He'd be useless to us if he gains it!"
Maybe if he drugged him enough to dull the process?
No, that might damage the body. He needed it intact.
But how--?
Then the hand burst out of the container, seizing Bish by the neck.
Yellowish water flowed freely from the hole made on the transparent material that had been broken like paper as Bish was lifted off the ground, choking noises escaping his mouth.
The High Priest found himself staring into the golden eyes of the figure that was slowly making his way out of his containment cylinder, the sensors of his body popping off randomly as he did. The eyes lacked the determination and insane drive that they once had, it had replaced by two dull circles filled with confusion, fear, and above else, despair.
Hard to blame him.
An eternity ago, Adam Matthews was a kid who just wanted a peaceful life for himself and his sister. Then he had been forced into apprenticeship by Slade Wilson. Despite his best efforts, he failed to measure up to the title he never had wanted and his foolishness had caused his death. But in this world, the laws of physics and life are very flexible.
And due to Bish's insane need to carry out his predecessor's work, Adam Matthews was back.
Metatron was back.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Rating: M.
Time Period: Three weeks after Legend Maker's 'The Cutting Edge'.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans, nor do I own Noel Collins, Robert Candide, Nigel Hastings, Sophie Mathews, nor any of their respective author's villains. Read this well because it will only be shown on this chapter.
Author's note: This is not exactly important, but it might help you understand what you are about to read. This work, as stated before, is the sequel to my previous fic 'Children of a Lesser God'. But that doesn't mean nothing happened between the gigantic 5-year gap between both stories, there were a LOT of events between them. To make it easier to understand, here's a list of the order things happened:
'Teen Titans', season 1.
'Children of a Lesser God', by me
'Black and White', by Legend Maker
'Wings of the Eagles' Parts 1-10, by Legend Maker
'Time and Time Again', by Legend Maker
'The Epic of Gauntlet', by Bobcat (not complete)
'Wings of the Eagles' Part 11-17, by Legend Maker
'White and Black', by Legend Maker
'Wings of the Eagles' Part 18-, by Legend Maker (not complete)
'Flashing Lights and Sounds', by Jedi-And (not complete)
'The Cutting Edge', by Legend Maker
'Via Negativa', by me
'Here Comes Tomorrow' (not complete)
I'd like to say you don't need to read all of these to understand what's going on. But you probably should read 'Children of a Lesser God', 'Black and White', 'The Epic of Gauntlet' AND 'Flashing Light and Sounds' unless you want to be asking yourself just who the hell are all those new guys you've never seen or heard about. I should probably also point out that Bish is one of the characters featured on Flashing Lights and Sounds, which is why some of you might have never heard of him before.