Fanfic #197 Try to remember by Faff(YoungJusticeXSouthPark)

This fanfic is a kind of fusion between South Park and Young Justice following Kenny. I really liked this fic because it sounds like such a crazy concept, but it's executed well by focusing on Kenny and the eldritch side of his immortality.

Synopsis: Sixteen year old Kenny McKormick must adapt to his new life in Gotham City, while the same is also true for his eldritch alter ego, Mysterion. But while the agnostic angel of Denver makes his mark on Gotham, the Justice League and hero community at large must adapt to the emergence of this little mystery person who knows far more than he lets on…

Rated: M

words: 89k

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11618640/1/

Here's the first chapter:

One thing Mysterion could never do, was forget. Whatever happened that passed other people by, he had sworn to remember.

When he died, it slipped their minds, yet it stuck in his.

When all evidence of the Gulf crisis vanished, the people didn't see the changes, but Mysterion saw every single one.

When the thousands of deaths caused by Cthulhu were undone, no one noticed, except Mysterion.

When Captain Hindsight no longer appeared, nobody cared, while Mysterion wondered why.

The people, the government, the law, his friends, his family, the news, the Justice League. When their minds were made to forget. Mysterion remembered.

—?M?—

He let the stormy night carry him over the rooftops of his new city, running over the rain-slick concrete of Gotham's downtown buildings. Ears bristling for any sign of trouble, and this being Gotham it was not long until he heard the city cry out.

Three men cornering a young boy in an alley, one man armed with a knife, one with a gun, the third unarmed and delivering threats.

"Steal from us? You little shit. You got away with a beating last time Todd, this time though, you're dead!" The gruff looking guy cracked his knuckles menacingly, slowly approaching the kid who couldn't have been older than nine or ten.

The boy didn't look afraid though, he was too busy looking for an escape, his eyes darting around desperately. He kept his fists up, prepared to fight back, even though his opponents were bigger than him, and armed.

Then out of nowhere a shape dropped from the fire escape, landing heavily on the man with the pistol. The crook's gun went off, drawing a sudden start and two shocked sounds from the other criminals. The bullet had flown off and hit the wall, while the gunman was now being subdued on the ground by a dark, shadowy figure.

"Batman!" The knife wielder shouted, panic stricken, diving forward and plunging his knife towards the caped figure.

The vigilante drew himself around, bringing with him the struggling body of the gunman. This vigilante thrust the gunman between himself and the knife, using the crook as a human shield.

As the knife sank through the coat of the criminal, the unarmed man and the boy got a good view of this caped crusader… They did not see Batman. What they saw was a disheveled, soaking wet character, wearing a ratty grey costume with a ragged dark purple cape. A green question mark on a spring bobbled limply atop his head, and what was visible of his face beneath the damp hood and half mask, was an angry scowl. If this was Batman then he'd had a bad night, and suffered some serious budget cuts.

What happened next was not a poised execution of precise martial arts, or a fluid and efficient act of crime fighting. What followed was a brutal street fight, a beatdown which the mysterious new vigilante was most inarguable the master of.

He pressed his shield into the knife wielder, ensuring the blade could not be withdrawn easily. As the human shield was hefted into the knifeman, the two smashed together and fell to the ground in a messy heap. One of them wailing in pain as the knife twisted inside him, thanks to the nuances of physics and momentum working against him. The other man hastily tried to remove the blade, while the wounded one flopped about in pain on top of him.

The vigilante had left them when they clattered to the ground, and turned on the third man. Surging forward with a look of fury in his eyes.

Green-gloved fists came in fast, smashing past his hastily raised arms and evading his guard. The blows connected with the criminal's stomach, then his face, and kept on returning until the man lay limply on the ground.

As quickly as he had leapt on the unarmed crook, he sprang back at the others. The knifeman had disentangled himself from his friend, and was looking between him and the vigilante, unsure whether to stick it out or cut his losses.

The vigilante gave him no choice, as he closed in, leaping up and kicking off of a dumpster, coming down on the crook like a sack of bricks. A clumsy knife swipe cut the mysterious crime fighters shoulder, but no sound was made to indicate that he had felt any pain. So the assault continued.

A few moments and nasty sounding punches later, the three would be muggers were bleeding and unconscious on the grimy alley floor. Then the two people still standing, merely stood there in silence.

"… You okay?" The vigilante asked, his voice distinguishable as that of a young man. Though it was rough, his tone still carried a note of concern for the boy.

"Yeah." The kid replied, not sounding grateful, or awe struck or anything that most kids his age would be after being saved by a vigilante.

"… You got a home to go to?" The hooded man asked after a mutual silence.

"Yeah." The kid answered again, his tone still uncaring.

Another moment passed before the vigilante asked, with a quiet understanding."… You gonna go there?"

"No…" The boy's gaze broke away from where he had been warily observing the man. "Not yet anyway."

The vigilante offered a grunt of acknowledgment, before inquiring. "Got somewhere to go in the meantime?"

"Yeah. Old lady in my building lets me stay sometimes, but she wasn't in when I left." The boy said, his voice losing some of its hostility.

"Can you get back there without pissing anyone off?" The vigilante asked, a slight smile and teasing tone making its way into the question.

The boy snorted in amusement. "I guess…" Then there was a more companionable silence between them, before the kid asked something. "You're new here, right?" To which the reply was a simple nod. "Does Batman know you're here?" The answer this time was a shake of the head in the negative. "Oh… Well he's gonna be pissed… The B-man doesn't like people moving in on his turf. Kinda like a mob boss like that… You met him yet?" Another shake of the head, the question mark on the vigilante's hood wobbling with the movement. "Don't let him scare you, he's just uptight."

"Understood." Replied the caped figure, thankfully. "Any more advice?"

The boy mulled it over for a second, before shrugging and saying. "Nothing much that you wouldn't guess… Don't let anybody push you around, that's how it works in this city. That's what makes Gotham different from everywhere else. No matter who you push, they'll push back harder, and then it'll build up from there until everybody's pushing everybody… You gotta learn that quick around here. But…" The boy paused, looking at the gun holstered to the vigilante's hip, the cold metal sticking out in his costume of dull grey. "I'm guessing you already know that…"

"Yeah." The crime fighter replied solemnly. Then he reached down and picked up the gun that the mugger had dropped when he first attacked. Turning it over in his hands, he checked the clip, flicked the safety on and held it out to the kid. "You know how to use one?"

"Yeah. My mom gives me hers when she has a client over. She tells me to bust in and hold it on 'em if it sounds like they're getting too pushy." The boy said, evenly.

"Anyone pushes you too far, really pushes you… You push back." The vigilante said as he put the gun into the boys hands.

"You're seriously giving me a gun?" The boy said, confusion and skepticism leaking into his tone. He held the heavy metal implement tentatively, before looking up at the hooded figure in front of him.

There was no reply, so the boy watched the vigilante bound up onto the dumpster, springboard off of its lid, latching onto the fire escape he had first entered from. In practiced movements he swung himself up, climbing the rusting metal, scaffolded rungs and railings with the ease of a monkey in the jungle. The light from the street reflecting off the surfaces that dripped and ran with rainwater, gliding slickly over the inky form of this vigilante as he ascended to the rooftops.

"Who the fuck are you?!" The kid shouted after him as the mysterious teenager crested the roof.

Stopping, silhouetted against the gibbous moon, cape blowing in the wind, the vigilante looked down at the young boy from the top of the building. And answered.

"I am Mysterion!"

—?M?—

As Mysterion shut the window behind him, taking down his hood and removing his half mask, he ceased being the elusive, little known hero and once again became, sixteen year old Kenny McKormick. The blonde haired, blue eyed kid from South Park, Colorado.

Kenny stood in his room and began to busy himself with examining his wound. Only sparing half a glance to check his alarm clock, which upon inspection revealed the time to be 3:44AM.

Sitting down on the edge of his bed, Kenny peeled away the sodden fabric of his shirt, which was wet with both blood and rain. Removing his shirt revealed a long thin, partly scabbed over gash. Inflicted by the knife earlier that night. It didn't look too serious, so Kenny moved over to his desk and withdrew a first aid kit.

There was always another option, which would essentially heal the wound straight away… But death was never a first resort for Kenny. If he killed himself here, sure, he would wake up in his bed with no sign of the knife's cut. But dying really, fucking, hurt. So no, he would not commit suicide for something so trivial as a little graze.

Now his reason for contemplating suicide over this, was because Kenny McKormick was born into un-life. For as long as he could remember he had been unable to die permanently. Instead of passing on, he'd always reconstituted in his bed. Waking up later as if nothing had happened, with no one who witnessed his death ever recalling it.

As he had grown, Kenny learnt to manipulate this curse to an extent. He could, thanks to the sheer number of times he had experienced death and the pains it brought with it, resist the pull of the grim reaper. Holding out against injuries and forces that most people would buckle under. He could also focus where he woke up after he'd slipped through death's fingers. No longer was he stuck waking up in that same cold room, in his old home in South Park. Now he could wake up anywhere he had slept. Thank whatever gods favoured him for that convenience, he thought, otherwise he'd be spending a lot of time on buses and trains simply trying to get back to where he needed to be.

Letting out a heavy sigh as he finished cleaning and bandaging the cut, Kenny once again looked over at his clock. 3:59AM. Recognising the time, and that he had school in a few hours, Kenny let the tiredness he had been holding back, wash over him. He had one thing to do before he slept though, even though he did it pretty sloppily. He hid his costume. Stripping it off and shunting it under his bed, before collapsing onto the soft sheets.

He'd conceal them properly when he woke up. For now though, Kenny would just try to bask in the relative luxury he now lived in.

—?M?—

That night, those same memories visited Kenny in his dreams, troubling him once more with visions of certain times.

Ten years old, him and his sister Karen being ushered out of that foster home in Greeley. The fundamentalist agnostics being manhandled out of their home by police officers. The children of the orphanage corralled by other cops, until it could be decided what would be done with them.

Kenny expected the whole event to be swept under the rug. All the orphans would return to their families if they still had them, and barely a second thought would be given to them after they had left police custody… Apparently not though. It had seemed that on that specific day six years ago, fate had decided to actually pay attention, and someone competent must have been making decisions for once.

Because instead of being sent back to their meth cooking, drug dealing, Pabst blue ribbon drinking parents. Kenny and Karen were shuffled off to another foster home, in Denver.

Time flew by at that point, from when they set foot in Denver to when they first met their adoptive parents, the Gothamites Mr and Mrs Dupuis. It was as if Kenny had stopped paying attention to time. He got by on a daily routine; go to school, do his best, protect Karen, go back to the orphanage, pull on the second skin that was his Mysterion suit, and then go out into the night to do his duty.

It had become mechanical, or at least, it seemed so through the lens of this dream. Back then it had been a nightmare. The streets of Denver harboured more secrets than anyone could have guessed at, had Mysterion not been there digging in the right places, looking for the wrong people praying to foul gods. The cult of Cthulhu had not died the last time, and he was certain upon leaving Denver, aged sixteen, that it had not died this time either.

But those intermediate years had made something out of him. It was hard to tell what, but it had a name and a purpose, and always did have one come to think of it… He was Mysterion. Keeper of Eldritch secrets, safeguard against those who wielded the cosmic power of deities so unfathomable, that they cannot be described. He was far cry from a boy playing superhero, he had been set on a path that led beyond the normal realms of understanding, and into the unknown.

The dream progressed. Now he was moving to Gotham city, and Kenny knew what that meant. He had not encountered any of the established superheroes before, unless you counted Captain Hindsight, which Kenny did not. Partly because no one remembered him, partly because he had just vanished off the face of the Earth, but mostly because fuck that guy.

Though back during the Gulf crisis things had been different. Cthulhu was tampering then, the Justice League had been silent, and any other heroes were absent. Then when all was said and done, everyone forgot. The world practically rewound, as if that had been a joke take, a deleted scene from reality. No one noticed, and certain things changed; BP Oil disappeared, as did Captain Hindsight. The hundreds of thousands of people killed, just reappeared without so much as a word. All except Justin Bieber, but to tell the truth Kenny wasn't too torn up about that.

Either way, when Kenny realised what had happened, had essentially not happened. Just like so many hundreds of deaths he had been through. Well that straw almost broke his back… But instead of it being the breaking point for Mysterion, Kenny came back stronger. After the Gulf crisis, that was when he went from wannabe, to hero.

When he stood with his friends on that one day, and asked what they should do now that Cthulhu was vanquished. When they stared at him with 'that' look, and said.

"… Kenny what the fuck are you talking about?"

It had almost broken his heart… People forgot, like they always did. But this time the scale was massive, the entire world forgot everything. Maybe they had to, perhaps it was natures way of dealing with the unknown mythos of the outer gods and their subordinates… Which left Kenny the only one remembering, for some flimsy, mostly unknown reason he was the one who had to remember everything the world needed to forget.

He took it as his job, his duty… Mysterion, warden of sanity, secret keeper of reality, the only person who ever remembers…

Then his alarm sang, and Kenny woke with a start. Rolling out of bed, he dragged himself away from his dreams of the past, and tried to get ready for his second day at Gotham Academy…

—?M?—