It wasn't the gray light of a new cloudy day piercing through the heavy curtains of the Addams Mansion that pulled him from sleep.
'Was it morning?'
The question echoed in his mind, still wrapped in the remnants of rest.
No... It was still night.
The confirmation came not by sight, but by a sharp sensation that cut like a blade through the room's stillness. A sudden, foreign Spirituality, violent as a scream in the silence. It didn't emanate from the mansion; it didn't carry the familiar, complex signature of the Addams or his own dense, controlled energy.
This one was different. It came from outside the mansion's barrier areas, a beacon of distant power, but approaching rapidly. And its tone was chaotic, shattered, and carried an intention Noah recognized instantly: it was bloodthirsty.
His eyes opened fully, assuming the red and blue color in their respective eyes, all drowsiness dissipated by adrenaline. He was sitting up in bed in one fluid motion, his senses already extending beyond the walls, mapping the threat.
From the deepest shadows in the corner of the room, away from the faint night light, a figure appeared. It was a silhouette that solidified from the darkness, assuming its own form. Another Noah. The replica was perfect, from the posture to the calculating gaze, a creation of his own, a double made of shadow and pure will.
Without losing a second, the real Noah stood up.
"Stay here." He ordered, his voice a low, absolute command as he adjusted his sleepwear and grabbed the coat hanging on a nearby chair.
And then, without ceremony, without a sound or a flash of light, his figure vanished in the blink of an eye. It wasn't teleportation in the traditional sense; it was as if the space around him had folded, swallowing him and stitching itself back together in his absence. A practical and instant use of the Path of the Door.
The room fell silent, occupied only by the other Noah. He remained where he was, his identical eyes turned towards the spot where his original had been. Then, an almost inaudible sigh escaped his lips, a sound laden not with worry, but with a deep resignation.
...
In the Cemetery, seated on one of the tombstones, was a young man with short black hair and brown eyes. His posture was relaxed, but a perverse energy emanated from him.
A Red Spirituality, alive and pulsating, flowed from his body like an aura of condensed hatred, tinging the air around him with a sinister glow. He wore elegant, impeccable clothing: a white dress shirt under a dark vest, a precisely adjusted tie, tight black dress pants, and dress shoes that shone even in the gloom.
"I wonder if she won't fall for it?" The young man asked himself, his voice a thoughtful whisper to the night, as if evaluating the effectiveness of bait.
He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn't notice the subtle movement around him. The shadows, always deep and numerous among the graves, came to life.
From the ground and the sides of the tombstones, tentacles of pure darkness quickly formed, thick and solid, which silently shot towards the intruder, seeking to envelop him, immobilize him, and drag him into the depths from which they came.
However—
Foosh!
The sound wasn't of an impact, but of a conflagration. The oil lamp, forgotten at the foot of a nearby tomb and until then emitting a faint, trembling flame, exploded into life. Its flame increased, growing exponentially from a simple wick to a tower of furious yellow-orange fire.
The fire didn't burn the air uncontrollably; it lunged at the shadow tentacles with intelligent purpose. The dancing flames destroyed the tentacles' forms, which dissolved with a muffled hiss, like ice thrown into a furnace, retreating back into the depths from which they were torn.
The intense, sudden light illuminated the young man's face, revealing not a hint of surprise, but a wide, sharp smile.
"Wow! Outcasts are truly unpredictable," the dark-haired young man commented, his voice laden with a perverse excitement, as he watched the darkness tentacles dissolve. "Could it be Wednesday's power?" The question was rhetorical, a whisper to himself as his mind worked quickly to identify the source of the threat.
But the shadows hadn't given up. From the ground and the deepest corners of the tombstones, more shadows disformed, gushing like solid waves of darkness, far more numerous and determined than before, seeking to envelop him completely.
"But it's still too weak!" he shouted, scornfully.
Foosh!
The response was immediate and overwhelming. The Flames, now fueled by his will and the red, bloodthirsty Spirituality, erupted in a violent whirlwind around him. They weren't content to merely repel the shadows; they burned all the vegetation on the ground, reducing weeds and moss to instant ashes, and destroyed the shadows' forms with a roar, creating a circle of black, smoldering earth around him.
"Is that all?!" he shouted, looking around with a triumphant smile, challenging any other threat lurking in the gloom.
It was then that his arrogance was cut at the root.
He saw a hand appearing out of nowhere. It wasn't a fast movement; it was a supernatural apparition, as if space itself had torn to allow its passage. The hand was pale and familiar. And it snapped its fingers.
Snap!
The sound was dry, precise, and laden with absolute power.
Bang!
The reaction was instantaneous. The young man felt something pierce through his stomach with the force of a high-velocity projectile. A sharp, piercing pain, followed by the warm, wet sensation of his own blood. Fortunately, it didn't hit a vital organ, but the damage was done: a clean hole through his belly, gushing blood forward and backward.
'What? He just snapped his fingers!' the young man screamed mentally, his mind struggling to process the attack. Logic was replaced by shock. He spat blood, the metallic taste filling his mouth. Without hesitation, driven by survival instinct, he conjured his flames again, but this time against his own body. A hiss of agony escaped his clenched lips as the fire cauterized the wound, sealing the charred flesh around the hole in an act of extreme self-punishment.
Meanwhile, from the absolute nothingness, Noah emerged.
His entrance wasn't dramatic; it was a logical conclusion. He didn't fall from the sky or step out of a portal. He simply was there, as if he had always been. He wore elegant clothes, a deliberate echo of the intruder's, but with an inverted palette: everything was black, from the shirt to the pants and shoes, except for the vest, which was immaculate white with black details, making him look like a figure from a photographic negative.
Noah looked at the young man, his bicolored eyes scanning the wounded, writhing figure. He analyzed him, his mind searching his memory for any trace that could recognize his figure.
'I have no idea who this idiot is.' Noah thought, his expression unchanged, a stone face that betrayed neither curiosity nor contempt, even upon seeing him stand up after taking an Air Bullet from him. The fact that the young man was on his feet, enduring the pain of a fire-cauterized wound, caught his attention. 'He cauterized the entire hole? He has good pain tolerance...'
The observation was clinical, a mental note on the opponent's resilience.
'...Besides the flames...' The pyrokinesis was, indeed, the intruder's main characteristic, a Pyro? No... something in Noah told him it wasn't that...
"So... Sorry, but you're not the one I want." The pyrokinetic young man's voice was rough with pain, but still carried a thread of disdain. He ignored the smoldering wound on his torso, pointed his finger at Noah like a general condemning a soldier to death. "So, get lost!"
Foosh!
The response was a concentrated fire beam, a lance of incandescent plasma that cut the distance between them with a snarl, illuminating the tombstones with an agonizing light. The intention was clear: instant vaporization.
Noah, however, didn't move to dodge. His feet remained firmly planted on the ground. He merely raised his hand, palm facing the fire lance, in a gesture that was both denial and absolute control.
And then, the impossible happened.
The fire beam never reached him.
A few inches from his palm, the fire simply... disintegrated. There was no explosion, no dramatic dissipation. It was as if it had encountered an absolute vacuum, a sphere of non-existence that consumed it completely, leaving behind not even residual heat.
"Wha—" The word died in the young man's throat, his brown eyes wide with disbelief. The logic of his world, where fire was the supreme force, had been violated.
He had no time to process it.
Baam!
The sound was muffled and solid. Noah hit him with a Shadow Tentacle that emerged from the ground behind him like a whip of pure darkness. The blow was brutal, hurling the young man forward with enough force to shatter the bones of an ordinary man. He had used Blink, an instantaneous displacement, to appear behind his opponent at the exact moment his attention was fixed on the impossible phenomenon.
Seizing the opening, Noah threw several cards he materialized from the air. They cut through the air with a sharp whistle, their edges as sharp as steel blades, meant to finish the job.
However—
Ding! Ding! Ding!
The sound wasn't of tearing flesh, but of metal against metal. The cards, hard as steel, seemed to have collided with metal. The young man, still dazed from the blow, rose with a superhuman effort. And then, the change became visible: his veins, once hidden, now glowed under his skin with a metallic gray color, and his very skin took on a steel-like appearance where the cards had struck him.
Noah narrowed his eyes, a glint of genuine interest momentarily replacing the coldness in his gaze.
'Pyrokinesis and now... internal metallurgy? An interesting combination.' Without hesitation, he moved his shadows again, ordering them to writhe and attack like a pack of dark serpents.
"That doesn't work on me!" the young man shouted, his voice now distorted and metallic. He summoned his flames again, a mantle of fire that exploded from his body. The fire exterminated the approaching shadows once more, consuming them with a furious hiss. He then directed the flames at Noah, a tidal wave of heat and destruction.
But, once again, the result was the same. The flames did not reach him. They curved around Noah, burning only around him, licking the air and the ground, but creating a perfect, untouched circle where he stood.
It was as if he were in the eye of the hurricane, an absolute calm at the center of the firestorm, protected by an authority over reality that the pyrokinetic young man couldn't even begin to comprehend.
The fire that danced violently around Noah extinguished not with a bang, but with a sigh, as if someone had cut the oxygen to a giant blowtorch. The silence that followed was louder than any explosion.
"I see..." Noah's voice cut through the air, calm and professorial, a stark contrast to the elemental fury that had just been tamed. He began to nod slowly, as if connecting the dots of a complex puzzle. "You are a Beyonder..."
The word hung between them, laden with meaning. The dark-haired young man stood motionless, his brown eyes, once full of arrogance and then shock, now widened with a different kind of recognition: that of a deeply guarded secret being exposed.
"I didn't imagine there were other Beyonders," Noah continued, his voice reflecting a genuine, though cold, intellectual surprise. "It seems my theory was incorrect." His bicolored eyes scanned his opponent's figure, analyzing every detail. "Outcasts and Beyonders can be the same person, however... someone can be a Beyonder without being an Outcast."
He made a dramatic pause, the air seeming to grow heavier, charged with the imminence of his conclusion.
"But I would say you are an Artificial," Noah declared, his words falling like sentences. "Since, without the innate nature of an Outcast, your ability to use Spirituality is much more limited. Brute. Inefficient. Like a child playing with a flamethrower they don't know how was manufactured."
Noah looked at him, studying every microexpression that crossed the young man's face. And then, he smiled. It wasn't a smile of triumph, but of pure cognitive satisfaction. The answer he sought was stamped on his enemy's expression—a mixture of anger, fear, and, above all, recognition.
"I'm right, aren't I..." The name left his lips not as a question, but as a final statement, a puzzle piece fitting perfectly into place. "Joel Glicker?"
The effect was instantaneous. The young man's face—Joel Glicker—lost all remaining color.