I am pretty pain resistant. In school I faced some pretty harsh bullies, and I can take physical pain. Broken bones, cuts, slices, lots of stuff. It sucks, but I can take it.
I can go to the doctor, say that my arm hurts 8/10, and stay perfectly calm, keep a straight face, and not scream and wail. I wasn't really sure how I'd handle Saw torture stuff, once I got into unfair traps meant to make me rip chunks of flesh off, but normal pain that humans could handle? I could do it. I'd even once taken an electrode challenge where you
I really wasn't used to my soul hurting. It felt sorta like… have you ever had a really bad breakup where you have a chaotic mix of emotions and pain and ups and downs and it really hurts on a deep level. Enough that it's hard to move. I had that. I had flashes. A world vaster than ours by far, with creatures vaster than our world. Countless spiders, picking the flesh from my bones.
Still, it was just sensory data. Some weird new part of me sending error damage signals. That didn't relax the pain. That wouldn't keep me sane if it didn't end. But it wasn't gonna stop me.
I felt out around my psyche. I tried pulsing different memories, stimulating emotions, testing and exploring. I felt a sharp pain, and the feeling of wisdom and enlightenment. Ah. It was that perk. I felt another fragment and that was- spiders eating my flesh. A bit of IT power. I kept feeling around. My power was fragmented, intermingled with bits of loose Pennywise energy. And, there was something else, loose around. A feeling purpose, dedication, of chaos, and nobility. My gamer interface. It was trying to hold the power together, but the fragments of Pennywise were resisting it, and my power was damaged regardless.
I think I could do something. I focused on certain memories- an old sofa I had cuddled my mother on, the dinosaurs on my door that I was so proud of, the rush of joy as I rallied a friend to protect me and softly pulled them together. I couldn't restart my gamer power, but I could soft restart a fragment of my power. Gamer's mind.
The pain went down from a 10/10 to a 8/10, the world snapped into focus, and I saw. We we running. We had defeated IT, and were unstoppable. I felt so happy and-
Cocaine. Ah. I extended my bubble of the gamer's mind around Georgie.
I know, I know. You shouldn't give cocaine to seven year olds. But you also shouldn't have sewer clowns eat their eyes and abduct them. When I had been thinking this over with Gordon, I had made sure to get a child dose because I was pretty sure there was a high likelihood we would need a major physical boost.
"Georgie. Stop running. You got free." I called out.
He awkwardly skittered to a stop, in the middle of a green forest. With plants. And stuff.
"So… you gonna build a spear and we can hunt and stuff?" He said hopefully.
"Nah. We have no supplies, unlike the cave, and I don't really know nature stuff."
"We'll starve then."
"It's been a couple hours at best. You can go three days without water and be fine. You can go a lot longer without food."
"I'm hungry!" He said, stomping around the green leafed wooded areas.
I sighed. "Cool your horses. There's food."
"Where?"
"Try under that rock." He knelt down by a rock, grey and rocky. Geography was my least favourite subject. I was a city boy. Sue me.
He lifted it up. Creepy crawly bugs and creatures crawled away.
"Grab those ants! And that earth worm" I said. He reached down, grabbing little black ants off the ground, crushing each with his cocaine fueled eagerness.
"Now what? Are they bait or something."
"Hakuna matata. Slimey yet satisfying."
"What?" He said, confused.
Oh yeah. It had been released in the 90s. "It means no worries. And that you need to eat them."
"But they're bugs. You can't eat bugs."
"Yes you can. They're the safest thing to eat in the forest. Lots of plants are poisonous, mushrooms too, and unless you have a buddy who really knows them, you shouldn't risk it. But bugs? So long as they're not hairy or covered in legs or brightly coloured, best thing to eat."
He held the worm up to his mouth. "Woah woah woah." I said. "We cook them first. We aren't savages."
"But you said to eat it!"
"I'll eat you." I replied.
"Not if I eat you first!"
I guided him in gathering some dryer looking branches and clearing out a fire circle. Thankfully, starting a fire was something that I did know well. We collected more bugs, built a little fire, and I guided him in using a nearby stone and the steel nib of the syringe he had thankfully kept to spark a fire.
And we enjoyed roasted insect. I was working on repairing his body. I could start either gamer's mind or gamer's body. Not both. I was using a mix of that, and gentle start ups of poison control to nullify the poison. Bit by bit I was repairing the damage from Pennywise and all I had to do was occasionally endure the pain spiking up to full badness.
The roasted bugs helped. They tasted lemony. It was pretty yum. It was easier to repair with food in my belly. A few more hours, and we saw the sunset, orange light filtering through the trees. I felt a lot better in him. His eye was still raw and pulsating, but I'd scabbed it over and sealed off the damage.
"Can we go home now?" Asked Georgie, huddling up by the fire. "I miss my brother."
"Not yet. Sewer clown is chasing us. If we went home, he would simply attack them as well. We need to keep them safe. We need weapons capable of slaying him."
"But what if he attacks him while I'm away."
"He seems pretty focused on us, and I dunno if he actually knows who you are. He focused more on me. Do you fear your brother getting hurt."
"No, he's invincible!"
"There you go. He targets fears. Your brother is safe."
"Are you sure?" He asked. Persistent kid.
"I am not fucking sure. He's an inter dimensional alien, he does what he wants."
"You don't have to be like that! I just want to be there for my brother." He said.
Rah. I had snapped, with someone who I couldn't really control. I was in pain, but yeah, I needed to manage it. There was something that might well fix it. Something magic.
That had been a major part of why I had come here. To learn magic, I needed magic items. Stephen King's world had lots of magic, so I could become a wizard. Plus, I might be able to relieve this constant agony, which was about as bad as a fresh broken arm most of the time and worst when I didn't have gamer's mind up.
"We still have Aliens 2 to watch sometime." I said.
He perked up, distracted. "Yeah! But I don't have any money."
"We have the gold. I brought that with me so we could sell it for some quick cash."
"So we can eat all the sweets and watch all the movies we want?" He asked, breathing fast.
"Yes. And in time, we'll get back to your brother and your family, after we kill the clown."
He looked down, silent for a while. I also looked down. It was weird not controlling myself. I guess this was how Adam and Mia and Laura felt.
After a while he smiled again. "So, when we go to see Aliens I want-"
There was a growling sound from the woods. A bear. That was odd. I had checked, there were no bear nests around us. Georgie was spooked as hell. He jumped up, and twisted around, looking from left to right.
"Be wary. Bear attack imminent. You're small, so you might look edible. Grab that fire stick. If it comes, back away. It might just be curious."
Was this a… random encounter. Was my luck so bad the universe spawned a random bear to attack me? Could I loot rusty chainmail from it? This was definitely not a CR appropriate encounter regardless.
I knew a bit about bears. My very sparse nature knowledge consisted of knowing all plants and mushrooms were evil until proven otherwise, eat bugs, and how to handle bear attacks. And sharks.
Bears growl when they're angry. I know it was a movie thing for them to growl menacingly before they chased you. Was the bear following movie logic?
I needed an edge. I dropped gamer's mind, bit my mental tongue at the sharp agony, and drew up my survivor skill. It was a fruity smell, the smell of an explosion I had made in the labs. A lovely memory. It was advanced apprentice level, and pretty strong. Bears were mega stealthy. It might be able to sneak up on me.
As Georgie span around and waved the flaming stick around way too frantically, I listened. I could hear the forest. The sway of the trees. A distant stream. And- the crunching of a heavy foot.
"Behind us! Stick the flame in it's face."
Georgie span around, facing the fire, and out from it jumped a massive black bear, fur matted, a couple hundred pounds of muscle and fat. It looked confused. Georgie screamed and thrust the fire forward, so forcefully he dropped it.
The bear looked really unhappy, touching it's burnt chest, growling. It didn't take the opening, and Georgie was able to pick up the torch again.
"Stay away! I'm a Vampire Knight!" Said Georgie. "You can't touch me." Madly waving the torch.
After a while of pacing back and forth, the black bear seemed to make a decision. He came at us again, wary, looking extremely unhappy, slow and wary, growling.
My survivor skill was saying this was really unnatural. They didn't jump through fires, and they didn't get confused around prey like this. It did remember something. A hunt, through the green flooded nightmare city. I had been chasing a rogue abomination, created and escaped. It had suddenly turned on them, bound with foul mind magic to attack.
Ah. Pennywise. And that was a weird memory to have. Definitely not mine. Another thing to add onto the increasingly large something was off pile.
Pennywise didn't have perfect mind control. If we shocked this bear enough it would bolt. I wasn't sure I could get Georgie to do much. He seemed to be really not handling this well.
"It's just a bear. You can do it."
"I can't. Bears. They're scary." He said, waving the torch more.
The bear lunged forward, and whacked the torch out of Georgie's hand.
This wasn't going well. I needed to do something.
I grasped two powers. The shapeshifting power, and the turn into me power. It was a little hard holding them both at once, but they weren't as heavy as the gamer perks. I shoved George back, and took control.
In a moment I was no longer a scared boy, but a large adult. I stuck my hands up, trying to look as big as possible.
I screamed at the bear, letting out my frustration at the day, spat at it, tried to ward it off.
It looked like it would be very happy to leave. It shook it's head from side to side, touched it's burnt chest again, and paced back and forth, looking increasingly unhappy, and stepped forward.
I thrust the torch forward at it's nose. It tried to run away and step forward at once, it's face singing in the heat. It made a decision. It jumped forward, on two legs, swiping at my neck.
I dropped back down into little Georgie form, feeling the sway of the paw over my head, grasping on my dexterity and strength. Wasn't quite enough. The bear pinned me under their form. They scrabbled back, leaned over me, opened their mouth, and growled in my face. As they did, the bear's face shifted, red lines appearing like Pennywise's makeup.
I heard a whisper in my head.
"You can't run from me."
I tried triggering inhuman strength and strength and grabbed their paws. I managed to push them back, feeling their crushing weight on me. Then they started to lean into me, overpowering my merely human strength mouth open, drool dropping out.
I heard a bark from the side. The bear looked over there, and got a cheek full of searing spit. He backed away, teeth clattering, making a wuh wuh wuh sound, body shaking, then turned tail and ran off, scraping off the fluid on a tree.
I looked up, and saw a familiar sight. Cure. The perk had worked! And dropped him here.
What a good boy.
The gang is back together. It makes a mind control play, but the black bear doesn't comply well.
Crimsonsylvan. Georgie did well. And, I don't distinguish on the source of mind powers. Hive mind, pheromones, spores, psychic powers, I don't really care about the technobabble reason behind the powers, they all feed into a similar system. And controlling a city of undead is pretty psychic. And yeah, the multiple personalities would make it really hard for Freddy and similar people to home in on a fear.
Sansas22. A reward for what?
Thorison1080. Yeah, Pennywise is clearly not the smartest clown in the sewer. And sure, I'll add Texas Chainsaw massacre.
Arkyong. I know, he's letting the kid see age inappropriate films, using drugs, getting him to run away. Very bad influence.
Watermeloninja. Flamethrowers do make it much easier to fix interpersonal issues. What problem isn't made better with fire?
Soda-fiedpsycho. He does want more combat skills, and he has a few months of free time.
Dr Cookie Deleter. Minimal editing, and I have a rough outline for several arcs.
Toobad69. I looked those up. Pretty sure those are all in other dark tower universes. Not sure how he could reach them. Maybe later anyway.
Harnackam. Fixed, oops.
Gatling2745. Pennywise always backed down after a little physical damage. His true strength isn't in a punch out, it's with fear powers. And, I hope to keep up the good work.
Next time, they begin their fun road trip to get magical powers to crush Pennywise.
