Everything was fine. I had expected this.
Well maybe not precisely this. It was kind of a shock having augmentations I had for over a year just casually ripped off like a mask. But I had expected something bad.
Everyone knew Pennywise the creepy clown who unwise kids went to get paper boats from. Seriously kids, say no to toys from sewer clowns.
There was more to him than that. He was an ancient being, billions of years old. A member of the deadlights, eldritch beings of immense power, part of the Red faction of chaos. In the Stephen King mythos there was a central tower called the Dark Tower. It connected all of his books, and was central. I had seen it when I entered. IT drew his power from a terrible place, the Macroverse. He had horrible power and desires.
And he used it to turn into a clown and eat kids. What a waste. Anyway, I didn't know the power ranking of my Random Omnipotent Being and IT, so I was aware there was a certain risk of something like this happening.
My head banged on a rocky outcropping, and my host screamed.
Annoying. Regardless, I had a plan to get out of this. I could survive this, and regain my power. I actually had planned out almost exactly this scenario, but I had assumed I would be in the driver seat. This could work though.
Pennywise had immense power, vastly greater than my gamer power, was called The World Eater and was opposed by a magic turtle who created worlds, and I was powerless in the body of a small child who had been eaten to motivate his brother to try hard in the original film. That seemed to be a trend. I was the expendable motivator. The person who died to help inspire the real hero.
But IT had major weaknesses. He was strong, durable, but bound to the forms he was stuck in. He was vulnerable to the infinite creativity of children, to the power of friendship and vastly weakened when faced by fearless people.
And I wasn't weaker than before. I was different. The game had been pushing down my old self. It had blocked my memory, ripped my mind away from thinking of Summer, it had twisted my thoughts. It had taken my name from me. Peter.
I was a science teacher, judo lover, prepper, fencer, dnd player, chemist, tinker. I was that even without my powers. No spooky clown was going to stop me.
I pushed at my boundaries. I was stuck behind, like Adam, Mia, Laura had been, but they'd found ways to talk to me at times. I felt my soul constricted, like it was behind a vice. I strained muscles I didn't know I had, and felt the vice inch away- then force it's way back.
I couldn't brute force my way out. Maybe… what did I know about Georgie. He was obsessed with his brother. He'd been rejected, before he died. He trusted sewer clowns, so was pretty gullible. He liked boats? Maybe.
Let's try that. Family connection.
"Bill. Bill needs you." His bro.
He stopped screaming, and looked around, instantly diverted.
"Bill? Bill? Where are you?" He asked. IT likely expected this, and didn't react.
"Not outloud." I said in his head. "Think it. I'm not Bill, but I am here to get you home."
"What are you?"
"A psychic being who enters people to help them."
"Like a space vampire?"
If I had eyes, I would have blinked confused.
"They bite people and turn into people and come from space." He continued.
A distant memory hit me. Lifeforce? Some crappy 80s movie.
"Yes, I am a psychic vampire. You figured me out."
"I knew I could."
Pennywise looked a little unhappy. George had stopped struggling, distracted for now.
"I need you to help me. Pennywise drained my-"
"Are you going to burst out of my chest?"
I had seen that film when I was three! "Like Alien?"
"You're a space alien vampire?" He said in his mind, shocked.
"I am. We're about to have a hard time. I need you to do something for me."
"What?" He said.
"He's gonna use his fear magic on you. He's a fairy. You know what fairies are?"
He shook his head.
"Remember in Alien the big black thing with the tongue?"
"Yeah, that was sick!"
"That was a fairy. It tortured the crew by sneaking around and then ate them. The clown is a fairy like that. They have two weaknesses."
"Grappling hooks and fire?"
"Yes, exactly. Their big weakness is cold iron though, and being burnt."
"My cousin dares to interfere. Ruining my meat. I'll show him!" Said Pennywise.
"Remember!" I said quickly. "No darkness is a match for a flamethrower. And inside the heart of every boy lies a flame to burn things. I'll make a flame for you."
Pennywise slapped Georgie's head. It rung and shook me, and I felt dizzy.
"Go away, little thief. Stealing into my world. I'll show you fear."
And my world faded away.
I was back. In a familiar place. My parent's house. The largest house on the block. Old, cracked walls, a green garden, a rockery, two shrubs where trees once were, sliced down because they undermined the wall. Brick walls. The smell of spring.
I went into my house. I walked in, went to my room. Small, with dinosaur pictures on the door, back when I wanted to be a paleontologist.I sat on my bed, familiar and trustworthy.
My parents came in. My bald father, kindly, friendly. My mother, now with greying hair, short, loving. But not now. They screamed and screamed at me. Told me to get out of their house. That they didn't know who I was. I felt an aching pain. Why wouldn't they recognize me? I pulled out photos, but my spot was burnt out, empty.
The police came, and took me away. I was locked up. They forgot me. They never came they never loved me. I was alone. I had been forgotten, abandoned. Erased from the world. No purpose, no function. I was nothing.
Some inner fire pushed back inside me.
No. I was Peter. That was my name. I would not be forgotten. This didn't even make sense. There had been no transition between my home and the police station. The pictures and words I had seen- they changed when I looked at them, like a dream. And my parents loved me, and would never forget me. I was unforgettable.
Mental pressure lifted. Backup gamer mind activated.
It didn't stop the fog. The confusion. But it took the edge off. I felt one the last remnants of the gamer powers slide over me, shielding my mind, protecting me, pushing down the mental pressure. IT had another weakness. They weren't the most perceptive. They'd missed a few things, clearing me out. Like this hidden power.
The police were ignoring me, so I ran out of my cell. I stopped in a cleaning closet, the kitchen, their medical supplies and picked up chemicals I knew would ignite and burn. Then I ran and ran and ran till my lungs burnt, till I reached the well in the countryside I had set on fire so long ago.
This world was dreamlike. IT had trapped me in an illusion of my fears. A fear of being forgotten. I poured the chemicals together. Glycerine and potassium permanganate made fire.
Once more, the well, stone, solid, fixed in the green countryside burnt. The heat burnt me as much as any real fire, the smoke choked my lungs, prime English countryside being destroyed in my mindscape.
I screamed out Georgie's name, again and again, and called him to my fire.
And I felt Georgie's eyes on me. His fear was darkness. I was the light. There was something chasing him. A bat human monster, with red flesh. The vampire from Lifeforce.
I had a weapon. It was mine. I pulled out a cold iron blade, thin and sharp. And as the vampire got close, I stabbed. I felt my hand rip through flesh as the vampire was pierced, and screamed, glowing blue energy burning out of them and-
We snapped back. If I killed Pennywise's avatar in dream world, did he die in real world?
We were floating in the air. We were in Pennywise's central depot, there to act as fear batteries. There was a massive pile of toys and bones and clothes and scraps from Pennywise' past conquests, along with the corpses of his past kills.
"You made it out! Well done."
He nodded. "I was so scared in the darkness. There were things there, looking for me. Chasing me. But then I saw your light and you stopped it."
"Just like in the film." I said. "Cold iron stops fairies."
"Are vampires fairies?" I nodded.
"Basically. Distant cousins at least. Stab them in the heart with cold iron, and they die. We need to get out of here. Can you reach that bone?"
I sent a mental image of the bone of some past victim sticking out of the pile.
"Eww." He grimaced, and reach out, and grabbed the bone.
"Pull us both out of this telekinetic trap." He tugged and pulled, and we slowly drifted away from the center spot. Then the bone yanked out, along with blood and gore, splattering our faces. We span around and bounced around in the telekinetic trap.
"I'm gonna be sick!" He thought at me.
"Put your hand over your mouth. For Billie, for life, for Ripley!" I shouted at him.
He put his hand over his mouth as he began retching and retching, the spinning and blood of the situation disturbing his stomach.
He was having trouble. Like something was caught in his throat. Then he finished, and coughed it out. He just grabbed it.
A plastic bag. My holdaway pouch. P2 of my escape plan.
Pennywise wasn't the most observant. He was arrogant. He had left us here as a fear battery, and then ran off to fuck with more people. I knew he would do this. I had thought of this before we came- he trapped kids to use as batteries, I could escape that. In the film and book he hadn't, since his brother had taken months to find him, but I was an escape artist. Backup gamer's mind and holdaway compartment? They were both secret. Hidden. You needed to really search to find them, by nature of what they were. If any psychic could break your gamer mind and backup gamer's mind was obvious then that would be broken as well. So, it was secret.
I am sure IT could have broken both. But he assumed just ripping away my powers- which still hurt- would be enough. Now we had it. We slowed down, thanks to air resistance and Georgie got control of his wrenching, and then he felt through it. There were a couple things in here.
A cold iron knife. A heavy doctor's syringe. Several coloured pills. Antibiotics, morphine pills, a little capsule of cocaine.A piece of golden jewelry from Addison.
Weed was a schedule 1 drug in the USA. Far too dangerous for people to have. Cocaine was schedule 2, and so of course it was available and regularly used as an anesthetic. Much safer than weed, so sayeth the government. Silly. I thought I'd have to ask Xavier for it, but Gordon just had them all. Drug laws in the USA were crazy.
"I used my vampire fairy powers to get us these. He stripped me of most of my power though, this is all I can bring."
He got a sly look in his eyes, and then took out the cold iron knife and pointed it at himself.
"Vampires are bad. Are you going to eat me?"
What was he gonna do, stab himself?
"Fairies can't lie. That's one of our rules. Ask me anything." That definitely wasn't a rule I was bound to.
"What's the average air speed of an unladen swallow?"
"What species?"
"I don't know..."
"Hahaha, you can't answer me, you lose the riddle off." I replied.
"But then why am I not flying away?"
"Because you watch too many age inappropriate movies." He floated for a while, and then spoke, in a very serious tone.
"Do you intend to hurt my brother? I can't let that happen."
"I intend no intentional harm to any of those, though in the fight against the clown there is some risk of harm. I will do my best to keep you safe."
He thought through it for a second, and then nodded, and spoke.
"So how do we get out of this?"
"The needle is an artificial vampire weapon. It drains magic. You need to stab it into someone, and suck my powers back out. Then I can defeat the evil clown fairy. The other weapon is cold iron. If you strike at the clown without fear in your heart you can gravely injure him. The pills are drugs to help protect you- the red one is an antibiotic which you should take now, because I am pretty sure we caught everything on the way you mean this trap, we need to go back and grab more of the floating gore parts."
He swallowed the red pill. "Didn't work last time. My side hurts from the bone. I'm pretty sure I bruised!"
"A bruise is a lesson, and each lesson makes us better. Try and find a bone that's firmer in. They can't all be loose."
He spent a while, moaning and complaining all the while about touching the bloody corpses of children's bodies, but eventually we found a bone that was connected to a body pretty firmly. He yanked and yanked and eventually we snapped out of the trap.
"He'll be back soon. We need to prepare." I said. "Grab whatever armor you can from the pile- hats, thick clothes. See if you can find some free long bones."
He moaned. "Why. Can't we just get out of here?"
I shook my head. "Sharp drop. I don't know the way out. We need to be ready in case we meet him. We need a spear as well."
"This is so disgusting. Ew ew ew." He said, as he reached in the bloody pile of bodies. He searched a while, and found a cap, a thick jacket, soaked with blood, and an old leg of some big teen or young adult. I directed him in securing the cold iron to the end, making a makeshift short spear with the femur of some other unlucky victim.
Was it bad to destroy the corpse of a random child who Pennywise had murdered? Yes. But we really didn't have a lot of resources down here. It was a dank cave. I couldn't make up some chemical bomb, I couldn't make a lot because-oh. Yes. Jackpot.
"Grab that red thing! The etch a sketch. And that broken down matchbox car."
"Why?" He asked, going to grab them.
"We are lucky. The clown has a 27 year cycle. This was just released in 1960." I was pretty sure I was in the film version of IT, which happened in 1988 from the film references. The book was a lot darker and more weird since it was written by a druggie with a very creepy imagination and an excellent grasp of prose, and the film was more child safe. Ish. "It has aluminum powder in it. Mix that with rust, from the matchbox car and you can make thermite, a chemical that burns evil clowns."
It was more work to get a fire going, and make a sling, but we had a mountain of corpses and toys to work with. We managed.
Bone can serve as a replacement for wood in starting a friction fire, interesting fact!
He had a sling of thermite, bone and cloth and leather, his two weapons, a crude belt to hold his equipment, and was adorned with the toys and body parts of his slain fellow children.
We were ready.
"When I am out remind me of two things. Peter, and Summer. As much as you can. Annoy the heck of of me."
We were about to head out to find a way out when we heard the sound of loud shoes walking slowly towards us. The dim light from high above faded, till all we had left was the dim fire we had started besides us.
"I'm scared." He said.
"I am with you. I have saved others. I will save you. Trust in me." I said.
"How do you stop being scared?" He said, his hand shaking, a little thermite falling out.
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. We know him. You know what he is. He can't stand against our knowledge. I am with you. You know what he is. Every film you've seen has prepared you for this. You need to be Ripley. Slay the beast."
His hand shook a bit less. "I never saw Aliens you know. I want to see it." That was really child inappropriate, but so was being eaten by a sewer clown.
"I promise I'll help you see it if we get out." He gripped his cold iron spear tightly in one hand, his sling in the other.
"I got you...you son of a bitch." He said.
Pennywise stepped forwards. He was barely visible, but his eyed glowed a sinister orange, illuminating a little of his face. His red lipstick was stained with blood- he had fed. He looked pissed, and was flexing his hand, a torn off arm held in it, like a club.
I spoke. "Remember, don't fire till you see their whites of their eyes."
Pennywise swayed his hand. I felt the pressure build up on my mind, and pulled back, inside the boy. Behind his trust, imagination, inappropriate watching of gorey films, and fierce spirit and love his brother. I had no trust that my gamer shield would protect me on it's own, but maybe the boy could.
"I'm not afraid of you, Sewer Clown!" He shouted.
Pennywise slowly walked forward. "You should be." He laughed, a horrible creepy laugh."I'm going to eat you. Suck the marrow from your bones. I'll rip your eyes out, so you can never see anything again." He said, getting closer.
And he stepped on another of the toy cars.
Belief held a major role in these fights. Pennywise was immensely power, but stuck in narratives. Maybe with his shapeshifting power he could have avoided this- but this boy believed intensely that he would slip on the toys, so slip he did. A bit. He quickly recovered, but before he could do more, Georgie dipped the sling in the fire, and slammed it into Pennywise's eyes.
Pennywise screeched as the flame burnt him. His makeup crackled and popped as the intense heat of the aluminum reacting with the iron oxide burnt him.
Going forward, Georgie screamed, and charged him, ramming the cold iron steel into him. He screeched and screamed as he was forced back to the wall.
I pushed forward again. "Syringe, now!" Georgie nodded, and stabbed the syringe into IT's chest.
And nothing happened. No glue filled it. No energy rush. I could feel my power but this wasn't working why wasn't it working-
Oh. Vampires didn't use needles, and IT was only vulnerable to childlike belief.
I pushed forward more. Using the gamer's mind, I managed to shove Georgie back.
"Trust me. Vampire matters." I said. He didn't resist. "Go get him!" He shouted, as he went back out of control.
I grabbed the knife, and rammed it into Pennywise's chest. A light ripped out of it, along with a black oozing blood.
I felt my gamer's mind start to shatter under the deadlight, the pressure unbearable as the full weight of the macroverse slammed into me. I saw the world be birthed, and destroyed, saw the tiny nature of myself, a fly before the power above me. Even all that, barely anything before the weight of the Dark Tower that floated above all. I even saw a notification about my gamer's mind being about to collapse again. I forced myself forward, and bit and drank the foul black blood, and sucked and sucked and drained him, as vampires are supposed to. I immersed myself in Pennywise's body, draining him.
And I felt it. My power.
I sucked and ripped and bit into Pennywise, eating flesh and foul fluids. I immersed myself in the light, letting it consume me, tear me apart as I tore into it. And I felt the yellow light flood back into me as I vamped up my powers, empowered me to fight back, even as my soul burnt in the light.
Interface reactivated. Gamer powers resumed. Level up from defeating Pennywise.
Now I would show Pennywise who he was fighting with.
Errors detected. System cascade imminent. Crashing in 12 seconds.
A survivor. "Ruuuun!" I shouted.
Totally all part of the plan. Advancing in the rear direction. In the next chapter, see Macgyver vs Sewer Clown p2.
Arkyong. There are many gamer over moments.
Thorison1080. IT is an eldritch cthulhu esque power. He recognized that someone else was poisoning his meat, and stripped the poison away, aka the gamer powers, so he could have a delicious fear filled snack.
Dikr1229. I'll check it out then, thanks. Does sound fun, cat and mouse with an alien. And, in RE7 his mind got broken, he was unable to handle any really complex stressful situations well, but he had zombie regeneration so physical stuff wasn't an issue. If he got in a physical death loop he wouldn't be able to move. And nah. Pennywise likes to marinate his victims in fear, and is pretty arrogant, so he stuck them in a fear trance to erase the adult fear.
Toobad69. We'll see, once Pennywise stops jobbing because he thought he was facing a small child. Pennywise is pretty arrogant, he normally doesn't try that hard.
Acespeedninja. Yeah. He isn't in a good state. He's wounded Pennywise, but he still doesn't have fully functional powers.
Crimsonsylvan. He doesn't know what Heller would be like and might just get eaten, and yeah prototypes could defeat most survival and normal horror. They're probably demigod scale like pennywise, but in raw physical stats.
Watermelonninja. Stephen King loved the Cthulhu mythos. IT was an eldritch horror. Read the book. It's worth it.
JakeWJElliot2. Yep, he is very powerful in his own way. One of the themes of the story is that he's always reliant on the environment, but he is getting better and better at that. And yeah, he's working towards big power ups. Just needs a lot more grinding. And the system, being very helpful, obliges- he can grind against Pennywise! Zombie stories would be fun yeah. He can poke at some of the silly decisions.
Anon. yep. Round one vs the clown was a win, but r 2 will be harder.
IncognitoMinerals. Nah, he did, but he underestimated the speed of him. Got sucker punched. And he didn't predict he wouldn't be able to use his hidden weapons, free from fear because he's a catch phrase spitting asshole who fears nothing and could hurt IT.
Soda-fiedPsycho. More taunt perks do sound fun. Nothing too op, but I do like the idea of more ways to insult cosmic horrors.
Jschulter. This whole story is about unpleasant people trying to take away his agency. He woke up with his foot chained to a pipe with no equipment, powers, or items. It tends to end poorly for them. He woke up in a cave, filled not with scraps of advanced weapons, but with child bones and toys, and built a flamethrower, a spear, and a faith empowered child. He always finds a way.
Next time, we can see how far he can get in 12 seconds. See you then.