Oww oww.

He had gotten asleep a bit after that. Kid was afraid of bears. I got to work fixing things up. No sleep for me. No relief.

Pennywise was an eldritch horror. He had ripped my power apart into fragments, and when I ripped into him to restore my power, aspects of him were embedded inside me. Like sand on bare skin, they rubbed me raw whenever I tried to use my gamer powers.

Could he track me? Look through my eyes? I had hid in the woods because I hoped that would make it harder, but he'd sent a black bear after me. Not a good situation.

You know Rick and Morty? I know it of course, but talking to myself helps with not going insane. There's an episode where Summer gets a job at a shop called Needful Things, and it turns out the Devil is the owner. Rick comes in and fixes all his devices. Rick goes to Pluto and says that it's not a planet. There's a whole load of things going on.

Anyway, that was based off a Stephen King novel called Needful Things. A magical devil called Gaunt has a shop with useful stuff and magical stuff in it, and destroys towns with it. After things are finished they move town somewhere else and destroy it too. The message was probably that people went to obsessive lengths to obtain their addictions, something Stephen King could appreciate given his own addictions. The message according to him had been that reaganite greed was bad. The book hadn't sold great. I was hoping I could find it, kill Gaunt, and loot his stuff. Milk run mission.

They had a magical item that cured arthritis. I was really looking forward to that. Were they cursed? Maybe. But regardless, magical items were cool. They were also the edge I needed in Saw 3. I had the protective coins, but I needed something with a bit more magical mojo to give me a real edge.

Onwards with Gamer mind and body healing. Seeing the abilities in isolation was really giving me a much more solid picture of how they worked. I could focus the healing effect in area better. I had fully healed his eye, stopping the pain there, and was now working with dulling the head pain. More than that, I could see in my own inner void the machinery. I could see the shields they offered, the way that they could extend to repair and replace parts of other powers. My powers were some biotech weirdness, and I was ready to exploit it.

Pennywise and his fragments in my head fought me every step of the day. I really needed a solution. Whenever I would fix a machine in my mind that powered a skill they would lurch forward and burn and destroy it once more.

Early the next day, after a few hours of sleep, I used the minimap to walk back to town, past the old american buildings. The night air felt so raw on my skin. It was a purifying distraction from the pain. Georgie complained and bitched, but I needed less sleep now. Early, before the library opened, we sneaked in.

The security was shit. I picked the lock in a minute. In I went, to the treasure trove. I first went and picked up some books. History of the town, some native american books which had the ritual of chud (an unsuccessful clown killing ritual) what I could find on magic. Sorry library, but I had to steal. Then I broke in deeper. Survivor made me pretty good at dismantling locks.

This library, as a research institute, had a networked computer! I had thought I would have to do a lot of work to find the shop. The USA, unlike the much wiser and more intelligently organized UK, had a lot of different yellow phone book operators and different state by state records, rather than following the wisdom of having a centralized government which could organize it all, and which didn't throw tea in harbors.

That poor tea.

My eyes were blurry, and my head pounding, but I was ready to do research. I had earned 30 perk points from my levels up, plus 25 from my escape of Pennywise. A nice haul. Working very slowly and carefully, since I needed to activate my interface and my perk point system, I bought IT specialist. Megatron v2 would have to wait, for now I needed searching power.

The internet of that day was pretty weak. This was before mp3s had been released, long before the internet was much use. Still, there were news groups, exchanges, networks and subnetworks to navigate, all at the snail's pace speed. Text was necessary, because pictures were too big.

I spent hours and hours, hidden in the library's research computer. I read through research papers, silly news, recipes, ideas, political and religious debates of the 80s, jokes, stories, everything the many people on the internet had done. I cracked through some of the weak barriers in place, searching further and further for some hint of where to go. My new skill, along with my intellect and my gamer's mind, all three powers up, let me go through it fast.

And just a bit before dawn, I found the needle in the haystack. A little report from Illinois of a store, Everything You Need. An astronomer was nearby. They had complained about people fucking with their telescopes, and asked for advice fixing it as well, and more searching generally revealed a picture of a town going to shit.

"We got what we need. It's time to phone my brother." Said Georgie confidently.

"I am pretty sure he's spying on us. He'll know who your brother is if we call him."

The kid was an idiot and- rah. Blah. No. I hadn't slept in a long time, and I was in constant pain, but I wasn't gonna take it out on a child. I still needed him.

My survivor tingly senses agreed though. He hadn't mentioned Georgie's brother a lot, and Georgie didn't seem to have many fears around his brother. He trusted him a lot. He knew he could be moody, and didn't like it, but he was never afraid his brother would leave him. They sort of knew ish what Pennywise was, and didn't think he knew everything.

"You don't know that!" Georgie replied, flushed with emotion. "He could already be coming for him."

"I have a plan for that, when it's morning. We pay some homeless dude to call us every couple of hours, about a bunch of families."

"I need to see him now! To talk to them!" He said. And he seized control, and walked off.

I tried to speak, to stop him, but his will was iron, and he was going. We marched past piles of books, pictures, a printer, to the desk.

"Be sure when you do this. It could be everyone's death."

Georgie rested his hand over the phone, tears in his eye.

"I miss my brother. I want to talk to him."

"I know." I replied. "I miss my family as well."

He paused. "He said he'd go after them. Aren't you worried about them? Scared?"

I nodded. "I am. I am really worried, because I love them and want the best for them."

"So why don't you do something!"

"This is what I am doing. Preparing. Slow and steady wins the race."

He unclenched his fists, putting down the phone. "I miss him."

As we spoke, we heard a sound. Behind us was an easter egg.

"We probably shouldn't chase down the random easter egg." He said.

I shook my head. "You sure? We could go down to the basement following the easter egg, and maybe the corpse of a previous victim would appear and chase us down, but really it's a spooky sewer clown?" This had happened in the movies.

He shook his head. "Nah. I'm good."

Wise kid.

Secrets are gathered, information is revealed, and a quest shall be begun!

Next chapter, Needful Things vs Macgyver.

Sanas22. He's very close to regaining his powers, and will get some cool rewards then.

Arkyong. Soon the arc will be over, and we will be back to non creepy flesh mutilation in Saw.

Thorison1080. His gamer system is bust so he's trying to get an alt magical fix. A creepy clown is stalking him.

Dr Cookie Deleter. His stand is truly mighty, and needs to get flashier clothes to keep up.

Toobad69. Next chapter, we will see what he tries to do.

Watermelonninja. His stats are pretty heavy. He could baby parkour around even as an infant in a zombie apocalypse.

Moche. Thanks.

Artekha. He did indeed get to another world!