[ Location: Hawkins - Bottom of Lovers' Lake ][ Date: March 22nd, 1986 - Saturday Morning ]
I hit the freezing black water.
Instantly, the Gillyweed did its job and the burning in my neck stopped as the gills opened on my throat.
I inhaled a deep breath of lake water.
It was like toxic water and rotting fish, but my [ Passive: Venom Resistance (MAX) ] filtered out the poison before it could hurt me.
It was pitch black down here.
'Remote Viewing. Thermal Mode.'
[ Ability Active: Remote Viewing. ]
My vision shifted and the darkness vanished, replaced by glowing red heat signatures.
Fifty feet below me, the giant monster was waiting.
The Spawn of Dagon was the size of a three-story house.
It looked like a cross between a bloated toad and a deep-sea anglerfish and it was sitting on a massive pile of glowing green eggs, guarding its nest.
It looked up and saw me and didn't like that I was in its house.
The monster opened its massive, jagged jaws and let out an underwater roar.
A shockwave of bubbles and heavy pressure slammed into me, pushing me backward.
'You think you can bully me with water pressure?' I thought, gripping my glowing purple [ Void Blade ].
'I control gravity, ugly bitch.'
Normal people move in slow motion underwater but I don't.
'Telekinesis: Torpedo.'
[ Ability Active: Telekinesis. ]
I wrapped a bubble of mental force around myself and shot forward like a missile and the water parted around my shield, removing all friction, So I closed the fifty-foot gap in exactly one second.
The monster's yellow eyes went wide and it swiped a massive, webbed claw at my head, trying to crush me like a bug.
I just swung my sword.
The Aether coating the Void Blade was so hot it literally boiled the water around the metal.
SLASH.
I cut clean through its thick, scaly arm.
The monster shrieked and thick, black blood poured into the lake.
It thrashed wildly, sending massive waves of mud up from the bottom of the lake.
It backed away, furious.
It realized it couldn't beat me in a fistfight So, it tried a different trick.
The monster's giant yellow eyes started to glow with a blinding light.
It pushed a wave of pure, mind-breaking madness straight into my brain, trying to melt my sanity.
[ Ability Active: Occlumency (Level 6). ] (Occlumency level up in his time in hogwarts)
I just floated there in the water, completely bored by the psychic attack.
I just pushed my voice directly into its giant head.
'Telepathy: Broadcast.'
"I've got a literal world-eater caged in my gut," my voice echoed violently inside the monster's brain. "You're just an overgrown catfish and you show me attitude, Tch."
I raised my free hand and pointed my palm straight down at the monster.
'Sit down.'
[ Ability Active: Telekinesis (Gravity Well). ]
I multiplied the gravity at the bottom of the lake by fifty.
The Spawn of Dagon was instantly slammed flat against the mud and the sheer, crushing weight pinned it perfectly still.
It squirmed and gurgled, but it couldn't lift a single muscle.
I floated down right in front of its ugly face and raised the Void Blade with both hands.
"Eviction notice served," I projected into its mind.
I drove the glowing sword straight down, right between its glowing yellow eyes.
The blade pierced its thick skull and sank deep into its brain and the monster let out one final, weak shudder, and then went completely limp.
I ripped the sword out.
Next, I looked at the hundreds of glowing green eggs scattered in the mud.
'Telekinesis: Crush.'
I squeezed my empty fist.
Every single egg popped at the exact same time like gross water balloons.
The threat was gone.
[ SYSTEM ALERT: LOW BOSS DEFEATED ][ Target: Abyssal Leviathan (Spawn of Dagon). ]
[ Reward: 500 System Points. ][ Loot Dropped: Abyssal Pearl. ]
A glowing, dark blue pearl the size of a bowling ball floated up from the monster's chest.
I grabbed it and shoved it into my [ Inventory ].
I kicked off the mud and swam for the surface.
[ Location: Lovers' Lake - Shoreline ][ Time: 9:15 AM ]
I broke the surface of the water and walked onto the muddy shore.
The Gillyweed wore off immediately and the gills on my neck sealed shut, and the webbing between my fingers vanished.
I looked at the lake.
The sickly black sludge was already clearing up and the water was turning blue again.
On the shore, Tommy H., Carol, and the rest of the teenagers were groaning and sitting up in the mud.
The cosmic mind-control was broken and their scaly mutations on their skin dissolved, turning back into normal human flesh.
"What... what happened?" Tommy gagged, coughing up lake water and looked at his hands, confused. "Why am I in my underwear? In the mud?"
I stood over them, perfectly dry thanks to a quick burst of magic, resting my sword on my shoulder.
"You guys joined a fish cult," I said casually, looking down at the school bullies. "I just canceled your membership."
Carol shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. "Vivan? Did you... did you save us?"
"Don't flatter yourself, Carol. I saved my plumbing," I smirked. "Your new fish god clogged my shower with toxic sludge and you all owe me a hundred bucks for the cleaning bill."
Tommy looked terrified.
He remembered me throwing him twenty feet through the air with a flick of my wrist.
"Y-yes, right. We'll pay," Tommy stammered, scrambling to his feet.
"Now go home," I commanded, my voice dropping. "And if any of you ever talk about glowing yellow eyes or fish gods... I'll throw you back in."
They scrambled up, nodding frantically, and ran toward the road.
I slashed my hand through the air, opening a green portal directly back to my bedroom.
"Another day, another apocalypse canceled," I muttered, stepping through.
[ Location: Frostwell Residence - Vivan's Bedroom ][ Time: 9:30 AM ]
I stepped onto my bedroom rug and the portal snapped shut behind me.
"System," I said, tossing my jacket onto the chair. "Show me the loot."
I reached into my Inventory and pulled out the Abyssal Pearl.
It was heavy, radiating a deep, oceanic cold.
But the exact moment I held it in my bare hand, something went horribly wrong.
My stomach started burning.
The black spiral scar on my stomach—the Eight Trigrams Seal holding the trapped energy of Pennywise the Clown—flared with blinding orange light.
It burned like a hot iron pressed against my skin.
"Hey!" I yelled, dropping the pearl but it didn't hit the floor.
The pearl hovered in the air, connecting to my stomach via a beam of dark orange energy.
The temperature in my bedroom spiked.
"You got too strong, little VIVI" a voice whispered.
The voice wasn't echoing in the room but it was inside my head.
'A smile is something special
A ribbon is something rare'
But it didn't sound giggly or playful like it usually did.
'So I'll be special and I'll be rare
With a smile and ribbon in my hair....'
It sounded Cold, playful and very, very angry.
The Pennywise.
"Shut up, Bozo," I grunted, holding my burning stomach. "You're locked in a cage and you can't do anything."
"I can't take your body anymore," the Clown's voice scraped against my skull. "Your Spirit is too powerfull and you trapped little good pennywise in here but this Pearl... it is a piece of the pure Abyss and it is exactly the energy I needed."
"System!" I shouted, panic finally spiking in my chest. "Store items! Store them now!"
[ System Error: Temporal Paradox Detected. Inventory Locked. ]
"Time is just a string, Vivan," Pennywise laughed darkly. "And I know exactly how to pull it."
The glowing Abyssal Pearl erupted.
A massive beam of pure Deadlights shot out of the pearl and hit the center of my bedroom and It ripped open a swirling, chaotic, neon-orange rift in the fabric of time itself.
"I can't kill you and posses you in this timeline," the Sealed Pennywise whispered, his voice fading as he poured all the pearl's energy into the rift.
"But he can."
A hand shot out of the orange rift.
It was older, dirtier.
The sleeve was a faded, Victorian-era grey with a crimson pom-pom.
The hand grabbed me by the throat.
The physical strength was impossibly strong.
'Telekinesis! Max Gravity!'
I tried to blast the hand away but nothing happened.
My powers glitched and the air warped around me, canceling out my magic, Because the hand didn't belong to this timeline.
I was fighting a paradox.
"NO!" I choked.
The hand yanked me forward, dragging me violently off my feet and pulling me straight into the burning orange rift.
My bedroom vanished.
[ Location: ??? ][ Date: ??? ]
I slammed onto hard, wet pavement.
The orange rift above me snapped shut with a sound like a thunderclap, leaving me completely cut off from Hawkins, the Upside Down, and my friends.
I coughed, clutching my throat, and rolled onto my back.
It was raining.
My head was ringing and I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, looking around.
I was in a dark alleyway.
Brick buildings lined the street. Old cars—cars with giant tailfins and rounded hoods—were parked along the curb.
I looked up at a rusted metal sign bolted to the brick wall above me.
WELCOME TO DERRY, MAINE.
Below it, a soaked newspaper blew past my boots.
I caught it and the date at the top of the page sent a block of ice straight into my stomach.
October 14th, 1962.
"No," I whispered, dropping the paper. "He threw me backward. Twenty-four years backward."
I was in the past.
Long before the Losers Club and long before I had an army.
From the dark sewer grate right next to my boots, a quiet splash echoed.
Two glowing silver eyes appeared in the darkness of the drain.
"Hiya, Vivan," a younger, much hungrier voice giggled from the dark. "Welcome to Derry. Let's start from the beginning."
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