[ Location: Derry, Maine - Dark Alleyway ][ Date: October 14th, 1962 - 10:45 PM ]
The freezing rain soaked straight through my clothes, chilling me to the bone.
I knelt on the rough, wet pavement, staring into the pitch-black sewer grate at my feet and two glowing silver eyes stared right back.
"Hiya, Vivan," the 1962 version of Pennywise giggled and his voice echoed up through the rusted pipes—wet, raspy, and hungry. "Welcome to Derry. Let's start from the beginning."
I wiped a smear of mud off my chin, completely unimpressed.
"You dragged me twenty-four years into the past just to hide in a puddle? Bold strategy for a cosmic entity."
"Time is just a circle, little VIVI" the clown whispered, his silver eyes flashing with malice. "And in this circle, your power doesn't belong and you're out of bounds. You taste spicy, but you'll taste much better when you realize you're just a normal boy again."
A dirty, white-gloved hand shot through the metal bars like a striking snake, grabbing for my ankle.
I just reacted out of habit and flicked my wrist to blast him away with telekinesis.
Nothing happened.
No invisible wave of gravity.
Just empty air.
[ SYSTEM ERROR: Temporal Anomaly Detected. ][ Core Ability: Divine Psychokinesis is LOCKED. ]
My eyes widened and the clown's dirty fingers brushed against my wet jeans, leaving a thick smear of sewer slime.
I reached for my Void Blade, pulling on the mental thread to my inventory to slice his arm off.
[ SYSTEM ERROR: Inventory Locked. Temporal displacement prevents access. ]
"Oh, did the little landlord lose his keys?" Pennywise cackled from the drain. "You have no toys here! You're just sweet meat!"
A cold knot formed in my stomach.
The violent trip through time had severed my connection to the Upside Down and my dimensional storage entirely.
"Okay," I muttered, my annoyance quickly overriding my shock. "No mind tricks."
I couldn't use my telekinesis, but the raw strength and speed I had spent months training were still permanently woven into my muscles.
I pushed off the wet ground and backflipped just as the clown's hand snapped shut on empty air and landed perfectly on my feet ten yards away, barely breathing hard.
Pennywise let out a low, disappointed groan from the dark pipes.
"You can keep the sewer, Bozo," I said, wiping the rain out of my eyes with my sleeve. "I'll come back and break your nose when I'm dry."
Inside my head, a familiar voice laughed.
"You look pathetic " the sealed version of Pennywise taunted from the cage inside my soul. "My past self is going to eat your flesh, and I get to take the steering wheel of your body. Win-win."
"Keep dreaming, parasite" I replied coldly.
I bit my thumb, instantly drawing a bead of blood and without hesitating, I reached under my wet shirt and drew a swift, glowing blood seal directly over the spiral scar on my stomach, flooding it with pure, burning Aether.
"Fuinjutsu: Silence."
The cage inside my soul violently clamped down and the sealed Clown shrieked as the golden chains tightened, completely cutting off his voice and paralyzing his presence in my mind.
The silence that followed was a massive relief.
I needed to find a way to completely destroy the parasite inside me so he could never pull a stunt like this again but first, I had to survive his past self.
I turned and sprinted out of the dark alley, not stopping until I hit Main Street.
Derry looked like a ghost town.
Vintage cars with massive chrome bumpers lined the sidewalks.
The streetlights cast a dim, sickly yellow glow through the pouring rain and the entire atmosphere felt heavy, like the town itself was holding its breath.
I ducked under the large awning of a local movie theater to escape the storm.
The neon sign above me buzzed loudly.
I leaned against the cold brick wall and took a deep breath and I needed to know exactly what I was working with.
"System," I whispered. "Open Status."
A flickering blue screen popped up and half the text was blocked by flashing red warning boxes, but the bottom half glowed a steady green.
[ Vivan Frostwell - Temporal Penalty Active ]
Inventory: [ LOCKED ]
Divine Psychokinesis & Portal Manipulation: [ LOCKED ]
Aether Core & Magic Spells: [ ACTIVE ]
Fuinjutsu / Sealing Arts: [ ACTIVE ]
Passive Abilities: [ ACTIVE ]
I let out a long, relieved breath.
It was bad that I couldn't open portals and summon my army of Demodogs or even pull a dry towel from my inventory but I wasn't helpless. My Aether was still there powering brightly in my chest and every magic spell and sealing art I had spent months learning was fully functional and my physical body was still on superhuman level.
"I've beaten monsters with my bare hands before," I told myself, cracking my knuckles and the sound popped loudly in the quiet street. "I just need a safe place to regroup."
SCREEECH.
The sound of burning rubber ripped through the quiet street.
A wood-paneled station wagon was speeding down the road, swerving wildly across the wet pavement and it zipped past the movie theater.
The streetlights lit up the inside of the car for just a second, but my enhanced vision caught every detail.
A mother and father sat perfectly straight in the front seats and they both had massive, terrifyingly happy smiles plastered across their faces.
They were chanting in total unison, completely ignoring the road.
In the back seat, a boy—maybe seven or eight years old—was screaming in pure terror and he had a baby pacifier in his mouth.
And flying around his head was a monster.
It looked like a grotesque, mutant baby with leathery wings and a deformed face and it buzzed violently around the car, diving right at the terrified boy.
"Hey! Pull over!" I shouted, stepping out into the rain.
They didn't even tap the brakes.
'Let's see how fast I am.'
I dug my boots into the pavement and sprinted.
My muscles coiled with explosive power, allowing me to accelerate instantly and match the speed of the hurtling car and I ran right up to the passenger window, keeping pace with the speeding vehicle.
"I said pull over!" I yelled, banging my fist hard on the wet glass.
The parents slowly turned their heads toward me.
Their eyes were glowing a sickening, metallic silver.
"He is born for the dark," the mother and father spoke together and their voices were perfectly synchronized, sounding exactly like Pennywise. "He is meat for the Eater."
"Not today, freaks" I growled.
I reached out to grab the metal door handle with my strength, I could easily rip the car door right off its hinges.
'If I rip the door off at sixty miles an hour without my Telekinesis to anchor the car, the sudden drag will flip the station wagon. The parents will die, but the squishy human kid in the back seat will be crushed against the roof.'
Before I could figure out a safer angle, the mutant baby in the back seat shrieked.
It lunged at the open back window, spitting a stream of thick, black acidic slime right at my face.
I had to hit the brakes, skidding backward on the wet asphalt to dodge the acid.
The car hit a deep puddle and swerved violently toward the sidewalk.
As the mutant creature lunged at the boy's face again, it knocked the pacifier straight out of his mouth.
The plastic toy flew out the open window, tumbling through the heavy rain.
The station wagon sped up, taking a sharp turn at the end of the block and it headed right back into the dark center of Derry, moving too fast for me to safely stop it on foot without causing a fatal crash.
I stood in the middle of the street, completely silent, breathing hard.
I watched the small plastic pacifier bounce on the pavement and roll.
It stopped right at the edge of a deep, dark sewer drain on the corner of the street.
The town was deeply infected.
Pennywise was awake, fully powered, and his twisted influence was already slowly poisoning the people and the streets.
That family in the car was completely under his control.
I walked over to the sewer drain and picked up the plastic pacifier from the muddy puddle.
I stared down into the pitch-black pipes.
"You can't save them all, Vivan!" Pennywise's voice echoed faintly from the drain, taunting me. "You're just a boy in the rain... Oh no in pain! Missing Eleven?!"
"You think locking me here makes me weak?" I whispered into the dark, popping the collar of my wet jacket to block the wind.
My hands sparked with a faint, crackling trace of violet magic.
"I don't need to be a god to take you apart," I said, my voice cold and steady. "I'm going to tear this town inside out until I find my way back."
I crushed the plastic pacifier in my fist, letting the broken pieces drop into the sewer grate. Then, I turned and walked down the rainy street.
I needed to find shelter and then, I was going hunting.
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