[ Location: The Palace Arcade ][ Date: April 19th, 1985 - Friday Night (9:00 PM) ]
"We're closed!" Keith yelled, slamming a roll of quarters into the register. "Get out! All of you! Go home to your parents!"
"I'm waiting for my ride," Max snapped, leaning against the Dig Dug machine. She popped her gum aggressively. "Unless you want to drive me, Keith?"
"I don't get paid enough for this," Keith muttered, flipping the sign to CLOSED.
I was standing by the door, finishing a slushie. I had offered to walk Max home, but she insisted Billy was coming.
'The ticking time bomb.'
"He's late," I said, checking my watch.
"He's Billy," Max rolled her eyes. "He's probably doing bicep curls in the mirror."
Suddenly, the music stopped. Not a fade-out. A cut.
The hum of the cooling fans ceased.
Then, the lights flickered.
They didn't go out.
They changed.
The neon pink and blue tubes buzzed and shifted into a sickly, pulsating Orange.
The Deadlights.
"Keith?" Max called out.
No answer.
Keith was gone.
The counter was empty.
"Vivan?" Max turned to me.
I wasn't there.
The reality shift had snapped shut. I was standing on the pavement outside, banging on the glass door.
"Max!" I yelled, my voice muffled by the thick glass. "Max, get away from the screens!"
I pulled on the handle. Locked. I pushed with Telekinesis. The door didn't budge.
'It's not a lock. It's a dimensional seal. He pulled her into a pocket reality and left me in the real world.'
Inside, the arcade machines screamed.
Literally.
The screen of Dig Dug wasn't showing pixels anymore. It was showing liquid meat. The little pump character was inflating a human heart until it burst. Pac-Man opened its mouth, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth, champing at the glass.
Max backed away, terrified. "Vivan!"
A voice echoed from the speakers. It wasn't digital. It was wet.
"Insert coin to continue... your life."
A clown's face materialized on every single screen in the arcade. Pennywise. But he was made of glitching pixels and static.
"Let her go!" I roared, pressing my hand against the glass.
"She's Player One," the Clown giggled. "And she's out of lives."
Max screamed as the floor tile beneath her melted into grey slime, grabbing her ankles.
'Okay. No more Mr. Nice Wizard.'
'System. Reality Warping (Minor). Break the rules.'
I grabbed the door handles.
I decided they didn't exist.
'There is no door.'
[ Ability Active: Reality Warping. ]
CRACK.
The glass It evaporated.
I stepped into the neon nightmare.
[ Location: The Twisted Arcade (Pocket Dimension) ]
The air tasted like copper and old cotton candy. The gravity was wrong—heavy, pulling sideways.
"Max!"
I ran toward her. The floor tried to bite my shoes. I stomped on a tile, shattering the teeth.
Pennywise manifested in the center of the room. He wasn't a man in makeup. He was a ten-foot-tall construct of wires, CRT monitors, and hate. His arms were joystick cables whipping through the air.
"You're cheating!" Cyber-Pennywise shrieked. "No extra players!"
He lashed out with a cable-arm.
'Protego!'
I cast the shield charm with my wand. The cable sparked against the barrier.
"I have the cheat codes ,too" I snarled.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Stone of Avarice. It was pulsing violently, reacting to the sheer terror radiating off Max.
'You want to eat her fear? Too bad. It's mine.'
I held the purple stone aloft.
"Transmute!" I yelled.
[ Ability Active: Transmute Fear to Currency. ]
The black smoke swirling around Max—the fear Pennywise was feeding on—suddenly changed direction. It didn't go to the Clown. It spiraled into the Stone.
WHOOSH.
Pennywise gasped. He shrank. The monitors on his body flickered.
"My food!" he screeched. "You're stealing my dinner!"
"It's a tax write-off," I grinned, feeling the Stone heat up.
[ System Alert: High-Grade Fear Absorbed. +500 Points. ]
Pennywise roared, charging at me. "I will eat you! I will kill you!"
'He's weakened. Now I end it.'
I raised my wand.
Suddenly, the wall exploded.
CRASH!
A blue Camaro plowed through the brickwork, shattering the illusion of the arcade wall. Debris rained down.
The car skidded to a halt, crushing a Space Invaders machine.
The driver's door flew open.
Billy Hargrove stumbled out. He looked insane. His shirt was torn, his skin grey and veined with black.
"MAX!" Billy roared.
He looked around the twisted room. He saw me and He saw the wire-clown monster.
His eyes flashed pitch black.
The Mind Flayer inside him didn't see a clown.
It saw a rival predator in its territory.
Billy didn't attack me. He attacked Pennywise.
"GET OUT OF MY TOWN!" Billy screamed, his voice layered with a guttural growl.
He lunged, grabbing the wire-clown. Billy's strength was unnatural (boosted by the Flayer). He ripped a monitor off Pennywise's chest.
"Get off me, meat puppet!" Pennywise shrieked, shocking Billy with electricity.
They grappled, smashing into the ski-ball lanes.
Max was huddled on the floor, sobbing. "Billy? Vivan?"
I stood there, Stone in one hand, wand in the other.
'This is chaos. If Billy kills Pennywise, the Mind Flayer gets stronger. If Pennywise kills Billy, Max is traumatized forever.'
'I have to stop both of them.'
I looked at Billy. He was foaming at the mouth, trying to bite the Clown.
'Gravity Well.'
[ Ability Active: Telekinesis . ]
I focused on Billy.
'SIT.'
I slammed Billy into the floor with 10Gs of force. He hit the carpet face-first and stayed there, pinned by invisible weight, snarling.
Then I turned to Pennywise, who was trying to reassemble his pixelated body.
I pointed my wand. I didn't use a spell.
I channeled the energy from the Stone of Avarice—the fear I had just stolen.
'Pure Mana Blast.'
'Fear vs Fear'
"EAT THIS."
A beam of purple energy erupted from my wand. It hit the Clown dead center.
SCREEEEECH.
Pennywise disintegrated. The monitors exploded. The wires melted. The orange light faded, sucked into the void.
[ Enemy Defeated (Avatar). ][ Loot Acquired: Fragment of the Deadlights (Absorbed by Stone). ]
The illusion shattered.
The arcade returned to normal. Well, normal-ish. The wall was destroyed. There was a car in the middle of the room. And Billy was pinned to the floor, unconscious (I knocked him out with a final mental tap).
I dropped the gravity hold.
I ran to Max.
"Max!"
She looked up. She was shaking. She looked at Billy, then at me.
"You..." she whispered. "You saved us."
"I promised," I said, pulling her up.
She threw her arms around me. She was crying. "He was a monster. The game... it tried to eat me."
"It's over," I said, holding her tight. "It's a dream. Just a bad dream."
Keith ran out from the back office, holding a broom. "What the hell happened?! Who drove a car into my store?!"
I looked at Keith.
'Illusion.'
[ Ability Active: Illusion (Memory Layer) + Telepathy. ]
"Transformer blew," I said, waving my hand. "Gas leak. Billy crashed trying to avoid a deer."
Keith blinked. His eyes glazed over. "Right. Transformer. Deer. Damn deer."
I looked at Billy, slumped against the wreckage of Pac-Man. The black veins were receding. He was just a normal guy again.
'He fought the Clown because the Shadow told him to. The enemy of my enemy is... still my enemy.'
I looked at the Stone in my hand. It was glowing so bright it hurt to look at.
'I have a piece of a cosmic entity in my pocket. And I have 4,682 points.'
"Let's go home, Max," I said softly.
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