Work Text:
[ STEP ONE: AIM]
Ash shoots another coin from his pocket. He’s pretty sure he’s stole them somewhere, but that’s not saying much since he’s able to convince an alarming amount of people to look through their chests. Either way, whoever he stole it from, they probably won’t be missing gold, much.
Once he aims his gun and pull the trigger just right, he’s able to hit the coin head-on and watches it slam onto the other side of the room, leaving a small but noticeable hole in the wall.
Ash squints. The muscle memory for shooting a coin seems taken care of, and his eye has (pretty much) adjusted to the lack of peripheral vision.
That’s good, he thinks. His aim is finally getting better.
And…that’s good. Better aim means that he’s getting better at adjusting to new realms faster and better.
Ash sighs again. He tosses another coin, higher and at a different angle this time.
He misses again.
Shit.
[STEP TWO: MOTOR SKILLS]
Ash gives up on coin tosses after the 5th around of adjusting angles go nowhere, unless he considers firing stray bullets that do nothing but puncture the wall to be “progress”.
He takes a sharp sigh, going into the code again and turns back time just enough to reset the training room. After another one of his heart palpitations and a loud fit of screaming from feeling the fiber of his very being de-age, the room goes back to a blank, white room with a few obstacles and a small arsenal of weapons to the right. Perfect.
He fiddles around with the code a bit more, poking and trying to find any bit of loose reality he can take advantage of. After finding a few strings of code he can take advantage of, he closes his eyes and let’s the process take over.
As he bends the code, squelching at the feeling of how weird it feels, he finally feels the air pressure and atmosphere change around him. Before he knows it, he feels the air equalize around him—and he finally breathes.
He didn’t exactly mean to dimension warp into a forest, but the scent of pine and cold air biting his cheeks are welcomed sensations. For now, the forest would be good enough to practice moving around while stopping time.
So that’s what he did, running through the forest, stopping time, and moving despite that. A few times he’d feel himself freeze up, but once he warmed up—
Well. Let’s say the forest has never sounded so quiet.
It was peaceful, really, being able to get out his pent up energy and frustration from those stupid coin tosses while the world moved on. It was just him, his thoughts, and the frosty air through his lungs.
It was…nice, really.
Really nice.
[STEP THREE: DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS]
Good things don’t last forever, or however the phrase goes, Ash thinks bitterly as he has to panic-dimension-hop out of the forest when it started raining.
He doesn’t remember exactly what happened when he went into his loose code and just entered in whatever place he could squeeze himself into, but spawning in the middle of a 1 x 1 square of walls was not part of the plan.
And there, caught in the act, where 2 people he has never seen before looking straight at him.
“What the fuck?” Ash mutters to himself as they start talking about something he can’t be assed to listen too. He sees the yellow one jump somewhere before he decides to ditch them and go somewhere he wouldn’t get a heart palpitation from listening to them.
After a bit of wandering and panic bridging later, he finally makes his way to a small cottage at the end of the world border.
And…well. Don’t ask him about how that diplomatic relations went.
(For fuck’s sake she would become his “moral compass”, or whatever, in a few months.)
But hey, he got a friend out of it in the end.
Maybe this diplomatic mission (and server) wasn’t too much of a bust, after all.