User blog:CounterMatt/'Name Redacted' Personal File. Entry four.

Disclaimer. Those who've read the others please turn to paragraph 400. The rest of you read on. None of this is IC in any way. You didn't see it, it never happened.

Punch sits in the small automated shuttle he's bought. It's climbing. Higher and higher. As it levels out a small warning alarm goes of stating the shuttle has reached the upper atmospheric limits and is way beyond its design parameters. The readouts state there's less than a minute before the shuttle burns up, drops out of flight or otherwise explodes.

. . . Too late to try another sim first? A thought asks at the back of Punch's mind.

It really is now or never Punch thinks to himself. He ditches his cig and opens one of the shuttle's doors built into the floor. It really doesn't feel like a simulation this time he muses as he steps out dropping foot first out of the stricken craft.

This time there's no messing about. He can do this. Anti-grav and footrockets are gently slowing his acceleration but the blastwave of the explosion forces him down towards what's became a familiar black trench deep in the ground. In a sim he'd normally have cancelled it and retried. not this time. He has make it work. Have to work in the moment. Stop being slow.

Metaphorically speaking in this case. His speed indicators are redlining, despite firing his systems way beyond capacity. Punch drops into the trench. Finding reserves he never thought he had the pushes even harder to commit to slow down. Stop. Change direction. If he can break out of this downward spiral maybe he can break out of the mindset too. Finally not need a runup to every little thing. Although his altimeter states that he's past the point of no return and still going too fast.

The explosion ignites the whole trench in many flickering claws of flame. The thin atmosphere and high gravity combined leave a quiet scene. Deathly quiet as it were.

. . . -End Simulation-

Punch shakes his head, still in the shuttle, warnings firing, doors open and decides the last sim he ran may not have any answers. Except one. He shouldn't have tried to prep. If he want's to defeat that slow nature he believes he's cursed with he's got to commit to the moment. Don't think. Just do.

So he does. Punch drops head first out of the real shuttle and, about the same time he reaches terminal velocity the shuttle explodes but Punch is moving too quickly to even feel the blastwave. He fires his footrockets, no anti-grav, and accelerates. Nothing's going through his head. No slowness that way. Firing still the footrockets alone beyond design parameters Punch speeds down into the trench.

The whole trench in many flickering claws of flame. The thin atmosphere and high gravity combined leave a quiet scene. Deathly quiet as it were. A single unidentifiable speck, a few miles further along from Punch's entry point, is the only thing different this time to the simulation. The camera has to zoom in quickly, and pan upward, to identify the speck.

It's Punch. There was a trick he manage to pull off in the heat of the moment but. . . the best tricks are the ones you never reveal.

400. Read the disclaimer fully. Then read the post.