Reality shifting has many methods. All of which you've tried with limited success. You tried that heartbeat method for the first time last night and it brought you to Japan for a few hours, surrounded by a mash up of anime characters, Kyo and Yuki from Fruits Basket specifically leading you around and housing you after your plane landed...? Not your desired result for sure, but it was progress you guess. You haven't watched that show in forever so you're not sure why it had them first when your intended target reality isn't even an anime.
Anything with scripting was harder for you, never been much of a writer, so you've been avoiding it, and thank the gods above the heartbeat method seemed to work. Maybe tonight you'll be able to make it, after all, you were rather frustrated with your environment last time. Blankets kept tangling, arms or legs were uncomfortable, your phones charger was in the way, too much light, not enough... yeah it was a rather rough night.
You can only really tell it worked that time because you woke up feeling different. As if your body was in this reality but your consciousness wasn't. Or maybe vice versa? Either way, progress is progress, and you'll be damned if you don't continue to try. But unfortunately you have to get through another miserable day in your current reality before you can attempt again.
It's just the same old same old, day in and out, as you clean tables, take orders, give change and fix food for rude, entitled customers. Get screamed at by a drunk lady, get tipped by another drunk lady for crying due to the previous one, feel guilty for it. Stop a fight, call security, get burned by the fry station, snuff out another small grease fire on the grill with your spatula, report it to management again in hopes the trap above gets fixed so you'll stop having to report it every day.
Clocking out of a breakless shift, driving home with stops for takeout on the way back, walking inside an empty apartment to eat some shitty Chinese food alone. Taking a shower, watching some shitty horror movie or a rerun of a show you've seen a million times, watching tiktoks before-
A new method... of shifting...?
You watch the video a million times over, familiarizing yourself with it before attempting. It's really just a combination of a few others plus some witchy stuff, nothing you're not used to, and definitely nothing flashy. You do practice after all, mainly things like precognitive dreams, lucid dreaming- which you experience naturally, the latter of which being your weaker point- and astral projection with minimal luck, plus tarot cards, death magic, and protection spells. Luckily, what this calls for, you've already had some experience in.
It's essentially attempting astral projection with a mix of death magic and protective spells, like you'd use to speak to a lost loved one, but with the heartbeat method and scripting. You can vaguely see how this could be extremely dangerous... especially done wrong. And you are quite concerned about this method falling in the hands of baby witches. Fuck... who knows what those guys would do this time if they got ahold of this, right?
You gather a protection spell you have yet to set intentions on, some items from your altar, and prep for the spell. Setting the intentions for your protection first, then lighting your candles one by one, colors corresponding with protective intents as well as other traits necessary. Lavender scented to aid sleep.
It goes by fairly fast, the words themselves aren't the best written, the prick to your finger by your ritual knife was more memorable despite being a normal part of most of your own spells, yet for some reason still raise goosebumps. You shrug off the sensation as the temperature being too cold before politely sniffing out the candles and laying in bed in the starfish pose, listening to a heartbeat and imagining one of the characters from the world you're attempting to enter leading you in, counting 1 to 100 the whole way.
It didn't work, you're sure of it. How?
Well... Life repeats as normal.
Its the same old same old, day in day out. You wake up, eat some breakfast alone in your empty apartment, run into your new monster neighbors on your way out the door, who you vaguely remember were working on moving in when you left a few days before. A couple of them attempted to introduce themselves, but unfortunately you're running late.
You clock in, take orders, give back change, make said orders, dish them out, wipe down tables and get yelled at by another drunk customer, get tipped by a drunk monster customer for crying, feel guilty. Get burned by the fry station, snuff out that damn tiny grease fire that always starts halfway through your shift, report it again, clock out for the day, drive back home with some cold food from Grillby's, to find your new monster neighbors are being loud-
Wait.
Hold the mother fuck up.
A glance down at the cold burger with Grillby's packaging, mouth half full, mid chew. You turn it over in your hand, eyeing the logo's design, unwrinkling it, crumpling it back up, uncrumpling it again. You shifted.
You actually... shifted.
That's an actual Grillby burger you've been eating, the monsters you saw at work, the neighbors who moved into the larger apartment are monsters, too. You didn't get a good look but they were definitely monsters. And if this is anything like how you had tried scripting it...
A quick batch of cookies and some preening later, and you're now in front of the neighbors door working up the courage to knock. If it's not who you think it is, you'll still be seen as a good neighbor and maybe make a new friend.
If it is...
You pale.
Shit.
Will they know you're new to this reality? Does it even matter? You never got that far into scripting to know what you would've preferred, but currently you're hoping it's they wouldn't know. Or that it's at least more developed-
"HUMAN? ARE YOU ALRIGHT?" Papyrus, now standing in the doorway you had been looking at seconds before, shocks you out of the weird spiral you were heading into.
"Oh! Uh, sorry! I must've gotten a bit too nervous there."
"NO WORRIES, HUMAN! IT CAN BE QUITE NERVE WRACKING TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF SOMEONE AS GREAT AS ME!"
"Hah, of course. Ah... right, I live next door and wasn't able to say hello this morning, so I made some cookies for y'all as a 'welcome to the neighborhood' type deal-"
"GASP-" Did he really just say the word 'gasp' out loud? "-FRIENDSHIP FOOD? FOR US?! I DO BELIEVE I'M A BIT ILL PREPARED BUT-"
"U-uh-" Papyrus rushes you inside before you can protest, instilling more fear in your heart than you can ever imagine.
"COME IN, COME IN! WE SHALL EAT THESE COOKIES TOGETHER!" Fuck fuck fuck fuck this isn't how you expected this to go. Sans might realize. You only wanted to be here long enough to give one of them the plate. A quick lookie-loo to see if you were right. Not this, not this soon.
"EVERYONE! OUR HUMAN NEIGHBOR BROUGHT OVER COOKIES!" At his words, loud thudding steps could be heard from the back of the apartment growing closer, as three more skeletons waltz in with lax expressions. Sans, Stretch, Mutt... or was it Coffee? Whoever the SF-G guy was. As they filter in, their respective brothers Blueberry and Wine (Blackberry?), barrel through the door, almost simultaneously.
No. No, this is wrong. There shouldn't be this many of them here.