"Good, now let's get you to try cleaning it." She pulls out another of the pistols and another set of tools and demonstrates that process.

Hailey watches carefully, then repeats the exact same process, carefully dismantling and cleaning the pistol thoroughly before reassembling it. She needs to double-check a few steps to make sure she has them right, but she gets it down. Then she does it again, carefully dismantling and reassembling. Have to make sure she internalizes this.

"Great you're doing a good job with this. And you're taking it seriously. Now that you have that part at least somewhat down would you rather go through that again with another weapon or go straight to the vision room to try firing it?"

"I'd like to try that with a sniper rifle, if you don't mind. I don't have as detailed of opinions on those, however, so I think I'll have to trust your judgment."

"This beauty here is the M24 SWS," she smiles at the gun." It's a well designed piece of kit. Effective range of 800m in this configuration for those of us without blessings but you'll be able to best that with the right blessings. Bolt action, backup iron sights, and an adjustable butt plate. There's not enough call for sniper rifles for me to stock multiple kinds, though you can find others around if this one isn't to your liking."

She grins at the sight of it, gently tracing fingertips along the metal. "It's a beaut. Love it."

Then she steadies herself to learn how it's loaded and unloaded, and how it's cleaned.

Francine smiles approvingly. "Okay, you seem to have that down. I'm guessing you want to go try it out now?"

She grins wryly and nods. "Yep, wanna get licensed on both and put rounds through 'em until dinner, then bring the SIG home with a holster, that cleaning kit, and a box or two of ammo."

"Sounds like a good plan to me. Like I said we'll get started in a vision room. It's a bit more flexible than the firing lines and they're a good way to get some important lessons through less serious people's heads. The vision rooms here also have reset fields just in case."

"Vision room?"

"We have three sorts of areas for practice here, the firing lanes are the least fancy, they do have some magic to give people a wider cone to practice and some sound damping but they're otherwise normal.

"The vision rooms are a big step up, they have the same bullet catching magic as the firing lanes but they also have some pretty good illusion magic to let them simulate a wide variety of environments you might find yourself shooting in. They help a lot for teaching people to care about over-penetration. And the reset fields help when people are too dumb not to point the gun at me or at themselves.

"The Arena is a step up from both since it's big enough to actually move around and fight again other real people. It also has a reset field so you can experience what being shot is actually like."

Hailey grins wide. "Definitely going to work my way up to the Arena, then. That sounds fucking useful. And fun."

"It absolutely can be but getting shot is a big thing even when you don't have to deal with long recoveries, anyway over to the vision room?"

"Yeah, it is. And yeah, let's."

She follows, grinning.

Francine leads the way through one of the narrow doors below the label and into a relatively small circular room ringed with what look like faintly shimmering black stone walls with a short fence a little ways in from the wall "Load certification test part one and activate the reset field."

The room suddenly looks a lot less small. The fence is still there but to all appearances the walls have disappeared, replaced by a large open field with targets setup all around them except right where the still visible door is.

Emily watches to see Hailey's reaction. Rooms like this are super cool.

Oh wow. This is awesome. They fucking love this. She grins wide and open and looks around at everything. "This is fucking amazing. This is the coolest thing we've ever seen."

"It's great isn't it."

"I'm really glad to have fancy toys like this. You are absolutely correct about it being fucking amazing." Francine smiles openly. "One of the perks of doing this is getting to see people wowed by illusions like this for the first time. I'll give you another little bit to gawk before we get started."

So fucking cool. Fucking amazing. She turns and marvels at it in all directions, and tilts her head to see if there's any perspective fuckery going on. There isn't. It's so great.

The excitement bubbles up enough, and the smell of cordite and the site of the range is vivid enough, that Ruby can't help but tumble into front alongside Hailey, and then mostly take the lead.

She giggles delightedly, and the green bracelet turns a vibrant red.

"This is so great!" Her voice isn't much higher than Hailey's, but it's bouncier and not as sharp.

Since Emily is watching she notices the bracelet change. And she has as many as several clues. "Ruby?"

She runs her hands through her hair and grins. "Yeah! Pretty much had to happen at some point here, gun ranges and workshops are my favorite places in the world." She bounces in place and twirls in wonderrment. "It's so great!"

"I admit I'm a bit confused. I thought you were Hailey?"