"Nobody ever wants to. Well, at least not most people. Just have to anyway, sometimes" She nods and looks down at her options, mumbling to herself a bit. "Easy maintenance rules out some of the high-end stuff, mundane ammo rules out maybe half the coilguns. Skellies mean we can't count on the usual slug-thrower to hit something load-bearing..."

The range of available guns narrows, then narrows further, settling on things somewhat more shotgun-shaped.

"Ooh. Okay." She runs a quick check to make sure normal gun stores carry beanbag rounds, then nods. 

"Okay! So since you're dealing with stuff without vital organs, like skellies and slimes, you need to be able to put big holes in things. But since you don't wanna have to put a hole in a person — which, frankly, reasonable of you — you need dialable force to go non-lethal."

The screen displaying guns cycles rapidly before settling on what looks like a single-barreled shotgun, with a satisfyingly clicky-looking dial on the stock, easily reachable with a thumb no matter which hand you hold it with.

"This baby is a dial-a-yield coilgun. You could drop her in a muddy creek, swish her around, then pick her up and clear a room with her. I'll pout if you don't give her a good clean after that, but she'll keep working just fine. She charges off house AC or automotive DC with the charger I'll give you, and she's got a smart charging circuit so you can just leave her hooked up to charge in the cab on long drives just in case. A full charge will cover a thousand shots — if you need more than that in a single fight before reinforcements show up, something's gone really wrong. Now you might be wondering, 'but Ruby, won't a fancy coilgun take weird ammo I can't buy from a random gun shop in a rural town in East Nowhere?', and that's the beauty of this baby. I'm including a cartridge-loader with her that takes standard twelve-gauge cartridges, ten-gauge bean bags, and a pound of iron filings every four thousand rounds to make the plastic cartridges work with the magnetic accelerator coils. You should be able to pick all that up at any gun store and hardware store. Use setting two for humans you just wanna knock on their butts, three or four if they're more than fifty meters away, and eight-plus if you want to shatter a skellie or pulp a slime."

"...Holy shit a real like sci-fi railgun? No, you said coilgun. I guess there's a difference. I've just heard of railguns. The Navy is experimenting with them."

She grins. "I'm very good at making guns."

"I have railguns, but they're overkill for this, and most of 'em don't get small enough to be easily handheld. Both use magnetism and electricity to launch stuff, but railguns go much faster and use more power per shot. They're for anti-materiel and anti-building situations, not little bitty monsters like skellies and slimes and hogs. Oh, and any setting above five is gonna get loud, because you're gonna start moving a lot of air really fast, and when you dial it high enough you're popping the sound barrier. Below four should just be quiet thumps though."

She smiles up at him. "What d'you think?"

"I think I want it... And that I'm starting to wonder how expensive it is. And if you have a range here. Is that your thing I guess? Making tech stuff?"

"Fourteen hundred dollars, with the loader and the chargers and a cleaning kit all included," she replies. "And yeah, I do have a range. It's small, at least until I've had enough business to do some upgrades, but enough to test things out. My specialty is cyberware and weaponry, and tools and parts in service of that goal, but my skills extend to other tech and mechanical engineering stuff too. This is a full-service establishment, everything from fabrication to installation to maintenance and repair."

"Fourteen hundred! That's... Hmm. Pretty cheap actually, if it holds up to the hype. Tinkery stuff is usually on the high end. Add on a locked case, please? And I'd like to fire a few rounds on your range."

Ruby thinks for a moment, then nods. "Sure! Lemme lead you back to the range."

She gets up from her desk and leads the way through a door on the side wall, which currently connects to the storeroom. 

There's a narrow corridor through the storeroom, most of the floorspace taken up by shelving units stretching up to the ceiling. The shelves are packed full of artificial bones and muscles, prosthetic hands, optics, stacked squares of dermal-weave, spools of synth-skin, durable-looking metal boxes, guns in all shapes in sizes, swords, axes, and so much more.

Ruby grabs a shotgun that looks just like the picture off one shelf, a quarter-meter cube with a couple little hoppers and hatches that open from the sides, a few small bags, and one of the durable metal boxes. She passes the metal case over to the customer on the way — it's pretty light — and still has pretty full arms on the way to the range. 

It's not a big range, just a single lane that doesn't stretch very far, but there's a convenient little counter where they can load rounds and spread parts out. She sets the gun down, then pulls a cord out of the side of the cube and plugs it into the wall, pouring iron filings into one hatch from one bag, then pressing a button and feeding cartridges and bean bags into another hatch one at a time. Filled cartridges pop out the side, the plastic now a little darker, with a faint metallic glint. "Cartridge-filling's pretty easy, as you can see. I'm throwing in the iron filings and these little bags of cartridges and bean bags as well."

Then she picks up the gun and demonstrates how to feed filled rounds into it, which is similarly easy. It holds ten at a time. She carefully unloads it and sets it back on the counter, stepping aside to let the customer try.

He looks... Impressed and maybe a bit intimidated. He copies her actions and notes that it seems straightforward enough. He looks around for ear protection before loading the weapon again.

There are chunky over-ear protective headphones hanging from a hook. Ruby conspicuously doesn't grab one for herself, but happily points them out when he looks for them.

He seems to be waiting for her to put on ear protection, too, as conscientious as he's been about guns so far.

She notices this after a moment and scratches the back of her head sheepishly. "Oh! I should've said something. I'm still customizing most of the cyberware I'm going to personally use, but the first thing I installed in myself was a pair of ear implants to enhance my hearing while making me immune to the sound of gunfire. Makes it a lot easier to test all my products."

"...If you're sure."

Okay then. Time to see how this cool gun shoots!

He tries all the different power levels, slow and careful about the safety. Steadily starts grinning. It feels good to use, and the low power mode is nice.

It starts to get a normal handgun's level of sound around six, a normal handgun's level of kick around seven, and enough kick for him to really start to feel it around nine. The settings go up to ten.

Ruby restrains her excited bouncing for the most part, but her grin gets steadily wider as well the more fun he has with it. She fills more cartridges for him while he fires, steadily loading them into the lockable case, which appears to have a mounting bracket on one side.

Eventually he safes it, checks that it's unloaded, and turns to her.

"This is worth more than fourteen hundred, I'll pay two grand for it. Its probably worth even more but I need to pay rent, haha."

"Awww, thank you!" She has a moment where she feels like she might be letting him overpay, but her instinctive connection to Shop's felt sense of what transactions will nourish her says that's fine? "I'll pack everything up for you. Can you get out your FOI card, please?"

Yep they can do the paperwork and so on and so forth. He gets out his card; He is Benjamin Walker, apparently; Everything is in order and he presents a Chase credit card while chatting about how he's sure to impress with a tinker gun.

Yep, Chase Visa credit cards are accepted. Categorically all payment methods are accepted here, as a rule. It's a thing.

And she's thrilled he's so excited. She'd love it if he showed it off! (In safe ways, of course!) He can also have some of her fliers and cards to pass around to interested people!

"Enjoy, Mr. Walker!"

She's left alone for a little while. Then, a woman holding an ice pack over her right eye finds her way in.

"Wait, this isn't the clinic..."

Oh dear. "No, ma'am. This is a cybernetics and weaponsmithing shop. The clinic is next door. Do you need help reaching it?"

"Oh, sorry. I'm fine, I'm fine. It's fine. It just hurts. Fuck."

She turns back towards the door, a bit gingerly, and will go out if not stopped.