Ruby Rose, 5'2" tall engineering prodigy with short, naturally red-tipped black hair and silver eyes, is the shopkeeper of this interdimensional shop. 

Ruby doesn't remember the time before she became the shopkeeper very well. She knows there are gaps. It hurts to think about, but she's got plenty to distract herself.

She has basic products to inspect, like artificial eyes with enhanced senses, and prosthetics, and neural integration chips. She has improved versions to design and fabricate. She has new products to prototype, like ballistic analysis chips to integrate with the eyes and main neural implant, as well as get data from a chip she can install in a gun.

She needs to get to know her Shop, too. It seems to react to her, shifting the layout around in minor ways, or changing what type of cookies are in the pantry based on what she seems to like, or stocking parts she needs for new projects.

She's a busy little engineer.

Busy enough, in fact, that she doesn't get around to looking up the situation on her new world for a few days. Eventually, though, she does look things up. Does this world have a local network? Are there interesting weird events happening? Does it look like these people will be interested in getting some cyberware and weapons?

The world has a network! There is TONS of stuff on it. Shopping sites, and search engines, and discussion forums, and porn, and fanfic, and video platforms, and blogs, and social media, and weather services, and government agency sites, and news.

Prominent search results:

Celebrity movie star Leonardo DiCaprio selected for the lead role in the new movie Into The Fold, covering a daring attempt to open a portal to the mysterious world Narm. 

LaGuardia airport closed for 6 hours when an incursion occurred in one of the terminals; It was cleared promptly by an elite-level team and flights are back in operation.

Discover the magic within yourself with our special kit, only 3 easy payments of $49.99!

Lola Vera sued! Bystander claims negligence leading to monster attack. Arizona Vengers Group said 'all of our hunters have limited time to react in high intensity situations...' click here to read more.

Some are more equal than others: The danger of metahuman powers and the need for regulation. In this essay, we examine...

Portals? Incursions? Monster attacks?

Okay, at first glance it sure sounds like these people need weapons. And gear. And basically everything she can make.

Can she get a more detailed explanation about this portals-and-monsters-and-incursions thing?

An official looking government site has this to say about incursions:

--YOU ARE PROBABLY SAFE! Injuries and deaths due to incursions, if you stay out of them, are much rarer than car accidents!

--Most incursions are completely harmless if you do not go into them and will be destroyed promptly by Hunters.

--Going into an incursion and destroying the entities inside it grants supernatural abilities. Doing it more makes those abilities stronger. If you do so, you should* register to this national database of empowered people.

--Empowered people are still subject to all laws, including but not limited to those against vigilantism.

--Yes, you have to pay taxes on incursion loot.

--Monsters incursion entities do not appear to be people. They do not have observable language, learning, or higher thought, and act more like a trained AI model, with predictable patterns and deterministic actions.

--Report any glowing portals via this hotline number. Bounties may be available.

--Do not try to clear an incursion yourself. It is always safer to stay away. There are people whose whole job it is to get the magic stuff anomalous substances and objects from inside them.

--Becoming a Hunter is risky. Going into an incursion portal MIGHT KILL YOU.

--Click here to learn about becoming an incursion hunter.

*But are not technically required by law to

That sounds extremely concerning. And something about there being monsters feels familiar. She's not sure why, but...

She shakes her head and refocuses. It sounds like these abilities are pretty highly variable? If she keeps a wide range of stock, she can probably supplement people's abilities well, rounding people out to make them safer while they hunt monsters.

Is there some way she can verify incursion hunters? She really feels like people deserve to be armed for self-defense as a matter of principle, but she also doesn't want to make the government mad if she sells something too powerful to the civvies. They could camp out in front of her Shop and keep her from getting any customers!

That would be really bad for her Shop.

What sort of restrictions are there on what she's allowed to sell to civvies vs Hunters?

There don't seem to be any clear and specific laws about what to sell vs not sell to Hunters? Or well, some kinds of items get arcane classifications and restrictions, but the bureaucracy has at least this much resistance to easy understanding.

In Illinois, it is illegal to sell guns to people who do not have a Firearms Owner Identification Card. There is a not insignificant amount of bureaucracy around how they have to be registered, marked, etc. If a bit less than there would be in an alternate timeline where there weren't portals that spit out monsters if left untouched too long.

That... is a lot of paperwork. At least her Shop can help get that stuff filed? And generate the missing pieces that she can't get just by filing more paperwork?

Her Shop can do that, right?

How does she talk to her Shop?

Out loud, maybe?

"Hey Shop? Can you help me file this paperwork, so I can get registered for firearm sales? It's really complicated, and I think I'm missing some identification."

Did that work?

First, Ruby just feels a faint, distant sense of fondness, a connection and appreciation.

Then, from somewhere far away, barely audible, unidentifiable in location, there comes a faint whirring sound, like an old dot-matrix printer.

Okay that's new. She runs around looking for it. Is the printer in her apartment? In the storeroom? Her workshop? The medical suite? The storefront?

The printer sounds no closer, no matter where she looks.

Not yet, at least.

They need to connect further, and feed the Shop further, before that can happen.

Eventually the printing sounds stop.

A minute or two later, there's a note sitting on a side table when she next looks, printed on continuous-feed paper, the kind with the perforated lines of holes on the edges.

A note!! Did her Shop reply?

It does appear to have done!

Hello, dear Ruby,

Yes, I can assist you with this paperwork, though you will still need to sign the completed forms. It will take some hours, and cost some of my Essence. I would prefer if you opened up for business a day or so early to help make up the deficit. Keeping the supplies steady will be easier if you do. 

Thank you for already working so hard to prepare products for us to sell, my Shopkeeper.

Fondly,

the Shop

Her Shop's definitely a person! And it can help with her paperwork! That's so cool!

"Thank you!"

Wait. Her Shop's a person.

"Hey Shop, do you have pronoun preferences?"

A few minutes of printer noises later, another note appears.

I would appreciate she/her, dear. Thank you.

"Okay!"

She fidgets happily with the perforated edges of the notes while she finishes eating breakfast.

Eventually, after another few days of fabricating parts and products, Ruby's got the Shop ready to open up. She steps out of the door briefly to put up a Now Open sign, then gives her a fond pat on the wall as she steps back inside.

She sits down at her desk in the front room to work on designs while she waits for a customer.

The first one to come in is a tall bearded guy in a plaid shirt, carrying a Jimmy John's sandwich. He, frowning slightly, looks through whatever's on display.

A customer!!

"Hello, Sir!" Ruby calls out cheerfully. "Welcome to Rose Cybernetics and Weaponsmithing! I offer a full range of cybernetic enhancements, melee and ranged weaponry, and I accept commissions. Is there anything I can help you with today?"

The storefront has cutaway models of optics, shelves of arms locked mid-expansion to deploy a hidden armament, and arrays of artificial muscle fibers with info cards.

"-Uh, hi. Huh. Cybernetics? What, like robot arms? And eyes, apparently... Huh. Are those a portals thing? I mean, I was curious about the weapons mostly."

"Nope," she chirps back with a smile. "I'm not really related to the portal thing that's been going on here. Weapons I can do, though. Melee or ranged, sir? And what sort of circumstances do you expect to use it in?"

"If all goes well I won't use it. I'm a truck driver, not a portal diver. Target practice and just-in-case. I do have my FOI* card."

*pronounced "Foy"

She nods eagerly. "I'll definitely need to see that before we finish things up, but we can keep working out specific needs before we get to the paperwork. So would you say your use case is basically just outside chance of," why does she want to say bandits here normal Earths don't have bandits, "hijackers or robbers catching you at a truck stop, that sort of thing? Probably not well-armored or -armed, nothing really durable you have to punch through, and probably not trained to keep going through damage, so you don't need particularly high calibers or special ammo..."

She drums excitedly on her desk for a moment, flipping through options, various handgun designs sliding across the screens.

"Do you want traditional slug-throwers, variably-lethal electrics, or something more exotic than that?"

She's trying to restrain her excitement, but it's a bit obvious on her face that this is quite possibly her very favorite topic.

He smiles a bit, the energy is good. "I don't ever wanna shoot a person, miss. I might have to but I don't wanna. More like weak monsters after a portal break. It happens more often in rural areas. I've seen slimes just in a field in Montana. So things like slimes or skellies or giant bats or roaches. Or feral hogs, those can be nasty. Something durable I won't need special parts or ammo for?"

"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.