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.

Ruby almost gets up to go walk her over, but... probably she should save her outside-the-shop hours for when she's got something fun to do.

"Good luck, ma'am."

And she goes back to working on her designs.

She's really picky about how good her optics have to be before she'll replace her eyes. They're the last thing she has from her mother. It needs to be one heck of an upgrade, and it needs to match the color exactly.

Her legs are easier. Those'll be fully-designed soon. She's including boosted muscles for dashes and leaps, reinforced tendons to handle high drops, and of course she's replacing her bones as well.

There are more things she wants to do with them, like a double-jump and an air-dash, but those will take a lot of research first.

There's no one here still. It's been an hour.

She sighs, bonks her head against the desk.

She wants to do something more active, but she really needs to stay by the front in case she gets a customer.

Can't go to the workshop.

She shakes her head vigorously, then blows out a slow breath.

Right. Work on her fold-out multi-tool hand cyberware designs.

She's not sure if she's going to get a set of these herself. She wants them to be subtle and easily concealed, if so. 

A big part of the trick is getting the arrangement of the substructure right to allow things to fold in between inside the fingers.

She probably won't, honestly. Micromanipulators in her hands don't provide much benefit over just having hands that can pick up data from handheld tools.

That's the biggest thing, really. She needs to be able to pick up data from handheld tools and weapons.

Okay, she works on data transfer systems.

Data transfer systems cover another half hour. Then she works on padded palms to absorb recoil better. And then moves on to pop-out grenade launchers to hide in an arm.

Eventually it's been three hours.

Eventually, someone else comes in, having seen and grown curious about the door art. "Hello?"

A person!!!

"Hi! Welcome to Rose Cybernetics and Weaponsmithing, I'm Ruby Rose! How can I help you today?"

".....Huh. I've never heard of you? I was mostly curious about the cool door art."

"I'm new! Just opened the door for the first time today! You've heard of most cyberware and weapons shops in this city?"

She doesn't actually know what city this is please either don't ask her a question that needs it in the answer or be cool with her being an outworlder, one of the two.

"And thanks, about the art! I have my theme and I'm sticking to it, I guess?"

"Yeah, I have! Though, there aren't really a lot of cybernetics shops? Weapons shops, yes, I know all the ones in this area."

"Huh, lucky me! Wound up with an underserved market! So I can make just about anything technical, but my specialty is stuff that goes in or attaches to the body, and weapons of all types. And I absolutely take commissions. Do you have a favorite kind?"

"You hear about people with cybernetics sometimes, but I don't really know much about what they can do? I've heard of adrenal regulators and muscle grafts and someone who can control drones with their brain. As for weapons, revolvers are the coolest but rifles and shotguns are more reliable in incursions."

"Cybernetics can do lots! Hormone and biochemistry regulation, sure, but also reinforced replacement bones or muscles, concealed weapons inside arms, enhanced optics with a heads-up display, synced data from compatible guns, and so much more."

Then she leans closer, grinning confidently. "And yeah, normally you'd have tradeoffs between style and utility like that, but you don't sound like the kind of girl who wants her weapon choices restricted to what's normal."

"Ooh, that all sounds really cool. Real sci-fi hero stuff instead of basically just grunts with guns and little magic tricks. Like... Those gyro bullets that can twist in midair? Plasma guns? Stuff like that?"

"Are you talking about gyrojets, which are like little bitty rockets and spin to stabilize themselves, or using onboard gyros in a bullet to do crazy bullet-bending tricks? And plasma's doable, for sure, in a couple different ways even, but it'll take me a bit since I'm still building the tools to build the tools with some of that stuff. Sold a coilgun to a trucker this morning, even!"

"I don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to really techy stuff. Never been my thing. Plasma was... mostly a joke..."

"That's okay! You don't have to know techie stuff! That's my job! Simple explanation is you can turn your bullets into rockets to make 'em pick up speed as they fly rather than lose it, and this is good for armor-piercing and longer ranges. Theoretically if you put a remotely-controlled gyroscope into a bullet you could curve the shot, but practically you're not gonna be able to control it in real-time even if I make really good reflex boosters. And it makes bullets really expensive. Almost never worth it." She shakes her head with a smile. "So, you a Huntress?"

"Yep! North Chicago Women's Hunter Guild. Sort of a co-op thing, help the newbies out, joint bids on portal spaces, alert systems, that kind of thing. It's a nice system, I can focus on the monsters and other people deal with admin stuff."

"That's definitely the way to go. Specialization helps a bunch. So talk to me about calibers and ammo types that perform the best, and what you like best about revolvers."

"Hmm... They're... Wieldy. There's a certain old west style to them, but they're sturdy, they're reliable, and if there's a misfire - which happens a lot more in portals than outside them, physics can get a little bratty in the bad ones - I can just keep pulling the trigger. They're lighter than long guns, they stay close to the body, it's a comfortable pose to draw and aim and fire. Long range isn't usually a problem in portal dives. There are people with DMRs and I'm not one of them. I'm used to using them- I'm ambidextrous about it now, mostly. For all that I got made fun of a lot when I was starting. Oh, my power seems to be charged ammo, that I can touch a round and impart charge on it, they're also very convenient for that, opening the chamber and thumbing it, then snapping it closed. I tend to prefer small calibers with light loads, again for the wieldyness. If it doesn't work I can usually just shoot again and there's not a lot that's just completely indifferent to small arms."

"Ooh. Those are a lot of very very fun reasons to like revolvers. Now tell me why everyone else doesn't use them, and what the general needs are inside a portal?"

"The most usual reason is magazine size and the time it takes to reload. 'Just six shots, are you asking to get overrun?' They're seen as outdated and a choice of... Style over performance. People like SMGs, people like carbines, and shotguns. Portals can have really inconvenient environments. Sometimes you have to clamber over things, sometimes you have to deal with the dark, or clear cramped tunnels and fake indoor spaces or suddenly appearing entities. Sometimes you deal with annoying ranged attacks, or gimmicky things like poison or intangible enemies. They're frankly really weird. Like a caricature of a bad video game. Usually what you do is send a little drone in to take photos, or just peek in if you're lazy, and pick who goes in and what they carry based on that. I do mazes and bad weather portals a lot because people hate them so I can pick 'em up easier. So, clearing and close range wieldyness... If anything I'm lacking it's guaranteed one-hit KO power, but I still have wieldiness reasons to want small rounds instead of fat ones. If you can do better armor that might be nicer than a better gun."

"Yeah I can help you out here," she replies with a grin. "So the first obvious thing is moon clips, which let you pop a whole cylinder's worth in at once. Second thing is I'll be machining every piece of this girl custom, which means we can figure out exactly what your comfort zone is for weight and size, and fit as many chambers into the cylinder as possible. Should be able to get at least eight in there. Third trick is we can reinforce your hand and wrist to expand that comfort zone, if you're comfy with invasive options like that. Fourth trick is yes, I can do armor. In particular I can fit you with subdermal armor-weave — armor under your skin that you can't leave behind. And the fifth thing is that we can figure out where your sweet spot is for caliber and chamber her for that ammo specifically."

"Oh yeah I've got a bandolier of speedloaders for every revolver already. That all sounds really cool. Uh, hmm... I'm not sure about cyber stuff? Not without thinking about it more anyway? It's kind of a leap is all?"

Her grin softens a bit. "Yeah, it's a big change. I'm taking it slow, installing the pieces I want. It's a big decision. The next big thing I'm designing, though, the big experimental thing, is onboard ballistic calculations and displaying trajectories on your optics. That's a really invasive option, though."

"It's like... Not to be unfair, but are you even a doctor? Are you a tinker? As in someone with special powers relating to technology? I do not have an urgent need for these things. Well, until a close call happens and I'm sure that will recalibrate my gut feelings and maybe I should just do that in advance, but..." She does a gallic shrug.

She smiles sheepishly. "I think you'd call me a tinker, in the terms you're used to? The exact details are a complicated story, but I'm one hundred percent confident in my ability to install any piece of cyberware in my Shop. I can't really explain where the medical knowledge came from, but I have a full surgical suite, and I've already installed a piece in myself successfully."

One hand comes up to tap an ear. "Specialized auditory implants to enhance my hearing range while making me immune to the sounds of gunfire. Can't even tell it's there, can you?"

"...This would be a pretty convenient test. Not a hundred percent but..."

.....She covers her mouth and whispers, "If you can hear this, say 'Lemon'."

She grins sharper. "Lemon~," she sing-songs. "Oh that's giving me a craving for lemon cookies now."

"Ehehehe."

She digs a plastic package out of her messenger bag. Mediocre big box store sugar cookies, lemon flavor. Two left out of six.

"Lemons were actually on my mind for a reason. Have a present!"

"Oooooh!! Cookies! You're my new best friend! Well, after my Shop herself, of course." She cheerfully accepts the package, sets it on the counter, and pops a cookie from it into her mouth, wiggling happily as she enjoys it.

"I'm glad you like them! Hmm, I guess I should go fetch my usual weapons as a starting point?"

"Mhm!" She nods, mouth still full of cookie.

"It'll be a bit. Like ten minutes."

And it is. She's back carrying three handgun cases after that though!

"Hi again!"

"Hi!" By that point the cookies are gone. As is the package. "Thanks for those. Hit the spot. So! Tell me about your guns and which you use when."

Those details definitely exist, yep.

Two near identical save for differences in weathering and repairs, chambered in .32 S&W, a remarkably light round, and one big one in .500 S&W magnum, a remarkably heavy one. All of the guns themselves were made by Smith & Wesson. The two smaller-caliber ones are fairly old. She rarely uses the big magnum, not liking its weight and recoil but very much liking the option of big shots. The big revolver weighs literally half again as much as the other two put together and then some, though.

After examining the three revolvers, Ruby nods. "So our big goal is more stopping power for less weight. Is the magnum big enough, or would even more stopping power be better?"

"Hmmmmm. Honestly against the real big mean nasties - boss monsters, or tank monsters - even a bazooka wouldn't really be enough, but there's diminishing returns, you know? A .500 Magnum is enough to mangle almost every common monster quite effectively. Might be a bit too much, even."

"So the first thing to keep in mind is that the more exotic we go, the more likely it is you'll have to come back here for ammo. I'm not gonna mind that, you seem really cool and I need the business, but I'm not building you anything custom without warning you of that in advance," Ruby cautions. "I think we definitely have some options here, though. I can build you something in between your thirty-twos and your magnum, and cheat the recoil and weight a bit, especially if we get exotic with the metal and the ammo. For the big beasties, I've got ideas in the neighborhood of a solid slugthrower shaped like a shotgun, with a thin cutout down the magazine tube so you can run your finger over everything."

"You're not gonna up and vanish next week, are you? And if you suddenly jack the prices up sky-high, well, I'll go back to my old weapons. But you don't seem corporate enough to pull that shit, and also word would get around if you did so you have another reason not to... That thin cutout idea is neat."

"Definitely not jacking the prices up, and I'm pretty sure whatever brought me and the Shop here will keep us here, or at least keep bringing us back if it takes us away. Just a hunch."

Then she grins. "And I'm glad you like the cutout! Figured that'd be a good way to let you keep the quick finger-brush charge-ups right after loading."

She sits back down and start poking at designs on her computer, material specifications flashing on the screens that Lenora can see. She seems to be looking for two different things, materials with unusual force-dissipation or -redirection properties, and uncommonly lightweight metals.

"Pull up a chair!"

She will sit!

"Oh, I wonder if you could make camera drones with that one?" She says of the light metal.

"Yeah, I bet I could! This could be used for armored drones, probably. They're a bit outside my wheelhouse, but they'd be fun as a stretch project. Why I'm looking at these now though is to find something to lighten the load of a larger revolver for you. The force dissipating ones are to try to mess with the recoil a bit."

After a moment, she settles on a pale, bluish alloy. "Okay, this should save maybe a third the weight over the usual alloys, which'll let us get closer to magnum power while keeping a similar weight to your thirty-twos."

"I know just enough about engineering to know that some folks from Boeing would sell their left arm for lighter alloys, but not enough to really appreciate it. Looks shiny."

"Oh? That... I'm not sure if other people can make my alloys, honestly. Some of them depend on ingredients you might not have here."

"Mm. Sorry if I hit a nerve or something. I'm just kind of yapping."

"No! Not at all, I just wish I could share everything I can do."

While they talk, Ruby's laying out a revolver in her design software. "Oh, could you hold out your dominant hand for a sec?" She pulls a soft tape measure out of a drawer.

Left hand out. "There's only so many hours in the day."

"Yeah. And I can't even leave my Shop for half a day a week." She carefully measures the length and breadth of Lenora's palm, the circumference and length of each finger, and how far they can comfortably spread, entering each number into her computer. On the screen, the grip of the revolver shifts subtly as each number is added. "Never gonna find a gun that fits in your hand better than one of mine."

"Ouch, that's nasty. Some kind of magic limit? Any bones about helping with it? ...Huh... This is weirdly nice, the hand thing. Like hairdressers, you know?"

Ruby blushes a bit at that — Lenora's a pretty girl who likes guns. "It's a continuous scale? Like twenty-three minutes in the shop recharge one minute out, and sleep counts. So it's not as bad as it could be. But I'm not gonna say no to help if that's what you're talking about?" She takes the last of the measurements she needs and then sets the tape aside.

She flexes her hand a bit.

"I was thinking more 'break the curse' than 'grocery trip' but I could probably try both? I mean, maybe not very well, but..."

"Oh! Oh, I don't know, there's so much I don't know, is the curse keeping me here tied to why transactions can feed the Shop? Would breaking it hurt her? Shop's a sweetie, I wouldn't wanna break it if it hurts her."

She shakes her head. "No, the kind of help I was more thinking is just if you could show me a place or two around town on my out trips, so I don't lose time being lost or going to the wrong stores. Shop covers most of my groceries, so I don't even know what I'd need to go out for yet, just trying to... have it go well if I try."

"Hmm... I could do that. You'll need a car if you want to see anywhere good, so we could use mine some time maybe. There's a few shops around here and then it's not much to see for a while. Hmm... There's a bunch of museums in downtown Chicago, there's a nice place called the riverwalk down in Aurora, the Morton Arboretum... Oh, uh. That's more relaxing stuff. Stores though, what kinds of things would you be shopping for?"

"Ooh, those sound like fun places to visit! And I dunno, maybe stuff to decorate my apartment? Or music? Fidget toys? I make all my own tools, beyond the basics Shop provides, and she handles materials and supplies and groceries, but maybe there are things I wouldn't think to ask her for or she wouldn't think to offer without my going out and trying it."

"There's this store called, uh... Dai-so, I think? Bit pricey but they have a ton of house type stuff. Plus nice little vases, bowls, decorative stuff. For music why not just go on YouTube? Well, I guess you might need speakers or headphones. Amazon dot com is a wonderful place in many ways. Even if it's not quite like wandering through a store. I'm not sure where to get fidget toys at a physical location but I bet Amazon has plenty."

"Yeah, an online store probably has a lot of stuff, and visiting Daiso would be cool! What's YouTube, though?"

"Oh no~ Am I going to get you sucked into an internet rabbit hole~? YouTube is a video sharing platform. All sorts of stuff on it. Specifically, videos but also music, they just put up a static image or a simple little animation. I mostly listen to music on it and sometimes science videos. Or gun history videos. Or portal dive analysis videos. It plays ads sometimes, that's how it pays for itself."

"Wow! Okay, I'll check that out sometime tonight! I definitely need more music."

Ruby pulls the cylinder of the revolver out separately in the design and expands the chambers from .32 to .45, which should be a bit easier on the recoil than Lenora's magnum, but still pack a solid punch. The barrel adjusts to match. Then she expands the whole cylinder, maxing room to bring it from six shots up to nine, and honeycombs the center of the cylinder to keep things light.

She doesn't have any comments worth voicing at this point in the process.

"Got any personal themes or emblems or anything you want me to work in?"

"Mmh... I'm not thinking of anything? I guess... I'm trying to be a nice, professional portal diver. Check your corners, keep your guard up, comms discipline, you know? The whole, Final Fantasy I'm wearing twenty belts for no good reason thing, can be cool but I'd rather be useful than cool. I've got a vision of being the reliable old salt-hand when I'm old. Oh, actually, it needs a flashlight and it probably shouldn't be shiny when it's done, that can glint distractingly at the wrong moment. Or have weird stick-outy bits that can catch on things. I've seen fancier flashlight attachments that detect what range the barrel is pointing at and change the beam width or turn on and off a laser designator... But that's more a long gun thing."

"Well, I am making you a long gun in a minute."

Ruby works a slim flashlight mount onto the design, and makes a note to grab a flashlight from the storeroom. Then she replaces a section of the frame just behind the chamber with the anomalous, force-absorbing metal. Finally, she makes a note to use a non-reflective finish.

And then it's time for the long gun. She starts with a semi-automatic shotgun frame, with an underslung magazine tube, and then adds a slim cutout down the length of the right side. "I think we put the cutout in the right, that way you can sweep it with your off-hand when bracing it."

"Oh, nice. And I'm not opposed to fancy, just... I don't know, I've never really had a personal logo. Celebrities and S-tier divers get logos. Have you heard of the Legend of Zelda games?"

"Nnnot very well. I don't remember much about much. That... reminds me of a blonde girl? And a sword? But that's all I've got."

She shrugs.

"The blonde girl is Princess Zelda, and the sword is the Master Sword. There's this one symbol of three triangles in there that is, like, iconic of the whole franchise. The triforce. I like it. That and like... Wing motifs. The whole vibe of Breath of the Wild really? Anyway putting the actual triforce on my gun would just be a weird reference but something inspired by equilateral triangles might be nice."

She pulls up some pieces of art from the games, and gets the triforce, of course, but further digging finds interesting trim around the edges of tunics from Breath of the Wild, and she starts sketching reminiscent designs onto the grip of the revolver.

Hmmm.

She winds up with a border running around the grip, embellished by little triangles darting inward from the corners. A smaller, subtler variant of that slips onto the cylinder, along with a few traceries down the barrel.

Then she looks up to see what Lenora thinks. "Based it on the Champion's Tunic."

"If this is going to become my style... I mean, I haven't thought much about getting a signature style yet, as a portal diver, but geometric isn't bad... Like, beefy, tough, reliable? I don't like hexagons. I'm rambling. It sort of reminds me of those things where aircraft get decorative bits shaped like teeth around the front."