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Another tired workday, eating the same boring microwave burritos, working for an ISP she hates, in a body she hates, with the only remotely cheering part being the cute skirt she's wearing. She spends her day charming the employees of the ISP as she solves their tech problems, spending her warmth on people she'll never speak to again.
Eventually it's the end of the shift. She clocks out, gets up, and walks out into the backyard, stretching.
"Will do. Thanks for all the help, Sydney. You're great. See you back at the apartments, yeah?"
"You too!"
And then after Sydney leaves, Sable gets back to the guns.
She cleans them meticulously, memorizing the mechanisms, carefully burning every piece of machined metal into her mind. The best way to make sure every round she tries to fire hits her target, and to make sure the gun does nothing else, is to know it inside and out.
When they're reassembled, she brings them to a shooting lane, sends a target down the lane, carefully loads the shotgun, and pumps it to chamber a round.
She aims carefully ahead down the iron sights — no reason to hip-fire just yet, even if this is a shotgun — and fires.
Bang.
There's something viscerally settling about the recoil. She hasn't felt something like this since she was at summer camp, well over a decade ago.
She pumps the shotgun again, sights, and fires, gradually adjusting her posture and how she braces against the stock with each shot. She's carefully to only ever point it downrange or at the ground, never anywhere else.
When she she finishes working through the rounds she'd loaded, she carefully checks the chamber, puts the shotgun down, and collects the spent brass. Then she spends a moment just breathing heavily and smiling giddily.
The others at the range are similarly meticulous about gun safety, occasionally glancing at Sable's shooting and giving her a thumbs up once in a while.
She grins back whenever she gets a smile or a thumbs-up, and occasionally gives a thumbs-up or a quiet "nice!" to others, especially when she sees someone nail a particularly tight grouping or good shot.
She'll put another three magazines' worth through the shotgun, smooth and steady, her consistency improving with every shot.
When that's done, she'll carefully make safe the shotgun, put it down, and then load the pistol.
She starts to try to assume what little she remembers of Weaver stance from Earth, then quickly looks up pistol stances and corrects herself using a reference.
Okay. Carefully sight, and fire.
Yeah, she wasn't expecting to be accurate yet. It'll take at least three mags to get tolerable.
That's okay, she's got time.
Grinning and carefully shooting, she'll gradually refine her skills to something usable.
Well, she'll bring the guns back to the table, carefully clean them and pack them both safely away, then return them and their cleaning kits back to the front desk.
"Thank you," she says with a smile as she hands them over.
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