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."