"Hmm. It would be hell of backlash to do a really big one. Rock is startlingly heavy. But like. If wishes were fishes there'd be no room in the river for water... I should get back to practicing soon. I covered the precision drills so now it's just aim drills. Oh! You know guns, right?"

"Little bit, yeah.  I hunted before all this started."  Okay, finally, a thing I can do to seem like I'm not just a dummy.  He gracefully extricates his legs from Wendy's(practice!  makes perfect!) and pops to his feet.  Would Wendy care for a hand up?  And to maybe keep it after getting up?

Yes, guiding is good and she's starting to feel weirdly (no, it's not weird, he's nice) comfy around Tim.

"So, we experimented for a bit with ways to help me aim, including something a little bit like a gun that would put metal BBs in a socket, hold them steady until I'm ready to fire, but they weren't very helpful. When we took a modified paintball gun I had trouble propelling them straight down the barrel, the paintballs kept bursting inside it instead. And when we tried something with no barrel and just sights it sort of ended up aiming low because my vision was just a bit above the projectile. So like, I push straight out from my eye and it hits the floor instead of the target because I'm looking over the bearing. Same thing when I just hold things up to my eye. It's hard to compensate for even if I aim my power from, like, the bottom of my eye socket. Sometimes it goes high instead, then. I'm wondering if you have any ideas."

It turns out that if you cuddle with someone, you get more comfortable with them.  Even if you're an anxious wreck, it happens eventually.

"Hmm.  If it draws a line between your eyeball...and the projectile's target...  Is there a reason you couldn't use...I don't know, a little pipe that you hold up next to your head?  Load it with ten of these guys in a pipe and use your power on the first one?  You might not even need rifling, this is just so fast."

"Not quite what it does. It draws a line between where I'm pushing from - anywhere on my body - and the thing I'm pushing. But the pipe thing... I'd hold it up right to my eye and look over it through a sight. But I'd have to find just the right spot on my cheek to push from, so it's being propelled in line with the sight? And that part is what wasn't working earlier. I've hit things at thirty yards but it's surprisingly hard. I can hardly call myself a glass cannon with a range of thirty yards, I'm just glass."

"Ohhhhh.  So you could, like, aim from your toe, but the problem is that you're...hang on a second, have you tried...I'll be back in a second, okay?"  Tim excuses himself for a minute, and comes back with a couple of small hex nuts.  "This isn't really bullet-shaped, but it's got a hole in it.  Hold it in front of your eye and try it?"

She gasps in wonderment.

"That... Could work!! Do you - do you mind if I try it now?"

"Yeah!  The ballistics will be crap, but I'm sure some confused gunsmith would be happy to set up something better for you."  Tim carefully offers her a hex nut.

"Eeeeee! Okay, okay. Focus. Do this right. Uh... Looks like the furthest target is about twenty yards? I'm going to try for dead center bullseye..."

Deep breath... Holding it up on a finger and carefully lining up her eye...

Breathe...

Breathe...

Fwip-crack.

...."Ha! Aha, yes! Nice!"

It's right there, a neat hole just a hair off bullseye.

“Safety on for a sec, Wendy.”  He loosely wraps his arms over and around Wendy’s shoulders.  His left hand is palm-up, with a few more hex nuts ready for Wendy’s launching pleasure.

”I knew you could do it.”  He is quietly radiating massive amounts of smugness.

"This is great! I mean I need lots of practice and stuff, but once you have an idea that's the easy part!"

Hug? No, insufficient reaction speed to make it a question mark. It is a period now. Hug.

Definitely hug.  And a little bit of a pickup for Wendy, as a treat.  "Yeah, now you just have to put in the hours.  Maybe not many of them, hm?  Bulls-eye on your first try."