fandomhighdorms | The Range [Late Tuesday morning and early afternoon]

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The Range [Late Tuesday morning and early afternoon]

Triela was actually sort of looking forward to meeting with Karla today. The other girl was a quick learner and rather attentive. And she also appreciated, in all senses of the word, what a gun could do.

Besides, the questions about how magic might interact with Triela's own system had had her mulling over the implications of magic and modern technology for a while, and today's little experiment ought to prove rather enlightening.

She sorted through her gear. It wasn't often that she pulled out every weapon she had in storage. In fact, it was probably a good thing she'd arrived so much earlier than their appointed time because even she had needed to make quite a number of trips to get it all set up. She also had a kevlar vest with her for safety's sake. Ricochets could be unpredictable at the best of times, and she sort of doubted that what they were planning to try would make the things any more predictable.

[Range is open, of course.]

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It wouldn't be completely incorrect to say that Karla had been looking forward to going to the range with Triela. It would, however, be fairly misleading. Phrases like 'wildly enthusiastic', 'eagerly anticipating', and 'had a bit of trouble falling asleep due to excitement' might be a little more accurate.

So, it was a very bouncy Karla who appeared at the range at their appointed time. "Hi Triela!"

"Hey, Karla." Triela grinned back. She tended to be easily infected with other peoples' excitement. Especially when she was already having a good day. "You ready to get started?"

"I am!" she said cheerily. "I was up last night, studying." She proceeded to recite back much of the information she'd gotten from class yesterday, ending with a list of the parts of the semi-automatic Triela'd had her practice with yesterday.

"Did you sleep at all," Triela grinned. "You sound almost like Henrietta."

"Oh, I slept," Karla said cheerfully. "I figured if I showed up bleary-eyed and overtired, you'd send me home. I'm just really good at memorizing things. You have to be, if you're studying both Healing Craft and to be a Black Widow."

She was also buzzing a bit on caffeine this morning. She'd calculated the precise amount of coffee to drink that would keep her at the highest mental acuity without affecting her physiology. She was pretty sure that shaking hands were a big no at the range.

"Who's Henrietta?"

"You're right. I don't know enough about magic to know how dangerous this might be, so I'm not going to take any risks today." Triela nodded in approval at Karla's perception on that.

"And 'Etta's one of the girls back home. She gets excited pretty easily." Not as easily as Rico, maybe, but Rico was a special case.

"Well, you learn pretty quickly when you're sent upstairs to bed instead of learning how to brew the newest and most interesting poison because you were up all night," Karla said with a grin.

What? She just liked learning, especially learning new and deadly skills.

"And I only get excited when there's something to be excited about. What do you want to do, first?"

"First, you're going to put this on." Triela held up a relatively light-weight bullet-proof vest. "Just in case."

Karla shrugged into it without complaint. Practice armor was practice armor, and there was no one capable of Healing her if she got injured.

..Well, to the best of her knowledge anyway.

"Okay. I've got a large selection of weapons here and I think it's probably best to go from smallest to largest. That way we can see how your shields work at each level."

She glanced over at Karla. "You said you could shield anything, right?"

"I can," Karla affirmed. "Point, and I'll throw a shield up around it. I also have the ability to repair shields. Did we want to see how much damage it would take to destroy one of my static shields first? And then maybe follow it up to see how much it would take to destroy a shield I'm actively maintaining?"

"I think that's a good plan." Triela held out a pair of safety goggles and ear protectors.

"We'll start with the smallest thing I've got." She opened a case and pulled out a worn .22 automatic. It was small enough that it almost seemed like a toy.

Karla marveled at it. "It's so little," she cooed. "But still very dangerous, right?" Karla put on the goggles and protectors, trying not to snicker at how silly they looked. "That's our target?" she asked, pointing. And suddenly a bright shield of Sapphire-energy appeared around it. "I'll keep it visible, so we can watch the progression of the damage."

"It doesn't have very long range, and it won't punch through cover, but in the right circumstances there's very little that's more deadly than one of these."

Triela adopted a shooting stance and sighted at the target. "We'll try one shot first and you can tell me how much damage it does." And with that she squeezed the trigger.

The bullet basically pinged off the shield, not even damaging it. "It had the same effect as a small rock thrown really hard," Karla said, assessing the shield with Craft. "Didn't even leave a divot. Perhaps many of these guns, being shot at the exact same spot could do a bit of damage, but that's all."

"Let's test that, then." Triela took careful aim and then emptied the rest of the magazine at the exact same spot she'd hit with the first shot. Though she suspected eight rounds weren't going to make much more of a dent than just the one.

"Woooooooowwww," Karla muttered, impressed. She couldn't hit the same basic region of the target with two bullets in a row, never mind a tiny spot eight separate times. Especially since there was no visual record of where it was she'd hit.

"Nothing," she reported, a bit disappointed. She felt that such shooting deserved a little more in the way of effect.

"That's good, then. It means your shield can at least hold up to some guns. You ready to try something larger?"

"Yes," Karla said. "Hmmm...I think another thing to try would be to test shields of varying levels. I can create shields at the level of the White, all the way up to the Sapphire. It might be interesting to know what shields can stand up to which guns."

She was pretty certain that a White shield would have shown some impression after the eighth hit.

"Can you layer them?" Triela asked as she put up the .22 and picked up a pistol Karla might recognize. They'd worked with the P7 just the day before, after all.

"That way we could also see if a shot can go through multiple shields at once."

"Sure," Karla said. "But I think I'd prefer to see what happens to the Sapphire when things hit, first. It's my primary shield. It takes more energy to layer shields than it does to fix the Sapphire."

"Okay then," Triela nodded as she took aim again. "The .38 hits harder than the .22, but it's still not really a modern military weapon. Let's see how it fares."

She fired once.

"Still okay," Karla reported, smiling at her old friend, the P7. "Though I think a few more shots and the shield will begin taking minimal damage."

"Then I think we can call you safe from the little stuff. Next let's try some bigger pistols. Nine millimeter and forty-five caliber are both significantly heavier. Though I suspect you're probably safe from those too."

She put away the P7 and picked up one pistol in each caliber. She set the .45 down while she took aim with the 9mm and fired.

Karla flinched at the noise. It was also significantly louder than the P7. "Good," she announced.

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