Eralam's Explosives Emporium

Koko blinked in surprise. The newcomer didn't look like a normal customer. Human, female, adolescent. Estimated age between 15-18 standard years. Tall, certainly taller than Koko who, at 5'8", wasn't exactly short for a female of the humanoid persuasion. And she asked for Eralam. Didn't use the standard code words, so she wasn't referred by the usual sources, but then again, she didn't sound like she was even remotely familiar with basic.

Standard procedure would be to send her on her way, but business had been slow, and the Boss was getting bored. Maybe he'd be interested. She called up the internal commlink that the Shards in the shop all used to communicate. It was almost like a form of telepathy, being lightning fast and undetectable to outsiders.

::Boss, I might have you a customer.::

Might?

::Human female, cute as a button, says she needs to speak to you.::

She have a referral?

::Not sure. She doesn't seems to speak much Basic, so they might have gotten jumbled.

Grr. I don't like taking work from folks I don't know.

::Oh, come off it boss. She's just a kid. Stiff as a board, so nervous she's shaking, AH! I could just eat her up.::

Focus, Koko. Is she armed?

::She is. S&W Model 39 from the looks of things.::

At least she isn't using a crap gun. You get a read on her?

::You know I don't have the Force, Boss.::

Don't sell yourself short kid. You're a better judge of organics than I ever was, even without it.

::Thanks Boss. Um, if I had to say, she's pretty harmless for now. Just went through a rough patch, which might be why she was sent to see you. Give her ten years, fifteen tops, and she could be something else entirely. This one can go wrong in a big way.::

Interesting. Send her down, I guess. Won't hurt to see what's up. And hell, I'm bored anyways. Oh, and Koko?

::Yes Boss?::

Try not to traumatize her too badly.

It took about a half second for that exchange to take place. She reminded herself to glare at Eralam whenever he came out of that damnable basement of his. Try not to traumatize her, he says. Girl's already half out of her mind from the looks of it. A little bit of tender care and affection would do this girl a load of good. Still, orders are orders. Koko resisted the urge to pounce the girl over the counter.

"Um, hi. Eralam says he'll see you. Do you...um, shit."

The poor Shard was trying to be polite, but she didn't even know if the girl could understand her. She searched her databanks and looked up a probably guess for her native tongue based off of pronunciation and accent. Unlike protocol droids, which are generally programmed for millions of languages, Koko only knew a handful. She could, however, look up a translation. It would play hell with the grammar, but hopefully the point would get across.

"Der Chef sagt, er wird Sie jetzt sehen. Wie ist dein Name?"

Koko smiled warmly and consulted her translator for an appropriate response.

"Hallo, Chisame. Ich fürchte, ich bin nicht Deutsch. Es tut uns leid, Sie zu enttäuschen. Meine Fähigkeit zu sprechen ist von einem sehr schnellen erleichtert, wenn ungenau Übersetzer-Programm. Ich habe für jede grammatische Ungereimtheiten zu entschuldigen. Ich kann eine Kopie an Ihre Datapad herunterladen, wenn Sie möchten, der Chef ist sehr auf seinen Wegen gesetzt. Fremdsprachen sind nicht seine Spezialität.

"Mein Name ist Koko. Mein Chef ist so etwas wie eine antike selbst, so sollte er in der Lage sein, Ihnen zu helfen. Wenn Sie nichts dagegen haben, bitte treten Sie in mein Büro und ich werde Ihnen senden Sie ihn sehen. Bitte denken Sie daran, dass er sehr alt und sehr mächtig ist. Seien Sie vernünftig höflich, aber übernehmen keine Lippe aus dem alten Bastard. Wenn er Ihnen Mühe, rufen Sie mich an und ich werde Intercomm gewissermaßen in ihn zu schlagen."

The Shard slid one of the display cases back to allow the young human back behind the counter.

"Sie können Ihre Waffe, aber bitte nicht zu ziehen, es sei denn gefragt. Wie ich schon sagte, ist der Chef sehr mächtig, und dieser verdammte Revolver seines Willens sein, bevor Sie blinzeln können, wenn Sie ihm Grund geben."

Koko squealed in delight. Chisame was a delightfully fast learner. It was almost like dealing with another Shard.

"AAAAHHH! You're amazing! Let's get you back to see the Boss."

The Shard woman (shut up, that's how she sees herself, so that's what she is) had to work really hard not to wrap the girl up in a big hug or pinch a cheek. And if it wasn't for the sensible but still mildly encumbering heels that she wore, she probably would have skipped back to the office like a schoolgirl. But the job required a certain degree of professionalism, so she led the way purposefully, her gait smooth and confident, with nary a wasted motion. If her hips swayed, they did so naturally, a byproduct of her desired efficiency. There was nothing artificial here, despite the droid body she wore. Koko had been in this particular HRD for over 50 years; she really was closer to a human than a Shard in terms of personality.

Once back into the office, she pulled a particular book off the shelf, and taking great care not to let the human girl see what she was doing, punched the entry code into a wafer-thin keypad disguised as a normal page. The shelf slid aside, revealing an elevator, which promptly opened to admit Chisame.

"I can't go down with you lamb, and I don't know how long you'll be down there."

Hmmph, she thought to herself, eschewing the requirements of her office for long enough to give the teenager a quick hug.

"If I don't see you before you leave the planet, look me back up if you ever visit again. We'll have a girls night out," she said, beaming all the while. "Good luck!"

:: She's headed to you Boss. Heads up: she's a quick learner. She seemed to infer Basic from my mangled translation of German. Dangerously smart, though she's still cute as a button. ::

Thanks Koko. I've got it from here. You want the afternoon off?

:: Nah. If you don't take up too much of her time, I want to take her out to eat. Poor girl looks like she needs a friend. ::

As the lift approached the third level of the basement, music began to filter up through the floor. It was cranked up pretty loud, but not to the point of being painful to human hearing. The mechanical beat overlaid with the far more organic vocals resonated strongly with the Shard. He didn't expect his guest to identify with them, but then again, the music wasn't for her. He hit pause with a microburst of electromagnetic radiation right as the doors opened, admitting the awkward young woman into the brightly lit basement.

The workshop was cluttered, but in a very organized sort of way. The east and southernmost walls were covered with gunracks, with various exotic pieces from many worlds and varying in age from brand new to tens of thousands of years old resting upon them. All were in excellent condition, though some were obviously under a state of construction. Those were the Shard's personal projects, to be built and sold at his leisure. He could spend up to ten years perfecting a single piece before sending it to auction under an assumed name. Some of them went for more money than the entirety of the market would bring in for an entire year.

The northern and western walls were covered with hand tools of all shapes and sizes. Everything from the latest and greatest in molecular manipulation to a few actual hand awls could be found. A bank of tool boxes lined the bottom of the northernmost wall, the same massive rolling toolboxes that one might find in a well equipped mechanic's shop. In the center of the room, set equidistant from the walls, were two work benches, each over 20 feet long. They left about 10 feet to walk around between themselves and the walls on all sides, without about 15 feet in between the benches themselves. Various specialized tools that were attached to the benches themselves, and crates of what appeared to be spare parts lined the undersides of both of them.

The door opened on the southern wall.

Not 15 feet away, the workshop's owner, Eralam, sat diligently in front of a disassembled revolver so ancient that it would have been old when Darth Bane fell. Dozens of delicate metal springs and screws and gears and cams, some so small that human fingers wouldn't have been able to properly set them, lay on the work surface. The only sign that the Shard noticed his guest's presence at first was the revolver seemingly assembling itself of its own accord and at breakneck speed. In less than 3 seconds, the weapon had reassembled itself into a Colt 1851 Navy revolver. He then turned and looked at the newcomer.

"Hello. My name is Eralam. I'm told you might have a project for me."

The fact that this girl had the minie ball was of no consequence to the Shard. He had seen many a dark artifact over the years, and had been asked to work with a few. Still, designing a musket based off of this particular ammunition wouldn't be hard. The projectile appeared to be cast for a .50 caliber rifled musket. Hell, he had a couple of those on the shelf. Her request that it be able to fire conventional ammunition was unusual, but already a few ideas were filtering through his head.

Eralam was intrigued, but he wasn't entirely convinced he should take the job yet. It was doubtful that this teenage human would be able to afford his rates. That wasn't a huge issue. Eralam charged outrageously because, by and large, it kept the riffraff away. That this girl had even heard of him was a mystery. In the world of custom firearms, to have even heard of Eralam meant that you had no problem spending several hundred thousand on a weapon. Even a referral could cost as much as fifty thousand credits. The Shard wasn't hurting for money, that was for sure. He could definitely afford to do a job for free every now and then.

The main issue was whether or not it would be worth the effort. He wasn't about to begin crafting a masterpiece for a child that didn't know how to use it or wouldn't take care of it.

"That's a tall order, but doable," he said in his rumbling electronic voice. "But I'm sort of undecided on whether or not to take the job. Your sidearm, Ms. Chisame. May I examine it?"

Eralam took the pistol and regarded it thoughtfully. Well maintained, but worn. It had lived a hard life, that was for sure. But the action was still smooth, and if the trigger wasn't as crisp as it had once been, it still broke cleanly. A functional weapon then, hard worn but still with plenty of life in it. The Shard had always believed that you could tell the most about a person by how they treated their weapon.

With the physical examination over, the held the weapon in the palm of his left hand. It leaped into the air in front of his chest, and in short order, began to fly apart. In a short moment, the pistol was floating disassembled in the air, a perfect representation of the exploded diagram from the original owner's manual. A cloud of parts emerged from the a toolbox in the corner. Worn springs swapped themselves out with brand new ones. The old barrel found itself replaced by a competition-grade barrel, slightly longer but lighter and stronger than the factory version. The trigger assembly was replaced by a sturdier match-grade version that, while not quite a hair trigger, would be much more suited to the young girl's frame. After about 5 seconds of dizzying activity, the weapon fell back together into a single machine. The Shard gave it a quick functions check, and satisfied that everything was in working order, passed it back to Chisame.

If one of his regular customers had seen the display, they probably would have shat themselves. None of his parts bore a manufacturer's stamp, but those that needed to recognize them would. They were all handmade with the meticulous attention to detail that had earned the Shard his reputation. In their eyes, that pistol would now be worth as much as a top-end landspeeder. Mind, taking into a pawn shop wouldn't bear much fruit. They'd see the parts, add a few credits to their already low assessment, and be done with it.

Eralam could care less about all that. He knew what he needed to know.

"I'll take the job. It's going to take maybe a week, because I plan on building this thing from the ground up. Do you know how to operate a flintlock musket?"

If Eralam could have seen that the pistol would have been used to commit murder in cold blood, he would have shrugged and promptly forgotten about it. The weapon was simply a tool, only as good or evil as the person who used it. As long as it functioned properly, he could care less about how it was used.

The girl's lack of experience could be an issue. He walked over to one of the gunracks on the wall and selected a weapon that was significantly older than he was. Originally called the Kentucky Long Rifle, it was one of the oldest examples of a rifled slugthrower in existence. It was quite literally priceless. The weapon had been a part of his collection for years, mainly because no one wanted to buy it. Museums would occasionally ask to borrow it from time to time, but were less than pleased with the security procedures that Eralam wished to implement. The Shard had always thought it unusual that being invaluable practically made the weapon worthless, but it did. So really, he didn't mind turning it over to the girl to practice. If she broke it, she broke it.

"While I'm working on your piece, I want you to practice with this. I absolutely am not going to turn the finished product over to you until I'm satisfied that you are proficient with it. The action will be based off of this design, so it's a good place to start. You can head back upstairs when you're ready, and Koko will show you to the firing range and provide you with more..conventional ammunition to practice with. I don't know where the hell you got that bullet, but I don't want you to fire it on my range. We have a couple of instructors around that can help you practice, but Koko is more than proficient herself, and she's the only female. If you'd be more comfortable working with a female, she'll be happy to help.

"I'm going to work on the action today. That's going to be the tricky part. Once I get that figured out, we'll get you back down here to take measurements. This weapon is going to be custom built to you. It should feel like an extension of your body. We'll take as long as we need to get it right."