Toddler that she was, her hands were little even by human standards, though children her age were generally still working on not drawing people as potatoes with legs rather than on applied plasma physics. Valeria's fingers moved like an adult's, her grip on her tools both certain and precise, and she'd already begun her task when she answered.

"Without it slagging itself after a single use?" The question was rhetorical, and she continued without waiting for a reply. "I can get it to hit like a rifle of similar design, but the trade-off is fewer shots, and you'll burn out the components faster, because this thing is not built to be effective. There's only so much I can do without replacing the internals completely. They really don't trust you, huh?"