The xistera

A hobby potion gives Carl Cesta Punta and no explanation (ch. 5); a fan box gives him the scoop (ch. 17); the memory of a senior chief lobbing cherry bombs onto Arctic ice tells him the AI planned it. An orange disintegrates against a saferoom door; hob-lobbers pre-lit in inventory fly at 250 mph (ch. 18); Zev wins — no more slingshot. It retracts into a bracer the gauntlet fits over.

Idle in the trains' close quarters until the Banger Spheres — baseball-sized balls of robot scrap (ch. 16) — and then the range weapon of the floor: a stage-three monster's teeth (ch. 27), a mantaur's head at a distance Carl did not think he could throw (ch. 32).

Banger spheres at a thorny devil, a bomb run, a goose (ch. 3, ch. 16); alarm traps sealed in hollow spheres to play Jump Around, though Katia lobs that one by hand (ch. 22); a hob-lobber and a disco ball thrown from a biplane's wing (ch. 31); a potion ball at a puppy's head (ch. 31); and an Enchanted Xistera Extension Slot, custom-made for decapitated love-doll heads, that throws Samantha fifty kilometres (ch. 34).

It recalls whatever it threw, including a doll's head (ch. 22); not reinstalled in time for the pit, so a disco ball goes by hand (ch. 76).

Samantha returns to Carl's hand the moment the xistera comes off (ch. 4); a heavy ball lobbed into an invisible wall (ch. 29); hob-lobbers drilled across a field, a sticky one onto a deckmaster's chest, a holy-water one over the swordfish (ch. 30, ch. 38, ch. 39); a quarter hob-lobber at a house, breaking both of Carl's rules (ch. 41); a sixteenth-strength one behind them (ch. 42); a head-thrower for recon and teleport (ch. 54, ch. 57).

Hob-lobbers at a heavy pulse gun (ch. 24), at a fleshered influencer (ch. 69), a healing potion ball at eighty thousand people (ch. 69); the head-chucker attachment on the hotlist, and Samantha fired at a volcano (ch. 84, ch. 86).

Unequipped by a dachshund's paws (ch. 82); it forms again for the last throw (ch. 97).