8

Chapter 8: Chapter #8 | Perfect Simulation

Chapter Text

When Izuku opened his eyes that morning, he realized that they might have been overdoing it. In the last couple of days since he had given the plans to Hatsume, they had made a shocking amount of progress. Her, with tweaking his blueprints, god he was glad he had found someone with a mechanical background like Mei, and the paperwork involved with building a prototype reactor in a garage. The city really wasn't particularly happy about that idea, but Hatsume's lawyer of a mother had ripped through them like a shark when they tried to block her daughter.

Izuku, on the other hand, had been cleaning and pulling every possible piece of usable scrap from the beach and breaking it down into its base parts. They were going to need every piece of usable material and then some. After multiple days of work on that beach all day, however, Izuku's muscles were not happy with him. Sure, he was quite happy with them. He was just about back to the point he had been at during his spec ops days, but his muscles were certainly telling him to take a day.

After both his morning routine and a wonderful breakfast with his mother, he gave her confirmation that, yes, he would indeed be careful today. He made his way to the garage workshop that he and Hatsume were working out of to find her mother swatting at her with one hand while berating her.

"I do not care how important this project of yours is. You still have to attend your classes if you want to graduate. I've given you the last couple of days because I can see that it's something big you two have got going, but enough is enough here. You need to know when to take a break from your work." Izuku sweatdropped at the scene, and Mei was barely even defending herself against her mother's onslaught. Izuku let out a slight cough to catch the attention of the two ladies, and when they caught sight of him, they had two very different reactions.

Mei, relieved to see him, bolted behind him, immediately using him as a human shield against her mother. Mrs. Hatsume gave him an absolutely uncanny smile that was far too much tooth for his liking. Izuku shuddered, thinking that if this was how she acted in a courtroom, then he could see why she was considered one of the best defense lawyers in the country.

"Sorry, Mei, I'm with your mother on this one. I was stopping by to tell you that I need to let my muscles rest for the day. Besides that, we both know the dangers of staring at anything too long. Blueprints, code, simulations, it doesn't matter, and we can't risk even a small mistake with one of these reactors. One of these goes critical? We're not talking about the garage getting its windows blown out. We're talking Musutafu being wiped off the map." Izuku eased her away from her hiding position behind him so that she was looking him in the eyes while he was talking. She huffed but finally agreed, taking her leave of both of them to get ready.

"You know you're the only one her age I've seen able to talk to her like that? Outside of our family, no one, and I mean no one, is able to get her to do things like that. Even we struggle sometimes to get her to do things. But you, your words carry more weight than all of ours. Look out for her please." Izuku hadn't expected Mrs. Hatsume to say as much, but he didn't feel as caught off guard as he would have expected.

"On that front, you don't have to worry. She's a brilliant girl, and I can assure you her words carry as much weight with me as mine do with her." Izuku stepped to the side of the desk, picking up a sleek black unmarked case. Then back to the doorway. "I have somewhere I need to be, ma'am, so if you'll excuse me." Izuku turned to leave and muttered the last part to himself. "I'm certainly not going to lose another."

…

It had been two weeks since he had been to the music store to get his strings, and after Izuku had made his way there from the train station, he was glad to see the deli had quickly replaced it's doors and gotten back to serving its customers. It was pretty good food, after all. It would be a real shame if they'd had to stay closed.

Izuku entered the store much the same way he had before, this time carrying a case rather than a guitar. Izuku approached the shop counter expecting to see one of the Jiro family manning it and, instead, finding a store worker a little older than him. The man was about five foot eight and somewhere in the ballpark of nineteen or twenty by Izuku's estimates. His nametag labeled him as Tajima. He had brown hair down to his neckline and was wearing a smile that felt more forced than natural when he spoke.

"Hello, welcome to Don't Fret. Is there something I can help you with today, sir?" Izuku shook his head, thanking him but asking if any of the Jiros were around today, as he had several matters he needed to discuss with the family. The atmosphere changed when he mentioned the family. The clerk, seemingly not wanting him to meet the family. "I'm not sure. They aren't always around so you'll have to try again at a la-"

Izuku glanced past him when movement came from a door leading into the back. As he did so, he locked eyes with Kyoka as the door closed. There was a brief moment of silence as they stared at each other and the clerk was awkwardly caught in his sentence. That moment was broken when Jiro launched herself across the counter yelling, "Midoriya!"

Izuku barely had time to catch her and set her down before she was ushering him into the back, berating him for not coming by sooner and how her parents had started to lose hope that he would be back after what had happened. So preoccupied was she with her savior that she didn't notice the clerk glaring at the two of them.

…

The Jiros were ecstatic to see that he had returned and, after they had settled down in the break room with tea, wasted no time in bombarding him with questions. He answered what he could and generally made small talk with them. Eventually, the parents had to get back to what they were doing before he came. Before they could, he asked them to stay for one thing. Izuku placed a strip down on the table that Hatsume and he had been working on.

"I was asked to relay this footage to you from interested parties. As it turns out, someone has been lurking around your store after hours and they wanted you to be aware." Izuku hit a button on his phone and the strip lit up, projecting a hologram of a video into the air just above it. Of course, no one had asked Izuku to relay the message. Instead, it was simply something he had flagged to come up with an alert in his surveillance program. It wasn't perfect, but it caught quite a bit. The underground heroes swept most of what he had caught up, but there was still plenty of activity that they didn't. I'll have to talk to Mei about working with me on creating a logistics VI for us after the reactors are finished.

The Jiros were obviously put into a state of shock. Not just that some creepy person was lurking around their shop, which was upsetting for a plethora of reasons, but that the video was being projected in crisp high quality in the air in front of them. The parents, after breaking out of their stupor, thanked Izuku and, taking a copy of the video, left the room. Jiro looked from Izuku to the strip still sitting on the table, twirling one of her jacks with her finger.

"Sooo. Is this little strip what had you busy these two weeks? " Izuku chuckled and shook his head. Picking up the strip and turning it over to fiddle with some of the circuitry with a small tool he'd taken out of the case.

"Not at all. This has been more of a little side project I've been working on in spare moments. Mostly I've been working on two much larger projects with my business partner. We're almost to the prototyping stage, so we're taking a break from that today." Izuku placed the strip back down on the table and his tool back in the case. She couldn't see what was in the case, but she could tell from the sound of metal brushing on metal when he put the tool back that there was something larger in the case than just the strip and some tools.

For a time, they spoke of nothing. Inane things that would numb the mind as much as they made you smile. Jokes and stories that made them both relax, for a while forgetting their worries. After a while, Jiro circled back around to what they had been speaking of before the incident several weeks ago. Seemingly out of nowhere, she spouted out with, "I've decided I'm going to be a hero."

Izuku smiled now, his voice soft, remembering the last time they'd had this discussion. "I see you made your decision then. What made up your mind in the end?"

Jiro looked down and fiddled with her jacks. "It was actually the incident last week. For a while, I was stuck thinking about what happened. How close I came to not being able to make that decision and how badly I froze up. I wanted to be angry at that man for nearly killing me, for injuring you. Then after that, I wanted to be angry with Death Arms. If he hadn't run in like that, you would have diffused the situation and nothing would have gone wrong." Kyoka's face was pensive and she was hesitating, speaking softly. She slowly shook her head, "I am going to become a hero so that those kinds of situations can be resolved the right way. Not like how Death Arms handled it."

Izuku sighed as he listened to Jiro's reason to be a Hero. He wouldn't discourage her, of course, but he didn't know if she had thought it all the way through, either. Did she realize that if that situation had gone differently, he would have resorted to force? Did she realize that he would have killed the man to keep everyone else safe if the situation had called for it? Was she prepared to take that step if she had to?

He buried those thoughts and smiled, congratulating her on figuring out what she wanted to do and offering her to strength train with him down at the beach. She could meet his partner, as well. The image of a small, remote village smoldering flashed across his mind before he shook his head. She has plenty of time before she should have to think about these things.

…

As Izuku walked down the road, he sent a message to Mei, telling her that he was on his way to his second task. When he felt his phone buzz in his hand, he expected it to be Hatsume continuing to gripe at him regarding her classes being useless. Instead, he found it was Jiro verifying the time to meet him at the beach and what to expect. He smiled at her message. She seemed like she was taking this seriously. They had another three years before their entrance exams.

His fifteenth birthday had just rolled around, and his mother had made it readily apparent with her tears what she thought of that. The fact that her son, who should have been a freshman in high school, was in the process of finalizing his senior year did not pass by her. Nor, for that matter, had it passed by Mei, who had been incessantly hounding her mother to let her do the same. Perhaps if she was willing to socialize with Jiro, then they'd be able to convince Mrs. Hatsume to let that happen.

Izuku looked up from his phone as he rounded the final corner to his destination. The Line of Duty. Pro Hero Snipe's personal range and shop. The shop mostly catered to professionals, so there was a clientele consisting of police, military, and a handful of pro heroes from Japan and overseas. That isn't to say that civilians couldn't go there, but quirks had made most people forget about firearms.

Izuku stepped into the store and decided there was no way he was in the wrong place, despite the name sounding vaguely like the name of a bar for cops. The shop floor was filled with cases of accessories for both people and their weapons. Gun cases, safes, cleaning gear, and tactical clothing were towards the entrance, while in the back of the shop were glass counters filled with an assortment of sidearms and knives.

No rifles for sale, but that's not terribly shocking. Even if the rules for sidearms relaxed and you can get the license for rifles, that doesn't mean they're typically sold to civilians. Izuku walked up to the counter and caught the attention of the clerk. When she came over, he gave her a smile. "Hello, ma'am. I made an appointment to speak with Snipe today following his arrival. You'll find me under Midoriya Izuku." The clerk at the counter frowned.

"Aren't you a tad bit young to have an appointment with-" The woman cut herself off. While she was indeed surprised, she was anything if not professional, and his name was indeed in the appointment log. "I apologize, sir, I didn't realize that you were so young. If you come with me I'll take you right back." Izuku nodded his head and followed the young woman past the range. At this time of the day and week, it didn't surprise Izuku for there to be more booths than shooters currently. When the clerk knocked on the office door, she informed the Hero that his appointment had arrived, then ushered Izuku through the door before returning to her place.

The Hero in question was sitting behind his desk, still in his costume, the old school tan gas mask covering his facial features and keeping Izuku from reading him. That doesn't mean that he couldn't see Snipes shock in the way his body tensed when he walked in. Izuku gave him a smile and began to cross the room to take a seat. While he did so, Snipe spoke in the well known southern drawl that announced him as having spent time in the Reunited States.

"I've gotta say, when the detective went an' referred someone to me as a favor, I certainly hadn't expected someone as young as you are." He shifted in his seat and Izuku placed his case down next to him in the chair. Izuku gave Snipe a small, professional smile.

"Yes, well, the good detective owed me a favor so I asked him to refer me. Or are you telling me that you would have allowed a fifteen-year-old to make an appointment with you at a gun range?" Snipe shook his head.

"Aye. I can see ya point. And for that reason, let's get to your point, what are you here for?" Izuku straightened himself and held up two fingers.

"I've come with two requests. The first would be to allow me to take the licensing examination for handgun carry." There was a tense silence following this statement. Not that Izuku could see it, but several emotions had gone across Snipe's face at that and his eyebrows had settled into a scrunch that was certain to give him a headache if he held it.

"I can't say we have a tendency to issue carry licenses to minors."

"You also can't tell me that you haven't issued them before." Izuku and Snipe stared each other down for a few moments before Izuku finally sighed. "No, I didn't figure you would, but it was worth the chance. The second is to get this serialized." Izuku picked up and placed his case onto the desk now, sliding it across to him. Snipe was confused. Izuku was sure of that much. There was a slight head tilt when he pushed the case across the desk and hesitation when Snipe reached for it.

Snipe opened the case and pulled out the handgun that Izuku had pressed against Mei's throat only a few days prior. He drew the slide on it back, checking for a chambered round, before snapping it forward and pointing it at the wall of his office after he had cleared the barrel. He looked back at Izuku and placed the gun onto the desk.

"Where did ya get this from?" Snipe asked him, clearly wary of where Izuku may have gotten an unserialized sidearm.

"I made it myself recently in preparation for hopefully getting my license to carry it." Snipe was quiet for a moment before he stood, taking two boxes and several magazines from a drawer in his desk. He pushed Izuku's sidearm back to him before gesturing him to follow. As they walked, Snipe spoke.

"In light of you being a gunsmith, I'm gonna give you a chance. That box has fifty, hundred and thirty-grain rounds in it. You're gonna load your magazines with them both an' complete a simulation cycle of my choosing. You pass an' I'll give you a license to both carry and conceal on one more condition." They both stepped through into a room with a single booth looking down at a firing range. "I'm gonna program the simulation now. At random targets'll appear down the range. Circle means target and a square means civilian. Generally, squares would be just points deducted. In this case, it'll fail ya if you hit it. Load up and signal when you're ready."

Izuku nodded, he had expected he would have to fire his sidearm to get licensed, so this wasn't too much of a stretch. Even if he hadn't expected to have to pass a simulation to do it. He stepped up to the booth and began loading his magazines. As he finished placing them neatly on the table in front of him, he put in his earplugs, and when he was ready, he signaled Snipe to begin the simulation.

---

Snipe had done a lot in his life, and as a pro hero, he had seen a hell of a lot more. When the kid had come into his office, at first his instincts had screamed at him to draw his weapon. He hadn't because it was a kid. When the kid had asked to get licensed and stared him down, he could feel a pressure coming from this fifteen-year-old that he generally hadn't felt since he last met some of the old soldiers hardened by the first quirk wars.

Then finally, he had seen the handgun that the boy had apparently machined himself. He wasn't lying to him, he could tell that much. He had decided to give him this chance for two reasons. First was because if the boy passed, he would be offering him a position as a gunsmith for them. He hadn't seen craftsmanship like that in some time, and gunsmiths were in short supply in this day and age. The second was because something about this boy was setting off alarms in his head, and he had learned to trust his instincts.

So there Snipe stood, regretting having programmed the simulation to as high a level as he did. He had let that little irrational feeling worry him into setting the simulation to a level that he doubted even he would have been able to complete before his graduation from U.A. That sense of regret only lasted as long as it took Izuku to begin shooting. He hit the start button and the boy took his stance. The targets started flashing up at a pace that would have most shooters dizzy and they only picked up the pace, randomly throwing civilians, targets, and targets over the shoulder of civilians up into the range.

Never once did the boy miss. Never once did the boy put more than one bullet into a target. Never once did the boy miss the center mark on each target and never once did the boy even so much as clip a civilian. When the simulation ended and all one hundred rounds were put down range, the boy expertly ejected his last magazine, pulled the slide back on his sidearm, and set it down, muzzle pointed downrange. He then turned around, once again in parade rest, and waited for Snipe to come out of the control room and tell him his results.

"I have to say, I haven't seen shootin like that in quite a while. Your quirk must have something to do with accuracy like mine am ah right?" The boy gave him a confused look as he said as much.

"Sir? Didn't you read my file that the detective sent over with the referral? I'm quirkless." It took only a moment for the implications of that to sink in before Snipe felt all of the blood drain from his face.

---

Izuku turned when he had finished the simulation, taking his earplugs out. He didn't think it was his best shooting he had ever done, but he felt that it would suffice for what Snipe was looking for. Snipe came out and immediately asked him a question. "I have to say, I haven't seen shootin like that in quite a while. Your quirk must have something to do with accuracy like mine am ah right?"

Izuku was confused. He had had Naomasa send his information with the referral so that he wouldn't be surprised when someone under eighteen walked into his office. "Sir? Didn't you read my file that the detective sent over with the referral? I'm quirkless." Snipe was quiet for another long moment, just staring at Izuku's confused face, before he turned and sat down with his head in his hands. When he looked back up at Izuku, he was back to normal.

"Alright, you passed. I will, as ah stated, give you your licenses. That is on the condition that ya come in every Tuesday evenin and help as a gunsmith. We currently only have one gunsmith on staff and ah have to say as much as ah love guns, servicing them all myself can be painful. This can be for as long as you're willing to help. That being said, I would prefer it if ya were to come in for at least the next couple of months since we're coming up on huntin season. We're gonna have a lot of work to do in that time. "

Izuku thought about it for a second then nodded his head, putting his hand out to shake. He could do through hunting season. Mei wouldn't be happy that he had other things to do on Tuesday, but it was a small price to pay for his gun licenses.

"An' kid, if you don't mind me asking, what is it that ya plan on doing in the future?" Izuku gave him a sad smile now.

"I plan on getting a hero license, sir." Why he would be sad about that was beyond Snipe, but he had no doubt the kid would manage it. To which he could only think one thing. Thank God.

…

By the time Izuku got out of the store and range, the sun was already going down. He had let time get away from him when he was in the range and, as such, had to take his licenses and get going, promising that he would return Tuesday unless something came up. Everything had gone well that day. All of his tasks for his rest day had been ticked off his list, though he still felt like he was forgetting something. When he got home to his mother with the sidearm now in its holster under his left arm, he very quickly remembered what that something was.

---

"Who was that?" Snipe nearly jumped a dozen feet in the air when Eraserhead's voice came from behind him.

"God damn partner try not to sneak up on someone like that. Nearly gave me a heart attack." Snipe had locked the door behind Midoriya as he was leaving. When Eraser had gotten into the building, he had no clue. "To answer ya question, I just licensed him for carry and hired him on as a temp gunsmith."

Aizawa's eyebrows shot up at this. "Snipe, I've known you for quite some time, and in that time, you've issued maybe three carry licenses to minors and those were all under extreme circumstances. Is this kid someone I need to keep an eye on?" Snipe shook his head.

"Nah the kid actually plans on getting a hero license. But the reason ah licensed him is for two reasons aside from that. One, he's apparently a damn good gunsmith and ah need one of those. Second is that ah ran him through my personal gauntlet and he passed."

Aizawa could consider himself impressed at that. He had seen what Snipe considered to be a normal run on his 'gauntlet' settings. "What'd the kid score?"

Snipe looked him dead in the eyes and with full seriousness said, "Perfect." All Aizawa could do was stare at him in silence and disbelief.