Making guns was a lot harder than Katsuki or Izuku had given it credit. After three years of dinking around doing errands for their tribes one blacksmith so he'd make them their various tubes of shootery, the most they'd managed to make is a basic matchlock pistol and one musket. They were basically tubes with backs that you stuffed a bullet in along with some gunpowder, then stuck a cotton string into the back to light up. It also took three years because the forge didn't travel with them. It was a permanent fixture to their canyon home, the canyon home being entirely rock and all. Apparently, forging on a prairie that had nothing but dry grass and scrubby trees most of the time wasn't a good idea. Oh, and forges were heavy, who'd a guessed?
Needless to say, the blacksmith, who happened to be married to the fat lady with the mole, didn't much care for them at first. He had a lot of work to catch up with and only a part of the year to do it.
Well, Katsuki had had enough of him too. Idiot couldn't get a tube right. It had to be perfectly smooth on the inside and he kept half-assing it.
"Look, kid, iron's expensive. What you're asking of me is worth at least a goat and that's before I work with it."
Izuku, more understanding and used to getting subpar products, just patiently came up with some files and got to work smoothing down the gun's tube and handles himself. After giving himself an aneurysm specifically not fighting with their tribes only blacksmith, Katsuki eventually settled down with him to make some stock for the naked metal handles out of a mix of wood and leather. Wood wasn't all that common to come by either.
One night after a particularly tired day of begging, running errands, and looking for scraps because heaven forbid they actually use money in the tribe or his mom give him some sort of allowance, Katsuki let his face fall beside his dinner.
"Mom, why do we live in such a shitty place?"
"I take personal offense to you calling our tent shit, brat," she'd said calmly between puffs across her hot stew.
"Not the tent, hag. The land. It's resources are dead grass, rocks, and the occasional bison."
"It's the price to pay to be free," said his father. "Our people aren't as strong as they used to be."
"Losing the dragon tamers did that to us," said his mom. "Our lands used to go much farther south, covering the woods until the Spine Mountains. You'd have had iron galore for your stupid death projects from the mountain mines and a child could have found enough food just lying around in the forest."
"Which is why other people wanted it," said his dad.
"And now they have it," added his mother bitterly.
Katsuki understood not wanting to be controlled better than most. He wasn't about to ask why they didn't just let themselves become ruled by whatever nation decided to steal what was there. But with his whole body aching, exhausted, and filled to the brim with frustration at having a mind full of dreams and no way to make any of them of use, he couldn't help thinking that maybe this was an occasion freedom could bite it.
Especially when a handful of their tribe's travelers would come back from their year-long adventures with stories of all sorts of technologies and vast cities and exotic foods. Even Izuku had to admit their stupid bronze-age style of living was tasting a bit bland.
When they weren't running around doing errands, chores, or trying to get their matchlocks to work, Izuku and Katsuki trained.
Running, climbing, hiking, martial arts, swordplay, archery, slings, spears, clubs, you name it, his mother or father knew. Their hands blistered then healed hard to handle the various weapons and there wasn't a day where Izuku and Katsuki didn't end it in a spar into the dirt. For a while, Katsuki consistently rose the victor. But once Izuku's muscles caught up it began to fall neatly to 50/50, as it should.
Puberty meant an increase in their allotted training since their bodies were finally reaching a stage they wouldn't be stunted by too much bodybuilding. Katsuki hit his growth spurt first, to Izuku's dismay, but if he thought Katsuki's extra height would beat him he was wrong. Exponential came with a downside: growing pains. And Katsuki's body loved gobbling at his carefully built muscles for the material for said growth.
"Oh great Dynamite," Izuku liked to say. "So skinny and long."
He'd get sparks to the face for that one.
Speaking of puberty, they weren't the only ones who dived headfirst into it.
At sixteen, Birdie had come into her full, womanly form and never missed up a chance to flaunt it wherever Katsuki could see. She especially liked coming to wherever they were training to watch and lick her lips not quite out of site.
Izuku would blush and cover his chest, whether shirted or not. Ejiro would watch on and smother chuckles that released little plumes of smoke from his nostrils.
Katsuki would go ballistic.
"GO AWAY, PERVERT! Ain't no one going to miss you when I blow your fucking face off!"
And he had the firepower to do so. The three years along Eijiro's side had done wonders for his control and arm strength. Magic had to be involved because he could let loose far larger blasts than he could have back in his previous life with only so much bulk and training.
Birdie, however, would just smirk, as she always did when Katsuki laid into her…that came out wrong.
"All bark and no bite," she'd purr. "What, you don't like being watched? Is Kacchan shy?"
Only Izuku was allowed to call him that. Creepy little-ass bitch had no previous life of hero-work to qualify her for that honor.
He'd give a roar and start letting loose explosions around her feet. She'd shriek, but since she was used to this sort of distance-fighting of his (ain't no way in hell he was touching that perv), she'd squeal in almost delight before scuttling off as though he'd just thrown pop rocks at her feet instead of full-on, dirt popping cherry bombs.
" It's not like she's ugly or mean ," said Ejirio at some point. " Why not, I don't know, got on a date with her? "
Katsuki felt endlessly validated when Izuku joined him in looking at the dragon as though he'd done something stupid.
" What ?" Eijiro still blinked big, puppy-dog-like eyes, despite having doubled in size.
"We're not allowed to date until we're fifteen and have gone to our first bonfire," said Izuku.
"You've lived here how long and you don't know that?" said Katsuki.
Eijiro huffed. " Well, it isn't like anyone talks to me besides you two and your parents. And who'd bother to tell a dragon that?"
"But you hear perfectly fine, don't you?" Katsuki folded his arms across his chest.
" Stop iiiiiit, fine, I still think you're too mean to her. You burnt her foot the other day, not bad, but still. "
Izuku looked contemplative while Katsuki dropped his jaw, appalled.
"She never misses a moment to sexually harass me! Didn't you see her smack my ass yesterday?"
" It is a nice ass, " said Eijiro with a fangy smirk.
"GAY!"
"She doesn't have the qualifications," said Izuku, who'd grabbed a towel to mop up their sweat. This conversation had happened during one of their breaks practicing hand-to-hand combat. "She doesn't respect his boundaries, for one, and she isn't particularly clever. She also has no butt and too-large breasts. Too top heavy."
Eijiro gaped at Katsuki. " You claim to be a full-blooded man who doesn't like big boobs? "
"Fuck, Zu, stop making me sound like a shallow asshole."
Izuku blinked innocently. "But you are a shallow asshole."
Break ended then. Katsuki tackled Izuku head-on.
Puberty wasn't all fun and games, though. Katsuki hadn't missed the wacky wet dreams or the awkward hard-ons at inappropriate times. He'd known the girls in his tribe since he was a baby, so they were more like cousins than anything legitimate, but his hormonally charged dick didn't seem to care. And then there was birdie being the creep she was. She didn't even bother going to the bonfires, insisting she was waiting on him to grow into his 'man pants' to take him with her, like a kidnapped bride.
Oh, how he hated her.
Izuku tried to commiserate with him on their second passing through puberty but he didn't want to hear it. Especially since Eijiro's 'puberty' seemed to come with all perks and no downsides. The worst it got was the shedding.
" It itches !" he'd whine while scratching off scales.
Katsuki would take itching off flat-metal-like rocks to embarrassing hard-ons any day.
But wait a second….
"Oy, Tinman!"
"He's just excited, Mr. Smith," Izuku cut across Katsuki.
The blacksmith gave them both a flat look from where he sat working leather in front of his tent. He was a broad, sturdy man with ginger hair, a scraggy, blond goatee, and a square paunch that was more muscle than fat.
"Whatever it is, no." He stabbed the thick needle into the leather. "Fucking kid is old enough to know how to be polite and I ain't got no forge."
They were near the scrubby bush forest during Spring, so, yeah, no forge.
"You can do this without a forge," said Katsuki, ignoring the clear dismissal from the adult. He dropped a burlap bag on the ground near the man's feet. In rustled, as though filled with alluminum coins. "I need you to make me some dragon armor."
"No." But then the man paused. "Wait, dragon armor?"
Katsuki crouched down to untie the bag. He yanked it open with a toothy grin.
Inside, piles of scarlet scales glittered in the mid-day sun.
"Huh." The smith blinked, then turned back to his sewing. "Still, no. You're growing. Making you armor now would be a waste. When you're a man come back."
"Oh, come on, can't you just, I don't know, do add-ons?"
"No."
"Well, maybe you can use the scales for something else anyways," said Izuku, ever the polite one.
"Shut up! They ain't your scales, nerd!"
"Technically they're Eijiro's."
" Yeah, and it isn't like I'm doing anything with them ," said Eijiro's slightly distant voice. He was two tents over letting some kids use his tail as a slide.
"Eijiro said yes," Izuku told the smith.
Mr. Smith considered the bag of scales for a long moment.
"Nothing comes to mind, but I don't mind a bit of experimenting," he said. "Thanks, brat. Did something helpful for a change."
"I do helpful shit all the time, Tinman. Be grateful."
"Right back at you."
Izuku just gave a pained smile.