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“Alright, I think it’s ready,” Kacchan said, stepping back from the machine and wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“Really?” Izuku asked, running over from his own station.
Kacchan nodded confidently, surveying his latest pride and joy. “We just need to test it in the field and do some calibrations.”
Izuku’s small hunting dragon, Katsuma, dropped down on the cannon, sniffing it out. Kacchan waved his hand at the dragon, who flew back to Izuku’s shoulder and nuzzled into his hair, nipping at the hairs there.
“He’s just curious,” Izuku said, gently petting the little yellow-orange nose.
Kacchan scoffed. “He doesn’t need to get his snout blasted off in the process. Now come on.” He pressed a button which popped out the wheel at the bottom of the cannon and he began to drag it towards the door.
“Right now!?” Izuku exclaimed, following after.
“Yes, right now,” Kacchan said, stopping at the rack near the door and surveying the cannonballs.
“Woah, shouldn’t we test it with something else first?” Izuku asked, stepping between Kacchan and the display of munitions.
Kacchan scowled. “I can’t know it works if we don’t use the actual shit we’ll be firing with it.”
Izuku winced, still trying to futilely block the cannonballs from view. “But Kacchan, you’re so amazing and talented and smart, certainly you can adjust for the weight of whatever substitute we use, and use that to calculate for the real thing.”
Kacchan raised his brow scrutinously at Izuku. Katsuma had now moved on to nibbling on Izuku’s ear, but he paid it no mind, at least until he could dissuade Kacchan from wasting valuable ammo on a test.
“So what do you suggest we use instead?”
Thankfully, Old Man Yagi had been complaining about his surplus of pumpkin crop. Many of them were small enough and dense enough to be comparable to cannonballs. So a short while later, they were on the training field with Kacchan’s new cannon and several cartloads of pumpkins in various sizes.
Their riding dragons, Kiri and Kami, had followed along like the loyal dogs they were. Both of them were sniffing the pile of pumpkins, their large bulk getting in the way of Izuku and Kacchan trying to set up the test. Mahoro and Katsuma didn’t help either, who were also investigating, even if they were much smaller and less in the way.
“Get!” Kacchan snapped, shoving Kiri away from the pile.
“Kami, please just wait over there,” Izuku implored the yellow and black dragon, tugging him by the horns to get him away from the gourds. Kami finally huffed a small cloud and stomped over to where Izuku indicated, making small whining growls the whole time.
Kacchan finally threw one of the bigger pumpkins as far as he could, which Kiri chased after. Kami joined him, which then resulted in them fighting over it. “Fucking idiots,” Kacchan grumbled.
Now that the two dragons were busy gnawing on the pumpkin shells, the two engineers were free to finish setting up the test.
“So now just adjust for the weight—”
“I know!”
“Okay, okay, sorry.”
Izuku stepped back and watched, but couldn’t resist crowding in again and offering his help.
“I can tighten this nut here—”
“I’ve got it!”
“Okay, well then let me just—”
Kacchan slapped Izuku’s hand away. “My cannon, leave me be.”
“Alright! My bad!”
Izuku stepped back again, but couldn’t resist interjecting a few more times until the cannon was finally ready. It took several minutes of tinkering, and Izuku had to toss the dragons a few more large pumpkins to keep them occupied, but the cannon was at last ready for testing.
“Maybe we should aim short first?” Izuku suggested, watching Kacchan drop a pumpkin into the barrel.
“I’ll fire where I want to fire,” Kacchan grumbled, adjusting the height of the cannon.
“I know, I’m just thinking about being able to retrieve the pumpkins and—”
Boom!
Izuku belatedly covered his ears as the orange ballistic soared through the sky, landing on the other end of the training field. Kacchan had fired short.
“That was amazing!!” Izuku cried.
Kacchan smirked with pride. “I know, right?”
“Let’s do another one!”
The other mechanic was already loading the next pumpkin in, shoeing Mahoro away from sitting on the one he wanted. She hissed a small cloud of smoke at him for the inconvenience, before settling comfortably on the other pile. Kacchan scrutinized the dials and made a few changes, before pressing the button. A few whirrs and clicks and then another boom as the next pumpkin shot into the sky.
It did not land, however, because as soon as it boomed, Kiri was streaking through the sky and catching it in his mouth.
Izuku laughed at the brazen display.
“Dumbass,” Kacchan grumbled. He glared at the dragon for a long second, before yelling out, “Get off the damn field!”
Kiri looked over at the two engineers with a bit of a pout. He flew back over to them. Kacchan smacked him on the nose. “Go sit over there!”
The red dragon did as he was told, where he had to carefully guard his pumpkin away from Kami’s jealous nose.
“At least we have another use for Yagi’s leftover pumpkins,” Izuku remarked.
“But now I can’t measure the distance of that shot,” Kacchan scowled.
“Oh, we should measure the other one,” Izuku said, already running down the field.
“You have a dragon!” Kacchan called after, but Izuku was too far to turn around now. He’d take Kami next time. He used the marks on the ground and counted how many meters the pumpkin had flown. The poor thing was an utter mess on the ground. He hoped some animal would chance upon it later so it wasn’t wasted.
A yellow snout bumped his elbow, and Izuku realized that Kami had joined him out here. Kacchan was busy fiddling with his cannon, but Izuku suspected he must have sent the dragon over.
“Hello there,” Izuku smiled and rubbed Kami’s nose. The dragon leaned into the affection, making soft rumbling sounds of happiness. “Let’s get back over before Kacchan yells at us.” He hopped on the dragons back, and they bounded over to the shooting area in no time.
Kacchan must have had the next pumpkin loaded and ready because Kami had barely touched ground before the cannon boomed and the orange spheroid was flying. Izuku didn’t even get a chance to dismount because Kami was back in the air, chasing the pumpkin. Izuku held on tight to Kami’s reins, shouting “stop!” to no avail. Kami snapped down on the gourd with a satisfying crunch, dropping to the ground to chase after all the pumpkin scraps.
“You dumbass reptile!” Kacchan shouted, running across the field and slapping the dragon on the nose. Kami yelped and winced away from Kacchan, even as his tongue was still gathering the last few pieces of pumpkin.
“How the fuck are we going to test this cannon if these idiots won’t stop trying to catch them?”
Izuku slid off Kami’s back, getting his breath and his bearings, before he joined Kacchan in walking back to the cannon. “We can use the dragons as part of the test,” he suggested. “Try to fire off pumpkins as quickly and as far as possible, trying to evade their attempts. And they’re both hardy, so if one of them gets hit, it won’t hurt much and they’ll learn to stay off the field.”
Kacchan pondered Izuku’s suggestion while he looked over the pumpkins. Mahoro and Katsuma were now playing a kind of hide and pounce game around the piles.
“We do have a shitload of pumpkins,” Kacchan conceded. He kicked one that had fallen off the pile, immediately hopping and favoring the foot because the gourd had clearly been denser than he anticipated. “Alright fine, you win.”
Izuku laughed and leaned in, giving Kacchan a quick kiss on the cheek. “This’ll be fun!”
The dragons were intelligent enough to track Kacchan’s instructions, and they were such gluttons that they were eager to play for the chance of gorging themselves on the vegetables. Mahoro and Katsuma heard enough of the instructions to start whining that they were being left out. Izuku couldn’t bear excluding them, but neither could he risk them getting launched by a pumpkin with greater mass than them. So he popped out his spring-loaded knife and cut a pumpkin open for them, which they readily chowed down on while the rest of them continued with testing.
And it did in fact turn out to be rather fun. Izuku and Kacchan took turns loading the cannon. Kacchan had to chastize Izuku for the way he was a bit too hard on the handles and dials, but Izuku got the hang of it before long. They shot pumpkins both far and high, alternating to give the dragons a good workout.
“This is good training for them too,” Izuku remarked, before laughing at the way one pumpkin exploded in Kiri’s face.
“As long as they don’t try to eat actual cannonballs,” Kacchan scoffed.
They did manage to get a few pumpkins down the field without the dragons getting in the way. At one point the two got distracted fighting over one, which gave the engineers several minutes of freedom to fire off several pumpkins before the dragons were back to their pumpkin-chasing shenanigans.
“I think the cannon is holding up pretty well too, at least for the afternoon,” Izuku said, checking out the health of the springs and screws.
“I’d be fucked if any of the pumpkins were smashed in the mechanism, but thankfully they’re dense enough that that hasn’t happened yet,” Kacchan responded. He squatted down and was checking on everything himself. By now they only had part of the two cartloads left.
“Are you satisfied with it?” Izuku asked.
Kacchan nodded, looking up and down the barrel with a fond expression as if looking at his own child. “Yeah, this fucker is perfect.”
Boom!
He fired the cannon when Izuku least expected it, sending him flying back on his butt. He looked down the field just in time to spot Kami catching the pumpkin in his mouth.
“I thought you said you were satisfied?” Izuku exclaimed.
Kacchan barked a short chuckle. “Yeah, but chucking pumpkins is fun.”
Izuku laughed with his partner, because he was right. This had been ridiculously fun. So they rounded out the afternoon by firing off the rest of the pumpkins. Mahoro and Katsuma had already eaten their fill, they were so small, so they were napping curled up together on Izuku’s bag.
When the last pumpkin had been fired, they called the dragons back over to help them haul the carts and cannon back to the lab and Mr. Yagi’s farm. The field was now littered with discarded pumpkins. The dragons hadn’t consumed all of them as much as played fetch and keep-away.
“Guess all the pumpkin parts could be cleaned up and prepared for soups and pies?” Izuku suggested.
Kacchan groaned, rolling his eyes back. “That’s a fuck ton of annoying work.”
“We can’t just leave the field like this though!” Izuku protested.
“This whole thing was your idea!”
“It’s better than a field of cannonballs!”
Kacchan grunted and kicked the remains of the pumpkin the two small hunting dragons had been consuming. “Whatever. We’ll figure that out later. I’m starving.”
Izuku laughed. “Well, there’s plenty of pumpkin to eat.”
Kacchan punched Izuku hard in the arm. “I am not eating fucking pumpkin. I’ve seen enough pumpkin for a week. Let’s make some curry or something.”
“Pumpkin curry?”
Kacchan tackled Izuku to the ground, where they’re punches and kicks dissolved into wrestling, which then dissolved into tickling and giggling. Finally, Kacchan had Izuku pinned on the ground. Izuku smirked and licked Kacchan’s face, distracting the man long enough for Izuku to hop up and run away.
“Last one back has to make pumpkin curry for dinner!” Izuku called back.
Kacchan looked at the dragon roped up, still carrying carts and the cannon.
“That fucker,” he grumbled.
Izuku did not, however, force Kacchan to prepare pumpkin curry. They had a standard curry, and fell asleep on the bed, limbs all tangled together, resting from their hard day of labor.
And they were rudely awoken by Mitsuki, scolded for the mess of pumpkin on the field and they better go clean it up before the day was over and the pumpkins got rained on.
But at least they had been able to test Kacchan’s new cannon. It was a success, and the dragons had fun.
And they did get sick of eating pumpkin for several weeks after that.