Good Morning

06:15, 23 January 2034

He's drowning. Again. He's had this dream a thousand times; the cold, the dark, the fear. Which is always strange because he can't feel the cold anymore. The dream doesn't scare him like it used to. He's seen (and done) things that put this nightmare to shame.

Jack squints up, seeing halogen lights shining dimly through a sheet of ice. Sighing internally, he swims up and breaks through the ice and into the light.

"Rise and shine," a familiar voice chimes drily.

"Morning to you too." Jack yawns and stretches.

Hiccup's huge obsidian dragon jumps on Jack's bed, purring contentedly. "I heard we're getting a new recruit," Hiccup says. "Her name's Rapunzel."

"Weird name."

"Yeah. Toothless and I are going down to the mess hall. See you there." The best part about the guy's barracks is the fact that they're connected to the cafeteria. Basically, midnight snacks.

Jack yawns again, checking the clock with a glance, and it's six fifteen. Brilliant. He's late again.

He reluctantly gets up and starts rummaging around in his closet for a clean jumpsuit. They're all identical, white and grey with colored stripes along the shoulders and forearms. His are blue, for water elementals. Just before he leaves the room, he snatches up his tall, hooked staff from the floor.

The halls are already empty by the time he's outside, and Jack ends up running to the cafeteria so he isn't too late. He bursts into the caf at twenty before, nearly knocking over Merida before he skids to a stop.

"Thought you'd fallen and you couldn't get up," Merida says by way of greeting. "We were gonna send a search party."

"Thanks, Mer," Jack says in his most sincere tone of voice. "I'm gonna go get breakfast." It's a rather unappealing fare of scrambled eggs (made from powder), fruit (frozen, shipped here from Mexico), and toast (stale). Mmm.

"What's the schedule for today?" Jack asks Hiccup when he returns to their table.

"Huh? Oh, we have school before training in the cathedral. Just like always." Hiccup scratches his dragon between the beast's eyes, and the inaptly named Toothless meows in delight. He's kind of like a giant cat. Made of obsidian. And equipped with retractable diamond teeth.

Merida idly toasts her bread, burning a handprint on both sides of the slice. "Hope we're not up against Delta Team again. They're no fun to fight."

"Hey, I heard that!" Kevin MacGuffin shouts angrily in her direction. "You wanna go, Red?"

Merida slams her toast down on the table, sending blackened crumbs all over the table. "Do you wanna live to see another day?" she asks, eyes narrowed dangerously. Fire forms in her hands, vaguely shaped like a strung bow.

"Okay, guys, let's all take a chill pill and save it for the Cathedral, all right?" Jack says, holding out his hands in a pacifying manner. On his left, Hiccup restrains Toothless from taking a chunk out of the hapless Delta.

One of the guards comes over to intervene, but by that time everyone's sitting at their respective tables again. Merida sweeps her crumbs back onto her plate.

Ah, now for the highlight of Jack's day. School. He's only being half-sarcastic. They take classes called Battlefield Tactics and Advanced Espionage, and they learn the basics of dozens of languages. At an hour each, with a forty-five minute break for lunch, school takes up half the day. Plus "homework," which is ridiculous because none of them have a home.

His first class of the day is Weapons (Firearms, Knives, and Other Related Handheld Devices), with the most boring professor of them all, Mr. Brown. Kind of ironic.

"Today, class, we shall be studying the art of bōjutsu, fighting with a staff known as a bo," Mr. Brown announces.

Jack grins. He's wicked good at this.

"No, Mr. Frost, you must use a plain quarterstaff for today's lesson. We will be studying basic strikes today. Now, each one of you has been equipped with a bo. Please go to your lockers and retrieve them."

Jack sighs and reluctantly leans his staff against the wall. The new one, straight and made out of heavy oak, feels completely wrong in his hands.

"Please line up in groups of four, facing me. I will demonstrate the twelve basic strikes, and you will attempt to copy me.

"The first is a descending strike to the top of the head, as such, left hand at the back end of the staff, right hand about two feet in front of it with the pinky finger of the right hand away from you. The second strike is with the hands reversed. To transition from one strike to the next..." Mr. Brown continues in his monotone voice.

Jack knows this stuff by heart, even with a plain bo instead of his shepherd's hook, but Merida and several other students keep hitting themselves and everyone else with their staffs. He snickers quietly, and Merida zaps him with a little bolt of lightning.

After about thirty minutes of this, Mr. Brown switches to a different series of strikes.

"Now, hold your staff so your hands divide it into thirds. Left hand palm down, right hand palm up, right side of the staff held higher than the left. Yes, very good. Jack, would you care to demonstrate with me? Yes, you, boy."

Jack can feel his ears turning pink. "Yes, sir."

"Now, class, the first strike is up high, like so..." Jack promptly zones out for the rest of his explanation (otherwise he'd fall asleep), waiting until he can actually do something. Finally they go over the sequence, and their bos make loud clacks that resonate through the air. The motions come easily to Jack, even with a glorified stick instead of his staff.

"Now go get a partner and practice!"

Hiccup instantly grabs Jack's sleeve. "I am not getting whacked by Merida's bo again."

Unfortunately, the bo is definitely not Hiccup's strong suit, and Jack spends most of his time keeping Hiccup from accidentally hitting them both over the head.

"No, Hic, the first one is just a normal strike," Jack tries to explain. "And the second is less a whack than a tap."

Toothless eyes the staff warily, like he's wondering whether to chew it or set it on fire. "Like this?" Hiccup asks.

"Yeah. More or less." Jack tries to teach Hiccup the third strike, but the other boy's arms keep getting tangled up.

Finally, they put their bos back into their lockers, and Jack gets his real staff back.

Their next class is, unfortunately, Foreign Language. They spend bare months on each one, and they're all blurring in Jack's mind. Today they're starting a new one, Italian, when just yesterday it was Swahili. And the worst part? Merida and Hiccup pick up languages like they're nothing.

"Giacomo?" Jack asks. "No way are you calling me that."

Merida snickers. "È il tuo nome in italiano."

"Merida, per favore." Hiccup says, voice purposefully exasperated.

"Non io piace-"

"Non mi piace, peasant-"

"Fine! Non mi piace italiano!"

Ms. Connolly instantly swoops down upon them. "Davvero non ti lo piace? Perchè? Mi piacciono tutte le lingue straniere, e anche posso parlare in quasi tutti."

Fabulous.

After an hour of foreign language hell, they are shunted off to Advanced Espionage, and after that, to Tactics.

Everyone's starving by the time lunch rolls around.

"Are you sure you can eat all that?" Hiccup asks warily, looking pointedly at Merida's plate. It's piled high with basically every type of food the caf offers, but mostly meat.

She glances up, a chicken leg in each hand. "Watch me."

They spend another three hours in school, learning Math and Science and English (Jack feels insulted that this is a class. English is the only language he really knows!).

He spills acid on the tabletops in Chem (again). At least it's not burning a hole like last time, though he's not sure he likes the way it's sizzling...

"Hey, Mer, who do you think we'll go up against today?" he asks, leaning against the tabletop carelessly.

"Does it matter? We'll beat them into the dust no matter who they are," she answers arrogantly, flagging down the teacher to help with cleanup.

Jack nods. "And the new girl? She's probably going to be on Alpha Team with us. Well, unless she's awful and we get assigned Katherine."

"We'll whip her into shape," Merida says somewhat threateningly.

Hiccup leans across the lab bench in surprise. "Who's getting whipped? I thought that was illegal."

"The new girl," Jack chimes in. "Rapunzel."

"Everyone start cleaning up!"

"Alpha Team, you will be playing against Gamma Team in the cathedral. Beta Team will face off with Delta in the main compound."

Beta and Delta start grumbling. Training in the compound is no fun, especially when the cathedral is so great for aerial fights.

Jack grins to Hiccup and Merida. "Can't wait."

Alpha Team is set up by Lunar Lake, so named for its half moon shape. Half the lake is surrounded by pines, the other half by the far left edge of the Cathedral Plains. They set up base camp deep in the Lakeside Forest. Gamma's probably in the Far Forest, on the other side of the Cathedral Plains, somewhere near the mud flats.

"All right, guys," Jack says. "We're up against Gamma. Their leader is a water elemental like me, Jamie Bennett-"

"You can skip the intro, Frost. We know these guys already. And they know us," Merida points out.

"Ok then, no refresher. Hiccup, you guard. Mer and I will go get their flag," Jack tells them.

"Wait, wait, hold up. I'm always the one who stays behind. Not this time," Hiccup interjects. Toothless pushes up against Hiccup's heels meaningfully, emerald eyes boring into Jack's.

"Mer, you wanna stay back?" Jack asks. Knowing her, probably not.

"Of course not! We'll take the flag with us." Merida beams, picking up their silver flag and tucking it into her belt.

Hiccup adds, "And I can leave a few stone animals behind to confuse whoever comes after us."

Jack grins slowly. "Okay. New plan."

Author's Note: Disclaimer: I'm sure I don't even need this thing here, but anyway. I own none of this.

Moonrise WILL be updated regularly! Maybe even more than once a week if you're lucky :D

Please review! I love hearing from you guys!

***Edited 21/10/13

Chapter Soundtrack: Welcome to the Black Parade, My Chemical Romance