1 An Interesting Idea

Around the world, there are many places where regular explosions are a normal part of life. Most of the explosions experienced in those places, are related to the high pressures to be found from within the earth itself. Volcanoes and geysers are two examples, but there are many possible sources.

This was not the case in the small village that lay on the western side of the snow covered island of Berk. Although there were also many reasons why a person may encounter an explosion in this charming little hamlet, the most common cause, ahead of incendiary eggs, was a noxious substance known as Zippleback gas.

The Vikings who make Berk their home are the kind of people who normally deal with any problem by either ignoring it, or by hitting it with something sharp and heavy until it simply wasn't a problem anymore. This was the way they had been dealing with the problem of all the rock that made up the cliff face beneath the southeast side of the village.

To the Vikings, it looked like the perfect place for an underground dragon stable, where their flying pets could come and go as they pleased without causing any chaos in the village above. So they had been dealing with the problem of having tons and tons of rock where a cave should be, by hitting that rock with something sharp, heavy or both until the rock turned into gravel and therefore wasn't a problem anymore. The utilization of this method would have continued for the months and years to come if it were not for the amazing discovery made by Gobber the Belch, blacksmith, saddler and off key singer, when he attempted a new method of getting quick heat into his forge.

Gobber had previously used the white hot lava produced by his pet Gronckle as a heat source but when the lava had cooled, it had solidified at the bottom of the forge meaning that he no longer had a forge, but a pizza oven. Next he tried the intense heat of the flame produced by Nightmares and Nadders, but although that had seemed like a good idea, it only succeeded in consuming the wood, coal and charcoal in the fire pit before it could be of any use to him. The blue plasma blast of the Night Fury had only succeeded in blowing a large hole in the back of his forge, so he had decided at last to see if he could use a small amount of Zippleback gas to start the much needed fire.

When ignited in the open, the green gas would simply erupt with an intense heat for several seconds and then fully burn out in less than half a minute, but when Gobber had filled the fireplace with gas from the two headed dragon, the vapor had seeped into every crack and join throughout the forge. When the gas was ignited, the whole building was destroyed in one massive explosion.

"GOBBER; ARE YOU ALRIGHT?" Chief Stoick called into the smoke filled wreck that once was the blacksmiths work shop.

The hide of a dragon is very resistant to heat and flame; fortunately for all the people of Berk, the dragons are fully aware that their pet Vikings are not. And so as the fire had erupted inside the building, the Zippleback had protected Gobber by wrapping its right neck around him and quickly moving the man behind its body. Pigg the Gronckle was sleeping against the side wall at the time of the blast and was hurled half way across the village, but it would take much more than a small building demolition to injure a thick skinned beast like him.

"Over here Stoick" Agnar called from the other side of the wreckage.

Barf & Belch carried the dazed Viking away from the dust and smoke, and placed him on the ground near the man who had formally been in charge of first aid onboard Stoicks flagship. That was before the ship was destroyed, along with the rest of the fleet, only eight months ago by the Red Death; a giant dragon that had stood almost one hundred feet tall and was over three hundred feet long.

"How does he look?"

"One head, one arm and one leg; he's all here Chief" Agnar was pleased to say.

Other villagers and dragons gathered around to see what had caused the loud noise and what the result of it was, as Stoick tried to get some sense out of the still dazed blacksmith

"Gobber can you hear me, can you understand me?"

His head spun and his eyes struggled to focus as Gobber slowly began to come around.

"Sing me a song Barbra; the night is filled with voices."

"I think he's gonna be okay Chief" Agnar grinned as he stood.

Gobber sat on the ground recovering with Pigg at his side, while his friends went through the mess that was once his forge and workshop. Some were stacking up the larger stone blocks to use in the rebuilding and others carried away the rubble, while every useable or reparable tool and weapon they found was placed in a pile well away from the site to be sorted later.

"Have a look at this Gobber" Starkard and Thorfinn approached with some rocks in their hands.

"We've found a few like this and we think they show us what caused your workshop to blow up" Starkard pointed out.

"I know what made me workshop blow up; it was me thinkin' I could use Zippleback gas to get some heat into me forge without having to wait for it in the normal fashion."

"But look at these blocks Gobber" Thorfinn showed him two large pieces of stone that fit together perfectly to show that they had once been a single solid building block.

"So the blast was big enough to crack rock and I'm lucky to be alive; so what's your point?"

"The point is that every rock that remained unbroken was clean and solid with no cracks in it while every broken stone was just like this one."

"Okay then" Gobber enquired "what's so special about this one then?"

"Look closely at the break; most of it is clean rock but for about four inches along the face you can see where it is dirty and burnt."

"So it had a crack in it before the explosion then. I still don't see what you're getting at."

"The only broken rocks had cracks in them already, so that means that the gas had seeped deep into the cracks; now watch this."

Thorfinn signaled to Ruff and Tuff to bring in their dragon and create a small cloud of green gas from the right head.

"See how the gas covers a few square feet, but when we light it up…"

He pointed to Tuffnut who coaxed his side of the dragon to spark at the gas which went up in flame with a loud Whoomph.

"Did you see that? The flame cloud was Way Way Way bigger than the gas cloud that caused it, or in other words, it expanded as it burned so that means the gas inside the cracks had nowhere to go when it got lit up and the pressure must have been so strong, that it just blew the rocks apart trying to escape."

"Hmm… a very interesting theory to say the least."

"Another test then Gobber?"

"Another test indeed lads."

Looking in his pile of savaged scrap, Gobber picked out a flat metal plate and placed it on top of two stone blocks. Barf and Belch were brought in to gas up and light up the area under the plate causing a short jet of flame to shoot out from both sides.

"Right then" Gobber noted "that went just as expected, so now for the fun part."

He placed two more blocks under the plate to close in the sides with only a small gap left for the dragon to breathe its gas into. As soon as this was done, the spark was released and the loud, dull thud of a small explosion echoed around Berk.

"Oh wow" was Starkard only comment.

"Where's the plate?" Gobber asked.

The four stone blocks had all been blown straight out from where they had sat and they now lay over ten feet away from the source of the blast, but it was true that the metal plate, was now nowhere to be seen.

"It's disappeared Gobber… unless…"

A look of fear and regret came over the faces of the three men as they considered what they had just done. They slowly looked up into the air.

"Oh no."

From high above them a red hot piece of flying metal came into view as it fell back to Berk.

"LOOKOUT EVERYONE" Thorfinn called out as he pointed to the sky.

All those in earshot looked up to see the man made projectile, as it streaked down from the sky and straight through the roof of the Great Hall with a mighty crash.

"WHAT ON BERK WAS THAT? Stoick shouted from across the village square.

"Err… don't worry Chief" Gobber smiled apologetically "we'll get that fixed before we start on the forge."

Fishlegs Ingerman crawled over the deck of the Sharktooth taking measurements and making notes after looking through hatches and down into the hold. Watching him with confused interest was Olaf, the former skipper of the longship Sea Mist; one of the many vessels that was destroyed by the Red Death at the very beginning of The Battle of Dragon Island. Like most of the Vikings on Berk, Olaf was now very fond of dragons, but he had been given command of the Sharktooth due to it being the only ship that could be salvaged after the battle, along with his strong aversion to heights. The Sharktooth's previous captain Freya, had been very eager to become a Dragon Rider.

"Can I ask what you're up to over there young Fishlegs?"

"It's sort of a secret project that Hiccup and I are working on, so I'd rather keep it to myself for now."

"If it involves my ship in any way, I do think I should know about it."

"Well okay… but only if you don't tell anyone" he grinned secretively "Have you ever built model ships?"

"It looks like we won't be doing much in the forge for the next few days, eh Toothless?" Hiccup commented as he picked through the remains of the workshop.

He was very fortunate that his little project shed was not part of the main blacksmith shop but had been added on to the western side of the building so, although it had been destroyed with the rest of the structure, most of its contents had survived and only needed to be dug out of the rubble and stored away till the new forge was built.

"Hey Hiccup!" called out Snotlout Jorgenson "Oh wow you've really done it this time. Gobber's gonna kill you when he sees what you've done to the workshop."

"Firstly Snotlout, he's already seen it…"

"And you're still alive?"

"And secondly, I didn't do this; Gobber had a little accident with some Zippleback gas."

"Well… okay… but you must admit that this is just the kind of thing you would do."

"Thank you Snotlout, for your confidence in my abilities; now what do you want?"

"Have you seen Astrid? I can't find her anywhere, and you're usually found hanging around with her lately."

"She took off into the woods a few hours ago to play her tracking game with Stormfly, but I will be seeing her later if you want me to pass on a message."

"Just tell her I want to see her; I'm gonna take her to the couples dance tonight" he smiled.

"Does she know about this yet?"

"No" he replied sarcastically "that's why I have to find her, so I can tell her."

"Well I was gonna ask her to go with me."

"You?" Snotlout laughed so hard he had to drop to one knee to keep from falling over "As if she go with you."

As he got up and staggered away while still laughing , Hiccup turned to speak to his dragon.

"Is he the only one who doesn't know Bud?"

"Arrooommph" was all Toothless could come up with as he sniffed in the rubble.

Fishlegs looked at the wreaked building as he approached with the same amount of surprise as Snotlout, but with far less joy in his eyes.

"I heard the explosion but… wow! I did not expect this."

"Yeah, pretty bad huh?" Hiccup replied.

"Does this mean we'll have to totally start again?"

"Fortunately no. There is a lot of damage, but almost everything in my workshop is salvageable. So we're only going to be set back a little until the forge is rebuilt and besides that, my Dad won't want to hear about anything new till everything is back to normal."

"HA! What's normal in Berk these days?"

"It's a new kind of normal I suppose, but did you get those measurements from the Sharktooth?"

"I did indeed and I also found out that Fjori and Mulch are the best living longship designers and model builders on Berk; so we should definitely have a chat with them in the next few days."

"Great work Fishlegs. Well I'm off to the other side of the island to go over these figures and look for a good construction site."

"And to meet up with Astrid perchance?"

"If I'm lucky; Berk is a big island though."

Fishlegs handed over the notes he had taken to Hiccup, who placed them safely in his satchel with his notebook and some other supplies. The two friends and conspirators bid each other fair well, as Toothless and his rider went off in search of the most suitable deep water and rough weather protected bay on the island.

The snow still clung to the peaks of Berk as well as covering the higher fields, but as the end of spring approached the island, most of the lowlands along the entire coast, were bathed in green on this rare and almost sunny day. Hiccup and Toothless completed their slow trip around edge of Berk and then returned to land near a bay that Hiccup felt had the most to offer him and Fishlegs with their semi secret plan.

"Better hide yourself Bud; you never know when or from where they may appear."

Toothless crawled into some shrubs and curled up for a short nap. He had learnt long ago that when Hiccup started going through his notebook with a look of concentration and wonder on his face, life was going to get very boring from a dragon's perspective for the next hour or twelve.