HtTYD The Engineer Part 2
Summary: With the Green Death gone, there SHOULD be peace in Berk now. Unfortunately for Hiccup, Vikings and Peace are two words that rarely go together, especially when Dragons get involved.
1. Getting Settled In
The Vikings of Berk partied for a straight four days when the Green Death was defeated. But on the morning of the fifth day, Stoick had every single one of them assembled in the meeting hall. Hiccup was leaning against one of the walls next to Toothless while several of the smaller dragons were in the rafters looking down in curiosity, Toothless having brought them when Stoick asked him to. The Gronckle and Nadder elders were part of the group up there while the Terrible Terror elder was perched on Hiccup's shoulder.
Stoick studied everyone in the hall for a moment before he began the meeting and said "The Green Death may be gone now, but we still have problems to face in the upcoming weeks. The Big Freeze is soon to come and not only do we need to prepare for it for ourselves but the Dragons that have aided us are now without a home as well. We need both new housing for them and a way to keep them fed as well as us when everyday fishing is not possible. Ideas?"
It did not escape anyone's notice, Viking or Dragon, that Stoick's roaming gaze ended up on Hiccup once he had glanced over everyone else at the end. It also didn't escape anyone else's attention that Hiccup swept his gaze over everyone to see if they looked like they had a possible idea they were thinking of. When he didn't see anyone who looked like they had an idea that they could start with, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Toothless' eyes slowly widened an inch and his jaw dropped a little as well as the mental link the two shared showed him exactly what his partner was thinking.
First, there were symbols of all of the dragon types who didn't have homes appearing down in a single column, with xs and the number of said dragons beside it, starting from zero for each type and rapidly increasing before stopping and moving to the next type. (It was a perfect count) Soon as the dragons were counted up, that display flashed twice before measurements for the space needed for each individual dragon type appeared next to the column and quick calculations for how much space each type would need plus room for ten others appeared beside THAT. Then all of the resulting figures were totaled giving a new number at the very bottom that was circled in his mind and flashing.
The count and space needed calculations suddenly shrunk and went to the top left 'corner' of Hiccup's little mental drawing board and suddenly an aerial view of the island of Berk that Toothless recognized as coming from their usual cruising altitude appeared. The island was soon covered in a grid and each grid segment began being lit up with a yellow light as various statistics of the segment was shown before the light went away in that segment before the one next to it lit up. When the grid segment holding the ruins lit up, the statistics appeared and almost immediately flashed green, as did the yellow light of the grid segment. The map of Berk shrunk as well as it moved to reside under the Dragon calculations.
A brief question in yellow appeared on Hiccup's mental drawing board: What supplies to use for Dragon Shelter? Immediately under a sentence in red appeared: Dragons are both cold blooded and capable of breathing fire to heat surfaces up to keep them warm while sleeping, wood is automatically out. Then in blue: Stone is the best option to use. Yellow again: Where can we get that much stone?
An instant later, barely even a second in fact, all of the words faded away and an image of the island where the dragons' former nest had been formed with a top down view with the surrounding rock pillars shown, the whole thing slowly rotating. The collapsed mountain and the pillars all flashed with a green light five times before remaining green tinted. The image shrunk to half its size and went to the top of the board as another question in yellow appeared: How to transport large quantities of rock to Berk across the ocean?
There was a five second pause before the four launcher weapons appeared and one superimposed itself while the others shrunk. The superimposed one suddenly broke apart, it's parts quickly identified and sorted, calculations running off to the side. In blue, a sentence formed: Use weapon platform trees as support pontoons to give stone buoyancy for towing purposes. The three still complete weapons and the parts of the other one shrunk and joined the dragon calculations and Berk island.
The Former Nest island grew back to normal size before zooming onto a section of pillars and another question in yellow appeared: How do we remove pillars without shattering them? There was a much longer pause, ten seconds this time before an image of a Timberjack with a large tree cutting saw on its wings appeared. The teeth of the saw were surrounded in red and shot up off the body to be replaced with a sharp singular edge that dropped down on it while glowing green. The Timberjack then began flying, slicing through a pillar which when it fell, floated thanks to the trees tied to both sides of the pillar. The island proceeded to shrink and join the others, where everything flashed green five times and then stayed green.
Hiccup snapped his eyes open with a firm nod. Pulling out a charcoal pencil that he always kept on him, Hiccup turned around to face the wall of the meeting hall, and after shrugging his left shoulder to get the Terrible Terror elder to shift which shoulder he was sitting on, began rapidly writing exactly what had just taken place in his mind's eye as he began speaking "The best place to build a structure where the Dragons can be housed is on top of the ruins that our ancestors discovered when they first reached Berk, the stone floors and remaining walls can act as the foundation for any stone structures we build for them. It has to be stone rather than wood because Dragons as we all know breath fire and they like to heat up the place they are sleeping in with their flames, and rock retains heat much better than wood does. Also, the ruins are the only place with enough open space to build without cutting down even more of the island's forest. We can get the needed stone from the island that used to hold their nest, using the wood that was put into building the giant launchers as pontoons so that way the stone can be tugged to Berk. We'll use Timberjacks with single blade saws to slice through the surrounding pillars, if we tie trees to them before they cut them they should also be easily claimed and moved. If we work at it in rotating shifts, we should have the structure made in two weeks. As for food for everyone, the dragons can trowel large nets between themselves in the open waters to bring back more fish then what we Vikings can do with our ships."
There was stunned silence for a full minute and a half as Hiccup finished writing before one Viking, no one was sure who, said quietly "Damn, that only took him what, forty-five seconds to come up with?"
The question had Stoick suddenly chuckle and say with obvious pride in his voice "That's my boy."
'Nicely done Hiccup.' Toothless sent with a nod of approval. The Terror elder also chirped his praise, its tone more than making up for the fact that Hiccup couldn't understand its words.
Hiccup blushed at the praise and rubbed the back of his neck before he turned serious and said "Alright people, we have a lot of work to do and it isn't getting done just sitting around here, let's get started."
"AAYE!" The Vikings all shouted and the dragons roared their approval as well before they all began exiting the meeting hall to begin the next big project of their local engineer. It was going to be a busy two weeks, but if there was one thing the Vikings of Berk were good at, it was the quick assembly of buildings. Only this time, it was FOR dragons, not BECAUSE of them.
Time Skip: Two Weeks Later
'It's official, Dragons make everything better.' Hiccup thought with a grin as he took in the sight of the massive structure that had been built in just under fourteen days. Given the source material they had been working with, no one would ever call the structure pretty, but it was just as stable if not more as the buildings in the village. The structure was ten levels tall and instead of there being entrances only on the ground floor ALL of them could be reachable from the outside via a balcony that had an entrance big enough for a Monstrous Nightmare to go through with furled wings. The rest of the building walls were completely solid to prevent heat escape and the entrances had curtain doors to aid in that. The gaps in the stone work had been sealed the exact same way the Vikings of Berk sealed their wooden houses so the elements couldn't get in. There WERE ladders for the humans to use, both on the inside and the outside but other than that compromise, this whole building was pretty much made with only dragons in mind. Thanks to the link Hiccup and Toothless shared Hiccup was able to design the interior with what the dragons needed in mind. There were no interior walls, just support columns. (What did dragons care for privacy?) Each floor had dozens of large stones that could be heated before being slept on, sand was poured onto the floors, the top roof was slanted so that rain water wouldn't settle and find a way to leak through the building and there was even a chute that would take all of that rain water and bring it to a large pool in the rock on one side which would store it for the Dragons to drink out of. In short, it was just what the dragons needed in order for them to be comfortable while living on the island.
The food bit had been relatively easy to work with as well. It turned out that along with the ability to set themselves on fire, the Monstrous Nightmares were actually capable of diving under water and 'flying' in it for long periods of time of up to ten minutes without air. True, they couldn't go to the bottom of the ocean due to pressure, but twenty or so feet was easy for them. Apparently, back at the nest, they had been the ones responsible for herding large schools of fish closer to the surface for other dragons to catch and even sending them through the maze of pillars and to the shore for the Terrible Terrors. Who knew? The big guys had merely did what they normally did and herded the schools of fish into nets waiting on long boats.
The dragons could even help the Vikings with hunting on the island. They just used the same tactics they had learned over the decades of having to feed the Green Death to herd the local wild life into the Vikings' traps.
Hiccup was drawn from his thoughts as Toothless nudged him and sent 'Incoming parent.' Hiccup blinked and looked in the direction Toothless' message had indicated and upon noticing the serious look on Stoick's face said "Dad, is there something wrong?" His voice then turned flat as he asked "Is Mildew trying to convince the others to kick the dragons off the island again?" Mildew was a cantankerous, spiteful, and all around mean old Viking who farmed cabbages on the outskirts. His opinion on the Dragons settling down on Berk had been rather well made over the last two weeks.
Stoick shook his head and said "Not today thankfully." He then turned even more serious as he said "Hiccup, Toothless," He nodded at the Night Fury who returned the nod as he continued "Due to the events of the last few weeks, I've been thinking. Is it possible that instead of us just having the Dragons now living on the same island, if we could instead continue working closely with them?" He made an expansive gesture at the building which was before them and continued "Think about what we've created so far, we made weapons that were a key factor in taking down a Green Death, which was previously believed to be impossible, and then built a building that is easily five times bigger than our meeting hall, and from stone no less! Can you imagine just how long it would have taken to build something like this by ourselves?!" Stoick shook his head again as his tone went from amazed to solemn and he continued "But even with how easily the Dragons have aided us, I have noticed that except for you and Toothless, there have been no Viking who works with the same dragon or vice versa for more than a single day. I'd like to see that changed you two. We could do so much MORE if Vikings and Dragons became partners rather than neighbors."
Toothless and Hiccup traded looks and Toothless cocked his head as he sent 'I could see if the others would be willing to give pairing up with humans a test run.' He then turned his head to Stoick and gave the chief a nod before he trotted off into the new Nest.
Hiccup looked up to his dad and said "Toothless will see if the others are willing to give it a try but I think that if they agree then we should start out with a small group first rather than try to just pair everyone up to a dragon."
Stoick nodded and said "Of course, you can't trust someone to fight by your side just because you live in the same place, you have to build that trust. I'm sure it would be the same with this."
Hiccup hummed his agreement before he said "Use the arena for meet and greets?"
Stoick huffed in amusement with a smile as he said "Might as well use it for something constructive now that we ain't fighting them."
Hiccup chuckled at that and as he watched as his father began heading back to the village to begin choosing the first group thought 'THIS should be interesting.'
END
Author's Notes: Update Schedule and Poll are on Profile. Take a look, it might be a new poll.
Alright, so, I watched the first half of Episode 1 of Riders of Berk before I realized something, my story is WAY too different for that pilot episode to work as a guide. First off, I've already shown that the Dragons in MY version are a lot more smarter, just because the only one who can be understood is Toothless thanks to the link doesn't mean that the others are instinct based like most animals. They can understand that there are boundaries that need to be observed and kept. Also, I mentioned when the link fully formed that the dragons primarily ate fish, they wouldn't be going after chicken and pig legs like I saw. So, while lessons on dragon maintenance will be a thing, I decided to go more with actually getting the dragons a new nest then having a bunch of trouble with them.