Chapter 1: This is Berk

"This, is Berk.

It's about twelve days north of hopeless and a few degrees south of freezing to death. It's located solidly in the Meridian of Misery.

My village. In a word? Sturdy, and it's been here for seven generations but every single building is new.

We have fishing, hunting, and charming views to the sunsets.

The only problems are our unwelcomed guests. You see, most places might have robbers, or soldiers. We have…"

It's nighttime, and I'm asleep. Well, asleep till I hear the alarm. I'm really tired, and I don't wanna know what's happening right now, unless things get worse. I roll on my bed, trying to sleep again. Too late. The sound of explosions and warriors screaming wakes me up again, scaring me this time. Scaring me to the point of falling off my bed with a gasp. I get nervous as I look around my bedroom, dazed. I hate being awoken like this. The outside sounds are still being heard, getting even louder and louder. Not a surprise that I'm so stressed right now, that kind of alarm is only heard when they come. I put on my coat and boots and race faster than ever down the stairs. I open the door. The first thing I see is a few warriors running away with weapons, such as hammers and axes, on their hands. The next, I see the reason of why. Their chaser is an apparently young girl -but trust me, she's not- with white-blue hair and a red dress, that stops various meters away from me. She moves her angry gaze to me. My eyes open wide as I see a flame growing slowly on her left hand. A flame that seconds later she throws at me door, which I close shut with my back. I feel the hot of the explosion on the wooden door right behind me. The fire gets through the sides like lava.

"Girls…!" I say to myself, as I open the now burning door.

Oh, so you thought these are normal girl, huh? Think again. And you'll see why.

The scene I have on the outside is a real chaos. Fire, multicolored sparks, smoke, shadows and ashes cover the earth and sky, along with battle cries, furious screams and my whole tribe fighting the girls. I see a man running away from a blond witch. Another warrior (really short, by the way…) is hanging on the back of a girl with blue hair and bat-like wings. The man is thrown away just some moments later. I get out of the house, and turn around to see if it's closed. It is, the only problem is that it might fall off because of the fire. Duh. But I'm used to this, so I won't give it so much importance.

"Most people would leave. Not us, we're Vikings. We have… stubbornness issues".

I run as I can through the crowd.

"My name's Hiccup. Great name, I know. But it's not the worst. Parents believe a hideous name will frighten off gnomes and trolls".

An explosion near me, along with people running, makes me fall, as another Viking lands almost on top of me. He screams in my face, then says "Mornin'!"cheerily and rushes to the fight. It's not even morning yet, but after these attacks, we rarely sleep again and stay awake repairing the damage.

"Like if our charming Viking demeanor wouldn't do that".

I run up the walkway, trying to reach the blacksmith stall. I see various warriors passing by without stopping.

"What are you doing here?" someone says.

"Get inside!"other Viking yells. The thing doesn't stop.

People saying "Hiccup, get back inside!" and "Go back inside!"are very current. I run past a Viking named Ack, who's just picking his ear and doesn't even notice me.

Right then, a hand lifts me up by the back of my shirt. An angry "Hiccup!" is heard from the man that grabbed me. "What is he doing out agai- What're you doing out? Get inside!" the beefy man says, as he shoves me towards… anywhere he wants me to go.

"That's Stoick the Vast. Chief of the Tribe".

Stoick is a really muscular man. Tall, with a long and flowing red beard.

"They say when he was a baby he scared off one of the most powerful girls".

I see him lifting up a big, wooden cart that casually is behind him, and throws it without effort to the same witch I saw earlier. She doesn't fall off her 'magical flying broom' thing, instead she stumbles and gets a good shake before taking away.

"Do I believe it? Yes I do".

"Which do we have?" he says to anyone that can listen to him.

"Yukari, Marisa, Remilia, oh, and Hoark says he saw Mokou!" a man answers quickly.

Another flame, like the one that reached my house, explodes next to them. The Viking covers himself with his shield, while Stoick doesn't even flinch about it.

"Anyone saw her?" he asks as a burning piece of shrapnel lands on his shoulder.

"Not so far" the same man says, his worried and desperate tone cannot be hidden.

"Good" Stoick says relieved, as he brushes off the flaming piece from his plate.

I restart my race towards the stall. Man, it looks like its kilometers away. The smoke doesn't let me see anything, and I might have been running in circles. Finally I reach for it. Without slowing down, I enter. The blacksmith is sweating like it was a summer morning. I'm sure it's because of his heavy hammer, attached to his arm… thing. "Oh, nice of you to join the party! I thought you'd been carried off!" he says as I enter. I put on my apron and turn to him.

"No heh, me? Nah, come on, I'm waaaaay too muscular for their tastes!" I say. "The wouldn't know what to do with all… this!" I say with a huge smirk as I flex my missing biceps.

"Well, you'll scare them, right?" he says jokingly.

I handle the warrior's weapons, which they place on the window.

"The meathead with attitude and interchangeable hands is Gobber. I've been his apprentice since I was little. We'll… little-er"

I hear Stoick's voice from the outside, which catches my attention. I look out the window. "We'll move to the lower defenses! Counter attack with the catapults!" he yells as he starts running towards the catapults with his men. Right then, another flame makes a house explode behind him.

"See? Old village, lots and lots of new houses".

"Fire!" someone shouts. From the distance, a female voice speaks. "All right, guys, let's go!"

I recognize that voice. I look to where it came from, and see four teens around my age grabbing wooden buckets and filling them with water from a pit.

"Oh, and those are Fishlegs (he's chubby, but knows a lot of things. He's blond, and his arms are even wider than me, but he's not strong at all. His legs are so short that it's hard to notice them), Snoutlout (a beefy guy that's always smirking. He thinks he's the best Viking, and always teases me for any single thing I do. His eyes are intimidating and his hair is black), the twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut (brother and sister that love doing dangerous things and hate each other. They're both blond and their hair is long. They insult everything and everyone. And they never share. In fact, they're fighting over a bucket right now), and…"

The last teen, the girl I heard before, throws the water off her bucket to the fire. Right as she turns around, another explosion (probably made by that witch, Marisa, as it looks more like a magical one than a normal one) hits the house. The explosion is beautiful with her walking like nothing happens.

"…Astrid…"

I've never, never seen anyone as beautiful as Astrid. And I'll never see such person. Astrid is perfect, the only thing is that she acts like I'm not there whenever I try to talk to her.

They all run past my window. I lean out of it, almost getting out, when Gobber grabs me with his hook, hand, thing… whatever.

"Oh, come on, let me out please, I need to make my mark!"

He lets me down.

"Oh you've made plenty of marks! All in the wrong places!"

"Please, two minutes, I'll go out there and nothing will happen! I might even get a date" I add as I point to the direction Astrid went.

Before saying anything, Gobber stares at me for some seconds.

"You can't lift a hammer, you can't swing an axe" he starts counting. Then, he grabs a rope with iron balls attached to its ends.

"You can't even throw one of these!"

From the window, someone snatches it out. He starts running in the opposite direction to the stall, spins the bola, and throws it to Remilia, that girl with the bat-like wings. I'm sure she won't take long to let herself free.

"Okay, okay" I say as I back up. "But this will throw it for me" I stand next to my invention, the bola-launcher. I just barely touch it when it makes a rusty sound as it shakes. It throws a bola at Gobber, who quickly gets out of the way and hits a customer on the head. He falls backwards.

Gobber advances on me. "See? This here is what I'm talking about!"

I have to quickly think an excuse, because I don't know what the deal with the machine is. "A mild calibration issue-"

"No, Hiccup" he says, cutting me off. "If you ever want to go out there, fight those girls, you need to stop all… this" he points at me.

"But you just pointed to all of me!"

"Exactly! Stop being all of you" he says reliantly.

"Oooh" I say nodding, trying to sound intimidating.

Gobber imitates me, repeating my gesture. "Oooh, yeah"

"You- you sir, are playing a dangerous game. Keeping all this much… raw Viking-ness contained- there'll be consequences!" I proclaim as I wave my finger to his face. The whole time I've been talking, Gobber stared at me in total disinterest.

"I'll take my chances" he says as he turns around and handles me a heavy sword. I need both arms to handle it. "Sword. Sharpened. Now".