Disclaimer: How to Train Your Dragon, Tuffnut, Ruffnut, and all related characters and events belong to Cressida Cowell and DreamWorks Animation.
Chapter 1: Pulling My Weight
"A yak's gotta' do what a yak's gotta' do."
Well, that's what they say isn't it? Don't you forget it, 'cause it's true; believe me, I know.
It all happened a few years ago, when mom decided I was useless and needed to start pulling my weight. If she'd stuck to the weight-pulling part, everything would've been fine: Ruffnut's my weight, and she's easy to pull. But no, there were other jobs, like pulling water, pulling weeds, pulling yak udders. She doesn't call it that, she calls it milking the yaks, but it's the all the same thing. By the way, yak udder-pulling is way harder than it looks.
Anyway, this is how it happened: armed with the weapons of a weight-puller (milk pail: check, three-legged stool: check), mom sent me to milk the yaks. But, as they say, you can lead a fish to water, but you can't make it swim. Wait, is that how it goes? I don't remember; must be something like that. Whatever.
By the way, I should take this moment to say that yaks are really hairy, and those udders are kinda' hard to see through all that hair. They're kinda' like Ruffnut: she has a lot of hair too. So, I sat down on my three-legged stool next to the first yak and started digging through all the hair. Nope, no udder, and that yak sounded a little upset with me.
Next yak, same thing: no udder. The third yak did have an udder, but as soon as I found it, she ran off. I chased her around for a while, but she got away. She might have fallen off a cliff for all I know.
The fourth yak was different: calm, gentle, kinda' like that lullaby Fishlegs sings to his dragon. Once again I sat down on my three-legged stool, set the milk-pail on the ground, and started pulling.
The next thing I knew, my helmet and I were tumbling through the air in different directions, sent flying by a massive kick from that yak's hooves. The animal in question had returned to quietly munching grass as if nothing had happened. But my three-legged stool was in splintered ruins and I never found the milk-pail.
When mom asked me about milking later that night, there were no words to describe what had happened. A yak's gotta' do what a yak's gotta' do, and in my opinion, there's no human way of stopping it.
After my trial runs with "Better on Paper" and "The All-Nighter," this will be a series of one-shots inspired by lines of dialogue, verbal exchanges, and conversations from the films and TV series. If you have a request or an idea for a particular line or conversation you would like to see treated in this series, please send it to me via PM (also, please tell me where you got it, so I can get the context). I greatly appreciate constructive criticism.