HELLO! So, I wrote this for shesellsseagulls' Finding Toothless AU on tumblr! so this idea isnt even mine, haha XD I'll update whenever i get another part to add to this, and its also going on my tumblr!
DISCLAIMER: i own nothing, so TAKE THAT! READ ON!
Word travels fast underwater. Maybe just a little too fast, because in a fortnight, every mermaid in the sea knows the horrifying story of one of their own being snatched up from the surface. Some speak of it like it's some old legend, saying the rascal "hasn't been seen since." Others take heed, and there's a certain lack of mermaid activity for about a month. Most of them choose to stay in hiding, only going to the surface in the dead of night if they absolutely need to.
That's most, though. One mermaid thinks the story is bogus, and that they shouldn't be scared of something so preposterous. He tells everyone he knows that they should ignore the warnings that naturally go with the rumored story, but he's shut down. As always. Because he was never really popular in the first place.
Hiccup Haddock was the official oddball of the Hooligan Hoard. Most would say he was reserved, but he had his quirks. If he heard that, he would say he was all quirks, and he wouldn't change a thing. When he first heard of the story of the kidnapped mermaid, he laughed so loud and long that he needed to catch his breath afterwards. (He got quite a lot of glares because of that, but it was too funny!) He dismissed everyone's warnings, because they were so far away from where it happened (in the Arctic Sea, mind you) and because it was preposterous.
He would have disregarded this whole thing, if his father, Stoick, the most powerful mermaid in the Hooligan Hoard, hadn't have told him to be careful. The whole dilemma shocked him, because his father usually didn't give in to such ridiculous stories as this, but apparently, this was serious.
So Hiccup made sure he was extra careful, per his father's wishes, as he sneaked out during the middle of the night. He strapped his spear to his back and made sure that he was vigilant as he swam into open-ocean. He worked quickly, crossing the distance in what he thought was record time, and it was enough to make him break out into a grin.
He went directly up to an ominous-looking cave that sat below a huge, colorful coral reef, not once drawing his spear. He was swallowed in the darkness, and yet he wasn't even scared.
"Toothless?" He called in a melodious tone. He squinted and looked around in the dark, looking for…
A huge sound, almost like a pained groan, but a hundred times louder and stronger, echoed through the cave, and not even a second later, something equally as huge was colliding with Hiccup's chest, sending him sprawling onto the cool cave floor.
"ACK! TOOTHLESS!" Hiccup shouted, whining, and pushing at the thing on top of him. His spear's shaft was digging into his spine, making it uncomfortable to stay in that position for long. "Get up, you useless mammal!" He half-yelled, half-whispered, finally realizing that no one was supposed to know that he was here. The pressure was gone in the next second, and when he floated up, he sent a hard glare to the killer whale across from him.
The whale's eyes gleamed with something that looked like an apology, and Hiccup's glare dissolved into a loving smile.
"I know, I'm sorry, I'm happy to see you, too, bud." He said, swimming over and hugging the side of Toothless' massive head. The whale gave a soft squeak in response. "Let me check on your tail before we get you food, alright?" He said, patting Toothless' head three times before looping around and swimming towards the back of the cave.
His eyes, now adjusted to the scarce lighting, scanned the left side of Toothless' tail calculatingly. Deep, long gashes once riddled its surface, making it horrifying to look at. Now, the gashes looked more like deep-set scars, ones that practically screamed, "I survived, fear me." Hiccup grinned at the rapid progress of the wounds, before lighting tracing the scars with the tips of his fingers.
Toothless jerked, not out of pain, though, more like out of confusion.
"No pain, huh?" Hiccup asked, his smile becoming slightly wider. "You know what that means!"
Toothless' tail wiggled in agreement, and suddenly the cave seemed a bit too small to contain his excitement.
"You're good to go, buddy!" Hiccup said, swimming over and giving the huge whale another hug. "C'mon, let's find you some breakfast." He said, dashing out of the cave, the killer whale right on his tail.
As they swam even further out into open-ocean, Hiccup remembered when he first found the killer whale. Fighting between sharks and killer whales were uncommon, but definitely not unheard of, especially not in warm, ideal waters like these. So, Hiccup was definitely startled to see one of such fights unfold right in front of his eyes one day while he was away from the Hoard.
It was as vicious as vicious got, biting, howling in pain, smacking with tails as they jerked around, everything about it was horrifying and slightly intriguing. Hiccup didn't have time to watch much of the fight, because a couple seconds after his arrival, the huge killer whale locked eyes with him. Wide and fearful eyes compelled Hiccup into the fray, his spear in his hand in a matter of moments.
With a shout, Hiccup swam as fast as he could towards the shark. A second later, a cry of the whale's own joined Hiccup's, but this one was a cry of pain as the shark bit down onto his tailfin. Hiccup's spear found the shark through a plume of the whale's blood, and injured it enough to send it swimming away.
After that, Hiccup nursed the whale back to health, naively named it 'Toothless' after a slightly confusing mishap on Hiccup's fault, and the rest was history.
The sun was shining above the water just as Toothless found a decently sized school of fish to terrorize and eat. Hiccup knew that everyone else back at Berk (where the Hooligan Hoard resided for at least a thousand years or so) was up by now, and that his father might be a little furious with him for being gone… again. But, it didn't matter, as long as he came back with something to prove that he was doing something productive out on his own.
Watching Toothless hunt was a sport in and of itself. He darted around and around, almost like he was herding the school of fish in, making a tighter and tighter tornado of the fish until he charged at it, maw open, and chomped at whatever fish he could get. Hiccup couldn't help but stare. It was… completely different from what he expected from a killer whale… or maybe it was just Toothless-specific. He didn't know and didn't really care all that much, because it was fascinating. When Toothless was done, he swam next to Hiccup and nuzzled up beside him. Hiccup gave him a pat and smil-
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Hiccup and Toothless were looking around immediately, but the source of the scream was nowhere to be found. Toothless growled lowly, barring his teeth, and Hiccup immediately pulled out his spear; Toothless he didn't have a problem with. Anything that Toothless had a problem with? Ooh no, someone's going down.
Toothless shot off as fast as he could, and Hiccup quickly grabbed onto his dorsal fin, letting him pull him along so he didn't lose his only friend. It didn't take long to find the source of the screaming: a fellow mermaid with shockingly white hair and a possibly even paler complexion, who was being chased, and was finally cornered, by a familiar-looking shark. Hiccup let go of Toothless' dorsal fin, looked him in the eye, and nodded.
Keeping a strong grip onto his spear, Hiccup darted towards the shark and the cornered stranger. With a shout, he whacked the shark strongly on the nose with the shaft of his spear, while his free hand shot out and grabbed the stranger. He dragged him away as Toothless charged the shark.
"Hey! Let me go, you crazy-!" The stranger was yelling, prodding at Hiccup's strong grip in vain. Hiccup only held onto him tighter until he though they were far enough away from the fray, and only then did he let go. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" The stranger asked angrily.
"Saving your life," Hiccup said levelly, "and you're welcome, by the way." He added, smirking a little.
"I did not need your help." The other mermaid said, folding his arms across his chest defensively.
"Yeah, sure. I see you would have handled the situation just fine." Hiccup said, humoring him. He figured that after something like that he would be a little shaken up too, so he just gave the guy some slack.
"Yes, I would have, thank yo- HOLY SHIT!" The mermaid shouted, his eyes finally going back to the shark that nearly killed him. What he saw instead was the violent fight between a shark and a killer whale, and the killer whale was winning by a landslide. The large amounts of blood saturating the water around them was scary enough, and that wasn't even counting the flashes of teeth and the realization of "that could have been me" that was probably flashign through the stranger's head right about now.
"We've got to move before more sharks come." Hiccup said, his voice shaking the guy from whatever little reprieve he was taking. He grabs his wrist again and starts to swim away, before looking over his shoulder and calling, "TOOTHLESS! COME ON!"
The stranger looks on, horrified, as the killer whale obediently stops attacking and swims after them.
"WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!" The stranger exclaims, working his wrist out of Hiccup's grip and swimming backwards away from him and the whale. "Wha… what the… WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?!" He decides to yell, not knowing which one of his thousand questions should be answered first.
"We're swimming away from the dead shark so that we don't get-" Hiccup is explaining calmly before Jack interrupts him.
"No! Not that! I'm talking about that!" The stranger says hysterically, one hand making a wide gesture towards Toothless, and the other making its way up and tugging at his white hair.
Toothless and Hiccup share a look, something that says, "oops" and "what do we say now?"
"Well, this is my friend, Toothless." Hiccup explains, patting the killer whale's head gently.
"But… this isn't natural, is it?" The stranger said, still backing up and still looking stressed, or simply confused. "It isn't supposed to… follow you around or… do whatever happened back there…"
"Well, I sort of trained him. Sort of." Hiccup said.
"Sort of?!"
"He's not going to kill anyone, I promise." Hiccup soothed.
"Oh, well that's good to know!" The stranger says with a nervous little laugh to go with his hysteria. "You know what? I have to go. Thank you for saving me, and everything, but I'm just going to pretend none of this ever happened and-"
"You can't go back that way." Hiccup said, pointing in the direction where Jack was about to make his escape. Jack looked at him quizzically. "You'll be in more trouble than you were before. And I'm positive that you wouldn't like me and Toothless having to save you a second time."
"You're right." The stranger said. "But I don't want to be anywhere near your… whale friend, over there." He said, giving Toothless another nervous glance.
"Fine." Hiccup said, patting the whale's head again. "Bud, go back to the cave, and I'll see you later, alright?" He said, getting a nod and a coo from the whale in response. The whale glared slightly at stranger before swimming off (Hiccup pretended not to see him flinch as he passed).
"So, that's one issue out of the way, right?" Hiccup said, trying his best to pull up his friendliest smile.
"Guess so." The stranger muttered. "I'm Jack."
"Hiccup. Nice to meet you."
"The feeling is slightly less mutual."
"Understandable. Now come on." Hiccup said, starting to swim away from Jack.
"Wait! Where are you going?" Jack asked, hurrying to follow him.
"You don't have anywhere to go, right?" Hiccup asked, looking at Jack over his shoulder. The white haired mermaid nodded. "Thought so. We're going back to Berk. You hungry?"
This was really fun to write, so i hope to write more of it soon! (and dont worry, I'm plannign on finishing TTMATMW soon! Sorry for me being a butt!)
THANKS FOR READING! LEAVE A REVIEW PLEASE!
I LOVE YOU!
-HB
