Prologue: A Moment That's Held In Your Arms
The sun had already long disappeared below the horizon and in its place in the sky were the two moons, one smaller than the other; their lights slightly permeating through the clouds and space dust, casting a light glow over a town floating a few miles above the planet's seas. The street lamps were dim and one could barely see a foot in front of them as the nights were becoming longer. The winds were harsh and chilling; the sky continuously belting out snow leaving the ground covered in icy white powder. However, despite the harsh and bleak weather, loud voices and laughter could occasionally be heard from the streets, the sounds piercing the night and echoing through the spaces between buildings. Nature could be merciless, but it only made one stronger if one managed to live through it. Surviving harsh winters was not really a big deal anymore, at least not for the people of the spaceport town of Berk.
Berk had always been a stopover point for sailors crossing the Meridian of Misery. It was like a giant pile of rocks in space, between the other similar giant pile of rocks of the universe known as planets. Berk was around 12 light-years from Freezing and few parsecs away from Hopeless. Berk played an important part in the history of the universe being one of the first spaceports created for the Neo-Germanic Age. Countless men have passed through its streets, haggled in the shops, and many a ship have flown over its skies since intergalactic trade became the main industry of the Barbaric Galaxy.
Being a center of travel and trade, the town became a favorite target of space pirates. Raids have happened quite a few times before and the town would never come out unscathed. The town had many centuries old worn down paths, but they also had quite a number of buildings that looked newly constructed as the town had been forced to repair and rebuild many times. But, even with the constant attacks on the port town, the people still stayed, and business would continue as usual the next day.
For hundreds of years, the families that lived on Berk remained the same. Children inherited the skills and trade of their parents and lived to continue the line so that one day they may also pass their knowledge to next generation who would then pass it on to the next. The families had developed a simple system in order to mark their shops and properties so that despite the town's ever changing layout, one would still be able to easily find their way around. All the buildings in town were painted a certain set of colors while the shops carried signs with the same set of colors with an image on them which was the insignia of the family that owned the place.
If you have ever seen a building with red and yellow stripes or a sign bearing the image of a flaming creature with large horns, it surely must have belonged to someone from the Jorgenson clan. The Jorgenson clan was filled with rough and able-bodied men and so most of them worked and lived near the docks. The Jorgenson clan made up majority of the fishing association and could be said to have been more or less singlehandedly running the port. The Jorgenson men were often the hands and feet of a ship's crew. They were the deck hands that helped rig the ships when sailing, they took the ropes and helped haul in both their ships or perhaps another's when it was time to dock, and they also helped carry in the goods down to the port or even into town from the hull of the ships.
The Ingerman clan had buildings painted with triple stripes of orange-green-orange and an image of a large round creature with rock like bumps over their body was painted on their signs. Their shops and homes were often found along the borders, close to the forests and mountains surrounding the town where access to raw materials was easily found. The Ingerman clan were a clan of miners and ship builders and one could say that almost all of the ships in this side of the galaxy were designed and built by the Ingermans. The clan members had quite a passion for exploration that aside from building the ships, they also often took the role of navigator or historian whenever there was an expedition. The town library was filled with journals, books, and artifacts donated by Ingerman clan and if one wanted to find out anything about the history of anything or anyone, one only needed to approach an Ingerman.
The Thorston clan had members that were both the town bakers and innkeepers. The part of the building painted with green and yellow stripes were the bakeries, while the rest of the building where the rooms of the inn were sported stripes of yellow and black. Both sides would carry the same signs bearing the image of a double headed creature although each head was slightly different from the other. Any self-respecting local or traveller who would make claim to have ever set foot in the ports of Berk would know the taste of the Thorston clan's famous Yak Butter Parfait; however, rumor has it that there were those, the Jorgenson clan supposedly, who have incurred the wrath of the clan and denied the chance to ever do so. Some merchants claim that the clan members were still going through a long list of rare trading goods in order to appease.
The Hofferson clan could be clearly identified with their buildings beautifully decorated with waves of orange and blue. However, one should not judge this clan's personality based on their colors alone for if you looked at the image on their signs, you would clearly see a creature covered in deadly spikes. The Hoffersons were known for being fearless and fearsome. The name Hofferson was constantly splashed across the records of Berk's Viking Academy where people from across the galaxy came to train to become a part of the Hairy Hooligans, the Barbaric Galaxy's leading intergalactic fleet. Any ship from fleet could declare at least one Hofferson man among their ranks, and more often than not, these men eventually became captains of their ships. Many of the clansmen patrolled the stars, but recently, a lot of them have begun to choose to remained on Berk to patrol the streets as members of the fleet's ground unit, serving as the peacekeepers of town. Everyone, even those not from town, knew the rule - nobody messed with a Hofferson. Perhaps there may have been some who dared to, especially with the abundance of rowdy sailors in a port town as famous as Berk. Surely some men must not have known about the unspoken rule and have rose to the challenge to do so in the past, but no one has ever heard of such a tale so people just assumed that either nobody wanted to embarrass themselves further by retelling the tale, or nobody survived the experience to actually do so. The homes of the Hofferson clan were scattered across town with the main house positioned in the middle of town while some branch houses were strategically placed every few streets. Anybody who has ever come to Berk would have had to pass the main Hofferson home as the only road that connected the docks to town was right in front of the building.
The lively, loud and rambunctious docks that was usually swarming with sailors from different ports and the members of the different clans who worked there had finally settled down by this time of night and the only sounds coming from the docks were of the creaking of the ships docked in for the day. Both the locals and the travellers had cleared the streets to seek food, shelter and the warmth of their furs and fires to prepare for another surely busy day the next morning. Meanwhile on the outskirts of town, on top if a large hill that overlooked the whole town, was a large estate decked in colors of red and black whose gate bore the image of a dark, winged, mysterious creature. This home belong to the Haddock Clan from which the position of both the admiral of the fleet, and town mayor, was passed through the generations. Inside the huge home, was a small boy with short brown hair, a small pale scar on his chin, and the brightest emerald eyes anyone has ever seen. The young boy was running around his room, chasing a flying toy that was shaped similarly to creature on their gates. Looking around, the boy's room seemed to be filled and littered with weird contraptions, some of them even looking as if they had been taken apart and roughly put back together. The floor and walls were covered in sketches of flying creatures and things like ships, lamps, and what seemed to be designs for a child sized solar powered skateboard.
Behind the door to the room, from the staircase at the end of the hallway, the sound of footsteps could be heard slowly climbing up to the upper floor. The boy heard this, quickly grabbed his toy, and threw it under the covers of his bed. He grabbed the covers of his bed and struggled slightly to hoist himself up before finally climbing up. He continued to tug on the sheets that he was pulling on earlier and hastily climbed underneath them. The boy then closed his eyes as if asleep just in time as the door creaked open.
A large man with similarly colored eyes and hair stepped into the room and walked up next to bed and stared the boy down. Before the door closed behind the man, the boy could still hear the voices of men arguing downstairs, their voices carrying all the way to the room of the boy.
"Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third", the man sternly called out, his mouth in a small frown hidden behind his braided beard, not believing the boy's act one bit.
The man's booming voice, so close to him, caused the boy to slightly wince revealing his state of wakefulness. The boy had warily opened one eye and smiled sheepishly at the big man whose large frame and stoic appearance greatly contrasted the atmosphere of the child's room.
"You should have been in bed hours ago." the man reprimanded the boy, giving him a look over before pulling up a thick blanket of fur from the foot of the bed and placing it over the boy, tucking the edges to his side.
"Sorry, dad." the small boy mumbled, his voice slightly muffled by the multiple layers on top of him with only his bright green eyes peeking from behind the too large covers.
"As long as you sleep. Now." gently ordered the large man as he moved away from the bed, careful not to step over the toys and drawings haphazardly strewn across the floor and headed towards the small fireplace located on the wall of the room.
The man crouched down to stoke the flames and added a couple more logs to the small fire so that it would keep through the night and keep the boy warm.
"Could you read to me the Book of Dragons?" the boy said asked as he pulled the covers down to his neck as the room warmed up a little more. The large man glanced at the boy as his lips drew into a tight line.
"Sorry, son. Truthfully, the council meeting isn't over yet. We're only taking a short break and have yet to decide how we're going to allocate the funds this winter." the large man said apologetically. "Can we do it some other time? Besides, you've read that book about a billion times by now. Surely you're already tired of it?" the man questioned as he stood up and brushed the front of his clothes and hands of soot.
The boy shook his head in disagreement and squirmed restlessly underneath the sheets as his father made his way back to the bed to kiss the boy's forehead to say good night.
"That's what you always say." the boy admonished, dodging his father's lips trying to delay the man longer. "I really like it when you read to me." urged the boy as he got out from under his covers and reached out to grab his father's tunic to prevent him from leaving.
"You sound really cool when you read to me." the boy praised and then mimicked his father's way of reading in a surprising similar manner as he acted out a scene, stretching his arms as if in flight, only to fall from his bed when he accidentally tripped on the toy that was hastily stuffed earlier.
The boy fell out of the bed with a loud thud and the father made a loud snort at the weird antics of his son. The man picked up the boy and placed him back on the bed after taking out the offending item and placed it inside a toy chest inside the room that was already overflowing with similar reptile looking toys. The boy made a pouting face at his father, making the most desperate face he could muster, and it pulled the man's heartstrings like a moon to a planet's orbit, unable to resist that look once it got there. The father begrudgingly motioned for the boy to scoot over as he sat on the bed, causing the boy to lean nearer to him because of the shift of angle he created on the bed because of his weight. The boy then grinned so large and so wide, it was like his small face couldn't contain his smile and it would burst like a supernova.
"Alright. Fine, fine." said the father to his son. "It's not like those folks will ever come to an agreement and I'll probably just have to put my foot down later." the man said lips twitching slightly at the ends into barely held smirk.
"Yes! Thank you, dad!" said the boy while reaching under his pillow where he seemed to have kept his precious book, the man shaking his head at his son's obsession. "Could you read it with that fake pirate accent?" asked the boy as his shoulders shook with excitement while he turned the pages, seemingly looking for a certain page. The father suddenly let out a guffaw.
"What do you mean fake, son? That's how pirates really sound like." the man said, his emerald eyes now twinkling, almost matching the young boy's. "Sure dad." the young boy said his voice with a hint of sarcasm. "Well, you've never met a pirate have you?" the man challenged raising an eyebrow at the boy. "And you have?" the boy teasing challenged back however the grin on the man's face fell and his eyes looked to window of the boy's room and out into the distance not really wanting to recall the memory of that fateful day a few years ago. The older man shook his head to clear his thoughts and cleared his throat.
"Well, should I read to you or not?" the man asked avoiding the question. "The night isn't getting any younger and I'm expected to return soon." he said taking the book and placing it on his lap. The young boy scooted closer to his father in anticipation and as the man began reading the boy's favorite book to him. Sometime later, the boy ended up slipping into sleep, as his father continued to read the book, and his dreams were once again filled of visions of himself on the back of creatures who flew across the galaxy towards an unknown planet.
Author's Note:
So, I finally finished the first chapter and the plans for my first fanfic after 10 years! I mean, I haven't written a fanfic in 10 years... Not that the planning took 10 years... Planning took about a bit more than week... ... ... ... Anyhoo! I hope that the story seems interesting enough. It is only a retelling of HTTYD1 and Treasure Planet with dabs of the TV Series in there though; not exactly very original in the plot department. I don't think I'm the first one to see the striking similarities of their stories and thought of something like this, but weirdly enough I haven't seen any other HTTYD-TP story retelling yet.
Anyways, a brief discussion of the plan. The plan is that the story will have 10 chapters total, this one being the first. I might combine or split some along the way, but so far according to my outline, the plan states there will be 10. After this set of chapters, there is also visions of a part two of this story for the retelling of the second movie, but that's something I only want to think about if and when I finish this one.
Also, I would just like to apologize in advance (or belatedly since you've suffered through the prologue already). I'm am admittedly not as good at punctuation marks and grammar as I hoped, so I hope you'll excuse me for that. I'm also not familiar with astronomy or mechanics, but I will try to do some research along the way.
And lastly: I'm hatchethaddockhoneyhofferson on Tumblr. :) Feel free to follow me. And don't forget to review.