"Who is he?" demanded a voice, "Who is the demon in human flesh that you have in your territory? Tell me!"
Fishlegs looked up from the floor, to which he was bound. "I won't talk."
"If you wish to do things the difficult way," hissed the voice, "Be my guest."
Suddenly, the room was pitch black. There was silence. Fishlegs was left in the darkness.
Fishlegs couldn't take it. He panted loudly as he quickly decided what his next move was: give up. "Okay! I'll talk! I'll talk! The person you're talking about is Hiccup! She's the daughter of the chief of Berk! She has the abilities of a Night Fury and a Skrill! She still doesn't know how to control her Skrill powers! When she loses her temper she changes appearance and goes rabid! I've told you everything! Just put the lights back on!"
The lights returned as Hiccup Haddock lit a torch that she had in her other hand. Fishlegs was really in a cavern. Hiccup was trying to train her friends to cope with cruel and brutal interrogation and torture, but was getting nowhere with Fishlegs. She sighed in disappointment.
"What?" asked Fishlegs, "You know I hate the dark."
"Which is why you need to work on getting used to the dark. Alvin will do a lot more than turning out the light to get you to talk. Savage hit me and shoved me around violently as he took me to different parts of the island. Toothless was chained and muzzled for days. I even considered giving up when I tried to burrow my way out. I managed to get out through the advice of Mildew."
Fishlegs hung his head. He never liked it when Hiccup was disappointed, not even with him.
Hiccup continued, "We've talked about this. You need to give nothing more than your name and your home. Nothing more."
"I know, Hiccup. I'm sorry."
"We'll try this again tomorrow. Here." Hiccup cut Fishlegs free and gestured to the exit of the cave, "Let's go home. It's late."
000
The next morning, Stoick found Hiccup, and told her about his plan to keep her and the dragons safe, along with the rest of the village, as he supervised the construction of the walls and ballistas that would fill in for the dragons.
"What?" asked Hiccup, clearly unhappy, "A ban on flying? Are you kidding me?"
Stoick turned to the girl, "Do I look like I'm kidding?"
"Dad, you can't be serious."
"I'm dead serious."
"But, Alvin knows how to train dragons now. If we're gonna have a chance against him, we need to have the dragons ready. They used Mildew to get that information from me."
"Yes. They did. When you were kidnapped, and locked up in an Outcast prison, surrounded by middle-aged men and bloodthirsty murderers."
"Dad, we need to have the dragons ready. For all we know, the Outcasts could be heading here as we speak, and we'd need the dragons to drive them away. This is just... so... ridiculous."
"Are you calling your father ridiculous?"
"What? No. I would never call my father ridiculous. I'm calling my chief ridiculous."
Everyone stopped and stared at Hiccup. No one had ever dared to insult a chief. They had heard of the time when someone insulted Stoick, calling him soft for letting his daughter live when it was discovered that she had dragon powers. The man barely made it through Stoick's fit of anger with his hand.
Stoick knew that Hiccup was wrong to disrespect him like that. But he knew he couldn't hurt her. He held her arm tightly and pulled her closer.
Hiccup pretended not to be in so much pain as her father spoke, "There is a ban on flying, and that is that. If I hear of any of them flying, they'll be locked up for the day. That includes you." Stoick aggressively shoved the girl away, and continued to supervise the construction.
Hiccup sighed. She hated it when Stoick kept her from using her powers. But she understood that he was trying to protect her. She mentally told herself to apologise to Stoick later... tonight.
