So yeah, my latest story.

Actually, this is more like a pilot... I'm not too sure people will like this. It's a tale I liked telling myself to fall asleep without too many thoughts. Every night a little piece of it. And then, at a point, I tried putting it on Word to see what happens. If people like the story, I'll put some effort into it and go on. If it gets ignored, well, it's going to be my bedtime story for myself once more.

English is not my native language, even if I've been using it for fourteen years, so if you see some mistakes, deal with 'em. Unless you're willing to beta this.

Now, as for the plot, I really, really liked Rumbling Night Cutter, PersnicKty2018 and Endevorer's works, even if sometimes I get a little down when updates are delayed. The plot is partially inspired by their stories - and a LOT from a book I've read ten years ago, I'm Not Scared, which is a thriller featuring children and kidnappings and it's a lot about the loss of innocence.

Most of the characters are from HTTYD, but there'll be some appearances from other fandoms. For example, there will be three characters from the video game "Assassin's Creed - Rogue", mostly because I thought they covered the roles I needed. You don't need to know the game - their story is irrelevant and they'll just have minor appearances. Virtual cookies to who will recognize them as they show up. =)

Any questions? Ask. I'll answer the reviews!


Ghosts, werewolves, witches, they're all crap invented to scare off suckers like you. It's the men you must fear, not the monsters.

(Niccolò Ammaniti, I'm Not Scared)


I was an avid reader, as a boy. I mean, you read because your life sucks and you'd like to live another, or so I thought.

Or maybe it's just because at Old Mr. D's house there wasn't stuff like video games. As good and kind as the old man can be, he couldn't quite afford consoles and such. He gave us out cinema tickets a lot of times, never left us without toys, make sure we all had a bicycle, and he gave us all library cards as soon as we could read. But taking care of children isn't an easy task, especially for an old war veteran with a bad leg. He had a helper… but that's another story – I mean, THE story, and I'm just introducing it for now so shut up and let me talk.

So yeah, I grew up in foster care until I was thirteen. My parents died in an earthquake when I was just a few months old, I was lucky enough to be in my crib when a rafter fell on it and acted as a sort of cover – or so I was told, anyway. So I was moved to this archipelago up in the North, where old Mr. D – by the way, D is for Davenport – ran a foster house in the main island, helped by one of his former foster children who had come of age. Years came and years went, and honestly, I thought I was going to end up just like Mr. D's helper – that I would have spent all my youth in there and then I would have ended up working there. My greatest wish was that someone took a little interest in me and took me away from there – the odds were as low as the Mariana Trench, though, for how I thought it.

But as a very wise woman – good old J. K. Rowling, loved her books – said once, be careful what you wish for, it might come true.

In my case, though, it wasn't parents who came for me. It was a kidnapper.

So yeah… wait up, I haven't introduced myself… what an idiot!

My name is Thomas – not Tom! – and this is the story of how I lost my teeth, I lost my bike, gained something I didn't really like, and found myself a nickname and a family.


Chapter 1

Hayden and the Mangler

The noise in the conference room was too much for a three-year-old to bear, yet little Hayden Harington Haddock (the third) was a little too interested in the crowd to care.

His mama and other big people were talking, people were flashing cameras, just like his dad did whenever he did something funny and cool, and there was applause, so many people were happy… in his dad's arms, Hayden joined the applause every now and then. His clothes were bothering him, why did he have to wear that scratchy stuff?

At a point, his dad left him on the chair and pulled out the video camera. One of the men took a microphone in his hand and started talking.

As my colleague just said, this new intelligent viral vector will allow the cure of several genetic diseases, mostly neurological, consenting a higher amount of new cells carrying the corrected genes as soon as the patient requires it…


Thirteen-year-old Hayden sighed, slouched in his armchair, and pressed the rewind button on the remote control. They all were there, the big team. Claude J. Stern, the most talkative of the group, serious as his name, but looking happy. Doctor Bedwyr Beasley, the silent head behind everything, stood with his hands in the pockets of his light grey suit, looked at Claude, grinning under his long beard. Thor Drummond, nicknamed "Tornado", a portly middle-aged man, waited impatiently for his turn to take the microphone. Security agent Finn Hofferson, in his private agent's attire, standing near the table, ready to act at any threat.

And then, there was her. Valka Haddock. Mom.

It had been nine years since the four researchers, and their escort agent had been kidnapped on the way to a conference. There had been ultimatums from their kidnappers for several weeks, and then nothing more. They had literally vanished. Not died, Hayden hoped. No body had been found. Claude, Bedwyr, Thor, Valka, and Finn had never reappeared again.

Hayden had often asked himself who could have wanted to get rid of eminent people who wanted to help the world become a better place. His mother's and her colleagues' work had cost decades of effort and who knew how much money, so not even the greediest Big Pharma a conspiracy freak could have imagined would have had an interest in erasing it.

So what had happened? Hayden didn't really care, though.

He just missed his mom.

The clicking sounds of the door being opened gave him a jolt, and he quickly turned off the DVD player, switching on the news channel.

"Now let's go back on the local news," the announcer was saying. "For the case of the disappearance of little Thomas from the island of Lee…"

Hayden sighed and turned off the TV. A moment after, Stewart Haddock, chief of the local police forces and his father, entered the room, covered his eyes with a hand, and threw himself on an armchair.

"No clues, right?" Hayden asked him.

Thomas Nathan Fury, aged 13, dark hair, green eyes, blood type zero Rh negative, orphan, was the latest missing person case in the archipelago. He had been sighted the last time as he went back home, to the Davenport foster house, after a game of dodgeball, but his caretaker had never seen him going back. He had been missing for six months, and there were no news of criminals asking for a ransom, or anything like that.

Actually, no person in their right mind would have asked a ransom for an orphan, no offense meant.

"We found his bicycle," Dad sighed. "We are sure it's his… he painted his name on the frame, and it matches Davenport's description."

"Where was the bike?" Hayden stood up and asked, more curious every second that passed.

"On the bottom of the sea… not too far from our docks," Dad said, worry evident in his voice. "It was caught up in a fishing net."

Hayden listened and scratched his chin, trying to sum things up. This could only mean trouble.

"You don't really think someone will want to take me away, Dad?" he asked with a sarcastic smirk. "I'm waay too muscular for a kidnapper to get me!"

"Hayden…"

"Seriously, Dad?"

He crossed the room and took the stairs to his bedroom. That was that… Dad just wouldn't listen. There was no danger, at all. Berk was, like, the most isolated place in the world. The fact had happened on Lee Island, months before. Gods, even Mom's disappearance had been archived!

Lee Island was the main island in the archipelago – it hosted most of the administrative buildings, the old science compound, the high school… they had lived there, too, until Mom's kidnapping. After the event, Dad had decided to retreat in their old hometown, Berk. There was an elementary and junior high that Hayden attended, a small administrative facility, a tiny hospital, and, well, a few houses, shops, and stuff like that, and that was that. The bare necessities for a small community to go on.

Hayden was looking forward to go to high school – Dad still owned that old house on Lee Island, so probably they would have moved back there. He would have left that hole forever, if he could have done it. He just wanted to leave that small island behind. He wanted to finish school and go to college – get rid of Dad's presence.

There was a whole world out there, and he just wanted to see it all – to do everything, to live his life.

Just one year.

He would have asked to be enrolled in high school earlier, actually – he had the marks to do it. There was a reason why he had stayed, and that reason had a name and a surname – Astrid Hofferson.

She was one of the few kids in the school – there just were about thirty or forty kids in the whole school. She was the best in their year after Hayden, and her family was also victim of the criminals who had taken Hayden's mom – Finn Hofferson, the guard, was her uncle. Hayden had known her for a lifetime – they used to play together at the meetings, and he had often let her play with his action figures because she loathed her dolls.

He would have never said it out loud, but he would have given… who knew what? Pretty much anything?... for her to date him. He… just… didn't feel he was enough for her. She was the coolest girl in school – the previous year, she had managed to actually hit Thomas Fury during a dodgeball game…

He just needed a way to prove himself – a way that didn't imply beating her at school. He had his mountain bike, he would have given anything to race, but Dad didn't want him to get hurt, so he practiced in secret. He just couldn't race, not without a permission… right, the only thing he could have done in that hole of a town, and he wasn't allowed.

He had his place – there was a cove, on the other side of the island, almost a natural track. He knew every obstacle, every hill and every slope in it. It was his place. No one came there – not as far as he knew.

So, it was almost instinct for him to get out of the house by the back door, get his bike, and pedal to the secret cove.

Five minutes through roads until Raven Point, then dirt pathways and some tall grass, and he was there. He crossed the gap between two high rocks, then went down the slope and pulled the brakes in the middle of the cove.

He carried the bike to the shed he had built the year before, put down the kickstand, pulled out a pump and started inflating the wheels.

He really liked that cove, but sometimes he grew bored of doing always the same things in there. There was a body of water where someone could fish, but fishing wasn't exactly the best of fun for him. Hayden ran out of patience easily, and couldn't exactly stay quiet on shore.

He also had a few crates where he stored his stuff – comic books, for example. Dad wasn't exactly happy of how many he had in his room. An old toy RC airplane on which he had been tinkering. His tools. An old plush dragon given to him by Mom. Some bicycle spare parts – he tended to order a lot of them on the net and store them so when his bike broke or needed different parts, he had them ready.

Hayden had worked a lot on his bike. He had received it as a birthday present from Dad's best friend Bob (a.k.a. Gobber) a year before, and even though it had looked cool from the very beginning – it was green, and green was his favorite color – he had always tried to improve this or that part so it would have been faster or more maneuverable. He had even dubbed it "The Mangler", and painted the name on it with blood red paint.

Hayden finished inflating the wheels of his bike, then started lubricating the chain. Once he was done, he put his helmet on, got on his bike again, and started a test lap.

And that was it. He was flying. He was free.

He loved it. The sensation of speed, the wind on his face, the jumps his stomach made every time the bike was in the air or he went down a particularly steep slope.

He knew he probably was not a champion. But he loved it anyway – and those few moments a day were a treasure for him.

He didn't think about how much he missed Mom, or at Dad's oppressive presence and expectations. He didn't think about his lack of friends at school, or at how much his town sucked.

Then the wheels stopped, and he was on the ground again.

"This is Berk," Hayden mumbled to himself as he dismounted from the bike, "It's twelve days North of Hopeless and a few degrees South of Freezing to Death. It's located exactly on the Meridian of Misery."

He went back to the shed and sat on one of the crates.

It was then he heard a noise. Strange.

No one ever came there, not even Dad. He couldn't have even imagined Hayden knew that place, let alone went there every day. And the kids didn't know it – Hayden would have known if they did.

"What the actual…?" Hayden walked outside the shed and looked around. He reached in his pocket and picked up a spyglass, then he closed an eye and looked around.

No one.

No one was coming.

He looked around one more time without the spyglass, then he used it again. He heard the noise at a point, but when he turned to the source of the noise, he saw nothing.

"Seriously?" he sighed. "Sonny, if you're here to play statues, go away!"

Sonny Jorgenson was the most annoying boy in Hayden's school – rephrase, in the whole island. To Hayden, he was simply known as Snot, mostly for a childhood accident. He wasn't a real bully, but he tried his best to annoy Hayden in any way he could – and also, he kept hitting on Astrid.

Something emerged from behind a rock – something that definitely wasn't Snot. Nor any other kid Hayden knew… not even a person.

A chill ran down Hayden's back as he realized the thing in his cove was an animal. A huge animal, the size of a horse, with claws and fangs, huge jaws, and dark as ink. And judging by its stealth… it had arrived without Hayden knowing…

… seriously, what could have this monster done?

Hayden didn't know. He didn't want to know.

He just ran, ran as fast as he could, out of the cove, back to the dirt paths, the road, and the town – without even looking back.

He only stopped in the backyard of his house, and immediately wondered why it was going so dark all of a sudden.

Before he could find an answer, he plopped down to the ground.


End of the pilot! Yup, Hayden is Hiccup, but the name will be used as a nickname, and only eventually, you'll find out why.

I hope you'll like it!