This is Berk
Just off the Canadian shore, it's a little place that Nova Scotia wouldn't claim, Newfoundland won't admit exist, and New Brunswick is ashamed to be associated with.
Computer monitors blinked rapidly as they were booted up. Out of date, out of style, and almost out of storage capacity, they were dancing on their last life, but still effective. The surveillance centre was manned by a small group of teens, bumbling around and mashing buttons as if they knew what their intended uses were.
The weather here is brutal, icy and cold and the people, even more so.
"Hurry up! We're behind already and they could easily show up before we get the systems running." The unofficially leader of the surveillance team, a small, athletic blond in well worn sneakers and a teal zip up, had taken to shouting orders and her unwilling peers. There'd been a case strapped to her back that she'd abandoned at the door. At first glance, one might assume it to be for some custom guitar, but the villagers of Berk were all to familiar for her fondness of that well used battle axe hidden inside.
The only other girl, a tall blonde, was slouched back in a computer chair, her feet on the desk as she idly played with a keyboard on her lap. "Relax Astrid, it's been storming all day, there's never an attack in this kind of weather, even they aren't stupid enough to be out in the lighting."
Astrid grumbled under her breath. "And where's Tuffnut?"
"Just 'cuz they're not stupid enough to be outside doesn't mean he isn't." She pointed to the only window where a gangly boy, her twin, ran around some sort of trap that had been set up the day before. "He's been tryin' to set it off all day."
Now on a good day, Berk is quiet, to say the least. Our internet loads at a speed that would make most people cry, our cellphones rarely get a good signal if the weathers bad, and if you wanted to leave and do something, the ferry to the mainland only made two trips a week, Saturday morning, and returned Sunday night.
One of the boys took the gutsy move to distract the now disgruntled blonde as she tried to get everything in order. He coyly tried to wrap an arm around her shoulders, in his best "sauve" voice he began, "So, Astrid-"
"Not now Snotlout. Either watch your monitor or get out," she said sharply, twisting his arm until he pulled around.
Now, most people would leave, move to the mainland or into the cities like Halifax, Toronto, Montreal, maybe even farther, but not us. No, not the Berkians. You see, we're the last of a norse tribe that settled on this infernal island long before the Irish, the French and the Scots took over the rest of the region. We settled here, in the open waters among several uncharted islands, and we defend it with no intent of ever going anywhere. We're like vikings, we have stubbornness issues.
"Um Astrid, we're short a camera," the largest boy announced nervously, his large hands typing anxiously on the keyboard as he tried absolutely everything he knew how to get the stream running live once again.
"Where's it located?"
"The east end of the island." He was about to freak out, she could tell. "I think it's blocked by another feed somehow."
"That's where they'll come first. Can't you override what's shutting it down some how?"
He shook his head. "There's only three people that have the override passwords, since nobody thought it'd be a good idea to-"
"Who has them Fishlegs?"
"Stoick, Gobber, and..."
She groaned. "Hiccup. Of course. Snotlout, where is he?"
With utter disgust, her admirer scoffed at the idea. "How should I know? I'm not his babysitter!"
She then turned to the other girl. "Ruffnut, did you see him leaving when you came?"
Ruffnut rolled her eyes. "How should I know? I've got real problems to worry about."
"Like?"
From outside, the teens could hear the loud, pained screams of Tuffnut, who had managed to set off his trap. "I'm hurt, I'm hurt! I am very much hurt!"
Her eyes not leaving the window, Ruffnut laughed wholeheartedly. "Well for one, I woulda missed that looking for that toothpick! Ah man, he's gonna have to get his nose reset again!"
The wildlife here are something not to be desired.
"Does no one care that we are missing our most important camera feed right now?" Astrid had to avoid shouting as she ripped her phone from her pocket, madly dialling an unfortunately familiar number.
"Hello?" the voice on the other end of the phone asked anxiously.
"Hiccup! Where are you?"
He fought back a squeak. "Astrid, hi Astrid, um, Gobber's shop, why are you calling me." Smooth. Very smooth.
That's me. I'm Hiccup. You can laugh, but believe me, when it comes to names, I could have done a lot worse. This is Berk after all, they don't exactly buy baby books from Wal-Mart like the rest of the country. No, parents give there children names that will strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. Quite frankly, I don't think our current enemies would understand. You see...
"You're on camera duty tonight."
Crap. "Right, right, I'll be over in like, two minutes."
"I need you hear ten minutes ago, our main camera is down. Fishleg needs the override," she snapped.
"Override... Right, the override, I'll be right there, I just got caught up working on-"
She'd already hung up.
He shoved through the door of the shop, throwing a satchel full of metal workings over his bony shoulder.
The pest on Berk aren't quite like other places. They're actually the reason that the other provinces attempt to dissociate themselves from us.
The storm has stopped, but the ground was soggy and slick, his sneakers slipping and sliding around as he struggled to keep his balance. Just his luck, he'd lost his footing and landing flat on his back. He pulled himself up quickly and continued to run, mud dripping down the back of his coat. As if he hadn't already made a lovely impression on his peers with his tardiness.
"—the storm's been heading west, meaning that the the storm is moving away from them, they could have taken off as soon as it passed over head." Fishlegs was explaining anxiously as Hiccup entered, his hands playing with the drawstrings of his pullover.
"So there's still a chance there'll be an attack?"
Fishleg swallowed. "Based on patterns and past attacks, there's at least a 58% chance, but with the lack of attacks in the last two weeks, that's increased to 69%, and if you account for them figuring out the surprise attack—"
"Fishlegs!" Hiccup yelled over the panicking. "What computer is out?"
The last on the left. Of course. The only view of the eastern seaport, the others were destroyed in previous attacks. Override codes in… and… "The camera's gone."
The colour drained form Astrid's face. "What do you mean, the camera's gone."
He tapped the screen. "There's absolutely no feed because there's no camera. The tracking device in it has is out of reach. It's… Gone…?" A camera can't just disappear.
Most places have problems with rats, others with mosquitoes, but us, we have-
"Someone took it out," she said flatly, blue eyes wide with shock.
"Or ate it."
"Why would someone eat a camera?" One of the twins asked.
He wanted to be wrong, but within two seconds, there it was, the familar screeching and roars.
Dragons.
Without a second thought, Astrid shoved her peers out of the way to sound the alarm, if the screeching hadn't already alerted most of the village. She pulled the axe from it's case and gestured for the rest of the teens to follow suit, except for— "Hiccup!"
"Um, yes?" He knew where this was going.
"Get to the shop and set off the alarms for the mainland."
Of course, the mainland. The cowering, unaware civilians who had been kept in the dark about the dragons since they first started appearing, eight generations ago. Sure, everyone has heard the myths, folklore down the Miramichi River, myths and sightings off the chest of Cape Breton, but all except for government officials ad the military have no idea that the stories are true. It's probably for the best, the last thing Berk needs is a bunch of wannabe heroes and knights toting big guns and weaponry that they smuggled across the boarder, or hunters seeking out the most exciting pray.
The villagers scrambled around as the attack went into full spring. A few had taken hoses to extinguish flaming buildings. Others had donned battle axes and stun guns. All large, all shouting, all knocking out and wrestling whatever dragons they could contain, Hiccup struggled to wave his way in and out of the crowd, ducking under arms, ignoring shouts for him to get inside. Clearly, he was trying. Why had Gobber built the alarm system on the complete opposite side of the village?
A missile can't take out a dragon, a bullet can't pierce it's scales, arrows couldn't make a scratch, and a tranquilizer only last for about ten minutes. We've learned all of this the hard way. Instead, we've gone back to the ways of our supposedly might ancestors, with bolas, hammers, axes, swords, whatever hand to hand weapons you could find.
"Hiccup!" A familiar voice boomed, a large hand grabbing the boy by the back of his muddy jacket. "What are you doing outside?"
That's our leader, Stoick. A man so brave, so strong, so… Viking-ish that the villagers have taken to calling him chief instead of mayor. Once when he was a baby, they say he captured a nadder without putting down his toy sword, and do I believe it? Yes I do.
"Going, I'm going, the east end cameras down, need to go set the alarm."
He dropped the boy and shoved him off in the direction of the workshop. "Go, before the marines show up an start to meddle, we have this under control!"
It was Stoick that put in place our most very basic rules for handling dragons and dealt with the outsiders. Number one, always capture the dragon if you have a chance. Number two. Kill if you absolutely have to protect the village and Number three, never, ever, let a dragon get near the mainland. Unfortunately, that last one has gotten harder and harder to do.
Hello, thank you for reading! I hope to update this once every few days, especially once my school year ends in a few weeks. I'd love to hear what you think, and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it.
Oh, as for the exact location, Berk is set somewhere in the open water between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. When trying to find a region in North America with a similar climate to what Hiccup describes as Berk, I clued in the maritimes are quite similar. Other than the places I've googled or visited years ago, I'm not completely familiar with some parts of the region, I'm from a small part of it, but don't really travel much, so if anyone has any experience and could help me with a few little locational details I might get wrong, though I think I should be fine, I'd be more than happy to accept it. Again thanks so much for reading! Hope to see you again next chapter, haha!