Disclaimer: How to Train Your Dragon, Berk, and all related characters and events belong to Cressida Cowell and Dreamworks Animation.
"Come on, let me out, please! I need to make my mark."
"You've made plenny o' marks. All in the wrong places."
Did he really have to bring that up, again? It was four years ago, you'd think he'd have gotten over it by now. But no, every time I ask Gobber for a favor, he uses that incident to remind me why I'm a disappointment to my dad and a danger to everybody else.
The Gronkulator was one of my first big inventions. Sure, it didn't look like much; it looked like some sort of weird chair, actually, but it was a great idea.
Everybody knows that Gronkles are both easily distracted and really slow fliers: they do this slow, lazy, hover thing because their wings are small and they go cross-eyed if they're not focusing on something. The Gronkulator was equipped with (slightly larger) wings and a spin gear to keep them in motion. During the next dragon attack, I would launch it, it would distract any attacking Gronkles, and the rest of the village could bring the dragons down one by one.
In theory, it was perfect. But how was I to know that Gobber would get his peg-leg splintered on somebody's sloppy back-swing? And, that he would just plop himself down on the nearest stationary object to fix his leg? By the time I reached the smithy, the Gronkulator was in ruins and Gobber was sitting in the wreckage screaming all sorts of horrible imprecations.
It took the healer two hours to get all the splinters out of him; I got a lecture and two weeks of extra chores for the disaster. And Gobber frequently reminds me that he has scars from my contraption.
At least the Gronkulator looked good on paper.
The End