WNoG 1: A Cunning Plan
A/N: This story is not connected to my other stories, it was co-written by me and "The Core of Justice". The plot was his idea, he contacted me and asked me to write it, so, as you can see, I did. Hiccup is living with his mother in the Alpha's nest with his twin sister Heather and a couple of other dragon riders.
Dreamworks owns HtTYD, I own nothing.
Hiccup woke up that morning freezing, his twin sister Heather had woken him up by taking the fur of his bed while he was sleeping, he woke up with his fingers numb and with drool frozen to his face. Being cold was, of course, a fact of life living inside an iceberg, it was barely tolerable, water had to be heated in a cup by dragon fire and it froze again before you could drink it most the time. But this was the only place people could live alongside dragons, and that made it all worth it in the eyes of the dragon riders.
Hiccup walked down to the mess hall, feet stinging with pins and needles, there was a group of seven dragon riders sitting around a large table on stone benches with fireworms crawling around underneath it, everyone was eating fish, as usual.
"Hey Hiccup! How'd you sleep?!" Heather taunted.
"That was you?! Gods! I can't feel my fingers Heather!"
"Should have gotten up when I told you to! Mum wants to see us after breakfast! Something about another nest!"
Hiccup sat down next to her, holding his feet above the fireworms to warm them up. "Really? Is there another Alpha?"
Heather shrugged. "Don't know, Mum just told me to tell you she wanted to talk to us. Probably isn't an Alpha, she'd send more than three of us."
"Three? Wow, Heather, I thought you could count. Well done for trying, but it goes 'one, two, then three.'"
"Yes! Well done Hiccup! You can count to three! I'm impressed! But Uni is coming too. That makes three."
"Does Mum know he's coming, or are you just sneaking him along?"
"Course Mum knows about it. She asked for him especially."
"Then does she know you two are dating?" Hiccup asked, intentionally loud.
"It's not that serious."
"Heather! How could you say that?" Uni asked jokingly. "I thought we had something."
"Hey Uni." Hiccup greeted.
"Hey 'Iccup, you hear about the mission?" He asked sitting down between Hiccup and Heather.
"Yeah, what's going on with it?"
"Don't know, something about Whispering Deaths I think, a new breed maybe. Your mum called them Red Deaths."
"Could be a swarm burrowing into the nest." Hiccup suggested.
"Or an entire nest filled with them, like, an entire underground labyrinth leading to the Alpha's chamber." Uni yelled excitedly.
"Why don't we just ask Mum?" Heather asked, pointing out hers and Hiccup's Mum walking through a side tunnel.
"But I haven't eaten yet." Hiccup complained.
"Well eat then." Heather said, throwing a salmon into a pot underneath the living blanket of fireworms and walking through the tunnels with Uni.
"Why is it only us three?" Uni asked Heather.
"Less people means less weight, which means less vibrations, which means less Red Deaths trying to kill us." Heather guessed as they walked into a wide room with a table and map in the centre of it. Valka was standing over the map.
"Ah you two, you're here. But where's Hiccup?"
"Hi Mum, Hiccup's coming, he slept in a little. Came down to the mess hall a bit late." Heather replied.
"Oh, that's fine, we can wait."
"Hi Valka." Greeted Uni.
"Hello Uni, how's Sunray been?"
"She's gotten much better, she's been flying around the nest all morning."
"Great to hear it. How've you been lately?"
Hiccup came running down the tunnel towards the room, he slipped when he tried to turn into the room, but regained his footing before he fell over. Living your entire life in an iceberg makes you very sure-footed.
"You ate quick." Heather said.
"Fireworm crawled in the pot, ate it before I could." Hiccup puffed.
"Ok, everyone come here, I only want to explain this once: There is another nest about three hours flight from here by Nadder," Valka informed them, circling an island on the map then crossing it out, "do not go anywhere near it."
"Why?" Uni asked.
"Baldur came back from a scouting mission two days ago, said there was a massive dragon living in the nest, called a Red Death, it's a very aggressive breed of dragon that preys on other dragons, if it notices you, you're dead already. It controls a herd of dragons that are constantly attacking nearly every Viking settlement in the archipelago."
"So if we aren't going to kill it, why are we hearing about it?" Uni asked.
"This is a peaceful mission, we want to call a truce with the Hairy Hooligans on Berk, maybe even get some of them riding dragons with us, once we do that, then we'll destroy the Red Death, you cannot attack the nest without every man on Berk in the air or every single one of you will die. If the Vikings spot your dragons before you land, pass by and come back later, if you're known in Berk as a dragon rider, they will not listen to you. Dragon riders are almost always exiled, Hel, in some tribes, even just showing mercy to a dragon can get you executed."
"So you want us to go off to Berk and convince probably the most stubborn, meat-headed tribe of Vikings to forget everything they know, because it's wrong?" Asked Uni. "How long do you think we'll survive? Five, maybe ten minutes."
"The Hooligans only fight dragons, they only ever kill other people when they need to." Valka protested.
"You literally just told us that we could be executed by them for not killing dragons."
"I said in some tribes, not all of them."
"So in your mind, how do you think this could possibly play out?"
"You go there, tell them you know how to get to the dragon's nest. Chief Stoick will probably want to talk to you after that, he's obsessed with it, tell him you found a way to train the dragons. Tell him some crazy story about a magic spell that makes them more docile and ask if you can train some of his men to fight against the Red Death. He will probably put aside his hatred for dragons to kill the greatest enemy to his people."
"Probably? If this goes wrong, we're all screwed, you realise that right?"
"Yes."
"We need a way to make our appearance less..." Hiccup paused trying to think of the right word to use. "Well we can't just fall from the sky one day, people will start asking questions and trying to get us back home, we need a good reason not to leave."
"What if we masquerade as dragon hunters?" Heather suggested. "We could sail right in, say we're running out of food and ask if we can stay. During the night, we free the dragons and say that someone freed them in an attempt to ruin our business and go with Mum's plan from there. We could stay until we find our dragons, so we can stay as long as necessary, and we would have an excuse for leaving." She explained.
"That's brilliant... but we're a bunch of teenagers, how could anyone believe that we managed to capture three dragons that no one has ever even seen?" Uni pointed out.
"Mm, fair point."
"Say you can do magic maybe, if they don't believe you, use your tricks in the arena." Valka said.
"What do you mean?"
"Like, use your magic to "repel" the dragon, no one on Berk has found out about eels yet, just keep the eel under your jacket. A dragon pins you to the floor, show it the eel and it'll jump back without you doing anything, that would certainly impress them."
"That would work, anything we're forgetting?" Heather asked. Secretly Hiccup was a bit jealous of his sister, she was always the better liar, she'd think of the situation from all angles, come up with an excuse for every problem and weave them all together seamlessly. She was always the one who worked on undercover missions like these, Hiccup was on expeditions mostly.
"I don't think so." Valka said.
"Great! We'll set sail first thing tomorrow! How long will it take to get there?"
"Heather." Hiccup said.
"Yeah?" She turned around, eyes wide with excitement.
"What are we setting sail on?" He asked.
Heather's face fell when she realised her mistake.
In a nest full of rideable dragons, there isn't much need for a boat.
A/N: The first three or four chapters will be uploaded bi-daily, but it will probably slow to once a week after that.