AN:

So... My brainfart expanded.

What to do, what to do.

I have an assignment due... FML.

Instead what I have is the following series of drabbles and my series of essays on how to make the Power Rangers AU for HTTYD work.

AND BELIEVE ME THERE'S A LOT! It's all over on PRHTTYD dot tumblr dot com btw.

Also, on the tumblr is pics of zord!Toothless and the designs for the Ranger suits.

In Which Hiccup Tries to Cope.

Or

Exposition Time!

1. Discipline

Discipline was not really Hiccup's thing. That was, of course before he decided he wanted to become a doctor (for the sole purpose of later going into research). Then he needed to discipline himself – at least in some things.

So suddenly needing to discipline his thoughts (oh come on, they were his thoughts, besides the connection was pretty one-way, from them to him), was somewhat jarring.

It was not as if he wanted to overhear things, he just did. (And he'd much rather get through medical school without cheating thank-you-very-much… duringexam!Hiccup will hate current!Hiccup so much).

Also, there was this whole thing about the right to confidentiality that was being breached. His fellow colleagues (medical students really) had patients (well, the subject of family study projects) too. It wasn't professional.

So he had to discipline himself.

He looked up some martial art videos, checked over their philosophy and thus armed, attempted to 'build a wall' in his mind so that thoughts wouldn't leak through all the time. He practiced over and over till it was voice-free in his mind. (Then he went and enrolled himself in a class, because having a teacher is easier than going at it himself).

Of course, then he had to figure out how to let people back in. (Toothless had practically ripped up the ground trying to communicate when he realised the guy repairing him could not 'hear' his computations any longer).

2. Changes

Astrid Hofferson used to (may still, I-don't-know-it's-confusing) be disappointed in Hiccup.

Astrid Hofferson used to be best friends with Hiccup. (She still doesn't quite know what happened. One day Hiccup was her friend, and then one day Hiccup was Hiccup, and then Hiccup shot up and suddenly was Hot!cup (not that the oblivious boy knew it – also apparently because he was just that unassuming, nobody noticed that he had become that, even admittedly still skinny). But sometime between Primary and Sixth Form, Hiccup had just – drifted away.)

(Astrid remembers the one week in Secondary when he may have tried to take interest in what the rest of their old gang did, and maybe prove himself along the way. She remembers him joining them for that one week in the Juniour Rescue Scouts, but at the end of that week Gobber had lost two limbs and Astrid had lost he chance to possibly reconnect.)

Astrid was utterly confused by Hiccup.

First he decided to go into medicine (it blindsided her and she wondered if he remembered their old conversations about what they wanted to be when they grew up; she had just picked medicine because it was the hardest sounding thing with the stiffest sounding competition from what her complaining older cousin said, and she was just too stubborn to back down).

Then he started not sucking at it (somehow his personal statement and grades didn't mean that earlier this year he hadn't been practically carried by the rest of his groupmates in the group assignments. That changed briefly during the epidermis histology tutorial).

Then he joined her Wǔ Xíng class.

She had never taken him for someone who would ever join a martial art class. He was more the type that would sarcastically snark back at his attackers than the type that would defend himself when it came to it.

Colour her curious.

She actually walked up to him one day to just compliment him on getting out more (it felt like it had been forever since he showed his face for more than an hour after class on campus), and he had startled. Nervously stumbling back and stuttering at her about meditation being soothing and stress relief for medicine (honestly, how was this guy even getting through OSCEs? Did he just stutter at the simulated patients till they took pity on the poor boy? But the stress relief thing – she got. Medicine either made you straight-up crazy, or you learnt to handle the crazy. If first year Michaelmas exams were anything to go by, her particular method of killing punching bags was working).

A change had-or-maybe-was happening. She just could not put her finger on what.

3. Resources

Sending nearly half of her newly-awakened, inexperienced Terrors to attack a morphed Ranger was a bad idea.

To be fair she didn't expect a Ranger to show up, much less the red.

It was supposed to be a scouting mission, a search for the missing Night Fury dragonzord that was entrusted to her, and she lost.

This was bad.

There were only so many dragonzords under her control in her Island. She had a finite source of minions to work with. She couldn't just throw her entire army at Berk.

(Well, she could. But she knew the damage humans could cause the dragonzords. Of course their bullets and rounds and EMPs could not breech the dragonzord hulls, but the part of the zords that answered to technology and not magic could still be affected. Thankfully her magic retrieved the fallen zords before the humans could take them apart – but there was only so far her magic could extend, a dead zord is a dead zord. Dead zords don't come back… She had been very lucky in the past.)

She had learnt her lesson about that the first attack she led on stubborn, stubborn Berk twenty-three years ago.

She needed to be smart about this. (There were reasons why she only sent out one or two major dragonzord(s) at a time. She couldn't afford to lose her hard hitters.)

She learnt her lesson (the remains of a Cloudjumper, Timberjack, Thunderdrum and Boneknapper rested at the bottom of her volcano lair in the island. That was four corrupted major dragonzords less in her army).

Oh she still had plenty.

But there was only so much she could do while trying to manage her resources (she had a job to do).

4. Reasons

He was not necessarily unhappy with the Red Death. He could play the long game.

Yes they had conquered a fourth of the Archipelago.

Yes they probably should focus their efforts elsewhere. But there were reasons why they had not chosen to do so.

The Archipelago had the highest concentrations, well pools if you will, of two semi-magic elements known as Drakonip and Drakoroot. This was what they were using (in part) to control their corrupted dragonzords. They had quite a bit of the rare element, but not enough to turn their forces elsewhere.

Red Death had reported in that there was a certain range that they could project their magic through the elements, once the range ended, the control did too. They had to be careful. He needed to stay further back while she led the forward charge (and to be fair, over the twenty-five years that they had been doing this they had slowly and steadily gained ground till they reached Berk, where they still were gaining ground – just much, much more slowly) to keep the slumbering dragonzords there under their control.

The Red Death wore a choker that wove the two elements together. She might have been his Third-in-Command, but despite her rank – she was definitely saner than his Second. They had mutually agreed to leave the power to corrupt and control the dragonzords to the two of them.

Dagur had enough power. And even dark magic needed some semblance of order to prevent utter catastrophe.

He wanted to conquer and rule the world. That was hard to do if the world was destroyed.

…

People don't really bother to look at what the dragonzords are doing when they attack. But once Hiccup had Toothless, things became a lot clearer.

The attacks always had two fronts. One was the normal, usual attacks that came in via the coast. The second was more of an epicentre of a random spot.

"So… You're telling me that that is basically where random magical stuff is found and whoever she is, is using it to control you guys?"

[Basically, yeah.]

"Why here?"

[I dunno. New at this too.]

"Gosh I wish we had more answers… Now are you sure you can't go any smaller?"

5. Purpose

The first time Hiccup morphed was because he was scared and in danger.

The second time Hiccup morphed was because he was scared, in danger and curious.

Toothless apparently was able to go smaller, (keychain sized actually) which was convenient because then Hiccup could take him around places and not worry that the giant dragonzord would be found prowling around the Berk Reserves.

Hiccup leaned around the corner of which he ducked behind. There was another attack (what's new about that?) but unlike the last time (last time referring to the last time he got caught in one), there weren't scores of Terrors all around. Just a single group.

And they had driven one of the weird pipe-things that were left behind sometimes when there were attacks into the ground.

[So. You gonna morph?]

Hiccup glanced at the tiny Night Fury. His eyes swept his surroundings for cameras and the like and then he whispered.

"Saddle up, its morphin' time!"

The red-ness swept over him once again. It felt like fire and crackles of electricity (that didn't hurt). It felt like power.

With instinct that was mostly power and part newly-developing skill, he threw a backflip and pounced into the group of Terrors and snarled.

"Night Fury."

The Terrors scattered as he ripped the pipe-thing out of the ground with the strength that came from the power coursing through him. Breaking the web-thing that was forming from the pipe-thing (he really needed to ask Toothless about what those were – if Toothless even recalled what those were).

Something screeched overhead but Hiccup paid it no mind. He could deal with it later.

"Bow Guard!" he yelled out, calling for the random shield that appeared the last time. Again, there was a swath of red light and the weapon formed around his arm.

The Terrors advanced.

Hiccup swung his shield at the first Terror that approached him, bashing it in the muzzle. He whirled around and caught the one approaching him from behind across the torso.

The power gave him a nudge and he leapt high above a third Terror, grasping it by the shoulders and rolling, lifting his shield above his head to block the blaze of fire that came his way.

Rising up, out of his crouch, Hiccup let power build through his arm, focusing it on his shield as it once again glowed red.

"Guard Toss."

And hefted it at the remaining Terrors.

In the seconds it took for the shield to boomerang back to him, Hiccup finally was able to catch a glimpse of his appearance. (He looked like a bad Deadpool reject – even if the helmet resembled Toothless. Oh well.)

But there was no time for continued contemplations over his random costume. The screech that he ignored turned more into a roar and it was coming closer (oh no what should he do!).

[She's like me.]

"What?" Hiccup hissed back to his miniature dragonzord, trusting that he would hear him above all the racket.

[She's like me. That's a Deadly Nadder!]

"But you just said that… that's like you! How are you alike? I mean, we get like a dozen of these that show up at the coast. All of them blue. All of them deadly."

[Hence the name Deadly Nadder.] Toothless deadpanned. [But what I mean is that she's a major dragonzord – like me. See how she's much, much bigger when you compare her to the other Nadders?]

"You think you can break her out of it."

[Only one way to find out!]

The power flowed through Hiccup as he bellowed to the sky.

"DRAGON CALL!"

Hiccup could vaguely see waves of red pulse out of his mouth as the echo of Toothless's call rang through the air.

Speaking of the Night Fury dragonzord, he had flown directly upwards into the air, as fast as he could manage. As Toothless reached the stratosphere, the red glow expanded his body to its original size.

Toothless could hear her siren song again. But the bond he had with Hiccup was letting him push it back – somewhat.

[Hiccup! Help!]

Hiccup jumped up. Somehow landing on top of Toothless's head and dropping down immediately into the cockpit. He sunk his glowed hands into the 'control ball' and Toothless's red detailing glowed even brighter.

"Rider Online!"

[Thank goodness. She was in my head again.]

"Is she gone now?"

[Yeah. But now, we got to snap her out of it.]

"You got it Bud."

Hiccup's eyes narrowed behind the visor, yelling "Fury Bomb!" as Toothless swirled himself into a dive bomb.

The Night Fury slammed against the Nadder, and before it could hit any of the buildings or infrastructure, Hiccup had already launched himself out of the cockpit. The instinct fuelled by the power causing him to jump the gap between the two dragonzords.

The minute he landed on the Nadder, it-well-Toothless-said-it-was-a-she gained extensive yellow detailing, much like how Toothless had gained the red detailing. Her screech died out as she seemed reorient herself.

The reprieve lasted a scant three minutes.

Luckily for Hiccup, he had managed to launch himself back into Toothless' cockpit. The minute the Nadder seemed to lose whatever internal battle against whatever the force was, they were there.

"Plasma Blast!"

Hiccup's command was followed shortly after with a neon lavender blast that exploded out of the Night Fury's mouth. It knocked the Nadder towards the Berk Forest reserve.

And then all was quiet.

6. Support

When Stewart 'Stoick' Haddock first heard of the Dragon fighting the other dragon (and the random Deadpool-esque hero fighting the smaller ones), everyone waited for him to explode.

Everyone forgot that Stoick was capable of being infuriatingly reasonable.

Stoick laughed instead.

"If someone has managed to tame one of those beasts. And is taking them down for us, should we be complaining?"

AN:

What do you think?

Remember there will be headcanons!, pictures and stuff being posted on the tumblr - PRHTTYD dot tumblr dot com. (Shameless advertising, I know). Also, one of my headcanons is that Stoick can be infuriatingly reasonable, but people tend to forget that so often that it comes at a surprise.

People forget that he has to be reasonable. He's basically King of Berk *winks*, he has to deal with logistics and stuff. AND DIPLOMACY.

Being reasonable is kinda a requirement for diplomacy.

(Also, I crossposted this. It's on AO3 now too...)