Well, I'm back! I had trouble finding out where to cut this (again).

I went back and fixed a few mistakes (thanks reviewers! You know who you are!).

Anyway, this story's back on the road now.


After they returned to the lab and cries of "Baymax!" echoed throughout, the boy lying on the couch sprung straight to his feet to come face to face with the group standing at the doorway. Baymax turned his attention away from him as he approached the others.

Hiccup had left Toothless outside the lab, which wasn't such a big deal because the building was mostly empty at this time of day—for the sake of not leaving anyone behind, they decided to endure the hassle of having to walk back to the university, but of course, they could still have a little fun and jump ahead a bit. Even though they did travel quite briskly on foot, it was still late afternoon when they arrived at the lab.

"You're up," says Hiro to the stranger. "How exactly are you feeling?"

The boy held out his hand with his palm toward the ground and shook it slightly. "So-so," he replies, "a lot better than before, at least."

"Well, I guess you'll have to watch your back next time you wander in for a bot fight," says Hiro, leaning in toward the boy. "They want to hunt us down, so I recommend you don't go in there at all for a while and wait for everything to cool down."

The boy nodded. "Okay." He started toward the exit. "Well, I guess I'd better head home now. I'll be able to find my way back without any problems, so don't worry about giving me a ride."

Just like that, the boy turned the corner and was out of sight. Hiro stayed where he was in the middle of the room, watching the exit for a few more seconds before Baymax stole his attention. I never did get his name, thinks Hiro.

"Well, I think I'm going to try out the new tail on Toothless," says Hiccup. "I'll see you guys in a few. It shouldn't take long." He then dashed out of the lab, planning on finding the dragon right outside the lab.

Hiro slumped down on the couch, and after a few seconds the other university students took seats elsewhere in the lab. "So what now?" asks Wasabi.

"I don't really know," says Hiro, staring up at the ceiling. "I guess we just keep working. I'm still wondering how this is possible, to have found a dragon weeks ago when they've been extinct for a whole millennium."

"Krei, that's how," says GoGo.

Hiro's head perked, and he sat up abruptly. "Of course! Krei's experiment caused this, so he should know how this happened! We have to talk to him about this."

"Well, there really isn't any way to reach him right now," mentions Fred.

"Maybe not right now," Honey Lemon jumps in, "but I think we can reach him next week."


Hiccup relaxed on his bed back at the Lucky Cat Café, tossing a ball into the air and catching it with one hand repeatedly. He held a grin on his face, having just found Toothless yesterday, and now he was back in the garage, anticipating their next flight out in the city.

Aunt Cass had to be really oblivious to not notice that a dragon's been living under her nose for weeks now and she hasn't noticed. In fact, she hasn't even suspected a thing!

Hiccup's mind took him back to Berk, where he could imagine his old life there, the place he came from and belonged. The grin on his face dissipated as he lost himself in his own mind, imagining the barbaric archipelago and how it was always bustling with dragons, and how Toothless was the only dragon he has seen since coming here.

His train of thought remained uninterrupted until Hiro burst into the room. Hiccup sat up immediately and sighed, facing the floor.

"Hiccup, I—" starts Hiro, but stopped once he noticed that Hiccup's head was drooping. "Is something wrong?"

Hiccup acknowledged his arrival with a quick glance at Hiro. "No, it isn't nearly as bad as it may seem. I've just been thinking about Berk… and home… and everyone else at home…"

"You want to go back to Berk, don't you?" asks Hiro.

"Well, of course I want to go back to Berk. It's nothing personal—San Fransokyo's a really nice place, but Berk is my home. I'm the chief there, and I don't think my village can handle itself any longer without me," says Hiccup.

Hiro took a seat in a swivel chair, staring up at the ceiling. "I understand."

Hiccup lay back down on the mattress. "Thanks. But the thing is, I don't really know how I'm supposed to get home."

Again, Hiro's mind shot straight back to Alistair Krei and how his portal experiment, although a failure, is probably Hiccup's only glimmer of hope of returning home. If they can't reach Krei, then Hiccup can consider Berk his past; if they can't sway Krei, then Hiccup can consider Berk a memory.

"Well, that's actually what I came here for—to talk about getting you back home."

"Wait, really?" Hiccup sat up abruptly to come face to face with Hiro. If Hiro found even a glimmer of hope that Hiccup could return to Berk, then there's no time to waste.

"Well, first we're going to want to talk to Krei about getting a portal back up," says Hiro, "if we can find him. And Honey Lemon just told me about something next week."

Hiccup snapped into attention. "I'm listening. One week may not be too bad if it's the fastest ticket I can get back to Berk."

Hiro pulled out a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to Hiccup. It had the SFIT logo printed on the front, along with a few words that described the upcoming event next week.

Snatching a marker off his desk, Hiro hopped over to his calendar and circled a certain date for next week—next Saturday, it seemed. "Every year," Hiro begins to explain, scribbling some words down on the circled date, "the school has a student showcase. You know, that showcase that I went to and managed to get into the school at thirteen."

"And you're interested in this showcase because you think I'd actually be able to go to school there?" Hiccup guesses, though he had already convinced himself that he could never and would never win at such a showcase with only a week of preparation—additionally, he's only spent a few weeks in the city! There's just no way he would be able to blow the professors away!

"Bummer, but no, that's not the reason we're going," says Hiro. "If this year goes like the last, we'll be able to find Krei and talk something into him so he can help us get you back home."

Three simple words came to Hiccup's mind. Minus the fire, he thinks, and his initial impulse was to say it until he abruptly cut himself off as he was taking a breath. I shouldn't say that, of course there's not going to be any fire this time.

They have Baymax and all the others in the gang, and even though Toothless or the Dragon Blade that was beginning to run out of saliva canisters may put the place a bit at risk, there shouldn't be much to worry about. Toothless is more than careful enough when it comes to fires on Berk, and the school shouldn't be any different, while Hiccup can just keep the sword unloaded so no one accidentally releases some Zippleback gas.

After a prolonged pause, Hiccup finally decided to speak up. "Sounds great! Now, we'll just have to kill the next week and speak with Krei about at least trying to get me back. Can't hurt, right?"

"Right," says Hiro, forcing a smile. He couldn't help but feel sorry for how Hiccup's chances at getting back were basically zero, but the fact that Hiccup was so hopeful in that slight chance that he might be able to get back impressed him. Hiccup spoke like he was aware that his chances of getting back to Berk were all but gone now, yet he didn't let that stop him from having faith in that one sliver of hope.

"Hiro! Down here right now! I'd like you to explain the situation in the garage right now!" Aunt Cass calls.

Both their expressions sunk the moment the garage was mentioned. Hiccup just got Toothless back yesterday—he's not going to let anything happen to him again. He's not going to lose him in the city for a second time.

"Shouldn't she be working the café?" Hiccup says under gritted teeth, starting to scramble down the stairs.

Hiro grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. "That's what I was thinking! She's found Toothless in the garage, now we've got to get him out of here!"

"Hiro!" Cass calls again.

"Look," starts Hiro, "sneak past Aunt Cass, get Toothless, then fly to the school, and find Wasabi, Honey Lemon, anyone! I'll meet you there."

"And you? Are you just going to tell her what's going on? I don't know about you, but in a world where it seems no one has ever seen a dragon before, I think it's going to be hard to explain that a dragon's been living in your garage for weeks now," says Hiccup.

Hiro started down the stairs, Hiccup following. "I'll drag her away from the garage so you can get there. I'll simply lie to her—when does she ever not believe me now that I'm a student?"

Maybe Hiro felt too confident with his words—he was already fleshing out a fresh lie as they spoke. He would tell Cass that he had another school project and that he forgot to tell her about the thing he's been keeping in the garage for about a week. Then again, there was a pretty good chance she wouldn't believe him because this would be around the fifteenth time in the past few weeks that Hiro has used the excuse of a project to escape the café at unorthodox times.

They split up when they reached the ground floor, and Hiccup slipped away just as Cass found Hiro. She failed to spot Hiccup.

"Yes, Aunt Cass? There's something in the garage you wanted to talk to me about?" asks Hiro.

"What did you put in there this time?" she snaps, walking over toward him.

Hiccup found the entrance to the garage and entered, finding Toothless inside. He opened the garage to the streets, and right away he mounted Toothless and took off toward the school.

"Look, Aunt Cass, it's just another school project. I'm sorry, they've got me real busy in the past month and a half with project after project, even though some might not have been assigned by the school." He had mumbled the last few words in the sentence, trying to buy Hiccup some time to get out.

"Really?" asks Cass, "then let's see what you've got working in the garage if this is another project."

Uh oh. There's no way Hiro can stall—his only hope is to go to the garage and hope that Hiccup got out of the café in time and is now on his way to SFIT. "Okay," he says nervously, inching toward the garage door.

He tried his best to move as slowly as possible toward the garage, but Aunt Cass kept egging him on to move faster. There was no point in trying to argue, and Hiro reached the garage door in the same amount of time it would have taken him to walk there from the bottom of the stairs.

Cass pulled the door open to find that the area was now vacant, save for the desks and devices strewn across them alone the walls. The garage was open to the streets, and Hiro exhaled a sigh of relief that Cass couldn't hear.

They had gotten out in time.

"Oh… huh," starts Hiro, trying to come up with a story to tell. "I think it escaped. Someone probably took it."

"Well, are you just going to let someone run around the city with the thing you've worked so hard on?" asks Cass.

"No," answers Hiro, "I'll go get it."


"Microbots," says GoGo, inspecting one that she had pulled off Toothless's saddle during the walk back.

Wasabi, who was standing near his new setup involving laser induced plasma, had heard her. "What about microbots?" he asks.

"Nothing," GoGo quickly responds in an attempt to change the subject—she didn't want her thoughts to scare anyone. Why were Hiro's two working microbots barely functional when next to each other, but they floated in a strange way when they came near the ones Toothless had on his saddle? A microbot doesn't simply hang in the air or float slowly toward its target—no, the second a microbot is released, it instantly joins with the others and one would never have noticed it if it flew right in front of them.

At that moment, Hiccup and Toothless entered the lab without any warning, the sudden noise almost scaring Wasabi away from his setup in the corner of the lab. No one was expecting the two of them to be there.

"Hiccup!" exclaims Fred. "Well, are you here so soon? Well, want to see how Honey Lemon is trying to develop a concoction that would really turn me into Fredzilla and not just a suit?"

Hiccup just scoffed. "Still living in your own fantasies, are you? I think I'll pass. I kind of just realized that you're just like Tuffnut—you even sound exactly like him, too."

Knowing that he would get a few stares asking him who 'Tuffnut' was—a few heads were already turning toward him—Hiccup decided to answer quickly. "Tuffnut's the village clown back at Berk. Always trying to blow himself up with his twin sister. Flies a Hideous Zippleback with her, which is the two-headed dragon that supplies my sword with the gas."

"It does sound like Fred," says GoGo. "I mean, would he not want a two-headed dragon that breathes explosive gas?"

"Not really," answers Wasabi, "but Hiccup, why are you here right now? Shouldn't you be like, at the café with Hiro or something?"

"Aunt Cass found Toothless in the garage," says Hiccup, moving on quickly before anyone could respond. "She didn't see him for long, as she didn't seem to have any idea on what he was. I had to get him out while Hiro would explain everything to her—lying, hopefully—and Hiro said he'd meet me here in a while."

"So you're just going to chill here for a while until Hiro gets here?" asks Wasabi.

Hiccup nodded, spotting Baymax charging in a separate room. He hobbled over to him and, without any second thought, opened the capsule.

The white robot inflated himself in front of Hiccup, blocking out the window behind him. Baymax took one tranquil step out of his charging dock. "Hiro?"

"He'll be here soon," says Hiccup, taking a seat on a nearby swivel chair and rolling it across the room. "Everyone else is here, and Toothless is outside."

They decided to wait for a few minutes in silence, Hiccup pondering over what he would do with Toothless. Having the dragon move into the lab would work, but Hiccup would still stay at the café, and he wouldn't dare put so much distance between them since they lost him. Trying to get Toothless back to the café won't work, as Cass would be checking that garage much more often.


Minutes of explaining and improvising later just to save Hiccup, Hiro rushed straight out of the Lucky Cat Café, away from Aunt Cass and toward SFIT. He sprinted as fast as he could to the school, similar to how Hiccup had rushed over to the place when he found out that Toothless was gone.

What was different this time, though, was that Hiro knew of all the small passageways and shortcuts that he could take to get to the university, and he managed to reach the building much faster than Hiccup was able to. He passed by Toothless on the way in.

"How are we all holding up over here?" asks Hiro.

Everyone exchanged glances. GoGo, Wasabi, Honey Lemon, and Fred were all at work, while Hiccup was sitting in Hiro's lab conversing with Baymax.

Hiro waited for a few seconds. "And… no response," he says. "Okay, I see how it is."

He headed into his lab to talk with Hiccup.

"So, you manage to bail me out?" asks the chief.

Hiro shook his head. "Yes. Thank God for Aunt Cass's oblivious nature. I managed to talk you out of it. Robotics, animatronics, you know."

Hiccup heaved a sigh in relief. "Oh, that's good."

"But the thing is, just… stay low in the meantime, at least until the showcase."