He was aware of strange muffled sounds. Sounds. What are they? Felt like he should know. Something… familiar…

voices?

If they were, he could not understand the words. Not most of them, anyway. He kept his eyes closed, sinking his face into something soft. Felt his fingers unfurl by his ear. He let those sounds – that strange jumble of words and non-words – pass over his hair.

"Lucky he… should be…" "Yeah, I'll look into…" "…rescue… when we did…" "should… alright… just a li-… more time…"

They're talking about me. That though came sluggishly through the muffled void.

A moment later, a bit more concerned: Wait, I'm… where am I…?

There was a pillow beneath his fingers, and the voice of two individuals – one man, one woman? – right above his head. Neither he recognized. He heard himself groaning simultaneously as pain overtook his head and nearly drowned out his conscious thoughts. Concentrate… Opening his eyes, Hiccup could see little: a vague haze of dark browns and whites and pale grays. Bleary world. Blink, blink. At last vision settled, Hiccup could begin to make out objects, and the world coalesced into the less blurry existence of two hospital technicians leaning over his head.

"You're awake," the first one – a squinty-eyed woman wearing owl-like glasses and a hoard of black braids – observed.

"Uhh… yeah," Hiccup mumbled slowly. He reached for his head, and to his surprise felt not the soft touch of hair give way beneath his palm. Instead, his fingers brushed against a cloth… a bandage. Belatedly he recognized he must have received a blow to his head after the Outcast woman seized him in the gas station parking lot.

Wait… Outcast… gas station…

How did I get here?

He voiced that thought aloud, along with a rather stupid-sounding, "And… where exactly is here?"

"Your school's nurse's office." That information was delivered rather accusatively, pointing subtly out to him he should not be there. This was no training mistake, after all, but an incredibly unwarranted blunder on his end. "We picked you up after your little adventure outside of Berk."

Hiccup's eyes widened, and he babbled, grueling headache forgotten, "Wait – how did you – how did I –"

"Your father's car has a tracking device on it. Berk superhero protocol, used to find missing or potentially endangered heroes, the like. Security noticed pretty immediately that you were gone and had taken your father's car."

Oh. Well that made him feel incredibly stupid. So much for being stealthy.

"Saved your life. A small party – I think two of your teachers? – went out after you and followed you to that gas station. They arrived apparently at the same time that some enormous scaly monster attacked you. It raced away as soon as they came, I heard, and thankfully left you behind – guess you weren't worth the effort? – and took you back to Berk. Back here, with very luckily nothing worse than a blow on your head." Her finger jabbed toward Hiccup's brow, and he flinched for a moment, worried she would stab his wound, yet the finger came up short and she did not actually flick him. He groaned anyway from the residual pain on his head.

He sat then for a moment, taking in the story. For all he stupidly never considered that Stoick's car might be trackable by Berk Security Headquarters, at least that faux pas saved his life. When the Outcast had attacked him, he had not even brought a taser with him into the store, let alone his boots or his ray gun – all had been left in the car – so he would have been kidnapped, killed, or who-knows-what. Hiccup shuddered.

And then something strange from the technician's story clicked. "Wait… I got attacked by a monster?"

"Some sort of unidentified shapeshifting supervillain, probably."

"Oh." She must have transformed after she knocked me out. Hiccup remembered only a red-haired woman. "Uh, okay."

Hiccup paused, then pulled himself upright on the bed. Nobody stopped him from sitting up. "Hey, so, how bad is this?" He pointed to his head with a slightly shaking left hand. "Do I have to, ah, stay – stay here or anything for a while?"

"Let's give you a few checks to make sure you didn't get a concussion. And if not, you'll be good to go. Though please," she gave him a dissatisfactory glare, "just go to classes, and not outside of Berk."

His mouth dried. "Noted," he mumbled quietly.


"Hey, so how's the runaway today? Feeling any better? Get some sense knocked into you?"

Hiccup glared down at Snotlout as he took his seat at the far side of the room. His cousin, however, simply stood up and followed Hiccup to the corner, continuing to jibe about his failed rescue attempt. Camicazi's hair bristled, standing on end like some feral animal's, while Fishlegs cringed and stared sympathetically – if completely silently – while Snotlout's words vomited out.

Hiccup felt no desire to retaliate and defend himself against Snotlout. No words would appease his cousin; if anything, he would fuel more fire to the stronger sidekick's taunts. However, he at least expected Camicazi to run off in a long verbal diatribe about how Snotlout contained the senses of a concussed jellyfish or some other creative insult – she had done so before to him, when he peeved her off too much – yet the voice which spoke out against him was not hers. Not even Fishlegs'.

"Would you mind shutting up?"

It was Astrid. Hiccup blinked in utter shock. She should have been chewing him up, teaming with Snotlout.

"I don't need to listen to one idiot yelling at another."

Well, at least she called both of us idiots. Snotlout's face fell, his bright blue eyes dulling slightly, and the smile slipped off his face and crashed to the floor. He gaped for a moment mid-sentence, then shuffled to his seat and sat down, carefully avoiding looking at either Hiccup or Astrid for the rest of passing period.

Hiccup tried to cast an appreciative glance toward Astrid. She only glared at him, eyes extremely frosty, before turning away from him, too.

"Well that was interesting!" Camicazi exclaimed, completely unconcerned that her other classmates could hear her loud remark. She even pulled herself up on the desk, throwing one elbow on the back of the chair and the other on the desktop, to rise up and stare better at Astrid from her spot in the room.

Mindlock at least had the intelligence to speak at a regular volume, one Astrid would be less likely hear. "She just hates Snotlout more than you," he observed. He glanced up toward Hiccup, nervously squeaking, "Though she is right. I – I mean, that was dumb."

Hiccup fiddled with a pencil between his fingers. "Yeah. I know. I don't need another three hundred lectures on it, thanks," he mumbled. He stared down at his desk and considered adding into the doodle that someone else had begun on the wood's hard surface. He had little idea what the picture represented, yet he believed he could easily enough change it into some sort of symbol, perhaps something he could wear on his chest someday were he ever to become a full-fledged superhero.

His friends continued speaking, though, on the topic. "You're not going to do that again, are you?" Mindlock pursued worriedly. "You've gotta leave it to the professionals to save your dad. I mean sure we can do a lot but we're only sidekicks and…"

"He's my dad, Fishlegs," Hiccup responded tersely.

He very consciously realized Astrid was now staring at him. She had been listening. He could feel her eyes boring into the side of his cheek.

Fishlegs' voice dropped urgently. "Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. No you don't."

Mr. Starkard stepped into the room, carrying with him an impressively enormous tower of books, along with a pack of pens and markers in his hands, so Hiccup hurriedly finished, "We'll talk about it after class."


Three teenagers huddled together inside Hiccup and Fishlegs' room.

"No! No, you can't do that! You just can't! I mean, it's all great, wanting to save your father, but do you really want to get yourself killed? Because that's what you'd be doing if you went back out there."

"I know it sounds stupid," Hiccup admitted to both his friends, waving his hands in intent gestures, "but I promise you, I've got a better plan this time."

"Uh-huh. And what about the other superheroes? Don't you think that maybe they have better plans? Leave it to them. They'll find your dad, Hiccup. They can do it better than you."

"Yeah… probably." Hiccup hardly understood why he remained so staunchly stubborn about this, for every one of Fishlegs' arguments had been correct and rational. Later, Hiccup would need to assess himself to understand exactly why he felt such an urge to enter this suicide mission. For now, though, he understood his convictions, simply repeating, "But I'm still going to do it."

"He's got more motivation than anyone else to find Skullcrusher," Cami pointed out. Hiccup hardly knew what to make of Camicazi supporting his idea; she showed no signs of caution, which could mean his ideas were foolhardy and hair-brained. Okay, I know they are. Yet he did not know if her reactions boosted confidence or instilled questions inside him.

"Still doesn't mean he should get himself killed…" Fishlegs squeaked nervously in his own new personal mantra.

"Okay okay okay," Hiccup mumbled. He raised up a hand to try to direct conversation to him. Both sets of eyes turned to him, and he continued, "It's obvious that none of us are going to change our minds. And – and I know it's stupid it's just… well, I mean, I really feel the need to do this. I really do. You know I'm not the heroic type like Astrid or the braggart like Snotlout or the mindless thug like Dogsbreath. You know I'm not geared up to be a superhero at all. I – I just want my dad back. He's the only family I got. And maybe this is the chance I need to finally prove that I can do this sidekick business, being as no one else seems to believe I can make it."

"We believe you can," Cami emphasized.

"Yeah, two of you. But I need everyone to believe me. If there's one thing I've always wanted, it's to be a superhero. So that's what I'm going to try to do. I've got some new upgrades I want to make to my boots, and some other ideas for gadgets and robotics that might come in handy. How's this, Fishlegs – I don't rush into it. Give me three days to make these improvements, and then I go out to save Dad."

"Three days? That's it? Are you kidding me? You need at least a month."

"A week."

"Three weeks."

"A week and a half."

The two looked at each other. "Two weeks," they said at the exact same time. And then Fishlegs squeaked immediately afterwards, "Eeee… but that's really not much time…"

"Two weeks is a long time for Dad to be imprisoned by Outcasts," Hiccup said. His gut twisted inside him. Who knows what they've done to him by now… if he's even alive… oh god. He might not have been incredibly close to his father on a day-to-day business, yet he could not abide those mental images. He attempted to push that down along with the bile rising in his throat. Attempting to speak evenly, he continued, "I'll give the league two weeks to find Dad before me. I'll make some fixes, try to build some things, but two weeks from this time, and I'm leaving. You guys won't breathe a word of this to anyone?"

"No one at all," Cami said, and Fishlegs, more belatedly, grumbled, "No."

"Alright," Hiccup sighed. He pulled himself off his bed and reached toward his desk for some tools. "I guess it's time to get to work."