I woke up surprisingly early, given how little I slept last night. This is why you don't stay out all night partying, folks. I stretched and shook myself awake, then jumped to the floor. The twins were still asleep, and everything was eerily quiet. Except my stomach. How much do dogs need to eat anyways? Seeing little to no other option, I did what I had to.

"HEY!" I barked as loud as I could. Both kids jumped awake, Ruffnut even falling out of bed. Now that we were face-to-snout, I didn't find it nescessary to yell anymore. But it's fun. "FEED ME!" I then started to lick at her face to get her up and moving.

"Eeeww, Pepper! Down!" No. Food. I get down when you get up and feed me. Grumbling, my newfound girl got up off the floor, picked me up, and together we got an early breakfast. Slightly burnt, of course, but really. What did you expect. Tuffnut came down a while afterwards, and proceded to almost burn the house down for the second time this morning. I am going to assume this is normal. I was snuffling around and exploring when I heard a voice I was becoming quite familiar with by now calling for me.

"Pepper! Are you up yet?" Petite hollered from outside.

"Hakuna your lizard tatas i'm inside you crazy-ass traffic cone!" I yapped back. I scurried over to the door and scratched at it until I was let out, where I met up with B.B. and Petite.

"Morning!" B.B. greeted cheerfully. "Today's a big day!" He added with his other head. I cocked my head to the side.

"What you talking about?" I asked. Petite hovered over and got in my snout.

"Don't you remember Pep? We gotta teach you to hunt!" She said with enough energy to power New York City for about two weeks. B.B. saw my expression and quickly sorted things out.

"Don't worry, we're going to meet up with everyone else, and as long as our kids don't need us too long we can just run off and we'll all teach you the basics. Is that alright with you?" I nodded.

"Yeah yeah, sounds great." I replied. "Now when's this all gonna go down?"

"Seeing as Ruff and Tuff are already late, soon." B.B. answered nonchalantly.

That's when the morning went from good to great. The twins barged outta the house and were just fucking running in the wrong direction when B.B. grabbed them and set off in the right direction, Petite and I on his heels. Or rather, Petite on his heels and me being held by Petite from the scruff of my skin.

"You know," I called back to Petite, "I'd feel a lot safer if the dragon carrying me wasn't four-fifths my weight!" She giggled and sped up ahead of B.B., so I guess that's better than her opening her mouth and responding.

We finally made it to the arena once again, looking slightly more burnt than yesterday. I was set down and so were the twins, who tried to make it look like they meant to do... Whatever it was they just did.The humans all did their variations of face-palming and eye-rolling, while the dragons and I got to talking.

"Morning everyone!" Petite cried out cheerfully. "Oh my moon, i'm so excited, I could just scream!"

"Please don't." Cut in Toothless. He faced me and huffed. "I don't suppose you're as eager, are you?" Fucking rude!

"Hey, what the hell is that supposed to mean, you axolotl-lookin' asshole?" Before we could go at eachother verbally any more, Meatlug started explaining how the agenda would play out.

"We've already found a practice spot with some easy prey, like squirrels. Hookfang already cleared out most of the more dangerous obstacles." Said nightmare puffed up and looked smug.

"One roar and they all went running!" He boasted.

"It took you ten minutes just to convince that one pack of terrors to leave for the day, and you owe them, like, eight favors now." Meatlug deadpanned. Most of us chuckled at the way he deflated and the look of betrayal he gave. Meatlug waited for us to quit snickering and continued. "Before we go, Toothless will guide you on proper positioning and stances, since your body types are the most similar." If I had human lips I would have blown a raspberry along with furrowing my brow, but I just had to suffer with the latter. Toothless rolled his eyes and started walking away slowly. Everyone gave their 'good luck's and other well wishes before I scrabbled after him, easily catching up to his slower gait.

We stopped a bit closer to the humans, but closer to a wall. I stretched and shook my legs out, to loosen them up a bit. Toothless cleared his throat and began instructing me.

"Begin by widening your stance, and shifting your center of balance to your front legs." He demonstrated, and I tried imitating to the best of my ability. "Good, but lower your tail." Whoopsies. He stood back up and held me still with a wing again. "Now pounce forward and use your jaw to attack me." He instructed, and moved the wing in front of me.

"Wait, you just want me to straight-up attack you?" I asked. He nodded.

"You are the size of a rock and less of one's weight. You will not be able to injure me." He explained. I huffed and fixed my stance.

"Whatever, I got beef with yous anyway." I muttered before jumping and trying to bite at the skin stretched between his digits. He folded his wing back in quickly.

I fell on my face. I quickly got up and shook off some of the dirt before glaring at the night fury, who didn't look amused at all. "I would've gotten ya if you hadn't moved." I whined lowly.

"Your prey won't stand still for you. You have to be prepared to land on your paws and give chase." I closed my eyes and warbled my frustrations out, while Toothless readied his wing for target practice again. "Once more." Bah.

This continued for around a half hour before I finally managed to lightly nip his wing with my front teeth and land squarely once I let go.

"Bleh, your scales taste like rocks and shit." He didn't respond to me, instead heading back to the other dragons. I followed suit.

"She's ready, for the most part." Toothless told the group.

"Great!" Petite cheered for me. "I knew you could do it!"

"I ain't done diddly yet, Petite." I pointed out. She just laughed and bumped shoulders with me. Meatlug slowly got up and ambled over.

"Shall we?" We shall!

"Lead the way, Mee!" Petite called out before scooping me up again, and away we went.

Author's Note:

I was gonna upload this tomorrow but i'm gonna be super-occupied with the LITERAL RACE WAR in Splatoon 2 this weekend, so you guys get the big one-oh early! Surprise! Ten chapters for the ten tentacles of the SQUID OG. No offence to team octo but WE WERE HERE FIRST I DON'T CARE IF THE OCTO EXPANSION MADE MY LIFE WORTHWHILE FOR A WEEK.

Ahem.

Pepper begins her training to become slightly less bad at living! Hooray! After this arc i'm gonna try condensing each in-story day into a chapter or two instead of several, just to help get the metaphorical ball rolling. Once we reach some of the bigger parts I have planned out, though, we'll start seeing cluster chapters again! Big story arcs need a lot of bread for their butter cause too much butter on one slice of bread is super gross. Then again, not everyone has had a traumatic dairy-related incident. It didn't even happen to me personally but still it was super gross and I now have a slight fear of milk of any kind. Yay Carly! Lesson of the day; moderate your dairy consumption so you don't burst your gall blatter, accidentally scarring your youngest child into a deep fear of losing the only parent she loves.

If you love someone, tell them! -Carly

P.s. Love you mom.