The Hideous RuffleTuffleback Chapter 11
Gobber knocked on their cell door the next morning. "Is there anybody in there who can talk?"
"Yeah, it's Cu Chulainn and Queen Boudica! We're famous heroes, so let us out of here!"
"No dragon this mornin', eh?" he responded. "Fair enough. I'll get ye some human breakfast. By the bye, there's a ship on th' horizon, an' we think it's Stoick an' his team comin' home. They'll be here in a few hours. Once he's gotten organized, he'll be hearin' yer case an' makin' some kind o' decision about ye. I'm hopin' ye don't turn into a dragon in th' middle o' yer trial. It might be bad fer yer health."
"It's not like we have any control over it!" Ruff called through the door, but Gobber didn't answer. He was already headed for the exit.
Soon after they finished their breakfasts, they heard the sounds of a fight outside. They could make out the sounds of a dragon roaring and snarling. A few seconds later, they heard a thud, then Snotlout's disgusted voice – "Hiccup, again? Really?" That was the end of the fight, apparently.
"What is Hiccup doing out there?" Ruff asked. "It sounds like he's doing everything right, and we aren't the only ones who don't understand it."
"The world is going nuts ever since they took us out of it," Tuff nodded.
At lunch time, Gobber knocked on their door and got two snarls for an answer. "Ah, excellent!" he exclaimed. "Now I can do th' teamwork lesson this afternoon! I'll round up some buckets, an' you two can get ready to push yer friends to their limits. Best of all, th' chief can watch this time!"
The Ruffnut dragon head turned to her conjoined brother. "Teamwork? Buckets? What's that about?"
"I dunno," he shrugged. "We probably won't like it. Especially if Stoick is watching."
"Should we try to break out of here?" she asked. "If Stoick is back, he'll definitely be watching the training to see how Hiccup does. Do you think he'll chase us?"
"He'll never catch us if you let me do the running!" Tuff retorted. "He never caught me before."
"Yeah, but you weren't a big, two-headed dragon with short legs before."
He paused before he answered. "Ruff, I'm sorry I got you into this. I'm going to get us out of it. We'll make our break this afternoon, and I'll do the running. If you can figure out our wings, we'll be free and safe."
"If I can't, then what?" she asked.
"They probably won't try to capture us alive," he decided. "They won't have nets and bolas ready; they'll use the weapons they carry around, and those will be the pointy ones. Honestly, I'm getting so sick of being cooped up in this dark stinking cell with no hope, I'd rather fight to the end!"
"We'll lose," she said soberly.
"Ruff, we're half human, half dragon, caged in a training ring so our friends can beat us up without even knowing who we are! We're losers already. I'm ready to risk it all to be winners again, like we used to be."
"If it doesn't work, we'll be dead," she reminded him.
"If Stoick gets his way, we'll probably be dead anyway," Tuff retorted. "Our only hope of a happy ending is to get out of here. Yesterday, you were so sure that escaping was the best thing! Are you changing your mind?"
"No," she said slowly. "I'm just thinking about what could go wrong now."
"Ruff, we never think about that stuff! It's not our style!"
"Okay," she said with a mix of nervousness and anticipation. "You're right. We're gonna do it! We'll break out as soon as they let us out of the cell, and… we'll see what happens."
He glanced at their forefeet. "We can't spit and shake hands on it."
She breathed a bit of her gas onto the floor just in front of them. "Spark that," she ordered. He did; it made a small explosion that blackened their frontal scales a bit. "That's how we're going to spit and shake hands when we're a dragon. All or nothing!"
"All or nothing," he agreed. "I think."
About two hours later (it was hard to tell time in the dark), they heard Gobber's voice outside. "This afternoon is about teamwork!" Their cell doors burst open. Waiting outside were Hiccup with Fishlegs, and Astrid with Snotlout, all holding buckets of water instead of weapons. The Dragon Trainees would pose them no mortal threat today. Immediately, Ruffnut began laying a green smoke screen, first in front of them, then to the right, along the wall. Tuff walked them to the right, keeping them just inside the smoke, and she continued extending the screen around the edge of the training ring until they'd passed the portcullis. They heard Gobber saying something about wet dragon heads, but their attention was elsewhere. They backed up until they were next to the portcullis.
"Are we ready?" Tuff asked.
"I'm as ready as I'll ever be," Ruff answered. "You've got the legs. Open that gate and run for it!"
He reached out with a stubby foreleg and whipped the gate open. "Run!" she shouted.
"I'm running! I'm running!" he answered, and he was. An ungainly gallop was the best that a Zippleback could do on the ground, and they were certainly galloping. Shouts and cries from behind them made it clear that they hadn't made a clean getaway.
"You keep running; I'll look back," she said. Having two heads on the same dragon had its advantages! Spitelout was leading a ragged charge of the Vikings who happened to be watching their training session; Stoick was in that group, but was back in the pack. The Vikings weren't gaining on them, but they weren't losing ground, either, and their weapons were drawn. "We're holding our own," she exclaimed. "But they're mad. Keep going!"
"We're running out of room," he puffed. She glanced ahead. A group of Vikings from the town had seen them and was running to cut off their path. "Maybe you should be trying to make those wings work?"
"Yeah, good idea." Making them flap was like shrugging her shoulders when someone asked a hard question, but using muscles that were a little lower. They were rising slightly with each flap, but they were nowhere near flying. "It's not working."
"Try harder!" he shouted.
"I am!" she retorted. The pursuers behind them and the pursuers ahead would meet in about thirty seconds. The only way for them to avoid becoming the meat in a dragon sandwich was to jump off the cliffs to their right. That option wasn't thrilling, but their other options were running out fast.
"Ruff! Do something!" Tuff screamed.
"It's not working!" she shouted back. The group in front of them was close enough to throw spears now. They had run out of room.
"I am not going to die their way!" Tuff shouted, swerved to the right, and jumped off the cliff. Ruff screamed as they plunged toward the rocks and water far below them, and stretched their wings out as far as they would go…
…and they were gliding.
For a moment, the twins were speechless. They were almost never at a loss for words, even though those words might not be very profound. But now, for the first time in their lives, they were up off the ground but in no danger of hitting the ground, and the feeling of sudden freedom after days of captivity was almost stunning, it was so powerful. Tuff was the first to find his voice.
"We're flying, Ruff. You've doing it. We're flying!"
"Yeah." Ruffnut was still amazed at the sensation. She experimentally gave their wings a flap, and they rose slightly. Someone behind them threw a spear; it struck their thick back scales and glanced off. Then they were too far away to be hit by thrown weapons.
Ruff flapped again, and they gained some more height. "This is amazing!" she exclaimed. She stretched her neck straight out so the wind wasn't pushing against her neck so hard. Tuff copied her after a moment. She kept flapping.
"How come we can't change direction?" Tuff asked. Ruff tried flapping harder on one side than the other; they swerved and almost spun out of control. As they spiraled downward, they found the tips of their tails dangling a few feet in front of their faces.
"Maybe the tail will help," Ruff suggested. She straightened their tails (it took effort; she'd never tried to control her own tail before). Their spiral ended; some more flapping got them back up to their previous height. She bent their tails slightly, and they curved around in a broad circle. "Oh, yeah! I've totally got this figured out now!" she shouted. She bent their tails up; they began climbing.
"Can I have a turn?" Tuff asked eagerly.
"Not yet," she said firmly. "First, I want to touch those clouds!"
For a few minutes, they completely forgot that their life was out of control, or that their friends were hoping for a chance to kill them, or that they were now homeless and without any source of food. They just focused on the cloud layer as they drew closer and closer to it. When they were almost into it, Tuff suddenly raised his head. "Ha! I touched it first!" Then they were completely immersed in the clouds, and they were speechless again. That lasted until they burst out the top, into the realm of sunlight and blue sky that they so seldom saw from the ground. The sudden change from prisoners in the dark, to a free creature above the clouds, left them struggling for words.
Finally, Ruff found her voice. "Tuff… I don't want to go down again."
"Yeah. Me neither." That was as close to reverent as Tuff's voice had ever sounded. For a few minutes, they just flew. Never before in their lives had they been so content to just do nothing and go nowhere.
At last, Tuff asked again if he could have a turn controlling their wings. "Uhh, okay," Ruff said reluctantly. She quickly described how flapping worked, so he wouldn't crash them, and gave up control of their wings. He nearly crashed them anyway, several times. At last, he gave up.
"I guess you're better at flying, and I'm better at running," he admitted.
"That's cool," she nodded as she resumed control. "We'll have plenty of chances to do both."
"So… what do we do next?"
Ruff's face split into a draconic equivalent of her scheming grin. "We'll fly around until after dark. Then we'll land and steal some fish for our supper!"
"Swiping stuff is cool, but I'm still not sure we should steal from our own village." It wasn't like Tuffnut to have qualms of conscience.
"If we'd stayed in the training ring, they'd give us the fish anyway, so we're just taking what's ours," she answered. "Besides, I don't think that's our village anymore. They tried to kill us, and they chased us away. We don't owe them anything."
"Okay, I guess that makes sense… but what if they catch us? I've seen what they do to dragons that get caught."
"Then they won't catch us, okay?" she decided. "We'll be totally quiet and sneaky."
"Just like the time we put the polecat in Snotlout's basement?" he grinned.
"Yeah, just like that," she agreed with a matching grin. They did nothing but fly for the rest of the afternoon. They had found something to do that was completely awesome, but wouldn't get them in trouble (or at least no more trouble than they were already in).
Their purloined supper didn't quite go according to plan. Just as they landed, the blinding light in their eyes and the roaring in their ears warned them that they were about to turn into humans again. The next thing they knew, they were lying on the ground next to the fish-drying racks, disoriented and dizzy.
"I'm still not used to that," Tuff muttered. "Now what do we do?"
"Uhh, grab some fish?" Ruff said. They proceeded to do so.
Suddenly they heard a shout from above them. "Hey, you two! What's going on down there?!"
"It's the night watchman!" Tuff hissed. "Are we toast?"
"Grab all the fish you can carry, and run!" she said urgently. "We'll split up and meet in the Lost Cavern. After we turn back into a dragon, we'll eat the fish and we'll be full all day."
"That's enough of a plan for me," he said. As the watchman ran at them, one twin went left and the other went right. He couldn't decide which one to chase, so he stood there and watched them both get away as he shook his fist and called down divine imprecations on them. They met in their childhood hiding place about half an hour later. Both of them dumped their purloined fish on the ground. Tuffnut surveyed the pile with distaste.
"It's hard to believe we actually eat those things raw," he grimaced.
"I guess our tastes are changing," Ruff suggested. She picked up a fish and bit off a piece, and quickly spat it out. "Yuck! This is dragon food, not people food." About three hours later, when they had nearly dozed off, they turned back into a Zippleback. She ate their supper, which made them both feel much better; then they fell asleep in the cave with their necks crossed and their heads next to each other. It had been an exhausting day, but for the first time in a week, it was a good day.