His Soul Reflects My Own, a DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl
Chapter "You're Gonna Need Something To Help You Hold On" [English version] - Part 1
A/N: I expected that working with other people on translations would cause some delays, but I didn't realize how long I would take to do the Japanese translations, too. XD The real version of this chapter, once it's finished with all the available translations, will be posted as a separate Deviation on DevArt.
Even though this is the all-English version, I still want to give a shout-out to Lexalice and bulbul523 (and MugetsuPipefox), who are all helping me with translations for this series! :D
Btw, to all the people who still insist on reading my fanfiction on FFN - you do realize that I cross-post everything to Archive of Our Own and DeviantArt, right? I highly, highly, highly recommend that you read my stories there rather than on FFN. FFN messes up my text and makes translating the dragons' language much harder than it needs to be.
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Hiccup, alone in the locked room where the captive dragons were kept for training, turned in a slow circle. It was less to consider the cell doors, because he had already decided to free the Gronckle first, and more to psyche himself up. He was used to Toothless, but now he was about to trust himself to the mercy of five mostly hostile strangers.
'Okay...here goes.' He went up to the Gronckle's cell, typed on the access pad, and huddled warily by the wall as the door whooshed open.
Nothing happened for a moment. Then there was a low, wary growl from inside the cell.
"Hey," Hiccup called softly.
Before he could take a step toward the door, the Gronckle suddenly shot out of it. She whirled in jerky circles, her eyes roving wildly around the room.
"It's just me, it's just me," Hiccup murmured, reaching out as if to magically try to calm the Gronckle down from a distance. "No one else, no one's gonna hurt you. It's just me."
She finally fixed her attention on him, and she continued to growl with narrowed eyes as she backed away.
"Hey there... Hey, you want some chocolate?" He slowly withdrew a small chocolate bar from his pocket.
Her eyes lit up - she remembered the treat from when he had used it during training. She pounced at him, grabbed the chocolate from his grasp, and retreated to eat it, still watching him warily.
"That's right, that's for you," he said, still in a soothing murmur. "You just enjoy that, and I'll let your friend out." He turned to the Nadder's cell and unlocked it.
Unlike the Gronckle, the Nadder immediately burst out of her cell. She seemed disoriented for a moment when she saw no one except the other dragon, but then she must have sensed Hiccup behind her, because she whirled and pounced on him, snarling.
"Ow ow ow ow, it's okay, please, ow, please don't-!" Pinned to the wall, Hiccup tried to beg her with his eyes to not hurt him.
She growled for a moment. Finally she stopped and looked at Hiccup's slender arm that she was gripping. She gave an almost experimental squeeze, studying Hiccup as he let out a cry of pain. Her hold on him relaxed somewhat. "I suppose you are too weak to hurt me on your own, as long as you have none of your filthy human weapons."
"I promise I won't- Ah!" Hiccup gasped when the Nadder thrust her hands into his clothes, but he soon realized that she was methodically searching for weapons. He had deliberately left his knife behind before coming in here, so all she found was the flying remote.
"Chip?" she demanded. "Chip?"
"Y- Uh- Um..." He didn't want to admit that it was used to manipulate a dragon chip, but it didn't really matter because she was already crushing the remote in her hand. Hiccup winced as he watched. 'Just let it go, Hiccup...you can get another one...' Hiccup took a deep breath. "Okay. Okay, look."
The Nadder planted her hand square in the middle of his chest and shoved him back against the wall. "Free us," she growled.
"I...I know you're upset, um...that's perfectly understandable, but, um...I kind of need...a huge favor." He worked another chocolate bar out of his pocket as he spoke, and offered it to her.
The Nadder stared at it.
"It's for you," Hiccup whispered. "Don't kill me, okay?"
The dragon plucked the candy out of his palm, tore the wrapping with her teeth, and gulped down the chocolate, all without removing her other hand from his chest or taking her eyes away from him.
"Um." Hiccup took as deep a breath as he could manage. "Could you...let me go now? I need to let them out, too..." He pointed at the other cells.
The two dragons shared a long look. "What is he up to?"
"I don't know. I'm frightened. But perhaps we should take this risk."
The Nadder abruptly shifted her hold, seizing a chunk of Hiccup's clothing in her fist and closing her other hand around his upper arm. She marched him straight over to the Monstrous Nightmare's cell, even though he'd intended to let the Zippleback out next.
"Oh, crap..." Hiccup pointed, a little hopelessly, at where the Zippleback was being kept, but the Nadder shoved him against the Nightmare's cell's access panel and he gave up that idea pretty quickly. "Okay, we'll do it your way... Ow..." He squirmed until he had enough room to type.
The Nightmare rushed out, shouting as he scrambled to face the others, "What is it?! What's happening?! Too much strangeness, I'm frightened, I'm angry, give me something to destroy...!"
"I don't think we should hurt the little human yet," the Gronckle said in a cautioning tone. "He has been letting us out."
The Nightmare stalked close and seized Hiccup's jaw in his hand. "You again. You wouldn't fight me. You tried to talk to me. What do you want?"
The female dragons exclaimed in surprise at whatever he said. The Nightmare answered curtly, his narrowed eyes still fixed on Hiccup's face.
"I'll let you escape," Hiccup said desperately. "As soon as I get Toothless back, you can all go wherever you want, I won't stop you. I'll try not to let them recapture you, either. Just please, please help me save my best friend, that's all I ask."
The dragons were all staring at him. "...They really can't talk at all, can they."
"He wants something very badly, he is so sad and upset."
"He's not nearly as frightened of us as he should be."
"Of course he's not," the Nightmare snorted. "Not with these filthy chains binding our fire."
"We must get him to free the others."
"Sweetsap first."
Hiccup yelped as the Gronckle pushed her hand into his pocket and withdrew the remaining three candies. "W-Wait, that's-"
To his surprise, she made no move to gobble them up herself. Instead, she handed one to the Nightmare. "That is for you."
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "What is it?"
"Ohhh, I can't describe it! You must just taste it." The Nightmare dubiously started moving the chocolate toward his mouth. The Gronckle took it back, unwrapped it, and then fed it to him.
The Nightmare's eyes widened. "Aaahhhh!"
"It's good good good, yes?" the Nadder said eagerly.
The Nightmare made a swipe for the remaining candies, but the Gronckle jerked them out of reach. "These are not for you!"
"GIVE!"
Hiccup watched in amazement as the Monstrous Nightmare chased the Gronckle all around the room. She whirled to fight when he caught up to her, and she eventually won, planting a heavy foot on his chest as he squirmed on the ground and shouted and clawed unsuccessfully at her leg.
"NOT FOR YOU!" the Gronckle shouted. "I ate, and One Who Flies In Storms ate, and you ate! Now this one is for Ones Who Vomit Trouble And Belch Mischief, and this one is for One With Flawless Aim!"
"I hate you!" the Nightmare shouted back.
"Be FAIR, One With Hooked Fangs," the Nadder called.
The Nightmare growled and pouted and sulked as the Gronckle let him go and came back to join the others. He followed closely on her heels, fixated on the chocolate and then on Hiccup. "Him! HIM! Make him give us more!"
"There are no more, Hooked Fangs," the Nadder said.
Hiccup groaned in exasperation when more dragon hands groped roughly through his clothes. "I don't have anymore chocolate, what is with you people and having zero respect for personal space...?"
"You will bring us more," the Nightmare growled, gripping Hiccup threateningly.
"Forget about the sweetsap for now!" the Gronckle snapped at the Nightmare. "FREEDOM, Hooked Fangs! Freedom is more important right now!"
The Nadder, who was still holding onto Hiccup, forced him over to the Zippleback's prison. "Yeah, yeah, I'm on it," Hiccup grumbled.
When the door opened, two voices called out frantically from the depths of the cell.
"It's all right, it's all right," the Gronckle said soothingly. "There is only one human here, and we have captured him."
The dragon twins peered cautiously around the edge of the door, and hissed together when they saw Hiccup. "HE threw that horrible thing at us-!"
"-trapped us!"
"-very so much bad...!"
"Are you still mad at me about the magnet thing?" Hiccup said.
"Very bad," the Nadder told the Zippleback, "but now he is giving delicious sweetsap to you instead."
The Gronckle offered only one of the chocolates to the twins, but they split it between them without complaint. The Nightmare grumbled as he watched them savor the taste.
"One more," the Nadder said. She dragged the human over to the final cell.
Hiccup was surprised for a moment, since he hadn't even considered the Terrible Terror, but it made sense that the dragons would want all the prisoners freed, and he had no objection. He released the Terror without resistance.
The little figure shot out of the cell, snarling, then flew at Hiccup with a screech, jumped up, and sank his tiny yet needle-sharp fangs into Hiccup's flesh. The boy cried out and staggered back a few steps before falling. The dragon's venom was blocked along with his fire, but the bite still hurt.
"Scared confused lost what help human what what help?!" the Terror cried wildly.
"Hush, hush," the Gronckle crooned, scooping him into her arms and cuddling him until he calmed down. "It's all right, it's all right, it's not a dangerous human, we will make him free us."
"Not free," the Terror sobbed. "Back to HER I hate scared so so so much, scared no scared don't go back, run away hide flee scared no noooo...!"
Hiccup cradled his arm, staring at the blood welling out of all the pinpricks in his flesh. "Ow...ow..." He stumbled over to the med cabinet.
"What do you think you're doing?" the Nightmare hissed over his shoulder.
Hiccup fought to stay calm, not even turning around as he pulled down a jar of ointment. "Just give me a minute, I'm gonna patch myself up a bit..." As best he could, he ignored the suspicious Monstrous Nightmare looming over him as he bandaged his wound. As soon as he snapped the lid back on, the Nightmare seized the back of his shirt, dragged him over to the exit, and thrust Hiccup at the access panel. The other dragons fluttered close to them anxiously, apparently having figured out already that the door was locked.
"Let us out."
Hiccup took a deep breath. "I'll let you guys go soon - but you have to help me first."
Before he could say more, the Nightmare seized his hand and slapped it against the panel. "Let us OUT, stupid! Open this door!"
Hiccup twisted to look over his shoulder. "Before I open the door, listen to me-"
The Nadder pushed close and gripped his face, glaring straight into his eyes as she demanded, "Release us NOW, human." She gestured violently at herself and the other dragons, then slammed her palm against the door. "Open it! Let us out, let us go!"
"I know what you want, but I want something, too!" Hiccup started to reach for her chip.
The Nadder cried out and leaped back, spooking the others. Hiccup found himself trapped between the door and a ring of agitated dragons, their hands raised instinctively as if to shoot at him even though their fire was suppressed. "No! Calm down, just-" He stretched out his own hands in a 'Don't worry, I'm not threatening,' gesture, but that only seemed to make it worse.
Their wings spread wide and their tails lashed as they shouted. The Nightmare roared in frustration and swung a punch at Hiccup, who dropped to his knees just in time to avoid the blow. "Please, please, just-!" He tried to duck away from the hands grabbing him, but they seized him and shoved him painfully against the door again, pressing his hand to the access panel.
"Open it!"
Hiccup gritted his teeth, terrified but determined. His chances of survival were dwindling quickly, but he had to do this. So many lives were at stake, including his best friend's and his father's, and it wasn't like Hiccup had any sort of future left to salvage. "I am not opening this door until you promise to take me to Toothless."
He was thrown against the door so hard that he thought he might have blacked out for a second. When he blinked, disoriented, he found himself on the ground, with the dragons arguing over him. The Terror was pounding frantically at the door as the Nightmare shouted and clawed at the access panel.
"If we kill him, he can't let us out," the male Zippleback wailed, and his sister cried as if continuing the same sentence, "but he won't let us out, he won't let us out, why won't he let us out...?!"
"Hey...hey-" Hiccup struggled to his knees, his hands out again in a calming gesture.
The Nadder knocked his arms down and shouted, "Stop that!"
The Nightmare swooped back close and seized Hiccup's arms, yelling, "You have no fire! You're a human! You think you can shoot us when you have no fire in these weak hands of yours?!"
Hiccup stared, his heart pounding, waiting for the tirade to end, wondering helplessly what he was doing so wrong. The Gronckle pushed the others out of the way, hoisted Hiccup back to his feet, and shoved him back to the access panel. "Open it."
Hiccup turned and reached for her chip instead. She gasped and batted him away, not particularly violently, but she was so strong that he was flung to the floor, where he lay groaning for a moment.
"No human will ever TOUCH these chains again!" the Nightmare raged.
Hiccup, starting to despair, dragged himself to his feet and reached for the Nightmare's chip, already knowing it was a lost cause. The dragon struck him back to the ground. Hiccup lay there, seeing stars and wondering if getting beaten to death would be worse than being burned to death.
The Nightmare stooped down to seize Hiccup's shirt and drew back his fist for another, harder punch. Hiccup covered his head and braced himself, but the blow didn't come. When he peeked, he saw the Nightmare staring at him, fist still poised but unmoving.
"...I almost don't want to hit him...he's so pathetic, it's like beating up a young child..."
"Please," Hiccup said cautiously. "Please. I need your help, I really need your help, and you'd be helping a dragon, too, and then you can just fly away afterward and you'll never have to see my ugly face again..."
"What does he want so badly?" the Gronckle growled warily.
With slow movements, Hiccup set his holo to an outward display. He called up a photo he had taken with his phone a couple of weeks ago and transferred to his chip, a picture of himself and Toothless by the reservoir. The dragons stared at the image of a human cheerfully leaning close to a Night Fury, who was reaching toward the phone with an expression of easygoing curiosity.
"He's my best friend," Hiccup whispered. "He's my best friend. You have to help me save him."
"It's One Who Has No Teeth," the female Zippleback said, sounding perplexed. "He is alive?" her brother wondered.
"Look, he is giving his trust to this human, they are trusting each other," the Gronckle said wonderingly, reaching for the picture and frowning a little when her fingers passed straight through the image.
"He's my friend. Please...please help me." Hiccup started to reach for the closest dragon's chip. He was startled when the Gronckle nuzzled her face against him before he could lift his hand.
"You strange human, you want to be close to One Who Has No Teeth, I don't know why," she purred.
"Why would a human want to be close to No Teeth?" the Nightmare snorted. "No Teeth is best at blowing their heads off."
"He didn't hurt this human," the Nadder pointed out. "I think maybe No Teeth likes this human." She set a hand on Hiccup's head and stroked down the length of his spine as if she was petting a cat.
Then she frowned. Hiccup came to a sudden realization and cried, "Wait! No!" but he couldn't stop the dragons from prying up his shirt and examining his wingless back. "Aaaaarrrgghhhh..."
"They really do have no wings!"
"He didn't even lose them - look how smooth the skin is, no wings ever grew at all!"
Hiccup squirmed, knowing he couldn't escape from six (five? Did the Zippleback twins count as one or two?) curious dragons, but hoping to find something that would distract them. Preoccupied as they were with violating his personal space yet again, they didn't seem to notice him fiddling with his phone until he was able to call up the video he was looking for.
o.o.o
A Night Fury lounges beside a water reservoir, paging through a sketchbook.
The cameraman's voice is heard. "Hey, Toothless."
The dragon looks up curiously.
"Hey bud. Say hi~"
"What is that?" Toothless bounds to his feet and approaches swiftly. The camera is jostled, the view blurring before finally refocusing, off-center, on the dragon's face above. "A human thing? What is it?"
"Ack, Toothless, let go! It's recording!"
"Boring." Toothless moves away and flops back down by the sketchbook.
Hiccup's voice is heard again. "Yup...whoever's watching this... That, my friends, is a terrible and deadly Night Fury. The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself."
Toothless stretches out like a cat and whines, "Hiccuuuuuuup."
"Hi, Toothless."
"Hi." The dragon impatiently comes back, and the camera view is blurred as there is an apparent tussle.
"Toothless, no! Toothless, be careful- Gentle! Gentle, Toothless, gentle!"
"Gentle." The dragon is now holding the camera, peering into it. The view flips to the grass and two pairs of feet. "Ah!"
"Yup. Still recording, bud."
"I see!" The view changes erratically, flashing across a storefield before finally focusing on a slim, freckled human boy. "Aaaahhhh! Hiccup! Hiccup is inside this thing! But he's not?!"
Hiccup waves.
"Hiccuuuuppp~~~!" The camera view shifts erratically again. "What?!"
"You gotta hold it still, bud." The camera finally focuses on the two teenage boys standing close together, each with an arm outstretched holding the camera, the Night Fury staring in amazement, the human smiling. "There, see? Hi." Hiccup waves with his free hand. "Say hi to us."
"Hiccup. Hiccup and ME, I, together." Toothless lets go of the camera, wraps both arms around the human, and nuzzles him adoringly.
Hiccup, putting an arm around Toothless and bracing his feet to steady himself, gives the camera a serious look. "Everything we know about them is wrong," he says quietly. "And someday I'm going to prove it to the rest of the world."
"Me, I, and Hiccup, HERE! Me, I, and Hiccup, THERE!" Toothless points.
"Recording. Re-cor-ding."
"Re-cor..." Distracted, Toothless reaches for the camera again and coos at it. "Hiccup, little."
"Okay, I think that's enough of that."
The video ends.
o.o.o
The dragons were clustered close, fixated on the video. When the display went blank, they exclaimed and chattered to each other urgently and stared at Hiccup and absently held or petted him.
"Toothless and I are friends. We're not enemies; we...we care about each other. And I'm really worried about him." Hiccup was currently being hugged by the Gronckle, who was conversing rapidly with the Zippleback. Hiccup reached for her chip.
She flung him away and backed up, wide-eyed. Hiccup regained his footing and looked at the twins, who hissed at him and also backed away. "Come on, guys. You want me to free you from the restraining sequences. I'm not gonna hurt you." He went for the Nightmare next, who snarled and forced him to his knees and left stinging marks on his skin where sharp nails had bitten into him.
Hiccup wanted to give up, and he didn't dare approach the Nightmare again, but giving up was not an option. He went after the Terror, who shrieked in fear; the Zippleback immediately pounced on him and dragged him away. He tried, as they were dragging him, to access their chips, but they yelled and dropped him and fled. "I'm not going to hurt you!" he cried to the dragons, who were now circling him from a wary distance.
They played a horrible, impossible, miserable game of tag for a while. Hiccup finally caught hold of the Nadder, though only because her attempts to avoid being cornered were so half-hearted. "No," she begged him in Norse when he touched her chip, "no, no, no, no!"
"It's okay," he murmured as soothingly as he could. "It's okay, it's okay, I promise I won't hurt you, I promise, I'm not gonna hurt you..."
She screamed in panic and clung to him even more tightly when he opened her chip to receiving mode. "I'm scared! I'm scared!" Hiccup froze when he felt the Nightmare's hands on him, poised to break his neck.
"Run, Storm Flier!" the Gronckle urged.
"I will kill him for you," the Nightmare offered.
"No," the Nadder sobbed. "No, we need him...he is our way out..."
Trembling, Hiccup swallowed hard and forced himself to ignore the death threat. He started carefully working to disable the security on the Nadder's chip, and was very surprised when all the digital protection suddenly disappeared, giving him access.
"He will violate you and control you!" the female Zippleback was saying to the Nadder.
"I am already chained! Better to surrender to this weak gentle creature than to HER that I hate...!"
Hiccup was astonished when the Nightmare let him go. The dragons surrounded him, looking anxious and heartbroken, and the Nadder stared at him with such terror that he almost didn't have the heart to keep touching her chip. "I promise," he murmured again, almost humming in his attempt to be soothing, "I won't hurt you. It's all right, I'm not gonna hurt you..."
He tried not to mind the Nadder's painful grip, remembering how frightened Toothless had once been to have his chip invaded. Hiccup searched through the Nadder's files as gently as he could, looking for the sequences his own people had written and installed. While in captivity, the dragons were prevented from shooting or flying outside of training sessions, but he knew that they could not remain relatively powerless if they were to do what he needed, or if they were to take their freedom afterward.
When Hiccup finally finished deleting all the restraints, the Nadder cried out and flung herself away from him. Hiccup winced when the Nightmare grabbed him again, but the Nightmare's attention, along with the rest of the dragons', was fixed on the Nadder. She gave a heart-rending scream as she thrust out her hands - and fire blasted the ceiling. She whirled, sending spines thudding into an empty wall.
"You're free?! You're free?!"
"FIRE! What?! You have your fire again?!"
The Nadder sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands, sobbing.
The other dragons swarmed Hiccup. "Give! Give!"
"Give my fire back NOW!"
None of the other chips had any security to hack through, as if the dragons themselves had disabled it. Hiccup deleted sequence after sequence, wondering if it was a mistake to make these dangerous creatures even more deadly while he was alone among them. They shrieked and crowed in triumph, gleefully blasting their cells and the equipment - then went for the door.
"Wait," Hiccup begged. "Wait. Wait. Please, wait...!"
They took no notice of him; the female Zippleback pushed him away when he tried to get their attention. They no longer needed the access panel - they simply obliterated the door, and they were gone.
"Wait..." Hiccup tried to go after them. He managed two steps, but hopelessness crashed down on him, and he fell. "No..." He was shaking, unable to contain the horror of his own failure. "No...no...!" He buried his hands in his hair and rocked, bowed over, heard himself start to make a thin sound of horror and fury and helplessness...
'They're going to die. My dad's going to die, all of them are going to die, they're going to drag Toothless down with them, and I can't do anything...!'
He didn't register whatever noise it must have been that got his attention. But suddenly he looked up, and...
...They were there.
They hovered outside the blackened remains of the door as if they didn't dare cross the threshold again, but...they were all there, staring at him. The Nadder and the Gronckle crouched closest, looking worried and anxious. The Terror and the Zippleback twins were growling warily, the Nightmare looked seething and agitated.
"You came back," Hiccup whispered.
The Gronckle called something to him.
Hiccup scrambled to his feet and started to run to her, but then he stopped. "Wait." He waved his arms at them desperately as he dashed aside to grab a handful of writing instruments and a wad of computer paper. "Wait, wait, wait, just let me-!"
Relieved that they hadn't run off again during those few seconds, he flung himself to the floor at their feet and began sketching rapidly. After a confused moment, they all crouched close to look warily at his work.
"Look," Hiccup said, illustrating as he spoke, "the warriors are in ships...Toothless is in this one...they're going to your world, to that mountain-"
There was an alarmed hiss from the Zippleback twins. They cried out something that set off the others, and Hiccup had to wave his arms and slap the ground and tug hard at the dragons before managing to recapture their attention. "I know I know I know it's bad! But hey, listen to me, I really need your help, if even ONE of you just carries me here, to Toothless...!"
His sketches deteriorated until they were little more than stick figures. "Me, here, with Toothless! When me and Toothless are together, then you all can fly away!" He drew six winged blobs far away from the ships and several streaks to show the direction they were going. "That's all I ask. Please, that's all I ask, just please get me to Toothless. Me and him, together. That's it." He sat back on his heels and gave them a pleading look.
They stared at the drawings, at him, at each other. They conferred, anxious and angry and frightened.
The Nightmare suddenly fixed his eyes on Hiccup, leaning close and pressing a hand to Hiccup's chest, over his heart. Hiccup leaned back, his breath catching in fear, thinking that the dragon intended to melt him.
But the Nightmare's palm didn't heat up. His gaze was steely and searching as he asked quietly, "How much courage do you have, human? Is your heart stronger than this pathetic squirrel-meat body of yours?"
"He came alone and unarmed to five of us who could hurt him," the Nadder said, her voice soft and solemn. "He turned his back on his own kind and set us free. He has courage."
"Save us," the Gronckle whispered, tears glistening in her eyes.
The Nightmare plucked the pencil out of Hiccup's hand, impatiently shoved aside papers until he found a blank one, and drew...a bunch of random-looking shapes.
Hiccup stared helplessly. "Uh..."
"This," the Nightmare snapped, stabbing a finger at the most heavily-shaded mass that took up half a page and dwarfed all the other shapes. "HER that we hate, very so much horrible queen, you will make war on her?"
"Okay, um, Mr. Monstrous Nightmare...I'm really sorry, but we actually don't speak the same language. I can't understand a word you're saying."
After a few more attempts at communication, the Nightmare roared his frustration and looked like he was about to blast Hiccup's head off, but the Gronckle quickly laid a hand on his arm. "Back off, Hooked Fangs. My turn."
The Nightmare rushed away to melt a huge whole in the wall, yelling the whole time. The Gronckle picked up a pencil and frowned at it. "There must be a way to draw it so he will understand."
"Wings," the Nadder said suddenly. She took the pencil and drew wobbly appendages on all the shapes except for the smallest one.
Hiccup stared for a minute. Then he gasped in sudden realization. "It's us! I- Wow, it-" He went cold. "That's the queen," he whispered. He brushed a fingertip against the huge mass and looked fearfully at the dragons.
They looked back at him grimly. "Hooked Fangs," one of them called to the Nightmare, "he understands."
The Nightmare rushed back, getting in Hiccup's face again, staring at him in tense expectation.
Hiccup took a deep, shaky breath. He held out his hand for the pencil. 'They are enslaved to this monster. If I go after Toothless, there will be war with her, we can't escape it.' He set the pencil at a top corner of the queen shape, dragged the pencil hard across the entire figure, then reached up to the other top corner and completed the X. He looked up again.
The Nightmare let out a cry and eagerly seized the pencil, scribbling over the queen so savagely that the pencil tip snapped off. He grinned at Hiccup, his eyes burning, the message clear: "We are going to destroy the queen."
The male Zippleback, his shoulders slumped, picked up a pen and dragged it over all the smaller shapes. His message was just as clear: "And we will likely die trying."
Hiccup gulped. "I...I don't have any choice." 'I am NOT going to turn my back on Toothless. I'm not going to leave him and Dad and everyone to die while I run away like a coward.'
"Our hearts are strong." The Gronckle pounded her fist against her heart and then swept her hand out to indicate the rest of the group. "All of us."
"Scared," the Terrible Terror whimpered.
"You're not going," the Nightmare snorted. "You're useless."
"Not useless!" the Terror shrieked. "Strong brave amazing wonderful good!"
"Stay in this world, little one," the Nadder told him, stroking him affectionately. "We will fight. You will stay safe." The little dragon flung his arms around her and burst into tears. She held him and murmured comfortingly to him.
"Free me." The Nightmare took Hiccup's hand and pressed it to his chip.
Hiccup stared. "So...now you want me to do something to your chip...?"
"Free me!" the dragon repeated impatiently.
"Um..." A list of folders with alien names was presented to him. Seeing that one of the folders was highlighted, Hiccup cautiously selected it. He was immediately presented with another list. After a moment, the dragon made an annoyed sound, and one of the folders highlighted itself. Hiccup selected it. Then he was presented with a message written in alien gibberish. "Um."
The Nightmare rolled his eyes and scribbled out more gibberish onto one of the papers. Hiccup tried matching the symbols and was rewarded with the folder being unlocked. A couple of folders later, a black window popped up with a few lines of alien script and a waiting cursor. Hiccup experimentally entered modified versions of Monstrous Nightmare code that he'd learned from his part-time job and from Dragon Training.
The deeper Hiccup delved into the dragon's chip, the more the Nightmare began to express pain. He winced, grabbed Hiccup, growled, and at one point cried out and toppled onto his back, dragging Hiccup with him. Hiccup was afraid to keep going, but the Nightmare emphatically urged him further despite the fact that he was now shaking, writhing in pain every time Hiccup managed to get past another layer.
"Hooked Fangs," the Gronckle said helplessly, "Hooked Fangs, how much can you endure?"
"We have no chance against Her if we are still chained," the Nightmare said raggedly. "Human, I submit to you, hurry, I give myself to you so you can set me free, hurry...!"
Hiccup was clawing branches apart. Thorns cut at his hands and arms, he gasped in pain but somehow he knew this was important, he gritted his teeth and kept going. He felt a large presence press against him and simultaneously reach out to him from within the thick, ugly foliage, hooking around his heart, tugging him urgently forward, cool pressure sliding down his arms, offering some relief from the pain, even as a headache began to tighten around his brain and someone was whimpering-
Hiccup blinked. 'I was asleep?!' He stared down at the Nightmare, whose breath was coming in sobbing gasps. He shouted angrily at Hiccup and grabbed him again-
Clawing, hands streaked with blood and shaking and reluctant from pain, the unseen presence desperately curling around his hands, soothing them, still tugging him from within, he had to break past all this and find-
Hiccup gasped and shook his head. 'Why do I keep falling asleep at a time like this?!' There was code to write and modify, but it was so hard in this alien script he barely understood-!
Now all the dragons were crying out in dismay and frustration, and all of them grabbed him. Hiccup barely had time to resist before he plunged into the dream again, so hard and so quickly that he realized what was happening this time.
'They're making me fall asleep, this is...it's a dream, but somehow it's still really happening, I-'
The Nightmare was trapped somewhere inside the mass of thorns. Part of him was on the outside, able to help and guide Hiccup, but his heart was locked away, and Hiccup had to reach deep and fight all obstacles and free him. 'The enslavement sequences,' he realized with a jolt. 'That queen has - tied down her dragons with these chips, just like we do, except her restraints go all the way to their core- How can I possibly do this when I can't even read-!'
A small part of him was aware of the Nightmare's cries in the waking world. Most of him was staring at what floated in front of him in the dream world, something that looked like a message window on a computer. He couldn't read it, but somehow he thought he could still guess what it said: Administrative access only.
He was surrounded by other presences now...the other dragons, surely. They were pressuring him so hard that he started to feel like they were pulling him apart. He tried to resist, but they pushed back so forcefully that he screamed in the dream and distantly heard a thin, injured sound come from the throat of his real body. "You nearly tore me!"
"You are," they seemed to be saying to him. "You are!"
"I am what? I'm what?"
"You! You! You are, you you you, you are!"
"I am...?"
One of the presences became so dense that he could almost see it. It bunched itself around the message and pulsed in frustration.
"I know, I know, I see it, admini-" He came to a sudden realization. 'I can act an administrator.' But what was he supposed to do? He didn't know the password, he didn't know if this stupid thing even wanted a password, how was he supposed to-!
They were practically screaming at him in frustration. "Do! Do! DO!"
"Do wha-?"
This was a dream. A bizarre lucid one, but it was still a dream. One could do anything in dreams.
Hiccup turned the message into a door with a lock, imagined a key in his hand, fit the key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door.
The thorns fell away, revealing something that looked like a treasure chest for a minute and was then a list of files. The files all selected themselves. After a minute, the presences around him began almost wordlessly urging.
"Please! Please!"
"You guys have got to tell me what it is you want me to do..."
They pulsed with something he couldn't understand. Then something he did: "CRUSH!"
"Crush...?" He spoke back to them with just his thoughts. Crush? Smash? Destroy? Hi-?
"Destroy!" They pounced on that thought eagerly. "Destroy destroy destroy!"
Destroying computer files meant deleting them. "So..." Hiccup did so, or at least he thought he did. He was presented with another alien message which seemed to want a password.
He tried the dream-key trick again. He strained to turn the key, but it was resisting him, and then he remembered that whenever he communicated with Toothless in this strange dreamlike way, love always seemed to make everything better and clearer and stronger. So he thought of everything there was to like and admire about the Nightmare, how happy he hoped the Nightmare would be if he survived this, and Hiccup willed that love into the key-
He was jolted back into the waking world with the sound of a scream.
Hiccup tumbled to the side as the Nightmare broke free and shouted wildly. Hiccup slowly got to his feet, watching the Nightmare shoot an unsteady stream of fire and then stagger. The other dragons were calling to him in distress. He raised his head and grinned fiercely at them, tears streaming down his face. Then he caught sight of Hiccup and bounded straight toward him.
"Wait," Hiccup gasped, backing up and raising his arms in self-defense, "Don't hurt me, don't hurt me, don't-"
The dragon wrapped him in a crushing hug, weeping into his hair. "Thank you, One Who Breaks Chains."
'...I am being hugged by a Monstrous Nightmare.' Hiccup could barely move, but he wiggled his hand free enough to pat the Nightmare's shoulder.
"Hooked Fangs," the Nadder said, "please give him to me."
Still smiling with a mix of emotion, the Nightmare gently pushed Hiccup toward her. She took the boy's hand and set it on her chip. "Free me," she said softly.
Hiccup swallowed. "Your turn, huh?"
It was mentally and even physically draining. By the time Hiccup finished the Nadder and was almost done with the Gronckle, he started falling asleep for real, once even right in the middle of a lucid dream. He regained consciousness in the Gronckle's arms, struggled to sit up, finished deleting whatever she wanted deleted, then sat there swaying a bit as he blearily watched her celebrate and sorrow over her new freedom. "I'm so tired," he mumbled.
The Zippleback twins knelt before him, regarding him solemnly.
"I don't know...if I can make it, guys..."
Sure enough, he fell asleep in the middle again. He was on a boat reaching desperately over the edge and screaming for Toothless, but his father was holding him back telling him he had to let go, there was a war to fight, and Toothless had followed him but couldn't fly so he was drowning, drowning-
Avalkyriedrifted down in front of Hiccup and took hold of him and gently lifted him away from his father, only it wasn't a valkyrie, it was the Deadly Nadder, and he realized he was dreaming. "Toothless-!"
The Gronckle and the Nightmare came to hold and support him as well, and from their warmth and clarity, he realized that the Toothless down below was only a dream. Dream-Toothless stopped drowning, sat on top of the water like a cat, looked up at Hiccup with a slightly bored expression, then curled up and went to sleep and then disappeared. The boat disappeared, as well as his father, the ocean, and everything else.
Hiccup drifted in the white void with three dragons, who whispered love to him and slowly filled him with light. The Gronckle cradled him like a child. "Rest."
"Rest," murmured the Nadder, smoothing his hair. Whatever the Nightmare said didn't translate, but his touch was roughly affectionate.
Hiccup opened his eyes, blinked, and found that he had a second wind. The dragons, on the other hand, looked tired. "...Sorry," he said, tentatively guessing that they had somehow lent him some of their own strength.
"Hurry," the male twin told him. Hiccup reached for both Zippleback chips and tried again. The Zippleback being a Zippleback, it was extra-tricky, and Hiccup had to concentrate hard to correctly manipulate both chips at once.
"All right...all right, almost there...hang on..."
He dozed off again immediately after freeing the Terrible Terror, then blinked back to full consciousness to find the little dragon purring against him. Upon seeing him awake, the Terror stretched up to give his cheek a little cat-like lick, and Hiccup hesitantly returned the small creature's embrace.
"Come."
Hiccup looked up to find that the other dragons had formed a circle, broken only by the Nadder and the Nightmare reaching out their hands to him. The Terror scampered over to the Gronckle and wrapped his arms around her leg like a child. Hiccup diffidently got up and went to join the circle, staring around at the former captives as warm, strong hands grasped his.
"Together, we are alone," said the male Zippleback. "There is no one else like us," said his sister.
"Not yet," said the Gronckle thoughtfully.
"We will bind ourselves together as a troop," the Nadder said. "We will share our strength." The others all murmured in assent.
"Together, we will face Her that we hate," said the Nightmare.
"We will battle Her that rotten queen to win the freedom of our flock."
"Who will lead us?"
Hiccup tensed in alarm when they all looked at him. "Uh..."
"One Who Breaks Chains."
"You came to us."
"We will follow you."
"You will guide us. We will be your strength and your wings."
Hiccup got the distinct impression that he was expected to say something in response. He took a deep breath. "Um, so, if you're gonna help me get Toothless back, thank you. And thank you very much for not killing me, too."
He smiled hesitantly, and was heartened when they all smiled widely at him in return. 'Five-or-six dragons who aren't Toothless are smiling at me,' he thought in elation. 'It's not just Toothless; we really were wrong about all of them.'
To be continued...
Author's Notes: ...Anyone happen to know more Russian than Google Translate, or more Japanese than me, and would be willing to help out as well...? Also, any ideas on what language to assign to the Terrible Terrors? I can't decide. ^^; (Ftr, they're not fluent even their native language; they speak in words and phrases rather than grammatically correct sentences.)
I don't know if this idea will work in the long-run or not, but I decided to make magnets the AU equivalent of eels for now, because powerful magnets can erase computer data (like all the memories and stuff that dragons have stored on their chips). ...Come to think of it, most of the Red Death's flock would actually prefer that to slavery (it would also erase the enslavement sequences XD), but maybe she programmed them to have a magnetphobia or something. Or maybe it would really damage the chips and make the dragons brain-dead, I dunno yet. :/ In any case! I'm gonna use magnets for now and hope it works for the rest of this AU.
This chapter got so long that it broke my 10,000-word limit for individual installments, so I had to split it into two parts.