Not too long after, the whole of Berk was clustered in the stands of a giant stone arena. There was a feeling that was colorful in the air, and excitement was sprinkled on the faces of every man, woman, child and sheep. The outskirts and insides of the arena were garnished like a festival. Children and adults had painted their faces with stripes of teal, ruby-red, banana-yellow and charcoal, and the village's bakers had lugged their carts all the way from their homestead to feed the audience as they milled around impatiently for the challenge between a Thorston and the son of Stoick himself.

When a duel was, if ever, promised, it was to be planned by the next dawn, before the birds had started to sing and would be finished at any cost until the sun would disappear for the night. Astrid only thought those beliefs were a myth until she saw the arena for herself when she followed the loud commotion from the emptied streets to the grounds of the Dragon Riders Academy that served as a school and a year-round stadium.

At seeing all of the commotion she had caused, Astrid felt guilty. To her greater shame, Astrid hadn't lost her affection for Hiccup. Hiccup was a teensy-bit dragon-crazy ever since he had found his first clue that there were entire species of dragons yet to be discovered, but Hiccup hadn't changed very much. He was the kind-hearted and humble leader he had always been with an extremely vulnerable side and a subtle sense of humor that Astrid still adored. Since Hiccup had agreed to embarrass himself that morning in front of all of Berk for her affection, could it mean that Hiccup still believed in their relationship? Astrid considered that deeply as she searched for an empty place to onlook the stage. The sun felt hot on her skin. The cold hadn't left yet, and Astrid thought it best to wear her armsleeves with wool. That day, Astrid also did not want to be noticed, so she wore her usual clothes in winter that included her handed-down knee-high boots with thick fur on the shins, worn and dark leggings, a skirt made of a hairy pelt with a symmetrical and pleated pattern of leather strips with metal studs underneath a belt of skeleton talismans, and a carrot-red top that always fit her comfortably. Over her shoulders she wore a half-parka with a large hood to warm her neck and ears whenever they began to numb. Astrid hadn't slept well that morning and hadn't enough time to braid her hair. It had been left to toss and tangle in the wind, much like her own thoughts did.

Astrid pondered also about her stubborn alliance for Tuffnut aside her heart's allegiance to Hiccup. Before her separation from Hiccup, Astrid had never cried herself to sleep every night because it was too hard to realize Hiccup wouldn't come near for her for a flight outside of Berk in their own early-morning adventure. She had not knew how long it would take to feel Hiccup's presence coming from a mile away if she chose to sit over a view of the village and pretend she wasn't listening for him to say, "afternoon, m'lady." Her dinners had been tasteless without Hiccup's dry humor, and her errands without his meddling voice had been restless.

Astrid picked at her grimy fingernails in memory. She had confessed her struggles to Ruffnut because she hadn't knew what else to do to get Hiccup to love her again, and she only needed someone to listen to her feelings of dealing with her first break-up. She hadn't cared if Ruffnut had a real solution. She didn't know Ruffnut's brother would balm the emptiness in her heart and replace it with joy. That's what every moment had felt like with Tuffnut the other night. Joy. Tuffnut ran on a different fuel than Hiccup that never fizzled dry, and talking to him over stew in the tavern had been exhausting yet intoxicating. Tuffnut's way of humor was wacky to Astrid and not as puzzling as Hiccup's had become over the years. Astrid had felt that to laugh again the other night was to live again. She had kissed Tuffnut because she missed the feeling, and was that so bad to want after close to a month without it? Astrid could slug any thug that crossed her, she could throw an axe better than the stockiest of her age could, her battlecry could scare a dragon far away, and she liked her ale unsweetened. She wasn't a girly-girl, yet she was still a girl, and she had vain feelings she couldn't help. Hiccup had been willing to appease them by giving her kisses to the cheek when it was time for him to leave her for the day, or by holding her hand on their long walks, but he only did those actions when Astrid had asked. When Tuffnut had kissed her, Astrid remembered that it sometimes felt nice to not have to ask for affection.

That night, she had thought she was sure Tuffnut had made a mistake to pair them together. She was less and less sure as the evening had continued, and her doubt had been shattered by the end. She had felt ready to explore what it would be like to be Tuffnut's maiden. She imagined how different she would feel sitting barefoot with Ruffnut's brother on the shore of the village's lake when it was empty and only the fireworms knew they were there, she thought of what kind of flowers Tuffnut would surprise her with and if Tuffnut had the brain to remember when it was important to surprise her with them, and she imagined if he would know their special days that Hiccup had forgotten more than once because he had yet another "really, really important" meeting to attend for the tribe counsel. Astrid also fantasized what more stolen kisses from Tuffnut would be like: if they would be sweet and warm, shy pecks light as a butterfly's wing, or if they would always leave her wanting more.

...I like you, like, a lot. If I have to fight him to prove it, then that's what I'm gonna do.

Astrid thought of the promise that Tuffnut had said to her in the tavern as he had held her hands in his. Her heart had skipped a beat, then.

Hiccup's eyes had definitely been watching her at that moment maybe to judge if she believed Tuffnut was actually capable of winning against him. Astrid still didn't know, but she was sure that Tuffnut was a fair opponent.

Astrid looked below to the arena. Gobber was talking to Hiccup's advisers but nothing important was really happening. She didn't see Hiccup yet but assumed he was practicing to make sure there was no way he would lose. As scrawny-armed as Hiccup was, Hiccup was still from the family of the most feared Vikings on Berk, and there was definitely a chance that Hiccup had learned to wield as soon as he had began to walk. Whatever blade Hiccup had been trained with, Astrid was positive it would feel like a feather in his hands.

Ruffnut spotted Astrid in the stands and balanced two iron dishes of timeless-fried-duckbill with garlic and thyme whip. Astrid greeted her nervously. Ruffnut sat and chomped the first bite of her serving and offered Astrid her own dish she had brought her.

"No thanks," Astrid croaked softly.

"Ugh. That's the last time I'm waiting in a line as twice as long as the girls' bathhouse for you!"

"Ruffnut, how can you even eat at a time like this?"

"How could you not eat at a time like this?! Tuffnut is about to get slaughtered!"

"Aren't we supposed to be on his side?"

"No way," Ruffnut said as she bit into another juicy and golden-flaked portion of the duckbill. "He hasn't paid for tying my hair to Barf's tail last month." Ruffnut snickered to herself, what goes around, comes around, sucker!

"There won't be any slicing heads or needless stabbing, right?"

"Who knows?"

"Tell me you're joking."

"I am! They're not actually gonna to fight to the death; that's a buncha old lore. They're just gonna fight until someone gives up. But whoever it is..." Ruffnut's face and long-horned helmet shadowed Astrid's face and she drawled darkly, "...you're stuck with 'im forever."

"What happens if I refuse?"

"Nothing." Ruffnut whined, "but that's so boring! If you were me, you would totally be wishing you had two guys fighting over you."

Astrid resumed to scrape dirt from her nails.

"What's up?"

"I'm going home."

"No you're not." Ruffnut said. "I know you want to see this, Astrid. Just admit it!"

Astrid blushed indignantly.

"Y'know, I'm just kidding," Ruffnut hurried to reply.

Right as Astrid was going to give Ruffnut an excuse to stay and watch, she and Ruffnut were disturbed.

Waves of cheers and fanfare rose up from the villagers as Stoick the Vast, wearing a proud iron hat, a long-haired cloak, dark hides pressed to his stocky and square-formed body with a spike-covered and fat belt, baggy pants, and stout boots approached the middle of the arena with his hands in the air to wave at the villagers who had once been his people.

Stoick greeted everyone grandly.

Ruffnut presented to Astrid a whole fried duckbill that had not yet gone cold. That time, Astrid took it. She settled in closely against Ruffnut's arms to view the duel from one of the best seats in the stadium.

"I bring you...the Pride of Berk-!"

Really, Dad? Hiccup thought. Wild cries sounded for Hiccup while handmade flags of his face rippled inair in multiple sections of the audience from above Stoick.

A metal gate that kept dragons at bay for sparring and training for the dragon academy drawled ajar by the whine and grit of heavy iron chains. From the shadows, Astrid saw Hiccup emerge with a metal helmet and a full arrangement of bodyguards. Hiccup wore the same outfit he would wear when he would fly with Toothless to any of his lone missions to scout for unexplored territory in the offshoots of Berk. Hiccup's helmet, breastplate, his bicep's rerebraces, the vambraces of his outer arms, the cuisses of his thighs, the poleyns of his knees, the greaves of his shins, and the sabatron of his left foot were fully black and created from a dyed, sturdy hide, except for the symmetrical red markings on both sides of his armor's hips and headtemples. There was also a red-colored engraving on one one pauldron of his shoulder in the shape of a Night Fury. Nearly all of his armor was coated in Toothless's shed ebony scales which sparkled black in the eyes of everyone. Around Hiccup's hips was a black belt with empty loops where his mapping tools and dragon toys would have been.

Hiccup's prosthetic foot took root in the center of arena, directly underneath the high sun in the sky. He gripped an axe. It was a brilliant tool with a gleamy scabbard and two large and silver ears of thin, lacerous metal. Hiccup twirled the axe between his palm and clenched it, again and again, as he used to from jitters of slicing himself in two when he had practiced with it as a boy. The feel of the axe's threadbare handcloth made him feel secure. He felt ready to reclaim what belonged to him. His breath's echoes sounded calmer behind his mask that exposed his bright-green eyes under dark-brown lashes and showed only a glimpse of his nose and his cheek's barely-noticeable apples which were sprinkled with light freckles. His face was glistening already with sweat in the winter cold from his coverings and, worse, from his anxiety. He looked for Astrid's face, but in the sea of his people, he couldn't find it. He settled for the sweet smile and sea-blue eyes of his memory.

Hiccup's face was hidden to Astrid from her view. She guessed what it must have looked like. Astrid couldn't deny that Hiccup looked valiant and certainly handsome when he stood in the applause of the crowd in all of the black hugging his form under the sunlight. Yet, she didn't want to cheer for him. There were moments when she had encouraged Hiccup on his true missions, like when he had to obliterate a wild queen-dragon's nest. Now, he wasn't fighting for the survival of all of Berk. He was fighting only for himself.

Stoick made a rigid hand to quiet everyone. Without as much fatherly pomp as he had offered his son but with an equal amount of pride, Stoick finished, "and Tuffnut!"

Ruffnut sprang from her seat and and screamed encouragements far below. Her praise was lost in the noise from the banisters. The people did not cheer for championship, but rather from greater excitement because, finally, both names had been read and that marked the start of the tournament.

Tuffnut walked into the afternoon light from the darkness of the gate at the other side of the stadium. He was also clad in body-armor that all Vikings on Berk had custom-made when they came of age. Similar to Hiccup, Tuffnut's gear was similar to the natural appearance of his dragon but Tuffnut chose to embellish his armor's stiffer and fireproof leather more obviously. Tuffnut paired his sister's armor by putting the attributes of their dragon, a two-headed Hideous Zippleback, on display through the dragon's scales of mantle-red, rustic gold, amber and fairy-tale green. While Ruffnut's gear had a charm from its conservative design and rounded fins on some edges, Tuffnut's armor was molded to have presence. On both of his pauldrons and ankle protectants, large red spikes sprouted outwards like the shell of a porcupine. In hidden places, there were more attaches similar to Ruffnut's armor that appeared like cactus leaves.

On Tuffnut's knee caps were two disc-shaped polyens that were crudely and adorably decorated as his dragon's heads and contained small pieces for facial features. On Tuffnut's left knee, the face of his dragon of the Zippleback, Belch, was portrayed as a skull, at his own miscellaneous decision. All pieces of leather of Tuffnut's armor had been sewn carefully together by green and red and blue threads, even the large handgloves that had also been crafted in the likeness of his dragon's two heads. Tuffnut's helmet had a long mandible of metal with small silver spikes on the chin. The helmet's eye holes were gilded gold on the edges and pointed together at a slight angle. Unlike Hiccup's helmet, Tuffnut's eyes were not visible. His handmade beard of his own dutch braided dreads was the only visible part of his true self. It was adorned at lengths with red tin tubings and at the knot of his dreads below his chin was a grandpiece, a cylinder-shaped and green painted bind that matched the look of his dragon's tail. A bulb of sandy colored hair was exposed beneath it.

Astrid noticed Tuffnut had chosen a sword for the day. Swords were a weapon that needed a tactful and patient handler. It was better for him than an axe, Astrid thought, which took overconfidence to use skillfully. Astrid had not seen Tuffnut fight before and she was quickly becoming curious about what would happen next.

Tuffnut was a spectacle. There were a few chuckles from the audience, for many of them had not seen his full armor before. It suited the Thorston to have a suit as outrageous as his personality. At every step Tuffnut squished in his sweltering leather to approach the middle of the arena near Stoick, a tiny replica of Belch atop Tuffnut's helmet bobbled its cotton neck, and it thin wings made of old sail parchment oscillated up-and-down. The audience roared in laughter at the sight of it.

Tuffnut was unsettled by the scrutiny. Still, to the crowd he waved his dragonhead-shaped gloves at his announcement by the former chief of the Hooligans. Polite applause peppered the air in the continued barrage of laughs at Tuffnut's armor.

Astrid snickered, too. Although she was too familiar with Tuffnut's armor, it was still the geekiest bodyguard Astrid had ever laid eyes on. His whole outfit looked like a rainbow threw up on it. The puppet on Tuffnut's head was unnecessary. Yet, it suited him so well that Astrid couldn't imagine anyone else wearing it. She pictured Tuffnut thrashing his sword around wearing that thing he called armor.

It would be so cute, Astrid thought, chewing her lip. She suddenly glanced to Ruffnut's profile in fear that his sister had just read her mind.

Stoick gifted Hiccup and Tuffnut with wooden shields and proclaimed, "let the battle...begin! !" The arena exploded in shouts of excitement.

Hiccup's emerald eyes lit under the browcage of his helmet as he batted his axe towards Tuffnut.

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