Something smelled like burnt hair. And old pennies. It's a super gross combination. I contorted my face, wrinkling my nose and rolling over a little.

Wait. Why was I lying down again? I tried sitting up, holy moses I was sore, blinking hazily as my vision decided to stop taking a ride in the washing machine. I put my weight on my left arm and fuck all almighty that was a mistake. I let out a pained, undignified noise, and someone waved something hot skewered on a stick in front of my nose.

"She's up." Meatlug spoke, just about smacking me in the face with the stick of mystery meat. I snuffled, not even bothering to remove it from my peripheral.

"What." I articulated.

"Pepper!" B.B. hollered, rushing over and likely would have bowled me over if Meatlug wasn't in his way. Instead, he settled for taking me into his arms, readjusting quickly when I hissed in pain after he squeezed my arm too tightly. Both of his heads fretted with a speed i'd only seen in anime when the buff guys were punching hard enough to leave an afterimage. "I knew it was a bad idea to let you just run off to who knows where, going off and getting yourself attacked by some big disgusting monster, I should have stopped you as soon as you entertained the idea-" He rambled, stopping to breathe with his left and taking less than a milisecond to keep going with his right. I could physically feel the cobwebs leaving my brain as I recalled exactly how I got here.

"I fainted again." I stated, just getting it out into the open as I finally took the meat stick from Meatlug's hand.

"Yup." She confirmed, helping to pry off my zippleback straitjacket.

"I oughta get a punchcard for that..." I grumbled, ripping a meat chunklet off to sooth the roaring in my stomach. It was tough and a little undercooked, but that raised more questions than I had the brainpower to work through, so instead I looked around patting the ground trying to locate where the crystal went.

"Collar" Meatlug pointed to my neck as I swallowed dumbly, finally noticing the tight pressure of a rock being pressed into my throat.

"Wait, how did you-?" I questioned quickly, removing the offending volatile object from being so close to my very delicate facial bits even quicker.

"We learned a few things while you were unconcious." Toothless finally spoke up, walking over to tower over me. "First being, why and how all of the magic sludge was never discovered by anyone back home." I grumbled, uncomfortably remembering what I had seen that monster do after I killed it. If it was even alive in the first place, that is. It certainly wasn't sentient at least. I hope. Whatever, it attacked me first.

"Yeah, it all just turned into smoke and stuff." I scratched at the side of my face, taking another bite and swallowing it with a grimace. "That smoke stuff was the same shit that other cat was made of, remember? The one I caught and then it went 'poof'?"

"Excuse me?"

"Oh yeah, you and Hiccup were like, the only ones not there for that. I poofed a cat that turned out to not be a cat." I explained, pain making me flippant. More than usual anyway. "Right after that, you guys showed up and did your whole 'yadda yadda cats stole a wholeass boat out from under our noses' schtick."

"That's right... I kinda forgot about that in all the excitement." B.B. admitted, scratching at his nasal horn. "It was all the same stuff?" I nodded vigorously.

"And it stings like a bitch too. We're gonna have to be real careful whenever the cats pull that trick out." I pointed to my arm with my almost-bare meal. "Just a few drops made me wanna rip my arm off."

"...Right. We at least know what else it can do, besides make us ill and control our thoughts..." He trailed off, glancing at me oddly. I shoved the entirety of my last meat chunk into my mouth. I didn't want to think about Petite right now. Or, at all, preferably, but the idea i'd never see her as her again...

I forced myself to swallow.

"...You said there was other things. What else? Like, how the hell you managed to move this-" I changed the subject, shaking the shard in my fist, "Without a one-way ticket to burnt-handsville?"

"Snotlout figured that one out actually!" B.B. chirped. My ears perked up, rivaled only by my brow as it attempted to travel up my forehead.

"I didn't know he could do that... But you're gonna leave me guessing? Rude." I snarked.

"I'm getting to it! Anyways, it's directly touching the shard that makes it do the..."

"Magic finders-keepers."

"That. He had packed a spare drybag in Hookfang's saddlebags and used it to move it until we could set you down." He shrugged. "Who would have thought?"

"Huh. Who would've." I agreed. "Where is Snotlout and Hookfang anyway? I'd have heard them by now."

"With Stormfly, having fun with discovery three." Meatlug smirked. I squinted at her suspiciously, but then the trio of missing persons made themselves known, emerging from the woods and talking loudly among themselves.

"Are you sure this is gonna work?" Stormfly was questioning the boys, her saddlebags off her back and in her arms.

"Of course it will! It worked with the fox, didn't it?" Snotlout shot back, Hookfang's saddlebags slung over his shoulders. Hookfang himself was stretching, arms over his head.

"I dunno, i'm kinda running outta gel on my wings..." The nightmare groaned.

"Then lie on your back this time!"

I pushed myself up further, sitting properly to see exactly what they were up to. As I did so, Stormfly's eyes met mine, and she gasped.

"PEPPER!" She shouted, shoving her bags into Hookfang and sprinting over to me, almost sliding on the ground as she took Meatlug's spot, her and B.B. taking the cue to go help Toothless in making sure the Jorgensons didn't burn down the forest.

"That's my name, don't wear it out." I chuckled awkwardly as she got in my space, all worried eyes and remorseful slouch.

"Be serious! Do you know how it looks when one minute you're standing bleeding out in front of some gross smoking pile of slime and the next you're saying 'Toothless! Catch!' and you pass out!?" She ranted, gesticulating hard enough to lodge a few spines in the dirt behind her. I cough into my hand, finding it very hard to keep looking her in the eye.

"Uh... Oops?" I leaned back to dodge the finger pointing at my face.

"No! No 'Oops!', what's up with you and almost getting yourself killed lately?!" The disgruntled nadder accused, pulling away to cross her arms.

"It's a new development for me too!" I defended myself, moving my noninjured hand to my chest. "I thought that i'd be away for like, a few minutes! Slime monsters weren't a part of that!"

"I know!" Stormfly huffed, dropping her head. She sighed heavily, hands moving to her temples. "I'm sorry, this is my fault anyway, I shouldn't be yelling at you." I snorted, making her look at me strangely.

"Uh, what? How is me getting assaulted by a giant housecat made of Nickelodeon Gak your fault?" I shook my head. "You didn't make that thing."

"No, but I did make you go run off alone!" She shifted to sit, knees pulled up to her chest to rest her head and stare at the ground. "All because I couldn't handle a little bit of walking..."

"Stormfly, I..." I reached out to her, but withdrew my hand. Of course she blamed herself, what was I, a fucking idiot? I certainly felt like one as I racked my brain for the right words. "I... You didn't... It... It wasn't your fault that anything happened. I was the one that wanted to run ahead for you in the first place, remember? That was all me."

"Why though?! Everyone else was just... Letting me whine it out!" Stormfly lifted her head again, looking downright miserable. "Why would you just-"

"Because we're friends, right?" I interrupted her, leaning forward. "I wouldn't have done anything for anyone here if we all weren't friends, cause... I dunno, that's how friendship works? It's kind of a thing with friends wanting to help each other!" I could feel my face burning. God, could I get any cheesier?

"We are, but that doesn't mean you gotta make yourself do things just because-" I huffed, actually managing to will myself into grabbing her shoulder this time.

"Stormfly. You don't gotta question my autonomy or whatever. I do what I want." I declared, straightening my posture. "And I want my friends to be happy. So maybe i'm willing to do a few stupid things to get there, but that's my fault, not yours!" Stormfly gripped my hand.

"No, you're the one that got attacked, it's not your fault!" She fired back, aghast.

"Looks like we're both innocent then." I winked at her, scooting closer until we were shoulder to shoulder. She sighed at my antics, finally letting herself relax.

"Alright alright, you win. I still feel bad that you're hurt though." She smiled sadly, wrapping a wing over my shoulder.

"Pshyeah, i'd be worried if anyone here didn't feel bad." I snickered. "I'm an asset!" That elicited a giggle out of her.

"You know it." She grinned for a moment, before letting her face fall neutral. "...I can't believe you fought that thing all by yourself." I felt a chill run down my spine.

"It was less 'Fighting' and more 'Running away, praying, and getting lucky.' Besides, I totally got my arm roasted..." I poked at my arm fur, matted down and frizzed at the ends where the sludge enveloped it. I hit too hard in one spot and inhaled tightly at the sting. "I'm... Gonna have to heal that..." Stormfly tilted her head at that, humming.

"Didn't the crystal just... Heal you on it's own before?" She questioned. "...You should be healed already." I stopped. That was... A good point. A really good point. Why hadn't this thing healed me in my sleep like earlier? Oh fuck was this thing busted?!

"Yeah... Yeah, hold on." I pulled the shard up to eye level, leering at it as I tried summoning the healing spell. It flickered momentarily, sparking a little, even making a small sound like T.V. static. No dice. I was hit with a bout of dizziness, making me stop to hold the bridge of my snout. "Ugh! Woozy..." I moaned. Stormfly steadied me by the shoulder, gently keeping me upright.

"Are you okay?!" She pulled me into her lap as I readjusted to the nongelatanous state of the ground.

"Ah, yeah, I just got-" I was interrupted by an unexpected roar from my stomach and all-too-familiar hunger pangs. I winced, clutching my abdomen. "For real?! I just ate!" I whined, carefully pushing myself up to finally stand. My legs felt like they had gotten into a fight with a blender and lost.

"Hey, take it easy!" I was chastised, Stormfly hurrying to keep me balanced.

"What is going on today?! Nothing's making sense!" I huffed.

"Well it isn't going to start making sense while you're hungry. Come on, we can show you something we figured out!" I was pulled forward as Stormfly led me to where everyone was huddled around something on the ground, Hookfang nowhere in sight. There was, however, a growing heat and a sweet smell. Nitroglycerin.

Stormfly squeezed us in inbetween Toothless and B.B., all to be greeted with Hookfang lying on his back, flamed up and fully splayed, Snotlout kneeling next to him with a handful of sheared sticks, and the kicker? On Hookfang's chest, stomach, and even the undersides of his wings, was several fish. Skinned and filleted. Slowly being grilled. I found it very safe to say, what the fuck.

"I..." I trailed off.

"It's astounding, isn't it?" Toothless asked aloud, unable to pry his eyes away.

"Pepper, you weren't awake for this yet, but it was just the strangest thing. I almost didn't believe it, but-" B.B. spoke, getting interrupted as Meatlug leaned in front of him to deal the blow.

"Stormfly made a cohesive argument." She stated, amusement inching into her typically monotonous drawl. The nadder in question pouted.

"Oh please! You act like i'm just some pretty face!" She stopped for a moment to tap her cheek. "Well, my face is pretty, so's the rest of me, but... Wait, never mind that!" She stamped a foot, moving her hands to her hips. "The point is, I made Snotlout and Hooky figure out cooking!" Stormfly declared, a proud finality that still managed to leave me confused.

"Cuh... Cooking?" I blanched. "That's... Cooking... Stormfly, that's kinda gro-" I was held from starting a long tirade about exactly how unsanitary and probably unsafe Hookfang's flame gel was by another wave of dizziness and another sharp empty sear from my stomach. My ears pinned back as I wound up clinging to Stormfly's wing with my burned arm, whimpering quietly at the ripple of pain.

"Pepper, please sit!" B.B. took me, helping me to the ground.

"Sorry, sorry. I'll be better soon. Just gotta figure out why the crystal isn't working." I sighed, hiding my eyes behind my paws. "Besides," I gestured to the living frying pan in front of us, "I think there's a story you need to tell me."

Toothless sighed, mumbling "Here we go..." Under his breath as he walked away. Stormfly stuck her tongue out at his retreat.

"Um, yeah, I gotta go... Find an excuse to not be here. Bye!" B.B. stood, rigidly marching away while humming out of sync with each head.

"Hey! It wasn't that bad! Right Mee?" Stormfly looked to the gronkle expectantly, only to find her laid out with her arms tucked over her chest, 'snoring' by quietly whispering the word snoring to herself.

Oh god, you pass out from exhaustion and then you just miss things, don't you Pepper? I supressed a grimace as Stormfly flicked her tail primly, glowering at our friends as they all made a point of not being a part of storytime.

"Anyways," She began with an eyeroll, "after you did your running off into danger thing, we got back to walking. You leave a trail of destruction when you run, you know that? I think you murdered those bushes." I snorted.

"They had it coming, what with their... Chlorophyll and whatever." I jokingly ripped up a blade of grass.

"Mmhm. B.B. was getting tired of having to smell that dead fox he was carrying for us, and because nobody else wanted to do it we started talking about cutting it up and storing it." My face wrinkled at that.

"What, like, just, raw? Ok, know what, I think using Hookfang as a hot plate is considerably less gross than that." We had already been cutting it really damn close with all the raw fish we had shoved in Toothless' bags back when we were just going to roast them on a campfire, but raw red meat, probably getting blood and stuff everywhere? Yeah no! Just no. No. "That'd just make everything spoil."

"That's what I said!" Snotlout shouted, turning his back to Hookfang's flames just long enough to singe the back of his clothes. Stormfly nodded at his inclusion.

"Yeah! That's what Snotlout said! So then he started saying something about smoking and I was kinda not listening, but it turns out Mee is super knowledgeable about this stuff! And she said that smoking would take too much time." I turned my head to give Meatlug a quizzical look. She only shrugged and crushed a rock with her bare hands, crumbling the dust into her mouth like a frat boy demolishes a bag of hot cheetos. She was still whispering 'snoring'.

"Alright, I'll give you that one because she's right. We don't even have a smoker anyways. So how in the fuck do we get to that?!" I pointed to Hookfang, peeling fish off of his stomach and handing them over to Toothless, who had decided to be helpful and was putting the cooked food away in Stormfly's bags. The nadder poked at my ear, making it flop.

"I'm getting to it, shush. We wound up having to take a little break from that conversation because someone," She grinned humorlessly, "Got attacked by slime."

"Damn, really? Who?" I snarked. "You can skip this part."

"Right. Well you know how all of that went so I'll skip over the part where you pass out and B.B. screeches like a struck terror-"

"Hey!" An indignant cry from the 'struck terror'. That's hilarious, i'm gonna have to use that one.

"And we had to carry you all the way here to this next clearing because the original one kind of has a disintegrating magic corpse in it now. It was a little, you know, traumatising watching a tiny dog down that thing and then you know, so we were desperate for a topic change." Stormfly was suddenly very insistant on not looking at me. I futzed with the shard, trying to make it do... Anything, really, but I was just hit with fresh dizziness and an updated gnawing in my gut. Ow. I tried to swallow the wince, but I was met with Stormfly's hand on my shoulder and Toothless handing me a skewered fish fry.

"Stop using that thing, it's clearly making your condition worsen." Toothless snorted at me as he shoved the food into my hands. "Eat first. Then you can figure out whats wrong with it."

"Alright, sheesh. Forgive me if I ain't enthused about eating something that's been covered in Hookfang Goo." I mumbled, side eyeing the stick of meat.

"It burns off like alcohol." Snotlout shouted, nonchalant as if he hadn't just said something that makes sense. I stared at him until he noticed the silence. "What?! I'm right!" I tore off a chunk of fish, swallowing it. Huh. So he was. I sighed.

"I don't have the energy to argue why this is weird..." I trailed off, thinking about what I said a little more carefully. "Energy... Energy! That's it!" I yelped, shoving the rest of the fish in my mouth.

"What's it?!" B.B. jumped at my sudden proclamation.

"The shard! The crystal thingamajig! It's like a battery or something!" I exclaimed with my mouth full.

"A what?" Toothless blanched. I took a moment to swallow.

"It's like, before it was shattered, the big crystal didn't make whoever was using it sick or whatever! Whittney was slinging around huge spells no problemo!" I explained, getting excited. "The shard must have had a backlog of the main magical energy left in it!" B.B. nodded quickly.

"Like the curse residue." He inferred, I snapped my claws, shooting a finger gun at him.

"Bingo. So now that it's run out of that, it's taking energy from the next available source." I continued. Meatlug gasped.

"You." I withered with a smile at her sad tone.

"Me." At my confirmation, Hookfang turned his flames off and sat up quickly.

"What are we gonna do?! You'll get drained!" He growled, peeling the last slices off of his body.

"Looks like i'm gonna have to do my healing the old fashioned way." I let out a frustrated whine. Leave it to Pepper to offer to speed things up only to slow it down. "Sorry, I think i'm gonna be down for a while."

"You need time to rest, nothing's going to change that. No point in apologising for what you can't control. Besides," Toothless pulled out his map, unfolding it. "you got us a lot farther than you thought you did." He held the map in front of me, pointing to a spot a good distance away from where we were headed.

"Is that... Where we are right now?" I questioned with a grimace. He shook his head.

"That's where you fought that monster. This is where we are right now." He pointed an inch or so underneath the square we were headed towards. I snorted.

"What? But, then the next thing'd be-" Stormfly tapped her claw against my shoulder, getting up and walking back to where she had dissapeared earlier with Snotlout and Hookfang. I got up, following her as fast as I could despite my body being sapped. She slowed down, letting me take her arm and lean against it. I was led through bushes and bramble, coming to a halt at a sheer cliff face. "Uh, what is this?" I asked.

"Up there, at the top." Stormfly pointed up over the edge. She pulled away from me, kneeling. "Here, I'll carry you." I clambored onto her back, her saddle pressing into my chest. I gripped it tightly anyway as she began scaling the cliff, awkwardly sticking my feet in the stirrups and wincing as it caught inbetween my beans. Not made for paw pads. After a minute of climbling and clinging, Stormfly elbowed me, whispering. "Look."

She had gotten just high enough to peer over the top of the cliff, leaving us face-to-floor with a decrepit old adit, a crumbling stone arched tunnel carving deep into the mountain. I gasped.

"The mine entrance!" I whisper-shouted. She shushed me. "The mine entrance." I repeated, actually whispering. "Stormfly I could kiss you right now."

"We haven't seen any cat activity here, but after what happened to you we're going to take a day to scope it out." Stormfly explained as she began descending, carefully watching where she stuck her feet.

I was vibrating excitedly the whole way down, shaking by the time she made it back to solid ground. She set me down carefully and I made good on my threat before she could stop kneeling, licking the side of her face.

"Stop that!" She laughed, wiping it off.

"When you aren't even going to carry me back to camp? I'm wounded, miss." I placed my hand over my heart, only to wince and huff a little as it was the injured arm. "I'm also actually wounded." She rolled her eyes, giving me her arm again and walking me back to our friends.

"You better actually rest, the rest of today and tomorrow. You need to be able to heal yourself. And you should be eating more, too!" Stormfly chatted as she brought me back to where I first woke up.

"Alright. Anything for my favorite pincushion." I leaned in to plant another lick on her cheek. She forcefully laid me down before I could.

"Good night, Pepper."

"It's the middle of the day!"

"Good night!"

Author's note:

Man this is a dialogue heavy chapter. I even had to cut some bits because of how long it got. Nothing important, just my beloved prose. Worlds smallest violin, please. Five-ever in my heart.

Also I got my second vaccine shot a week ago. One more and i'm like. Considerably less likely to die! Kind of important to me, you know. Can't beg shamelessly for reviews if i'm dead. Wink wink nudge nudge audible fake coughing Do It.

Woo someone get that dog some character development! You go do incredibly idiotic things in the name of friendship you funky short girl! She's gonna get herself killed. Pepper's never had close friends like this before though it's fine. She's fine. Everything's fine.

(She's not fine)

Therapy is a goddamn nescessity! -Carly