Elsa was beginning to wake up, not remembering when she fell asleep and looked around to see most of the others are already awake. Elsa groaned as she began to get up and looked to see they were sleeping in the middle of a forest.
"Good morning, Your Majesty." Jack said with a bow still holding his staff.
"I can't believe it!" Rapunzel cheered as they turned to see the giddy teenager jumping around. "We're actually out here, on an adventure!"
Elsa then looked down and saw a small rock with berries on it in front of her. "What's this?"
Hiccup was also already up and about, mapping out the area they were in with Toothless still resting nearby. "Breakfast." He shrugged as he looked and nodded towards Rapunzel. "Rapunzel was actually the one who put it together. I doubt she or I got a wink of sleep last night."
"Where...where are we?" Anna asks as she looked around.
"I don't know. Rapunzel woke me up, seems she was the only one conscious when we arrived." Hiccup admits as he gestured over to the over jittery girl. "I have a feeling this is her first time outside in a while."
"We should be careful out here." Elsa informed them as she sat up.
"Sure, because when hasn't nature and fresh air killed anyone?" Hiccup asks her sarcastically, knowing what he's doing as he's been alone for a long time. "Don't worry about the berries, I've made sure they aren't poisonous or anything."
"How could you tell?" Elsa asks him.
"I've been on my own for years, you learn to tell the difference." Hiccup answered with a shrug.
Jack looked at his leaf and took a few berries and tossed one, causing it to bounce off of the middle of Anna's head.
"Bullseye!" Jack cheered with a laugh.
"Is everything a joke with you?" Elsa asks Jack.
"Only if it's funny." Jack shrugged as he sat down on a boulder.
"Can we ride on Toothless?!" Rapunzel asks as she sped up to the group, scaring the dragon awake at the thought of carrying all of these people on his back.
"Uh...I don't think he's gonna be able to carry all of us." Hiccup said as he looked towards his dragon who let out a quiet sigh of relief.
Jack then dropped off the rock and walked towards the two. "So what's the story with you and that dragon?" He then noticed the damaged tail and makeshift fin on Toothless. "Did you rescue him from whoever hurt him like that?"
Hiccup then looked hesitant to answer that, but it seemed to be best if he was honest with these people if they were going to work together. "Not exactly. I was actually the one who shot him down. It was...when I was trying to prove myself to my village. We're in the dragon killing business, and well...I was the worst at doing that, and just ended up befriending one." He then walked over to Toothless as he started bouncing around and Hiccup started scratching his head. "But it's all right. Right, bud? You couldn't save all of me, could you? You just had to make it even! So peg leg!" He gestured down to his leg as he raised it up to show it to them.
Toothless then dived in between his rider and shot him into the air where he landed on the dragon's back. Hiccup then scratched the dragons head again as Toothless tried to lick his rider.
All them watched their interaction with amazement as most of them grew up with stories of how deadly and dangerous dragons are. And here one was, and it was acting like a happy puppy if anything.
Jack walked up and scratched the dragon's neck himself with a sigh. "I wish I had a friend like that."
"Well, you've got all of us now." Hiccup told him as Toothless sniffed Jack.
"Things never work out that simple for me." Jack said as he pushed the dragon off of him.
Hiccup looked sorry for Jack as it seems he also had a life similar to Hiccup's. A life of being alone, isolated from everyone. A life with nobody wanting you around, but just the fact nobody could see him for who knows how long.
"Should we get going?" Rapunzel asks as she keeps bouncing around, seriously jittery.
"She's right." Elsa agreed as she got up and wiped the dust off of her dress. "We should get going."
"You heard her!" Anna cheered as she has just as much energy as Rapunzel and it's almost as if they're leading the way now.
"Where are we going exactly?" Jack asks them.
Hiccup then opened up part of his suit to reveal a compass and looked around the area, taking a notice of the environment. "We head West; we should find something out here."
"What makes you think that?" Jack asks him.
"I recognize the area we're in." Hiccup said and closed his compass. "Just follow the sun, we should hit a village named Seastresm." He then started leading them off into the woods.
"Seastream? Strange name." Jack muttered to himself.
Back with the villians, they were constantly getting more dragons for Drago's ever growing army in order to prepare for the fight coming.
"So my daughter has joined a cause that's supposed to defeat you?" Gothel asks Pitch after just meeting the Dragon Conqueror.
"She doesn't exactly realize that, yet." Pitch explains to her. "Only that they're meant to defeat me."
"She won't be a problem. She doesn't know how to fight. I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't last a day out there on her own." Gothel promises Pitch.
"It's not her I'm afraid of." Pitch assured her and created the members of the team out of his shadow dust. "It's those that Madame Web has chosen as her fellow Guardians.
"What makes all of them so special?" Drago questioned.
"I'd like to find that out." Pitch agreed. "Make sure to keep getting everything is prepared to move out when I say so." He then started to hover out of the room, confusing the two on where he's going.
"And you're going where, exactly?" Gothel asked as she got up from the stone table.
"To find out all I can about these...Guardians." Pitch explains and vanishes into the shadows.
"I hate when he does that." Drago snarled at Gothel.
Gothel just chuckled and looked down at her hands and noticed that her skin was starting to show her true age.
Back with the said team, they were strolling through the woods for hours that it began to become sundown, none of the five have any idea what to do or say to each other as they kept strolling and Jack was becoming a bit agitated with how long it's taking.
"Why are we just wandering through the forest?" Jack asks as he swings his staff over his shoulders. "This is taking ages!"
"We can't all fly, you do realize that, right?" Elsa asked him.
"Well, maybe you do, and you just don't know it yet." Jack shrugged, recognizing how she had similar powers to him with the way she was dressed in ice and the snow white hair. "You ever come into life with all your memories gone and a stick nearby?"
"What? No." Elsa stated in confusion before becoming curious how he gained his powers. "What exactly happened to you that caused you to have powers like this?"
"Uh..." Jack stops and does his best to remember. "Honestly, it just feels like I was created this way."
"Created?" Rapunzel asked in confusion.
"I...the first thing I remember is darkness." Jack confessed with a look of sadness. "Darkness. It was dark, and it was cold. And I was scared. But then I saw the moon. Then it seemed to chase the darkness away. And then, I wasn't scared anymore." He told them, feeling how amazed it is to finally tell people this. "Why I was there and what I was meant to do, that I never found out. Maybe this is the reason."
Hiccup looked at him, happy someone else might be figuring out that this what they were meant to be before stopping in the middle of a clearing and pulling out a map that he's been marking during the walk.
"We've been walking forever." Anna moaned as her feet were beginning to hurt. "How much further?"
"We are almost there." Hiccup answered as he took out a folded up paper and was able to map their location and knows for a fact there's a small village nearby that he knows. "Once we get there, we need to start coming up with a plan. Learn anything we can about Pitch Black. Like what he can do and where he resides."
"Yeah, right." Jack scoffed as he leaped onto a tree branch and strolled back and forth on it. "So we can go knock on his door and do what? Say: Hey, you Pitch Black? Great. We're here to kill you!"
"What if...we just asked him nicely to stop?" Rapunzel asked sheepishly, causing all of them, including Pascal and Toothless, to look at her just very confused.
"She serious?" Jack asks, not able to tell if she was or not.
"I think she is." Elsa confirmed.
"Okay, so how about we just camp here for the night?" Hiccup asks them, feeling they could all use a break from the walk. "We can't do anything for tonight, Jack why don't you give us a minute of no complaining and fly around the area to check for anything dangerous nearby?" He asked as he turned to face the ice boy who smiled at the idea.
"Gladly." Jack stated and blasted off into the air. "Whoo!"
"Boy, I'd never be able to stomach that." Anna commented and noticed Hiccup writing something on a piece of paper and attaching it to a Terrible Terror. "What are you doing?"
"I call it Terror Mail." Hiccup explains as he let the dragon go and it flew off into the night. "It's gonna deliver a message to a few friends of mine to see if they can find anything about Pitch Black."
"So, you have friends out here?" Elsa asks as she looked down at Hiccup's map.
"Yeah, they've been like a family to me." Hiccup told her as he fixed the map. "Ever since I...never mind." He had a quick flashback to the day he decided to leave berk in his head but decided that's not the best time now.
"How long have you been alone out here?" Elsa was curious to know.
"Ph." Hiccup scoffed as he began to wonder that himself. "Oh, I don't even really remember anymore." He confessed as he held out another piece of paper to Toothless for him to lick and Hiccup to place it on the map. "Maybe five, ten years. I don't really keep track."
"Sounds lonely." Elsa commented, feeling a little resemblance between the two of them.
Before the two could talk any further, Jack flew down and used his staff to create a slide to reach the two of them. "We've got nothing anywhere nearby. We should be safe."
"Great. Thanks, Jack." Hiccup told him sincerely as he folded up the map and saw it was going to get dark soon. "Okay, me and Jack will go out to collect some firewood, you three mind staying and setting up the site?"
"Sure." Anna guesses.
"Wait, sorry, who put you in charge again?" Jack asks him.
"You wanna try to lead?" Hiccup asked him with a raised brow. "You seem more of a jokester than a leader."
Jack raised his hands in surrender and backed off. "Hey, I wasn't asking to take leadership. Just wanted to throw it out there."
"I'm pretty sure I'm the only one here who has any real experience out here." Hiccup stated and gestured to Rapunzel. "She seemed to have been inside for most of her life if I had to guess."
"Uh...yeah." Rapunzel confesses nervously as she began to feel flushed and crossed her hands behind her.
"And those two don't really seem like they've been in any scenarios like this before." Hiccup nodded towards Elsa and Anna. "So I feel like me living out here for so long, it only makes sense that I lead."
"Fair enough." Jack shrugged and followed Hiccup into the forest.
"Is it just me, or could they pose as brothers?" Anna asked Elsa.
"Yeah, I can see a bit of resemblance between them." Elsa agreed as they heard groaning and they both turned to Rapunzel who was pushing a log over towards the clearing.
"Can I get a little help over here?" Rapunzel asked the sisters who came over to give her a hand.
Jack was taking large steps around the area while Hiccup and Toothless were looking around. "So...you don't remember who you were?" He asked Jack.
"Nope. All I remember is waking up in a frozen lake, nothing from beforehand." Jack said as he slid his staff on a dead tree bark, causing ice to grow across it.
"Must be hard." Hiccup said as he took his sword out and started to cut through the bark of one of the trees for firewood. "Not remembering who you were."
"Yeah, it was." Jack said as he placed his staff around his hands and behind his back while walking on the log he was freezing. "But after some time, I decided to just forget about it. But it does still bother me from time to time..."
Hiccup picked up the logs while Toothless picked up a few in his mouth. "Who knows? Maybe you'll find something on this adventure."
Jack chuckled as he dropped down to squinting his knees and holding his stick. "Heh...I've been searching for answers longer than I can remember. There's nothing to find." He stated as he began to help pick up some logs for the fire.
A while later, they were all sitting around a campfire, Hiccup cooking some fish he and Toothless caught from a nearby stream.
They were all sitting in a circle, all a little but distant from one another, still not sure if they trust one another or not. But it seemed that Toothless and Pascal don't care as they were resting off to the side of the group.
"So...who wants to share their story first?" Rapunzel suddenly asked out of the blue.
"I'm sorry?" Elsa asked her, not following what she's asking.
"Well, I have a feeling that none of us really trust anyone here, so maybe if we got to know each other, we would actually begin to trust each other. Especially if we're supposed to be a team." Rapunzel explains with a shrug of her shoulders.
"Eh, I'm not really the sharing type." Jack confessed as he lied down on a log. "Besides, I told you guys how I came to be. How about you, coldie-locks and sister?" He asks, looking towards Elsa and Anna. "Why were you guys chosen?"
Elsa looked towards Anna who gave a small shrug as a response. She then quickly put her hands together and formed a trick she hasn't done since that fateful day years ago. Forming a small ball of snow in her hands, Elsa shot it up into the air, causing it to explode and it started to snow around them.
"Whoa..." Hiccup was the first to say something as he wasn't expecting that.
"I have the ability to control snow and ice." Elsa explained to them. "Even able to create living things out of it."
"Whoa! Wait, I'm sorry what?" Jack asked her in shock. "Bring them to life?"
"Yeah, she even accidentally brought our childhood snowman Olaf to life." Anna added.
Hiccup removed his glove and raised his hand out to touch the snow as it fell and was amazed by the magic she had, which seemed awfully similar to Jack.
"So, how about you?" Jack asks Hiccup as he got up and walked next to Hiccup. "What's your whole story?"
Hiccup sighed and knew it was gonna come to that sooner or later. "I'm from Berk. It's twelve days north of hopeless and a few degrees south of freezing to death. It's located solidly on the meridian of misery. My...once home, in a word study. It's been there for seven generations, but every building is always new. We have fishing, hunting and a char I've view of the sunset." He then sighed as he rubbed his head. "The only problem was the pests. Most places have mice or mosquitoes...we had dragons."
"So dragons are your enemies?" Anna asked.
"Yeah, been fighting them for as long as Berk's been there." Hiccup confirmed.
"Why didn't you just leave to a place without dragons?" Rapunzel was curious to know.
"We're Vikings. We have stubbornness issues." Hiccup explains to them. "Also because of my father. It was told when my father was a baby, he popped a dragon's head clean off its shoulders. Do I believe it? Yes, I do." He then turned to face Toothless and scratched his head. "I was kept inside, as I always made a mess when I tried to help make a name for myself by taking down a dragon. One day I was able to actually shoot something, and that is how me and Toothless met."
"Why did you name him Toothless?" Elsa asked.
"When I was trying to gain his trust, I was trying to feed him some fish, and I learned he had retractable teeth." Hiccup explained to her. "But before then, I saw I shot him down. And when I was ready to actually kill him...I couldn't do it." He then looked down, ashamed of himself and scratched his own head. "I looked and I saw he was scared...afraid of what I was going to do. It was like I looked into his eyes and saw myself. So I decided to set him free, and that's when I saw the crash caused him to lose his tail fin. Seeing as I was the one to cause him to lose his flight, I should be the one to give it back."
"So how'd you end up by yourself?" Jack asked curiously.
"After some time, I saw that I couldn't keep Toothless at Berk as someone was bound to find him eventually. So I decided it was best that we left." Hiccup explained to them. "It was the greatest decision I made."
"But don't you worry about your mom or dad?" Rapunzel asked. "I mean, I know my mother is going to be gone for a while, so she won't notice I'm gone to be worried."
Hiccup then looked down sadly at the reminder of his parents. "My...my mom was killed by dragons when I was a baby. And my dad, heh, he didn't care about me until I was becoming someone I wasn't. I couldn't keep lying to him or myself, one of the other reasons I left."
"I'm sorry to hear that." Elsa apologized. "Our parents also died when we were younger."
"I...I don't remember my folks." Jack said with a sad look on his face as he took a seat next to Hiccup.
Rapunzel then looked sorry for her teammates as even though she doesn't even know if she ever had a father, she would feel devastated if she lost her mother.
"So, what's your story?" Jack snapped everyone out of their sad faces and looked to Rapunzel.
Rapunzel became flushed, no idea if she should tell them about her hair just yet, considering her mother told her nobody could know. "Well...I-I've been inside my tower for most of my life."
"How long?" Jack asked.
"Forever, I guess." Rapunzel shrugged. "I've never left my tower before, so when I was called here, I thought maybe I should jump at the opportunity." She looked up to the sky and smiled. "See the outside world, and maybe even learn a little about myself."
After some time, everyone got their backstories out and everyone was surprised at how different their backgrounds were from one another. So now they've gotten to the point where they're telling random stories about their lives, which consist of stories from either Jack or Hiccup since they were the only two with actual stories besides Elsa and Anna's "Great Thaw" story.
"So there I was, this huge yeti coming right at me," Jack said as he strolled back and forth on his log, spinning around once he reached the end, everyone listening to his story with smiles on their faces, "so I quickly created a snowball, and threw it at his face and blinded him..."
"And then I learned Toothless had some sorta echo location that he can use to see in the dark." Hiccup stated as he told the story of when he first encountered a new species of dragon he called the Death Song. "Once we were in deep enough, we flew out of the cave, leaving that dragon confused, his song bouncing off the walls for all eternity."
After some time, Hiccup looked and saw the fire was dying and they were running out of firewood.
"What do you say we call it a night?" Hiccup asked the group and pulled out a few blankets from his saddle.
"Where'd you get those?" Jack asked.
"A few gifts from my travels." Hiccup shrugged and handed one to Jack, who passed it along to Rapunzel, Elsa, and Anna. "We should be able to reach Seastream by noon tomorrow."
"Sounds great." Rapunzel said as she took her blanket and went to lie down.
"Don't you need one?" Elsa asked Hiccup, noticing he was taking a seat without one as she took hers.
"Nah, I've got him." Hiccup gestured to his dragon who immediately wrapped a wing around its rider. "This softie's overprotective." He shrugged, earning him a smack from the said softie, as well as laughter from everyone. "Hey!" He cried at the dragon who only belly laughed and lied down. "Good night." He told everyone else and went to sleep.
"Good night." Anna says as she wrapped herself up and lied down near her sister who did the same followed by Rapunzel lying down near the fire for extra warmth.
Jack chuckled at the sisters and was about to make a place to sleep when he heard something.
"Jack?" A childish voice called out for him, causing Jack to quickly turn around and look off into the forest.
Jack looked around for the voice again, trying to figure out why he recognized it and was about to walk off into the forest when Rapunzel saw him.
"Jack?" Rapunzel called out, causing him to stop and turn to face her. "Where you going?"
"I..." Jack looked back to the forest and knew he shouldn't wander off from the group. "It's nothing. Thought I heard something." He then walked back to them and took a sit down and drifted off to sleep.