Ever since the Scauldron incident, I have had amazing luck fishing. Waking up and going out early in the morning, catching a big haul, and selling it to my customers. Looks like that pesky scauldron was the problem. I was feeling a bit more confident in life and I couldn't wait for dragon training as it was going to start again the next week. If I were being honest, however, I just wanted to see Signe… In action! Not just because I had a crush on her. While in my free time, I went into the arena and trained a bit with the wooden swords and spears they had on hand. Unfortunately, I never saw Signe come in, perhaps she came in at other times or went through some sort of ritual to prepare for another round of dragon training.

A few days before dragon training, I remembered that Hiccup had visited me, wanting to hang out, so I went to repay the favor. Maybe we could look for trolls, I had been missing a few left socks and was meaning to get them back.

I knocked on his door and instead of Hiccup, I was looking at the stoic chief who probably hadn't had his breakfast.

"Hello Chief Stoick, is Hiccup around?"

"He was, though not anymore. He told me he was going to the shop to work on something, but he never clarified."

"Alright, thanks Chief!" I smiled and as I began to walk off his porch, he called to me.

"Arne?"

"Yes, Chief?"

"That smile suits you, you should wear it more often,"

I kept my smile and happily walked to Gobber's shop, to my surprise, the peg-legged viking wasn't in there. I suppose he was out preparing for the training sessions.

"Hiccup?" I called out.

"Be with you in a minute!" He answered like I was just a customer. Almost immediately a grapple was flying to my face, barely giving me time to duck for cover.

"Hey, watch it!" I warned him.

"So sorry about that." He apologized as he walked up to the service table "Oh, hey Arne, finally taking in the sun's rays? What can come through anyway."

"Yeah maybe a bit- wait a minute, did you throw that!?"

"Not me, no, I had something else to throw it for me."

I gave him a blank stare "Huh?"

"Come in, I'll show you." He opened the door to the shop and gestured to the back. The whole contraption looked like a small catapult on a cart. "The calibrations are extremely sensitive, I must have touched it in the wrong way and it shot out a grapple."

"I see.. May want to point that in a different direction, away from your potential customer. You could knock someone out, what if that happens in a raid?"

"Hopefully it doesn't. Maybe you can help me work on it?"

"Sure, what do you need me to do?"

"First of all, pass me that wrench," he gestured to the wall of tools. "There's a screw that's gotten loose, that could be the problem with it."

As I passed him the tool I began to ask questions, away from the front of the catapult. Who knows if he put in an extra surprise there. "What do you plan on catching with that thing anyway?"

"Oh, pretty much anything, even a terrible terror. As long as it gets me a date, preferably Astrid."

"With all the wrong marks you made, you really think Astrid would be into you? I think even Snotlout would have a better shot." I joked.

"Oh yeah? and how's your progress with Signe?" He said as he tightened the screw.

I fell silent "...Touche, my friend…"

"I've seen that you had more luck selling fish, how'd that happen?"

"Oh Hiccup, let me tell you a tale… I chucked a spear at a scauldron eating all my fish on the lines. It dove back in the water and seemed to have left me alone."

"A scauldron? Maybe tell Signe that when you see her, it should impress her."

"Oh please, I don't think she knows I even exist. And how do you know it'll impress her?"

He shrugged, "Just a thought."

"Weren't some of those thoughts the reason why you have a bad reputation in the village?"

"Not all of them." He raised a finger but I rose an eyebrow as if to say Really? "Okay, maybe it was all of them…"

"Which was the last one? A giant pit that was supposed to keep a dragon in if they fell? You know they have wings, right? I think the only thing you caught was a stern talking from your dad after a viking fell in and broke his leg."

"Yeahhhh, I don't really know what I was thinking that day." He admitted.

"Anyways, when we're done with this, wanna go look for trolls?"

"Missing your socks again, eh?"

"Yup, I can't keep buying new ones. I'll run out of money at this rate!"

After an hour of tinkering, we went hunting for those stone creatures in the forest but nothing. I saw what looked like a glowing amulet hanging on a low branch, I was about to grab it but Hiccup called my attention and when I looked again, it was gone. Strange. We did find a large land indentation with a lake in it.

"Wanna catch a few more fish?" He joked.

"Eh, I think I have more than enough at home. It's really becoming a problem." I laughed.

"A good problem to have."

"Not when you have to live in the same house as them, I would smell like fish every day if I didn't take a bath."

Hiccup took a sniff "...Did you... take a bath today…?"

I raised a finger "Now that you mention it… I don't think I did. Might as well take advantage of the situation." I took off my shirt and dove right in. "Water's great, how about you join me?"

"Way ahead of you." He said as he cannon-balled right into the lake.

After having some fun for the rest of the day, we arrived at the village at nightfall. Needless to say, we were a bit cold since we were soaking wet.

"Oh, my dad's gonna kill me…"

"Why? Because you were gone the whole day or because you're wet?"

I slightly poked at him, water seeped out of his clothes.

"Both."

"Welp. Been nice knowing' ya bud."

He chuckled "What? You're not gonna come with me? At least then, not all of the yelling's gonna be on me."

"...Nah, I like to hear. By the way, are you going to dragon training?"

"That's what I'm planning to do, hopefully Astrid will at least notice me."

"Yeah… but it's gonna be hard to kill a dragon with those pen-looking arms."

"Oh, and you think you can do better?" He jokingly shoved me to the side.

"Hey, I fight fish pretty much every morning, some of those fish are pretty strong and would pull me into the water immediately if I let up even a second. That kind of stuff creates some sort of muscle."

"Think you could beat Snotlout at an arm wrestle?"

"...Maybe not that much muscle. I would fare much less at regular wrestling."

"Yeah, I think even Fishlegs might do a better job."

"But he doesn't seem like he would be a fighter."

"Looks can be deceiving. That's why you shouldn't jump to conclusions when it comes to my arms."

"I'll believe it when I see it." I chuckled.

"Oh, you'll see it just fine if you keep that up." He joked.

As we neared his house, we had to say our goodbyes.

"Well, if your dad doesn't kill you or blow your ears off, I might see you tomorrow."

"Alright, see ya later then." He waved and entered his house. As soon as I got home, I threw on a pair of dry clothes, hung my old ones to dry, and slammed into bed.

That very night, there was another dragon raid. I knew as I heard roars and shrieks of all kinds in my dreams, I opened my eyes and realized that those noises were real. I immediately jumped to my feet and went for my spear, only to realize that I already threw it at that one scauldron. It took me a while to muster my courage to grab my dad's sword.

From what I could tell according to the horizon, the sun was coming in a few minutes. As I rushed with the crowd I saw Gobber's shop with HIccup and Gobber arguing a bit… an awesome time to do that... Soon enough his catapult activated and knocked out a viking just trying to get some supplies, as I predicted.

I noticed that a house was on fire so immediately sprang into action and grabbed a nearby water bucket, threw some water over it and took out some minimal blazes only to have a gronckle set it back ablaze. "Oh come on!" I shouted.

"Behind you!" I heard someone warn me, I turned back and saw Signe running up to me and throwing a grapple at the culprit, immediately downing it.

"Nice throw," I said as I saw a deadly nadder landing near the house. "This place already had enough damage, I'm not letting you take a single step on it!" I shouted as I ran towards it, sword drawn.

The nadder noticed me and shot a barrage of deadly spikes, I managed to dodge them by jumping a few feet to right and continued to run towards it. "Your kind killed my parents, so I'm taking yours as repayment!" As soon as I got close enough, I took a stab at its side. It dodged and slapped me with its tail, sending me flying into the house's wall. When I opened my eyes in front of me, I saw the dragon eye-to-eye and as it loaded a shot, it spurted blood instead and looked to its right. I got out of its way and saw Signe who just threw an ax at its side. While it was distracted I took my chance and drove my dad's sword right under its underbelly and twisted it just for good measure. The nadder fell dead at my feet and I felt some sort of surge of power.

"What is this feeling?" I asked myself but I soon saw Signe walking towards me so I pulled out her weapon and handed it to her.

"First kill?" She asked.

"Y-yeah" I stuttered "H-h-h-how did you know?"

"When I killed my first dragon in the ring, I felt something. Not sure what it was, all I can describe it as is a boost of strength. Though maybe we shouldn't talk right now, dragon raid and everything?"

"Y-yeah, yeah. Talk later."

I heard Gobber's war cry as he ran out of his shop, leaving Hiccup to tend to it. Though as soon as he was gone, Hiccup ran out with his contraption. I didn't see anything else and when I looked to my side, Signe was gone, probably off fighting more dragons so I sheathed the blood-stained blade and ran to Hiccup.

"Shouldn't you be in the shop?" I asked.

"I'm a viking too, there will be consequences if they keep this much raw power contained." He replied.

Soon enough, we got to a secluded point where he fully dispatched his catapult and we waited for a dragon. A few seconds later, we heard a loud shriek. So loud that I didn't know a dragon could make that sound at such a high point. I looked everywhere but it was like trying to find a good mushroom in a patch of poisonous ones, it looked just like the background! Finally, a dragon shot some sort of blue fire at a nearby building, illuminating it for just a second.

"Fire!" I ordered.

Hiccup tried to lead and guess where the dragon was and fired his catapult, knocking him backward.

"You alright?" I said as I offered my hand.

As soon as he took it we heard the shriek of the dragon and something falling just off Raven's point. I was happy for my friend but I soon felt something breathing down my back "Um.. Hiccup!"

He couldn't hear me over his excited celebratory shout. "Did anybody see that?"

"Hiccup!" I shouted.

He turned to me "… except for you…"

I slowly turned around to see what he was referring to and it was a Monstrous Nightmare!

"Run!" I shouted. Yes, I forgot I had my sword. It was new and at that point, I hadn't formed muscle memory!

We ran into cover near a plaza with the dragon hot on our tail, Literally! He fired a few shots in our direction, missing us by a few feet. Hiccup hid behind a pole and I dove behind a wooden barrel. The nightmare went for Hiccup and fired a shot right where he was, the pole blocking its fire. As he was about to look over from his cover, I noticed the nightmare was about to grab him but before I could call out, the chief came to the rescue.

He grabbed the nightmare's nose and moved him in a way that made the dragon give us some distance in between us and them. Once the nightmare locked eyes with the chief, it tried to fire a stream of what looked like magma but it only spurted and stopped.

"You're all out!" the Chief whispered. From then, he gave it some skull-crushingly powerful kicks and punches and it flew away like a hatchling. I'm surprised it hadn't already died from his blows.

When it came to Hiccup, however, he only just stared, and, the funny thing about that pole, on the top it had a circular torch-like object. With nothing to support it, the object fell off the pole and rolled down several flights of stairs, hitting other vikings and destroying traps for dragons. It was a catastrophe.

Angrily, stoic grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to what was most likely his house. As Hiccup tried to defend himself, Stoic stopped and shut him up yelling: "STOP!"

"Just. Stop." Paused Stoic. "Every time you step outside, disaster falls! Can you not see that I have Bigger Problems? Winter is almost here and I have an entire village to feed!"

"Well between you and me, the village could use a little less feeding, doncha think?"

I couldn't help but feel attacked as I'm at least partly feeding the village. If they want to buy some fish, and if they have the money to cover the cost, then why not let them eat fish? The customer is always right, after all.

"This isn't a joke Hiccup!" Stoic clarified and sighed "Why can't you follow the simplest orders?"

"I-i-i- can't stop myself." Hiccup stammered "I see a dragon and I have to just- kill it. You know? It's who I am, dad."

I could see the disappointment flood the chief's face. "Many things Hiccup…"

You think he's a failure, don't you?

"But a dragon killer is not one of them…" He said something else in a quieter tone, that I couldn't quite catch. As Gobber smacked him in the back of the head and they headed toward the house, the rest of the people started to heckle Hiccup, Ruffnut starting with that disgusting gremlin-like laugh… At least Gobber defended him by pushing Snotlout back in line, though I think he was just in his way. Though, Signe wasn't with them. She was probably doing something more productive than joining their boo-crew.

I felt like joining Hiccup on his walk but considering how Gobber was with Snotloud, and I didn't feel like being pushed off a hill so I slowly walked back home and reflected on the morning.