15. Tomorrow

"No Toothless, stay," Hiccup said. After Storm left two days ago, Toothless had been more adamant about going everywhere with Hiccup, and that posed some problems. For one, Hiccup didn't want anyone to see him and ask questions, questions he wasn't ready to answer and without Storm here to either think of something or divert the conversation, he would surely give himself away.

When he finally got Toothless to stay within the forest he made his way to the arena. It was still early in the morning, the only people that were out were going about their work so no one saw him leave the forest. Hiccup was not looking forward to training. After the first proper training session Snotlout and the twins started whining and trying to skip their given tasks. It was annoying to have to listen to them.

Astrid, Fishlegs and, surprisingly, Eret were taking his training seriously at least. While his exercises were condensed to lifting heavy objects, running around with heavy objects and squatting for an extended time, they did help with actual dragon riding and fighting on dragon. Having stamina was essential to do those things efficiently and the other three didn't seem to get that.

He was happy that Storm would return soon with the dragons, she had more experience in getting other do what she told them to. Having taught Hiccup how to fight she had more than enough patience to teach those muttonheads. He felt a bit bad about looking forward to unloading them on her, but he knew that from the two of them she was more equipped to train them.

He reached the academy and went about getting everything ready for that day's task. For the twins and Snotlout still running around with heavy sacks and for the other three moving on to accuracy training. He set up targets that were left in the academy by his request and went to check the weapons that were on the weapon rack.

The first to show up to training was Eret, next Fishlegs and Astrid strolled in talking about something, the twins were right after them and Snotlout was last. He told them what they were going to do that day and his words were met with moans form the three usual suspects. He groaned, annoyed that the idiots could deal with three days of training from him. As someone who was bullied by the three he couldn't ignore the irony of them whining at manual labor when his younger years were spent getting mocked for being weak.

He told them to go do their work and then turned to the three that were left. He told them to line up in front of the targets and gave each of them a weapon they weren't familiar with. He gave Astrid a dagger, Eret an axe and he let Fishlegs to choose for himself, he chose a bow. Their task was to get five consecutive bullseyes and only then would they move one to other tasks.

The day went like that. The three running were good to starts accuracy training the next day, Astrid and Eret were half way to getting enough bullseyes. Soon the evening rolled around and the training was over, Hiccup was excited to get back to the camp. Night was coming fast and with it Storm should be coming too, he had already decided to ride out to meet her, wanting to see her in the flesh. The moment he was out of the village he mounted Toothless and rode off.

After less than an hour of flying he saw a group of dragons in the sky being led by Shadow. He sped up and reached them in minutes.

"Storm!" he yelped, excited to see a familiar face again.

"Chief!" she yelled back, waving to him happily, a huge grin in her face. Hiccup observed the dragons trailing after her, he saw the same ones from the academy and a Rumblehorn he recognized from their Hideout.

"How was training?" She asked. He rolled his eyes.

"Exhausting, the twins and Snotlout are being idiots and I desperately want you to whip them into shape."

"Really?" she laughed, "Alright, I'll do my best to break them in. After all, we can't have idiots on dragons."

He laughed with her, knowing that the three wouldn't last with their attitudes. They spent the time to the island just talking about what happened when they were separated, happy to be in each other's presence again. Tomorrow the group would be introduced to the dragons, tomorrow they would start forming the life changing friendships and the real fun would begin.