25. Quiet hour

"You think Snotlout's going to show up today?"

"Not likely."

"Why do you say that? He is very stubborn, wouldn't put it past him to march in and demand to be let into training again."

"Oy, Chief, the troll had tears in his eyes. You were behind him and didn't see it, but I honestly thought he was going to soil himself, from fear or from pain I don't know."

"Fuck," he sighed, "I never wanted to be like Snotlout, but I became just like him. I hurt someone just because I could…"

"Yeah, no. Stop." Storm commanded, stopping Hiccup in his tracks. It was just before sunrise, it was still dark out, but the dejected expression on his face was unmistakable. She stood in front of him and made him look into her eyes. "You are nothing like him. You had a good reason to do what you did, he was lucky it was you who restrained him, because I wouldn't have been as nice as you were."

"You are very violent," he joked with a small smile on his face. They continued their way to the academy, Storm scoffed.

"You want to say that again?" She asked in mock anger. He laughed, knowing that she was just joking, he turned to her as they entered the academy.

"You are violent." He slowly said, putting emphasis on every word. Her eyes widened, she frowned, keeping up the act of being angry.

"Do you want to run laps around the arena until your prosthetic breaks?" She demanded, jabbing a finger into his chest. "You know I can make you do that."

"Yeah, I know," he answered, a mocking smirk on his lips. He crossed his arms, walking away from her. He looked back, throwing her the same smirk. "Have you thanked Eret for that ability, by any chance?"

"You little shit!" she yelped dropping her act, her mouth open in surprise. She wasted no time and started to run at him, he saw her coming and started to run away from her. Their laughter filled the early morning air as Storm chased him around the arena. She finally managed to jump on his back, bringing them both down to the ground. They wrestled for a while, Storm coming out on top. She had Hiccup in a choke hold and only released him when he tapped out.

She fell backwards, they laid there giggling like little kids, catching their breath. Hiccup rose first, he felt weak from all of the laughter, but managed to stand up. He was helping Storm up when the gang (minus Snotlout) entered the arena.

"Wow, you look like shit," Storm couldn't help but exclaim, Hiccup silently nodded, agreeing whole heartedly with her statement. Usually the group was used to waking early, but now they looked like they hadn't had any sleep. They were continuously yawning and stretching, the bags under all of their eyes didn't help their overall appearance.

"Was there a part we weren't invited to last night?" Hiccup joked. He saw them glare in his direction, he held up his hands in surrender.

"We didn't get a lot of sleep last night," mumbled Tuffnut.

"I didn't notice," whispered Hiccup rolling his eyes, Storm heard him and stifled a laugh behind her hand. The pair let the gang have ten minutes of peace so that they could wake up a bit more. After that Hiccup gathered their attention and started to explain their plan for the day, that mostly consisted of the simple plan to go and fly some more.

"But considering you look like you're ready to drop. We will sacrifice an hour of the morning to answer any question you may have from yesterday's training."

Somehow the group found themselves sitting on the ground in the same way as the day before. The twins were leaning against one another and were out like a light as soon as they reached the ground, the others were no better. Storm clapped her hands to get their attention, they barely registered it and the twins were dead to the world.

"Okay, we can work with this, right?" Storm asked Hiccup. He mutely nodded, yet looked unconvinced.

"Do you have questions?" Hiccup questioned after a few minutes of silence from the trainees. Tire grunts were his answer. He rolled his eyes, shuffled a bit closer to the middle of the circle and whispered in a dangerous tone. "If you don't ask questions, you will be running laps around the arena until the hour is up. This is training not nap time. Okay?" He gave a small nod, a smug smile on his face.

The awake ones if the group sat straighter at the threat. Hiccup shared a look with Storm as the gang tried to think of something to ask. The pair tried not to laugh at the panicked expressions on their students faces. Suddenly Astrid's eyes lit up and she pointed her finger at the pair.

"I do have a question! It's not training related but…" she cringed, not knowing if the 'demons' would be okay with her asking something unrelated to the lesson. They simultaneously gestured for her to go on, in the creepy way that they sometimes did things. She chucked it up to them living their entire lives together and picking up each other's mannerisms. "The Chief asked for a meeting with you two."

"That's not even a question." They said at the same time, in the same sarcastic tone. They shared a look, before Storm addressed Astrid.

"What time is he thinking?"

"So you'll do it?"

"Yeah, this thing we have in Berk is like a very fragile temporary alliance. We have to keep both sides happy, and we do have somethings to talk about with him."

"He didn't specify a time, just asked me to ask you," Astrid said, gesturing to both of them. Hiccup swept his calculating gaze across the gang, he then nodded to himself.

"Our requests can wait for a bit, ask him if it's convenient for him to have the meeting in three days, in the evening after practice, his preferred place of course," he said giving her a casual smirk. Astrid nodded at him and nudged Fishlegs asking him for a piece of parchment to write everything down.

"Why do they get to sleep?" Asked Eret as he pointed to the twins with a grumpy look on his face. A mischievous smirk appeared on Storm's lips.

"Don't worry about them, I'll wake them up later."

Storm's answer seemed to satisfy Eret. The look on her face helped him understand that she was letting them sleep not from the good of her hearth, she had something planned and he would rather stay out of it. The gang were more awake now, but they still had time to just relax, seeing that no one was asking anything Storm rolled her eyes, she knew that she could make them run laps, but just sitting down was far more appealing for her. She sparred a glance at Hiccup, who was also content to be just relaxing.

"Just the one 'question'?" Hiccup asked the gang, he noticed Storm eyeing them all and knew that his threat of making them run laps was void, he just didn't want to sit in silence because then he would become sleepy, and with their plan of going flying that was not ideal. "So why don't we ask you something? You cool with that?"

He got affirmative responses from all of them, even Fishlegs, who looked like he wanted to ask something from the very beginning, but couldn't bring himself to do so. No matter, he would either forget his question, figure the answer out himself or grow some balls and finally ask them.

"So," started Storm, "I've noticed that my dearest brother here, has been dubbed 'Dragon boy' by you lot. And I'm sitting here, just wondering if I didn't leave a good enough impression to get a nickname. To tell the truth I'm a little hurt by the fact." She pulled of the hurt look so well, that Hiccup almost believed it. He knew that she was messing with the group and he loved the innocent fun that was watching the various emotions cross their faces.

"Ah, well, honestly…" Fishlegs tried to say something, but he was clearly panicking and the other two awake ones were trying to have a conversation just with their eyes, and they were failing, miserably. Storm couldn't contain her laughter anymore and Hiccup joined her after seeing the gangs shocked faces when she started laughing.

"Let's start with this," she said between her barely contained laughter. "What do you call us when you're speaking about us?"

"The… 'demons'?" Astrid's statement came out as a question. The pair shared a satisfied look, they liked that their reputation exceeded them.

"I know we told you that you could call us 'Whatever you like', but we expected you to at least ask us our names!" Hiccup said with laughter in his voice, he raised his hand stopping Eret from doing just that. "No, no that is off the table now. I've been nicknamed 'Dragon boy', that stays, you cannot change that, but my sister doesn't have a nickname, so…"

"Guess." Storm finished for him. The first one to guess was Fishlegs.

"Oleander?"

"Nope."

"Helga?" came Astrid's guess.

"Nah."

"Sif?" guessed Fishlegs again.

"No." They went at this for a good ten minutes, with no luck until Eret suggested a name that made the pair laugh again.

"Valkyrie?" A barely there blush made its way on Storm's cheeks, only Hiccup noticed it, his smile widened. The nickname was given to her by a man they had met on their travels, the man knew her real name, but said: 'A beauty such as this deserves no lesser title that Valkyrie!' And the memory still made her blush.

"Points to you, because that was a nickname she was once given," he said, making Storm hit him in the shoulder so he would shut up.

"Shadow?" Eret tried again.

"That's my dragon's name!" she chuckled, the smiles on the pair's faces started to look like they belonged there.

"Your name is not Astrid, is it?" cautiously asked Astrid.

"Ah, the name meaning beautiful and loved. While the name doesn't lie and describes the person perfectly, that's not her name." Hiccup answered looking directly into Astrid's eyes, making her blush. Storm eyed him from the side lines, determined to remember this interaction for later purposes of making him regret bringing up the 'Valkyrie' thing.

"I know I have heard your name before!" exclaimed Eret, he looked desperate to figure it out. Which was really funny to the pair, for some reason.

"Yeah, you have. Now remember it," Storm teased him. She then looked up to the sky and sighed. "Okay, guessing's done for the day, we need to get to training. Don't wake them up."

Her words stopped Fishlegs in his tracks as he was about to shake the twins awake as they miraculously stayed sleeping through all of the noise. Storm picked up her helmet from the ground, where they ended up.

"Put your helmet on Chief, this might attract people," she told Hiccup, who did just that. "Astrid, mind helping me?"

"What with?" the viking asked with a puzzled look on her face. Storm went to her and whispered something in her ear, making Astrid's face light up with a mischievous smile. "Sure, I'd be happy to help!"

"We'll be right back boys, don't leave and don't wake them," Storm called to them. She and Astrid made their way out of the arena, giggling along the way.

"Mischief?" Eret questioned a confused Hiccup. Hiccup raised an eyebrow in question before it dawned on him, he answered with a laugh.

"No, that's not her name. Sure fits her though."