26. Laughter
The girls came back fairly quickly, both were carrying a bucket of freezing water each. Storm was right, hauling buckets of freezing water peaked some people's interest and a small group of viking were following the two. Storm tilted her head in question at Astrid, who mouthed back 'I got this.' Hiccup was confused as to what the twins had done to deserve that fate, he didn't have time to ask, as the girls stood at either side of the sleeping pair and at the quiet count to three poured the water straight on the twins' heads.
They leaped up with a shriek, much to the amusement of everybody that witnessed the act. The soaking wet twins were very confused, to say the least. Ruffnut frantically looked around, and when she saw the two girls laughing while still holding the buckets, she knew she found the culprits.
"YOU!" She yelled gaining the attention of her equally soaked brother. "WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?"
"Payback for Loki day!" Astrid answered between her laughter. Ruffnut shook some of the water off, with a frown she accepted the answer, remembering how on Loki day she and Tuffnut had managed to trip her into a barrel of fish.
"WHAT ABOUT YOU?!" Tuffnut yelled pointing at Storm, who had tears in her eyes from all of her laughing. Tuffnut shook his head like a wet dog while still glaring at her. Storm took a few second to stop chuckling, she took a calming breath and schooled her features, not that it mattered with the helmet on.
"This is how you scare someone awake Tuff," her lips stretched into a smug smile. "Honestly, you two sleep like dead, I wasn't sure it was going to work!"
The twins shocked faces almost made her start laughing again, but she managed to hold herself together. She didn't know it, but she gained respect from them, not that they were ever going to tell her that, and they were defiantly getting her back for this. Respect or not, Ruffnut and Tuffnut were the best pranksters around.
"Okay! Show's over people, we have work to do and so do you!" Hiccup's voice carried to the gathered crowd, he didn't know if the village knew that the trainees had dragons, but regardless he knew that in the early stages of the bond the less people were around to distract the batter. The vikings left with minimal grumbles.
"Come on, you'll dry off on the way to the clearing."
Storm thanked Astrid for her help again and let her lead the group to the clearing. Hiccup and Storm naturally fell behind the group. They lifted their helmets once they were deeper into the woods, Storm noticed that Hiccup was limping and looked at him in concern.
"It's nothing," he reassured her, "a nail is coming a bit loose I think."
"No pain?" she asked seriously.
"No, and I'll look at it tonight. I do not what to repeat the last time," he snorted at the memory of the, at the time, harrowing experience.
When the outcasts had first heard of the pair they had been young, didn't even have the title of 'Dragon demons', but they had started going around islands, helping dragons as much as they could. They didn't have a lot to their name and were just surviving. They had been having problems for a while when Storm had fallen ill, one of the problems that they were ignoring was Hiccup's limping, but considering it didn't hurt he never looked closer at his leg or prosthetic. They had found a friendly healer that told them the cure for Storm's illness was found on Outcast island, Hiccup hadn't wasted any time and took off as soon as he knew what he was looking for, leaving Storm to the care of the healer.
He regretted never looking into his limping as soon as his prosthetic had, basically, fallen apart while riding Toothless. They had crash landed on Outcast island, Toothless' flying gear was intact, but without a leg Hiccup couldn't operate the system, so they were stuck. Until some outcast had found them, Hiccup ordered Toothless to run and the dragon did so, going against his instincts to protect Hiccup until his death. Toothless knew that Hiccup could handle himself at this point, and having one of them free gave them a better chance of escaping later on.
So Hiccup was presented to Alvin as the dragon conqueror, the outcasts that found him freely telling everyone how he had scared away a never before seen dragon. Alvin, in his own truly dumb fashion, had ordered Hiccup to banish all of the dragons off of Outcast island, and promised Hiccup the payment of Toothless' head. Ignoring the utter disgust Hiccup agreed, with a very small cost beforehand, considering he could not walk without a leg, he requested the use of the outcasts forge.
Alvin had agreed, but sent a pair if guards with him. He didn't sleep through the night and build himself a good enough leg from memory. He made sure to sabotage the forge, and maybe steel some of the money he found while looking for equipment, and slipped out of the forge, the guards had fallen asleep long ago. Hiccup found Toothless near the outcast village, they managed to evade the search parties sent out to find the Night Fury, got the needed ingredients and didn't look back as they left near dawn.
They got back to Storm and she was fine after taking the medicine, obviously. Hiccup had taken the money he borrowed and managed to buy everything he needed to build back his prosthetic and build a matching one for Storm, who at the time had a Gobber-esque peg leg. After that Hiccup never ignored any change in his prosthetic and never let Storm ignore her own either. But something else had come from this too, after Hiccup felt guilty for borrowing, Outcast island had become the first and most dangerous place for their spy-and-goodbye project. They spent months on Outcast island, learning everything about the dragons there and slowly driving them to safer places.
Storm laughed with Hiccup, remembering how he had told the story and painted Alvin as a complete idiot. She suddenly stopped and gave a deep irritated sigh before groaning.
"Shit," she drawled out. "We need a day off." Hiccup blinked a few times before the source of her irritation dawned on him.
"Oh fuck," he cursed. "We've been laughing almost all the time since we woke up! I just love it when the sleep deprivation catches up to us." He said in the most sarcastic tone he could muster up.
"We do this as fast as we possibly can, then go to sleep," Storm said as they reached the clearing. They had fallen behind the group a lot, as the dragons were already saddled by their trainees. Hookfang was without his saddle, so Hiccup went to saddle him and check the other's work on their own dragons while Storm told everyone the plan for the lesson.
"Today we will be doing some easy flying maneuvers because you're still getting used to your dragons, you will help your dragons to gather food for themselves, which means getting wet and getting fish. Word of advice: don't try to chase the fish too deep, because the deeper you go the colder it gets, while the sun has warmed the top of the water somewhat."
"You'll be flying on your own," Hiccup said coming up behind Storm, having checked on every saddle. "We'll be flying on Hookfang. After you're in the air above the ocean, get as close to the water as you can, we won't be behind you and your dragons are not going to be as alert as they would be if a danger is present, so if you accidently fall, you won't get injured from a smaller distance."
"Saddle up and take off!"
The group managed to take off without problem, they soon reached the ocean. Storm was behind Hiccup on Hookfang, so she had the job of giving the gang tasks. First, she ordered the gang to fly in a line formation, the hard part for them was figuring out the order the dragons went in. The first mistake was letting Meatlug fly in front of Barf and Belch, Meatlug could barely keep up with Skullcrusher who was second in the line and the twins got bored going at the slowest pace, so they decided to dunk themselves in the ocean, repeatedly, which while not actually causing harm, was distracting.
Hiccup, with the help of Hookfang's roar, managed to get their attention, and Storm managed to get them in line, literally. Next came the sea stacks. From Hiccup's personal experience, flying through sea stacks, at the fastest pace you can manage and trying not to die helped to get comfortable on dragon back like nothing else could. The trainees got ahold of it fairly quickly, Eret did manage to fall off of Skullcrusher into the ocean, but he was swiftly retrieved. They stayed at the sea stacks until about midday, by the time the gang could navigate the course with their eyes closed, but not at their highest speed.
Lunch was once again marked by a lot of laughter, from all involved. Fishlegs got off easy, Meatlug didn't need fish at all and he could skip getting soaked repeatedly and had flown off to one of the more rocky sea stack so Meatlug could eat. Tuffnut managed to catch a fish with his mouth, the proceeded to take a bite out of it to everyone's, except Hiccup's, disgust.
The dragons were sated and Fishlegs had returned when the pair decided to end the training for the day. On the way back Storm kept looking around the sky and finally after having enough she stopped all of the dragons and urged Hiccup to fly up, much to the confusion of everyone.
"What are you looking for?" Hiccup asked when they were far up in the sky away from the others. She looked around a couple more times.
"A storm is coming," she finally said.
"Please sis, not with me here!" he said with a laugh. She gaged in disgust shoving him forwards.
"Your thought process is revolting."
"What's wrong?" came Astrid's yell from behind them. The gang had followed them up after they didn't come down fast enough.
"Nothing! A storm will be coming, probably sometime this evening!" Storm yelled back, and slapped Hiccup on the back of his head when he decided to chuckle.
"STORM!" Eret shouted, his face lit up like he won the best price in existence.
"That's what I said!" she confirmed with confusion.
"NO!" he excitedly pointed at her. "YOUR NAME! STORM!"
"Congratulations! You win nothing!" She said with a small giggle. Hiccup rolled his eyes fondly.
"Figures he'd be the one to figure it out," he said quietly so only Storm could hear him. She huffed in irritation, reached over to direct Hookfang so he was above Stormfly.
"Hey Astrid! Catch!" That was the only warning either got before Storm showed Hiccup off of Hookfang and onto Stormfly. Storm took off in the direction of Berk. Hiccup quickly righted himself, firmly holding onto Astrid.
"After her!" He urged, his voice breaking everyone out of the shock of what happened, nobody was expecting him to get shoved off and be okay afterwards, but he clearly was. The gang all took off with Storm in the lead, laughter was heard all the way back.
