Gotcha

"Okay, you sorry lot! On your feet, double quick!"

There was a huge number of grumbles, and the ice-encrusted vikings stayed lying where they were. Some even pulled there helmets over there eyes and went to sleep, right in front of her.

Astrid glared at Fishlegs, who was blushing. "What? They don't listen to me...how d'you expect them to listen to you? They just...don't want to."

She looked to the sky and muttered a tired question before focusing again on the barely-reduced ice shard that Fishlegs' team had been "working" on for the past hour. Fishlegs was smart, quiet, and very nice and polite. He was really good at the things he did-unfortunately, making tired vikings do something they didn't want to required extreme charisma or extreme force, neither of which Fishlegs had in abundance. She shifted her glare pointedly to the boy, who looked nervous. He must have seen some gleam of danger in Astrid's eyes, for he gulped.

"Well...it's you're shift now! I'm gotta go...I'd love to stay and help out, but I skipped second breakfast, and...yeah, I'm just gonna..." He started turning around, but Astrid grabbed his arm with a scary grin.

"Break is over, Fishlegs! Get back to work!" He gasped as he understood her meaning.

"Astrid! You wouldn't!"

"Wouldn't I?" She challenged. "And anyway, consider this your repayment for not working right before!"

Fishlegs opened his mouth, then closed it again with a sigh. "Yeah. You're right. I'll get to work." He walked towards the ice shard.

Astrid suddenly felt a surge of affection for the boy. He was certainly exhausted and hungry-but he had accepted her word without a complaint, even considering the other vikings were asleep. Speaking of which...

"Did the rest of you not hear me? ON YOUR FEET! NOW!" Nothing happened.

Astrid gave a secret smile as she played her trump card. "Don't make me call Eret!"

There was huge uproar, and suddenly every viking was on his feet and racing to the ice, sliding over each other in desperation. Astrid watched them for a few minutes, with a huge grin on her face. Eret was the magic word-after he had been seen fighting off 3 villagers at once over is outsider status, he had been accepted as a very scary and competent fighter. She knew that she could probably do the same-Eret had commented himself-but she had no desire for picking a fight that could be avoided.

She looked up at the sky, half-expecting a small iridescent-green silhouette to be flying erratically overhead. Eret was still getting the hang of his saddle, but it had to be admitted he was an excellent fighter with that sword of his. Whenever they practice sparred, the usual result was a stalemate, with a few lucky wins or sad losses mixed in. The record was currently 8-7 to Eret, so she was looking forward to getting back on level ground. She turned her head back to the ice shard, and her dragon, who was joining in.

Stormfly blasted the ice with a magnesium stream, then cocked her head and sniffed. She looked back at her rider and squawked urgently.

"What's wrong, girl?" Astrid was by her side instantly.

Stormfly responded by suddenly grabbing Astrid by her collar and dropping her on her saddle, then immediately taking off.

"WHOOOAA Stormfly! Girl, what's wrong?"

Stormfly squawked impatiently and flew faster, straight to the other side of the village…

Snotlout woke to the smell of smoke.

Normally, nothing could wake Snotlout if he was sleeping, but this smoke smelled very distinct: a mixture of kerosene and burnt wood. He knew this was bad. Really bad.

"AHHHH!" He rolled out of bed, and immediately took off running to his dragon's stable.

'By the time he got there, half of Hookfang's hut was in flames. The rafters were collapsing, and as Snotlout watched, his dragon's hut caved on itself, completely flattening anything inside.

He should have been extremely worried for his dragon—except for the fact that Hookfang was already outside, looking at his destroyed stable with distaste.

"Oh COME ON Hookfang! I've rebuilt this thing 12 times! What is it that you hate about it?"

Hookfang snorted and walked over to the back of the rubble. Snotlout sighed and followed.

But before he could get there, he heard a roar, two terrified screams, and two loud thumps and a moan, as if two people had been picked up by their heads and thrown against a wall. Snotlout knew this exact sound because he had heard it so many times before.

"Hey!—OW OW OW!"

Snotlout wasn't exactly helpless when presented with beating up people, especially these particular identical, annoying, irritating, aggravating, (insert adjective here) pair. However, even he had to admit that what Hookfang had done to Ruffnut and Tuffnut was much worse (or much cooler, depending on your viewpoint) than anything he could have done himself. Hookfang was lying down near them, looking very pleased with himself. Snotlout was about to go congratulate him when a thought crossed his head.

"What are—were—you two muttonheads doing behind Hookfang's hut?"

"Well, it's not really a hut anymore, as you can see…"

"RUFFNUT!"

"Okay fine! We were just back here, minding our own business—

Tuff chimed in. "—you know: trying to see how much Zippleback gas we could inhale without throwing up—

"—when someone (Ruff looked very pointedly at Hookfang) decided it was a good idea to light up all our gas while we were inhaling it."

Snotlout laughed. "Yeah actually I think that was a good idea too."

Tuff gave him a pointed glare. "Well, my fine fellow, we were using some more of said gas to accomplish our little mission here—"

"—Yeah! It's our game with big Hooky now: we bring the gas, Hookfang lights it up, accidentally (she put this word in very dramatic quotes) burning down his master's amazing dragon stable."

Snotlout took a while to process this. "And…um…just out of curiosity…how long has this 'game' been going on?"

Tuff should have noticed the quiet tone in Snotlout's voice, and just left well enough alone, but he was too excited for a question he could actually answer without someone's help.

"Oh yeah, easy! We've been keeping track actually—this is lucky numero 13. Oh yeah, we've been rocking it with our hombre here, luckya numbrero thirteeno..." Tuff kept on babbling with incredible multi-lingual skill, so he didn't notice that Snotlout was walking away. His sister did, however.

"HEY! SNOTLOUT! Aren't you gonna get us out of here? You can't just leave us like this!"

Part of Snotlout knew they were right—Hookfang had literally tied their (apparently) amazingly flexible limbs to each other: His arms to her legs, and vice versa. He had then hung them from a protruding beam of wood, suspended over the raging fire of his ruined hut.

It was a very small part of him, unfortunately, and he just chuckled and started walking away again.

Suddenly, several Nadder spines shot out of the air with incredible accuracy, whacking his helmet one after another. Snotlout wobbled on his heels, then crashed backwards, out cold from the concussive attack.

His last vision was of a smiling, blue-clad female with an axe blade bigger than his head. A Deadly Nadder stood behind her, looking very pleased with herself.

"Darn you, Astriiiiddd…" He mumbled before passing out. Astrid's smile grew even wider.

"Gotcha."

A/N: Sorry for the delay! Rewrite added more thoughts and Eret has his first mentioning! I had actually forgotten about him until now. And yes-that brawl over being an outsider? That's from "The Serpent's Heir." Read it! It's good. And yes, I'm gonna add Eret in a little-but he won't accompany them on the Journey. Sorry! Oh well-hope you enjoyed!