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The Dragon Pirate.
Hiccup smirked under his visor as he reached his dragon, Toothless' wings were already unfurling as he prepared to take off, though the Night Fury's eyes were narrowed slits with his ear plates lowered as he pawed the ground as his rider rushed towards him with half a dozen Vikings chasing after him. Slipping a hand into his armour, Hiccup pulled out a small clay egg with a fuse on it, before he took out his lighter. The spark created when the Monstrous Nightmare saliva caught alight, and the fuse began to spark. Without turning back Hiccup threw the egg over his shoulder as he ran towards Toothless, who was tensing up ready for a fight and had been for the last five minutes.
Hiccup's smirk widened when he heard the explosion while he slipped in and around houses on the island this tribe had, thankful that his short, wiry frame was coming in handy while his hand went back into his armour for another charge. After lighting it, he hurled it back over his head, this time there was a cry of pain, but he didn't turn back. He didn't feel any regret for what he'd done, he had done when he had begun plundering the various islands. Not anymore.
When the Night Fury saw him Toothless crooned enquiringly to find out if he was alright, that he hadn't been harmed.
"I'm okay, bud," Hiccup said quickly, smiling at his dragon's coddling even as he quickly jumped onto the Night Fury's back with a smooth practiced move before they were both in the air. When they were high up, too high for even the strongest catapults, Hiccup turned his head so he could look down on the island he'd just left. He couldn't see any signs of fire because of the charges, though he knew they had done some damage, and yet he knew far below, there would be dozens of people injured because of what he'd just done.
He sighed with genuine regret. While he had no problem hurting those who either hurt or hunted him down, he did not like injuring people needlessly. Hiccup turned his head around and he took control of Toothless, knowing he was only doing it to assuage his guilty conscience. While he could say with complete honesty he was enjoying being a pirate who rode a dragon and committed acts of theft against the various Viking tribes, he did not like other people paying the price for his actions.
As Toothless flew and put distance between them and the island he had just visited and plundered, Hiccup turned his thinking off and focused on the ride back to the island he had taken as a base of operations. The ride back to the island took Toothless only an hour. As Toothless drew closer to the island, Hiccup studied it as it jutted out of the sea, a rugged fang of dark rock, with high mountains, harshly chipped out of the rock. From the sea, the island was inaccessible, with no beaches or rivers longboats could not find anywhere to land, or get deeper into the island by using the river as a passageway. In short, it was the perfect place for Hiccup to set up his base.
Once they'd landed, Hiccup led the Night Fury into a cave overlooking the sea that gave him an excellent vantage point and gave him a perfect view of what was out there. The island he was on was quite close to the shipping lanes where the traders, merchants and fishermen passed by on the main routes through the archipelago. Anyone looking for him would be concentrating on the islands that were far away, guessing he would want somewhere remote, a long way away from the various tribal islands, such a long way it would take weeks for even the fastest and sleekest longship from reaching the island.
Instead, he had decided to make his base close to the core on an island that had no way in since there was no harbour, but the island was one of many in the archipelago. There were hundreds of islands like that dotted about the archipelago, but he had chosen this one because of how close it was to the main tribes and to many of the tribes beyond. He didn't want to go anywhere near those benighted islands. He had seen them already, and while it would have been good to plunder them where they were a long way away from the more powerful of the Viking tribes, he wanted to deal with the powerful ones since they had everything. They had supplies of food, raw materials so he could work on building the forge on this island as he had done on several others dotted around the archipelago, though some of the things he would take would be given to other islands.
After slipping off Toothless's prosthetic and getting the Night Fury some fish for his long night, Hiccup went deeper into the cave so then he could stoke the fire in the crude grate he'd made for this place, and he sat down on a rock. He would be happy to get some sleep, he thought to himself as he relieved himself of his armour and his gear.
As he slipped off the layers of flexible leather and took off his utility belt, Hiccup thought about the recent events. For the past three months, since he'd recovered from his time on the Outcast island, Hiccup had been learning how to become a pirate. In theory, it was incredibly straightforward to be one; you simply had to attack a ship on the sea, which had done on more than one occasion so far and was actually the first thing he had done as a dragon pirate, the first one ever as far as he knew, have a few fights and then get back with your plunder intact.
And your dragon safe, he added darkly to himself as he recalled that occasion where one of the tribes had fired a razor net straight at them in the air, or that time where bolas were fired into the sky. Toothless hadn't been harmed, thank Odin. It had been close, though.
The breaking of dawn the next day brought with it a routine; Hiccup would take Toothless out for a brief fly to exercise the dragon and keep him happy before he fed the ravenous dragon, and then he himself would have his own breakfast before he went out and explored some more of the island which was currently not just his headquarters but also was his home. He frequently went out into the island's wilderness to give himself freedom of mind, but also to pace his thinking while he thought about his long-term plans.
Hiccup had already worked out his plans in advance. He had decided to turn to piracy to make ends meet, but he would give away the things he wouldn't need to those who needed it. The things he would need he would store on this island. He had become sick and tired of wandering around the Barbaric Archipelago, either trading items or selling his services and skills as a blacksmith apprentice to any smith out there while using whatever money he accumulated to purchase whatever he needed, Hiccup had been okay with that approach at first even though he had been increasingly uncomfortable with being forced to stay on one island for long periods of time. Nadder's Point was a prime example, and besides the longer he was forced to wait to gather supplies for himself and to maintain the tail fin, the greater the risk to Toothless.
Being a pirate was incredibly simple and it meant he could gather everything he needed and wanted for what he wanted to do in the future. With the tribes of the Barbaric Archipelago separated by miles and miles of sea, and having a dragon to travel to those islands, it was incredibly easy to just sneak to those islands and take what he wanted, or he could go after merchants and traders to see what they had in their wares.
Hiccup preferred to attack ships since they were more isolated than the islands, and besides, he didn't want to cause any problems for the Hairy Hooligans because he no longer cared about them as a tribe, but the Dragon War had just ended. He didn't want to give the other tribes a new target for them to vent their spleen on.
But there was worse than the tribes out there.
Hiccup closed his one good eye and sighed, shivering with dread, as he remembered his first and so far only meeting with the madman Drago Bludvist.
It had been a shock to discover someone else out there with the ability to control dragons, but that was as far as Hiccup and Drago had in common.
Alright, he wouldn't deny it, but the thought of humans and dragons being friends with one another was a nice one, but after he had seen the way Vikings treated dragons beyond the Kill Ring, he had come to accept the fact it was not going to happen. It was sad, but that was the truth.
There was simply too much bad blood between both races for that to happen.
But Drago…. There was something really wrong with that man. Hiccup had only met him the once, but he had not enjoyed the experience one little bit, especially when he had seen the lengths the bastard and his followers went to get his hands on dragons, but what he did with them… Hiccup had no idea.
He shook his head, deciding it was not a good idea to dwell on the matter. He had managed to free as many dragons from Drago's tender clutches as he could, but he had no idea how many more were being held by the man, or what Drago was even doing with them; he knew they were building an army to take over the world, but how they were doing that, he didn't know. All he did know was the people who worked for Drago were scared stiff of him, not that Hiccup really cared, but Hiccup had encountered the man once, and it had not been a pleasant meeting.
He pushed those memories aside, remembering them for the close call he'd had and decided to focus on his other thoughts (he didn't bother sparing any more attention to the talk he'd heard from Drago's men about "the dragon rider" that apparently flew on a larger dragon with four wings; with everything else he had picked up over the years, another myth meant nothing to him, though the idea of another rider was something that made him wonder if there was another like him out there, but since the source of this 'rumour' was a bunch of men who went around capturing and probably torturing dragons, he was going to take it with a pinch of salt, as it deserved).
Hiccup didn't plan on being a pirate for the rest of his life. No, he would only be one for another few months now he had finished laying down the groundwork to spread a "reputation" for himself, and then he would say goodbye to the Barbaric Archipelago. He unconsciously rubbed his eyepatch with a deep sigh. Just feeling the hated thing on his face gave him another reason why he had turned to piracy. Alvin and his men had taught him even if he tried to live in peace he would still be hunted, especially since he was long since gone from a tribe.
He might not want to have anything to do with his former father anymore, but that didn't mean Hiccup wanted to cause major troubles for the tribes in the archipelago, though it would be poetic to leave the place wracked with chaos as he left as penance for them putting him through hell.
Walking back into his cave, the first thing Hiccup experienced was being knocked onto his back by the overexcited Toothless. After he managed to get the Night Fury off of him, he led the dragon to the loot, and the pair of them went through the motions of going through the lot.
Hiccup held up a number of large rope coils and instantly shoved them into the "keep" pile before he pulled out a load of hairpins and other accessories. He dumped them into the "Don't keep" pile.
When they were finished Hiccup surveyed the keep pile. It was filled with rope, mostly, but there were metallic objects as well, a few knives, a couple of swords. They weren't going to be a problem; melt them down and they would be perfect for him to use to make spare parts for Toothless's prosthetic, and even help him with his research in giving the Night Fury a tail fin prosthetic he could use without his rider controlling every move.
That was the reason why Toothless and Hiccup were still in the archipelago. It had nothing to do with greed, or revenge (though he had to admit it was still a fun reason, to get even with many of the Vikings).
Hiccup was trying to restore his dragon's full freedom of movement, and with the resources of the various forges he'd come across since he had managed to flee Berk after the final battle from the fully equipped forges to the derelict ones he had discovered on the forgotten and abandoned homes of tribes that no longer existed or had just moved off, Hiccup hadn't had any problem with building a forge of his own in a well-ventilated cavern which was open up to the sea, and gave him the right amount of air to keep the fires going and yet vent the place out. If someone passed the island by, Hiccup wasn't worried if they happened to see the smoke and fire since they wouldn't be able to get anywhere near the island.
As he walked into the forge after leaving Toothless with the simple task and sweeping the keep pile into the storeroom, Hiccup saw the numerous pieces of paper torn out of his journals that chronicled his efforts to construct and test a prototype tail fin to help Toothless. Hiccup wasn't going to rush this work, he wanted to get it just right for his Night Fury.
Hiccup picked up a journal and a charcoal pencil and looked over the latest technical entries, and studied his calculations some more. The main problem he was having with the prosthetic was making it work for the dragon-like it was his own flesh and blood, but another was what it would need to be made from, and there were a host of problems mechanical wise since it was more complex than an ordinary prosthetic.
Hiccup rubbed a hand over his face, grimacing at the feel of the needle-like hairs on his chin, realising he would need to use a knife to scrape it all off - he didn't want to spend his life looking like a miniature version of Stoick the Vast, wondering if perhaps he would be better off building a tail fin that Toothless could operate on his own in a more basic form before he took the design out beyond the archipelago, and maybe find a forge with an open-minded smith to help him, give him opinions and options.
He shrugged his shoulders and decided to give that idea some serious thought for himself later. In the meantime, he would carry on with his plans and go from there.
The little boy, though in Viking terms he was quite large, was walking through the town on his way back to his house. He had spent the best part of the day on his job at the harbour, lifting boxes and taking them back and forth to the various ships as they came and left the island. As he walked home, flexing his aching muscles, all the boy wanted was to go home, eat, rest, and then go to bed.
Suddenly the boy stopped when he thought he'd heard something. His house was, damn Loki, just outside the boundary of the town for reasons he could never understand since they'd been lost to time, though he guessed one of his ancestors had decided it was a good idea to keep his descendants safe from dragon raids, though truthfully the boy thought it was a pain in the butt especially when he had to spend hours at the harbour, so he could hear a great deal as he left the village.
It sounded like…..something beating the air…. Wait, something the air…. something in the sky… That could only mean one thing-!
"DRAGON!" the boy screamed at the top of his voice.
The sound of his voice carried to many of the nearby houses, some of them already had their owners inside, so they instantly heard his warning. The war may be over, but dragons were still considered the greatest enemy of their people.
His father barrelled towards him, glaring at him with an intensity that told him his father was frightened. "Where is it, boy?"
"I don't know. I just heard the sound of beating wings."
But there were too many people demanding answers and making crude threats, so the boy's father yelled, "SHUT UP, ALL OF YE! QUIET, AND LISTEN!"
it took a few moments, but eventually, the other Vikings shut up. When they did they could hear it too, the sound of wings beating above their heads, sweeping over the town, and over their heads. The Vikings lifted up their weapons and charged towards the centre of their town, but when they got there they were in for a shock.
The boy's eyes widened when he took in the sight of a long black dragon, so black it almost blended in perfectly with the shadows of the darkness of the night, with big green eyes, and a mouth full of sharp, white teeth. But that was not what attracted the boy's notice when a flash a movement caught his attention, and he gasped in shock. Around him, the other Vikings were just as surprised by the sight of someone standing near the dragon and a pile of objects nearby, but it was too dark for the boy to see clearly what it was.
The figure was too far away for the boy to get an accurate impression of how tall and how large he was. Still the figure was wearing some sort of black mask that completely covered his face so no-one could see his features, and he was dressed in some kind of armour that didn't look all that tough, but the strange cloak covering the figure made it virtually impossible to get any more ideas about the figures' form, or his intentions.
The moment the figure spotted the Vikings nearby, he instantly froze, but his dragon hissed and snarled at them.
The boy's heart raced in panic and terror as he put two and two together. Black body, sleek, menacing…. "NIGHT FURY!" he yelled, but before anyone could react, the figure jumped on the dragon's back, and the beast leapt into the air, cloaked by the night.
Until the next time...