How to View Your Dragons

by Cke1st

You've probably seen many stories about how the canon cast of HTTYD watched themselves in the first movie. But what if their DRAGONS could watch themselves? The results will be humorous, touching, and enlightening, sometimes all at once. This story takes place between the first movie and the second one. Rated K-plus to be safe; the language is all K.

2. Chapter 2

How to View Your Dragons Chapter 2

The other dragons heard Toothless building up a firebolt; he obviously meant to blast the flat panel into tiny bits. "Paws!" Meatlug shouted desperately. The action on the panel froze, which reminded Toothless that he was watching images from the past, not something real. He jerked his head sideways and launched his firebolt into the sky; it burst harmlessly a few seconds later. But the Night Fury's rage wasn't even close to pacified.

"Hiccup did that to me?" he demanded angrily. "He's the reason I can't fly without help? He's the one who tore my tail fin off? I thought he was my friend!"

"He is your friend!" Stormfly tried to reassure him. "Think for a moment! Everything he's ever done for you -"

"...doesn't come close to what he did to me that night!" Toothless raged. "He mutilated me! He took my flight away from me! I could kill him for that!"

"Just like you were trying to kill all those other Vikings that night," Barf suggested.

"Well, of course I was!" the Night Fury exclaimed. "Was there something wrong with that? After all, we were in the middle of a war. That means we were trying to kill each other, right?"

"Exactly," Meatlug said. "And that's what Hiccup was trying to do to you, just like you were trying to do it to his friends. It wasn't anything personal."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better about losing my tail?" Toothless countered. "I need my tail, probably more than any other kind of dragon! What kind of a friend would do such a thing?"

"When he did it," Stormfly said, "he wasn't trying to be your friend, and you weren't trying to be his friend, either. Like you said, it was in the middle of a war. When did that war end?"

Toothless thought for a moment. "I suppose it ended when the queen dragon died, and the rest of us realized that we didn't have any reason to fight each other anymore."

"Was that when Hiccup started trying to be your friend?" Stormfly pressed him.

"No, of course not!" the Night Fury answered. "He started being friendly long before the queen died. In fact, it was..." His voice trailed away, as did much of his anger.

"It was while we were all still in the middle of that war," the blue Nadder finished. "Right?"

"Right," Toothless admitted.

Meatlug had figured out where Stormfly was going with this. "So he started being friendly to you when he was supposed to be killing you. I'm sure the other Vikings would have killed him if they found out about it, but he did it anyway. That sounds like a true friend to me. How about you?"

Toothless looked behind him. "But... my tail... he did that to me?"

"And he's spent the rest of his days trying to make it right," Stormfly reminded him. "I heard that he even made you a replacement tail so you could fly without him. Isn't that the kind of thing a friend would do?"

"Not to mention, he risked his life to help you beat that Whispering Death," Hookfang added.

"And he almost got killed while proving that the lightning strikes on the town weren't your fault," Sizzle chimed in.

"But how could he do this to me?" the Night Fury asked plaintively.

"Because he didn't know any better, and because he didn't know you," Meatlug explained. "To him, you were just a faceless destroyer who was wrecking his town's defenses. I suspect that everything changed the first time he looked you in the eye. At some point, you became an individual to him, and that made all the difference."

"But what was the big deal if I took out a few catapults?" Toothless wondered. "The Vikings only used them against dragons, right? So why did Hiccup try so hard to protect them at my expense? Me shooting them was self-defense, in a way."

"My fast-flying friend, I'm afraid you're mistaken there," Hookfang retorted, somewhat haughtily. "I know for a fact that the Vikings used those catapults to protect themselves against raids from other human tribes, too. Yes, it was self-defense when you took them out, but you left their village wide-open to attacks from the other humans, as well as attacks from us. When you shot those heavy weapons, you hit them where it hurts; you took out their best way to protect themselves. So of course Hiccup reacted strongly! You shooting their catapults was like... was like..." He tried to come up with a good simile.

Meatlug beat him to it. "It was like them shooting you down!"

Toothless considered that for a moment. "Okay, I guess that makes sense, from their point of view. But why didn't Hiccup ever admit that he's the one who ruined my tail? Why didn't he apologize?"

"Maybe it's because he doesn't speak our language?" Sizzle suggested.

"Maybe it's because he feels really bad about it now?" Stormfly added.

Meatlug nodded firmly. "Stormfly nailed it. That has to be the reason. Again, look at all the work he's put into making your artificial tail and flying gear. That's not just for his benefit, even though he obviously loves flying with you. He's trying to right an old wrong, the best way he can, because he knows he's responsible for what he did to you. He may even still feel guilty about it."

"Well, he should feel guilty!" Toothless burst out. Then he shook his head. "No, I don't want him to feel guilty. He's my friend; I don't wish anything bad on him. Oh, this is complicated!"

"Maybe we should just watch the pictures," Hookfang suggested, "and figure out all the philosophical stuff later."

After a second, Toothless nodded. "That's good advice. Play!" He still cringed as he watched Hiccup rejoicing. "I hit it? Yes, I hit it! Did anybody see that?"

The Nightmare who had attacked Stoick's catapult had climbed up the cliff and stomped Hiccup's bola-thrower into matchwood. "My buddy gave you some payback there, Toothless," Hookfang grinned. "Hiccup never got to shoot a bola at anybody else again!"

"Paws!" Sizzle called. "I think we're about to get thoughtful again."

"That Nightmare almost killed Hiccup next," Stormfly observed. "What would have happened if he'd done it?"

"I'd be dead, too," Toothless said without hesitation. "If Hiccup hadn't lived to untie me from his own bola, then I would have lay in that forest, tied up and helpless, until I starved to death. The rest of you would still be locked up in Dragon Training cells, and all the other dragons would still be at war with the humans. Hookfang, I am very, very glad that your relative didn't do his job that night."

"That makes me wonder," Meatlug said. "How many other humans might have changed the course of our history, but they never got the chance because we killed them first? Maybe that stupid war could have ended generations ago if we'd given the humans a chance."

"But it's like we said earlier," Stormfly objected. "We didn't know, just like the humans didn't know. It took a dragon and a human getting together to figure out why we were fighting, and how to stop. It wasn't just any dragon and any human, either. Any other dragon would have killed Hiccup, just like that Nightmare tried to do; and any other human would have killed Toothless, just like Hiccup initially tried to do. It was that one-in-a-million combination of the two of you that made the difference."

They all nodded. There was no disputing her words. After a few seconds, Meatlug said, "Play!" They watched Hiccup running in panic and hiding from the Nightmare, who was then chased away by Stoick, who attacked the much bigger dragon with nothing but his fists and his feet.

"Hookfang," Stormfly said, "I've got nothing against you and your kind, but that was one really wimpy dragon! He could have killed that Viking Alpha just by sitting on him, never mind using his claws and his teeth, and yet he let an unarmed Viking beat him up and scare him away! He's lucky the Queen didn't eat him when she found out about it."

"She docked him an hour's fish," Hookfang admitted. "But it wasn't really his fault. He just took some solid whacks in the head from the Viking Alpha's war hammer a few minutes ago, when he attacked that catapult. He was still a little woozy, and he didn't have his 'A' game on. It was embarrassing to watch, though." Stoick dragged his son through the village.

"He's scolding Hiccup for trying to do what every other Viking does!" Hookfang realized.

"It wasn't the trying that was the problem," Meatlug said. "It was the failing."

"Well, I, for one, am glad that he failed," Barf replied.

"Where would we be if he had succeeded?" Belch added.

"Still at war," Toothless said sadly as he watched Hiccup endure his friends' taunts and Gobber's brutal honesty.

"Look, the point is," Gobber said, "stop trying to be something you're not."

"I just want to be one of you guys!" Hiccup almost whined.

"But if he couldn't be a Viking," Toothless said to the panel, "then what else could he be?"

"I suppose he had to find his own path," Meatlug suggested.

"The other Vikings didn't make it easy for him," Sizzle said.

"Finding your own path is never easy, no matter who or what you are," Stormfly decided. "Only the strong and the brave can resist the pressure to conform, and still have strength left over to find out who you should be and how to get there from where you are."

"Are you calling Hiccup strong?" Hookfang scoffed.

"Not all strength can be seen with the eye," Toothless reminded him. "I happen to know that some dragons are less than half your size, and yet they can take out a human catapult with one shot."

"And some dragons are as big as you are, Hookfang," Meatlug teased him, "and yet they can't take out one unarmed human!"

"Oh, give it a rest!" Hookfang protested. "I told you, it wasn't his fault! Let's watch the pictures. Oh, look, that's the inside of their big meeting hall! I always wondered what that looked like." They winced as they noticed the hall's main decoration, a bronze dragon hanging over the fire pit with a sword plunged through it.

They watched as Stoick raged, "If we find the nest and destroy it, the dragons will leave! They'll find another home!"

"Oh, sure, that always works!" Stormfly mocked. "We'd find another home, all right, but it would be as close to the old one as we could arrange! Why would we move far away from our best source of food?"

"That new nest would have to be big enough for the Queen to live there," Meatlug reminded her. "There aren't many places like that. We might have to move a long distance away."

"Or," Belch reminded them all, "we might just move back into our old nest after the Vikings left. Did they think they could destroy a whole cave?"

"Those Vikings didn't know any of that!" Stormfly shot back. "Their entire strategy was based on faulty thinking and false assumptions. It's no wonder they could never beat us!"

"Yes," Toothless nodded, "nothing changed until someone started thinking differently."

Stoick called for volunteers to search for the nest, and got none. "All right. Those who stay will look after Hiccup." Everyone suddenly volunteered.

"They really hated Hiccup, didn't they?" Barf said.

"They didn't understand him," Belch explained.

"Just like they didn't understand us, and we didn't understand them," Toothless went on. "From what I've seen, when humans don't understand something, they tend to either hate it or fear it."

"Or both," Stormfly added. "That's how they related to us. Fear and hatred."

Meatlug counted by tapping her claws on the ground as she recited, "Fear, hatred, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the chief..."

"Oh, stop reciting all their negative traits!" Toothless burst out. "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!"

"The what?" Hookfang asked.

"Never mind," Toothless said firmly. They resumed watching the moving pictures; they listened as Stoick confided his qualms about Hiccup to Gobber.

"From the time he could crawl, he's been... different!"

"He says that as though it was something bad," Meatlug observed.

"Why are humans so obsessed with conformity?" Stormfly wondered. "We dragons are very different from each other, but we all get along just fine, as long as it isn't mating season. Why do they feel so threatened if one of them isn't like all the others? You'd think they would value diversity, but in reality, they try to stamp it out wherever it appears, and pretend that everybody is just like everybody else."

The Viking chief went on, "He doesn't listen, he has the attention span of a sparrow..."

"They say that about me," Sizzle objected, "and I think I turned out okay!"

"Trolls exist!" Gobber burst out. "They steal your socks... but only the left ones. What's with that?"

"Wow, that's a hard one. Gee, let me think," Meatlug snorted derisively. "Let's see. Could it be because he doesn't have a foot on his right leg anymore, so every sock he owns is a left one?"

"Oh, don't be so logical!" Stormfly chuckled. "He's bound to figure it out someday."

"It taught me what a Viking could do, Gobber!" the chief was exclaiming. "He could crush mountains, level forests, tame seas!"

"In other words," Toothless commented, "he could destroy the world and everything in it."

"Except a dragons' nest!" Sizzle chimed in.

"Did you ever stop to think," Hookfang said, "that maybe the only thing that was holding them back was their war against us? Now that we're at peace with them, they can turn all their time and energy into destroying everything else. Did we do a good thing by ending the war? Would the rest of the world be better off if we were still keeping them busy by stealing their food and burning their buildings every few weeks?"

"I wouldn't worry about that too much," Meatlug said. "Now that they're at peace with us, they're spending a lot of their time and energy fighting each other instead."

"Besides," Barf commented, "the idea of humans wrecking their own world is ridiculous! No one would be that stupid!"

"Would they?" Belch asked.

The scene changed. Hiccup was walking through the forest, making X marks in the little book he carried.

"What's he doing?" Belch asked.

"I think he was looking all over the island for me," Toothless answered. "He put the X marks on that picture of the island to show the places he'd already searched, so he wouldn't look for me in the same place twice."

"Oh," Belch said. "I thought the 'X' marks showed where he'd buried some treasure."

"That's quite clever," Stormfly nodded. "The Vikings called him all kinds of names, but they never called him stupid."

"Huh?" Barf exclaimed; he'd gotten distracted by the moving pictures.

"I said the Vikings never called Hiccup stupid," the Nadder repeated.

"Oh," Barf said, relieved. "I heard the word 'stupid' and I thought you were talking about me."

"No comment," Stormfly said. They watched Hiccup slap a tree branch, and then cry out in pain as the branch snapped back and hit him in the face.

"Well, maybe the Vikings never saw him do stuff like that," Hookfang grinned. "Now that was stupid!"

"It could have happened to anyone," Toothless tried to explain.

"Did it ever happen to you?" Hookfang asked pointedly.

"Actually, I ran face-first into that very tree when I crash-landed," Toothless said. "So he and I have that in common."

Hiccup followed the trench that Toothless' crash-landing had dug in the ground, then nearly panicked when he saw the black dragon on the ground in front of him.

"And, just like that, he broke his own rule," Barf said. "He said no one ever saw a Night Fury before! What's he looking at now, chopped liver?"

"Almost," Toothless said ruefully. "That landing really messed me up. If it wasn't for hard dragon scales, I would have been hamburger."

Hiccup searched himself and pulled out a small belt knife, which he held in front of himself like a sword.

"Behold the valiant Viking warrior and his deadly weapon!" Hookfang hooted. "It's, like, the size of my -"

"Shut up!" Meatlug hissed. "I have a feeling this is going to be a very emotional scene for Toothless." They watched as Hiccup overcame his initial fear as he realized that the Night Fury was tied up and helpless.

"I have brought down this mighty beast!" he crowed.

Toothless sighed sadly. "He really did do it to me. I was hoping we were all wrong. I hate feeling like I'm grounded because of him."

"You're not grounded!" Stormfly exclaimed. "In fact, you can fly because of him!" Then the Night Fury in the pictures stirred, and Hiccup nearly panicked again.

"You called him a valiant Viking warrior?" Toothless said to Hookfang. "If he really was a valiant Viking warrior, then I'd be dead. So I'm glad you're wrong."

They watched in complete silence as Hiccup tried to steel himself and kill the dragon. They saw the fear in Toothless' eyes. They knew exactly how this scene would have played out if it had been any Viking other than Hiccup. They saw the human look into Toothless' eyes; they saw him try once, twice to bring down his blade... and finally give up trying. Sizzle let out the breath he was holding.

"Why didn't he kill you?" Meatlug whispered.

"To this day, I don't know," Toothless answered, very quietly. "Everyone knows that a Viking will always, always go for the kill." They saw Hiccup start to walk away, saw him realize that the dragon would die if he left him tied up, saw him turn and cut away the ropes... and Toothless broke free.

He pinned Hiccup to a rock with his paw, glared at him for a few seconds with eyes that were no longer fearful, and then roared, "You son of a half-troll, rat-eating munge-bucket! You don't know who you're dealing with! I'll show you the same mercy you just showed me because I'm glad to be still alive, but if I ever see your ugly pink face again, I'll ram my paw down your throat, grab your innards, and turn you inside-out!" Then he turned and flapped awkwardly away, striking several rocks and trees as he flew.

"Wow," Meatlug said. "Does Hiccup know you said that to him?"

"To him, it was nothing more than an incoherent roar," Toothless replied. "I think."

"You hope!" Hookfang retorted. "You were complaining about him treating you badly when he's your friend, but it sounds like that accusation could go both ways."

"They weren't friends yet, in case you didn't notice," Stormfly corrected him. "That scene was just an unscheduled truce in a war that was still raging. Nothing would have changed if Hiccup hadn't... Toothless, what did Hiccup do to change things?"

"I think we're going to see that part soon," Toothless replied. "You seeing it will be easier than me explaining it. Let's keep watching the pictures."