How to View Your Dragons Chapter 3
The dragons of Berk were watching the events of the recent past unfold before their eyes, projected somehow onto a flat panel in front of them. They were learning about the events that had transformed their existence as seen by the humans, and by Hiccup in particular. They saw Hiccup sneak into his house after his first encounter with the Night Fury and attempt to avoid drawing his father's attention. He failed. Stoick called him over.
"It would be nice if we could see things from my rider's point of view for a change," Hookfang complained. "Does it have to be all Hiccup, Hiccup, and Hiccup?"
"Considering that your rider still hated dragons as much as any other Viking," Meatlug answered, "his point of view wouldn't tell us much. If we want to find out how our world changed, then we need to focus on the one who changed it." She stopped as Hiccup and Stoick spoke at the same time; the only intelligible word was "dragons" at the end.
"It's still all about us," Stormfly observed. "What did they say?"
"You got your wish," Stoick said reluctantly. "Dragon Training. You start in the morning."
"What's dragon training?" Sizzle wondered. "Is that where they learn how to recognize the different kinds of dragons?"
"Uhh, not exactly," Stormfly said, and shuddered at a bad memory.
Hiccup was talking. "...but do we have enough bread-making Vikings, or...?"
"Bread-making Vikings?" Hookfang exclaimed. "You mean Vikings eat something that isn't meat? How can they be such vicious fighters if they aren't carnivores?"
"They eat plenty of meat," Toothless answered. "Maybe there's a reason they don't have many bread-making Vikings; maybe they just don't eat much bread."
"So, if they had more bread-making Vikings, then they'd be more peaceful?" Meatlug wondered.
"No, they would just chew their bread angrily," Barf suggested.
"You'll need this," Stoick said, and half-handed, half-tossed a fancy axe to his son. The dragons hissed in displeasure.
"I never liked the look of that weapon at all," Stormfly decided. "It doesn't look like it would bend if it hit me. I took it out the first chance I got, and I'm not sorry. It looks painful."
"It looks very hurty," Meatlug nodded. "But he's having trouble holding it."
"Maybe he should 'axe' his father for help!" Sizzle giggled. Barf and Belch rolled their eyes.
The scene changed; Stoick closed a door, and Gobber opened another one. "Welcome to Dragon Training!"
Sizzle's eyes went wide as he recognized the arena where he'd been imprisoned for over a year. "That's Dragon Training? They're going to show Hiccup how to beat us up?"
"That was their plan," Stormfly answered.
"Even though he knew more about dragons than the rest of them put together?" the Terror went on.
"Not at this point, he didn't," Meatlug said. "Trust me; I was the first one to face that bunch, and Hiccup was no threat. Not unless I tripped over him or something."
"I hope I get some serious burns!" Tuffnut grinned as he looked around the ring.
"I'm hoping for some mauling," his sister agreed. "Like on my shoulder or lower back."
"Are they out of their minds?" Meatlug burst out.
"Yes!" Barf and Belch chorused.
"Yeah," Astrid said, as though agreeing with the dragons. "It's only fun if you get a scar out of it."
"Don't Vikings feel pain?" Hookfang asked.
"I think they feel it even more than we do," Toothless explained. "But that bunch are trying to impress each other with how brave they are, so they're saying things that they don't really mean. Remember how Tuffnut ran away in a screaming panic as soon as any of you got a tooth on him? Yeah, you'd give him some serious burns... if you could catch him first!" The Zippleback's heads both laughed at that thought.
"Let's get started!" Gobber shouted. "The recruit who does best will win the honor of killing his first dragon in front of the entire village."
"Does that mean they weren't supposed to kill us while they were getting the training?" Meatlug asked.
"Good point," Hookfang nodded. "If one of them killed one of us before they were supposed to, would that ruin everything? Would they get thrown out of the training because they killed a dragon too soon?"
"I guess we'll never know," Stormfly said philosophically. "None of them ever came close to killing any of us, except for Astrid once or twice, and they don't do Dragon Training like that anymore. Which of us did they fight first?"
"Me, I think," Meatlug answered.
Gobber was introducing the dragon types behind the heavy doors. "The Deadly Nadder!"
"Speed eight," Fishlegs recited. "Armor sixteen."
"The Hideous Zippleback!"
"Plus-eleven stealth times two."
"Paws!" Barf shouted. "What did he mean, the 'Hideous' Zippleback? Are we that much worse-looking than the rest of you? Why can't we be the Deadly Zippleback, like Stormfly is a Deadly Nadder?"
"Maybe you're not deadly enough," Hookfang suggested.
"Maybe they just gave you that name to be mean," Stormfly said. "After all, we know they gave a pretty rotten name to Hookfang and his relatives, and they gave Hiccup a name that wasn't so nice, either."
"But they gave you a cool-sounding name!" Belch protested. "How come you got lucky with the names, and the rest of us got names that stink?"
"It's probably because I'm so pretty," Stormfly said, tossing her head. Hookfang and Toothless snorted. Meatlug called, "Play!"
"The Monstrous Nightmare," Gobber went on.
"Firepower fifteen!"
"Whoa!" Hookfang burst out. "Stormfly had armor sixteen! Are you trying to tell me that she has more armor than I have firepower? No way!"
"Armor sixteen? Sixteen of what?" Belch wondered.
"Firepower fifteen? Fifteen of what?" Barf echoed. "Does that mean you can cook fifteen fish at once?"
"I honestly have no idea," Toothless admitted. "Let's keep watching and see if we can learn anything else."
"The Terrible Terror!"
"Attack eight! Venom twelve!"
"Hey, I got a bad name, too!" Sizzle shouted. "They think I'm terrible! They hate me just as much as they hate you big guys!"
"That's not much to be proud of," Hookfang growled.
"I'll take what I can get," the Terror shot back. "Being terrible is better than being a nobody."
"And... the Gronckle!" Gobber pulled a lever, the door opened, and Meatlug shot out of confinement.
"What?" Hookfang burst out. "No awful-sounding name for you? That's not fair!"
"She didn't even get an adjective!" Toothless agreed.
"I remember that battle!" she said as she watched herself. "Nothing felt better than just getting out of those prison cells! Well, beating up young Vikings felt pretty good, too."
"Yeah, I remember the bad old days," Stormfly nodded. "Every little victory felt like a big victory when we were prisoners."
On the screen, Meatlug slammed into the wall, dropped to the ground, and eagerly swallowed some rocks that were lying nearby.
"It was very thoughtful of the Vikings to give me rocks to eat," she said. "Otherwise, I couldn't have flamed anybody."
"Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the rocks away from you for their first lesson?" Toothless asked. "Did they want you to flame the trainees?"
"I've often wondered about that," Meatlug answered. "My best guess is that they were trying to do a natural-selection thing. You know, weed out the unfit ones right away, and then spend the rest of the time training the ones who proved that they could survive? I guess they were using me to do their weeding for them."
"You almost weeded out Hiccup, didn't you?" Barf asked.
"Yeah," the Gronckle said with a touch of sadness. "I feel bad about that."
"Bad that you almost killed him," Belch wondered, "or bad that you didn't weed him out?"
"Bad that I almost killed him, of course!" she exclaimed. "Even before the war ended, he was acting like a friend to us. The next time I faced him in the ring, he knocked me out with crazy grass, which hurt a lot less than getting bashed with Viking weapons, believe me! If I'd killed him the first time..."
"We'd still be at war," Toothless finished. "Hiccup sure had a lot of chances to get killed, and if any one of those chances had turned fatal, everything would have changed."
"You mean nothing would have changed," Stormfly corrected him. "They'd still be beating us up in the ring with deadly weapons, the war would still be on, and we'd still be giving up all our food to feed the Queen. Meatlug, thank you for not killing Hiccup! But how did you miss him when he couldn't run away?"
"Watch and see," the Gronckle said. They watched, and they saw her take out the twins with one shot. Then the other four teens began banging on their shields with their weapons, and the noise was just as distracting to the dragons watching the scene as to Meatlug within the scene.
"Tell them to stop that!" Sizzle protested.
"They will in a minute," Meatlug remembered. They stopped just in time for her to blast Fishlegs' shield.
"Nice shot," Hookfang nodded. "Too bad you almost killed your own rider."
"He wasn't my rider yet!" she reminded him. "He was just another young, inexperienced target."
"Why did you keep shooting their shields instead of hitting the Vikings?" Hookfang wanted to know.
"Don't you remember what it was like, getting out of that prison cell after spending days or weeks inside?" she asked him. He nodded; he remembered all too well. She went on, "My eyes had been in the dark for all that time, and suddenly I was out in the daylight! I could barely see. The shields were shiny and colorful, so they made the best targets for me. I figured that, if I saw a shield moving, there had to be a Viking attached to it, and maybe I'd get lucky, or at least do some splatter damage." Her doppelganger on the flat panel had taken out Snotlout while she was talking.
"So, I guess it's just you and me, huh?" Hiccup said to Astrid.
"Nope, just you," she answered, and ducked out of the way just in time to let Hiccup's shield get hit by Meatlug's lava-breath.
"Wow! That wasn't a bit nice!" Stormfly exclaimed. "I know my rider is the no-nonsense type, but that was just cold. He could have been killed!" Hiccup ran for his life with Meatlug in pursuit as Gobber announced, "One shot left!" She pinned him against a wall, opened her mouth to blast him out of existence... and Gobber pulled her away so she shot the wall instead.
"That's how I missed him," she explained unnecessarily.
"Go back to bed, you overgrown sausage!" Gobber ordered as he wrestled her back into her cell.
"Oh, so that's what he thinks of me?" she complained. "I'm just an overgrown sausage?" She glared suspiciously at the other dragons. "Why didn't any of you tell me I was gaining weight?"
Toothless looked away to the left and tried to look innocent; Hookfang did likewise, looking to the right. Stormfly took it upon herself to explain. "If a male tells a female that he thinks she's getting fat, those are usually his last words. I think it works the same with humans as it does with dragons."
"Besides, it wasn't your fault," Belch said. "I mean, they had you locked up in that cell so you couldn't get any exercise!"
Meatlug was not mollified. "Well, if that's his opinion of me, then I'm never letting him clean my teeth again!"
"I've got a better idea," Barf suggested. "Just before he cleans your teeth, eat a few sausages. Then you can hit him with sausage-breath and remind him of how unkind he was."
"That's not a bad idea. I'll think about that," she nodded as she returned her attention to the moving pictures. Gobber was telling the teens, "Remember, a dragon will always, always go for the kill." Hiccup stared at the smoldering molten rock on the wall that had nearly ended his life, and...
"I know that facial expression!" Toothless exclaimed. "He just had an idea!"
Hookfang shouted, "Hiccup-idea! Get down!"
The scene jumped back into the forest where Toothless had been tied up. Hiccup hefted his machine-thrown bola and asked no one, "So why didn't you?" He set down the bola and tried to follow the Night Fury's path when it flew away yesterday. He soon stepped between two huge rocks into an enclosed cove surrounded by ancient trees and sheer rock walls. Birds could be heard singing in the near-distance.
"What a peaceful place!" Stormfly exclaimed.
"For a prison, it wasn't bad, I guess," Toothless said. "I mean, it was better than the cells that you guys were stuck in, but I was just as stuck." They all jumped as Toothless-on-the-screen suddenly leaped in front of them, then made several more attempts to escape the cove, roaring out his frustration as he repeatedly lost control and crash-landed. Hiccup reached into his vest.
"Is he going for his mighty belt-knife again?" Hookfang jeered. But Hiccup pulled out a book of papers and a drawing-stick and proceeded to sketch the Night Fury.
"He doesn't act very afraid," Meatlug noticed. "The last time you two met, you almost killed each other. Now he's making a portrait of you!"
"Why don't you just fly away?" Hiccup softly asked no one, then looked again and erased one of the tail fins from his drawing of the Night Fury.
"Yeah, now you know why," Toothless said bitterly. He watched himself crash-land again, then snap unsuccessfully at two fish in the cove. "I was getting hungry, too." Then Hiccup dropped his drawing stick, the Night Fury heard the sound of it falling, and he noticed the human for the first time.
"Now you're gonna get it, Viking boy!" Belch sneered.
But they just stared at each other.
"Why didn't you let him have it, like you promised?" Barf asked.
"At the time, I couldn't have given you a reason," Toothless answered. "But there was something in his eyes... something about the way he looked at me without fear, but also without being a threat. He knew I could kill him then and there, but he didn't even try to flee. He just looked back at me. It was as if he knew I wasn't going to shoot him."
"How could he have known that?" Stormfly wondered.
"There is no way he could have known," the Night Fury replied. "Maybe he was just hoping. But we'd already made eye contact twice, once when I was helpless and once when he was helpless, and we didn't kill each other at either time. We were both somehow realizing that we didn't want to kill each other."
Then the scene changed to the doors of the Vikings' Mead Hall. "Hey, wait a minute!" Belch exclaimed. "How did that scene end? How did he get away without getting fireballed?"
"I blinked, and that moment of understanding ended," Toothless told him. "After that, I went back to trying to escape from the cove and tried not to pay him any attention. When I looked for him a few minutes later, he was gone. I guess he'd seen what he came to see." They watched the teens heap some more verbal abuse on Hiccup, until Gobber swept Fishlegs' plate and mug onto the floor and dropped a thick book in its place. "The Dragon Manual. Everything we know about every dragon we know of." Thunder rumbled; the meeting was over, and the rest of the teens soon left. Hiccup stayed late into the night, reading about dragons.
"Thunderdrum... Extremely dangerous, kill on sight." "Timberjack... Extremely dangerous, kill on sight." "Scauldron... Extremely dangerous..." "Changewing... kill on sight."
"I'm picking up a pattern here," Sizzle muttered.
"I don't think they liked us very much," Hookfang added.
"Gronckle..."
"Hey! That's not a very flattering picture!" Meatlug complained.
"Is it possible to make a flattering picture of a Gronckle?" Barf snickered.
"Zippleback..."
"They didn't make you look very beautiful, either," Meatlug said sarcastically. "In fact, they made you look downright... hideous!"
"Burns its victims... buries its victims... chokes its victims... turns its victims inside-out..."
"What kind of a dragon turns its victims inside-out?" Stormfly asked. "I've never heard of that one."
"Just a very angry Night Fury, I think," Meatlug said.
Then Hiccup read, "Night Fury," as he turned to an almost-blank page.
"What? No ugly picture?" Stormfly wondered.
"Did they think you're invisible?" Hookfang asked Toothless.
"Evidently, they never saw enough of me to draw a picture of me," Toothless answered. "Hiccup did call me 'the dragon that no one's ever seen' a few minutes ago. Maybe that's why he was so excited to draw me when he saw me in the cove."
Hiccup went on, "The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself."
"That's a vicious lie!" Toothless burst out as he leaped to his feet. "My mother was not lightning and my father was not dead!"
"Yeah!" Belch nodded. "Everybody knows that your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries!"
Toothless turned on the Zippleback with a snarl. "Hey! No mothers! You leave my mother out of this! My mother was a saint."
"Never engage this dragon," Hiccup continued. "Your only chance: hide and pray it does not find you."
In the silence that followed, Hookfang was the first to speak. "Wow! The rest of us got an 'Extremely dangerous, kill on sight.' You got a 'Put your head between your legs and kiss your tail goodbye.' They were really afraid of you."
"I earned it," Toothless said simply.
"So how come Hiccup wasn't afraid of you?" Stormfly pressed him.
"He was afraid, at that point," the black dragon replied. "Remember how I roared at him, and he fell down and fainted a minute later? He knew what I could have done to him. He'd seen what my fire could do to a catapult. But, for some reason, he didn't act afraid. Maybe he was curious, and his curiosity got the better of him."
The scene changed to broad daylight at sea. Three Viking longships were running before the wind. "Targets!" Hookfang burst out. "Oh, yeah, that's right, we don't do that stuff anymore. Darn it! The war was hard, but at least we could have some fun now and then."
"Paws!" Meatlug suddenly shouted. "Look at the pictures on those Viking sails! The first one is a dragon with swords through it, which is no surprise, I guess. But look at the second one! It's a Viking breathing out fire!"
"Were they trying to copy us?" Sizzle wondered.
Stormfly didn't get it, either. "If they hate us and our fire so much, then why would they draw themselves doing what we do?"
"They could never do what we do," Hookfang said firmly. "Maybe it's a picture of a Viking who ate too much garlic for lunch. Play!"
They watched Stoick watching, waiting, and then giving the orders for his ships to approach the nest. The ships disappeared into the fog... which was quickly lit up from within by a burst of fire and the silhouette of a Monstrous Nightmare.
"Yeah! Get 'em!" Hookfang shouted.
"Hookfang, we don't do that stuff anymore!" Stormfly rebuked him. If she had more to say, she bit it off, because the scene suddenly changed back to the Dragon Training ring. Hiccup was asking Gobber about Night Furies when a blast of Nadder fire burned his axe-head right off the handle.
"You shot at the axe and not at the Viking?" Sizzle asked Stormfly.
"Like I said before, I didn't like that weapon," she answered. "Once I disarmed him, I figured he'd be an easy kill. But the other ones distracted me before I could finish him off. At least, that's what I was thinking at the time." They watched as the twins hid in her frontal blind spot, then got into a fight that ended when she separated them with another fiery blast.
"How could you miss them at that range?" Hookfang wanted to know.
"I couldn't decide which one to kill, and I wound up shooting right between them," she admitted. "I'm sure they got some mild burns out of that, but not the serious burns that Belch's rider said he wanted."
"I guess you can't have everything," Belch shrugged. They watched as first Astrid, then Snotlout somersaulted in front of the Nadder; then Hiccup tried it and failed. He made a panicky escape; the dragon turned on Astrid, but Snotlout stepped in front of her and hurled his spiked mace... and missed.
"See?" Stormfly said. "Dragons aren't the only ones who can miss at point-blank range! That was such a stupid move, I laughed at him instead of pouncing on him. It was a lot more satisfying."
Stormfly-on-the-screen began chasing Astrid, knocking over half of the training-ring walls as she did. "I admit, wrecking those human walls felt good, too," she said as they watched her destroying the interior of the ring. Astrid somehow wound up on top of the walls, then jumped down on Hiccup and got her weapon stuck in his shield. As Stormfly lunged at her, she pulled both weapon and shield away and hit the dragon with all her strength. Stormfly staggered away, stunned from the blow.
"That part didn't feel so good," she said.
Astrid forgot about the dragon for a moment. She turned on Hiccup angrily. "Is this some kind of a joke to you? Our parent's war is about to become ours." She threatened him with her axe as she ordered, "Figure out which side you're on!"
"Well, she's a proper little witch, isn't she?" Sizzle commented.
"Did she really think he might be on our side?" Meatlug asked.
"She had a funny way of making him want to be on her side," Hookfang added.
"He's looking thoughtful," Toothless noticed. "I think something important might be about to happen."
He was right.