Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; if you're on this site, you know the drill. Also, thanks are owed to athingofvikings, who gave me a much-appreciated sounding-board for a few aspects of my planned world-building for this particular crossover; hope you like it.
Feedback: Appreciated as always.
The Dragon of Wanheda
"OK," Clarke said, as she spat out her last glass of water to glare over at Ruffnut, "that had better be the last bite you want to test on Snotlout here, because I am not doing that again."
"Amazed you wanted to do it the first time," Ruffnut mused from her position against the tree.
"I don't like seeing people die even if they're officially my enemies, and this guy's just an idiot."
"I'm right here-" Snotlout tried to protest as he sat up.
"And you've driven someone to a point where I'm worried he's going to have some kind of psychotic breakdown because you wanted to have a laugh; I'm sure you can understand why you're not my favourite person right now," Clarke said.
"Why did you do that anyway?" Ruffnut asked. "That bit with the oil, I mean…"
"Just remembered something I heard from… a story," Clarke said (she didn't have time to start telling these people about films, even if a few of her pre-prison friends had enjoyed the classics such as that Snakes on a Plane movie). "I wasn't sure if it would work, but it probably helped get some of the venom out before it spread too far."
"You didn't know if it would work?" Snotlout yelled at her.
"Fair enough," Ruffnut said before she turned her attention back to Snotlout. "Well, we'd better get you to Tuff and make sure he's not done anything overly stupid."
"Good, because I really think I've done enough to make up for-"
"You've just done everything we can think of to help us find out what happened to Tuffnut; you're only off the hook for driving him to his current state when he's over it," Clarke corrected him. "We've ruled out sea snake and basically every other dragon on the island, so if it's not any of those that bit him, what else could have done it?"
"Let's just get back to the Edge and see how he's doing," Ruffnut sighed. "I mean, if he hasn't turned by now, maybe we can help him snap out of this nutso state if Hiccup hasn't done it already…"
"God, am I glad you're not my sister-" Snotlout began.
"No!" Ruffnut reached over to slap Snotlout
"You wish I was your sister. You think I'd be dragging your monkey butt all over the jungle risking your life if my brother weren't the most important thing in the world to me? Think about that!"
"Family is important," Clarke nodded. "Which is why we need to make sure Tuffnut's all right."
"He's gone?" Ruffnut glared at the empty stable where her brother had been just a few hours ago. "How did this happen?"
"I don't know," Astrid shook her head apologetically. "I was on patrol after Hiccup and Fishlegs left to check up a lead-"
"A lead?" Clarke looked at her in surprise. "What kind of lead?"
"They… were going over some of our old records and found something that might tell us more about the lycanwing."
"Hold on; now we're thinking that's real?" Snotlout protested. "After you all spent ages trying to tell Tuff he was an idiot?"
"That's not important right now," Clarke looked scathingly at Snotlout as she indicated the full moon rising in the distance. "What's important is that Hiccup found something he felt he had to check out, and given the faith you all have in him, that might have been enough to push Tuffnut… well, just that bit further on his current breakdown."
"He's having a breakdown?"
"He thinks he's turning into a dragon; that's not the sign of a stable mind," Clarke countered, looking up at the darkening sky in frustration. "Look, in his current state, there's no way of knowing how Tuffnut's going to react to whatever he thinks is about to happen to him; we need to find him before he does something stupid."
"She's right," Astrid nodded. "Everyone needs to start searching the island; Barf and Belch are still here so Tuff can't have gone far, but we need to get moving if we're going to catch up to him."
"Tell me about it," Ruffnut said grimly. "Even if he does turn into a dragon, what are the odds that he'll survive that flight?"
"We're on it," Clarke nodded, before she joined the other Riders in heading into the forests around the Edge, the group splitting up to cover more ground. It was only after she started that Clarke mused she probably should have tried to do this on Griffin, but quickly decided that it was probably a good thing she did this by herself. Griffin was good company, but searching through the woods was simple enough, and she didn't want to become so dependent on her dragon that she couldn't do anything on her own. She kept looking back to keep a better sense of the best route back to the Edge while making her way through the forest, but soon began to wonder if she wouldn't have been better sticking with Griffin after all; she really hadn't spent enough time learning about this island's geography, apart from flying over it during that mess with the other Nightmare…
"Tuffnut?" Clarke called out tentatively, only for her ears to prick up as she heard a strange roaring sound from further into the woods. Taking a moment to trace the sound, and once again regretting that she didn't train herself to track on her own before she left Camp Jaha, Clarke made her way to a more open part of the woods where she saw Tuffnut walking alongside his pet chicken.
"I can't be contained, Chicken," Tuffnut said, a deranged grin on his face that put Clarke in mind of some of the nightmares she'd had about Finn shooting that village. "Look at that moon… a matter of hours, it will finally apex, and I will be transformed into a giant scaly beast! With nothing to do but feast on my prey!"
The young Viking crouched down to sniff the ground and then reared back to let out a loud roar. "Oh! It's like all my senses are alive for the first time! I can feel things! See things! Hear things I've never been able to before! You know what I mean, Chicken?"
When Tuffnut let out a surprised yell and then began to talk to his chicken as though he was responding to it, Clarke knew that she had to step in.
"OK, Tuffnut," she said, stepping out from behind the tree and trying to look reassuringly at him, "I think we should just-"
"Leave me, Clarke," Tuffnut proclaimed (Clarke supposed she should be grateful he wasn't yet crazy enough to remember that she couldn't understand his native language yet). "I have to get away from you all before I go full dragon; I seek the tallest cliff for my first flight-"
"You don't have to do this, Tuffnut!" Clarke protested. "You're not going to-"
"Only a fool lives his future in the past," Tuffnut proclaimed, before his attention returned to the bird in his arms. "Our time is short, Chicken; come, our fate is sealed!"
With those words, Tuffnut ran past Clarke towards the edge of the forest, leaving Clarke to roll her eyes in frustration and hurry after him. She registered Ruffnut calling out from another part of the forest, and wondered if she'd heard her twin or this was another example of that 'twin bond' she'd heard about in pre-Ark stories, but right now her priority was to find her new friend. As she reached the edge of the forest, she found Tuffnut standing on the edge of a cliff, literally howling up at the moon as he held the chicken in his hands.
"The apex is upon us!" the young Viking proclaimed. Despite herself, Clarke couldn't resist the temptation to just sit and watch for a few moments, taking in the other boy's activities out of a morbid sense of curiosity as to how far he'd go…
"C'mon, do it with me, Chicken!" the long-haired Viking proclaimed. "It feels so good! And we only have a few moments left till we can fly! FLYYY! Riding high! The currents of the wind blowing through our hair! Ah, I mean, your feathers, you have feathers, not hair- FREE from the bonds that bind humankind!"
If this wasn't completely ridiculous- and assuming it sounds as interesting in English as it does in whatever his language is- he might actually have potential to be a kind of poet…
"We have to fly away, right?" Tuffnut continued as he held the chicken in front of his face. "I would never forgive myself if I ate the other dragon riders. I mean, on the other side though, I'm sure as a dragon I would find them delicious, especially that Fishlegs, good Thor he looks like a marshmallow! Flesh-colored in with a little hair on the top…"
Did he say 'marshmallow'? Clarke wondered in surprise at the familiar-sounding word. They're meant to be Vikings; how do these people have any knowledge of marshmallows?
"It's happening, it's happening, I can feel it!" Tuffnut howled as he stood on the very edge of the cliff after another roaring session. "Are you ready, Chicken? Are you finally ready to be free?"
"STOP!" Clarke yelled desperately as Tuffnut took a step towards the edge of the cliff.
"DON'T DO IT!" Ruffnut's voice yelled from behind Clarke as the other twin joined them.
"We've been through this, Chicken!" Tuffnut yelled at the bird in his arms. "Don't try and impersonate my sister, and adding Clarke into the picture doesn't make it any better! We made a pact! I'm doing it and you're coming with me!"
"Did that chicken ever try and impersonate me before now?" Clarke cut in (and what did it say about these people that she already felt that sentence wasn't quite so ridiculous?).
"You can fight this!" Ruffnut affirmed (Clarke chose to appreciate that the female twin was including her in this 'chat').
"I can't, sis," Tuffnut said, still apparently sane enough to follow his sister's cue. "You don't know the hold it has on me. It has its claws on me."
"What if we fight it together?" Ruffnut continued, even as she waved a hand to stop Clarke saying anything. "We do everything together, we always have! Look, I refuse to spend the rest of my life doing anything alone. Do you hear me?!"
"You always were the strong one," Tuffnut said, a slight sob in his voice. "Mom should have named you Tuffnut…"
"But she didn't," Ruffnut said, stepping forward as Clarke moved to the side to let the two siblings talk. "She named you Tuff. I'm begging you! And you know how much I hate to beg, just get down from there!"
"It's too late to stop the metamorphasis, can you not see what I've become?" Tuffnut protested, before letting out a twisted roar.
"Tuff, stop!" Hiccup suddenly yelled as the other Riders appeared on their dragons behind the two girls, "There is no metamorphasis, alright? You are not turning into a dragon. Fishlegs, pelase tell him!"
"It's true!" Fishlegs said. "We found the cave of the Lycanwing; it was just a myth to keep people away from- keep people away!"
Clarke briefly noted the way Fishlegs corrected himself and stopped reaching into a pocket when he saw her, but chose not to press the issue; if there was anything the Riders were keeping secret, she had enough faith in them by now to believe that it wasn't anything dangerous to her personally.
"No," Tuffnut shook his head. "No! I don't believe you. Look at me. I'm hideous, I'm terrifying!"
"Tuff!" Astrid protested. "You're not hideous! Terrifying at times, yes. Hideous? No."
"Well, then how do you explain this?" Tuffnut brandished his arm-wound. "Can't do it, can you, hm?"
"Just because we haven't found anything yet-!" Clarke tried to protest.
"That's what I thought," Tuffnut ignored her. "Now, it's time to fly!"
"Wait wait wait wait!" Snotlout yelled, dragging a large bag onto the cliff. "Wait! I can explain! I can explain it!"
"Whoa, you don't look great," Tuffnut observed.
"And that's with me treating his last few injuries; imagine how bad he'd be if I wasn't here…" Clarke put in.
"Uh, Snotlout?" Hiccup asked. "What do you have in that bag?"
"I have what did this!" Snotlout said, brandishing his right arm with a similar wound to the one on Tuffnut's left.
"Ah!" Tuffnut yelled. "The Lycanwing got him too! Save yourselves!"
"It's not a Lycanwing," Snotlout said indignantly. "It's not even a dragon! It's a wolf, and I caught him. You're not turning into a dragon, Tuff."
"Wolf?" Clarke repeated in surprise before looking at the rest of the Riders. "We never looked into whether this place has wolves?"
"Something to kick ourselves about later," Hiccup observed, even as his shaking head told Clarke he was kicking himself about that oversight as well. "The point is that you're not turning into a dragon, as we've been trying to tell you…"
"I'm not?" Tuffnut grinned.
"Exactly!" Snotlout said. "I just made you think you're turning into a dragon; it's funny, but it's not true."
A broad grin on his face, Tuffnut stepped away from the ledge, only for the stone below him to suddenly break and fall away. Tuffnut fell backwards with a loud yell, but Toothless lunged past Hiccup and grabbed the Viking's leg in his toothless mouth. The dragon easily hauled Tuffnut back onto the ledge to reveal that the Viking was holding Chicken's foreleg in one hand, talking to the small bird in relief.
"Oh, thank Thor," Hiccup sighed as Toothless pulled the young Viking back onto the main island, before Ruffnut ran up to hug her brother from behind.
"Oh, I know what you're gonna say," Tuffnut said with a warm tone. "You realized how much you love me, you were scared, you were gonna lose me, and I better never do that again."
"Actually, I was just going to tell you what an idiot you are," his sister responded before she turned her brother around. "Come here."
Watching the twins hug, Clarke thought she saw Ruffnut's mouth move as though as she was saying something to the chicken behind her brother…
"Uh, Snotlout?" Hiccup said, drawing her attention to other matters. "Where's the wolf?"
Snotlout barely had time to turn around before a grey wolf had leapt from the bushes and was biting down on his arm once again. Lost for anything better to do, Clarke grabbed the wolf's outstretched tail and desperately pulled at it, the wolf releasing its grip on Snotlout's arm as it let out a loud yelp of shock before Astrid slammed the broad end of her axe into the top of the wolf's head, knocking it out before it could get its teeth back into the short Viking's arm.
"Nice move," Astrid nodded at Clarke.
"You too," Clarke smiled back.
"You can't just-!" Snotlout began.
"We're not killing a dumb animal because you were stupid enough to get close to it," Clarke cut him off as she indicated the wolf. "Griffin and I can take this thing somewhere else so we won't have to deal with it again; you won't have to worry about it again."
"And we can do a check around the island tomorrow to make sure there aren't any more wolves here who might bother us," Hiccup added. "We can give Snot a day or two to recover while the rest of us take Gobber to take a better look at Clarke's ship to collect some of the remaining metal; he could offer a few other ideas about how we could transport and use that stuff."
"Sounds good," Clarke nodded at Hiccup before looking around at the Vikings with a smile. "By the way, guys… thanks for including me in all that."
"Huh?" Snotlout asked.
"You were speaking… traders' tongue for me, right?" Clarke clarified.
"Oh, yeah, no problem," Tuffnut shrugged.
"Just so long as you are trying to pick up our language in return," Astrid pointed out with a brief glare at Clarke.
"Of course," Clarke nodded. "Just… maybe give me a few specific lessons and I'm sure I'll get my head around it all soon."
She was fairly sure she'd followed a few of Tuffnut's ramblings earlier where she would have been completely clueless if she'd met them just after the dropship landed- he'd definitely said something about his senses coming alive and contemplating how Fishlegs would taste if his dragon-self tried to eat him- but it was probably time she started getting a few more explicit lessons on that front…