Chosen of the Wind (Version 2)

[DISCLAIMER]

[I do not own Moana or How to Train Your Dragon.]

-CONTENT NOTES-

TFWhen strangers interview you, 'cause your style and attitude is on point.

–FORMAT NOTES–

I added so much to ch 4 that it got split in two!

MY NOTES

I feed off of reviews! Please, I need more helpings of wonderful, encouraging nuggets. -artisticRadifyer

Extended Summary:

After fighting the Red Death and a murderous tyrant by the name of Drago Bludvist, Hiccup wouldn't think he would have any more outstanding adventures as big as those. Yet, he must set off to try and stop this 'Darkness' that is spreading across the Barbaric Archipelago to save his village. Njord chose just him, a runaway heiress, and the demigod that triggered the decay, to fix things. But there is no 'team' in 'chosen,' and the mentally challenged chicken that might be food, can't change that.

Chapter 4.2 - Capability Interview

"...Lava Monster? Ever defeat a Lava Monster?" Maui asked.

"No," Moana shrugged and put her hands behind her back. "Have you?"

The mention of a 'lava monster' while he dismounted reminded Hiccup of the Red Death. "He," he gestured to Toothless and then pulled his helmet off, but a look from the dragon when he straightened back up made him reluctantly include himself, "or we, basically have."

"Really?" Moana was awed.

"It's how I lost my foot."

"Well," Maui maneuvered around everyone to get food from the storage compartment. "I'm not going on a suicide mission with some… mortals. You can't restore the Heart without me, and me says, 'no.' I'm getting my Hook." Maui sat at the rudder of the raft. "End of discussion."

Hiccup had wondered if they would get down to planning for some objective to complete. He was relieved some action seemed to be starting. "I'm up for any advantages we can get... Let's go grab this 'hook' that I'm assuming is powerful, and then go stop the Darkness."

"Hmph." Maui peeled a banana and ignored them.

Moana glanced at Hiccup, then to Maui's tattoos. She seemed to get an idea after another second. "You'd be a hero... That's what you're all about. Right?"

"Little girl," Maui took a bite of the fruit, "I am a Hero."

"Maybe you were. But now...now you're just, 'the guy who stole the Heart of Te Fiti.'" Moana stole the banana out of his hand in kind. "'The guy who cursed the world!'" She took a bite as well, speaking next with her mouth full. "You're no one's hero."

"Pff…" The demigod weakly scoffed, but his expression then slid into uncertainty. "'...No one?'"

Hiccup had picked up on the manipulative talk, and spoke up to help. "I've never even heard of you. That might be just because I'm from the North, but..."

Moana picked up where he trailed off. "But, put this back; save the world..." The necklace around Moana's neck was revealed to be holding the Heart. She closed it. "You'd be everyone's hero."

Maui glanced down to Tattoo Maui, who picked up a dot and rushed to place it into a swirl. Generic humans popped up pantomiming cheering to give praise to the inked man.

"Ma-ui, Ma-ui, Ma-uiii..!" Moana whisper-screamed behind Maui. "'You're so amaziiing...!'"

Maui got up to get away from Moana. "We'd never make it without my Hook. Not passed Te Ka."

"I already voted that we do that." Hiccup pointed out.

"Right." Moana recognized the fact and went back to convincing Maui. "We get your Hook, take out Te Ka, restore the Heart." At the hulking man's back she continued. "Unless... You don't want to be...: 'Maui, Demigod of the Wind and Sea, Hero to… All?'"

"...First, we get my Hook."

"Then, save the world! Deal?"

"Deal." The two southerners shook hands, and with the grip they shared Maui threw Moana over his shoulder into the water. She was instantly returned and he shrugged at Hiccup's incredulous glare. "Worth a shot."

Hiccup rolled his eyes. "Where will we find your Hook?"

"East," Maui grabbed the only oar on the raft, put his free hand to the sky, "to the Lair of Tamatoa…" and then dropped to put the same hand into the water. "If anyone has my Hook," he plunged the oar into the water, and gained a bored expression as he finished his answer, "it's that beady-eyed, bottom feeder."

The raft, with Maui's guidance, shifted to sail in the direction Maui wanted. The other three still on the raft had to duck away from the mainsail, and then brace themselves when they launched off a towering wave.

"Okay." Hiccup connected himself to his dragon, and addressed both of the other two after he shrugged his helmet on. "Now that we have a destination, we will be above. I'll tell you when we see land."

Back in the sky, Hiccup felt cold air and relief bleed into his body and mind respectively. He stretched a bit, too warm in his outfit. "Hey, Bud. Let's do some trick flying. Both of us know how slow ships are; much less a raft. Let's also stay pretty high up; the sun is slowly roasting me."

In their first trick, Hiccup noticed the raft going a little haywire on its path. With a simple sigh and a questioning gurgle, the two turned their trick into a dive-bomb. They pulled just shy of the water a distance from the raft, and turned tight to circle it and slow down in the same motion. After an attempt to try and keep pace with the slow raft, the two quickly landed, and Hiccup lifted his helmet's face guard to talk. "Is everything okay down here? We saw you guys going all over the place."

Moana was the one to answer. "Maui is teaching me how to sail! Sort-of."

Hiccup noticed Maui laying down on one side of the raft. "Asleep?"

"Nope." The man, whose face was pointed away from the rest of the boat, corrected him. "Tranquilized."

"Is that what the darts were? Did you have a late reaction to one?"

"You could say that…"

"Well, you said you could sail." Moana recalled, and asked Hiccup expectantly. "Can you help me?"

"I already told you, Princess:" Maui griped before Hiccup could respond, "It's called 'wayfinding,' and the King there won't actually know how."

"'King' sounds… wrong. ...But, looking at how this is made: I think I actually don't know how to control it. There's nothing in the water and only one oar." Hiccup turned back to Moana. "Besides, with Toothless on board, you would need to compensate for his weight by either knowing how to adjust your controls, or maybe asking him to move to specific spots would do it; and he barely even listens to me most of the time."

"You can't even train your pet properly?" Maui asked.

"Toothless is not a pet. Sure, half of Berk thinks the dragons are such, but the good riders have better connections than that. And now, we are leaving-because I'm sweating more than Gobber in a closed forge."

"Why are you still wearing that then?" Moana winced in sympathy.

Hiccup yelled as he left them, "It's saved my life-" and muttered the rest, "more times than the number of scales a dragon can shed in a lifetime."

Up in the sky once more, Hiccup ignored the snaking raft below them and had fun in the cool breeze and freezing upper atmosphere. They did everything from cloud-jumping, to dive-bombing, to a few successful, separate glides-since there wasn't any land near them at all, the only thing that they had to accomplish was to get Toothless underneath Hiccup again.

At some point in the night, Hiccup noticed the raft traveling much smoother. He and Toothless took their time descending, and they landed on a raft being piloted by Maui,

"Hiya, King. Bird."

"'King' really does sound wrong, you know." Hiccup spoke a bit softer at the sight of a sleeping Moana. "But, you could call Toothless: Alpha. Since he is the Alpha of my island's dragons."

"So what else are you? I could call you 'Chief,' but you would be called that already, and I figured 'Stumpy' would be a bit too far."

"Out of the three, I'd rather be called 'Stumpy.' A lot of people in Berk think the jokes I make about my leg are horrible." Hiccup stretched a bit. "Can we take an extended breather down here?"

Maui shrugged assent, not saying anything, but Hiccup noticed he continued to stare.

Weirded out over the energy between them, especially because the large man didn't respond to the questioning look Hiccup gave, he soon pulled out a notebook as they sat in silence. It was some time later, when Hiccup felt himself close to following Toothless to dreamland, that a statement from Maui took his attention,

"You're no stranger to adventure."

Hiccup was surprised. It had been a long time since he encountered someone who didn't know of his 'conquests' and admired the crazy retellings everyone knew. Suddenly fascinated and very curious, he perked up from his previous lounging position, and sat facing Maui. He had to know what impression he gave. "What makes you say that?"

"Well, for one: your leg. For two: the outfit you have on, and the saddle the dragon has on are both battle friendly. And three, the most noticeable: you have a lot of patience."

Hiccup chuckled at the last one. "Have to be with the idiots I lead. They come up with the stupidest ideas, and try to solve any problems with worse ones. Of course they have their brighter moments, and certainly not everyone on Berk is as crazy as a Berserk, but the passion and solidarity between everyone is what keeps the place going."

"Sounds pretty lively. -"

Hiccup cut Maui off without meaning to as he leaned back against Toothless again to see the sky, lost in the subtleties of the last observation. "Most people actually tell me I'm restless. I have a lot of patience dealing with my villagers individually, but there's always so much to keep track of, that I end up bouncing all over the island trying to help and keep things straight. Gobber thinks I could run off to the next piece of land I find; stay on the edge of the map I've made and never return."

Maui waited a moment to see if he was finished. A breath or two and Hiccup added one more thing:

"I've just noticed the stars are different. About half of the sky is recognizable. …I think I'll map them out on the way home."

"So," Maui quickly responded, tired of waiting to ask, "what's the whole story behind that missing foot of yours?"

"It fell off."

"I don't believe that."

"What, I don't look clumsy enough to drop an axe on my leg?"

"That would mean it was cleaved off, and did not drop off by its own volition."

"Would you believe that though?"

"If you can make jokes about it, I would think you could tell me how it happened." Maui pressed. "Didn't you say you killed a monster?"

Hiccup conceded, and a little exasperation bled into his tone. "Yes, fine." He paused to get the tint off of his words. "Okay. Look. Did you notice how Toothless matches me?" Hiccup tugged his dragon's tail closer to him. With it on his lap, he displayed the absence of a proper fin where the fabric was. "The story of his loss intertwines with mine. Because I wanted him, he lost this left fin. Because he wanted me, I lost my left foot and some shin."

"I just wanted a story, Poet, not a dramatic eye-for-an-eye theater play."

Hiccup huffed, he hadn't meant to rhyme. He figured he would be as blunt as possible, because he was ready to sleep and wasn't aiming to gain himself another admirer; even if that outcome was becoming unlikely. He told Maui of the biggest change in his life. "When I was fifteen, we were at war with the dragons. I shot Toothless down and it crippled him for life. The Night Fury was the most elusive dragon that was raiding our island, and no one believed me when I said I captured him, so I found him alone. Cut him loose because I couldn't kill him. I continued to visit the place he ended up getting trapped in, and once he trusted me, I fixed the ripped off tailfin by making him a prosthetic. My village found out about him, split us apart, and used him to raid the Nest on Dragon Island. I followed with-with a team, they were my fellow teenagers and became friends with me after this. I made it to Toothless, and the both of us took down the island's leader, a dragon that forced other dragons to bring it food. The Red Death was...huge. That's what I compared to a Lava Monster. Killing it had required great amounts of fire, and I lost my foot to it. Well, the fire burned away the flesh, yeah. The scar, however, has teeth marks on it: Toothless had grabbed me to save me. It was not as...fun, an adventure as you probably meant." Maui was silent as Hiccup revealed the results of the battle. "But, I got some admirers, got some friends, a better relationship with my Dad, the strongest woman there was, and… him. I have no idea what I'd be without him."

Maui's continued silence gave Hiccup a familiar mix of pride and shame: Pride that he managed to return such an amazing creature to the sky. Pride that he hadn't conformed into or buckled under the violent ways and traditions of old. Shame came from his failed attempts to convince his tribe and Father that they didn't need to fight. That failure consequently led his tribe to sail to their doom that waited on Dragon Island.

Thus, after he shook away the uneasy anxiety born from Maui's second lack of response, Hiccup fell asleep with the warm, powerful, scaly extension of himself wrapped around him in comfort, and hoped that their destination would be within reach when he woke.

They are special because they are one-and-the-same that could be in two places at once. They each as separate parts have different strengths that complimented the other, different weaknesses the other could cover. They fit so perfectly against each other, that it takes no thought to protect the other, to stay together, to be together.

They endlessly plummet towards their territory. Home is in each other. This, they own, defend, lead. A whole land of lives who know and recognise their greatness. A land that was given to them perhaps too early.

The isolated earth was passed on to them by the guiding figure that stands apart from the bulk of beings, who encourages the group to draw closer together; and with that last order fulfilled, the lone specter turns to ash that drifts away in the wind.

Left alone, the huddling cluster now crows and cries in distress and anger. There are two that step forward: a maiden and a creator. The two stop and stand calmly as a third one, a mother, weaves through the commotion and consoles the rest. The two are looking to them for guidance, for help, rather than a rescue. Ready to follow orders as soon as the half with the same language gives some.

His voice does not sound. He panics, so his wings roar in his place, but the two do not understand. They watch helplessly as the territory falls in under all those lives who rely on them, leaving a dusty, dark, and drifting unnatural storm.