How to Prepare a Party

Five Years Later

Astrid slapped down her hand on the button of her annoying alarm clock to stop the incessant beeping that dared to wake her from sleep. She removed her hand and rolled over onto her other side and snuggled tightly in her warm comfy blanket as she released a heavy sigh and closed her eyes to finish off the dream that was interrupted by her alarm clock. But, her eyes snapped open as she remembered what today was. Today was the day that Hiccup would return to Berk. Astrid mentally slapped herself for forgetting something important like that since everyone was decorating the whole town all day yesterday for his arrival.

She jumped out of her bed and pulled on a pair of dark blue jeans, a crimson tank top, a black warm jacket and brown leather boots. Astrid, using her power of super speed, ran out of her house after snatching an apple from the fruit bowl on the table and went over to the stable next to the house where her dragon, Stormfly, slept. The Deadly Nadder raised its head at the sound of her rider's footsteps and stepped out from her stable to greet Astrid. The young woman laughed in delight as Stormfly nudged her head against Astrid's cheek then proceeded to give her a big slimy lick.

"Stormfly!" she exclaimed "That's gross!"

The Nadder only squawked in amusement as the girl wiped the saliva off her cheek.

"So, ready to see Toothless again, girl?" Astrid asked.

Stormfly, roared on excitement and as soon as her rider was on her back, she took off into the air.

As Astrid and Stormfly soared over the city of Berk, Astrid couldn't help imagining the look on Hiccup's face when he arrived. Berk had changed from simplicity to complexity. As time went by in the five years, new additional facilities had been built for both the people and the dragons; a new water tower, a large hangar was situated on the side and edge of a headland that dug through the rock where the stables were located, grooming and all-you-can-eat feeding stations were spread throughout the rooftops and main park of the city. Because of Hiccup the city had thrived and flourished.

Berk was now bustling with movement of the people running with boxes of decorations and banners at the town square. Lampposts on the side of the streets had ribbons of green, black and red with strings of crystal beads, banners stretched across buildings and house windows, the fountain in the square had been installed with changing coloured lights and a long table was being set up with a large green lace tablecloth.

Astrid smiled brightly at the scene; she had been waiting for five years for Hiccup to return home, and today was that day. She landed Stormfly just outside of the square, got off, and walked over to Fishlegs with her dragon following.

"Hey Fishlegs!"

The buff nineteen year old turned around and smiled as he saw Astrid. Fishlegs wore a large rustic brown hoodie, dark green jeans with a belt that held several rectangular packet pockets and short brown leather boots. He held a small notepad in his left hand and a pen in the other as he scribbled down some notes. Fishlegs was shy and meek, but he had a heart full of love, especially to his Gronkle, Meatlug; his powers were weaker than the others but were more useful, having the power to make himself shrink helped with stealth missions, to be able to transfer his mind into technology was a way to gather information and the power to heal any injury came in handy but was limited to a certain number of use.

"Hi Astrid" he greeted back.

"How are thing going?" She asked.

"Things are going well, so far no one's died and the twins and Snotlout haven't messed anything up."

"That's good. Is there anything I can do to help out?"

"Um..." Fishlegs flipped through his notepad. "Nothing at the moment. But, you could help set the table with food later."

"Sure."

"Hey guys!" Called a voice.

Astrid and Fishlegs both looked up and saw Tuffnut standing on top of a ladder on the right side of the square while his sister Ruffnut was on the left side. The twins had changed as well in appearance. Ruffnut looked a bit more sophisticated but still walked with a slouch. She had taken to wear a deep purple jacket, short black boots with golden spiked studs at the toe and dark blue skinny jeans with rips along with a chestnut brown tunic. Tuffnut was just about the same; black leather jacket, heavy, thick soled boots with studs, red trousers and a raggedy looking murky green T-shirt.

"Check this out!" said Tuffnut.

They both motioned their hands up to a huge canvas banner that stretched over the square and connected to two pillars. On the banner were words that were messily written in red paint.

'WELLCOM BAK HICCUP'

The two young adults stared uncertainly up at it.

"At least they spelt Hiccup's name right" Fishlegs stated.

Astrid nodded. "And it's the thought that counts" she added.

They both smiled and gave the thumbs up to the twins. Astrid's mind wandered to the short, gangly and sarcastic boy that was somewhere on another island, staying safe. The last time she saw Hiccup was five years ago when they said goodbye on the docks, and shared their first real kiss. Even though Astrid never showed it, she did feel sorry for him in the past, however, the Viking tradition that Berk lived on prevented her from helping him and she had to keep to herself and not let her emotions get in the way. But, she learnt it was alright to express her feelings of sympathy to someone and had a whole new perspective in life. Hiccup had showed her a new world that she could be happy in and enjoy her life instead of bottling up herself and become a heartless soldier.

While Berk did follow Viking ways, her family was one of the families who strictly went with its guidelines, and Astrid being blessed with some of the stronger powers of invisibility, super speed and poison immunity, she did and became everything they wanted her to be; but when Hiccup stepped in, he broke down a wall she had in her mind and let the real Astrid flood out like a broken dam. He had freed her. Astrid owed him so much, everyone did. Hiccup had changed and created a home for the people and dragons, and taught people that having physical strength, doesn't make you a hero, it's the strength from the heart and mind that does.

The young woman let herself come back to reality as the twins began to start a fight with each other, using the paint to throw and stain one another. Ruffnut had a good advantage in all the fights they had, her abilities were enhanced hearing, animal morphing and her main one teleportation. The citizens all thought that she has blessed by Loki to carry such a power as that for her to use in her tricks, and always cursed the God for using her to make entertainment for himself. While her power allowed Ruffnut to zip from one place to another, without people ever knowing where she went, her brother Tuffnut, was just as bad. Even though he couldn't disappear in the blink of an eye then reappear on the other side of the city, his powers were just as Loki tainted as Ruffnut's. If an object was thrown or shot at him he would wave a hand in front of it and would transform it into something harmless or something edible, if he didn't use his power of transmutation, he would use elasticity to get to the top of buildings or would run and run through walls to get away. Yes, they gave their loyalty to Loki.

"Hey Astrid? You excited to see Hiccup again?" asked Fishlegs.

"Yeah" she answered. "I can't believe it's been five years since we last saw him."

"I know! I wonder how he is. Do you think he's changed?"

"Well, we have" Astrid stated. "And it's been five years, so of course he's changed. In appearance and maybe personality. I bet Hiccup's still that same sarcastic and stubborn boy."

"I'll take that bet" chuckled Fishlegs.

Astrid, the twins and Fishlegs all walked up to the City Hall that situated at the top of the hill. The Hall was quite big, with four tall white marble columns that supported the roof and had Snoggletog lights wrapped around them, the doors were made out of thick oak wood with stained glass windows. The City Hall was a place where Stoick, Hiccup's father, would mostly work; the hall was the only restaurant on the island and citizens and dragons would also take shelter in the Hall when there were severe snow storms. The young adults opened the doors and entered into the building. The inside was built out of large sandstone bricks and the floor was a white marble with hazel brown diamond shaped tiles, wooden benches that could hold ten people were spread out in the room, a large oval pit sat in the middle of the hall with several giant planks of wood that were on fire and gave great light to the room. Tapestries of ancestors, dragons and wars lined the sandstone walls, along with portraits of the past leaders.

"Painful message! PAINFUL MESSAGE!" a voice screamed.

The group looked up to see Snotlout running down the walls with an orange Terrible Terror attached firmly to his arm by its teeth. Snotlout would've had to be one of the people that changed the most; whereas Astrid had grown considerably taller and matured from a girl to a woman, Snotlout didn't have another growth spurt after he reached the age of seventeen and was now shorter than the others. But, his ego kept the same, much to the disappointment to everyone, so he continued to boast about his ability to create artificial gravity around him that allowed him to walk on surfaces that were on any angle, the power to lift objects that weighed a thousand times his size and to mimic any metal he came in touch with.

Tuffnut grabbed the Terror by its body and pulled it off Snotlout's arm with all his might until it finally let go.

"Whoa! Is that your skin in its mouth?"

Astrid noticed a piece of paper tied to the little dragons leg and took if off before the Terror decided to launch itself at Tuffnut and clamp its mouth onto his nose.

"What does it say, Astrid?" Fishlegs asked.

She began to read it out:

Hey guys,

It's Hiccup. I know I haven't written in a while, some... 'Things'... Happened these past few months. Anyway, can't wait to see you guys again.

See you soon =)

P.S Could you tell dad that we'll be arriving in two hours?

P.P.S Get ready for some new arrivals

"I wonder what he means by 'things'" pondered Fishlegs "Did something happen while he was gone?"

"Maybe puberty finally hit him" joked Snotlout, which earned him a punch in the face by Astrid.

"We'll ask him when he gets here. In the meantime, where's Stoick? We need to tell him Hiccup is going to be here soon."

"I'll go find him." said Astrid before she run at high speed out of the Hall and zoomed through the streets of Berk, looking for him at the usual spots. She stopped at the docks first, but only found the fishermen; next, she went to Silent Sven's farm, not there, his house, the food storage, his office in the Great Hall; he was nowhere!

An idea suddenly popped in Astrid's head. Today was an emotional day for everyone, especially for Stoick; so she ran to the one place where he could be. The Forge. The repair shop had rarely been touched in the past five years. The paint for the sign was worn and chipping, cobwebs lined the edges of the windows; thick layers of dust covered every area it could fall on. The inside of the shop was exactly the same.

Sitting on a stool by the old counter was Stoick, holding a picture of Hiccup and his wife. Valka Haddock was Stoick's wife. He hadn't seen her in fifteen years when she decided to do some research at the mainland, sadly, while on her journey she had sailed into a storm and was not found. I had been hard to cope with the loss, and even harder to explain to a five year old Hiccup that his mother wasn't coming that day, the Haddock household had been completely different.

"Chief?" Astrid called out.

Stoick looked up from the photo and turned to see Astrid standing by the doorway.

"Oh, hello Astrid. what can i do for you?"

"We just received a letter from Hiccup. He'll be here in two hours."

"Really?! Two hours?"

"Well, more like one hour and forty five minutes cause i spent fifteen looking for you. Don't worry, when i checked your office, i told Fishlegs to speed up the preparations for the party. He also said to get ready for some new arrivals."

"New arrivals?" Stoick asked quizzically.

"I believe he meant new dragons"

"Oh, OK. Thank you, Astrid. Go tell Fishlegs to assign some people to prepare some stalls in the stables. " smiled Stoick.

"Of course, Sir"

Astrid left the Chief and ran back to the square where everyone was finishing the final touches to the decorations. The scent of hot delicious food wafted out of the City Hall, lanterns of red, blue, yellow and green had been hoisted up in the air. She found Fishlegs giving out instructions to people, and relayed Stoick's request to him. The twins went to start painting targets on Sven's sheep for a dragon race as a surprise for Hiccup, Snotlout was in the kitchen 'taste testing' the food for the celebration and Astrid began to help set up the buffet table.

Time went by like a shooting star, and when the loud sound of the horn echoed through the city, everyone rushed to the docks with excited smiles on their faces. Astrid had used her super speed to get there first, Ruffnut and the others shortly by the female twin teleporting them there. Johann's boat was just pulling up in the dock as the rest of the citizens showed up. Once the boat was tied to the dock, a ramp was pulled out and Johann stepped out.

"Ah! Berk!" he exclaimed. "My favourite of all the places I've been to."

"Johann" Stoick greeted with a nod. "How's Hiccup?"

"Hiccup is very well. He's just downstairs grabbing his things"

"Oi! Don't tell me you forgot about old Gobber!"a voice called.

Said person appeared next to Johann, grinning and laughing like an idiot.

"No one could forget you, Gobber" commented Stoick.

The old, blonde, mustached welder hadn't really changed all that much, excepted his face was had patches of soot on it and his shirt was ripped and eaten away in areas.

"You could've washed up before you returned" the Chief scolded.

"Yeah, but that would've taken hours" Gobber replied.

The two old friends gave out a laugh and embraced in a manly hug. They, and all of Berk's people and dragons, diverted their attention back to the boat when a sound emitted from the staircase.

Tap, clink...Tap,clink...tap,clink

When the figure showed himself, everyone stared at him in awe and silence. Except Tuffnut.

"Whoa! What happened to Hiccup?"