It's 11:05 p.m., so I won't say anything...Don't have the energy to...but enjoy.
That night, an immediate council was called. Nearly all of the villagers attended – down to the dragon kids: Astrid, Snoutlout, Fishlegs, Tuffnut, Ruffnut and naturally, Hiccup. The little Night Fury who was the source of all miseries raining down on Berk at the moment wasn't exactly invited, but she had clung onto Hiccup's shoulder like he was her last life line and spat blue, white-hot fire at anyone who wished to pluck her off of her perch. Well, with the exception of Toothless, of course. After that little hit in the kitchen, the hatchling showed a reasonable level of respect to her elder, and she did not challenge him again, but that didn't mean she obeyed every command he gave.
As it was, Toothless didn't even bother to tell the hatchling to bug off. He himself had tried to enter the city hall with Hiccup, his eyes never leaving the boy's back, worry, fear and wariness all dampened with a forced calm in his eyes. He hadn't forgotten what his kins had said, and if there was one thing that Toothless feared to lose more than his ability to fly, it was his rider.
Naturally, Stoick was nowhere near pleased. In fact, when all threats were rendered useless, the chieftain had told Hiccup to "get your oversized kitty out of this place or else I'm gonna toss him out". Of course, Toothless was insulted and was getting ready to torch the burly man just a bit, seeing as he had so much hairs to singe he didn't know where to start when Hiccup limped in between the two and put a hand on Toothless' head.
"Calm down, Toothless," he whispered reassuringly. "I'm sorry, buddy, but you can't be in here. I'll tell you everything afterward, okay? 'Til then, why not stand guard at the doors if you like?"
Two pairs of green eyes, one reptile and fiercely protective and the other soft but firm, contrasted each other for some moments while the people surrounding them paused to watch, some holding in their breath, wanting to see what would happen.
Finally, Toothless broke the eye contact and instead glanced at the young hatchling on his friend's shoulder and let out a long, accented growl. To humans, it might sound almost like a warning, but the message was really just half of that.
Keep him safe, the message said.
And the receiver chirped in agreement. Toothless then reluctantly removed his head from Hiccup's touch and with even more hesitation, stalked out of the great doors to go and stand with the dragons that had bonded with Hiccup's friends. The dragon spared the boy one last morose glance before the doors swung shut.
They started the meeting right after that.
"Good men and women of Berk," Stoick began, his voice that made rumbling thunders sound like a dying puppy's breaths echoing down the silent hall of the hundred Vikings, "it seems to me like we have found the reason for today's attack on our village."
Out of habit if nothing else, all eyes found Hiccup's gaze. For ten years long, the chieftain's son had rained trouble after trouble onto them, some comical while others fatal, and one month wasn't enough to erase the memories of one decade.
So it was understandable, really, when Hiccup flinched at their gazes, but it only took one second for the Vikings to direct them at the black Night Fury on the boy's shoulder, and understanding dawned on their faces.
Oh, so that's the problem.
"Chieftain!" a woman called out. Stoick waved his hand for her to continue. "I saw Hiccup trying to hand the hatchling to its parents this evening, but then I was batted down. What happened? Why didn't the dragons take it and go?"
At that, all eyes turned back to Hiccup expectantly, even Stoick's. He immediately felt squirmy. He had never been good with public speeches. "Well, it had almost gone smoothly," Hiccup admitted, reaching up to scratch the little dragon under the chin, "but then some dragons from our side shot the female approaching me, blasting her, and then all Thor broke loose."
His explanation was simple, and it did make sense. Some of the Vikings nodded, some shook their heads and sighed, while others started chatting among themselves, now planning on a course of action.
"The Night Furies will be back," Stoick began, and silence instantly took hold of the crowded town hall. "Until then, I want a night patrol with dragons, mind you. One of them is enough to set half of Berk on fire already as we have learned. Ten? I refuse to let them set foot on this town's ground."
Stoick then proceeded to calling out names and assigning tasks. The kids will go with some grown-ups if they wished, he'd also said. They were, after all, the most skilled in handling dragons, and of course, Hiccup could do as he pleased, as long as there were some watchful eyes on him. Stoick knew Hiccup would try something reckless or crazy but brilliant all the same if nobody kept a close tab. He'd seen that streak of genius in the boy before, along with that familiar habit of taking large risks with almost zero percent of success and still made it out alive and although never unharmed, with his goal reached. It was his mother's genes that took the blame, not his.
As his father ranted on, Hiccup turned his head slightly to look at his friends, Astrid specifically, and offered a reassuring crooked smile, but it turned out awkward. When she smiled back, his turned into a grin and he nodded briefly. This is going to turn out alright, the message said, with the silent, I hope, tailing but undetected.
The hatchling on Hiccup's shoulder gave a mournful moan, and that dragged the young boy's mind back to the evening. Something didn't seem right. The hatchling didn't want to come back with her family. If it hadn't been her family, she would no doubt have fought more fiercely, but she didn't. That confirmed that, but…
But why? Why wouldn't she want to return with them?
0o0o0o0o0
Outside, right on the front steps of the town hall, was Toothless, gloomy, pacing, worried and frustrated. He knew he was being way too paranoid – that flight would need some time to recover its wounded, and it wasn't like they would burst into the middle of a whole town of Vikings full of battle axes and tons of dragon-murder experiences in them and decided to strike down Hiccup, the chieftain's son.
But still, he was worried. Night Furies have little honor, but their loyalty was beyond time and if any one of them is hurt, revenge is like a mourning of a loved one; it comes naturally. They were dangerous, powerful, and now, bloodthirsty. Thirsty for the blood of the human hatchling who did nothing wrong.
Toothless growled furiously, still prowling, his ears flat against his head. If only he'd known which idiot of a lizard brain did that careless shooting…That dragon had endangered them all, and he had endangered Hiccup, of all people. His rider. His friend. With an angry huff, he settled on the steps.
A distance from the dragon and the town hall, the four other dragons that belonged to Hiccup's friends watched Toothless silently, but none of them stepped up to meet him. They knew what the outcome would be. They had tasted the Night Fury's anger before, and it wasn't something they wanted to again.
Finally, however, Wreck stepped forward, hesitated for a bit, then came two large steps closer and stopped while his friends watched him with amazement, fear and a touch of respect. "Toothless," he began, and then paused as he waited for some kind of snappy retort. He was careful to use the name Hiccup had given him; Toothless had a name before that, but he detested it, and he accepted this one with grace, so they called him that.
There was no snappy remark, however. In fact, the dragon wasn't even listening. He was lying in a simmering black mass of some hundred pounds of enraged and anxious Night Fury in front of the Town Hall's tall doors, his green eyes narrowed into slits and downcast, darkened with all the negative feelings he was experiencing.
Wreck waited awhile longer and then tried again, "Toothless."
This time, the Night Fury looked up. He grunted. "What?"
When a human was nervous, they shifted their feet and stumbled through their words, but for a dragon, it was when the scales on them starting to rustle, and that was exactly what was happening to Wreck. Still, so very Astrid, (oh, how in Thor did the humans influence them this much?) his voice was cool (as much as it could be with a Night Fury, the most fearsome of dragons, to glare at you), "I was just trying to say, I don't think your…cousins…will return so soon. They aren't exactly stupid, you know."
They looked at each other for awhile, then Wreck recognized his mistake and said quickly, "No, not that I meant that your kind is stupid…"
"You are right," Toothless grumbled, cutting the Nadder off. He laid his head down on the earth again and blew a sigh from his nostrils. A column of smoke still blew out of his closed mouth, however. "But they will take revenge. And they will stop at nothing for it…" And they will be very, very happy to tear the young hatchling apart, too. Very.
There had been an important rule regarding humans and Night Furies, but Toothless had been on his own ever since he was fifteen years into life, so he didn't remember it clearly, but he knew it was important. Now he tried to rack his brain to remember. It wasn't a legend. It was a rule. A rule every single self-respecting Night Fury out there obeys, set by nature, not the dragons. If only he could remember correctly…
As the Night Fury was thinking, something else interrupted his thought, this one a human. "Excuse me," a voice squeaked somewhere twenty human steps away from Toothless, and he lazily lifted his eyes to meet the speaker.
It was a human female, eight or nine years old, wearing a long piece of brown-black garment longer than Hiccup's, er, tunic. In fact, it reached all the way to just some inches above her ankles, only enough reveal a pair of fur boots. Her long dark hair was held up in a single ponytail, not the typical braid, and her eyes, a very, very deep shade of blue, was shining with fear, and she was shaking, but the set in her jaws showed that she was too stubborn to do anything about it. Her hands were held firmly at her sides, even though they were shaking also. Overall, she was a picture of barely contained fear, but she was trying her best.
Viking convention, Toothless thought.
The Night Fury had only adored Hiccup and Hiccup alone, so he didn't pay much attention to the other people around him much often. If he did, then it was either a) they have some type of good fish on them, or b) they were talking about Hiccup, so Toothless wanted to hear what they were saying.
Aside from that? Toothless ignored them. Not that he would want to be friendly with a bunch of smelly humans who love belching contests and such gross cultures. The children weren't any better; they kept shouting out, "It's the Night Fwuwy, Mama!" whenever he walked past, or trying to intimidate him with wooden sticks. The rest just giggled and went "Aw!" when they saw him. It drove Toothless mad.
"You are blocking the doorway," the girl before him said, her voice, surprisingly, holding a calmness a world away from her shaking body. "I need to make an important report, so please, can you…can you move aside? Just for a bit?"
Toothless growled defiantly, then turned his eyes to the pavement before him. He had never listened to anybody but Hiccup and occasionally, Astrid or Stoick when they asked nicely, and in his grumpy mood, he felt no oblige to listen to this little youngling, so he went to ignore her.
Now Robin, Snoutlout's beloved Nightmare, spoke up for the first time. "Come now, Toothless, be reasonable," she said, her voice motherly. It was really a hard thing to believe this dragon was the one who tried to kill Hiccup at that time in the caged arena, Toothless thought vaguely. To be honest, the Night Fury didn't want to let go of the fact that this thing had nearly killed his rider, but it was close to impossible, seeing as she mothered everything small and weak and generally pathetic, humans, other baby dragons and everything else in between and beyond.
"Why do I have to be reasonable to a hatchling I didn't even know?!" Toothless snapped back irritably, but just then, the gates behind him open, and he jumped to his feet, eager to see Hiccup again and hear about the news that was "for human ears only", but a shadow of brown and black fleeted past him and into the big, dispersing crowd of Vikings.
With a blink, Toothless realized it was the young hatchling from before, and by now she was shoving people out of her way, crying out, "Father! Father!" as she tried to search for somebody.
"Excuse me!" another familiar voice yelled from somewhere at the back of the crowd. "I've got a possibly very impatient Night Fury waiting for me and I won't put it pass him to burn down all our rations just because he's kept waiting for too long!"
Immediately, the crowd parted like terrified sheep scared by the swooping shadows of dragons to make a path for one Hiccup with a baby Night Fury on his shoulders to limp past them, followed closely by Astrid, the Nuts, Fishlegs and Snoutlout, all very serious-faced and thoughtful, in Astrid's case, at least.
Hiccup went to the eagerly waiting Toothless and smiled, putting one hand on his dragon's snout, leading him toward the other dragons while the rest of the gang went to their own dragons, chatting about the placements of the patrols. Hiccup would go with all of them plus some battle-hardened fellows who had gotten fairly good with their dragons – the best in Berk for the moment, actually. Hiccup, useless (nobody dared said that word anymore, because Toothless will be throwing a murderous fit) or fish-bone or whatever, was still the chieftain's son, and that made him an important figure. Top security will be needed.
The boy had started telling Toothless about the arrangements (hey, dragons understand the human tongue perfectly, you know) when the girl from earlier almost slammed into him, but she brushed herself off quickly and said a hasty apologize before following an equally hasty giant of a man off to do something, but Toothless felt her dark blue eyes on him for a second before she turned and ran.
"Who's that?" Hiccup asked, rubbing his shoulder. "I've never seen her when we walk around Berk."
It was true, Toothless realized, as he walked toward the other five mounted dragons, that he'd never seen her before. She wasn't in the groups of kids that usually tried to do silly things to him. She had never been seen, as a matter of fact. But she was nine. She'd been around here for a long time, so how come she wasn't noticed.
"Hey, why did I feel something's missing?" Hiccup asked suddenly as he leaned against Toothless when they walked to meet their friends. Toothless looked at him for a second before both sets of eyes moved toward his shoulder, where the baby Night Fury should've been.
She was gone. Again.
"Oh, for the love of…" Hiccup groaned, and he swung onto Toothless' back. The dragon himself snorted. And he thought she would've learned.
Maybe the Viking stubbornness is a spreading disease, and it was just affecting the Night Fury hatchling a tiny bit too much.
Well, Genome Soldier, you asked for a new chapter in this story, so here you go. Thanks, guys for the reviews you left me. Bye.
~the Apprentice