Title: Going Down

Summary: A Tale as old as time, and true as it can be. Both a little scared, neither one prepared… You know where this is going. Beauty and the Beast with a twist. Toothless/Hiccup.

Warning: Eventual slash, mature themes, I guess.

Disclaimer: What part of FAN FICTION is hard to understand? I don't own Beauty and the Beast, and I don't own How to Train Your Dragon. They belong to whoever they do. I'm not here to make money; I'm just here to entertain.

Stoick sat as close to his campfire as he could without getting burned. It was a strange sensation, to be so warm on his front and so cold at his back, but it was a sensation he was used to. Beside him were a few fish and a small deer. He had been strangely reluctant to go dragon hunting without Hiccup now that he'd agreed to take his son with him. Instead, the chief had decided to go ahead and catch their food already, so they wouldn't have to worry about it later when they were hot on the trail of a dragon.

'I hope he's okay…' he thought absently. The hairs on his neck had been tingling for days now, and it had nothing to do with the temperature.

Snow fell in flurries around him, and Stoick wondered for a moment whether Hiccup was lost. He dismissed the thought immediately. Hiccup had this thing that always told him which way north was, so he was fine. What he should be worried about was Hiccup hunting dragons on his own.

That thought bothered Stoick. Hiccup could have gone after a Terrible Terror on his own, thinking it was a Common Garden dragon, when there was a large difference. They looked mostly the same, but Terrors traveled in packs, and were a lot more aggressive. If they got a hold of his son without him there…

Stoick made up his mind and started putting out his fire. If he hurried back, maybe he could get there before Hiccup left, and they could leave together. Training his son involved having a son to train, and while he didn't doubt that Hiccup would be killing Nadders left and right soon enough, right now he was completely untrained, and he was just now realizing why Gobber was so insistent that he prepare his son for the world. It was a dangerous place…

But just as Stoick put out the fire (he kept a torch for walking back to Burk at night, hours from dawn), a large dark shape swooped down from the sky.

PAGEBREAK

"Dude, I've never seen anyone mess up that badly." Tuffnut laughed.

It was the next day. Snotlout, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Fishlegs, and Astrid were walking to the Haddock house. If they couldn't convince Hiccup to drop the dragon-hunting plan altogether, surely he'd let them come with him to make sure he didn't die, right?

"How about I mess you up!" Snotlout launched himself at Tuffnut. Astrid caught him by the collar and used his own momentum to fling him in the other direction.

"Oops." She said.

"Seriously, man, what were you thinking?" asked Ruffnut.

"If you were thinking at all." added Fishlegs. Out of them all, he was the most disapproving of what Snotlout had done. Well, the twins found it hilarious more than anything, and Astrid was being Astrid, which meant no one could read her.

"Look," Snotlout scratched his head. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. I figured once we were married, I could stop him from trying to impress the chief so bad. I mean, come one, dragon hunting? He'd have died for real."

"Well, Gobber thought he was ready." Fishlegs pointed out.

"Gobber," Tuffnut rolled his eyes "Is not exactly the best judge of things like that. I mean, he's lost a leg and a hand, right? I'm surprised he still has both his eyes."

Astrid knocked him upside the head. "Don't talk about him like that. He's got more skill in his pinky than you could have, ever."

"Yeah," Ruffnut was always ready to insult her brother. "You're too chicken to do anything like that. You wish you could lose a leg fighting a dragon!"

"How about I make you lose one right now!"

And this time Astrid didn't bother keeping them apart. Ruffnut was trying to fix her hair and Tuffnut was trying to fix his helmet when they finally got close to Hiccup's house. Smoke was coming out of the chimney, and they could see lights coming from the inside.

They walked right up to the door, upon which Snotlout knocked.

"Hiccup?" He called. "I've got your boot."

"Way to show him who's boss." Tuffnut snickered beside him. Snotlout shooed him away, pressing an ear against the door, waiting for telltale footsteps…

…and nearly fell in when the door was opened. By Old Wrinkly, Hiccup's grandfather.

"You," he shook a bony finger at Snotlout, "Have been very, very rude to my grandson." And he slowly hobbled back to the chair by the fireplace.

The teens looked at each other before following the old man inside.

PAGEBREAK

'The Nerve…!' Hiccup thought darkly to himself. After spending most of yesterday with the door locked, moping and being aggravated at everything, he'd decided to go to his grandfather for a chat, and had come home feeling better. Still annoyed like you wouldn't believe, but better. Then he'd decided to leave before the crack of dawn, eager to go meet with his father and bring down a dragon.

All in all, it had been an okay morning so far. He'd cooked himself breakfast, and had eaten it without incident. He had set a pretty good pace, considering he had brought his bola-throwing-thingy with him. Everything was going swell,

Except now he was lost. Hiccup had opened his bags to find all of his navigation supplies gone, and he had a pretty good idea whose fault it was.

'Snotlout.' He thought murderously. His book of maps (Which had a special compartment for his compass needle and everything) was gone, and in its place were some fire stones and Snotlout's dagger.

He couldn't even just look up and navigate by the stars, because the trees were tall enough to obscure the important bits of the sky. The same trees were impossible to climb without his climbing gear. And his climbing gear (surprise!) was gone too.

'I swear I'm going to kill him when I get back.' Hiccup allowed himself a few minutes to imagine choking his cousin to death before getting back to the problem at hand. He was still lost.

He stood there for a few more minutes, then leaned on a tree, then sat down, then stood up again because that made his butt wet, before he thought of the solution. The Sun. It always rose in the east. All he had to do was wait until dawn, and he'd have a pretty good idea which direction to go to get to the inland lake west of Raven's Peak.

Hiccup sat there, not bothering to build a fire. He'd have to start moving again pretty soon. But not building a fire left him with nothing to do, so he fiddled with his bola-shooting-thingy.

'I really need to think of a better name for this thing,' He thought to himself.

He peaked through the sight with the crosshairs, 'Maybe I'll shoot a dragon all by myself,' He joked. While he had complete and total faith in his machine (the same of which could not be said of anyone else in the Hairy Hooligan Tribe), the chances of a dragon flying by right then were about—

Suddenly, a black shape shot across the circular view provided by his contraption. Hiccup rubbed at his eyes before looking again. There it was, gliding across the pre-dawn sky, cool as could be. It looked like no other dragon Hiccup had seen before. He was excited by the prospect of discovering a new species of dragon before noticing a more important fact.

Was that thing…circling him?

Hiccup started to sweat. Something that big could carry him away, no question. If it didn't rip him into teeny-weeny itty-bitty pieces first.

'I've only got one shot at this.' He told himself.

He too careful aim, and fired!

Down

Down

Down! The dragon went. Hiccup let out a disbelieving "I did it! Oh yeah! Whoo!" before hightailing after it, forgetting his bags and bola-shooting-thingy and everything else except for one thing.

I just brought down my first dragon! All. By. My. Self! I rock!

A/N:

To skyinthenightslove: Wow, so many questions again! And, again, I can't really answer any of them without revealing too much, but I will tell you this: You've hit one nail right on the head and kind of glanced a blow at a few others. If your questions are what you want to happen, I think you should keep reading!

To SkyHighFan: Wow, I've never had any experience like that. I was just sort of making it up as I went along…

To Deeper than Darkness: Snotlout doesn't really. I mean, not right that second. Imagine if one of your best friends was about to go do something incredibly stupid and kill himself if he didn't get married soon. So you did. Would you have done it anyway? Maybe. Who knows? But the point is that he needed you, and you were there. That thing from the day before was a joke (A strangely prophetic one, but a joke nonetheless. I'm looking at you, Crystal F. Flowright)

To Firebreather339: Why not?

To Lauren: Yeah, I know what you mean. I'm trying to keep it light, but when the drama starts, it won't just be drama, it'll be dramatic!drama.

I'm back! I just went on a short vacation with my sister and mother, which was only supposed to last one night, but yeah. The good news is, staying in a hotel room without internet and without my colored pencils (I left them at home.) gave me a lot of time to think. I have some ideas that I'm kind of excited about. The bad news is that having more ideas doesn't make me write any faster, so expect the usual daily or every-other-day updates.

Before anyone asks about the compass (1), Hiccup made a cannon in the movie, so it totally fits and (2), compasses were made around 200 BC in China and were pretty common at 1000 AD, so I assume he read how to make one in a Roman book or something. Maybe he asked a French explorer for one, I don't know.

As always, feed me feedback! And thanks for reading!