Sorry for being rather absent lately, I have a good disappearing act no? I promise I'll try to post more, but this month is NaNoWriMo and I'm trying to write 50000 words so...

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Dracologistmaster: Thanks and oh yes he is!

ivanganev1992: Lots of good insight!

Fishlegs and Hiccup had once been the best of friends, they'd been inseparable since they were three, but their bond had gone back much farther. Valka, Hiccup's mother and Halla, Fishlegs' Mother had been friends as well, and when Valka died Halla had in a way adopted Hiccup, and cared for him in a way only a mother could.

Fishlegs stood nervously, to his left was Snotlout, Tuffnut and Ruffnut and to his right stood Hiccup by himself. His eyes flicked back and forth uneasily, he knew this decision should have been easy, after all Hiccup was his best friend. But being as shy and unvikingly as he was, Fishlegs already stood out, and Hiccup didn't exactly help, and he knew what would happen if he remained friends with Hiccup….

Not sure who to chose he remained rooted to the spot, but the ever so slightly he turned to the left.

Hiccup watched the blond hair boy as he shifted back in forth between the choices, in the beginning he'd been confident that Fishlegs would choose him, after all what should he have to fear, they'd been good friends for two years, and they both hated Snotlout and agreed that the twins wouldn't make very good friends. But as the seconds dragged on his certainty faded steadily. And when Fishlegs turned slightly toward Snotlout and Co. he knew what would happen. Sighing he turned around and walked away, he couldn't bare the humiliation, better to leave now. Fishlegs left with no choice walked over to Snotlout.

They entered the cove, Hiccup climbing down first with Fishlegs following closely. Toothless immediately bounded over, he nudged Hiccup's hand and smiling the boy pet the dragon's head. He kneeled down and whispered into Toothless's ear, "Stormfly is safe, no one was training today." The nightfury purred, an even larger smile gracing it's scaly face.

Hiccup stood back up and turned to Fishlegs and gestured to a tree across the cove. "Why don't we sit over there?" The boy nodded and the group of three made their way toward the shaded spot in this little oasis on an island that was located solidly on the meridian of misery.

Fishleg's sat, his back against an old tree, and Hiccup leaned on the curled up figure of Toothless. The nightfury opened his eyes, glanced at Hiccup and purred, Hiccup smiled and rubbed Toothless behind his ears. The boy turned his head to face Fishleg's and cleared his throat. "Okay, as I promised, I'm going to fill you in on everything." There was a short uncomfortable silence and Hiccup after much delay, began. "The same night that you and Astrid were taken, I was also grabbed by this dragon" Toothless's ears perked up, "Hey Hiccup, you forgot that I was planning on kidnapping your Viking friend you call Snotlout not you." The boy groaned in annoyance and Fishlegs stared at him, but Hiccup didn't notice.

The annoyance faded and was quickly replaced with a saddened uncomfortable expression. "I escaped because Toothless was brought down by the bola launcher which I built, and he lost one of his tail fins." Hiccup lifted his arm gesturing to the leather prosthesis. Fishlegs followed his hand and for the first realized the discolored fin. " I still don't know who shot it..." Hiccup trailed off.

"We landed in this cove, and after a few harmless skirmishes" the dragon snorted. "We finally began becoming friends. You see Toothless had lost half of his tail fin, and without that he couldn't fly, and if he couldn't fly he couldn't catch food. So I decided to give him a fish, and that's how he got his name." Toothless grunted and his human turned and smiled, the dragon copied the human and opened his mouth showing his teeth then retracted them and gave a toothless smile.

Fishlegs gasped in amazement, and Hiccup grinned wider, "So bud, any other tricks up your sleeves?" "No not as far as I know, anyway I don't have sleeves," the dragon smiled and closed his eyes.

Hiccup laughed and turned back around fully intending to finish explaining, when Fishlegs started to stutter. "You, you, can talk to d-dragons? H-how is is this even possible?" Hiccup who'd clearly forgotten about this very important and particularly mind blowing fact frowned, how had he forgotten? "Yes I can, so far it seems all dragons can understand me and I can understand them, and apparently there are particular dragons who can understand all humans, like Toothless here, he can understand every word you say." Fishlegs looked even more surprised if that was even possible.

Hiccup cleared his throat, "As I was saying, from what I gather the reason that Nightfury teeth retract is because their jaws don't widen as much as other dragons do. Which means when they breath flame their teeth would get in the way, so their teeth retract." Fishlegs nodded excitedly, this was getting good.

"And because I can talk to dragons Toothless explained why you two were kidnapped." Fishlegs leaned in eagerly, this very question that Hiccup was about to answer had been troubling him days. "Apparently the dragons had noticed that their people were disappearing, then one day a dragon found out that we, Vikings have been imprisoning the dragons, and in order to get revenge the dragon queen ordered the kidnapping of three Viking hatchlings."

"Wait, wait... THERE'S A DRAGON QUEEN?" Fishlegs screeched. "Oh oops... Yes there is, she is a Timberjack and goes by the name Flare." Hiccup sighed, explaining all of this was definitely going to take a while. Fishlegs head spun as he tried to take this all in, there was just too much, it seemed like Hiccup held all the answers to all the questions he'd ever asked about dragons.

"All that time I think Toothless held me in the cove in hope that he'd still be able to present me to the queen, but eventually he decided to let me go. And so I returned to Berk." Hiccup sucked in a deep breath and returned to the telling of the tale of the last week. "After returning to the village I decided to fashion a replacement tail fin for Toothless, and after much trial and error I ended up with what you see here." Fishlegs stood up, moved over to Toothless's tail and crouched down to examine the leather fin.

"Wow, this is amazing Hiccup!" Hiccup turned red and shrugged, "It still needs some work, but for now it should do." Fishlegs shook his head, not understanding how Hiccup could possibly not see how impressive this contraption was. Quickly Hiccup changed the topic, he hated when he blushed. "Well after I got the tail working I was finally able to bring you and Astrid back to Berk. So me and Toothless set out with the intention of sneaking into the nest and kidnapping you two back...Oh gosh have I told you how spectacular the inside of the nest is?"

Astrid watched horrified as green smoke engulfed a house, this was her first ever glimpse of a dragon raid, and it was more horrendous than anything she could imagine. But it would get worse, Astrid realized with a pang of fear, that that very house was where all four of her grandparents lived.

Her eye's widened in shock as she caught a glimpse of three figures as they fading in to view and quickly disappeared back into the zippleback gas. Astrid quickly identified them for she knew them well, they were her parents and Uncle Finn.

Then as if in slow motion the final blow hit her hard, a monstrous nightmare facing a viking nearby flamed up, and the thinnest tendril of the gas was caught in the flame, but that was enough. So quickly that human eyes could not see, the flames hungrily devoured the tendril and consumed the rest of the gas, and in an instant the house was blown to pieces.

Astrid burst from her hiding place and ran straight toward the pile of the burning remains of what once was her grandparents house. It was then she possibly had the only bit of luck she would have all day, a slender hand clamped on to her arm preventing her from blindly running to the spot of her parents destruction and perhaps dying herself. The young girl turned preparing to hiss and spit, when she saw the sorrowful face of her Aunt Embla. Astrid drew back into herself, her anger quickly diminished and was replaced by tears at the sight of her only living relative.

Well... not her only relative. Whether it was fate taking one last gamble to preserve a bit of young girls life, or simply a coincidence, her Aunt had not been fighting that night, and only because she was carrying a child she would later lose. But the loss of that child would not be so great, because Astrid slowly filled the gaping hole in Embla's heart and the Aunt the same for her niece.

That day shaped most of Astrid's life, it was the very root of her hatred for dragons, and forced her to grow up too fast. But as humans often do, she didn't get the entire tale of that night, for the zippleback had never meant to lit the gas with its flame, it only intended to warn the humans. And the monstrous nightmare had never wished to harm the humans, Astrid and every other human had missed the horrified expressions that the dragons had worn...

How's the character building?