I'm feeling pretty good about this now. Thank you for the favorites and reviews, although I only just started replying to them because I'm a buttnugget. I'm trying to write longer chapters and write more often now. We'll see how that turns out. For now, have a long-ass chapter that I probably didn't fully proofread.

Lunch break was the fourth time, at least, that Monday that he'd accidentally met eyes with clearly irritated Merida in passing time. How could it be possible to have that bad luck? Considering past events, pretending to not have seen her while proceeding to the usual spot outside the hall doors seemed like the best choice. Astrid, the twins, and Snotlout were already there, along with Fishlegs, who was still engrossed in his reading. He missed walking to school with them, and none of them shared morning classes with him, making it the first time he'd seen them since Friday. Quite a bit had gone on since then.

"Someone finally made it to school," Astrid teased.

"I've been here since first period." To be more accurate, "... Halfway through first period."

"And knowing you-"

"I was working on something this weekend."

"Oh boy," Fishlegs whispered over the small draconology handbook.

They always expected him to be up to something crazy. Justified, with what happened the last year. "Just research. You wouldn't believe what my dad dropped on me Friday night."

"Frying pan?" Everyone stopped to look at Tuff with confused expressions. "Just a guess. And it happens." Ruff nodded to him vacantly.

Hiccup slowly hook his head. "Not literally, I mean he had crazy news."

Snotlout chimed in, a bit too cheerily asking, "Are you adopted?"

Hiccup reluctantly answered the second interruption, "No, but it does have to do with family."

"Something about your mom?" Fishlegs offered.

"Can we all stop with the guessing game? They're only getting worse."

Astrid urged, "Just tell us, then."

"Alright. So... My aunt and uncle apparently had a daughter."

The table went silent again until Snotlout charmingly broke it. "So some old people had a baby, who gives a rat's ass?"

"Eighteen years ago. I had a cousin my entire life and didn't even know. Well, I guess I knew her, before she was kidnapped." The silence devolved into unamused stares. It took a moment to realize what he just said, paired with its delivery, sounded like a pitch for a bad ABC Family show. "No, I'm not joking, I found pictures of her. Some of the old reports after she went missing... The timing works, everything checks out, she's for real."

Half of them were snickering, but Astrid played along, "And she's been gone how long?"

Hiccup shrugged, "About fourteen years... Just enough that I wouldn't remember, of course." Oh, this was sounding so fake. He hardly believed Stoick when they discussed it, how could any of it make sense to them?

"What whackjob hides a stolen kid for fourteen years?" Snotlout asked. "Did he keep her locked in the basement with a salt lick and a bucket? Or were the cops just lazy?"

"Being used by a witch for her health-restoring power, no, she didn't get out much." The more he thought of her, the worse he felt. This was all so messed up. "She was manipulated for her entire childhood."

Snotlout added, "Lots of people go missing around here. All those people in the lake, that guy Lars, Hiccup's mom..."

Astrid lightly smacked Snotlout's arm. He still didn't think to not bring it up, though Hiccup was used to it at this point. She looked away and shook her head. "There's something seriously wrong with this town." Nobody could argue with it. As innocent or even quaint as Aberleigh appeared to anyone outside of its limits, nobody living within them ever seemed to get a rest.

Fishlegs fidgeted in concern. "So... Why do we live in it?"

Watching the twins singe their arm hair with a lighter (yeah, that was definitely not allowed on campus) and laugh at the smoke, Hiccup answered "Because we're crazy."

Turning back to Hiccup, Astrid said, "It's weird that your dad wouldn't tell you something like that, though."

"If you haven't noticed yet, my entire life is weird." He glanced up to see Merida still staring violently. He hushed to the group, "On that note, does anybody know what the deal with Merida is?"

Fishlegs asked, "Who?"

"Moved from Scotland, big red hair... Kind of behind you." Immediately Hiccup cringed and muttered "No, don't all look!" as Snotlout, the twins, and Fishlegs did so. Looking away, he could still feel her eyes burning holes in himself.

They turned back, Snotlout shrugging. "Eh... like a Five, but still way out of your league."

"Definitely not what I was asking about. She's just been glaring at me all day. What is that?"

"She's pissed. Not at you, just in general," Astrid clarified, "but wouldn't you be if you had to move here?" She didn't know the half of it, he knew it was more personal than that.

"She almost shot me the other day, in the section of the forest she shouldn't even have a bow, and told me I was overreacting about the arrow that hit a tree - I swear - less than a yard in front of my face." Knowing he wasn't finished, Astrid smiled and waited.

"It's pretty clear she really doesn't like me, and I think..." He looked again, only to see she'd walked away. "I think she's planning to kill me."

Astrid only laughed quiety. "You can calm down. Unless you deliberately did something to get on her nerves, you're probably in the clear."

"I think telling her who my dad is was enough to get her mad."

"So maybe she's a little hot-headed. She isn't stupid enough to pick fights in the first month of school for no reason."

Astrid was never particularly rude to him before they became friends, but it was impossible for her to stand up like this for a stranger. "Do you know her?"

"I've talked to her once or twice." She gestured to herself and Snotlout, "We all have P.E. together."

Snotlout gained an enlightened look. "She's the one with the high socks! Nevermind, Seven. At least with the hair up."

Astrid rolled her eyes away from him grumbling, "We really don't need your commentary, you know." Only at that moment did Hiccup finally notice Astrid's Chemistry book. He then realized they shared that class and, yes, he should have had his with him too.

"Hang on," he said as he stood back up, "I think I forgot my book in my locker again."

Wryly smiling, Astrid mocked, "The genius that captured and tamed the most rare and mysterious of dragons... Forgetting the same book for three weeks straight."

"At least I'm remembering I forgot it," he joked back, and reentered the hallway.

He was glad that this year he could open a top locker with no problem. Previous years hadn't been as easy. In the seventh grade it was either carrying all of his books all day, or stepping on top of them to be able to read the numbers on the lock. After everything Snotlout said about the latter, he mostly stuck to the former. He thought he was alone in the hall until hearing a voice from the other side of the locker door, causing him to jump a bit.

"So a strayed arrow is a murder attempt to you, is it?" Closing the door revealed Merida with a look of murder in her eyes.

He took a half step away and carefully inquired, "Uh... What do you mean?"

"I told you it was an accident," her words biting as she stepped closer, "you know it was."

All he knew was that this was escalating quickly and couldn't end well. "I... don't know what you're referring-"

"Why did my father hear from yours that I attacked you?" The rise of her voice, along with a quick shove to his left shoulder, backed him up against the wall. She wasn't any larger than him, but undoubtedly more threatening.

"I never told him that." Hiccup tried his best to keep his voice from shaking. His voice shouldn't shake at this.

"Really."

"All I said to him was that you shot near me, not on purpose." Why? Why did he tell him that in the first place?

Incredulous, she demanded, "Tell me who made up the rest, then."

"Look, it's no secret our dads don't get along. Don't you think it's possible they stretched the story a bit? Mine getting protective, yours getting offended, easy mistake."

Her face was softening. Thank goodness, the snarl was disappearing. He added, "I don't want any trouble. I'm assuming, uh, hoping you don't either. What do you say we drop this, just stay out of each others' ways?"

She stared for a second, still half menacingly, before giving him that lovely word, "Fine." Then, grabbed a stack of books from the floor and was off.

Good God, it was like watching a hurricane turn into a rainbow.

Suddenly, she spun back around. "But I'll make this clear to you: I don't need any chicken-legged louts OR their fathers spreading lies about me."

"Well, sorry. Won't happen again." Despite the risky sarcasm in his tone, he found himself pathetically apologizing again to someone that had scared him half to death twice.

At least she was gone now. And actually, quite unnatural in how quickly she was gone. The entire encounter felt closer to a surprise Pokemon trainer battle than how two normal humans would communicate at school. That would be granting, of course, that either of them were anything close to normal. Hating to admit it, even to himself, Hiccup was just slightly terrified of her. It seemed she liked it that way.

Chicken-legged lout. Somehow, he had never heard that one before.