SkyGem: Hello my lovely readers! I'd just like to start of by apologizing greatly for the super long wait you've all had to endure for this chapter! I'm sure I've lost a lot of you by now, but for those who are still waiting, I hope you'll enjoy this chapter.
When Hiccup awoke on his first day of school, it was to the soft, rolling tones of the alarm he had set on his phone the night before.
Rolling over with a groan, he grabbed the phone off his bedside table and jabbed moodily at the screen, still half-asleep and grumpy at being woken up.
He'd hoped that a gentler alarm would make waking up easier, especially since he had to be up a whole hour earlier today than he was used to.
No such luck.
Yawning widely, the brunet sat up, pushing his hair out of his eyes and looking around, trying to orient himself.
The sky outside had just begun turning a dusty pink, and he had just two hours until he and the other first years were expected at the Hangar for the Bonding Ceremonies to begin.
As soon as that realization hit, Hiccup jumped out of bed, his stomach flipping and flopping and doing a number of other things stomachs did when a person was nervous.
Tuffnut, meanwhile, was still snoring loudly in bed, and there he stayed for the next hour and a half, as Hiccup went about showering and brushing his teeth and generally just stressing out.
Finally, just as Hiccup was about to leave for breakfast, after checking multiple times that his hair was as manageable as it was going to get, a loud, obnoxious alarm rang through the air.
It went on for several moments, and Hiccup was just beginning to wonder if his roommate had possibly died in his sleep, when the lump in Tuffnut's bed moved, and a head of messy, blond dreadlocks popped out of the covers.
Looking around, dazed, he grunted out, "What time is it?"
"7:30," replied Hiccup, expecting Tuffnut to hop out of bed, worried about being late.
Instead, the blond just smiled widely, and said, "Sweet. I'm early."
"Early?" demanded Hiccup, his eyes widening as he turned back to the other boy. "We're supposed to be in The Hangar in half an hour!"
"Exactly!" replied Tuffnut with a yawn, sitting up and reaching out for a hair tie on the nightstand next to him.
Hiccup's eyes narrowed, as he tried to figure out what exactly it was that was wrong with his roommate, before shaking his head and turning to leave. That would take way more time than he currently had.
After a quick breakfast eaten alone, Hiccup hurried to the Hangar, not wanting to be late, and in the process ended up being one of the first few to arrive.
There were only about seven other students there ahead of him, out of the ninety-nine other students in Hiccup's year, and none of them was anyone he knew.
Berk Riding Academy took in students from all around the globe, so it wasn't surprising that Hiccup didn't recognize these students. In fact, if he'd remembered correctly from what his father had told him, there were only five other Norwegian students starting this year.
Each of the kids already in the room looked up at him when he entered, each of them perking up as they recognized him.
Hiccup hated this.
Hated that no matter where he went, he was known because of his father.
It always got everybody's expectations up, which made it that much more humiliating when he inevitably didn't live up to the person they thought he was.
Eventually, they all went back to talking amongst themselves, and Hiccup was free to go and sit on a bench in the far end of the room, by himself.
He watched as, one by one, the other new students in his year trickled into the Hangar, each of them taking a moment to survey everyone else in the room, always taking extra long to study Hiccup himself.
Five minutes before eight, Astrid Hofferson walked in with Ruffnut Thorston, as big a mismatch as ever there was. Bafflingly however, the two girls had been good friends since they were young, despite how different they were, and Hiccup wouldn't be surprised if they had ended up as roommates. His father knew that putting Ruffnut with Astrid would temper the girl's naturally mischievous nature just enough so that it was at least bearable.
Fishlegs Ingerman followed in not long after the girls, walking meekly behind a group of students who had to be either American or Canadian, by the sound of their accents. Guessing by the way Fishlegs occasionally gave his input into their conversation, they were probably friends of his from Canada. Fishlegs used to be a childhood friend of Hiccup's, but the boy's family had moved to Canada when Hiccup was seven, and the two had lost touch soon after.
The Hangar quickly filled up, and just before the doors closed at 8, a group of latecomers rushed in, completely out of breath, and among them were Tuffnut Thorston, looking exhausted but presentable and quite proud of himself, and Hiccup's cousin, Snotlout Jorgenson.
The latter threw Hiccup a haughty smile when he saw him, before moving to the from of the crowd, just below where the principal would stand to address them.
Hiccup got up from where he was sitting to join in the crowd.
If he was off to the side the whole time, the chances of him finding a dragon would be much lower.
Finally, when all one hundred students were gathered in the center of the Hangar, the principal stepped out onto his balcony.
The hum of conversation quickly dropped as everyone noticed him, and before long, all that could be heard was the rustling of clothes and the scuffing of feet as kids nervously shifted their weight.
Mr. Haddock stared down at the students, his gaze flowing over the crowd, and resting for a second on his son before moving on.
"As I'm sure many of you know," he began, "I am not a man who likes to waste time on formalities. But before I like to begin, I would just like to say, welcome! Congratulations on passing the entrance exams, and I hope you will all continue to do well in your studies!"
A loud cheer went up from the crowd of students, each of them proud to have the approval of this intimidating and important man.
Mr. Haddock smiled a moment, before lifting his hands to request silence. He got it.
"And now that that is over, let us get to the important part! The Bonding Ceremony!"
Another cheer went up from the students.
As his father quickly went over what exactly would happen during the Ceremony, Hiccup looked around in curiosity.
He knew this speech backwards and forwards, word for word.
What he was more interested in was the building he was currently standing in.
The Hangar was a large, four story building that usually served as a nesting place for the students' dragons.
Today, however, it was more than half empty.
The older students' dragons would be back to claim their dens after the Bonding Ceremony was over.
At the moment though, there were two hundred unbonded dragons nesting on the first two floors, and at the end of the day, half of them would be staying, while the other half were returned to the sanctuary they lived at during the year, waiting for the next ceremony, and their next chance to find their Rider.
The dragons would be released in bunches, groups of the same species going at the same time.
The pickiest species would be up first – more students to choose from meant a more likely chance they would find a rider they liked.
Suddenly, there was the sound of multiple doors opening, and Hiccup snapped back to attention.
While he had had his head in the clouds, his father had finished up his speech, and the first group of dragons had been loosed onto the waiting teens.
There were a few squeals and noises of surprise, but as a whole, the kids were quiet, stock-still.
Hiccup tried to relax himself; he knew there wasn't any real danger here. These dragons had been raised and trained by licensed professionals to be careful and conscientious of the fragility of humans. Otherwise, there was no chance parents would let their children be exposed to them.
But he had to admit, it was rather hard to relax when there were three typhoomerangs stalking around, surveying them all and poking their heads forward here and there to sniff at them.
At one point, one of them stopped right in front of Hiccup, and the boy almost forgot to breathe.
There was no freaking way he was going to Bond with a typhoomerang. It seemed too good to be true!
The dragon approached him, seeming curious, and it was the only one of the three that had seemed to find someone it was interested in.
It stuck its head close to Hiccup, sniffing at his clothes.
Hiccup looked up and around the room, still completely disbelieving, and he noticed that almost all eyes in the room were on him.
Certainly his father looked quite hopeful. Hiccup knew he had always been worried that his son wouldn't continue the Haddock tradition of Bonding with extremely moody, picky dragons. Stoick himself had a thunderdrum, after all!
But just as Hiccup was about to reach his hand up, for the bonding, the typhoomerang took a sniff at his hipbone, and immediately backed away, head lowered, whining pitifully. Almost as if it had encroached on another's territory.
The other students began muttering amongst themselves, wondering at what had happened, and Hiccup thought he heard his cousin make a joke about how the typhoomerang had realized what a loser Hiccup was.
But he wasn't really paying attention to Snotlout.
There was a horrible suspicion growing within him, and he didn't know whether he should be relieved or happy or absolutely horrified.
He tried to stuff the thought into a tight little box in the back of his mind, but somehow it kept escaping to taunt him. It was something he had never allowed himself to want, a possibility he had never allowed himself to consider.
He watched, distracted, as the typhoomerangs returned to the dens they had been in before, none of them having chosen a rider.
Other dragons came out, one after the other.
For the first little while, it was quite slow, as the picky dragon species kept true to their natures.
There were a few that were chosen.
One of the two Hideous Zipplebacks ended up choosing the Thorston twins as their riders, each head burning the proof of their bond into the hands of their chosen twin.
The two refused to use the burn cream that they had been given earlier, which would help ease the pain and swelling from their new trophies. They claimed they were tough enough to handle it on their own.
A Monstrous Nightmare ended up choosing Snotlout, and boy made sure to throw a gloating look towards Hiccup, as if to show off his amazing new partner, and Hiccup turned away, trying not to feel jealous.
After the Deadly Nadders came out (one of whom chose Astrid as her rider), things began to pick up.
A gronckle ended up choosing Fishlegs, and quite a few dragons approached Hiccup as well, including a changewing and a timberjack and a thunderdrum (Stoick had looked especially hopeful at that one), but they all had the same, strange reaction as the typhoomerang.
And with each new encounter, it became harder and harder for Hiccup to ignore his suspicion about what was really going on.
But in the end, when all his peers had been chosen, and Hiccup was standing alone in the middle of the large room, he could no longer keep it quiet.
He hadn't been the only one to notice the strange reactions of the dragons.
When the last two of his peers had been chosen and the dragons returned, Stoick stomped down the stairs to the ground floor to confront his son.
His sharp eyes had watched each of Hiccups encounters with the dragons that had attempted to bond with him, and their reactions were worrying, to say the least.
He knew what it meant when a dragon backed off like that, when they lowered their heads in submission like that.
And the answer explained so many of the strange quirks about his son, it explained that maybe he wasn't such a screw-up of a father and it wasn't his fault that Hiccup had turned out...like Hiccup.
There was relief tugging at his heart, and he tried his best to ignore it, because there was a more pressing question at the moment.
There weren't many dragons out there that could scare a typhoomerang, of all things, into submission.
Hiccup stared up at his father in confusion and fear, and when Stoick was close enough, without saying a thing, he reached out, and pulled his son's shirt up slightly to study his torso.
"D-dad?" asked Hiccup, startled and indignant.
There, sitting nestled on his left hipbone was a jagged scar like a vicious lightning bolt, stretching halfway up Hiccup's torso.
Stoick had seen it before, but had never really paid attention to it. It was thin and silvery and not very painful looking, especially when compared to all the other scars his son had from his "adventures" on this very island.
But looking at it now, Stoick cursed himself for his stupidity.
Now that he knew what to look for, it was glaringly obvious. The way the skin in the area was slightly discoloured, and harder than the rest of his torso, the way it was puffy and ugly and just a bit shiny, like a burn scar.
Dropping Hiccup's shirt, Stoick backed away, meeting his son's gaze.
"Call it," he growled, and murmurs of confusion rose from around him, the students wondering what on Earth he could be talking about.
But Hiccup knew.
Stoick could see it in his face. Stoick knew that his son had had the same creeping suspicion as him during the entire ceremony.
Hiccup backed away, shaking his head just slightly.
"He won't hear me," he said quietly.
"He will," replied Stoick, sure of himself. "No matter where he is. Or what he's doing. He will hear you. And he will come."
Hiccup gulped, looking at his father with a nervous expression.
Finally, after an intense staring match, he whispered something.
"Louder!" snapped Stoick, getting impatient, despite his best efforts.
Gulping again, Hiccup took a deep breath, then bellowed at the top of his lungs, "TOOTHLESS!"
SkyGem: And, that's a wrap! So, what did you guys think? You like? There's quite a bit of context and world-building done in this chapter, and I really like how it came out. But I want to know what YOU guys thought. Leave me a review with your honest opinion! Love it? Hate it? Lemme know! And for now, goodbye! I'll see you all in a few weeks with the next update!