Chapter Nine: The Outcast and the Outlander, Part II
Three steps left.
The mental voice came about so suddenly that it had the opposite effect of its intentions, Nestor skidding to a halt in the middle of a dodge backward. Three of Alvin's weapon-limbs tore in the snowy ground ahead of Nestor, while the fourth one slashed sideways and smacked Nestor's shoulders hard enough to spin him around a full three-hundred-sixty degrees. His field held off the bone-cracking injuries, but the sickly look of his field meant he would start feeling the blows very shortly.
Inadequate response time, Human Nestor, commented Proto in his head.
"I know!" Nestor didn't need a literal-minded machine pointing out the obvious right now.
"What do you know, whelp?" Alvin laughed as he retracted his weapon-arms, thinking Nestor had been talking at him. "That you're about to join your ancestors in whatever pathetic afterlife they reserve for the feeble?"
429 prepping for overhand attacks, reported Proto. Move on my mark.
"A little quicker on the warning next time," asked Nestor.
"What?" said Alvin. "I'm not warning you ahead of time. What kind of moron do you take me for?"
"A pretty big one," said Nestor, unable to resist a comeback, "though your new shiny outfit does improve your looks."
"Nice," growled Alvin. "Here, let me improve your looks."
Two steps backward left, instructed Proto, a second before Alvin's arms came in, all overhand chops as predicted. Two steps felt like a very inadequate distance, but Nestor did as told and took two steps in a backward-left direction, his arms up to guard from the newest strike that was sure to come.
All four limbs pounded the ground where Nestor had been standing two steps ago, whishing by him so closely that the breeze sent shivers up his spine. Nestor couldn't help showing his surprise at the incredible near-miss, and neither could Alvin.
"Huh. Lucky break, boy," said Alvin, pulling back for another strike. "But unless you've got Loki in your back pocket, your luck's about to run out."
Four steps right, duck to waist height. Nestor moved four steps right as Alvin sent all four limbs in a wild flurry of chops and slashes, beating the air seemingly at random. Nestor almost forgot to duck until the axe-limb sliced his way, and he narrowly avoided the head-aimed attack by diving to his knees.
"What is this?" The first hint of genuine anger had crossed Alvin's mind. This was supposed to be over by now, yet the Outlander was getting a second wind. "You think you can keep dancing around me all day?"
"No, I plan to end this pretty quickly," said Nestor, "unless you want to give up right now."
Not impressed with Nestor's renewed confidence, Alvin showed the whites of his not-all-that-white teeth and flailed his limbs around in series of chaotic moves, sometimes chopping, sometimes slicing, sometimes thrusting, sometime whipping. Sometimes all four at once. Nestor didn't think Alvin was this creative a fighter; more likely, 429 was attempting to find ways to trip up Nestor. But each attack was defeated by the simple technique of not being in front of it, Nestor moving a few steps left, then back, then right, then back, then jumping over a knee-high slice, then rolling under two tentacle thrusts. Nestor fully trusted Proto now, and he gave himself over to the monotone music of Proto's instructions, focusing so intently on the machine's words that the actual fight seemed staged, a play performed by an untalented court jester that hadn't realized that the play was a big joke on him.
"AAHHHH!" Alvin's patience had loudly come to an end. Up on the hill, his men shifted their feet and watched the battle with growing uneasiness. Their leader's victory had seemed assured up until now, and none of them were thrilled with how this was going.
As he danced to the tune of three steps right, stop, two steps back, Nestor began to realize he still wasn't making headway against Alvin and 429. He couldn't avoid 429's attacks indefinitely, and he didn't have a clear path to the T-Node in 429's torso. But thanks to Proto's efforts, Nestor didn't have to waste his field on agility and defense. He could put it to better use.
One of Arc's many words of wisdom came to Nestor as he easily sidestepped Alvin's newest melee flurry. He had forgotten the exact wording, but it had to do with the best way to defeat your adversary: letting them do the work for you. As he watched Alvin's attacks grow increasingly predictable, Nestor soon discovered a way to use that bit of off-hand advice.
Four steps back, warned Proto for the umpteenth time. Nestor did only three, shifting all his remaining power to his right arm, an angry-red glow enveloping his fist, and held it up as a shield. Three limbs missed him by a wide margin, but one of the tentacles swept in wide to bash him. Proto repeated his instructions to warn Nestor, but Nestor merely held his ground as the tentacle impacted on his glowing forearm and shattered in half, the weapon end flung loose as myssteel fragments scattered to the snow. One unlucky Outcast caught the flying chunk with his helmet and spent the rest of the fight babbling about termites in his rafters.
Alvin's rage-face managed to fit in more rage. "WHAT? HOW?" The limb retracted into 429's torso, disappearing without a trace save the wreckage on the ground. A new one sprouted up in a different location of Alvin's metal-covered chest, a considerably shorter and less impressive tentacle.
Nestor breathed a sigh of relief and shuffled to Proto's next safe-spot, watching for the next opportunity to present itself. He was starting to get a handle of listening to Proto in the back of his mind while plotting his next attack. If he was going to win this, he had to go on the offensive. At full power, his field could wreck havoc on myssteel. The only problem was that his field was so depleted now that he had to divert everything to one limb to do it, leaving the rest of his body defenseless, which would prove painful if he guessed wrong.
Alvin threw a crisscross swipe attack with his two big arms, hoping to catch Nestor in the middle and cleave him in two. He did… just not all of him. Nestor dived to the ground and held up his right arm ramrod straight, sheathed in flowing red energy. Nestor grunted as both limbs smashed into his arm, shattering as before, the axe-limb and the mace-limb sailing away and landing in the churning surf.
Nestor shot back to his feet and charged Alvin, the irate Outcast swinging his two active limbs in a frantic waving pattern to keep Nestor at bay. Proto sounded a warning and Nestor compensated by sidestepping to the right as a tentacle dove into the ground. Nestor lashed out with his arm and severed the tentacle like it was made of parchment, leaving the severed end sticking out of the ground where it struck.
The next tentacle went for his legs, and Nestor diverted power to his right foot as the tentacle snaked around it. His foot stomped and crunched the tentacle beneath his boot heel.
Alvin appeared to be shrinking, at least in terms of his metal body. The mad-eyed Outcast was now swearing in a Norse dialect that Nestor didn't know as 429 shrunk him from his ten-foot status to something closer to seven, his arms and legs back to almost normal size. 429 was losing too much myssteel in the battle, drawing back up the hill on its bird legs. Given time, it might rebuild its myssteel – normal Guardians had that power, and Nestor had to assume 429 would do the same.
He didn't plan on giving 429 the chance.
Alvin retreated up the hill as Nestor rushed him, the Outcast leader driving his right metal arm under the snow, picking up an ice-frosted rock and tossing it at the Outlander. Forewarned by Proto, Nestor was already out of the line of fire, the rock skipping over the ocean's surface a half-dozen times. Alvin desperately tossed three more rocks, all with the same poor result.
The retreat came to standstill when Alvin's path became a cliff, the one cliff on the whole island. It was a short one with less than thirty feet of falling space, but Alvin seemed reluctant to see if his metal friend could protect him from sudden freefall. He must have forgotten about 429's flight abilities, Nestor realized. He hoped Alvin would keep on forgetting for a few seconds longer.
Bellowing in infuriation, Alvin swept his arms wide in one last attempt to fend off his attacker. With his weapon limbs in tatters, his arms reduced to the length of his inferior flesh-and-blood originals, he had no chance at all. Nestor dodged them all and jammed his glowing fist into Alvin's metal shoulder, right where a tiny portion of the T-Node stuck out. Metal broke and parted under Nestor's field as he grasped the top of the artifact, struggling to get a good hold. One of 429's tentacles wrapped around Nestor's waist, where it would shortly begin crushing his hip bones, but Nestor paid it no heed and shoved his hand in further, his fingers finding purchase just as the tentacle commenced squeezing.
Nestor's cry of exertion mingled with Alvin's cry of denial as Nestor ripped the T-Node from the Guardian, the artifact flying from his grasp and spinning end over end to fall down the cliff, noisily clattering off the rocks below.
429 shuddered all over, the Guardian going through a series of grotesque transformations as mini-tentacles erupted and receded all over its body, the tentacle at Nestor's waist slackening and sliding off to the ground. The disfigured mostly-metal man promptly fell over on his back, his limbs writhing randomly and his steel skin quivering like a bowl of jelly. Alvin panicked as the metal covering him poked him in places he didn't want poked.
"The devil's gone mad!" he screamed, and Nestor had to agree. Without its proffered power source, 429 was about to self-destruct.
It was more than Alvin deserved, but old habits died hard. He knelt down over Alvin and, with what little power he had left, Nestor shifted his field to both hands and tore into 429's chest plate. Alvin's traditional chainmail armor loomed right below the myssteel, dented by 429's death throes. Nestor wasted no time grabbing Alvin by the neckline and yanking him free of the Guardian, tossing the irate Outcast safely away from the dying Guardian.
Stepping back from the ancient machine, Nestor watched 429 spasm like a dying spider, mesmerized by the lifelike nature of its gyrations. Nestor had never felt guilty over destroying Guardians before – nothing but lifeless automatons created for war. Breaking a Guardian had the same emotional impact as breaking a battleaxe. Yet this time, as he watched 429's limbs slow in their quivering, a morsel of guilt found its way inside him. 429 was like Proto – something different, something unique. Unlike its dark-hearted partner, it had not been evil, just the machine equivalent of insane. Lost in a world it didn't have the "command structure" to cope with.
Satisfied that 429 was no longer a danger, Nestor faced Hiccup's self-appointed nemesis, who was sprawled out on the ground where Nestor tossed him. Alvin wore a new expression on his face, new to Nestor but not new to Alvin. Whether it was due to getting thumped by Stoick the Vast's rock-hard fists or getting his catapults incinerated by the Dragon Conqueror's blasted Night Fury, Alvin wore the face far too often these days. Alvin knew far less than most Vikings who achieved the position of Chieftain (not that it took much in the way of smarts to lead Outcasts) but he did know when he was beat, and he wore the face well.
Alvin remained speechless while he and Nestor regarded each other. Braggarts usually couldn't handle having the tables turned on them, and Alvin had to be waiting for Nestor to start in with the gloating or with the rib kicking. Nestor wasn't in the mood for either. With his field down to almost nothing, two days' worth of exhaustion, starvation, hypothermia, and general anxiety was creeping up on him. His knees felt a little wobbly already. Best to get the T-Node, get back to Proto, and leave Alvin to stew in his defeat. Still, it couldn't hurt to have Alvin fret for a few more seconds…
All of which became a moot point when two myssteel tentacles wrapped around Nestor's shoulder blades and roughly yanked him backward.
A lot of Nestor's training under Arc had been general wisdom concerning life and the pursuit of keeping one's life in the world of magic and monstrosities, but there were a few lessons that were very important and yet very specific, lessons that could be disregarded for ninety-nine percent of your life and yet crucial for that one percent of experiences that crop up unexpectedly. Say, for example, Arc's analogy comparing Guardians to campfires: in both cases, they're only harmless when they're nothing but ashes.
As Nestor wriggled helplessly in 429's grip, his legs dragging on the snow as he was pulled toward the not-as-dead-as-it-should-be Guardian, the lesson irritated Nestor like a bug buzzing into his ear. Pity and fatigue had stopped Nestor from doing what he should have done – finding 429's powercore and destroying it. All he had actually done was remove the T-Node, and he had naively thought that had done the job.
Now 429 was grabbing onto the only other power source it could find – Nestor.
The worst part was how Alvin's defeated face had departed. The ugly Viking proceeded to laugh hysterically, a high-pitched cackle that stung Nestor's ears like a harpy's wail. Nestor wanted to plug his ears at that moment, but his arms were pinned backward by 429's steel grip. He couldn't reach the tentacles binding him, much less his head.
Then the horrid sucking sensation commenced, the tentacles around his shoulders changing from silver-gray to reddish-orange as 429 stole his power. Nestor tried to shunt power to his legs, but nothing shunted. 429's draining power had hobbled him, and there was nothing to be done but to wait and watch the last of his barrier field flow into the Guardian, his short-lived triumph flowing out with it.
But the sucking sensation ceased abruptly, accompanied by the disturbing echo of steel grinding or ripping into steel behind him. Alvin's laughter morphed into a gasp as two new tentacles whirled in the air around Nestor, these tentacles ignoring the young man and clamping onto the tentacles restraining him instead. The new tentacles flexed with amazing strength, crushing the other ones and forcing them to release Nestor, who found himself flopping to his back on the freezing ground before he could get out his standard exclamation.
Nestor twisted on the ground so he could watch the final battle of the day. To Nestor, it looked like a quartet of steel tentacles had found their way up the cliff next to 429 and were alternatively pulling the Guardian's body over the cliff and batting away its tentacles as the damaged machine tried to defend itself. The new tentacles whipped and darted in precise strikes and blows, crippling every counterattack 429 threw out. One desperate tentacle drove its wicked tip into the snow, only to be yanked back out immediately.
For a long second, 429 was balanced on the edge, struggling like a trapped lion in a hunter's net. Then a fifth tentacle came over the cliff edge and drove into 429's mid-torso, plunging in as if the machine had been made of lard. When the tentacle pulled out a few heartbeats later, it held a crystalline object in its grip. Oval and opaque, it had the barest wisp of light shinning within it, like a candle down to the last of its wick.
429's powercore – its literal heart, exposed at last.
As the powercore left its body, every inch of 429 froze in place at that exact instant. Every tendril locked in place, the machine unable to resist its destiny as it toppled over the cliff and disappeared, a great unseen ruckus of metal colliding with stone echoing upwards moments later.
Knowing that showing weakness was an invitation for more trouble, Nestor stood back up on shaky legs and slowly moved to the cliff edge, hoping to see something positive. He did.
Below on the rocks, Proto stood on three limbs amidst of pile of myssteel glitter and fragments, looking like a confused child that didn't know what to do with the sudden rain of metal that had fallen on it. Proto's head-tentacle gazed up at Nestor, its mental voice silent in Nestor's head. Its fourth limb held the T-Node like it was a prized possession.
"Is it dead?" spoke up Alvin from behind Nestor.
Nestor put a finger to his mouth and hoped Proto took the hint. Proto had finished off 429, and he was very glad for that, but Proto would be useless against Alvin and his men if they were still in a fighting mood. It remained his getaway if he needed it, but Nestor was not about to run from such a brute as Alvin if he could help it.
Nestor turned to find Alvin standing up, aided by one of his Outcasts, the other Vikings gathering around him like a wolf pack. Alvin didn't look all that worst for wear, his cold stare indicating he was not in a bygones-be-bygones mood.
"I don't know what deviltry you play at, Outlander," he said. "I don't know how you got that steel devil to tear out its own heart. But you just cost me an expensive toy, and I mean to get payment from you."
Nestor kept the bafflement off his face until clarity came to him. Alvin thought 429 had destroyed itself. From his angle on the ground, it must have looked like Proto's tentacles had sprouted from 429's backside. Proto and 429 were practically alike physically. It meant Alvin didn't know about Proto yet, though Nestor wasn't sure how that helped him.
Trying to stand as firmly as possible, even though his body felt fitted with sandbags, Nestor glared back at the Outcasts. "I'm giving you guys a chance. Go back to your ship and leave. You saw what I did to the steel devil. Think what I can do to you."
The infuriating quality about Alvin was that he seemed to have bouts of intelligence intermingled with his obtuseness, his hard eyes showing a hint of knowing. "You seem a bit tired, Outlander. I think that fight took a lot out of you. I aim to take out a bit more."
He was right, of course. Nestor's field was all but gone again, and he was doing everything he could just to keep standing. But the fact that Alvin didn't have his men charging him meant Alvin wasn't convinced. Maybe…
A hot rush of fire prevented any further brinkmanship, Alvin's eyes widening as he smelt the fresh odor of molten metal above him. His men cursed in panic as the number of horns adorning Alvin's helmet had instantly gone from six to two, the helmet smoking and sizzling.
From off to the side, the Gronckle with the heavy-set boy riding on top hovered like a hummingbird, its fierce eyes locked on Alvin. Fishlegs tried to look just as fearsome and might have pulled it off had he not opened his mouth.
"No more trouble from you guys. Chomps didn't finish her nap today, and she gets very cranky when she doesn't get twelve hours a day."
To avoid having his hair combust, Alvin grabbed his ruined helmet and tossed it away. That defeated expression was back on his face. Nestor felt a rush of relief at the sight of Fishlegs and his dragon, with the other two dragons and their riders circling overhead. The Monstrous Nightmare roared out a nasty warning, causing the Outcasts to cower slightly in response. They all had bad memories of previous go-arounds with these dragons, and their leader's defeat at the hands of the Outlander hadn't helped morale either.
Alvin closed his eyes, angrily gritted his teeth, and then told his men to head for the ship. "This day isn't ours, boys. Better we live for the next one." He moved to follow them, but like most egomaniacs he couldn't help but get in one last comment, giving Nestor a wicked glare in the process.
"Congratulations, Outlander. You just made my list."
He then patted his head to put out a smoldering hair and headed down the hill towards his ship, carrying what was left of his dignity with him.
The Dragon Squad circled the island's airspace until the Outcast ship had departed, oars in the water to speed their departure. Nestor waited for the Outcasts to get out of sight and then dropped to his knees, feeling exhaustion in every bone in his body. He wanted very much to take a nap right now, even if it meant using the icy snow for a bed, but he didn't have the luxury. He'd settle for a bit of jerky, though. With all the tension of combat fading, his stomach was all but begging for something to digest. Lacking jerky or anything else, he chose to pluck some snow off the ground and suck on that.
Ruffnut and Tuffnut landed their Zippleback first, followed by Fishlegs on his Gronckle, and they ran up to Nestor as he struggled to regain his footing. It was harder than it should've been, and he felt slightly humiliated as a result. With an uncharacteristically caring face, Ruffnut went to Nestor and got under his right shoulder. With a little goading, she got Tuffnut to man the left shoulder, lacking his sister's caring expression but otherwise cooperating. They gingerly moved Nestor toward their campsite down the hill.
Once Snotlout was done yelling insults at the Outcasts from the air, he landed Fenrir and disembarked near the cliff where 429 had met its fate. "So we missed the whole fight? I told you guys we should have come back sooner."
Fishlegs looked confused. "But weren't you the one saying we needed to honor the Outlander's sacrifice and…"
"I meant his sacrifice of time and energy," Snotlout hurriedly interrupted. "I always wanted to come back and save him. You know, like any Viking would do."
"What happened to you guys going to Berk and staying there?" asked Nestor.
"Well, we had a fight over that," said Tuffnut. "I thought we should go home and get help, but no, we had to come back and save Ruff's boyfriend ourselves."
"At least we can say we defeated Alvin again," suggested Fishlegs.
"Well, that helps a little," said Tuffnut.
"Wait, I'm a what now?" asked Nestor.
"My brother's just being an idiot," said Ruffnut, giving Nestor a weird smile. "Well, unless you don't think it's an idiotic idea."
"I'm… um… what?" Nestor stammered.
"Too bad I wasn't here to take on that steel devil," bragged Snotlout. "I would've been all, 'What, you think you're so bad? Here, have a face full of dragon fire.' And it'd be all, 'Not in the face, not in the face.'"
"I don't think it had a face," said Fishlegs.
"Of course it had a face. Everything has a face."
Fishlegs saw something rise up behind Snotlout, who was still too busy being full of himself to notice until he saw Fishlegs wither in renewed terror. "I'm pretty sure this one doesn't have a face."
Snotlout whirled around and screamed at the steel devil passing the cliff edge to greet them, planting its legs on the snow and walking toward them in a casual manner. Snotlout and Fishlegs scampered past Nestor and the Twins, who managed not to dump Nestor but did manage to deafen him with their mutual cries of terror. Their dragons reared back their heads and cried out warnings to the advancing devil, and it was only due to Nestor's raised and insistent voice that things didn't get very hot for everyone involved.
"It's with me, it's with me!" Managing a little reserve energy, he shrugged off Ruff and Tuff's hands and staggered over to Proto, blocking any potential fireballs. "It helped me defeat 429. It's harmless… a little too harmless, really."
"You made friends with a steel devil?" asked Snotlout, staring in amazement. "Does this mean we're going to have a flock of these things running around our village from now on?"
"No, just the one." Nestor's reassurance seemed to do the trick, as both dragons and dragon riders cooled their attitudes very quickly, though not without wary eyes in Proto's direction.
Human Nestor, we must discuss the situation, insisted Proto in its smooth, mechanical voice.
"In a second, Proto," said Nestor, turning to the machine. "Let me square things with these guys first."
"Whoa, it talks?" asked Tuffnut.
"I don't know if that's awesome or freaky," said Fishlegs meekly. "I'm leaning towards freaky."
Nestor turned back to the others, shocked by their reactions. "Hold on. You guys can all hear Proto?"
"You call it Proto?" said Ruffnut. "Who names a steel devil Proto?"
Human Nestor, now that 429 is non-functioning, this unit must return to Transition Site with T-Node, said Proto. Nestor realized that it was his ear hearing the machine talk and not his mind buzzing with the words. Proto had learned how to speak during the battle. Very smart machine, distressingly so at times. He also noticed the T-Node was parked on Proto's upper torso like a large thorn sticking out of its back.
"I understood absolutely none of that," said Snotlout. "It's speaking our language, right?"
Nestor gestured to the Vikings to cut the chatter, then gave Proto his full attention. Nestor tabled his questions about how Proto was speaking aloud now. He knew the answer would be long and tiresome. "Proto, remember what I need the T-Node for? You can't take it back until we use it to find Hiccup and Toothless." Nestor was aware of the troubled looks his words had inspired behind him, but he'd have to deal with Hiccup's Dragon Squad after he got Proto's cooperation.
T-Node designated too dangerous to leave exposed, said Proto. Safest location is back in Transition Site.
"Understood, but we've already lost too much time recovering it, and we can't afford to waste more time going back there. Can you use it now?"
Negative. This unit requires analysis time to interface with T-Node.
Nestor groaned. By the Fates, please let it be a low number. "Oo-kay, how much time?"
Proper analysis can be completed in 3.4 hours.
Nestor breathed again. Not too bad. Judging by the sun, Proto would probably get done before sundown. He could wait down by the Vikings' campsite, where there was a fire burning. He wouldn't freeze to death waiting for Proto.
"Great, then go ahead and get to it." Proto reacted by lowering its torso to the snow and retracting all of its limbs, head-tentacle included, so that it resembled little more than a malformed metal boulder. The T-Node started to come alive as well, the undecipherable symbols on its surface glowing and fading with a steady rhythm that was oddly soothing to watch.
Satisfied, Nestor turned his focus to the four young Vikings who were looking at him in the same disbelieving way most people looked at him when they found out he was a magic-wielder. He couldn't blame them for feeling as they did. They were clearly not going to be satisfied until he explained things a bit better than he had.
"Right, the very long story," he remarked. "By and by, do you guys have anything to eat? I'm kinda starving."
It didn't thrill the group to be camping again on the same uninhabited rock they had just been held hostage on, but with Proto absorbed in its analysis they didn't have any choice but to park themselves at their campsite and listen to Nestor try to summarize two months of adventure and conflict in three hours.
Clad in a spare fur blanket, chewing on his sixth piece of jerky, Nestor felt loads better than anytime in the last three days, at least physically. The waiting game wore on his nerves, though, and he found it helpful to have something to do. Storytelling proved a great time-waster, even though Hiccup's friends had a tendency to interrupt him every other sentence with an unnecessary observation or an even more unnecessary insult aimed at one another.
It was the last week of events that proved the trickiest to navigate, and Nestor left out a lot of details that weren't relevant to how he got here, or why he needed the T-Node so badly. He also left out one other detail. An important detail, but one he wasn't ready to tell them. One he didn't think it was his role to tell them.
"That's about it," he concluded. "Hiccup and Toothless are out there somewhere, hopefully not far from another one of those artifacts. I don't know what happened to… to Astrid or Arc or Saga or Qiao or Linebreaker. The fact that I'm here is almost pure luck." He hoped that any of the emotional giveaways on his face concerning his lie about Astrid would be construed as part of his exhaustion.
The group was subdued after all that, watching the fire or looking out to the fading horizon or, in Fishlegs's case, patting the sleeping Gronckle at his side. It was a lot to take in, especially learning that two of their good friends were missing in action. Nestor could relate. He was beyond feeling anything close to comfortable, not until he found Hiccup and Toothless, and maybe not even then. He wouldn't feel good again until he reunited with Arc and Saga, however long that took.
"Well, I'm glad you showed up," said Ruffnut, the first to break the long pause after Nestor finished speaking. "You saved our bacon… again." Fishlegs happily agreed, as did Tuffnut after a little jostling from his sister. Snotlout continued staring off into the fire, as if finding solace or distraction in the crackling orange flames.
Nestor shrugged off the compliment. "You guys saved my bacon as well. I wouldn't have lasted against Alvin."
"So what now?" Snotlout's serious question removed what little mirth had been circling the campsite.
"Now I get Proto to send me where Hiccup went." Nestor thought he had already answered this question, but then Snotlout didn't strike him as having paid all that much attention to his lengthy story.
"Which means what? You just hope that Hiccup is okay? How do you know he didn't get whooshed into the middle of a volcano? Or how about the fact that you left Astrid stuck in a cave filling up with the entire ocean?"
"Cool it, Snotlout," said Ruffnut.
"No, I'm not cooling it." Snotlout stood up in a huff, a deep scowl on his face. "I get that you want to defend your boyfriend, but someone's got to say it."
"Why do you keep calling me…?" Nestor couldn't finish his sentence before Snotlout took two steps toward him in a threatening manner, his eyes accusing.
"Our friends may be dead. That's what he doesn't want to say. Our friends may be dead, and he's still alive. The fact that you clobbered Alvin doesn't change the fact that they wouldn't have gone with you to save the world if you hadn't showed up on Hiccup's doorstep and dragged him away."
"I dragged no one away," countered Nestor, feeling his temper start to rise. "I tried to get Hiccup to stay put."
"You should have tried harder. You knew he was just a regular guy, and he had a life here. Astrid had a life here, but she loves Hiccup, stupid as that is, and she runs off to join him in this insane fight of yours."
Nestor picked up on Snotlout's emphasis on Astrid. He had wondered what other suitors had attempted to woo Astrid before she hooked up with Hiccup, though Astrid had never mentioned Snotlout in conversation. Hiccup, on the other hand, had mentioned Snotlout on several occasions, usually in conjunction with words like bully and insulting and bane of my childhood.
If he was this put out over Astrid's disappearance, how bad would he take it when he found out the real story? Nestor hoped he wouldn't be around to find out. Right now, he told himself to keep his temper in check and remember that Hiccup had kept this guy as a friend despite the fact that his flaws outweighed his strengths two to one.
"We didn't know how things were going to go," Nestor said in a calmer voice, "but Hiccup understood the dangers and…"
"Did he, or did he go out of loyalty to you?" Snotlout's face had grown as heated as the campfire.
Fishlegs placed his hands on his knees and scrunched closer to Chomps as he nervously watched the escalating argument. Tuffnut sat and watched expectantly – he loved a good argument, especially when it led to violence between two people he didn't particularly like.
Ruffnut watched with growing dread. Usually arguments within the group got settled by Hiccup or Astrid, the sensible members of their squad. Fishlegs came the closest to being sensible except he was often too timid to act sensibly. That left her, and she had no experience deflecting trouble. Her skills lay in the other direction.
"Hiccup is a good man," said Nestor plainly, anger rising within him despite his efforts to quell it. "Astrid w… is a good woman. Those qualities drove their decisions. They're also a lot braver than some."
Nestor wasn't trying to insult Snotlout – the comment slipped out of his mouth before he could stop it. Alas, impugning the courage of a Viking was a great way to start a fistfight, and Snotlout took the slight for what it was.
"Well, there's being brave and there's being stupid," countered Snotlout angrily. "It wasn't their fight, and neither of them should've been out there. They're not like you, a deviltry-using freak with no friends and…"
Nestor wasn't consciousness of what he was doing until he found his hands hoisting the young Viking by his shirt, lifting him off the ground as effortlessly as a child lifting a doll. Rage swallowed up Nestor's face as anger fell off of Snotlout's, replaced by the face one made when realizing the presumably-harmless hole you had stepped in was actually a boar trap full of sharpened sticks. Nestor wasn't all that much taller than Snotlout, who still had a few years left to bulk up to average Berk height, but to the panic-stricken teenagers around him Nestor's stature had grown more imposing than two Alvins stacked together.
"My family is out there, you troll," growled Nestor. "My family. They're all risking their lives so that guys like you can sit back and act like the poseurs you are. I don't know what's happened to any of them. People I care about… people I love. But one thing's for sure - the last thing this deviltry-using freak wants to hear is your idiotic opinion!"
"Uh… sorry?" Snotlout whimpered, fear brimming in his eyes.
The weak apology curbed much of Nestor's anger, and he grew aware of his riveted audience. He looked at his arms and saw them glowing a soft red, which was all the power he could generate after a scant few hours of inactivity. More than enough to crush Snotlout's neck, had he reached for it instead of the Viking's shirt.
Salo krebit, what was he doing?
He gently returned Snotlout to his feet and let go, Snotlout skirting away in the direction of Fenrir, who had snoozed happily through the altercation and continued to do so. Snotlout gave his dragon a dirty look that all but said way to come to my defense, pal.
"I… think I need a little time alone," Nestor remarked, the anger gone and replaced by a sad kind of shock that made him feel twice as exhausted as before. He crept off in Proto's direction, leaving the others to stare after him with varying degrees of concern.
"That's it?" remarked Tuffnut. "I thought he was going to rip Snotlout's head clean off."
"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" countered Snotlout, returning to his spot and crossing his arms so he could hide his shaky hands.
"Well, yeah," Tuffnut replied.
Passing up on a potential comeback, Ruffnut gave Snotlout and Tuffnut her patented you guys are all morons expression and abruptly stood up from her log. Her brother almost asked the obvious question, but by now he was so flummoxed by her recent behavior that he stalled long enough for Fishlegs to speak up instead.
"If you're going after him," Fishlegs said hesitantly, "you may want to let him cool down first."
"Don't worry," she replied. "I can actually talk without insulting someone every other sentence."
The three boys watched her go and then exchanged baffled looks. "She never does that with us," observed Tuffnut.
When the island you were camped on was little more than a crumb on a navigator's map, there were generally few places to wander off to. Ruffnut found Nestor where she expected him to be – not far from the steel devil he called Proto.
The thing unnerved her worse than any dragon ever did or could, even when all it was doing was sitting in one place and… what'd Nestor call it, analyzing? One of those sage words that never came up in dragon-riding conversations. It didn't help that it resembled one of Gobber's failed attempts at artwork using the metal castoffs from all his iron smithing. It also didn't help that an island-sized version of Proto tried to wipe out Berk weeks ago.
Nestor had found a snow-free rock to rest on, his elbows on his knees, his head slightly bowed. He looked pretty miserable, and after everything he'd told them she honestly couldn't blame him. But instead of making her want to jab him for laughs, an instinct she went with for the other boys in her life when they were hurting, she felt almost the opposite.
Astrid had a big word for it; compassion.
Despite Fishleg's warning, Ruffnut didn't fear Nestor. Bloody noses and black eyes were the typical way most Vikings vented their unhappiness. This guy sulked. She had to admit that she found it refreshing, thought the Viking way was a lot more fun to watch.
She cleared her throat as she neared him. Nestor gave her a quick glance but didn't respond or move to leave. She took that as a sign to continue.
"You know, if you want, Ruff and I could hold down Snotlout and you could punch him to your heart's content. I promise you that no one will care… except Snotlout."
Nestor took her comment as a joke (which it wasn't) and chuckled. "Tempting, but no."
"Okay, how about my brother?"
"Unless you want to explain to your elders why your brother is coming home as a bag of broken mush, it's not the smartest of suggestions."
"Well, then I could teach you some great insults so that the next time you argue with Snotlout you can really get under his skin. The one I like is when you compare his mother to a…"
"Is this your idea of cheering me up?" Nestor finally turned his head, one eyebrow raised in curiosity.
"Ah… is it working?"
"Not especially. I don't find other people's suffering inspirational."
Ruffnut blew out a sigh. "Look, I'm not good at this… at all. I'm just saying that everyone wants to throttle Snotlout from time to time, so… get over it."
"Thanks. You really are bad at this." Yet a little smile had found its way to his face. "But I give you points for trying."
Nestor motioned to a spot on the rock next to him, and Ruffnut took it, trying not to look too nervous and keeping her eyes more on the dormant Guardian than Nestor. She wasn't used to being close to a guy whose birthday wasn't three minutes ahead of hers, and she was glad that the other guys couldn't see her right now. She'd never hear the end of it – she might not anyway, certainly not from her brother.
"It's not Snotlout, Ruffnut," explained Nestor. "I just… I've been going strong since I woke up in Proto's cave, first trying to survive and then trying to get back the artifact so I can find Hiccup. Now all I can do is wait for Proto to tell me something… and all I can do is think about how screwed up things are."
"I try not to do that," replied Ruffnut. "It takes all the fun out of screwing things up in the first place." When Nestor gave her a disapproving look, she withered a bit. This wasn't going exactly the way she hoped. "I mean, you'll just drive yourself crazy doing that to yourself."
"It's not that easy to stop. Arc… you know, Green Lightning… he's always been there for me. I counted on him to get us through the rough times, and he always did. So here I am, doing all the heroics on my own… and it's all a bit much."
Ruffnut decided to stop giving Nestor sideways glances and look him straight in the eye. He deserved that much, and as she did it she found it wasn't such a scary thing to do. "Well, so far you saved me and my idiot friends, sent Alvin with his tail between his legs, and with any luck you'll be rescuing Hiccup once your new pal, the creepy steel devil, gets back to us." She glanced Proto's direction to make sure it hadn't taken offense. "I don't know how it feels to be in charge of anything – my friends laugh whenever the subject comes up – but anyone would tell you you're doing okay. Even Snotlout, when he's not being Snotlout."
Ruffnut thought she had this "understanding" business down when Nestor's smile widened a little more. The trick, apparently, was to say good things about the other person. She might have a knack for this after all. Then he adopted a curious look that made her squirm inwardly.
"So… I'm your boyfriend?"
She looked away again, silently promising to kill Tuffnut at the next available opportunity. "Oh, that? You know, just an inside joke." She deflected her discomfort by falling back to irritability. "You have enough to think about without hearing about my stuff."
"Actually, hearing about someone else's 'stuff' would be nice and distracting right now."
Nestor's sincere gaze had a way of making Ruffnut feel not so irritated. If it made him feel better, why not? A small repayment for saving her life… again. "Have you ever felt like you've been playing a role for so long that everyone looks at you as 'that role' and not as, you know, you?"
"Can't say that's been my problem."
"Well, it's mine. I'm one-half of a two-person comedy routine in Berk. 'Ruffnut and Tuffnut – what stupidity will they undertake this week?' That's what everyone says back home. Don't get me wrong, it was fun for the longest time, and somebody had to make all those yaks tip over. But now Hiccup and Astrid are in love and out having exciting adventures and I'm still here… still doing the same comedy routine."
Every time Astrid's name came up, Nestor felt his heart stop for a second. Whether or not it was his place to tell Hiccup's friends about Astrid's death, he didn't think he could keep the secret for long before it found a way to burst out of him. For now, he had the presence of mind to keep a lid on it
"Is that really a bad thing?" said Nestor. "Look at what's happened."
"Okay, it's safer to stay home. No arguments there. But Hiccup and Astrid got a chance to try new things, find out who they really are. When do I get that chance?"
Nestor nodded thoughtfully. "And this is somehow related to me being your boyfriend."
Ruffnut felt her cheeks grow warm. She really hoped Nestor would mistake it for frostbite. "Before you left Berk, I told Hiccup that you should… that you should look me up if you ever came around again. The guys heard it and it was a running gag for awhile until they got tired of it. It's like, 'Isn't it funny that Ruffnut might want to have a boyfriend? Doesn't she have Tuffnut already?' I finally had to tell my brother how I felt today, and we don't share stuff like that, so it didn't go very well." Her expression changed as she thought of something? "Did Hiccup ever tell you what I told him?"
Nestor bit his lip and glanced away as he thought how to delicately put his next words. "Well, he did, but I was too caught up with… someone else… to really think about it."
Her cheeks cooled again. She had half-expected an answer like this, but she felt disappointed regardless. Still, she decided the best way to proceed was to do what she always did with bandages: rip them off fast.
"The Seer, right?" she asked.
Nestor nodded, surprised by her observation. "How did you know?"
"I'm good at figuring out everyone else's love life but my own," she replied dourly. "You two seem to find a way to be around each other all the time. Which is funny since she tried to kill you right off the bat."
"Ah, yeah, it was a rocky start."
"Don't all the good ones have rocky starts?" Ruffnut sighed.
"I imagine. But I deeply care for her, Ruffnut, and she's one of the few hopes I have that's keeping me sane right now."
Ruffnut heard the sincerity in his voice and decided right there that her little flirtation had gone as far as it was going to go. She shrugged in resignation. "If I thought about it for long I'd have to admit that you're not really my type. Seriously, you're just too…" She spread her hands wide in a weird gesture that told Nestor nothing. "You keep saving my life, though, and that does makes a girl feel good. But I'm smart enough not to come between you and your girlfriend."
Nestor had wanted a good distraction and he was certainly getting it, but this honest discussion was quickly becoming too distracting. He almost corrected Ruffnut on the fact that he and Saga hadn't quite gotten to an actual romantic relationship, but he realized that such a statement might give Ruffnut the wrong idea.
"You seem like a nice girl…"
"Wow," she interrupted. "You really don't know me, do you?"
"Oo-kay, you seem like someone trying to break out of the rut you've created for yourself. Respect that and don't let your brother and your friends dissuade you from finding what you really want out of your life. That better?"
She had to admit it – that was better. Disappointment still circulated in her heart, but it was nice to hear someone say it was okay to be Ruffnut and not just Ruff and Tuff. It even made her smile.
Before the conversation could get any more honest, a burst of sudden activity from Proto derailed it. Proto's legs reappeared, as did his tentacle-head, and Nestor stood up to greet the Guardian as it purposefully stepped his way. Nestor felt like a kid right before his first trip to the local Harvest Festival, hoping the payoff was worth all the anxious waiting. Ruffnut kept a discrete distance behind him, not quite warmed up to the "creepy steel devil" and preferring to let Nestor take point.
"What do you have for me, Proto?" he asked hopefully.
Proto began to tell him how much it had. It proved to be quite a lot.