With school out for the day, Hiccup walked to the front door to meet up with Jack, Merida, and Punzie as they did everyday.
"Hey, Hiccup, how's it going bro?" Jack tossed Hiccup a soda can he swiped from the cafeteria when the lunch lady wasn't looking.
"You know, same old same old I guess." Hiccup shrugged, opening the can slowly as to not have it explode its sugary sweet contents all over him.
"Not the way I saw it." Merida shifted and narrowed her eyes playfully while a smug grin played across her face. Hiccup's face contorted into surprise and fear. He knew what was coming, and he started to interrupt her with a 'don't you dare' but she spoke anyway. "You got into trouble today."
Jack and Rapunzel did a simultaneous 'what?!'. "Dude, you got into trouble? I didn't even know a brainiac like you could get into trouble even if you tried." Jack gave him a pat on the back, "Nice job! So what did you do?"
Hiccup glanced from Merida, to Rapunzel, to Jack, unsure. "I accidentally released the bio class Skink. I went to go pick it up, but it lunged and grabbed my finger. I panicked, and I sent it flying across the room and it got out. It was an accident, really."
"Aww, I was starting to think that you were taking after me."
"Jack, that's a bad thing." Merida's comment was almost drowned out by Rapunzel's question.
"Why did it attack you, Hiccup? You usually get along so well with the class lizards."
"I don't know. Maybe it was hungry?" Hiccup shrugged again and took another swig of his soda as he started to make his way out to where Merida's car was.
If it had been in the fall or the late spring, they would have gone down to the park, but because it was late January, it was too cold to. They all ended up deciding to go to Hiccup's place instead.
His house went against the norms of the more modern-like neighbourhood he lived in with its more rustic and hand-made appearance. It looked more like an oversized modern-day cabin, while retaining a wealthy appearance. His family was in the middle, upper-middle class, so he was well off. His father was an avid hunter, so the inside of their house looked as if it was some kind of knock-off cabin tourist resort with the majority of the inside being wood, and the stereotypical decorations of antlers above the stone fireplace with the mounted heads of wood animals: two buck, a bear, and a moose his father found while on a hunting expedition in the Alaskan wilderness with his hunting 'tribe', as he called it. Merida and Rapunzel took a liking to him, despite his rough looking exterior.
He opened the door to his friends, and they immediately made themselves at home. Jack left the group to scavenge for snacks in the kitchen while Merida, Rapunzel and Hiccup made their way to the home-theatre room.
They usually played a mixture of Halo, Call of Duty 4, and Battlefield 3, so they were always entertained gaming wise, and because it was a Friday, that left them more time to play.
Eventually they decided to play CoD.
"I'm going to kick your icy ass." Merida's accent cut through the sound of gunshots and explosions.
"Oh is that a challenge, haggis? Bring it on." Their grunting, yelling, and the sound of buttons being maimed only intensified as they were sucked into the gameplay. Rapunzel sat on the ground in front of Jack, her back pressed against his twitching legs. Hiccup knew that Punzie liked Jack. She showed it everyday. It wasn't that he was always looking for it, but it was quite obvious after Merida pointed it out to him. It was kind of sad, really. Jack was just a tad too thick to notice it. He was a prankster, and social, and fun, but he didn't quite read other people very well.
Hiccup watched them play from over the top of his laptop screen. He was playing 'How to Train Your Dragon', the popular online-multiplayer game which almost all the guys at school played. Basically, you capture a single dragon in the wild, train it, and attack rival players and the boss dragon. Hiccup happened to come across one of the rarest dragons in the game within minutes of playing: a 'Night Fury'. He captured it, named it Toothless, and now he was roaming the online village with his dragon companion.
"Hey! That wasn't a fair shot!" Jack complained.
"Well maybe you shouldn't stand in the middle of the field then. You might get hurt." Merida grinned wolfishly.
"Play by the rules, redhead."
"Last time I checked, the only rules were 'survive'."
"Well now theres a change in rules. If someone is trying to target someone else besides you, then you let him shoot that person."
Merida didn't respond. Instead, she tossed a grenade at Jack's spawning location and killed him within seconds of his regeneration.
"Are you serious." Jack narrowed his eyes at the smiling Merida. She was having way too much fun with this.
"Want anymore snacks, guys?" Rapunzel offered as she stood up, her long hair falling from her hands.
A simultaneous 'yes!' filled the room, and Rapunzel skipped off to the kitchen with the empty popcorn bowl.