I have two very important things to say: Number one, I am alive. Number two, I fail epically at updating. You know, in case you haven't noticed already. -cringe-

Well, anywhoo. #119 is a spin-off of a request from RCWriter, who wanted an insight into Gobber and Stoick's younger days and inspired me to write "Storytellers." I also had a drabble called "Invisible," which was a prompt from Redbud-Tree, but I didn't like the style that I wrote it in and decided to wait and come back to it. Hopefully it'll pop up in the next batch. Also, this entire chapter is a request from several people, who told me that I angst too much and need to write some happy drabbles. XD So none of them are angsty, except for maybe #120, but that's not really angst. Actually, I'm not sure exactly what that one is, except maybe random. I wrote it at about three in the morning, so . . . yeah . . . . Anyway, enjoy!

~.~

117. Detonate

"Huh. Well, last time, it didn't explode as much."

"Last time," Stoick repeated dumbly. His beard was smoking, and even as he stood there in shock, a piece of smoldering debris fell from the sky and bounced off his helmet with a clang.

"Okay, that probably didn't sound good. It wasn't supposed to explode as much. How about that?"

"Hiccup . . . that was our house."

The boy coughed nervously, and Toothless scooted to one side as half the dining table came crashing to earth, trailing smoke and sparks in it's wake. "Well . . ." He glanced to where the bed had erupted into a fiery inferno. "Yeah. But, uh, we can rebuild," he offered.

As far as Toothless could tell, Stoick still didn't seem to have come to terms with the fact that his son had just blown up their house. "Rebuild. Okay. We can rebuild."

For a moment, there was no sound other than the crackling of the burning bed and the occasional thunk! of falling pieces of wall that had been thrown into the air by the explosion.

"Hiccup . . . what exactly did you do?"

The boy cringed. "Think chemicals, Dad. And molten iron. Plus some fire. And maybe . . . maybe a bit of uranium."

"Oh."

118. Hiccups

"Hic."

Toothless looked up in surprise.

"Hic. Hic. Hic."

The dragon grinned. Beside him, a gentle smile stole across Astrid's features, but it was quickly replaced with a mischievous look.

"Hic. Hic."

"Why, Hiccup, what do you—"

"HIC."

They stared at him, still too surprised to be howling with laughter, and Hiccup scowled. "Don't you dare—hic—say—hic—anything."

119. Storytellers

High atop a watchtower, gathered around a campfire, Toothless sits beside his best friend, listening as Stoick the Vast and Gobber argue over the finer points of the War of the Ages.

"It was Fingall the Six-Eyed who killed the Creature of Doom," Gobber insists, waving his hooked hand around in an attempt of emphasis. "Not Phlegm the Terrible! She wasn't even born for another six years!"

"Nonsense," Stoick says, dismissing Gobber's interruption. "It was Phlegm the Terrible, Mort Morbid's wife, who cut off it's head and ended the war. Fingall the Six-Eyed was off pillaging with Rockjaw Grate Jr. when it happened; He wasn't even there."

Toothless has never realized just how creatively Vikings named their children.

"Oh please, Mort Morbid was three generations older than Phlegm, there's no way she would have married him. And Fingall the Six-Eyed never went pillaging! He was too worried about his blood pressure to risk a voyage." Gobber glares at Stoick, who opens his mouth to argue, but Hiccup jumps in, much to Toothless' relief.

"Um, could you maybe tell a different story?"

Toothless exchanges a look with the boy, and they both struggle not to smile.

"Fine," Stoick grumbles, looking peeved. "Have ever told you about the time that my father told me to bang my head on a boulder and—"

"And you got a headache," Gobber says, rolling his eyes. "Let's not even go there. How about when I lost my—"

"Leg?" Stoick asks. "Please, I've heard that one so many times, I know it better than you."

"Alright, then how about the Battle of the Mountaintop, where I slew the Creature of Doom's great-great-great grandson with only my—"

"What! You did no such thing. That was me!"

"You only claimed credit for it, because you're the chief, but I was the one that did all the work. Hiccup knows all about it, right lad?"

"Yeah, right, don't listen to that old duffer, son, I'll tell you what happened . . ."

120. Oblivion

Toothless lifts his head as the sea breeze whistles over his skin, the spray thrown skyward from the booming waves misting his face as he stands at the very foremost point of the ship, like a figurehead. Behind the dragon, his hand resting on the handle of his father's heavy battle ax, Hiccup stares into the fog with glassy eyes.

Toothless knows that, of all the jobs in the world, his best friend would never have asked for this one.

Eerie silence reigns as the single warship slices through the water. The crew, or what's left of it, stays quiet as they row. Oars splash as they hit the water and boards creak as the ship rocks, but there are no voices. Nothing moves out of turn, nothing breaks the spell. There are no provisions left, but that really doesn't matter much. Maybe it did at one point, but Toothless can't bring himself to care anymore. Nobody else can, either. Nothing exists but the splash of oars and the creak of the ship and the rustle of the water beneath them.

The world is cold. Cold and quiet and colorless, white with fog and the pallid skin of the crew and black with the deep, deep water and the dragon that points the way to, what he hopes, is . . . something. He can't remember exactly where they're going, only that it isn't cold and silent and colorless, and maybe, when they get there someday, to that far-off destination, maybe then he'll remember. But it's hard to get where you're going when you don't know where that is.

Off in the whiteness that surrounds them, a rock looms. The top of a submerged mountain, perhaps, is what Toothless thinks. If so, the tallest one around, because no others accompany it. The dragon imagines that there's someone standing on the rock, a woman perhaps, with an axe slung over her shoulder and her blond hair held back from her face by a wickedly spiked headband. But she doesn't move, even in his imagination, and he thinks about what she would see if she were actually there.

A single lonely warship sailing through the fog. The crew cold and caught forever in a routine of rowing in careful synch. The captain standing at the wheel, tall and lean and grim and completely motionless. The dragon, pointing the way. And all of it cold and quiet and colorless, until it disappeared forever into the mists, relentlessly sailing home to . . . somewhere. Toothless can't remember where.

Oblivion, perhaps.

121. Spirits

"What do you think they are?"

Snotlout glances at Ruffnut. ". . . Whut?"

The Viking girl points upward. "The stars. What do you think they are?"

Toothless follows her finger to the dark sky above them, speckled with insane amounts of tiny glowing pinpricks. They're lying on the grass, the odd trio, enjoying a rare summer heat wave and stargazing.

"I don't know, really," Snotlout says with a slight shrug.

"Oh, come on, you must have an idea at least." Ruffnut rolls over on her stomach to look at him and rests her elbows on the ground and her chin in her palms. For the first time Toothless can remember, she is not wearing her helmet, and her hair falls in a casual tangled mane down her back instead of being tied into signature braids.

"Well . . ." Snotlout says slowly, "my dad says that the stars are the spirits of warriors. He used to tell me that some people go other places, but the best and the bravest and the most honorable go up there, to watch over the rest of us."

Toothless can see Ruffnut's eyes shining in the soft starlight as she rolls onto her back again, staring upward.

"I like that."