Honestly, readers, I'm sorry you all thought I was giving up on this. I never really given up on this story – as I told you, it's my own bedtime story and I keep telling it to myself when I have trouble sleeping. I just didn't know if someone else would have appreciated it, because it's a bit awkward as a story, and so I left a pilot to see what could have happened.

I'm also sorry I couldn't have replied to reviews immediately – I'm talking to you, guests! – but a promise is a promise, so here you are.

Miaow: thanks ;)

Sky: Just you wait… Hayden is a name I've always liked – and it's also a hint to the fact that the HTTYD movies quote a lot Star Wars.

Guest: Don't worry, here's chapter 2 =)

Dragonlovewater: don't worry again. If I like something, I like it and I work on it. I may take time (I study, I cosplay, I do this and do that...) but I work on it.

Also, thanks to keelall for following and faving the story. I really appreciate the support of all of you who showed it.

Chapter 2

What You Wish For

From the moment I properly met Hayden Haddock, I knew he was a person I could trust.

Honestly, I had already seen him once or twice – we lived in an isolated archipelago, so the children of his school came to Lee Island whenever there was something like a chess tournament, the science fair, and so on. I knew about the son of the police officer who always had some engineering project up his sleeve, also because one of my former classmates, Hiro, kept beating him up when Hayden's projects backfired (Hayden later told me it was for lack of good materials – it's hard to find the best quality in a small settlement like Berk).

But enough with chatting. He loved bicycles, like me. I knew he was clever because I had recognized him as the science fair boy. And I knew he was the son of a policeman – he had to be an honest person.

I admit him I must have scared him badly when I approached him first. I had noticed him for the things he had said – because he had spoken in the woods, and so I knew there had been someone. When he said we were on Berk, I was overjoyed – ever since escaping from… that place, which I didn't even know where it was exactly, knowing where I had ended up was a safety anchor. It was such a relief, knowing I wasn't so far away from home, that I almost forgot my appearance was no longer the one I used to have.

So I hid.

But then Hayden started looking for me.

I think I was as scared as he was. Home was a step away, if I could only have been recognized. But, at least not then, it was not something I was able to control. And I couldn't stay hidden, he would have found me eventually.

I prayed he would have kept calm – he didn't. He ran all the way to the town, and then he fainted in his backyard. There weren't any people in the road, so I just hid on the roof and tried to see what could have happened.

Then, my ears caught something.

One of the perks of being… well, what I am… is that I developed excellent eyesight and hearing. And there was a man talking at the phone, in one of the rooms of the house, and pacing back and forth.

"What am I going to do with him, Gobber?" the man in the house was saying.

"Put him in the team," a voice that the telephone made machinelike answered. "Let him race."

"No, I'm serious." That had to be the boy's dad.

"So am I," the telephone man replied.

"He'd break a leg before the first lap ends!"

"Look, Stewart… I know it seems hopeless. But I wouldn't have given him that bike of his if it really was. He would have built his own, or made who knows what to do something. He's feeling caged. You can't always be around to protect him. Have you ever wondered why he gets out so often…? And let me guess, judging by your voice he's out there right now."

The man called Stewart hung up, then a few sounds informed Thomas he had probably plopped down on the couch and switched on the TV set.

There was really nothing else I could do over there – I had to get away before people saw me. I mean, they were looking for a teenager with black hair, not an overgrown black axolotl – and despite it would have been amazing, for once, seeing something like the National Geographic in this forsaken archipelago, well, I didn't want them on ME. I had already too much media coverage as missing person.

Hayden stood up and shook the grass and the dirt away from his clothes. He was still in his backyard… which meant the monster had not followed him.

He made a sigh of relief, but soon after a series of hiccups followed his sigh. He quickly got inside home from the back door and helped himself to a glass of water. The reflecting surface of the fridge showed the face of a terrified and bewildered thirteen-year-old who just looked as if he had ran away from Hell itself.

There was a monster. In his place. And he had left there his bike, his stuff, Mom's plush…

"My life sucks," he moaned. Until he was sure the monster had left, that stuff was as good as lost.

"Hayden? Are you home?" Dad's voice echoed from the living room.

"Yeah," Hayden answered, trying to sound as calm as he could. He shook some more dirt from his clothes, then he closed his eyes for a moment, sighed, and walked into the living room again.

"Listen… that bicycle…" Dad started. Hayden had a start – had he noticed his bike was missing?

"Dad, I'm sorry, I…"

"Hayden…" Dad covered his eyes with a hand, then sighed. "I'm the officer assigned to the Thomas Fury case. The bicycle could hold more clues, and I'll have to work on it – maybe this time we'll find the boy."

He wasn't talking about his bike… he wasn't talking about his bike… Hayden had to stifle a sigh of relief.

"… so?" the thirteen-year-old asked.

"I'll be staying in Lee Island for a few days – interrogate the fishermen, inspect the spot where the bike was found. I'll have to coordinate a team of divers."

"Is that all?" Hayden walked towards the stairs that led to the upper floor. "Now, I need to have a shower, Dad, if you're leaving while I'm in the bathroom, goodbye…"

"And…"

"And what?" Hayden turned. He hoped it wasn't another restriction.

"I'm enrolling you to the cycling team. You start tomorrow after school."

Hayden was sure of one thing: whoever was up there, they hated him with all their guts.

There couldn't have been a worse moment for him to start training with the cycling team. His bike was as good as lost. He still was recovering from the scare of the day before. The bike he had borrowed from the warehouse of the team was old and looked as if it hadn't been used in years – and the uniform he had been given, despite he knew was for speed and comfort, was skin-tight and made him look even scrawnier than he was.

The kids in the team were almost all the ones in his class: there was that royal pain of Sonny "Snotlout" Jorgenson; then the boy who sat next to Hayden in most of the classes, Francis Ingerman, who was known all over the school as Fishlegs after he had crashed with his bike in a pond during a race and had inexplicably ended up with tadpoles in his pants.

Then there were the twins, Ruthie and Tucker Thorston, even if they hated those names and wanted to be known as Ruff and Tuff. Most of the town, anyway, called them Ruffnut and Tuffnut… because they were as nuts as they could be. One of their favorite pastimes before every race was to headbutt each other with their helmets on. To test them, they said, even if Hayden had his doubts.

Last, but not the least, came the reason why Hayden was about to die of shame. A reason with a name and a surname.

Snotlout and Fishlegs were strong, and the twins were… well, rough and tough, but Astrid Hofferson was… Hayden didn't even have a word.

He had known that girl for a lifetime, and had seen her change a lot in those years. She had been his playmate as children, during the endless business meetings at which families were invited.

He had seen her cry when her uncle had been abducted. A few months later, though, something had happened. She had become different. Determined.

It was as if she had seen something, as if she knew something, but wouldn't tell.

Some people had started seeing her going to libraries, searching the net for something, training – just, no one exactly knew what or why.

She knew how to be discreet, and Hayden thought he knew why. He had caught her father scolding her in the street in front of the library once, telling her that there was no such thing as ghosts.

When, four years before, their teacher had asked to write an essay on what they wanted to be when they grew up (Hayden had written of himself as a racing car pilot), Astrid had read to the whole class of how she wanted to become a detective and try to solve the mystery of the vanished scientists and their guard. It was just as if… she had a lead. When Hayden had gone back to his desk after reading about his dreams of motors and speed, she had punched his arm and whispered: "Really, Hayden? What about the guys who took your mom?"

If there was someone Hayden didn't want to be seen by in his current state, that person was Astrid Hofferson.

He was dead. He was so dead.

The thing that worried the most, though, was the practice itself. The coach was Dad's friend himself – the very Gobber. He had been a champion in his youth, that was common knowledge in town, but after a war in a country with an unpronounceable name, he had lost his racing dreams along with an arm and a leg, and now earned a living working as janitor at the school and training the cycling team of the town.

He had also baby-sat Hayden a lot of times when Dad had been too busy with work, so the boy knew him well enough to be aware that his strategy was to learn on the field.

In plain English, he would have had to race the other guys.

Dead. Dead and buried.

"Oh, great, who let him in?" was Tuffnut's first comment when Hayden approached the starting line with the borrowed bike.

Normally, Hayden would have had a line to properly reply, but right now he couldn't think of anything. There was an argument between Tuffnut and Snotlout on whether Hayden belonged in the children's team, or they had to start practicing in the bigger, professional team at Lee Island.

"Don't worry," Gobber put his hand on Hayden's shoulder. "Underestimating has always marked an opponent's defeat. I know you have skills on a bike. You may not be used to race with anyone but yourself, but they won't really put an effort in trying to beat you, so give it all you got."

Again, Hayden didn't reply. He knew by experience there was no argument with which he could have convinced the coach. He just got on the bike, put his left foot on the pedal (he was quite sure he was the only left-handed boy in his school) and waited for Gobber to whistle.

At the sound of the whistle, the other kids shot forward like bullets. Hayden hadn't quite expected it, and when he started pedaling, the others were gaining speed. As a voice in his head kept screaming no, no, no, no…, Hayden pedaled faster, and faster, in the desperate attempt to catch up with them as they got farther, and farther.

Fishlegs… pardon, Francis, was the heaviest, and the closest to Hayden.

He felt bad for his classmate, but he had to do better. He had to, or he would have been covered in shame until college graduation.

He pedaled faster. And faster. He was almost there…

Then Fishlegs quickly steered – a curve! Hayden hadn't either seen or expected that – and they both ended on the muddy ground in a tangle of limbs, wheels, and chains.

"Boys!" Gobber ran to them as fast as his mismatched limbs allowed him. "Is everything fine?"

"Not at all!" Hayden moaned, trying to get up. He had ended up under his own bike, but at least Fishlegs had not fallen on him. Not quite. His backside ached, his right arm too, and one of his knees was bleeding.

"Maybe we should just start one at a time," Gobber helped him up with his good arm. "I forgot you're not familiar with this track. The others have been doing this for…"

"Years, I know." Hayden snorted.

He picked up the bike and went back to the starting line along with Fishlegs. They waited for the other four to arrive to the line, then Gobber pulled out a stopwatch and announced them they would have practiced individual time trial.

"Hayden here isn't used to race with opponents," he said. "We should give him time to get familiar with the track, so he can learn how to regulate his speed and won't make mistakes like this again."

Hayden was pretty sure he had heard Snotlout mumbling "Useless", but he hoped he had just misheard him. He got back on the bike and pedaled to the starting line.

"Now, Hayden, take your time. Memorize the track. I want you to do two laps, I'll take the time the first and the second time," Gobber said, holding the stopwatch. "On my three… one. Two. Three!"

At the end of two seemingly endless hours, Hayden left the bike in the warehouse, waved Gobber goodbye, and left to go home.

The other guys had their bikes, and they seemed to have no regret to leave him behind. Alone, afoot, on a dirt road, and with that ridiculous skin-tight uniform that would have looked cool only when actually riding a bicycle.

"This is really rock bottom," Hayden mumbled kicking a rock.

Another rock rolled by his feet. The boy stopped and looked around. Now, who could have possibly kicked that…?

When he saw the monster a few steps away from him, he thought he was inches away from fainting again.

That was it. He was dead. Da-da-da. Dead. Done.

The big, black… thing was approaching him like a predator with a prey. Hadn't it been so close, Hayden would have thought it was beautiful… it was a sleek, lizard-like being, with a flat head, spikes on his head and back, four paws, a long finned tail, and… were those wings?

The thing was a dragon. And that dragon, very ironically, looked somewhat like Stitch the alien, from the movie he had watched a lot of times with Mom.

"No fre…hic…king way…" Hayden tried to say, but he found himself facing another attack of hiccups.

The dragon stopped in front of him, and just stared. It had huge green eyes, with big square-ish pupils – Hayden couldn't exactly put his finger on it, but it looked friendly. Definitely like Stitch the alien.

But there was one more thing that Hayden noticed. The dragon could have been big, but now he could see it more closely, and its mouth was slightly open, the boy could see that the big scaly lizard lacked that "something" that made scary most of the beasts.

"Toothless?" Hayden lifted an eyebrow. "I could have sworn you had teeth!"

The dragon lifted an eyebrow in return, then it sat on its rear and showed properly his gums. A second later, a set of fangs sprung out of the gums, like the claws from the paw of a cat.

"Oops. You do." The boy grinned. The dragon retracted its teeth again and made something that looked a lot like a grin.

Hayden shook his head.

"Are you sure you aren't just a big black cat? Because if you are, don't worry, I'm not superstitious."

The dragon looked at him, and his pupils somewhat shrank. Then they widened again, and the reptile made a hough-hough-hough verse that sounded a lot like laughter.

Hayden couldn't have been more surprised. He had cracked a joke. He had cracked a freaking joke and the dragon had understood it!

What was that creature exactly? It had not pursued him when he had run off, the previous day. It laughed at jokes. (It even was hard to think of it as an "it", honestly.) It looked harmless.

"No freaking way," Hayden said again, looking at the dragon. The reptile raised its left paw and made some sort… of gesture. It was as if it was telling Hayden to come.

"Come with you?" Hayden asked.

The dragon nodded, then it lifted its tail and pointed to a familiar direction. Hayden knew too well where it was pointing. The cove. His cove.

It took half an hour to walk there, maybe even more, Hayden didn't have his watch, and he didn't exactly mind the time, not when he was wary about that big scaly thing next to him. But they were there again – it was his place, and his new "roommate" didn't look like a threat, for now.

"So, I know I might sound a lot like Professor Oak," Hayden smirked as he started rummaging through his boxes. The dragon didn't look like a threat, but still he wanted to take something home, just in case it was a threat and his stuff could go lost. "But… are you a boy or a girl dragon? I can't think of you as an it."

He looked at the dragon, who rolled its eyes and smacked its snout with a paw. It opened its mouth and growled something, then it smacked its snout again and laid its head on the ground.

"Whatever you said, I didn't get it," Hayden joked pulling Mom's toy dragon out of the box. He stared at it for a moment – Mom might have been an eminent scientist, but she had found the time to sew that little thing for him and even embroider his name under the belly of the plushie.

The dragon came forward and sniffed the toy. Its eyes widened, as if it had realized something, and it sniffed the toy again, then Hayden, then it found a patch of dirt, took a branch in its mouth, and made a few scratches on the ground.

"So what are you doing now, are you playi…?" Hayden approached the patch of dirt, and the dragon made a low growl when he almost stepped on a line. Hayden stepped backwards and looked at the signs, and when he understood what he had just seen he couldn't really believe his eyes.

It wasn't a doodle. They were words.

I AM A BOY.

I hoped he trusted me enough to return, but I didn't want to fool myself. If he had really taken that old-looking stuffed animal, he was probably trying to secure at least that treasure, take his bike, and never come back.

I was afraid, no, terrified. I had in front of me the chance to end everything, to go home, it was all in Hayden Harington Haddock III's frail, weak hands.

If he could only trust me.

If I could only tell him my story.

If he could only help.

And fear only made it worse. I couldn't even try to turn back to my real self when I was terrified. Now I know it's all about fight-or-flight and rest-and-digest, nervous system stuff, and how it regulated the transformation a bit. Then, I only knew I was as afraid as I could be and I wanted everything to go back to normal, and fear didn't help.

I could only watch as Hayden waved me goodbye and left, fearing he would have left once and for all.

A little trivia: the fact that Hiro beat Hiccup at the science fair is a wink to the Oscar case. It's just like having the same great ideas… but buying the materials from a big store or the small shop just around the corner. Or using a soldering iron vs. duct tape.

So yeah we're not fully into action yet. And all I can think is "boooring!" because chapters 1 and 2 were a mere introduction. I hate writer's block. But at least, now the introduction is complete and the plot can finally start!

I hope you keep supporting the story like you did. If you want to, tell me what you like, what you don't like, if you have theories on how the story could go on ;) (obviously, if you have an account I might reply and tell you whether it's right or wrong, but if you're guests I will not give spoilers to all the other readers!)