Well... This chapter happened. I'm sorry if it doesn't focus on the main idea so much, as it does explaining Astrid a bit more. And yes, I added some fluffy little bits in here because I can and I love writing them... It was truly inevitable, if you thought about it.

But, anyway, I don't own HTTYD or any of the characters used in this story. And I'm sorry if this chapter is a bit short or if there were any grammar mistakes or whatnot. Go right on ahead and PM me or review to give me some feedback or ideas or whatever you feel is necessary. Okay, now, onto the story!

Astrid glared down at her calculus homework with a dissatisfied growl as she impatiently tapped her slender fingers against her desk. The numbers and letters and lines scattered strategically across the sheet just swirled off the page and began to backflip and somersault around her field of vision, making her head spin.

She let out a groan and slumped back into her seat, keeping her icy blue eyes trained on her homework. Her mind slowly began sliding off of her homework and shifted to a mid-sized bruise that was forming on her right forearm.

She absentmindedly ran her fingers over the mark, staring at the purplish, plum-sized blob that was placed almost strategically in the middle of her forearm. Her fingers skimmed the swollen welt and circled it, inattentively marking where the swelling lessened and where it began to raise.

Her azure eyes examined the mark critically, her vast plethora of homework being forcibly thrust to the back of her mind. As if moved by an unseen force, Astrid's hand shifted to push a light amount of pressure onto the bruise, sending a light shockwave throughout her right arm that snapped her out of her daze.

Her eyes snapped back into focus and shifted over to her calculus book, which she immediately deemed the current bane of her existence.

You see, Astrid was on honor roll, and had AP classes and everything good like that, but she had a hard time with her math classes. She just barely scraped by with an A all throughout high school, but calculus really deemed itself an impossibly stubborn adversary that wouldn't go down no matter how many times things were explained to her.

She herself was also too stubborn (not that she'd ever admit it,) to ask for help from a tutor or anything along those lines, causing her calculus grade to slowly plummet throughout the semester. She was close to a C now and was struggling to cope with the fact that her A streak was over.

In all honesty, if she could, she'd spend her entire life locked up in the school library, or in her art class class. She greatly enjoyed sitting down with a good novel or a sketchpad, not that she'd ever openly say that's how she spends her free time, curled up in the corner with her nose stuck in a book or doodling nonsense all over a piece of notebook paper. At the thought of paper, her mind took an arbitrary turn back to her homework, which she had painstakingly been doodling all over.

She took note of the basketball arcing into an unseen basket hidden behind the paper's text and began to shade in the ball, taking great care to add specific lines and bumps when needed.

As she finished the random sketch, she shook her head and snuck a glance at her laptop, which periodically flashed the time in big black numbers across the screensaver, a picture of her and her basketball team winning the championship at a tournament. She moaned inwardly as she saw the digital 12:29 flit across the screen.

She turned back to her paper with a stiff growl, her lower lip curling in with disgust. After an unsystematic moment of an intense one-sided glaring contest, Astrid noted a somewhat shrill cawing coming from across her room. She raised her cerulean eyes and shot a blank gaze at the cage hanging by her window, gears turning to substitute for the blank moments of idiocy the girl had had.

Another agitated squawk brought her back to life and she gnawed on her lip, her brow furrowing. Her blue and yellow parakeet Stormfly was flapping about her cage, cawing like she was trying to wake all of Northern Europe.

Astrid sent out a seemingly random series of scratchy whistles that amazingly quieted her bird down to the point where it wasn't all that she heard. The blonde senior had had her bird long enough to know that certain things had a certain effect on her. Such as that she didn't like it when the blinds were closed in the room, and that she needed to fly around the room at least three times a day.

Hell, Astrid had even learned a little bit of bird body language over the years. But, nonetheless, Stormfly was easily Astrid's closest friend, which the popular team captain didn't exactly want to come out and say to everyone she knew.

"Hey, did you know that when I get lonely, I sit and rant to my pet parakeet?"

And this, children, is How NOT to Make Friends 101.

Astrid cast a final, weary glance at her homework before she opted that she wasn't going to get anything done. She sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of her nose, pushing her swivel chair back and standing up. After a moment of staggering around the piles of athletic bags and half-empty Gatorades and water bottles and scattered pieces of clothing, she reached her bird's cage by her window.

The blue and yellow bird let out a happy, almost relieved chirrup and hopped towards the door that her owner was fumbling to unlatch. Once the frustrated 18-year-old managed to unhook the door, Stormfly soared through the opening with a delighted warble, flapping her azure wings as she flew across the room.

The sight of the uncaged bird brought an unexplainable warmth to the girl's chest and caused the corners of her lips to tilt skywards. The parakeet cawed and skyrocketed across the room, landing periodically on strategically placed perches fastened to her owner's ocean blue walls.

The warmth expanded in Astrid's chest as her bird flew around delightedly, uttering happy trills and tweets at being let out of her somewhat confining cage. Astrid couldn't remember the last time she had felt this warmth other than when she was with Stormfly.

Suddenly, something struck Astrid's mind and made her feel like a pitcher of ice was being dumped down her shirt. She had felt this way before. Quite recently, in fact, it had only been about 8 hours or so.

When she had been with Hiccup…

She had to give a little laugh at the mention of the scrawny reporter whom she had just met. The laugh died right after it passed through her lips, and her brow furrowed. She began to ponder what the bony, yet mildly striking boy had done to make her feel the ever-elusive warmth in her chest.

Then, it hit her.

His gorgeous green eyes.

And his childish, toothy grin.

And the adorable dusting of freckles across his cheekbones.

She bit down on her tongue, hard, at the thought of herself finding this guy - dare she say it - cute. And it's not like she's one of those typical "Hey I'm popular and am obviously too good for you so get the hell out of my field of vision," high school girls.

She was more of the "Hey I'm a popular jock who's really indifferent about all these cliques and social pyramids and just really wants to be friends with everyone," sort of high schooler.

It was just the fact that he was sort of a nerd, so to speak. Hey, she may be an overall nice girl, but she still has an image to upkeep. If people even figured out that she thought a nerdy newspaper boy was cute, BAM! There goes her social status down the crapper.

She may be indifferent about the whole thing, but she still knows that a good image is everything, and that includes love interests. She knew that she should be going for the football quarterback or the captain of the boys' varsity basketball team, but she found them repulsive and disgusting.

Their main interest at heart was to get into her pants, and they had a careless way of not bothering to hide it that made most other girls go wild, but not Astrid. Sure, she was friends with some guys on the basketball team, and the football team, and even some wrestlers, but she knew their tactics with girls.

And she hated it.

So, she made it a point to herself not to ever go out with any of them; to not let them win. As stupid as it sounded, it had worked for the 18-year-old for several years, and she made no plans to stop anytime soon.

Her mind shifted back to Hiccup as she threw herself on top of her bed, nestling into her blue and yellow blankets. Stormfly had long since stopped flitting around the room, coming to a rest at a perch above Astrid's headboard and crooning softly to her.

Astrid realized all of a sudden that Hiccup's looks weren't the only thing that had made the evasive warmth form in her chest. It was the look in his eyes when he gazed at her. S

he was used to guys staring at her, (no arrogance intended,) but their eyes were filled with lust, a certain eagerness and craving that made her feel uncomfortable and often lead to her excusing herself to go to the bathroom until she felt she was ready to go back.

But when Hiccup looked at her, she only saw a gentle look filling his emerald green eyes; an unfamiliar affection and tenderness that she never observed in anyone.

It was kinda nice; being able to stand comfortably with a guy without having to cross her arms over her chest or walk away and give herself a five-count before she decked someone. Before she could help it, the corners of her mouth tilted up precariously as she reached up to sweep her sandy bangs out of her eyes, fatigue suddenly weighing down her body as if it were made of bags of wet sand.

Stormfly was perched above her human's head, looking down at the girl with an intelligent look filling her dark eyes. Astrid just smiled with a light chuckle, shaking her head and reaching out to her bird. The blue and yellow parakeet gave a happy warble and flapped down to land precariously on her girl's finger, nuzzling her head affectionately into her hand.

The blonde just smiled at her companion, the auburn-haired paperboy flitting through her head once again as she settled onto the edge of her bed. No, she wasn't falling for him.

She barely knew the guy for Pete's sakes!

But, she did want to get to know him more.

She thought that she needed a genuine, kind guy like him in her life amidst the liars and the cheaters and the assholes that surrounded her on a daily basis. She smiled again at her bird and gently moved her to the perch above her bed, staggering over to her dresser before she could pass out in mid-step. She quickly changed into a more comfortable garb of mesh basketball shorts and a t-shirt.

She quickly slid back into bed, sighing comfortably at the warmth as she snuggled her head into her pillow. Her bird chirped at her, and Astrid stuck out an arm as she partially raised her upper body. Her bird landed on her arm as she pointed her other hand at the cage across the room, where the faint moonlight was filtering in around the windowpanes.

Astrid sighed before snapping out a quick, yet gentle command at her parakeet.

"Cage."

The one word received a light trill and a painless, affectionate nip to Astrid's ear before the bird flew across the room and into her cage, the door slipping into place behind her. Astrid laughed despite herself and slid further underneath her covers, reaching out to switch off the lamp on her nightstand.

As the room became shrouded in darkness - save for the moonlight filling the far side - Astrid let out a short series of light, melodic whistles that rang through the room. Shortly after, the whistles were returned in a higher pitch, receiving a happy smile from the girl.

As she nestled her head back down in her pillow, her eyes fell shut like the curtain after a bad comedic play, and she drifted off into a dreamless sleep.