Lauren's POV
"I believe in learning on the job." Gobber announces, and he pulls the lever.
The Gronckle bursts out from the cage and we all scatter across the room, acting as useless as ever.
"Today is all about survival." Gobber lectures. "If you get blasted, you're dead."
"QUICK! What's the first thing you're going to need?" Gobber asks.
"A doctor?" Hiccup quickly replies.
"Plus five speed?" Fishlegs asks like it's a video game.
"A shield!" Astrid says quickly, and I dash for the shields.
"Shields! Go!" Gobber yells at the rest of the teens, and they trudge over to the stand of weapons. That's when I realize: I can't win this. I have to let Hiccup almost die. I'm now a minor character with a not-so-minor ego. I have to act like any other normal teen. I have to be eliminated, but not mortally wounded. Here goes.
I grab a shield and cover my face with it. It's heavy, but unlike my giant sword, not too sharp.
"Your most important piece of equipment is your shield. If you must make a choice between a sword and a shield, you pick the shield!" Gobber lectures, and shoves a shield at Hiccup as Shaina reluctantly picks one up. She's an animal lover. She is going to hate fighting dragons.
"Get your hands off my shield!" I hear Tuffnut yell.
"There's like a million shields!" Ruffnut yells. They must be fighting over a shield.
"You should take that one. It has a flower on it. Girls like flowers." Tuffnut mentions. Ruffnut hits him in the head with it, and then says: "Oops, now this one has blood on it."
They continue to fight over it when the Gronckle comes near them and blasts the shield to bits.
"Tuffnut, Ruffnut, you're out!" Gobber yells at them. They got blasted.
"Shields are good for another thing! Noise!"
I start screaming.
"Not screaming! Bang the shield and weapon together!" I stop screaming and decide to do as Gobber says. He might just know how to keep me alive.
"Now, noise can throw off a dragon's aim. All dragons have a limited number of shots. How many does a Gronckle have?"
"Five?" Snotlout asks. I dodge some running teens and meet up with Shaina.
"This is more intense than I thought." I tell her, banging my shield and sword together. She doesn't seem to hear me though.
"SIX!" She yells out the answer before Fishlegs can.
"That's right! You all have to share!"
"But what if-" Fishlegs mentions, but the Gronckle blasts his shield across the room and Fishlegs screams.
"Well, I guess now that's five." I say, looking over my shoulder.
"Hiccup! Get in there!" Gobber yells, and I realize he's taken shelter.
He looks almost like a turtle when he comes out of his hiding spot, yells "NO!" and runs back into his hiding spot.
I decide this is when I need to get taken out, so I go up to the beast.
"AHH! AHH!" I scream, trying to get its attention. It turns its head to me in question. "Hit me! I dare you! I dare you to-" He blasts my shield to pieces, and my plan works. I'm out.
"Laurel's out!" Gobber yells.
The Gronckle then turns to Astrid and Snotlout, and I hear part of their conversation over the loud pounding in my head.
"So anyways, I just moved into my parent's basement. You should come by some time and work out. You look like you work out." Snotlout mentions while his shield gets blown to bits and Astrid tucks and rolls. She lands on her feet and is next to Shaina.
"This is going to end badly." Shaina announces.
"Not for me!" Astrid yells and ducks out of the way just as Shaina's shield is lit on fire.
"STOP! DROP! AND ROLL!" I yell from my side of the arena. Fishlegs looks at me strangely, but smiles when he sees Shaina succeed in putting out the flames.
"Where'd you learn that technique?" Fishlegs asks me.
"I made it up." I lie, but I kind of did, so it's not a whole lie.
"Cool." He smiles. He seems nice, but his BO is a little stronger than I'd thought it would be.
Astrid and Hiccup are side by side now, and Hiccup starts talking.
"So… I guess it's just you and me, now." He points out to Astrid as she stands on guard next to him.
"Nope, just you." She tells him, and the Gronckle shoots a blast at Hiccup's shield which disintegrates. Astrid runs for the hills.
"One shot left!" Gobber yells from the sidelines. The Gronckle doesn't stop going after Hiccup, like it did to all of us when it shot our shields. Instead, it goes straight for him in a flash of armored skin.
"HICCUP!" Gobber yells, scared for Hiccup's life. I feel like he's going to die. But I know he's not.
The Gronckle rears up and almost obliterates Hiccup, but Gobber saves him. He pulls the Gronckle's mouth away from Hiccup and drags it back to the cage.
"That's six! Go back to bed, you overgrown sausage!" Gobber yells at the Gronckle, and swings it in the cage.
"You'll get another chance, don't you worry!" Gobber says, and I'm not sure who he's talking to. Either the other teens and I, or the dragon. I really hope it wasn't the second option.
Shaina's POV
"Remember. A dragon will always, always," Gobber pauses and looks at Hiccup, "Go for the kill,"
Hiccup stares back at the charred portion of wall and then looks back at the ground, a slightly confused look adorning his face.
I glance over at Lauren and see her watching him too. If I am recalling my HTTYD correctly, Hiccup will be leaving us shortly to go find Toothless.
Lauren breaks her gaze from Hiccup and looks over at me. I tilt my head over toward Hiccup and give her a meaningful look. Slowly she shakes her head. Well now what are we going to do for the rest of the day? If we can't track Hiccup, then I guess that leaves us with one more option.
I look over at the group of disgruntled teens who are clearly less than pleased that they had lasted less than ten minutes against their first dragon. It looks like Lauren and I will be getting to spend some quality time with our peers until dinner. Yay.
Gobber leads the group of us out of the arena, tells us that we will go over our mistakes later tonight during supper, and then says that we are free to do whatever we want until that time. He mumbles something about having to go clean up back at the shop, and heads off in the opposite direction.
"Wait, Gobber, do you need any help over there?" I ask, in an attempt to avoid spending time with Snotlout and the Nuts.
"I'll be fine, you two go on ahead and spend time with your friends there,"
"Oh. Okay, thanks."
Not the answer I was looking for.
As it turned out, spending time with the group of teens wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. When they found out that we weren't from around here, Astrid kindly offered to take us on a tour around Berk and showed us some new places. They showed us a few cool places around the town in the woods, too. Who knew that there would be a zip-line out there, right? Even Snotlout was more bearable when he wasn't bullying Hiccup, though his hitting on Astrid every five minutes was starting to get really old really fast. I pitied the poor girl for having to put up with him every day.
Dinner came around faster than I thought it would, and we were soon all seated around the table, Gobber quizzing us on what we did wrong during training today.
"Alright, where did Astrid go wrong in the ring today?" he asks us.
"I miss timed my summersault dive. It was sloppy and threw off my reverse tumble," Astrid speaks up.
"Yeah, we noticed," Ruffnut replies.
"No, you were great, that was so Astrid," Snotlout says. I roll my eyes at him, and then look up at the door as I hear it opening. Hiccup walks through and quietly closes it behind him.
"She's right, you have to be tough on yourselves," Gobber disagrees with Snotlout and he looks a bit put off. Ha, serves him right.
"Where'd Hiccup go wrong?" he asks then, as Hiccup reaches the table and starts to load up his plate.
"He showed up?"
"He didn't get eaten?"
"He's never where he should be," Astrid states as Hiccup goes ad sits down at his own table away from the rest of us. Aww, no Hiccup! You don't have to go sit all on your own!
"Thank you, Astrid."
"You need to live and breathe this stuff!" he tells Hiccup, before he turns his back to our table.
"The Dragon Manual," Gobber announces as he clears of the middle of the table by swiping his arm across it. Lauren has to scoot quickly to the side to avoid having whatever that beverage might have been spilled on her as a filled tankard is knocked over.
"Everything we know, about every dragon we know of."
Gobber stand up and then announces that there don't seem to be any attacks tonight, and then tells us to go on and study.
"You mean read?"Tuffnut asks.
"While we're still alive?" Ruffnut looks mildly horrified.
"Why read words when you can just kill the stuff the words tell you about?" Snotlout asks as if there is no danger in that.
Sigh. These poor children have not been properly educated on the joys of reading.
"I've read it like seven times!" Fishlegs says excitedly. Thank you Fishlegs! At least one of these Vikings cares about literature!
He goes on to tell us about one of the water dragons in the book that apparently sprays boiling water at its enemies and the other teens look even less excited than before about the book, if that is even possible. They collectively decide that studying is overrated and head outside. Hiccup comes and sits down at the table where Astrid, Lauren, and I are still seated.
"So, I guess we'll share?" he says uncertainly.
"Nope, read it," Astrid pushes the book toward him and walks over toward the door. "You girls coming?" she asks us.
"Yeah," Lauren replies reluctantly, glancing back at me before following.
I turn to Hiccup and do a little wave, dismayed that I have to leave. I quickly catch up with Lauren, who hasn't yet caught up with Astrid.
"We're following him back here tonight to study the book too, right?" I whisper to her.
"You ask this like you don't know me."
Another chapter, yay! Hope you all enjoyed it and hopefully we can have the next chapter up soon for you all. Please feel free to let us know what you think through a review or by sending us a PM. As practicing writers it's always nice to get feedback and constructive criticism so that we can fix things in the future/keep doing whatever it is that you think seems to be working!