A/N: Oh what the hell. Let's just do this.

Oh, this chapter contains a Tumblr-induced easter egg. The question is, can you find it?

Disclaimer: I do not own How to Train Your Dragon. I do own an assortment of OCs, a few of whom are trying to make me regret creating them.

How to Train Your Marching Band

Chapter Six: Dragons

The dinner hour got off to a predictable start.

"Gimme the freakin' keys!"

"You hogged the car all last week! It's my turn!"

"You drove here and nearly killed us! I am totally driving for the rest of the week, even if I have to beat you up and tie you to the luggage rack!"

It usually consisted of the twins trying to figure out who was going to drive this time.

They had to share the car between themselves. It was a good car; almost new too with all sorts of shiny things that made some people envious. Truthfully, the twins had the best ride in the school. Though most people wondered why their parents -- who were fairly well off -- just didn't buy a second car so the twins would stop fighting all the time over who got to drive.

Hiccup suspected it was because the car was new and shiny and expensive. If there was only one car between the two of them, they wouldn't start arguing over who had the better car and wind up sabotaging the other's ride.

On the other hand, it meant that unless the twins were in total agreement about the driving arrangements, they never really got anywhere until they had made up their minds.

It was bothersome when they only had a limited amount of time for dinner.

"We should really stop them." Astrid commented absently, watching the twins fight with a sort of fascinated look on her face.

"Yeah..." Hiccup nodded, just as absent. "Snotlout, go stop them."

"Yeah right." Snotlout snorted and backed up a step. Then he gave Fishlegs a hearty shove forward. "You go stop them."

Fishlegs immediately backpedaled in the name of self-preservation. "I'm not stopping them." he said. "Where's Marie? Isn't this sort of her thing?"

"She got roped into chaperoning duties." Hiccup replied, inwardly pleased with himself that he had avoided being recruited.

During sectional time that afternoon, Steiny the drum major had announced that she didn't have enough seniors volunteering to chaperone the rookies for dinner and had cast a rather expectant look at the assembled woodwinds. Hiccup had spent the entire time trying not to catch her eye while Marie had shot him filthy looks for trying to get out of it. The rookie dinner was one of those functions that only the truly insane looked back on with fondness.

And, at times, Marie considered herself quite sensible, as opposed to insane.

Hiccup felt quite proud of himself for getting out of it, despite Marie's threat that something drastic would happen to him.

Without looking, Astrid punched Hiccup in the arm.

"Ow! What was that for?" he grumbled, turning away from the blonde girl in a protective gesture.

"For being a weenie." Astrid replied. She tilted her head, still eyeing the fight. "I wonder if Tuffnut realizes that Ruffnut is holding his set of keys." She made flexing motions like she was physically steeling herself, then strolled forward towards the twins and swiped the keys from Ruffnut's hand. "Gimme those!"

"Hey!"

"If you two can't decide like normal mature eighteen-year olds, then neither of you are driving." the colorguard captain snapped, holding the car keys out of reach. "Now, I don't like treating you like two-year olds, but if that's the way you're going to act, then that's the way you're going to be treated."

"I'm not two years old!" Both of the twins shouted in unison.

"I'm not seeing it." Astrid commented disapprovingly. She pocketed the keys and came up with a quarter in their place. "Call it."

"Heads!" they yelled.

"I'm heads!"

"No, I'm heads!"

"In your dreams!"

"Maybe in your nightmares!"

And so on.

"Urgh... Let me know if they stop. I'm gonna take a piss." Snotlout announced, starting for the exit.

"Standing right here and didn't need to hear it." Astrid hissed at his retreating back.

"Must have said it a thousand times. I don't want to know when he's going to the bathroom." Hiccup muttered.

Meanwhile, the twins continued to squabble.

"So... What are we gonna do about them?" Fishlegs wondered.

"We could just take Hiccup's car. It can fit all of us, easy enough." Astrid suggested.

"It doesn't matter if they're twins. At the end of the day, my car still only holds five people." Hiccup said, but not-so effectively shooting the idea down, because Astrid came up with another suggestion.

"We could stuff Tuffnut in the trunk."

It wasn't enough to say that Hiccup was glad to finally get home after a long day.

They did end up stuffing Tuffnut in the trunk and he actually kind of enjoyed it, though he did swear revenge on Astrid for suggesting it and bloody revenge on his sister for putting him in there.

The rookie dinner hadn't gone down smoothly, if Marie's account was anything to go by. They were officially banned from Papa Joe's Pizzeria for the next thirty days for reasons that the other seniors refused to elaborate upon, though Marie had promised Hiccup and the others full disclosure once tempers over the incident had cooled down. She had left them with the tantalizing hint that several members of the Pride of Paolini had turned up. Given the rivalry between the two bands, one didn't need to stretch their imagination too far on what might have happened.

Halfway through the evening practice, the rookies had started to get rather restless and nervous. Part of it was just the grind of a long day coming to an end, but most of it was attributed to the dragons that had gathered at the edge of the field to watch them. They had all gotten a kick out of the Night Fury's presence, but they hadn't been terribly enthused by the way Hookfang kept lighting up his scales every time they hit the park-and-blow spots in the music. Gobber's instruction to "give the dragons a good show! It's what they're here to see!" had failed to reassure the rookies in any form.

Hiccup really couldn't put words to the relief he felt in stepping through the back door to the kitchen. It was illuminated by a single light above the sink and smelled as though Stoic had cheerfully burnt his dinner to a crunchy crisp again. Typical. Stoic was practically living as a bachelor, but he was also a father and they couldn't live off of take-away all the time. His cooking skills were hit and miss. Mostly miss. Dinner most often tended to veer in the direction of "slightly overdone".

And if he got really distracted, then dinner gained the status of "charcoal briquette".

This smelled like one of those times.

Not really willing to turn on the light and find out what had been singed to the point where it was no longer recognizable as food, Hiccup dropped his cooler on the counter and slung his bag into a chair at the table. He had taken two steps towards the fridge when he heard it; a distinctive hissing-spitting sound, like someone repeatedly tapping a finger on the nozzle of a pressurized air hose.

The survival instincts that Hiccup had been born with kicked into gear and his mind quickly categorized the origin on the noise.

There was a Frilled Whipspitter in the house.

They were small dragons; more serpentine than draconian. They averaged about four feet in length with stubby little legs and as the name implied, they had a frill around their necks. Deceptively harmless-looking, they were one of the few dragons that Stoic wouldn't take on in a direct fight. They were the King Cobras of dragons.

The Frilled Whipspitter and its cousin the Hooded Whipspitter vied for the position of most poisonous dragon on the face of the planet, with the Puff Nadder coming in as a close second. The two species of Whipspitters were indigenous to Australia (like all immensely poisonous critters), but a collector of rare creatures had misplaced his population of both species and they had skittered out across the dry expanse of the American West to breed faster than rabbits.

But whereas the Puff Nadder only had a problem with its vain cousin, the Deadly Nadder, the Whipspitters had a problem with everyone. They were highly territorial little bastards and really didn't care if you were there first. The only way to deal with a Whipspitter was to kill it and the Dragon Laws (really the guidelines for dealing with dragons, not actual laws) stipulated a "kill of sight" order.

Hiccup strained his hearing, trying to ascertain the source of the hissing. Other than that noise, the entire house was dark and silent. Stoic's truck was in the drive, meaning he was probably holed up in a corner with a handful of knives, waiting for a chance to catch the Whipspitter unawares.

But Hiccup could hear it right now and he tried not to breathe too loudly. He had been told horror stories about the Whipspitter; about how anyone unlucky enough to be bitten by one died within a minute; how their bodies rotted and their limbs fell off before they were even dead. Stoic had told these stories to his son in a well-meant effort to "prepare" him, but all he had really done was give the boy nightmares.

It sounded like the Whipspitter was hiding out under the stove. The stove was probably still nice and warm from when Stoic had burned his dinner and the thing really hadn't started hissing until Hiccup had started for the fridge. He had to pass in front of the stove to get to the fridge.

Very slowly, Hiccup moved towards the table instead, going backwards with each step. His intention was to get out the door and to the garage and come back with the chainsaw or something. But the Whipspitter saw his movements much differently; perhaps interpreting them as threatening. There was a skittering sound of scales on linoleum and with a leathery rustle of wings, the serpentine dragon was airborne.

It only took him a split-second to react. There was a knife on the tabletop, its curved edge gleaming brightly under the light. Hiccup seized it and hurled it in a practiced throw towards the back-lit form appearing suspended in mid-air.

He didn't really see what happened because the second the knife left his fingers, he turned and made a dash for the hallway. Several things happened at once; there was a heavy *thunk* sound and the Whipspitter let out a pained screech, and the kitchen light went on without warning, blinding him to everything but brightly colored afterimages. He ran right into something very solid that he fleetingly thought might have been the wall and toppled over.

"Hiccup! Get out of the way!"

One of Stoic's large hands closed around his upper arm and hoisted him effortlessly to his feet.

"There's a Whipspitter in the house!--"

Hiccup only staggered when Stoic tried to shove him into the hallway. It didn't work because the teenager could hardly see where he was going and this time, he really did run into the wall.

"Stay back! Let me handle this!"

"Dad!"

Hiccup groped around for a second before he got a hold of his dad's arm and aborted the throw Stoic had been about to make. He opened his eyes, squinted a little and had to blink a few times before the afterimages stopped dominating his vision.

"I don't hear it." he said. "The Whipspitter. I don't hear it."

Stoic tilted his head and listened into the silence for any sign of the serpentine dragon. Whipspitters hissed like mad ninety-eight percent of the time. The only time they wouldn't hiss was if they were sleeping or dead.

A familiar rustling made them both turn defensively and they spotted the Whipspitter at the same time.

"Oh..."

The Whipspitter was pinned to the wall above the stove by the thrown knife, its body still wiggling and writhing weakly around the blade. It was a critical hit; the knife had severed some important blood vessels and the dragon was bleeding out. Fearless now that the danger was averted, Stoic went right up to dying dragon and examined the critical wound. The dragon opened one eye and hissed its last at the hunter.

"Ooh, right through the neck. Good aim, son." he complimented, quite proud that the knife-throwing lessons had paid off in the long run. "At least it wasn't a Hooded Whipspitter." he added with a chuckle. Hooded Whipspitters were- well, the spitters were as the frilled variety actually had to bite you.

"That's sort of not the point, Dad." Hiccup said exasperatedly, shaking off the adrenaline in his legs. "The fact is, it was in the house. How did it get in? You keep telling me that your traps are foolproof."

"Must be another hole in the basement I haven't found yet." was Stoic's thoughtful answer while he examined the dead Whipspitter from all possible angles. "Don't worry, I'll find it and plug it up. And I'll set some more traps, just to be safe."

"Great, let's make the basement even more dangerous. Dad, remember when this happened?" Hiccup showed him the pale, crescent-shaped scar on his elbow. That one had taken eight stitches to close up. "I went down to get the laundry and one of your traps exploded on me. Just remember that the washer and dryer are down there."

"Hmm, it might have wiggled in underneath the pipes..." Stoic muttered, plainly having only heard every other word. He started to work the knife out of the wall and the dragon's body.

"Never mind!" Hiccup threw up his arms in defeat and walked away. "I'll just start bringing a stick with me so I can poke at anything that looks remotely dangerous."

"You do that. I'll get rid of this." Stoic freed the knife and the dragon, leaving an unsightly smear on the wall. "And don't touch the wall or the stove until I've scrubbed it down. You speared one of the poison sacks."

"Mop the floor." Hiccup suggested, watching various draconian fluids drip onto the linoleum until Stoic whisked the body away out the back door. He bet that quite a lot of dragon blood had been dripped on this floor too many times. A few more drops might not have made a difference, but he didn't want think about how many different species' blood had gotten onto the kitchen floor over the years.

While Stoic put the incinerator in the garage to good use, Hiccup cleaned out his cooler, put two new bottles of water in the fridge and set about making lunch for the next day. He intended to find something for dinner when he was finished, but he rather lost his appetite when Stoic returned sans the corpse of the Whipspitter, but bearing something roughly the size of his torso. He set it down on the table with a heavy thud.

"Dad, what is that?" Hiccup asked, pointing at the huge white, pointy thing now adorning about a quarter of the round table.

"The skull of a Saber-Toothed Bonehorn." Stoic dusted his hands off and looked at the skull with a satisfied expression.

"North American?"

"Yep."

"What's it doing in the house?" Hiccup wondered, the same question he asked whenever a part of dragon found its way into the house and he usually got the same answer.

"It's a trophy." Yep, that was the usual answer. "That little bastard went down hard. Remember when this happened?" Stoic held up his left hand, which bore two splinted fingers still a week or two away from being declared fully healed. "Missed the nerve bundle twice, cracked my fingers, and ended up snapping its neck."

"But why do you have the skull? In the house?" Hiccup would never understand his father's fascination with bringing home bits of his recent kills. "You know exactly where that thing's been!"

"Relax Hiccup, it's been sanitized within an inch of its life." Stoic patted the skull like it was a dog. "There's roasted chicken and mashed potatoes in the fridge, if you're hungry. Mrs. Overland doesn't think I'm feeding you enough." he grumbled.

Hiccup wanted to say that Stoic really wasn't -- burnt food wasn't appetizing and school food was best avoided so he was the skinniest, scrawniest thing this side of anorexia and Mrs. Overland was the hyperactive mother-type who kept plying them with food because she was worried that Hiccup was too skinny and small and definitely not eating enough for a growing boy his age -- truly, it was a wonder her own son wasn't approximately spherical -- but he settled for frowning at the skull instead. The Bonehorn scared him, even though it was dead. It had three rows of teeth and was said to be a link between sea dragons and sharks; if a sea dragon and a great white shark had ever gotten jiggy with it. The creators of Jaws had certainly played with the idea, setting the stage for a horror movie featuring a mutated shark-dragon hybrid so creepy-looking that not even science had wanted to fathom whether or not the union would produce an offspring like that.

Sharks and dragons were scary enough on their own, but a hybrid could follow you onto the beach after you had gotten out of the water?

No wonder the movie was a classic.

Leaving Stoic to find a place to mount the dragon skull, Hiccup went off to take a quick shower to wash the sweat and sunscreen off. Then he helped himself to Mrs. Overland's offerings and holed himself up in his bedroom for the night. He polished the meal off in a little less than ten minutes, then settled back in his chair with his sketchbook propped on his knees. For a moment, he just sat there and took in the atmosphere.

His skin had turned a faint pink with sunburn, his feet wanted to cede from the body and his muscles were sore in that good way. For the first time in twelve hours, his hair was not sticking to his skin because of sweat and the smell of sunscreen was absent. He felt kind of buzzed from the self-esteem high one got after accomplishing a lot in one day and as the effects of the adrenaline finally faded away, he started to feel sleepy. The air in his room was still warm, but all of his windows were wide open and the square fan mounted in one of them brought in the cool evening air. For that one moment, he couldn't hear anything beside the humming fan, the chirping crickets and the croaking bullfrogs.

Then his chair creaked and just like that, he put pencil to paper and started to sketch.

Band camp always left him with inspiration, but he suspected it had more to do with only a few chances during the day to whip out the pencil and paper, and not enough time to get the inspiration entirely out of his system.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was drawing at first, but after a few more lines, it starting coming out distinctly Night Fury-shaped. Hiccup smiled a little and put a little more confidence into his pencil strokes. The black dragon had always been a large source of inspiration for him. After all, there weren't many people who could say they saw one of the rarest dragons in the world day after day.

The Night Fury had been living Paramount for longer than Hiccup had been alive. Stoic could remember seeing it for the first time when he'd been around five years old, waiting to go to his first day of school. The way Hiccup's grandmother told the story, the Night Fury had barreled out of the hedge, claws and teeth bared and blue flames streaming out of its mouth. Stoic told the story much differently: the Night Fury had merely lain under the hedge and watched him with large green eyes until the bus had come. Hiccup was more inclined to believe his father's version of the story, because there were reasons his grandmother now took anti-psychotics and lived in a care home in Florida.

Stoic would also add, with a confused frown, that the Night Fury used to follow him around as well.

It took Hiccup a few minutes to realize that he was being watched and he raised his head to the meet the Night Fury's wide green eyes peering through the window in front of him. The roof extended three feet beyond his windows. Stoic had long-since reinforced the vaguely sloping ledge to take the dragon's weight, knowing that there was just no getting rid of the Night Fury and the best thing to do was learn how to accommodate its frequent presence.

"I don't think it's really a danger, son." Stoic had said to him one morning a few years ago. "You were never afraid of it; you used to walk right up to it all the time as a toddler. And it certainly likes you. I haven't forgotten what happened in Canada."

"Stalker." Hiccup told the Fury. "How long have you been out there?"

The black dragon just warbled happily, seeming pleased that he was talking at all. Hiccup smiled and had to tighten his fingers around the edge of the sketchbook so he wouldn't lift his hand and try to pet the dragon. No matter how friendly and social it was with him, the dragon wasn't a household pet and he had no idea how it might take to the idea of him initilizing contact.

The Night Fury tilted its head, eyes focused on the sketchbook, and made an inquiring noise.

"Oh," Hiccup turned the book around so the dragon could see the drawing. The rough sketch was complete-ish; it depicted the Fury looking ridiculously adorable with a fish tail hanging out of its mouth. "Whaddya think? Think it looks like you?"

The Night Fury examined the sketch and then purred, a deep reverberating sound that Hiccup felt rumble in his chest. It was a sound of approval.

"I'll put some color on it when it's inked." Hiccup said, turning the sketchbook back around to continue working. "Think I should stick it on the fridge? I haven't done that in years. Dad would probably flip or something."

He was sure that approving purr started to sound like a snigger of laughter. With a chirr-sound from the back of its throat, the Night Fury leapt off the overhanging roof, its wings beating the listless evening air for just a moment. Then Hiccup heard taloned paws scrape gently on the roof over his head. The ceiling creaked at the dragon settled in for the night. Hiccup's grin softened.

"Good night to you too, buddy."

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