Heyyyyyyy guyyyyyssssssss...

Yup. There is no excuse for my lateness. I'm so sorry, but I understand if you don't accept my apology...

Anyway, this chapter went through three VERY different versions before I came up with what you see in front of you... hope you enjoy...

Read, relax, review!

~o0o~

23.

"Rise and shine Frost!" an overly cheerful voice tore Jack from his sleep. The white-haired boy cracked his eyelids open in annoyance just in time to see Hiccup throw open the curtains and let in a torrent of bright sunlight.

"Ahh," Jack recoiled, shielding his face and sitting up a little in his bed. It's way too early for this! he was protesting in his head. "Really, Hiccup? What time is it?"

"Time for you to get up," Hiccup stated with a smile as he walked briskly about Jack's room, opening all the curtains and letting the bright morning light flood into the room. Neither Hiccup nor the light was doing anything for his mood. Jack rolled over, intending to go back to bed, when a giant and heavy black mass hopped on top of him, causing him to cry out painfully.

"Agh- what- Hiccup! Get this- ugh! Toothless, get off of me!"

The dragon in question only tilted his head before grinned excitedly and licking Jack's face, followed by the rest of his upper body.

"I'm up! I'm up! Ok? Ugh please, just get off- will you cut that out?" Jack protested, now thoroughly annoyed, as he tried in vain to push the Nightfury off his lap.

Hiccup whistled to the dragon, still smiling. "Toothless, c'mere Bud," he commanded with a wave. "Let's leave the grumpy Guardian alone." With a final lick to make his point clear, Toothless jumped from Jack's bed and padded lightly across the floor towards where Hiccup was leaning in the doorway.

"You. Downstairs. Fifteen minutes," Hiccup told Jack.

"I need a bath," the white-haired boy complained, lifting his arms away from his chest and making a face at the dragon-saliva that coated his body.

Hiccup only laughed. "You just had one!" Toothless snorted in agreement, sitting up and staring at Jack innocently with wide happy eyes. "Fifteen minutes," Hiccup said again as he pushed away from the door frame and began to leave.

Jack fell back onto his pillows with an overdramatic groan. "Why? What's happening in fifteen minutes?"

Jack had to turn his head slightly so he could see Hiccup's face, and he immediately wished he hadn't. The brunette boy wore an expression Jack knew so well from the many times he'd worn it himself- a look that screamed mischief.

"Training," Hiccup replied with a smirk.

…

Hiccup wasn't really a whistler. He could whistle, and often did so to get Toothless's attention or give him a direction, but aside from that, it wasn't a pastime he was overly fond of. He often preferred a contemplative silence, or the comforting, consistent sounds of hammer against metal while he worked.

But today, Hiccup was whistling.

Movement behind him caught his attention, and he looked up with a grin to see Merida walk through the doorway to his workshop. His good feelings only increased, and he simply couldn't frown if he tried.

"Mornin', Milady," he smiled teasingly, waving her over. Surprisingly, Hiccup's workshop was not as crowded as his bedroom, and Merida was able to pick her way to his side in no time at all.

"Yer in a good mood," Merida commented with a grin of her own. His smile was infectious to her- they were living in a time of chaos, and she felt like the world was about to end, yet his beaming gaze made her feel like she was soaring millions of feet above the ground without a single care. Hiccup pulled her close, clasping his hands contentedly around her waist.

"Well, I have a lot to smile about," he shrugged. "The sun is shining, we found the hammer, Compass is fixed… and I've got you," he grinned serenely.

Merida could feel his heart beat beneath her hands, or perhaps it was her own heart pulsing through her ears.

"Good reasons to smile, indeed," she said after a moment, her voice coming out in a whisper.

Hiccup unwound his hands from around her waist, much to her disappointment, but firmly grasped her right hand with his left and pulled her over to a table deeper in the workshop, beside the currently dead forge.

"I've got your arrows," he announced happily, reaching for the quiver that was now stocked full compared to the day before. "They're color coded like the others," he said, gesturing to the colored bands inked in where feathers met wood. "I've been experimenting a little," he added, pointing to a few marked with a deep red band. "Try them out today and let me know how they work."

Merida gingerly fingered one of the indicated arrows and cautiously pulled it from the quiver. She knew better than to be anything but gentle with the arrows that Hiccup had messed with. Her brows furrowed immediately.

"Hiccup… they're… metallic." She looked up at him questioningly.

The brunette nodded excitedly, crossing his arms. "Yeah. Don't worry though- it's the same basic structural design I use for Toothless's tail fin. It should have no problem flying."

Merida frowned. "But what does it do?" she asked, running her fingers along the arrow's narrow shaft. She realized some sort of… polish maybe?... coated the metal. It didn't seem to have quite dried yet either, it came off kind of sticky on her fingers-

Merida looked up with wide eyes as a thought struck her. Hiccup was looking at her, biting his lip to keep from laughing as he waited for her reaction.

"They're not…" Merida started, excitement building in her chest, as Hiccup said nothing, only rubbed his thumb across his smiling bottom lip as he nodded vigorously. Merida wanted to kiss those lips.

"Like I said," Hiccup finally answered, smiling wide, "let me know how they work." And then, in afterthought, "They activate just like the smoke ones."

Merida nodded eagerly and excitedly, admiring the silver arrow from different angles. "When do Ah get ta try it?"

Hiccup picked up a dulled sword from the table and tossed it to her. Merida swung the quiver over her shoulder and caught the sword handle-side-up in her left hand, the silver arrow still clutched in her right.

"How 'bout now?"

…

"Tell me again why this is necessary?" A freshly showered, non-saliva-coated Jack complained as he met the other Guardians in the main hall of the castle. "What even are we doing, exactly?"

Jack took in the appearance of the girls- Rapunzel wore leather pants and a flowing burgundy blouse and belt, hanging from which was her weapon of choice: a frying pan. Merida too had traded in her dress for leggings and a green tunic, matched with tall leather boots. Even her hair had surprisingly been gathered up into a tight ponytail atop her head, though a few wild curls had managed to break free around her face. Her bow was strapped neatly across her back, and she stood anxiously fingering the tail feathers of the arrows residing in the quiver on her hip. Hiccup wore his fight suit, but that wasn't really as shocking as the girls' attire. Still, it made Jack wonder if he should've worn something more… battle like?

"Should I go grab my suit of armor from upstairs?" Jack joked with a smirk, pointing back toward the staircase with his thumb.

"If ye think it will help," Merida smirked. Jack frowned at her, not amused.

"Oookkk what are we doing, guys?"

"I told you earlier, Jack," Hiccup called, walking up to the boy and dumping a couple shields in to his arms. Jack noticed that the Berk hammer was strapped to his belt. "Today we train."

They hauled a couple shields and swords, along with other equipment that Jack couldn't divine any purpose from, outside into one of the large grassy courtyards of Corinthia. The sun was bright today, but also very cloudy, the overall effect being a whitish-grey sky in which one tiny spot where the sun rested was significantly brighter than the rest. Wind blew through the trees, stirring up leaves and making the grass tickle Jack's bare ankles. He briefly wondered if he should have worn shoes.

Even Punz is wearing shoes, Jack thought to himself, eying the girl's boots.

He flipped his staff through the air, swung it over his shoulders and hung his arms lazily over the edges as he waited for what would come next. Hiccup was handing something out- some sort of black bands.

"What's this?" Jack asked when the brunette boy held out four of the bands to him. Each one was a couple inches wide, and maybe a little more than half a foot long.

"They're weighted," Hiccup explained. "Wrap them around your wrists and ankles. Makes you work harder in practice, helps make the real deal that much easier."

Jack looked at him skeptically. "Weighted?"

Hiccup shrugged. "They're only about two or three pounds each. Piece of cake,"

Jack took the bands from his friend and bent down to fasten them around his ankles. Once he was sure they wouldn't come loose or fall off, he stood and gently shook his legs, testing the feel of the bands. He could definitely feel the added weight, but it wasn't restricting to his movements- everything was normal. Jack shrugged as he fastened the other two to his wrists, not quite understanding what the point was.

He worked with Merida first. Hiccup told him he had to practice fighting with his staff… without actually using the staff.

"Pretend the staff is just a piece of wood, and not your source of magical power," Hiccup explained. "How would you fight with it?"

Jack nodded in understanding as he adjusted his stance and readied himself. Merida stood a few paces away from him, sword in hand. Jack eyed the glinting edge of the blade with an uneasy feeling in his stomach. The redhead had assured him her blades were blunt, but he didn't quite trust her on that. They looked pretty sharp to him.

After all, magic or not… his staff was wood.

He glanced at the knurled stick held tightly in his callused hands. A sense of sure dread suddenly washed over him. He spun around to look at Hiccup.

She's going to hack it to pieces! He screamed at the boy in his head.

Hiccup shook his head. "No, she won't." he stated calmly.

Jack inhaled and turned back to face Merida. Fine, but when North wants to know why I can't use my powers anymore, I'm telling him it's entirely your-

And then Merida was slashing, and Jack just barely blocked her in time. He winced as wood made contact with steel, and stood frozen in place, afraid to open his eyes and see the damage. He felt Merida lessen the pressure and knew she'd backed away. He peeked his eyes open just in time to see the fading blue glow within the portion of the wood that Merida's sword had come in contact with during the hit. Jack's eyebrows shoot up in wonder and his whole posture visibly relaxed. The staff was completely unharmed.

"See? Nothing to worry about!" Hiccup exclaimed from the side. "Now, spread your arms a little further apart, Jack, yeah that's better, and Merida, watch…"

They spent the next ten minutes or so like that, exchanging hits and parries and taking part in short duels. All the while, Jack was not allowed to use any sort of magic- not just his ice powers, but his flying and invisibility were banned as well- in order to strictly strengthen his fighting skills. Eventually Hiccup let them continue practicing and left to go work with Rapunzel. Jack shed his sweatshirt almost immediately, glad he'd chosen a short sleeved t-shirt to wear underneath.

As time wore on, Jack became increasingly aware of the weight on his wrists and ankles. At first they had just been a nuisance, but as his body and muscles tired from the physical activity, the weights seemed to grow heavier and heavier, and Jack found himself working harder to continue performing the same movements. Jack understood now- it was just another tool to make him stronger. When he first began to sweat, Jack had used his powers to make ice lightly coat the surface of his forehead and the back of his neck to help cool his body off. However, maintaining the ice while trying to simultaneously concentrate on his skills was surprisingly taxing to his already rapidly diminishing energy, and he quickly decided to forgo it all together and simply take a cold shower later.

Eventually Merida called truce, and, much to Jack's relief, had him remove his weights. Jack's arms and legs felt strangely buoyant the few minutes after he'd freed them. He drained an entire water bottle from the stack they'd brought outside with them, and then Merida made them get back to work.

"Do I get to use magic this time?" Jack asked hopefully.

"Uh uh," Merida shook her head with a smirk.

Meanwhile, Hiccup and Rapunzel were immersed in their own kind of struggle.

"I just don't understand what connects them," Hiccup said with a frown, looking at the hammer in his hands and the crown resting in Rapunzel's lap. He sat down cross-legged in the grass beside her. The blonde girl reached over and grasped the hammer's handle, raising it in front of her face for closer inspection. With a smile, she balanced the circular frame of the tiara on the head of the hammer before watching it slide down over it and onto her arm like a bracelet. She shrugged and laughed.

"Experiment number one: failure," Rapunzel teased, mimicking Hiccup's voice.

He rolled his eyes. "Okay, so they don't react when in close contact with each other." He reclaimed the hammer from her and held it, testing its weight in his hands, switching from left to right.

Rapunzel ran her hands over the glittering crystal leaves that dominated the crown. She absentmindedly took a few strands of her long hair and began weaving them around the thin gold band as she thought. Then she unwound them again. Watching her work gave Hiccup an idea.

"Rapunzel… try singing," he suggested.

The girl's eyes lit up and she sat up straighter.

"Flower, gleam and glow,

Let your power shine."

Her hair began its radiant glow, and both Guardians watched the crown and hammer closely.

The crown's three crystals began to glow faintly, pulsing with a very dim, almost milky light.

Moonlight, Hiccup thought.

The hazy glow lasted a few seconds more, then faded completely.

Rapunzel looked at Hiccup excitedly, but the boy had his face scrunched in thought.

"That was… something," Rapunzel urged. Hiccup nodded in agreement.

"…So…?"

"It reacted to the use of your power," he conceded. "But it didn't really do anything… interesting."

Rapunzel sighed at the boy's obvious disappointment. "Well, it's a start….right?"

"Let's try this…" Hiccup spoke into her mind, but he was looking expectantly at the hammer. He wanted to see if it would react like the crown had.

The hammer sat in the grass, motionless, glow-less, and overall rather boring.

"…Maybe you need to, you know," Rapunzel offered cautiously, "use your full power…"

"On who? You?" Hiccup asked with forced casualness, glancing up at her. "Nah. I… I don't think so. I'm not doing that again unless I have to… and only with Pitch."

Rapunzel swallowed, wondering whether she should push him. She decided it was his decision to make, not hers.

"Besides, the hammer did do something at Compass," Hiccup went on. "Without me even using my powers. Somehow…somehow it fixed Merida's connection with the place."

Rapunzel's eyes grew wide. "It did? That's wonderful news! Why didn't either of you say anything before?"

Hiccup grinned ruefully. "Yeah, the blessing and curse of her seeing the future is back. We haven't really said anything because… well, we were waiting 'til later this afternoon when we all sit down to reevaluate our options and everything… Mer had a vision that she wasn't all that happy about," Hiccup explained, "she wanted time to think about it."

They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Rapunzel tilted her head to the side. "Hiccup… Isn't the hammer the Berk relic, not the DunBroch one?" she reminded him. "So how would that work? How could it fix Merida's powers?"

Hiccup shrugged. "Well, Compass is in Berk… there's some link there...it's like they're connected or something." He ran a hand through his hair and looked over to where Merida was dueling Jack…and winning. "But that's a whole 'nother question all together." He paused. "We have to figure out what the Burgess relic is… before Pitch does."

Rapunzel adjusted her position, straightening her legs out in front of her and leisurely stretching. "North promised us that it was safe, even if he won't tell us what it is."

"I've been thinking about that," Hiccup confessed, rubbing his thumbnail against the corner of his mouth as he stared into space. "It's just… ugh okay, call me crazy." He turned to face her in the grass, holding his hands out in front of him in a "look" gesture. "The crest inked into the treaty that Tooth brought us- it was a symbol of what I'm assuming must be the Burgess relic, if the Corona and Berk ones are anything to go by."

Rapunzel nodded, her eyebrows drawn together, trying to understand where Hiccup was going.

"It was a line. Ish. I don't know, but the first thing that came to my head when I saw it was a staff."

Rapunzel glanced to where Jack and Merida were taking a water break, looking at the long curved stick the white-haired boy had resting against his side.

"Hiccup, are you saying-"

"I'm saying that I'm wondering whether it's a coincidence Jack is so powerful with magic, and how a lot of that power comes right from his staff," Hiccup interrupted eagerly. His green eyes were bright with excitement and curiosity. "I mean, North promised us the relic was safe from Pitch… but what if that was because he knew we already had it?"

Rapunzel bit her lip. She understood his reasoning, and had seen firsthand just how strong and powerful Jack was. The strange incident Jack had caused after he'd saved her from Pitch- that alone made her wonder whether the weapon Jack wielded was indeed something more. But the whole thing just didn't feel right to her.

"I don't know Hiccup… Jack's staff is just a stick he found by a frozen lake near his home. It's a fallen tree branch."

"Maybe, maybe not," Hiccup insisted.

"Oi, you two lazy bones! Come an join tha fun!" Merida hollered from across the lawn. Hiccup saluted her and offered his hand to Rapunzel to help her up.

…

The four trained together for awhile, and Jack was finally allowed to used his powers. But fighting against three was significantly harder than just Merida, so it didn't really help him as much as he would have liked. When mercy came in the form of Hiccup telling the team good work for the day, Jack collapsed in the grass, spread-eagled, shirtless, and panting up at the sky bleary-eyed. With what little energy he could muster, Jack fingered his staff and created a tiny snow cloud in the air above him, content in watching little snowflakes flutter down on top of him, their presence cooling and relaxing.

Merida, who never seemed to get too tired, decided to do some target practice before heading inside. Rapunzel helped her set up different targets around the courtyard, while Jack and Hiccup watched from the sidelines.

Merida's aim was good. Jack had seen her shoot before, but he'd never really watched. Jack himself wasn't half bad with his staff, but Merida was decisive, precise, confident, and one-hundred percent accurate. After a few minutes, Jack realized Merida was more concerned with familiarizing herself with the different kinds of arrows Hiccup had made for her than practicing her shooting in general.

"Try the new ones!" Hiccup urged. Merida turned excitedly and made her way back to the first target, where an arrow from earlier rested square in the bull's-eye. Jack and Rapunzel watched curiously as the redhead pulled out a silver arrow and gently notched it in her bow. Though her figure was obviously excited and jumpy, her fingers were calm and steady. Merida pulled the bowstring back, did something strange with her thumb, and immediately released the arrow.

It flew at such a high speed that it was nearly invisible. The other three Guardians whipped their heads around to look at the target.

The metallic arrow had sliced clean through the other one, taking its place in the center circle. Hiccup cried out in frustration, and Jack and Rapunzel looked at him in confusion.

"No! Ugh- I'm sure that I-" the brunette boy frustratingly argued with himself as he stood up and jogged over to the redhead girl.

Rapunzel and Jack looked at each other, trying not to laugh.

"Looked cool to me," Jack shrugged with a grin. "Lightning speed, and all."

Hiccup approached Merida, the later of whom had a crestfallen look on her face.

"Ah thought ye said they activate like tha smoke ones," she asked him with a frown.

"They do," Hiccup nodded, the gears turning in his head. What had gone wrong?

"Try another one, gentler this time with the release," he urged. "They might take a second to flare."

Merida nodded, walked to the next target in line and pulled another silver arrow from her quiver. She notched it in her bow and pulled the string taut.

"Wait, don't move." Hiccup said quickly, stepping behind the girl and placing his hands over hers. He rested his head on her shoulder, trying his best to ignore the curls from her ponytail that brushed up against his cheek and focus on the task at hand. "Don't actually activate the arrow, just mime for me how you do it," Hiccup told her.

Merida complied, moving her thumb across the hidden latch were the colored band was in a ghost movement. Hiccup stood up straight, satisfied.

"Okay then, do it just like that, but wait an extra second so it has a chance to light up," he told her, crossing his arms and taking a step back, his eyes watching intently.

Merida let the arrow fly, remembering Hiccup's suggestion. The arrow flew with amazing speed, just as the last had, but this time burst into flames mid-air. It crashed through the circular disk, slicing the arrow resting in the middle neatly in half and burning a neat hole through the target itself, not to mention setting the whole thing on fire. The arrow continued flying until it lodged itself in a tree, still burning with flickering flames.

Merida and Hiccup whooped in celebration, while Rapunzel and Jack sat wide-eyed and motionless from the side.

"I'll have to remember to use a little less Nightmare saliva next time, but hey! Not too bad!" Hiccup was exclaiming from beside Merida, who was nodding vigorously.

"Okay, that was pretty cool," Jack grinned.

I swear the wait for the next one won't be as long.

Guest Responses:

Saph: Ah YES popcorn! Hooray! You da best! And thanks for letting me know...

Ber fangirl: hahahahahahah oh my goodness that made me laugh so hard! I'm sorry! Creative license! And aww oh my goodness thank you so much! That really means a lot! I'm so so happy that you are enjoying my story and I love hearing from you! Thank you for making me smile :)

Orange Cat: What? Never turn down ice cream! haha jk, sometimes you just don't want it, I know. And yup! Finally North and Jack's little talk... this chapter might have expanded on it I think... Ok cool thanks for letting me know... Thank you for being just as amazing yourself and for putting up with me! Stay awesome!