"Hiccup, wake up or you're going to be late." A large burly man by the name of Stoick with a large red beard bellowed from the bottom of a staircase.
In a somewhat messy bedroom, we see a teenage was slouched on his desk, snoring loudly as a little trickled out of his opened mouth.
"Hiccup!" Stoick yelled again.
Hiccup suddenly jerked from his sleep and sat up dazed and confused, wiping his eyes he felt the drool coming from his mouth. Cringing in disgust he wiped it away with the back of his hand, he then blinks a few times in order to focus his vision. His desk was a cluttered mess, his laptop was surrounded by papers and books. Turning around he spotted a medium-sized black lab sleeping soundly on his unused bed, but then his gaze settled on the alarm clock which read 6:37. His eyes went wide as he shot up out of his chair and in what looked like an instant he changed out of his night wear into a forest green t-shirt, dark blue jeans and black Nike's. He quickly grabbed his backpack from his bed, rousing his dog from his sleep, causing the pooch to dart his eyes around the room.
"Sorry Toothless." Hiccup said as he patted the dogs head before turning to the door. "Alright I'll see you later buddy." He said as he left the room.
Hiccup rushed downstairs, trying his best to fix his bed head as he made his way to the kitchen where his father was writing on some forms. The large looked up and greeted his frazzled son with a stern look.
"Fell asleep at the computer again." He asked even though Hiccup knew it was a rhetorical question.
"Dad can we can hold off on your routine 'spending too much time on the computer' speech until I get home." Hiccup retorted as he grabbed a piece of toast.
Hiccup walked to the door and barely missed walking into an older woman with long brown hair.
"Sorry mom, can't stop, love you." Hiccup said quickly as he left the house.
"Fell asleep in front of the computer again?" She asked her husband as she sat at the table.
"Yep, I tell you Val he spends way too much time on that thing." Stoick said.
"Stoick don't you normally save that speech Hiccup?" Valka joked.
Stoick rolled his eyes as he got back to work, outside the house it was a cool March morning as Hiccup go onto his bike and went as fast as he could, thanking whoever was listening that his high school was only about 15 minutes away by bike. Berk High was bustling, the school day was about to begin as students were walking into the main building, Hiccup stopped his bike near the bike rack, affixing the lock he ran into the school. Inside a classroom on the third floor, the students were waiting for the bell to ring, some were sitting at their desks while others were talking with each other. One group was composed of a beefy-armed young man with brown hair and a 'piggish' nose named Snotlout Jorgenson he was currently talking to a very large blonde haired boy with short legs by the name of Fishlegs Ingerman. There was also a pair of fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, both with long blonde hair, but the girl kept hers tied in large braids while her brother kept his straight, both of whom are named Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston respectively.
"I'm telling you guys, last night was incredible, Astrid totally wanted me." Snotlout bragged.
"Really because that's not what she texted me." Ruffnut corrected.
"What, come on I bet it was the best date of her life." He said.
"Far from it according to her." Tuffnut said.
"Yeah and if I can point out, I don't think running into her at the park constitutes as a date." Fishlegs explained.
Snotlout glared at the large boy but he quickly lost interest when he spotted Hiccup walking rather quickly into the class, causing him to smirk.
"Well look what the cat coughed up, rough morning fishbone?" Snotlout commented.
"Really not in the mood Snotlout." Hiccup said passing the group.
Hiccup made his way to his desk and sat down, he then gave a quick sigh of relief as he saw the clock read 7:25, made it with five minutes to spare. Hiccup took a moment to relax and pulled out his book for the class, silently glad that he got to start the day with one his favorite classes, Astronomy. Even though it just counts as an elective, he liked it all the same, so much so that he can tolerate having Snotlout and the twins in the same room, he ignored Snotlout's opening comment, almost every day since elementary school he has not failed to give at least one insult at Hiccup.
It's been going on for so long that Hiccup just ignores it, although some days are better than others, especially when some of those days Snotlout chose to 'rough house' as he called it. It was hard enough to avoid him at school, but for it's even harder when both their fathers were friends, so they tend to spend a lot of 'quality time', yay. The twins weren't as bad, but that didn't mean that they were easy to deal with, aside from being annoying they can also be very destructive, luckily for Hiccup they're a little more opportunistic when it comes to targets. Now he didn't have anything against Fishlegs, he doesn't really mess with him though he also chooses to hang with the others which sometimes perplexes him.
Look around the room Hiccup spotted the one other reason Astronomy was one of his favorite classes, and her name was Astrid Hofferson. For Hiccup, seeing at the beginning of the day never got old, in fact there were times it made his day and on this day she was sitting at her usual spot, reading a book while listening to music, probably to drown out Snotlout's voice. She was currently wearing a blue long sleeved shirt and a red skirt which dark blue leggings and bark brown boots, not to mention she was wearing a red head band and had her blonde hair in a braid, although some strand fell over her eye, she casually blew them back.
Hiccup gave a quick glance in her direction and then quickly focused his gaze at his notebook in which he casually doodled, he didn't want her to think that he was creepy. Hiccup was amazed that even though they've gone to elementary school together, pretty much share the same classes and that she lived down the street from him, she probably didn't know anything about him except his name. As he kept drawing, Hiccup couldn't help but think about whether or not he should try to talk to her, although he had a sinking feeling that it wasn't going to end well, even though Astrid in his opinion was like a falcon; smart, beautiful, but piss her off and she'll rip you to shreds. Not only is Astrid possibly the most attractive sophomore in the school, hell maybe the most attractive girl period, but she also happens to be the star of the high school track team with a major competitive streak. Many boys in their class have tried and failed to ask her out, they were either met with a rebuttal or if they still don't get the message then a physical injury. Snotlout to Hiccup's knowledge seems to be one of the more persistant ones and no matter times Astrid says no or threatens him, he still tries.
Hiccup has had a crush on her for as long as he can remember, however he refrains from trying to do anything for both a fear of being assaulted and being rejected but he still has a little ray of hope for the possibility. He was snapped out of his thoughts when the bell rang and their teacher entered the room. She was a woman in here mid 30's with short brown hair and was a wearing a red blouse and black pants. She stood about 5' 9'' and had an average built, she walked to her desk and placed her materials on top as she looked around the room.
"Alright everybody class has started so let's get started." She said as the remaining students took their seats.
The teacher, known to the school as Ms. Helga Webber, walked to the front of the class and pulled down the projector screen as she began her lesson.
"Now today we're going to deviate a little bit from the lesson plan, while I said we were going to talk about the life cycle of stars, I decided to talk about a different subject." She explained.
Hiccup and several of the other students looked to each other in confusion over what she was talking about. Ms. Webber then made her way to the light switch and dimmed the lights and began to talk again as she made she reached for her projector remote.
"You see last night I was looking through some online journals when I found one that caught my attention. According to astronomers, they have managed to find 3 more planets in the Andromeda Galaxy that are capable of sustaining life." She said.
The students looked at her with confused looks, although some of them seemed vaguely interested. Ms. Webber pressed a button on her remote and the projector flashed an image the Andromeda Galaxy.
"That article got me thinking and I thought that maybe today we could have a little discussion about the possibility of life on other planets." She said.
Some of the students began to talk amongst themselves about the topic but they were all silenced when Tuffnut decided to start the discussion.
"You mean like little space mutants that abduct people and harvest their organs?" He asked, less in mockery and more in genuine interest.
Many of the students laughed and Ms. Webber just rolled her eyes.
"You know Tuffnut sometimes I feel that I can never really get class started without one of your 'profound' observations." Ms. Webber joked.
This made Tuffnut a little embarrassed as he became quiet, Hiccup couldn't help but smile at the teacher's response.
"Now we're not going to talk about that, but I do want to talk about the possibility of other intelligent lifeforms. Interesting thing about this subject, 70 years ago this would have sounded like pure science fiction, but as our understanding of the universe grows, so does our openness to the concept of alien life." She explained.
Hiccup began to pay close attention to her words and he couldn't help but ponder to himself about the possibility of such a thing. 'Definitely seems more likely when you think about it' he thought to himself.
"Now there are many questions about the possibility of intelligent life on other planets, but remember there is still one obvious yet crucial detail, and that is that the Universe is Big." She said emphasizing the word Big.
She clicked her remote and another picture came up, this one was of the Hubble-Ultra Deep Field which showed images of stars and galaxies.
"We've been taking pictures for years but haven't come anywhere even remotely close to truly understanding the sheer expanse of the Universe. With this in mind it isn't so far-fetched to think that somewhere in this expansive nether is some kind of intelligent life." She said.
As she talked, Astrid raised her hand up which caught Ms. Webber's attention.
"Yes Astrid?" She asked.
"If there is intelligent life, could there be civilizations?" Astrid asked.
"Well that's an interesting question, unfortunately it's one that I can't give a straight answer to. There is a chance for intelligent life to exist, but the idea of civilizations is in completely different ball park, though that's not to say that there aren't any, who knows what's out there in the universe." Ms. Webber explained.
Astrid thought for a moment and shrugged, Hiccup then getting idea raised his hand.
"Yes Hiccup?" Ms. Webber asked.
"If there is a possibility of civilization on other worlds, what is the possibility of technological advancement?" He asked.
"Another interesting question, as we can see from our own history, after species progress and civilizations rise so does technology. Again we don't really know what's out there in the Universe but again it's not entire crazy to think that some kind of civilization has developed advance technology, heck maybe even space travel." She said.
"Alien invasion, I knew it!" Tuffnut exclaimed.
The class was silent for a second, Ms. Webber was just giving Tuffnut an irritated look.
"You done Tuffnut?" She asked.
"Yep." Tuffnut said slinking in his seat.
"Look everybody, I want you to know that this is just a discussion, we're not trying to solve any major questions about the Universe. This is just to get us to think a little bit about possibilities that come with new discoveries, and besides if there were aliens travelling through space, maybe they wouldn't want to invade, who knows, maybe they would want to try to communicate with us." She explained.
As Ms. Webber went back to here lesson, Hiccup couldn't help but thinking about the possibility of mankind meeting another species, though one question pops into his mind, 'how would they contact us?'