Hiccup sat in his room as Toothless was busying himself with a raw-hide that he just got, the young man was decompressing from his latest 'discussion' with his father, if you want to call it that. Over time Hiccup had found a pattern whenever it comes to talking with his father, although he felt that shouldn't call it that because talking normally involve both parties participating. However, they normally are one-sided and entails his father lecturing him while he nodded and managed to sneak in the response.
"You know bud; I wonder if I could ever have a real conversation with dad." Hiccup told his canine companion, who looked up from his snack at his human with a knowing look on his face. "Yeah you're right, probably shouldn't get my hopes up." Hiccup joked.
Being where he is at this point in time, Hiccup didn't really have a lot of people to talk to, none of the other students, he and his father barely have actual conversations, the only people he could really talk to are his mother and Gobber. However Toothless was a special exception, ever since Hiccup first found the pup at the kennel, there was a connection and the two became almost inseparable. Toothless was able to tell how Hiccup really felt and to Hiccup he was his most trusted confidant; in fact, he was more comfortable talking to Toothless than he did with other humans.
"By the way bud, we had a very interesting talk in class today, we were talking about possible alien life in the Universe." He said as Toothless looked at him quizzically. "That got me thinking about what would happen if they tried to contact us, that would be interesting, maybe I could find another sapient creature who I could have a conversation with, bring my total to three." He explained.
Hiccup leaned back in his chair and took a deep sigh as Toothless went back to his bone. After a few moments, Hiccup's eyes began shut as he drifted off to sleep, however as he did this, he did not notice that his laptop screen that he had on to do homework, began to flicker.
Downstairs in the living room, Stoick sat his recliner and much like Hiccup, he was decompressing from his latest talk. The burly man had given Hiccup another lecture about his computer usage.
'Son, you need to tear yourself away from that laptop; You need to start branching out other people more; Life is out there not behind that screen'. Were just some of the things that Stoick had to say to his son.
As he flipped through the channels, he heard the door open and saw Valka walking in, to him it's not an uncommon sight, sometimes Valka works late at the shelter, filing papers and making sure that all the animals have been properly fed.
"How was your day Val?" Stoick asked his wife who put down her satchel and walked over to him.
"Eh, busy but we managed to get a few animals a new home." She said as she leaned down and kissed her husband on the cheek. "How about you?" She asked.
"Same old, same old." Stoick said, however Valka looked at him and noticed something in Stoick's face and knew what was going on.
"Did you have another talk with Hiccup?" She asked.
"Yes." He said evenly, although Valka knew that he was hiding something.
"And it was about him falling asleep at the computer again?" She pressed on.
"Umm, yes." Stoick said taking a double take at Valka, almost as if he was nervous.
"Okay, last question, was this an actually talk where both of you exchanged words, or did you just lecture him and he was lucky to get a word in edge wise?" She asked.
Stoick gave a nervous look to his wife as if he knew that she wasn't going to like the response, he then turned his gaze away from her and only gave a 'hmm', however that was all Valka needed for an answer.
"Stoick." She moaned as she turned around, prompting her husband to stand up and walk over to her.
"Valka, don't make me the bad guy here." He demanded. He followed her to the kitchen where Valka turned to face him.
"I'm not trying to make you the bad guy, I just don't agree with how you 'talk' with our son." Valka said, adding quotation fingers to the word talk.
"I'm trying to get him to enjoy the real world a little bit." Stoick retorted.
"I do too Stoick, but you won't be able to reach him if you don't stop talking down to him and start talking to him." Valka explained crossing her arms.
"I try, but sometimes he has the attention span of a sparrow." Stoick said.
"That's because whenever you two speak to each other you sound like a parole officer talking to a delinquent, he's heard it so many times that he tunes it out." Valka explained.
"What do you want me to do Valka? At times I want to have a conversation with him he doesn't share the acknowledgement, he talks more to his dog than he does to me." Stoick said.
"I know dear; this is something that you both need to work on. You know I remember when he was little and all he wanted to do was spend time with you. Of course you were busy a lot so you two drifted apart." Valka explained, "Now our little boy is growing up, but I still think there's a chance for you two to salvage a relationship. All you need to do is try and connect with him." She said.
Stoick thought over her words for a moment and then sighed, "Alright Val, I'll try as best as I can." Stoick said.
"Thank you Stoick." Valka said with a slight smile.
Back up in his room, Hiccup was sleeping in his chair until he leaned back a little too far and the chair fell over. The sudden impact with the ground startled Hiccup awake, with a yelp he stood up, looking around and realizing where he was he calmed down a little, "Dosed off again, I hope this doesn't become a habit." He thought to himself.
Looking over to his bed he saw Toothless laying in his preferred spot, have also been startled awake by Hiccup's fall. "Sorry about that bud, you can go back to sleep." He said as the canine gladly complied.
Hiccup then turned his attention back to his laptop and reached to turn it off, however when he got close to it, something strange happened. The screen began to flicker, subtly at first but then quickly became more erratic.
"What the?" Hiccup mumbled to himself as he inspected the device.
In no time the screen became wildly distorted until it suddenly went black, Hiccup was very confused about what had just happened. "Okay, I think I need get this thing fixed." He said to himself.
But before he could do anything, the screen lit up and what appeared confused Hiccup even more, on the screen were four lines of some strange, unrecognizable text that alternated between moving up and down on the screen. "What the hell." Hiccup said, more fascinated than confused, for some reason he felt drawn towards the strange letters, if he could call them that.
Looking down at his keyboard he pressed a random key, it caused a line on one of the rows to light up for a second until the whole row quickly sped up, only to slow down to its original pace a moment later. This caused Hiccup's eyes to widen in curiosity as he continued to observe the moving symbols.
"This could be interesting." He said.