Ghost's Reign Chapter 17: Cavern Conversations, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 17, everybody! Back to spelunking!

Those of you who read Ghost's Fury will remember the Whispering Death caves (and if you haven't read that, please do this is the sequel). And it's the return of Mole! From Atlantis, not the one from the BH6 series. Also Mole is quoting Jazz from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Meantime, Tadashi and Honey Lemon are imitating the concept phase of the Furies in love scene, along with some explanation for some of the stuff from the third movie regarding Night Furies.

It had been a good couple of months since Obake had been back to the caves they had been hiding away from the Yokai in. In all honesty, he was expecting a fine layer of dust when they got there.

In retrospect, he should have expected that they would have been tempting to dragons.

"Ah," he noised, stopping dead in the entrance at the first growl. "I don't suppose it was mine first will work, will it?"

The fact that most of the boulders in the entrance cave had eyes suggested no. "I didn't bring enough fish to bribe everyone," he muttered to Hiro, hating the notion that he'd have to abandon this location. Well, again, technically.

Hiro yipped, cantered around him, bounced in place while barking at the other dragons—finally sat in front of him and yapped at him, eyes big and ear flaps up, making pointed little twitches indicating that Obake was to pet him and look nonthreatening. A tame Yokai, if he were to indulge his suspicions on how Hiro viewed this arrangement.

"You're selling me again, aren't you," he sighed. Crouched down as a Gronkle started padding closer, started petting Hiro, resisted rolling his eyes as the little Night Fury hammed it up, very obviously pitching that the big scary Yokai was actually desirable to have around, no being mean to the Yokai that legitimately couldn't survive a concentrated assault from a bunch of dragons. Roll over to his back, exposing his belly—some of the Gronkles relaxed and sat down, but most of them remained standoffish, eyeing him warily. Smaller shapes peeking around from behind some of the Gronkles suggested why.

"Well I'm going to guess hiding up here is out," he muttered to Hiro, who sat up and chirped questioningly. "I'd rather not be a dragon's lunch, but I need someplace to hide these designs, otherwise Momakase will have them."

Hiro tipped his head, considering him…stuffed his head in the bag Obake had brought along before tugging out a rope.

"Let me guess, walking your Yokai?" Obake asked, looping the rope around Hiro's chest before taking the other end. The Gronkles watched warily as he gingerly stood, Hiro posing and barking something that sounded suspiciously like a shill.

They were still plenty eyeballed as they went through the cavern and into the tunnel, though.

"You know we're going to have to do this again to get these back, correct?" he asked Hiro. "And I'm very disappointed, my intent was to hide up here." So much for that plan.

Although in retrospect, he probably should have been expecting this—dragons favored caves, caves were nice and sheltered for them, and this former Whispering Death nest was obviously the perfect fit, considering this was where they had found Enoka when they first met the Gronkle. Apparently, if the growls and snores from the other caves were any indication, it was a fine place for Boulder dragons, although there were plenty of Terrible Terrors flitting underfoot and following them.

Also, a collection of Nadders in the cave they had been aiming for.

"Ah," he noised—didn't get much else out when a big Nadder with several old scars bulled forward, puffing up to fill the cave entrance and snarling at him with enough heat that he nearly stepped on a few Terrors trying to dodge away from it. Hiro barked indignantly, was snorted and cawed back at with his arguments summarily dismissed. Glance down at movement near the legs, saw several smaller shapes peeking around—

The stronger snarl had him grabbing Hiro and retreating as quickly as possible.

"So that didn't work well," he sighed, putting Hiro back down when he felt he wasn't in immediate danger of being fried to a crisp. Glance back to see the Nadder, still with flame in its mouth, hustled until they were around the bend and out of its direct line of sight. "Good to know all my hard work is being appreciated."

Hiro huffed at that, hopefully in agreement, stopped when they reached the main cavern again.

"What, Hiro," he sighed, looking at the little dragon. Hiro barked at him, dragged him over to where their first fire used to be, barked at a Gronkle to light its mouth, wrote fish in the remains of the ash before looking up at him.

"I do that here I'll get mobbed," he pointed out.

Hiro wrote fish again and looked at him pointedly.

Sigh, figured that at least he wasn't getting pounded on by Momakase or expected to fulfill a task ill-suited to him by Carl—crouched down, put his pack down, and pulled out a fish.

As expected, there were a lot of dragons suddenly interested in him.

"Hiro this didn't help me," he said, eyeing the Gronkles warily as he gave the fish to Hiro—tugged his pack away from the Terrors questing for it even as several Gronkles barked with interest at Hiro—

The Terrors started mobbing Hiro as he barked and hawed, bouncing up and down and scratching at the ash, looking at him expectantly.

"Oh whatever, it's not like I'm staying here anyway," he groaned, tugging out another fish and flinging it away for the Terrors to scrabble after. Pulled the rest of the fish out as well, no sense in hauling it all back down. "This buys your silence, by the way—I was never here."

None of the dragons seemed to care about his comment—had to dig and pull his notes out to draw some of the expressions, definitely entertaining as they tried to puzzle this out, angling his body so he'd have the light from the entrance shining on the paper—

A Terror scuttled up, cocking its head at him—glanced at Hiro as he houghed and waved, looked back at Obake before opening its mouth and lighting it, giving him a little extra light to see.

"Nice, very nice, you can come with me," Obake told it. "I'll get you an extra fish for your trouble."

The terror perked up at the mention of more fish—

All of them glanced over at the sound of scrabbling and scuffing.

"I'm guessing by the general reaction that's not a normal sound," Obake observed, glancing over the dragons' behavior. Well, it was worth investigating, at least.

Tug out a stick from the pack, outline what he wanted—Hiro translated, and one obliging Terror later he had a torch to better examine the tunnel again (and a crowd of curious draconic gawkers). Sound was coming…from the right. Where the tunnel angled straight down.

"Ah," he noised. "It seems the Whispering Death came home to roost."

Hiro snorted at that, shifting around on his paws a little as Obake slowly minced towards the downward tunnel, carefully eyeing the black maw where it went straight down—definitely sounded like something scrabbling up, which might negate it being a Whispering Death—they didn't really have claws, per se, the only limbs on their long whipping bodies being their wings, which they only really used when flying. Possibly it was a dragon that had fallen down the hole, like a Terrible Terror, that didn't have the energy to climb or fly back up and had to take it in spurts. Deep breath, lean over, look, torch not illuminating far down—

But it did illuminate something big, rounded, and with three luminous eyes.

Sharp yelp, leap back, nearly landing on Hiro and nearly dropping the torch—trip over the little dragon and land hard on his rear—

"Oh good," came from the hole, a pickaxe preceding a round, dirty body. "Zis must mean zat ze dragons left zat cavern."

"Mole!?" Obake demanded, recognizing the other Yokai. "What are you doing here!?"

"Examining zeze beautiful caverns, of course," Mole said, dusting his knees off before indicating the hole he had just climbed up. Tugged a roll of paper out of his jacket. "I have been taking ze liberty of outlining ze tunnel paths through ze island."

Well this would explain why he hadn't seen Mole around since this whole thing started. "And it has the added bonus of keeping you away from the dragons?" he asked.

"Zomewhat," Mole said, rolling open his map so Obake could see; he leaned forward to look despite himself. "Zey seem to prefer caves zuch as zis one where zey have easy access to ze air."

Made sense, which was more than could be said for Mole's sketches—he seemed torn between showing the caves' horizontal and vertical layouts and had apparently attempted to meet in the middle. "Anything we could make use of?" Might as well ask since his first pick had fallen through.

Mole made a pensive noise, flipping through his pages. "Zeze here would work, similar zize and shape to the great hall and infirmary, but zey are not conductive to everyday use—zey require a skilled spelunker zuch as myself to reach."

Huff. "Any chance of digging to there?"

"It would be a long and arduous process," Mole said, knocking on the rocky floor between them. "Zis is primarily metamorphic rock, very difficult to dig through. At the very least, you'd be wanting ze dragon zat dug zese tunnels—ze great hall and infirmary were probably lucky finds. How long did digging those out take, do you know?"

"Ask Carl, he'd probably know," Obake sighed, standing—so much for this plan. Mole shrugged, rolled up his maps—

Started when Obake lifted the torch and they realized the tunnel was full of curious dragons.

"By the way, no, the dragons did not leave this cavern," Obake told him. "I recommend fish to bribe your way through next time."

"Duly noted," Mole said, retreating back down the tunnel to several dragons' confusion. "I am going back down here where things make zense."

"Fair enough," Obake observed—looked at Hiro. "And I think we've done all we can here—might as well find something else to occupy our time with."

Tadashi had been spoiling for an excuse to avoid playing nice-nice with Hiro's pet Yokai, so Honeysuckle asking him to go flying was definitely a proper distraction. Paused long enough to ask Older-Light-Fury to keep an eye on the flight before powering after her, doing his best not to lose her when she flitted into the clouds, scales shifting slightly and making her harder to track.

"Haah," he noised, bursting through the top of the clouds and skimming along their shifting crowns. "Okay." Strain his senses, angle a little higher so he'd have more warning….

Dove down and to the left, just barely keeping his tailfins out of Honeysuckle's mouth.

"HA!" he barked back, diving into the clouds, arrowing down before leveling out and flying along its interior. She'd be diving and expecting him to go all the way down, give him a moment to hover and recoup—

"GAH!" Spin around at the clamp on his tail to see her giggling, tailfins in her mouth.

"You tried that trick last time!" she teased, letting go.

"I did?" he asked blankly, wincing when they burst back into the sun—oh right, the last free flight they had had before Hiro had been shot down. Scowl, shake his head—not today, nice stuff today. "Well did I try this?" Angle sharply to the side and down—okay yes he probably did try this before, he much preferred speed, had taken Hiro on many a flight before he could fly on his own, always with his little brother shrieking for him to go faster. Pretty sure he had permanent dents in his scales from that.

Honeysuckle, meanwhile, dove after him, slimmer body offering less resistance but also less weight to throw into plummeting down—jostle her a bit, her jostling back, both of them keeping an eye on the rapidly approaching ocean and their options for flying away—

Arced back up right before it was too late, him shooting one way, her shooting the other, leaving behind rooster tails as they weaved through the sea stacks at blistering speeds, narrowly missing impacts that would see them as little more than a grease smear should they connect—never with that fear, though, they were Furies and of all dragons Furies were the ones with the most control at high speeds.

Delirious cheering once they were through, her firing a blast and flying through it, yipping "New game!"

He knew this one, fired one of his own blasts and closed his eyes as he flew through it, with the intent of counting off his claws—that should give her enough of a head start before trying their variation of hide-and-find—

"Tadashi!"

"Eh!?" he squawked, startled out of his counting and looking around frantically. "What!? What is it where is it give me a target!"

Honeysuckle gingerly flew over, constantly glancing down—okay so it was something beneath the waves—glance down, scanning frantically as he powered up, seeing nothing but his own shadow—

Was totally unprepared for her tackling him. "Honeysuckle, what—"

"You did it!" she cheered, licking his nose. "You did it you did it you actually vanished!"

Do what? "Come again?"

"Land—over here," she said, breaking away to land on a sea stack with a top big enough to canter across—good thing too, considering she was bounding around with nervous excitement.

"So what did I do, exactly?" he asked, landing.

She tackled him in a hug before bouncing back. "Remember when Little-Brother was shot down and you asked me to help you learn how to hide your scales?"

He scowled at that, not appreciating that memory—felt his expression melt into surprise as what she was implying sank in. "No wait—I didn't—"

"You did!" she cheered, bouncing up and down. "When you flew through that blast you vanished!"

"What—" Why now? Why now, when he didn't really need it? "How'd that happen? I wasn't trying to do that!"

Honeysuckle made a pensive noise, padded up to him, sniffing—licked near his spine.

"Remember when you fought Mountain-King?" she asked. "And Healing-Talons said that these scales down your back got superheated, that they'd always be like that because you were probably supposed to grow into that, whatever it was?"

Him firing past his shot limit in his rage to take down Mountain-King, she meant—when he thought that Little-Brother was dead. "Yeah."

"Maybe it made your blasts stronger, and when it did…now the blasts are strong enough to hide your scales," she said, waffling a paw. "I don't know, I bet Healing-Talons would have a guess."

Tadashi huffed, looking back towards Yokai—not really looking forward to heading back already. "We'll ask him when we get back." Slide a glance at her. "In the meantime…tag!"

"Hey!" she barked, leaping after him. "No fair!"