Ghost's Reign Chapter 24: The Ancient Wreck, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 24, everybody! Happy Thanksgiving! :

When given the option Obake and Momakase will totally take the mickey out of each other, and yes that's a Gollum quote, although Obake doesn't use the voice.

In other news…stories taking place generations after a cataclysmic event always appeal to me, and it allows for a bit more freedom than writing from the past but slightly to the left does.

Gogo wasn't done, apparently, if the way she warbled at Tadashi and took off again after a few minutes of catching her breath was any indication. It was a daft name, Obake mused, but an accurate one—the yellow Nadder was definitely an active one, which had probably preserved her in the past.

Tadashi following her also meant that the Fury was too preoccupied to be trying to rid himself of Obake, and he was taking the opportunity to savor the flight. Yes, there were quick adjustments as he followed Gogo, who at the very least was being more accommodating to her rider than Tadashi was as far as a learning curve was concerned, but compared to his trial by fire it was practically tame, and left Obake some leisure to contemplate everything.

Saddle was working fine, he could finally take some time to assess that, it seemed to not be bothering Tadashi, he didn't show any signs of it irritating him in certain spots, and Obake had yet to go flying off into oblivion. Momakase's saddle seemed to be holding up too, didn't notice any issues as Gogo started going into more ambitious maneuvers—from the sounds of it, encouraged by Momakase. What, did everyone have dragons that liked them better than Obake's own pick?

"Wrr?" Hiro noised, glancing back at him like he sensed his huffiness. Which, fair.

"Aggravation at how your brother has been," Obake told him. "This is much improved, by the way."

Tadashi huffed something that must have been an order for Hiro to get off, if the way Hiro hunkered down and hung on was any indication.

"Might be needing you to come hitching rides with us on a regular basis," Obake told Hiro, making sure his tone was teasing. Tadashi flipped his head around and slapped him in the face with an ear flap. "Hey!"

"Hurrf," Tadashi grumbled.

They did eventually come in for a landing, Gogo landing on the pointed tip of a spit of land to allow Momakase to slide off—Tadashi had touched down too by the time Momakase did.

"Have fun, did we?" Obake asked, getting off and looking at her rolling a bit on the ground.

"Ow, ow ow," she said, staggering up. "Maybe I shouldn't have sat that long."

"My understanding of horse riding is that you have to work up to riding in a saddle for any amount of time," he said, internally rejoicing at her hopefully being too sore to inflict pain on him. "What's that Calhoun says? Walk it off?"

"Shut up," she spat at him, already walking around. "You're so lucky I don't feel like picking up a rock and throwing it at you."

"Well thank Heaven for small mercies," he said, picking up some driftwood so she couldn't see the smirk on his face. She still gave him poisonous looks as he got a fire going, perked up when Gogo came back from a brief flight to deposit some fish. Watched her try to crouch to pick them up as Gogo perched on an outcropping, snitched them away before she got there.

"Hey!" she protested.

"Seeing as how you're still stiff, I'm sure you wouldn't mind delegating," he teased.

"You couldn't have volunteered that before I got down here!?"

"I could have," he said, trying to keep from grinning too hard as he unsheathed his knife. "But this was more fun."

"You're lucky I'm too sore to throw you in the ocean."

"Walk it off," he laughed, scaling the fish.

Momakase did so, somehow folding poisonous glare and critical eyeing into the same glower as she circled around him, monitoring his cleaning and prepping and cooking.

"You're going to burn the fish like that," she said finally.

"You don't have to eat it," he said, poking one with his knife. "I can give it to one of the dragons and be done with it."

Hiro gave him a disgusted look at that—yes he had eaten the guts with no complaint, but he didn't seem to much care for fish when it was cooked.

Momakase grumbled, finally eased herself down when the fish were done, stretching and massaging her legs as he flipped the fish out of the coals.

"So how long does this last?" she asked him.

"Come again?"

"How long does it take before you can ride without getting sore."

Didn't really feel the compulsion to tell her about Tadashi's habit of flinging him all over the place. "Well, you know, it really does depend on the person—" Had to dodge a rock she threw at him. "All right, that's it—Hiro that fish is yours."

Hiro gagged and bounded over to Tadashi, who had gotten himself some fish and was doing his best to look like he was ignoring the Yokai.

"I told you your cooking is terrible," Momakase said to Obake.

"Yours is too—" he started—had to duck the bit of driftwood she flung at him. "To them. Apparently they prefer their fish raw and wriggling."

She tipped her head at that, looked at Gogo, busy nibbling on a wing. "Then why steal from us all these years?"

"I told you my theory."

"Oh yeah, the monster dragon. Don't you think we would have seen one by now?"

"We've never seen the nest," he pointed out. "If it sends out other dragons to feed it, then it stands to reason that it never leaves there."

Momakase watched as Hiro tried to snitch a fish from an unimpressed Tadashi. "So what, when it gets hungry enough it'll come after us? Hey, you, you'd better have killed it—if I have to face some monster dragon because of you I'm stabbing you first."

Tadashi looked very done at that declaration—huffed at Hiro when the latter tried to take this lapse to grab a fish.

Momakase glanced at the fish when Obake pushed it over to her. "You know what, I'm tempted to help that little one because that looks awful."

"Fine, don't eat it, more for me," Obake said, keeping an eye open during his moment of silence (apology for doing so had become standard long ago)—didn't really need the risk of her taking advantage, she could be playing up her soreness to get him to let his guard down. Did need to work to keep his expression neutral when he ate, she wasn't wrong when she said she could cook better.

"Uh-huh," she noised, expression not lost on her. "How's that working out for you?"

Look away from her, not wanting to deign that with a response—tilted his head as something about the rocky fold next to them registered. "Momakase."

She looked, hand already darting for a knife—cocked her head at him when he got up. "What is it?"

Good question—it had looked like a pitted rock wall when they first landed, but something about the shapes had been too regular. Lean in, careful of the jagged shapes beneath the layers of salt—

Looked back at her. "This is a ship."

She perked at that, looked at the ground—the deck, he realized, buried under years of sand and silt and wind-blown grasses…that was why it was so flat, why it came to such a point….

And judging by the size of the deck, the buried ship itself must be huge. Huge and Ancient.

This occurred to her too—shot to her feet, all soreness forgotten, grabbing a torch as he slipped through the thin doorframe—handed the torch through the narrow window before following him in, to the concern of the dragons.

"Don't worry, I'm just making sure he doesn't hurt himself," she told Gogo when the latter warbled.

"How altruistic," he observed, lifting the torch a little, tipping his head as he considered the small flower-shaped designs on the ceiling currently dripping with salt-based stalactites. "Make sure you don't twist your ankle stepping over my body."

"Never do," she said, grinning—walked over to what might have been the steering column in a past life, tracing the different aspects carefully with a finger.

"Doesn't seem much removed from our own, does it?" he asked, coming over to better see it.

She snorted at that observation. "When something works, you don't change it." Look everything over with a critical eye—an Ancient ship was tempting to them both, but only for nominally similar reasons; he was reasonably sure she was looking for something she could lift. Watch as she traced the outline of a cabinet, tugged a knife out, levered it open—angle the torch a little so they could both evaluate the contents: what looked like wires, too thick to be effective as garrotes. Debate on what such stiff wiring wrapped in some foreign material would be good for as she poked around, blinked when she rocked back and started looking the rest of the room over—right, the interior should be much bigger—

"Ah," he said, tapping her on the shoulder and pointing. Head though the portal and deeper into the ship, only giving the briefest of consideration to her following with a knife handy—yes backstabbing was in her nature, but she had had better opportunities before now to kill him and get away with it.

There was water damage here despite it being dry now—likely it had been sunk beneath the waves and then pushed back up by the vagaries of tectonic shifting. Test every spot that seemed like a likely door, Momakase trying to kick a few in, but none of them opened and they were reduced to walking until they found one already ajar.

"Ah," Momakase noised as the shapes in the room registered. "Speaking of things that have worked well over the years."

Obake made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat, looked the ragged galley over as she started rooting through the cupboards and tossing potential swag onto an island counter. Rusted, yes, ruined, yes, but not as much as it could have been—either it had been pushed up early in its career as a shipwreck or whatever the Ancients used to make it had fared better than much else of theirs.

Possibly the latter, he reflected as he turned over a plate she had tossed up from a lower cabinet. Similar in composition to the refuse that washed ashore, but much harder and scratch-resistant, resolutely refusing to break…some fool would pay through the nose for it. Of more interest was the utensils that didn't tarnish and whose rust could easily be cleaned off—now that would fetch a pretty penny—

Felt a little tingle of excitement as he pondered this—so Night Fury scales hadn't gone as far as he'd hoped, they were rare and someone had gotten lucky with a stash. Ancient objects, however…now those were in limited supply, and couldn't be faked like some traders accused. This would be what netted them the funds they needed for—

Stop that, he scolded himself, realizing he was about to do precisely what Carl had been hounding him to. Dangit he was not folding just yet he had principles darn it—

Also a very unbecoming yelp when something nosed against his leg. Leap back, nearly losing the torch, Momakase leaping up and whipping out a knife—

"You—stupid dragon!" he wheezed upon registering just what had bumped against him.

"Hrphf," Hiro noised, tipping his head at him before looking around.

"Stupid dragon," Momakase agreed. "I could have killed you!"

"I would have let her," Obake told him. Hiro seemed singularly unconcerned, padding around and sniffing at the cupboards before looking at them. Obake exchanged aggrieved glances with Momakase—had to take a minute at how much she had actually gotten out. "I didn't make saddlebags, by the way."

"Yeah, you're going to have to fix that," she told him, sorting through everything. "I'm thinking sets would sell for more, don't you think?"

He made a pensive noise as she got a set together. "Might want to keep this place in mind for later—don't want to flood the market by getting rid of this all at once, now do we?"

"Like the Night Fury scales?" she asked. "Seriously, who else could possibly be that lucky?"

"Good question." He had the distinct feeling he had gotten close to learning this at that mercenary meeting—thank you, Dagur, for absolutely derailing it. Really going to have to come up with a good excuse not to go back to one of those. "And you still don't have a means to carry those."

She looked him up and down, evaluating. "Oh, I think I do."

It took him half a beat to realize what she meant. "Oh come on."

So flying back after the sun set, without his coat, was cold.

"Okay fine dump it in your house and give me my coat back," he snapped as they landed—currently he was as curled up on himself as he could without falling off of Tadashi, sleeves tugged down and arms crossed tightly, but that hadn't stopped all his back muscles from seizing painfully from the cold and he anticipated a long painful process of warming up later.

"Mmm, what'll you give me for it?" she teased, hugging the bundle to her chest.

"Do not."

"You haven't even heard my terms."

"A week of peace is worth a coat."

"Actually I want saddlebags."

"We have no more leather."

"And we're going to fix that," she said, hefting the bundle a little. "So do I get my saddlebags?"

Sigh. "Fine, yes. Now give me back my coat."

"Sure," she said, heading in. Wait a few minutes….

"Yeah?" she called at his irritable knock.

"Forget something?" he asked, still hunched up and stiff—kind of glad she was inside and hadn't seen him stumble off Tadashi, he'd never hear the end of it.

"Nope," she said brightly, slightly muffled by the wood. "You get your coat when I get my saddlebags."

"Why you—" Gripe a moment, hands clawed—struck the door and stepped back, pointing it out to the dragons. "Break it down."

Tadashi's expression buried the needle on the so done scale—sat up, hit the button on his saddle, slipped out and flew off. Gogo watched him leave, tapped the button on her saddle—chirruped in pleased surprise when her saddle slid off her as well. So that was two dragons out—look at Hiro, who didn't seem like he had any intent on doing as Obake asked.

"Fine," he spat, collecting Tadashi's saddle and stalking back to his house. Way to cap off what had been a nice day—and here he had thought he had found a way to twist everything so he had the upper hand on her. Really going to have to review the tapes to find out where that went wrong.

Not today, though—tea was only doing so much to warm him up, resigned himself to curling up in bed still feeling like an ice cube. Felt the bed shift a little a few minutes later—

"Hrr."

"You're not supposed to let her steal my coat," Obake muttered. "I wear it for a reason, Hiro."

"Wrff," Hiro noised, sitting down and chuffing at him. Pawed a little bit before burrowing under the covers and curling up against him, nothing but the tip of his nose poking out from under the sheets. Well, he couldn't deny that Hiro made an effective hot water bottle….

Was almost asleep when he heard the thump, opened an eye to see Tadashi slipping up to sniff at the lump that was Hiro.

"Also thanks for nothing, you useless reptile," Obake muttered, reflecting that if Tadashi blasted him at least he'd be warm.

Tadashi snorted at him, sniffed again at Hiro, made a sort of whff noise—Hiro's response was to burrow deeper under the covers and against Obake's chest. Tadashi groaned—

So did the bed when a much bigger Night Fury crawled up onto it.

Obake froze, not wanting to attract any more attention to himself—maybe if he sort of pushed Hiro out from under the covers, or wormed his way out the side—

Tadashi kneaded the bed a little, ear flaps up as he evaluated it—made a noise at the lump that was Hiro, twitched an ear flap at Hiro's response…slowly eased himself down, still very much glaring at Obake as he did so. Tried tugging Hiro closer, which resulted in Hiro digging his claws in and protesting loudly at being moved. Stop, evaluate the situation again….

Obake was very much not happy with the larger Night Fury shifting around and finding a comfortable position where he could also glare holes into him, had a lengthy debate with himself on whether or not to abandon the bed and try sleeping in front of the fire, finally decided against since he'd be guaranteed to be stiff in the morning and dying messily at the claws of a dragon was only a maybe.

Definitely anticipated a sleepless night though.