Ghost's Reign Chapter 5: Obake's Terrible Awful No-Good Week, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 5, everybody! Which is technically being uploaded after midnight, but details.

Yes that chapter title is a reference, and from personal experience having your pet hop all over the bed is a surefire way to wake you up in the morning whether you want to be awake or not. Meantime, Obake is having to deal with everybody and he's not enjoying the event. Momakase is referencing Portal 2, while Felony Carl quotes Chicken Run and Obake references Blue Sky's Robots (disney's acquisition will never be acknowledged in this house). Also there used to be a stigma about left-handed people and seeing as how 90% of the population is right-handed, if you're left-handed you'd better get used to accidents due to things not being made for you.

Moving on…yes Obake is being punished and eventually we'll clear up with what. Also he's surrounded by people who know him too well, unfortunately for him. And if you've been following me on Tumblr, you've seen a bit of this before.

Obake was less than pleased at being jumped all over the next morning—dangit he was still sore from Momakase handing his head to him.

"I feel like I should tell you that I don't do perky in the mornings," he groaned as he rolled over—didn't do perky the rest of the day either, but he really didn't need to get up just yet and…too late, mind was off to the races and—ugh not the licking!

On the positive side, apparently Hiro had convinced Tadashi, considering there was a larger Night Fury sitting in his living room. Now if only it didn't look fit to murder him.

Trying to butter him up with fish first wasn't doing, and after a mug of coffee and a few other tries he was resigned to the fact that Tadashi was going to look murderous no matter what. Might as well get this travesty started.

Tadashi kept twitching and shifting nervously when Obake took measurements, which caused him to keep twitching back, anticipating a mouthful of teeth clamping down on him at any minute. Hiro kept barking at him, sitting imperiously on the table (dratted dragon) and waving a paw. This was making Tadashi think twice about biting Obake, apparently, so that was a good sign.

The saddle he stitched up at his place, since the forge was well-trafficked and people were hesitant to approach a building with Furies on the main beam. Tadashi sat and watched him work the entire time, which did nothing for his nerves—by the time he was done, he was honestly surprised he still had skin, utterly convinced that it had crawled off ages ago.

And then the issue of trying to get the saddle on a full-grown Night Fury. It wasn't bad enough getting one on the little one—especially when the bigger one had no qualms about tripping him up with its tail and knocking him flat, despite the scolding Hiro leveled at him. Finally had to concede that this wasn't happening today.

Or the next day…or the day after that, despite leaving the saddle where Tadashi could see it and get used to it and Hiro keeping his on and parading under his nose. No matter what, that dragon kept glaring at Obake, like he was trying to tie a poisonous snake around his neck.

"If I wanted you dead I'd have done it already!" he spat finally. "I have better things to do than to argue with a daft dragon!"

Tadashi looked away, waved a paw like then go do them already. Dangit, that was his bluff called. Stalk away to the forge, deflecting people as he went, arrived and scoured it to find that his current situation hadn't improved. Gah, he needed to come up with something!

You know what—just—be calm. Think things through. Something would occur to him eventually. For now, the priority was rebuilding from the last dragon attack, finding their way out of the murderous rut they had been treading for years. It would just take time.

Now if only he had that little thing called patience.

Sword-training with Momakase wasn't doing very well either. Thus far Obake had a nice collection of bruises and a complete permeating ache that made him want to murder something. If only he was able to move.

It had gotten to the point that his fighting back was mostly token attempts, him focused on trying to take a soft fall and get this over with quickly.

Momakase had other plans.

"No, no, no," she said, twitching his tanto away with her sword as he tried to struggle upright, groaning. "You're holding it all wrong. You try to block like that and you'll end up breaking your wrist."

"That's actually the most helpful information you've given me thus far," Obake muttered.

"Oh shut up," she said, watching him hawkishly—

And then kicking him so he fell on his side.

"What was THAT for!?" he demanded.

"Are you left-handed?"

"What?"

"Am I speaking in an accent beyond your range of hearing? What's your dominant hand, you ninny?"

"I don't—"

Haul him up to bonk him on the head. "Idiot. Pick up your sword, and use your left hand this time."

Drat. So much for the appear incompetent enough that she gives up routine. "Some people have superstitions about left-handedness," he tried, picking up his sword.

"Some people like to not die when they're in a fight," she countered, expression thunderous as she stalked up to him. "So let me get this straight—I have been wasting the past week on you because everything we've been doing you've been doing with the wrong hand?"

Oh boy.

"Well?" she demanded.

"I'm trying to think of an answer that doesn't get me killed," he said.

Which was the wrong answer.

Carl swung by about an hour later.

"I brought bandages," he said. "Wasn't sure if you needed patching up or prepping for burial, so…."

"Very funny," Obake hissed, glaring up at him—right now laying on the stone until the swelling went down sounded like a grand plan.

"So what happened?"

"Momakase beat me to within an inch of my life to teach me a lesson. Now go away."

Carl nodded, put the basket down, walked away. "I'll be back with something for those bruises."

"Wonderful," Obake muttered, glaring at the crisscrossing chains forming the ceiling of the kill ring, the ones damaged in Tadashi's attack still dangling in the wind where they hadn't been repaired. Maybe it would be worthwhile to crawl back to his house—or at least someplace a bit more dignified to shuffle off this mortal coil in.

Hiro sniffing at his face suggested he wouldn't be allowed to do so in peace.

"You go away too," Obake ordered.

"Hrrf," Hiro noised, before licking his face.

"Gyeh—stop that—Hiro! Fine, I'm getting up OWowow—"

"Hrr?" Hiro squawked worriedly, dancing around him.

"So in other news, I need to find a smarter way to get out of this," Obake hissed, hugging his sides. Maybe broken ribs would excuse him.

They didn't.

"I didn't hit you hard enough to break them," Momakase said. "At most they're bruised. Now get your butt over here."

Slam his hands down on the forge's counter—ow. "I. Am. Not. Going," he spat. "I have no desire to be tortured constantly, if I had wanted that I'd have asked Callaghan to do it. Now will you leave me alone? I'm very…busy."

Momakase gestured. "Doing what, pray tell? You keep shoving off chiefing on Carl, and I know you ran out of material to work with days ago."

"I'll think of something."

He really didn't like that look she gave him.

Coming back from another failed attempt with Tadashi, he discovered that there was a reason that look Momakase gave him earlier was worrisome.

"What is this?" he demanded, kicking at the refuse coming out of his forge.

Travis froze in the act of dumping more in. "Um…Momakase said you wanted this?" he said—took off when Obake glared at him. Glare at the junk—

Wince when Momakase came up and thumped him on the chest, a hand on his back.

"There you go," she said, keeping one hand on his back as she put the other on her hip. "Something for you to work with in the forge over training with me. Is that more to your liking?"

Blast this girl—she knew he hated this stuff, the junk from a lost civilization that floated in with the tide and was good for nothing. The one thing he had managed to do with it that made it useful was use it as a glass substitute, but working with it wasn't worth it.

She knew this, he had vocalized his issues with it before, which meant he now had a choice between two detestable options. Dangit she wasn't going to win either.

"Fine," he spat, throwing his bundle at the trash in his forge and trying for an indignant shuffle to get through it. "I might as well get started."

"You have fun now."

Ugh.

Carl checked in with Momakase later, found her sharpening her swords in the kill ring—glanced up at him.

"I don't think it's working," she announced.

Carl sighed—yes, that was what he had been afraid of. Clever and cunning Obake might be, but he was also stubborn, and if he didn't want to do something he'd go through every hoop in existence to avoid doing it. Dangit, there had to be a way to convince him that yes, being in charge of the Yokai was a good thing, please start doing it. And yes, he had already tried asking nicely. Several times.

The main problem was, he was certain that if he conceded defeat and let Obake shove the role of chief onto him, that they'd wake up one day to find Obake gone, never to return. It was the impression he had been getting from him for months before things had come to a head—he had delivered his comment of I'm leaving and not leaving a forwarding address in his usual dry sarcasm, but it had to come from somewhere. He hadn't been too concerned about it before because Obake was about useless in a ship—got seasick easily enough, never seemed to care enough to learn more about them beyond how to sabotage them, wouldn't last long on the single-person boats on an open sea with large dragons beneath the surface.

But now, there had to be about a thousand other alternatives to taking off flapping about the island.

Yeah right—riding dragons, now there was a concept—you had to be pretty…actually no you know what that sounded like Obake.

Shake his head to dislodge his musings, look over when he heard someone running up.

"Hey!" Dibs called. "You said to let you know if the fishing crew got something from the communication stacks?"

"Actually, I said to tell Obake," he told Dibs as the slimmer man finally came to a halt. "What's up?"

Dibs held up a hand, focused on recovering his breath—finally straightened and pulled a letter out to hand to Carl.

"Ah," Carl muttered, accepting the letter.

"Good ah or bad ah?" Momakase asked as he opened it.

"I've known him for a while—that was a bad ah," Dibs supplied, trying to read over Carl's shoulder.

"It's a meeting of the mercenary tribes," Carl said. "I was hoping we wouldn't be dealing with one for a while." Or ever—the main issue with the shift in Yokai policy was that it made them acceptable targets for the other mercenary tribes of the Archipelago.

"Ah," Momakase said. "So I'm curious—how are we playing this? I'm not wrong in guessing they'll be expecting Callaghan."

"They will." Again, why he had wanted Obake more firmly in the chieftain role before one of these letters came. "I have to go tell Obake."

"Good luck with that."

Yeah, he was gonna need that.

Hiro was feeling pretty good about today—mostly because he had finally convinced a Nadder to give training a Yokai a chance. Sure, Gronkles and Terrors were very open to the concept, and Nightmares viewed it as a grand challenge, but Nadders—hoo boy, those were the tough sells.

It probably helped that Gogo seemed to have taken Momakase as her pet Yokai and thus set the standard.

So he was feeling very good about himself as he pranced through the village-nest, heading for Obake's forge—just part of his whole grand scheme of domesticating Yokai so they didn't go off killing dragons willy-nilly. Next up, fetching Obake for another round of PLEASE big brother just TRY IT already! Pad down a straight shot to the forge—

Slow when he smelled something odd—

Ear flaps shooting up when Obake stumbled out coughing, that weird smell clinging to him.

"Oh WOW," Hiro said, cautiously approaching and unable to help his snout wrinkling, paw up in concern as Obake sat down, putting his head between his knees. "WHAT have you been doing what is that SMELL?"

"Remember that big plan I outlined to you, about getting out of here and leaving the whole tribe behind?" Obake muttered. "I'd really like to revisit that plan."

"I bet," Hiro said, nose still scrunched up. "What is that anyway that stinks."

"Oh good, I caught you outside," Carl said, approaching with a page-leaf in his paw.

Obake waved him off without enthusiasm. "Whatever it is, I'm not interested. I don't think I even have the brainpower to deal with anything right now."

"That is kind of awful," Carl said, peering into the forge. "But I guess Felix is getting more windows?"

"Whatever. Now go away."

"Can't, I have something for you."

"Unless it involves the words Felony Carl is the new chief, I don't want to hear it."

"Sorry, no," Carl said, all but putting the page-leaf in Obake's face—which, fair enough, he was busy ignoring him so kind of necessary.

Not that Obake seemed happy when he took the page-leaf.

"Yeah, that was about my feeling on it," Carl said in response to Obake's snarling. "So what's the plan then?"

"Well certainly not the truth," Obake said, crumpling up the page-leaf and throwing it away. "If they find out that Callaghan's gone we'll be sitting ducks."

"Well there is you—"

"Excuse me for not wanting to paint a target on my back." Pinch the part of his snout between his scrunched-up eyes, thinking. "Give me a bit—I need a plan."

"How long is a bit?"

Hiro watched, concerned at the length Obake was silent.

"Tomorrow morning," Obake said finally, struggling upright. "I'll have thought of something by then."

"I'll hold you to that."