Ghost's Reign Chapter 7: Sailing Troubles, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 7, everybody! In other news, Obake doesn't travel well.

In other news, Carl has concerns and Obake is quoting Pearl from The Books of the Raksura—really love that series, will reread it almost yearly. Tadashi, meanwhile, is having problems with his new job, especially while also dealing with little brothers that listen to no one. Obake's bellyaching (literally) about sailing comes from Atlantis: The Lost Empire (so apparently Michael J. Fox threw that line in and is actually allergic to carrots?), and also a quick reference to The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Also most ships do have galleys so Obake's design is basically open-air cooking (we can argue that the Yokai did what most pirates did and gutted the ships to give more room for cargo).

Obake was very careful about packing for the trip—mostly because it was to double as an escape.

The plan was simple: go to the meeting, baffle his way through it, and then stow away on some other ship bound for elsewhere, commandeering a smaller craft when he was able and further escaping his old life. That it was flimsy at best was of no concern to him—actually no scratch that it was of a lot of concern to him getting eaten by aquatic dragons was a real risk but dangit what had turned into a simple plan here had spiraled way out of control and at this point he'd much rather abandon ship and hope for the best.

Now for the little snag.

"No you aren't coming," he told Hiro, who was excitedly bounding around him as he packed. "The one thing all these disparate tribes have in common is a desire to kill dragons—bringing you is a bad. Idea."

Hiro, of course, understood nothing of this, Hiro was absolutely daft when he wanted to be, and this was apparently one of those times—more than once Obake had to move Hiro after he belly-flopped into his pack. Good news, this smashed the air out of his clothes and meant he could store more. Bad news: this also tore up the food stores he had snuck in as well.

But eventually, he had something together he could call a proper get out of dodge bag—relocated Hiro outside before he could do more damage.

"Now I want you to know something," he told Hiro as he put him down. "It's not you, it's me. And your brother. If I could take you I would, but I am utterly convinced your brother would kill me if I were to abscond with you, and I'd rather avoid that fate. Stay, Hiro."

Hiro blinked at him, watched as Obake backed into the house and shut the door. Okay, that was one issue down—

Scowl at the knocking at the front door, stalk over and open it to see Felony Carl's bulk. Of course.

"I take it that we're ready to leave?" he asked.

"Almost," Carl said, sidling in despite Obake's best efforts. "I still feel like there's other things we need to discuss."

"You're going to have a whole boat trip to torture me on, why start early?"

"Can we start with we're leaving all this and hoping it behaves itself?" Carl asked, gesturing in the direction of the village. "There's dragons and Yokai there, do you really think you can leave without, say, telling them to play nice?"

"They've been told once, if they attack the dragons the dragons will retaliate and kill them all, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Also we're taking Dibs, if I recall," he added.

"Actually Dibs passed on that."

And while it was wonderful that he didn't have to deal with Dibs…."Do I dare ask?"

"You remember Fred."

Okay, he wasn't sure who was the bigger idiot. "Just. Get. Him," he snarled. No wait—"Can we sail without the idiot?"

"Dibs is not necessary to this trip in the sailing sense, no."

"Fine. Then let him trigger everyone's death via dragon—it's much preferrable to him doing so with mercenaries instead," he groused, stamping up the stairs to retrieve his pack—oof, he should have checked to see how much it weighed before stuffing it to the gills. Stamped back down, past Carl, out the door. "Come on then—let's get this travesty started."

Older-Brother was not sorry to see Obake go. Not at all.

Okay, maybe he had a problem with the alpha-Yokai going off and leaving these Yokai here, but wasn't that what their old alpha did? Was he out there even now, raiding some poor dragon nest? Should he check? But then that was leaving everyone here at the mercy of the Yokai…UGH, why was being alpha so HARD.

Sigh, stand, shake himself, loft lightly into the air and start angling around, looking for a small black shape—Little-Brother had been sulking around when he found out that he wasn't going, which was no scale off Older-Brother's back. The less Little-Brother saw of that thing, the better.

But now he had a new problem: that is, Little-Brother off sulking somewhere and being out of his sight. Start searching, sniffing around….

The sun was starting to set as his panic started to rise. Get other dragons on it, tracking down every last scent trail—the Yokai were starting to get agitated at the dragons' actions, but that wasn't the immediate problem.

No, the immediate problem, the one getting steadily confirmed, was that Little-Brother was GONE.

No no no think—think where did he see him last? Came up to bellyache at him, whined because he said it was a good thing the Yokai wasn't taking him off (Older-Brother would not have stood for that), took off again….

Bullied his way into the Alpha-Yokai nest, confirmed that these scent trails were fresh, tracked them to a space where they didn't lead away from—

But that one Yokai's trail did.

Oh no….

There was something very important about Obake and sailing that needed to be said.

That is, he wasn't very good at anything involving sailing. Including keeping his lunch where it was supposed to be. Marvelous way to be presenting the Yokai. Didn't even want to think about what everyone else on the ship was thinking, even if he trusted Carl to pick people with discretion in mind.

"Ugh why carrots why is it always carrots I didn't even eat carrots," he muttered, rubbing at his face when he finally stopped heaving.

"Are you okay?" Carl asked.

"Oh I'm just peachy," Obake snapped, without most of his usual fire—it had already abandoned ship along with his meal. "I always feel just dandy after a bout of seasickness, don't mind me."

He could practically feel Carl's eye roll. "Maybe you should go belowdecks and get some rest then."

"Great," Obake muttered, grabbing his pack and heading for the steps in a hopefully straight line. "Why don't I do that."

Managed to get down the steps without falling, teetered over to a sleeping pad not right by the steps, dropped his pack before sitting down heavily—

Wait, did his pack just squeak?

Flip it open, rip away a couple of shirts—

"Hiro!?" he squawked, flinching back at the black shape beneath.

The dragon in question at least had the decency to look sheepish for all of five seconds before popping up, grinning gummily at him before bouncing out of the pack and around the hold, sticking his nose everywhere.

"No!" he scolded, making a fruitless grab at him before rooting through his pack—Hiro had evidently tossed, hidden, and in the case of the food ate, most of the stuff he had packed. "You stupid! Dragon!"

Hiro seemed very unconcerned with this, still nosing around the hull—did finally come over with some concerned noises when Obake buried his head in his hands.

"You just trashed my entire plan," Obake groaned, not looking at him. All of the supplies Hiro had removed…the ones that were left wouldn't sustain him in his mad dash for freedom.

In other words, he was stuck, ladies and gentlemen.

Carl came down with a mug of tea to find Obake curled up on his side, using his pack as a pillow. To be expected.

What was not expected was the little black dragon cantering around, nosing at everything before spotting him and bounding over, alternating between yipping and growling before looking confused at his lack of reaction.

"For the record, I don't think bringing a dragon along is a good idea," Carl said, walking over to Obake.

"And what makes you think this was my idea?" Obake demanded, barely lifting his head to snap at Carl before going back to his previous position. Carl looked at the dragon, now sitting next to him with its front paws up…decided to acquiesce that point it was doing a cute face that said it probably smelled the fish cooking on deck in the small fire pit Obake had designed because, and I quote, it's bad enough I have to ride in this miserable bucket I don't want to be stuck eating cold food too. It had been a clever enough design that Callaghan ordered him to add them to every ship, something Carl remembered Obake being chuffed about at the time.

But back to the topic of interest. "You never did say what the plan was for when we get there," he pointed out, sitting crosslegged next to Obake.

"And I'm not planning on sharing now, either," Obake snapped back.

"So I should wait until your stomach settles."

"Don't you have anyone else to bother on this trip?"

Sigh—Obake could be prickly at the best of times, would be a hundred times worse when he was feeling miserable; he really did have to wait until Obake's stomach settled before resuming this line of questioning. "You think you could try some tea?"

"You think you could bring yourself to leave me alone?"

Carl's response was cut off by the little dragon—apparently impatient with him semi-ignoring it—bouncing forward so its front paws landed on his knee, startling him badly enough to spill some of the tea.

"HEY!" Obake barked, twisting a bit when some of the wet splashed on him—watched the little dragon lick at a tea puddle, suddenly hack and splutter. "Is he trying to poison me?"

"Pleaugh," the little dragon noised, tongue hanging out as it shook its head vigorously.

"I'm guessing dragons don't like tea," Carl observed, gently patting his chest to make sure his heart was still there.

"Dragons don't like most of what we eat," Obake said, rolling over more to push himself up to a sitting position—desire to show off his knowledge warring with his seasickness, apparently. "Which does make me wonder why they ever bothered with us to begin with."

"The fish, maybe?"

"No, they don't like the spices we use on the fish."

Well then that did leave a big question mark as to why the dragons even bothered, he had to agree there. "Territorial dispute, then."

"No," Obake said, finally accepting the remainder of the tea. "If it was an actual territorial dispute they would have committed instead of raiding every other week. As best as I can figure, they used to be driven to attack by something else."

"So like us."

Yes he was expecting that repressive look from Obake. "I am not in the mood to be lectured right now."

"This implies that you'll be open to it later."

"Don't you have someone else to bother?"

Not really, but he could tell Obake needed some time to himself; he'd come up when he was ready and hopefully he could get a clearer answer then. Shrug, very carefully get to his feet—the little dragon was watching him and he didn't want to give it a reason to attack him.

Said little dragon followed him to the stairs, put its front paws on the first one and wuffed at him.

"Sorry, but you should probably stay down here for now," Carl said, gesturing a little at Obake, who had laid back down. "For moral support."

"I heard that," Obake spat.

So Hiro had exactly one experience with a water-traveler before and it was much smaller than this one, so he was more than happy to explore its belly and put off worrying about how much trouble he was going to be in when the other Furies caught up with him. Was he going to be in a ton of trouble? Yes, yes he was. But the important thing was, he was going to be able to do some research and figure out these things that happily carried the Yokai to and fro. Maybe he'd get something that he could spin towards selling the saddle better.

But the more he sniffed around, the more convinced he was that the one would not be like the other. For one, under the Yokai-smell (and a lot of other concerning smells that he had to remind himself were in the past now) the water-traveler smelled like wood. For another, he'd never heard of riding in the stomach of something else being enjoyable—usually being eaten by something was the end of it, and he didn't smell any digestive juices or anything like that. No, as far as he could tell this was akin to clinging to a log that had fallen in the water, except much less wet. Like they had somehow crafted a den from a log so they could float from island to island in comfort. Kind of impressive, actually—he wondered if they could make a flying one, that'd be cool.

But apparently, comfort was a relative term if you took in Obake, who took most of the day and copious amounts of that nasty leaf-water to be able to get even slightly ambulatory again. Which was apparently a half-Yokai thing, since in his explorations of the water-traveler and inspection of the other Yokai he noted that Obake was the only one affected.

Hiro also noted that the other Yokai on the water-traveler kept flinching and watching him warily whenever he trotted by, which he was going to take as a win because of COURSE he was big and scary he was a Night Fury, after all. Climb up the not-tree growing in the middle of the water-traveler's back, that had weird blankets for leaves—was this for camouflage? Did they disguise the water-travelers as small islands so they could sneak up on others? That could make sense.

But in the meantime—climb along one of the branches to better look around, loft his wings and let himself be carried into the air so he could circle around and look for fish. The water-traveler didn't travel quite fast enough to outrun him, so he wasn't too concerned about that unless he got distracted.

The fish didn't seem to be cooperating though, which was a shame—the Yokai had food but it was more their food than anything Hiro had any inclination to eat. Dried fish, blech.

No fish were being obliging though—angle himself higher—

Swoop down when he realized that there was a shape trailing along the wake of the water-traveler and eyeing it hungrily.

"Hey!" he barked, startling the Scauldron. "No eating that water-traveler!"

"Says who?" it shot back.

"Says me, that's who!" Obviously this dragon didn't know who it was dealing with! "The famous Yokai-Tamer! You're not allowed to attack this water-traveler, it has my tamed Yokai on it!"

Had to dodge away from the spume of steam shot at him, although it did alert some of the Yokai on the water-traveler that they were being stalked. "Get lost, you little loser—no one tells me who I can and can't eat!"

Loser? Okay, that was it. Power up, circle around, dive—

The plasma blast narrowly missed the Scauldron's head, which was on purpose, and definitely rattled it—which was also on purpose.

"NEXT ONE HITS YOUR HEAD!" Hiro yelled—which was a lie, he didn't have any shots left. "I asked nicely once—I won't do it again!"

"Geez, fine!" the Scauldron said, mincing off and watching him carefully. "Be that way! That would have been too much work anyway."

"Tell your friends!" Hiro hollered after it. "Leave this one alone! Hey are you listening to me?" Nope, gone. Keep circling a while to make sure it wasn't trying something mean like coming up underneath….

Finally landed back on the water-traveler to find that he suddenly had a lot of friends.

"So nice, being appreciated," Hiro said, looking forward to stuffing himself silly.