Ghost's Reign Chapter 19: On Windows of Opportunity, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 19, everybody! FFN, please stop dying you put a delay on the posting here.

In other news, sibling bonding! And Obake continuing to have a bad week. But Gogo and Momakase are getting along, so that's good news. And Fred and Dibs bonding, which might not be as good. But we get a Jurassic Park quote, so win.

Enrichment and destructive behavior are two things you hear about if you're a pet owner—if the pet isn't properly enriched, meaning they have things to do like playing or hunting for their food, then they start engaging in destructive behavior, which can range from destroying furniture to harming themselves.

So in other news, Tadashi needed a lot of bribing in order to get him over the whole mask thing.

"You're supposed to be giving this a fair shake, Older-Brother," Hiro reminded him as Obake tried again, putting the mask down in front of him and a fish next to the mask before scuttling back.

"No," Tadashi said, flicking the mask away with a paw. "I'm not doing this I'm having to tolerate him hopping onto me because of you I don't need to tolerate that on top of it."

"You don't tolerate him hopping onto you, you flick him off as soon as you can," Hiro pointed out. Well, since he wasn't doing anything with the mask. "Also my fish."

"Little-Brother."

"Oops sorry all gone," Hiro said, scooping up the mask and bounding over to Obake.

"I probably should have had the one thing squared away before trying another," Obake mused, taking the mask back and considering it. Held it near his head, shading his eyes a little as he addressed Hiro. "You'd think it'd make him like me better, considering it's modeled after you two."

"Is that what it's supposed to be?" Hiro asked. "Because it looks more like Honey Lemon but narrower and with extra nubs." The bloody claw marks along it had been rubbed off by Obake working with it, so it did kind of resemble a Light Fury now, once you got over the shock of white faces and black hides.

"Well if this is the end of today's round of idiocy," Tadashi said, standing. "Come on, Little-Brother."

"No, I'm not coming on you're being mean to my Yokai."

"Okay, but that means you miss out on the really cool thing I learned how to do."

Oog, that was tempting. Glance at Obake, back at Tadashi, back at Obake—

Obake sighed and waved him off, apparently noticing the impatient wiggle starting.

"Okay fine but only because Obake is okay with being left to his own devices for a few minutes," Hiro said, bounding over. "So what's the really cool thing you learned how to do?"

"You're going to have to follow me and find out," Tadashi said smugly, flying up into the air.

"Heeey," Hiro whined, winging after him. "No fair!"

Tadashi laughed at him, angled over the ocean and dove, fired a blast and flew through it—

Hiro blinked at seeing the rooster-tail from Tadashi skimming low over the ocean, but no dragon to go with it. "Wha—?"

Tadashi was laughing when he angled back up, regaining visibility when he reached Hiro's height.

"That was AWESOME!" Hiro barked, bouncing off of Tadashi and winging back around. "How'd you do it? Teach me teach me teach me!"

"Sorry little bro but you must have this cool blue crackling on the back to do this," Tadashi said, angling a little to show off the color bleeding through the black scales along his spine. "I showed Healing-Talons the other day and he thinks that maybe overheating like I did gave me enough oomph to be able to do that."

"That's still super-cool," Hiro said, angling around. "Not as cool as being a Yokai-Tamer, but still. Hey wait, would it work if I flew through one of your blasts? Since mine aren't strong enough but yours are—"

"I might be willing to experiment," Tadashi conceded. "But first you have to say I'm the cooler brother."

"Never."

"Then we'll never know."

"Hey that's not fair GET BACK HERE—"

So Obake was of the opinion that he was surrounded by idiots. This was nothing new, but occasionally the statement needed refreshing in his brain, in case he was ever in danger of forgetting.

"What do you mean this was all that they got?" Obake demanded, glowering first at the list, then at Helga. "They had Night Fury scales. They went to a different buyer."

"What do you want me to say, I skimmed off the top and gave you a fraction because I thought you were dense?" Helga demanded. "They got the same song and dance—Night Fury scales aren't going as far as they used to."

Ugh, great, like he didn't have enough around giving him a migraine. Pinch the bridge of his nose as he turned this problem over in his head. The issue was, people would have heard if a Night Fury had been shot down or found dead. Likely, someone had found where one had nested and flooded the market.

Not that this helped now.

Helga was still standing there when he looked back up. "Oh go bother Carl," he groused, waving her off and stalking away to the forge. Not that he had nearly enough to work with, the priority had been food and he had the distinct feeling that what he had to work with could barely be called scrap.

Helga arched an eyebrow, looked away. "Obake tells me I should bother you."

"Maybe find something else to do," Carl said—put a basket on the counter and arched an eyebrow at Obake when she left. "Seriously?"

"Do not," Obake groused, pointing at him. "I have better thing to do today than be bellyached at."

"Such as?"

Such as getting flung around by a dragon now that he had gotten him past the whole mask issue—had only taken a week. "Other. Things." Thought of something that'd sufficiently distract him. "Did Mole go to you?"

"About?"

Oi. "I understand he had questions about the great hall."

"He did," Carl said, nodding. "Asked a lot of questions about the excavation, got excited when I said the records had that cavern discovered, was muttering a lot about the hardness of the stone when he dug out one of his holes. By the way, how right is he about there being tunnels all through the island?"

"I'm going to say a Whispering Death came through here a while back."

"He did mention that," Carl said. "He also said you sent him to me."

Oi. "It was either that or leave him in a cave with a bunch of irritable dragons. I feel like doing that would be frowned upon."

"It would." Ponder. "You know, that whole cave system would have been nice to know about before, give us someplace to hide during dragon raids."

"This isn't the part where you try to make small talk, is it? Because that's annoying."

"Also Momakase is looking for you."

Oi. "Tell her I'm unavailable."

Carl shrugged, looked over. "Obake says he's unavailable."

"Sure he is," Momakase said, leaning in. "Busy making more windows, are you?"

"Don't you dare," Obake said, poker in his hand with the serious debate of lunging forward and stabbing her.

She seemed to sense the intent. "You'd never nail me with that stance," she teased. "Seems someone needs another lesson."

"You can't make me."

"Pretty sure I can."

"Do. Not."

Momakase won that particular altercation. And the next several.

"Wrr," Hiro noised, nudging him with concern.

"I'm sure your brother will be thrilled," Obake groaned.

Gogo watched the whole thing, followed Momakase as she left Obake sprawled on the floor of the kill ring.

"So I don't see the point of this exercise," Gogo admitted. "You claim he's the alpha and then defeat him enough times to take the title yourself. You and those others don't seem to see him as alpha, so why don't you take the title?"

"Are you scolding me for kicking his can?" Momakase asked her. "Because if you are it's unnecessary, I'm just trying to toughen him up so he doesn't get totally killed by someone wanting the role."

"So…you're trying to help him," Gogo said, trying to reason through this. "Why not just attack whoever's threatening him?" Watch Momakase, noted her watching Gogo's tail….

Momakase leaped up when Gogo swung low, landed lightly and rolled forward when she swung back, tapping a hand against her side when she popped back up. "Ha."

"So it's not so much that you don't like him, this is just how Yokai play," Gogo reasoned. "The sort of thing that keeps you sharp in case you have to fight."

"What, are we done already?" Momakase asked, reaching and scratching Gogo's neck—Gogo twitched away from that, not quite trusting her near where life bubbled so close to the surface. Momakase translated that as a game, spent the next several minutes trying to score a tap on her neck as Gogo evaded her—eventually won when she pushed off against a nearby wall and got the flat of her paw against Gogo's neck, barking another triumphant ha when she did so.

"Hrm," Gogo noised, tipping her head to watch as Momakase flopped down, winded but pleased. "I wonder if Hiro would have a spiel about this. 'Yokai enrichment' he'd probably call it." Should field it by him, she mused as she watched Momakase watching her. Hmm….

Momakase yelped, spun as Gogo whipped her tail back from poking her. "Ha," she warbled.

Which started another round of not-quite-tag that ended with an exhausted Yokai and a pondering Nadder.

"Okay, my dude, it is time for us to go over the beauty of having a pet Yokai."

"No, no it is NOT time we are not doing this," Wasabi said, digging his claws in.

"My dude, I don't know what your problem is."

"What is my problem my problem is that YOKAI EAT DRAGONS."

"Pretty sure we established they eat fish and plants."

"Fine they KILL dragons happy?"

"Also pretty sure they've gotten past that, we're giving them nice enrichment so they stop with the destructive behavior, if Gogo can do it then so can you," Fred insisted. "Now observe. YO DIBS!" Bang on the side of the Yokai-nest with his tail as he roared at the door. "Come on my dude! I need help with an object lesson! Okay hold on." Stuff his head in an upper opening. "DIBS!"

"HEY NO!" Dibs yelped, waving skinny little wingless forelimbs frantically. "No don't do this we're not flaming this house I like this house the roof's mostly intact WHY aren't we allowed to kill dragons anymore WHY are you doing this I thought you liked me."

"So. My dude. Wasabi's being a frumpy gill about all this even though we've already established that he'd be awesome with your big buddy that you hang out with, get out here and help me convince him." Watch Dibs frantically dance around before purring. "Right of course positive encouragement we are putting out good vibes today my dude."

"Out out out," Dibs insisted, shoving on his snout.

"Oh right—you're coming out though, right?"

"OUT."

"Okay, going now," Fred said, drawing his head back—

Stopped when his horns bumped against the inside of the nest. "Uh, hold on." Turn his head, try again—turn his head, try again—more frantically this time. "Uh, HELP."

"Oh crud," Wasabi squawked, scrabbling at the nest and trying to free Fred's head. "Oh crud oh crud HALP!"

"Okay no wait STOP no panicking hold on lemme—I will be right back," Dibs said, waving his paws at Fred before darting out the door.

"Wait—WHERE is he going?" Wasabi demanded.

"You gotta go you gotta go," Fred offered.

Where Dibs went was to go get Ralph.

"So…what is it exactly you want me to do here?" Ralph asked, gesturing to the dragon head sticking through the window.

"Well, I was kind of hoping you could like, put a plaque right there, maybe a table right there to keep the head up…I want the window bigger so he can get his head back out," Dibs snapped.

"So you guys are really giving up killing dragons."

Okay no Dibs liked Fred, weirdly enough. "I'm sorry, I was under the impression we agreed on the fact that Obake is scary." And since it was his rule….

Ralph shivering indicated he agreed with that assessment. "Okay, but there's going to be a big hole where a window used to be," he said, rubbing his fists as he approached.

"So you add shutters," Dibs said, flapping his arms. "Just get him out, please."

"Okay," Ralph said, puffing out a few breaths before bringing his fists up. "I'm gonna wreck it! HAAA!"

"Okay no chill chill please we are having happy thoughts," Dibs said, latching onto Fred's snout when the Nightmare looked like he was planning on panicking at the guy pounding on the wall around his neck and hollering as he did so. "Ralph—Ralph tone it down that's not helping—"

"HAAA!" POW—knocked a big chunk of the wall out, enough that Fred was able to pull his head out. Bad news: Dibs was still clinging to his snout.

"So uh," Ralph said, looking the hole over before looking at Dibs. "When I go get Felix, how big do you want the window to be?"

Dibs looked back at Fred, considered the span of the horns…looked back at Ralph. "Oh, about yea big."

Fred, at least, seemed happy with this whole situation.