Ghost's Reign Chapter 22: Night Flight, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 22, everybody! Obake has complaints about being made to work.

So I was hoping that there was some detail stuff on Hero's Duty from Wreck-It Ralph—had to do some digging on the wiki, but apparently the system affected by the cybugs is the Triad System, hence where Calhoun hails from. Dunwitty was apparently a dummied-out character, hence his status in this story.

Obake's referencing the Six Days of Creation from the Book of Genesis in the Bible—First Day is heavens and the earth and darkness and light, Second Day is the firmament and Heaven, Third Day is Earth and Seas and everything green, Fourth Day is the sun and moon and stars. Also for the completionists the Fifth day is fish and fowl and the Sixth Day is all land animals plus Man. So yes, humans and dinosaurs coexisted, Creationists have more fun, it's official. :D

Obake really had to give these people credit for immediately sucking the fun out of his big dramatic triumph and reveal.

Okay no maybe that wasn't fair but that's certainly what it felt like—in retrospect, he should have given himself more than just one day of enjoying this, his success, before revealing it to the rest of the Yokai. Now they all wanted it as well, and looking at the cadre of eager dragons, he had to admit that part of his irritation stemmed from him having to go and pick the most stubborn and blockheaded dragon out of the lot.

Huff as he flopped into bed, debating. He could just look at this as he had picked the toughest dragon and tamed it and take the win…but it still rankled. Would it even be special if everyone could do it? Being the only one to ride a Night Fury wasn't that special when there was only one Night Fury available to ride.

"Wrr?" Hiro noised, poking him.

"Just thinking," he muttered. Okay consider this. Only a handful of Yokai had dragons willing to give them lifts, currently, and of that handful the increased mobility would make them more useful. And theoretically, if he wanted to he could make this an exclusive thing, like how the masks had been.

That thought made him eye his own porcelain mask, now edited to more closely resemble the Fury he was riding. Callaghan had reserved the masks for his elites, those who had proven their worth to him over and over again. He, Obake, had been the first to receive one after Callaghan had made his own, telling him that as the first one to deal a solid blow in this war against the dragons that he had proved his mettle. He remembered how excited and proud that had made him at the time—finally, finally, someone was seeing him, seeing his worth…ah, what irony, that his symbol for being seen involved hiding his face.

But the masks worked as a status symbol, gave the Yokai something to jockey for…it had also given them targets to take out in the hopes of being picked themselves. And in the whole grand scope of things…flying was incredible. It was incredible and the dragons themselves were being selective enough that he didn't really need to limit it himself. Well, that was one thing off the table, at least—

Blink at those thoughts, at the realization that he was, even slightly, considering the job Carl was trying to fob off on him.

"No," he said, sitting up and startling Hiro. "No I absolutely refuse I will not be tied down by a tribe I can't even stand."

"Wrr," Hiro noised, confused. Obake looked at him…sighed, sagging a little. No. No he wasn't going to fall into another trap, he wasn't going to be limited, he had found the greatest, limitless feat to pull off, he wasn't letting them ruin it.

Flop back down, staring at the ceiling…brain was buzzing too much for sleep to be a possibility. And him being chief was a joke anyway. No one would listen to him—if they did it would be out of fear, not respect or loyalty. The ones who stayed now probably only stayed because they were afraid of what he would do, or because they worried what would happen to Callaghan's contingency on the way out. Possibly, even, it was because they were sick of Callaghan, but it wasn't because they felt they'd do better with Obake. Stare out the skylight he had engineered to give Hiro ease of access (Felix had obliged because of fear and not because of a rotten patch, he was sure). Starry and black, was probably late into the night by now.

He wondered.

"Wrr?" Hiro noised, sitting up when Obake rolled out of bed—bounded after him when he took the saddle outside.

Tadashi looked up sharply at Obake's whistle, cocked his head when Obake held the saddle up.

"Late night flight?" he asked, Hiro bounding up and down excitedly and yipping to punctuate this question. Tadashi squinted at him…kept that squinty glare the whole way down, disappearing in the shadows but for his eyes and that blue crackling along his back. Where did that come from, he wondered—the few times he had managed to run his fingers along it without Tadashi flinching away, it had felt like glass, almost, but flexible if the way Tadashi could move was any indication.

A question for later, he decided, buckling the saddle onto Tadashi, who seemed decidedly unamused about all this. Lock himself in, tug his mask on as Hiro leaped on and dug his claws in—okay you know what wait jumping onto a Night Fury in the middle of the night was probably not a smart idea—

And then Tadashi launched himself into the air, power-flapping before corkscrewing a little as he bled off altitude and speed—

Dove over the edge of the cliff, his passengers hanging on for dear life, hunkered down close to his back to cut down on drag—

It was an enthralling feeling, and the fact that he had to trust that Tadashi knew where he was going and wouldn't hit anything added an extra buzz—speeding across the ocean reflecting sparks of stars, the milky way a thick band across the sky. They could be the only living things out here, witnessing the evening of the Fourth Day, emphasizing the greatness and vastness of the universe, making all his own problems look so small in comparison. Lean forward, resting his hands under Hiro's chin as Tadashi slowed from breakneck…reflected on his old chief's teachings, on how she always tried to frame things as seeming so terribly big because he was so terribly close to the issue. At the time, it had angered him—his issue wasn't that he was too close, it was that it affected him in an all-encompassing way and trying to take a step back didn't solve the issue.

Sigh, slowly blowing out all the air in his lungs…well, he was a good distance away from those problems now. As for the rest…well, this worked far better than retreating into the woods ever did. For starters, whether or not he was colluding with the other ghosts was no longer a burning question. After all, here he was on the back of a Night Fury, and what was such a dragon but the offspring of Lightning and Death?

"Mrr," Hiro noised, pressing the flat of his head up under Obake's chin.

"Just thinking," he assured the little Fury. Tadashi flipped an ear, tilted a little—

Obake and Hiro watched, enthralled, as the tip of his wing touched the water, leaving a trail of brilliant light behind. From a purely academic level, he knew that Tadashi must have disturbed some microscopic creatures that produced bioluminescence. The rest of him though, the part currently filled up with wonder and calm and for once in his life contentment, drunk on the high of being full of pleasant feelings for once, was just as taken with the sparkling glow as Hiro was, as Tadashi angled so he was making a smaller Milky Way in the ocean to follow the greater one in the sky.

And when they did finally go back, when Tadashi landed and stretched and slipped out of his saddle, Obake went to bed without his head full of gnawing, darting thoughts, mind and soul instead filled with the calming flight, body enjoying the heat of a tiny dragon curled up against his chest.

He didn't remember falling asleep.

The next day was filled with tedium only if your name was Obake. As for the rest of the Yokai….

Okay, let's be real here: as quartermaster Calhoun was used to dealing with limited means and the overreaching, ravenous habits of the Yokai. The standard set by Callaghan meant that there was no stocking up against a rainy day, and most of the time her days were preoccupied with making sure their weaponry, at least, was maintained. She had, unfortunately, gone from being a sergeant of an army standing against the locusts to a member of that foul hive trying to keep them from eating themselves when they had no targets to feast on.

Huff a sigh at that—the Yokai had been plaguing the Triad Isles for years before her ship was captured, sharp jabs that had been letting blood while not presenting a clear target. It had gotten to the point that the Isles' commanders had started drafting all able-bodied citizens to bolster their navy and intercept these attacks; said attacks had slowed enough that her acting ship captain had agreed to marry her and her fiancé on a quiet night—which was when it had all fallen apart. Worse, the Yokai had used her ship to slip past the navy and raid one of the Isles' smaller settlements, blending in with the ships and attacking the dock where Yokai could be seen.

Said Yokai had been villagers who had been forced into that garb at knifepoint, told to keep it on lest their loved ones turned hostage felt the Yokai's blades. Said hostages were gutted and thrown overboard once the ship was far enough from the others to evade notice.

She had, prior to being captured, expected that the Yokai were run by someone cunning, and she had been right. A rabid dog Callaghan might have been, but he was canny and intelligent, having acted as a chief's second for years. Yes, his moods had turned increasingly foul and he had turned increasingly violent, but he could keep the Yokai pointed in a singular direction from sheer presence.

His plans, as it turned out, came from his own personal pet ghost.

Reflecting back on it, Calhoun could identify her emotions at the time as indignant and outraged, learning that their navy had been continually routed and outsmarted by a boy, of all things—she had been in the navy for half a decade at that point, joining as soon as she was able, and this boy, maybe a few years older than she had been when she joined, had outsmarted an island nation famed for their military prowess.

At the time, still reeling at the loss of her fiancé, their beaten status, and captured ship…at the time she had been incapable of anything but gawping at the head Yokai clasping the younger Yokai's shoulder and congratulating him on the plan, smugness evident in every line of the boy's stance. Did he even understand the loss of life here? As the result of every strike against the Isles?

The answer was yes—he had been blandly disinterested when confronted, taken a step back when she lunged forward to take a swing at him—her soldiers had stopped her, recalling what had happened to Dunwitty when he had tried to take out the Yokai's pet obake: the boy had managed to dodge the attack at the last minute, cry out before Dunwitty had started squeezing his windpipe—

Gagged and gasped and rolled to freedom once Dunwitty's corpse fell off him, the head having been removed by Callaghan. The Great Hall had been deathly quiet as Callaghan explained why attacking Obake was frowned upon, told of some goon named Todlin who had tried before, ordered that Dunwitty's corpse be given the same treatment Todlin's had—that is, being tied up and used for target practice. That this also doubled as a pointed reminder of who was in charge and what happened when you lost his favor was simply a bonus.

But until such time as she worked past her superstition, Calhoun had figured that taking out Obake would be the key to taking out the Yokai. As an obake, his main goal was infiltrating villages and destroying them. That Callaghan had struck a deal with one and turned it against other villages to spare his own made sense given what she knew of the man, and she expected that the other half of the village that had been rumored to flee rather than become Yokai had done so when they learned what had been brought in and what deal had been struck with this creature whose glowing face betrayed him.

That Obake was just a man, that it was the former chief who had been responsible for him being of this tribe, made sense when she processed the unguarded terror he had had on his face, masking it quickly as he stood, narrowing his eyes at the corpse being dragged out. She had caught him firing several bolts into Dunwitty's corpse in the following days, fiddling with a crossbow design that eventually became the standard for the Yokai. Reach behind her back, fingering the handle of her dagger…it might result in her death, but better the Yokai defanged than—

"Don't think I don't see you over there," Obake said, glowering at the crossbow as he wound it up again—voice cracking with his youth and yet possessing a timbre better suited to someone who had seen far too many battles. "What do you want?"

Grip the handle. "Your aim's off."

"Don't you think I know that?" he snapped. "I'm trying to fix this stupid thing."

"The shoddy workman blames his tools."

His attention snapped to her—

Stalked over with all the petulance of a child and shoved the crossbow at her.

"You shoot it then," he said. "If it's not the crossbow then you should be able to hit the target first try."

Was he for real? "I am not shooting one of my men."

"He's dead—he won't care."

Ran hot at that, grip tightening, dagger slipping from its sheath—

He held the crossbow up higher. "If you shoot me with this you can blame it on a misfire."

She froze at that. "What?"

"You want me dead, right? Everyone does."

Scowl at him, wondering if there was a reason the obake had picked this particular appearance. "If that's the case, why are you still here?"

There was something akin to a harsh winter in those eyes, a bitter cold that made her chest ache. "Because no one wants a ghost."

Stare at him for a long beat—

He flinched when she snatched the crossbow away and aimed it—

The bolt glanced off of the wall behind the corpse.

"The sight's off," she said, shoving the crossbow back at him.

"The shoddy workman blames his tools," he parroted back at her as she stalked off. Frustrating little toerag—even worse when she learned he was the blacksmith. Of course he had to be one of the crucial cogs.

The longer things went on, however, the more Obake lessened as the greater evil in her mind. Yes, he was dangerous, but for the most part he was content to serve under Callaghan. That time, when he finally decided to turn his fangs towards his benefactor…well by that point Callaghan was so far gone that his decision wasn't that much a surprise, was when she had teamed up with Helga to escape with anyone who was willing.

Obake bringing the dragons down en masse and taking the chieftainship though—that was a surprise. And while she would say that anyone was better than Callaghan…there were times she wondered just how much was Obake playing the role, convincing everyone not to anger a ghost so he would stay unaccosted. There were benefits to him not taking the role of chief too seriously right now, and the most ardent of troublemakers had left with Callaghan, but...

Come to think of it, his big reveal with the saddles came right about the time that people were getting antsy enough to start giving serious thought to mutiny, threat of dragons or no. Dangling that carrot in front of them, this thing that only a select few would be allowed to have…it was his own variation of the masks, she supposed, gave the Yokai reason to behave and jockey for position, to struggle to get into Obake's good graces, if he had any.

And then the question of the dragons.

She had noticed, during her rounds, that she had the joy of having a scaley tail as well—a Monstrous Nightmare that did its best to affect an unconcerned air while at the same time watching her like a hawk watches a chicken coop full of crippled roosters. she tried to affect a similar air, let it know that she was unperturbed by its presence—

Which, apparently, it translated as leave to be more obvious.

She watched as it landed, looked at the fish it had deposited, looked away. "Bribery don't grease these wheels, you overgrown purse."

The Nightmare huffed at that—if she didn't know any better, she'd say it was amused—reclined against a house and scanned the square she had been glaring at, like it was trying to see what was so fascinating. Intelligent, far more than they had given credit for.

Huff, cross her arms and systematically scan everyone, doing her best to ignore the dragon's pointed presence—she had her men keeping an eye on things, if things went south then maybe they had a chance to get one or two shots off—

"Markowski!" she barked, stalking across the square.

The man in question—plus one of her other soldiers, Manolo—immediately snapped to attention. "Sir yes sir!"

"What were you doing, soldier?" she demanded, jabbing a finger at the Rumblehorn between the two soldiers, busy puffing up at her—probably in irritation of her interrupting its pampering.

"Er…well…."

"You're not actually buying into this, are you?"

"Negatory, ma'am!" Markowski barked. "It's—uh—part of our infiltration, ma'am!"

Calhoun cut a glare to Manolo. "Manolo?"

"Er…."

"Were you feeding it?"

"Er, yes—"

"Did you name it?" she demanded of Markowski.

"Uh—"

"Were you, or were you not, scratching it under its chin?"

"I'm sorry!" Markowski burst out finally. "I was tempted! I was weak!"

The Rumblehorn growled—probably at her, but it looked like it was looking at the Nightmare behind her—

Which poked its nose between her and Markowski before pushing her back and away from him a little.

"Ma'am," Manolo said. "No offense, but it looks like you have one too."

"I take full offense, Manolo," she hissed, jabbing a finger in his face. "Take a lap! Take twenty laps! Both of you!"

"Sir yes sir!" they both barked, taking off running—the Rumblehorn growled at her again before lumbering after them.

"Don't you huff at me," she snapped at the Nightmare behind her. "I know what you things are planning and it won't. Work."

The dragon huffed again, obviously unintimidated—started nosing her towards the forge. The message in her mind was clear: you have a problem with it, take it up with Obake.

She planned to—stalked for the forge, already mentally rehearsing what she was going to say to the man when she got there—

Had to take a moment, freezing in the act of bringing her hand down on the bell—she had walked up on Obake having an unguarded moment, apparently busy going over some designs when the little Fury decided to climb up his back. And instead of being annoyed or irritated at such an interruption, he was smiling at the little dragon, an expression of such human affection that it stunned her to see it on him of all people.

And then it was gone, usual expression slamming down like a shutter door when the bell rang and he spotted her. Eyes focused on her, flitted to the Nightmare, back again.

"Let me guess, you want a saddle," he groused.

Probably better for him to figure that than for her to call him out on his draconic spies. "I've been informed," she said, arms crossed as she indicated the dragon pointedly pushing its head into view.

Obake considered the situation. "Well I'd rather make one for you than for Dibs—at least I can trust you to be useful."

He probably intended that to be more compliment than backhanded, but she held her tongue as he took measurements, answering the pointed questions he asked—

Looked at the dragon in a more evaluating manner when he retreated back to the forge. They were not friends, not allies, not partners—dragons were not, could not be any of these things.

That didn't change the fact that this one was looking at her with intelligence, head held high with obvious pride, muscles under the scales suggesting it had the oomph to back it up.

"You're not going to take me that easily," she decided. "If you want me that bad, then you're going to have to earn the right."

The way the dragon huffed out a rumble, she could almost imagine it saying challenge accepted.