Ghost's Reign Chapter 43: Balance Issues, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 43, everybody! In which the dragons discuss kidnapping...

Don't look now, Tadashi, but you're getting attached. As for Momakase's pondering...well there's at least one more person out there living feral with dragons. She's also quoting The Santa Clause 2 and Obake has apparently had some Captain Jack Sparrow moments.

In other news, what really truly bugs me about how people view humans and domesticated animals is the fact that they view them as alien, as opposed to a part of Creation and therefore part of the balance involved. The full removal of humanity will not halt global warming or cooling, and considering all animals produce methane then the removal of cows will not stop those emissions. We are told in the Bible to be stewards of the earth, to go out and subdue it, and honestly that's a full-time job—if you don't believe me, look at any abandoned town or location or city; it goes back to green really quickly.

This was probably not going well, but no one was trying to kill each other so Tadashi was willing to count this as a win. Watch the not-dragons to make sure they were behaving themselves, start scanning the caverns when he was assured they wouldn't try for each other's throats again. So despite what the one said he was pretty sure the big purple one was still too young to be the one in charge, so…ah. Amble over, act friendly-like, sit with the dragons who were still keeping an eye on the one feral not-dragon.

"So," Tadashi posed, eyeing the Nightmare he was vaguely sure was in charge; maybe the Gronkle next to him, it was hard to tell if they were co-leaders or not. "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but that is a not-dragon over there."

"And you have two yourself," the Nightmare said, pointedly licking some of the scratches Tadashi had left on his muzzle. "Your point?"

Great, what was his point? "Ah…from the sounds of it those three used to be from the same flight…I guess the question I want to ask is how she ended up here."

The Nightmare and the head Gronkle exchanged glances at that.

"Maybe we should start from the beginning," the Gronkle said. "So…I'm not sure how long ago this was…twenty turns or so now? I'm buzzing along and I find this little hatchling on this unprotected spit of land, wide-open to anything that thinks to fill its mouth with her."

"This hatchling being the not-dragon?" Tadashi asked, flicking an ear-flap.

"Do you want me to tell the story or not?" she asked, irritated. At his apology, she continued, pointing at the massive dragon currently lounging in the main pool. "That one, Violet. She was maybe a third my size when I found her, but still very obviously a hatchling. I ask her where her parents are, and she says that her mother left her there and told her to stay.

"Well it didn't sit right with me leaving a hatchling by itself, so I stayed with her and waited for her mother to come back, and while we wait we talk, and as we talk several things become clear to me. One, that what she called 'mother' was actually one of those two-legged not-dragons, and two, her 'mother' was not coming back for her."

Tadashi's ear flaps flicked up at this news. "You're sure? On both counts? Because if she was that small then, and she's that big now…."

"I asked for clarification, fished around for it," the Gronkle said. "She drew a sketch of her 'mother' in the sand for me, and we waited well over a day and a half for someone to come. No one ever came. Dead or deserted, either way I had to do something."

"So she brings her here," the Nightmare grumbled.

"Says the dragon that spoils her to no end," the Gronkle countered. "So I bring her here, and things go decently. The nest starts raising her as one of our own, teaching her and taking care of her….

"But she keeps having these bouts of despondency, wanting her old mother, or something like her. We try to distract her from this, telling her she's better off around dragons and that a not-dragon would be happier with its own kind, and then Mr. Sensitive here tells her that the not-dragon she called 'mother' was most likely dead, which puts her off eating—"

"I fixed the problem!" the Nightmare protested.

The Gronkle gave him a look that was heavy with repressive irony. "You solve the problem by grabbing another not-dragon and bringing it here."

"My first question is 'why' and my second question is 'how,'" Tadashi said.

The Nightmare huffed. "I figured one not-dragon isn't too different from the next, so as long as I got her one she'd be happy. As to the how…well that isn't as hard as you'd think. Just fly around for a while until you see one of those raiding parties heading the right way, follow along, act like you belong, and then grab a not-dragon while everyone, not-dragons included, are distracted." He blew a smoke ring off to the side, contemplating it before continuing. "So I find a group, follow it to a not-dragon nest, fly around for a while…." Squinted at Obake. "Funny, that one has a mark similar to one I saw before."

Tadashi's ear flaps flipped back up. "Do what?"

"Now that I think on it, that one might be the same one—twenty turns ago it'd be a hatchling, I think. Well anyway, this particular nest, to hear the group tell, didn't really fight back so I figured I'd be safe enough—figured it'd be the one time everyone was wrong. Tricks and traps flying everywhere, downing dragons and causing chaos—I see this not-dragon with a skull face, little slip of a thing, trigger a trap that downed another dragon, and at the very least I figured I'd scare it so it wouldn't do it again.

"So I swoop down, roaring, on fire, aiming for this skull-faced not-dragon," the Nightmare continued, Tadashi picturing this clearly with a growing dread in his stomach. "And before I even get close this other not-dragon—that one—" he clarified, pointing out Abigail. "Runs in, grabs him, and flings him away, thinking to save him from me. Well, that's the sort of mindset you want when it comes to hatchlings, so I doused myself, came back around, and grabbed her. Slapped a flaming tail against the nest the skull-face was hiding under, but I didn't stick around once I had what I needed. I had a long flight ahead of me, after all."

Tadashi kept his mouth tightly shut, ear flaps and nubs starting to strain from being kept still. What Obake said earlier when confronting that other not-dragon…he was right. She had saved him from a perceived death and paid for it by being ripped from her own nest to humor a hatchling.

"So I bring it here, Violet's happy, end of story," the Nightmare finished, scratching behind his horns.

"I noticed how you skipped over the whole bit about having to acclimate the not-dragon to being here," the Gronkle said flatly. "It took forever to get her convinced that we wouldn't eat her."

"That sounds like a problem," Tadashi said, impressed that he was able to keep his tone even.

"No kidding. She'd find whatever hidey-hole she could get and squeeze herself in there, barely ate—we kept trying to give her fish and she'd stare at us like we were crazy. Tried to sharpen a few sticks and rocks a couple of times—we had to stop that in a hurry—"

"Not-dragons don't have claws like we do, they have to improvise," Tadashi found himself blurting. "You wouldn't begrudge a dragon his talons, would you?"

The Gronkle flipped her ears forward, apparently intrigued by his line of thought. "No, but usually we can trust a dragon to not try killing one of the sentries.

"So anyway," she continued. "Eventually it sinks in that we're not going to hurt her, that the reason we brought her here was Violet, who was worlds better once the not-dragon decided to stop trying to run away. She was actually the one who was best at hunting her down, and the reason she stopped fighting in the end."

Tadashi was intrigued despite himself. "Why? What happened?"

"So she had gotten herself into one of her hidey-holes again," the Gronkle said, gesturing a little with her paw. "Violet thinks she's playing hide-and-find, claws at the hole a little before stuffing her head in, excited because she found her—and then goes rolling backwards because the not-dragon jabs her in the nose with a stick.

"Well she cries and carries on, more shocked than anything, gives her this utterly heartbroken look and then goes to her pool to curl up and sulk. We think that's the end of it, until the not-dragon kind of sneaks out of her hiding spot and over to where Violet is. Violet's watching her, kind of wary until the not-dragon offers her the fish Not-Sensitive here gave her…and then it starts going much smoother."

"Still annoying," the Nightmare huffed.

"If you really believed that you would have told me just where you got her so I could take her back."

"You were going to take her back?" Tadashi asked, stunned.

"A couple of times," the Gronkle admitted. "There were times when things were going so poorly I figured taking her back would just work out better. But things worked out in the end."

Tadashi had no idea how to address the tangle in his gut, tried to think of how to break it down into something manageable—

"Abigail."

The Nightmare and Gronkle looked at him, surprised. "What?"

He was kind of stunned too, but figured there was nothing for it. "The not-dragon you snatched—her name is Abigail. That's what they said," he said, indicating Obake and broadly referring to their conversation, if it could have been called that. Mostly he had been preoccupied with keeping the dragons from attacking due to Obake's increasingly scathing tone.

The Gronkle and Nightmare looked at each other. "Well THAT would have been nice to know a long time ago," the Gronkle said huffily. "Do you have any idea how many arguments we've had over what to call her? We figured there had to be SOMETHING better than just 'Violet's mum' but we couldn't ever get anything to stick."

"They wouldn't understand Dragonese," Tadashi said, trying to figure out how to slot this into his worldview—what must it have been like, being kidnapped from your nest and forced to live in another, one where you were nothing like the natives, couldn't ever understand them or even understand what they were calling you, having to rely so heavily on social cues you didn't understand—

It suddenly struck him why this was bothering him so badly: this was what had almost happened to Hiro in reverse.

"I um…I'm going to go…is there anywhere around here that's designated fishing areas?" he asked, not really listening to the answer—he just needed an excuse to get out of there.

Being up in the clear air and circling the nest from way up high didn't help, though. Lock himself in a circuit, dedicating just enough energy to keeping that circuit, dedicate the rest of his energies to addressing all the thoughts clawing at his head and weighing him down.

Trying to do so wasn't untangling any of it, though—he didn't want to justify this, but part of him wanted to because if dragons did the same thing that the Yokai did, then it wasn't a failing of the Yokai species, it was—

It was both parties failing to see the other as an intelligent species worthy of respect. Seeing them as pets at best.

It meant he was as much at fault as anyone else.

Obake had found a hidey-hole to curl up in and sulk, much preferring to be away from that horrible gnarling tangle of thoughts that this day had brought.

Abigail Callaghan. The reason the Yokai had been formed to begin with. She was alive. Alive and living the literal antithesis of her father's lifestyle.

He had no idea how to take this.

So here he was, curled up in a corner, looking at nothing and doing his best to think of nothing despite that being an impossibility for him. Think of other things—Seashockers could potentially take down flying targets, that was worth contemplating. That dragon out there was only a hatchling and therefore would be much bigger someday. Abigail Callaghan wasn't dead—dangit.

Was vaguely aware of footsteps, stayed curled up in his corner, banking on his coat and the shadows hiding him, decided when the person stopped in front of him that he wasn't destined to be that lucky.

"Want a blanket?" Momakase asked. Well, there was a fifty-fifty shot of who it would be, and of the two of them, Momakase didn't have quite as much trauma involved. And judging by the little dark dragon curling up next to him, she had had help finding him.

"Let me think about it," he muttered, ducking into his sweater more. Couldn't curl up tighter on himself if he tried, and the stones around him were starting to drain his heat. It'd be warmer in that center cavern where that baby dragon was, but she was there too so that was a problem.

Felt part of the blanket flopped against him, a warm body curled up on the side opposite Hiro, tight as she could manage. "You're freezing, you know that right?"

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"Well I'm not sleeping out there," she said, jerking her chin towards the center cavern. "When are we leaving?"

"You are free to leave whenever you want."

"We've had this discussion. Oh wait you're going to stay here with crazy dragon hermit who is barely a step up from crazy meteor hermit, right? At least there's dragons here."

Yes, that would solve the problem of Tadashi and Hiro flying off—there would be another dragon to tame.

Except he'd be lying if he said the idea of the two Furies flying off and leaving him wasn't heartbreaking.

"So," Momakase noised, jolting him back to the here and now. "Dragons just up and kidnap people over killing them and eating them like we thought. Think she's the only one? Maybe there's a whole commune out there you can hang out with."

"I don't think so," he said. "I think she was just very, very lucky."

"Hmph. For the record, what we've got is loads better. I'm not giving up a bed for a bunch of rocks this stinks."

"You don't know her sleeping arrangements."

"And I notice you didn't deny the first part."

Oi. "What we have can't rightly be considered good. It's vaguely workable at best."

"Hmm, maybe if someone finished the job he started."

"Oh good grief not this again."

"Yes this again what's with you? Since when did you ever leave a scheme unfinished?"

"I've left plenty of schemes unfinished."

"Name five."

Oi vey. "Well…most of the ones off the top of my head were plots against you so it wouldn't be wise to share."

"Liar." She shifted a little to glare at him, some of the softly glowing moss barely outlining her. "You've ridden schemes out far past the point of us getting into trouble, always twisted it in a way that ended up with you on top. What made this one crash and burn?"

"If I tell you, will you leave me alone?"

"You know what? Yes I will because I don't think you know."

Figures it was in this one moment that his brain decided to no longer click out more information, stuttering on this one thing that would give him the peace he wanted.

Because it wouldn't give him peace—admitting it, explaining it, would just make it real in a way he didn't want to visualize. How could he explain it, how after everything, everything, nothing had…changed.

That was it. Nothing had changed. That statement had proved it, Abigail confirmed it…nothing had changed.

He was still no one.

Sigh, not looking at her but still feeling her attention boring into him. He was going to have to actually force it out of himself, confirm via his own words what his mind had already figured out and what he had been fleeing ever since hearing that singular phrase.

You can't kill a ghost.

"Nothing I did changed anything," he said finally, making her start. "After all my hard work, I'm still the same as I was twenty years ago." Sigh, look down and away. "I'm still nothing."

Long, long silence, and if it weren't for the fact that the blanket hadn't moved he would have put good money on her having left.

Started when she poked him. "Hey."

"Well you don't feel like nothing," she observed.

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't," she said, shaking her head. "How do you even figure? You're Obake of the Yokai—you're the reason the tribe is so feared to begin with. You've sacked ports without firing a single shot, you've taken entire villages before they even realized they were in a noose—"

"Yes, I'm quite accomplished at killing. That's not the great compliment you think it is."

"Okay, how about this? All those clever things you make? A mold so you can make a bunch of little miscellany at once? What about—"

"Weapons of destruction. Again, not the compliment you think it is."

"Saddles," she said drily. "Dragon saddles. You tamed a flight of dragons we've been fighting for years. You ride around on the back of a Night Fury. The offspring of lightning and death itself. Is that accomplishment enough for you?"

"I told you, they aren't tamed."

"And yet they're still sticking around. Tadashi is letting you on his back—"

"After a lot of him trying to get me off of it—"

"Did you swim here, you dolt?" She socked him in the arm. "I hate to break it to you, but you're a lot more accomplished than you think you are. I can't believe I have to even explain this to you. Should I make up a code so you can understand it?"

He tried to keep his snort smothered. "Your codes are terrible."

"And your approval means so much to me," she groused, flopping against him. "Oh thank you I needed a decent heater," she said when Gogo ducked in.

"Wrr," Gogo noised—nudged them up before settling in the spot they had been occupying and lifting a wing. Hiro bounded over first, Momakase following.

"Get under here," she ordered, Gogo warbling agreement.

"I'd rather not."

"I'm taking the blanket and you will be cold."

That wasn't much of a difference from how he usually was, but the biting cold from high flying was still worrying at his bones and he couldn't deny the temptation of a warm dragon to lean against, especially when said dragon was poking the tip of her tail against his side. Finally settled down next to Momakase, who handed him the blanket before curling up against Gogo's wing join. Couldn't deny that it was much warmer under a tented wing than against bare stone, but also couldn't ignore the fact that Gogo wrapped her tail around and made sure the outside spikes were bristled and ready before fully folding her wing down over them.

"I see she shares our general opinion of the place," Obake observed drily.

"She's a smart dragon," Momakase said, sagging against her in a way that suggested she planned on falling asleep in the next five minutes. Considered before turning her head a little to look at him. "We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you."

"Where, lost and in a foreign dragon nest?"

"Before, would a dragon have ever let us be here? In a nest like this, under her wing and against her side where all the tender spots are?"

He had to take a long beat to consider this.

"You're not nothing," she muttered, sounding like she was drifting off to sleep.

You're not nothing.

Did he believe that? Maybe not. There was still far too much arguing against that…but at the same time, it was hard to focus on those negatives when he was tented under a dragon wing, up against a wall of warmth, with a smaller dragon curled up in the space between himself, Momakase, and Gogo.

His mind refused to unclench, but his body slowly did from the aching cold it had absorbed, and eventually he was able to follow her into a hopefully-peaceful sleep, if such a thing existed for people like him.

It took Tadashi a long while to bring himself to fly back to the nest, to go inside and fold his wings, scales still prickling as he padded through, nerves twanging and every sense on high alert—did not trust this nest, plain and simple, if they were willing to kidnap a not-dragon then….

Found Gogo sleeping with one eye open, tail bristled around a tented wing—obviously with the Yokai under there why—

"Is Hiro with you?" he asked when she blinked at him.

"He's under here," she told him. Lifted her head to consider him better when he nodded and curled up close. "Are you okay?"

"Just thinking," he said, looking at nothing. Shook his head and buried his nose under his paws. "I don't want to talk about it right now."

She bumped her snout against his neck. "Fine, but you know we've got to talk about it eventually."

He knew that, it was why he wanted to avoid it. Do his best to think of nothing, trying to will himself to sleep—think of something that had nothing to do with this nest or the Yokai—maybe his parents, that could work, didn't immediately lead back to this tangle of thoughts he was doing his best to avoid addressing—

He had been allowed to fly with his father and aunt on one of the raids, made to circle with Older-Light-Fury as she directed the flight—watched the whole thing with a growing gnawing feeling in his stomach, like something was eating him from the inside out—

Waited until they were back at the nest to ask why they attacked not-dragon nests.

The older Furies all exchanged glances, but it was his mother who looked at him and said "Come with me." Follow her, confused—

Flew with her in the pale dawn light.

"Tell me what you think of the not-dragons," she said after the nest had faded behind them. "Be truthful."

He swallowed then, thinking back on the white faces and black hides, as they had countered the dragons and ripped them out of the skies—"They're horrible. I wish I had never seen one they kill dragons."

"And the fact that Mountain-King had us attack them instead of fishing?"

"That's wrong too," he said, glancing back—that was why she had him out flying, he realized, to keep them from being overheard. "Why does he have us do it?"

"My understanding is he prefers the land-based food the not-dragons harvest," she said. Expression darkened. "It's also my understanding that he views it as a convenient way to get rid of dissenters."

"That's mean," he said.

"It is." Indicate an island ahead of them. "Come."

Land in a clear spot, follow her into a forest, looking around wide-eyed at all the greenery.

"The not-dragons," his mother said as they padded through the woods, ear flaps up and tipping as birds bounced from twig to twig, tracking them. "You call them horrible—if you could rid the world of them, would you?"

"I—" This felt like a trick question. "If you could rid the world of dragon-killers, why wouldn't you?"

"Why indeed." Snort. "There's an island not too far from the one with the not-dragons—they hunted every large thing on there, and now the rodents overrun the island and are stripping it bare. Everything exists for a reason, is there to keep the balance."

"I don't see how not-dragons fit in there," he said. "They—have you seen their island they've—it's like they've scraped it bare and built their nest there."

"Mmm," she noised, pausing to sniff at the ground—indicate he look. "Much like ants, aren't they? Ants will build themselves a nest that overruns the immediate area." Scraped the anthill flat with a paw. "And you can make it as if it never were, but they're industrious—if we came back tomorrow this anthill would be right back where it started."

He blinked at that, at her as she continued on.

"Not-dragons are like ants—they build nests that overrun the area, stay together and build because it pleases them," she said. "If you flew by their nests regularly you'd see them tear down trees to convert to nests, like how some ants rip up leaves to weave into their nest or birds use twigs in theirs."

"Yeah but—then the woods are gone," he countered, bounding after her. "Everything that lives in them is gone. Then it's an island with nothing on it."

"You think that their mark is permanent then?"

"I…yes."

She nodded, stopped and sat down. "Look around you—tell me what you see."

He did so—started, backed up against her when he saw the sharp angles of not-dragon nests—

Blinked, staring as he realized that these were just the shells of not-dragon nests, worn down by time and overgrown by the greenery surrounding it.

"Even though they build like the ant, eventually nature reclaims what is hers. Even our nest would grow moss and attract seagulls if we were to abandon it," his mother said. "Not-dragons may seem strange to you, but they're as much a part of Creation as we are. They belong here, have a right to live, the same as we do. Just because their behavior is foreign doesn't make them less than you."

"But they kill us," he protested.

"And we kill them," she said. "If someone were to attack our nest, wouldn't we defend it? What you saw was forced by Mountain-King—if he did not make it so, then the only time dragons and not-dragons would clash would be over disputes of territory." Hug him close with a paw, resting her jaw against his head and purring. "You're young—someday, you'll be able to take a step back and see that things aren't as clear-cut as you'd like. Someday, perhaps, you'll see the keelbone that keeps the world balanced in flight." Lick his head. "You're a smart dragon, you'll learn."

Open his eyes, sigh as he stared at nothing. Yes, maybe he had finally. It was easier to just think of them as other, as lesser, because to do so made the raids sting less. Yokai were dragon-killers, like Skrill or Slither Songs or Dragonbite vipers.

Yokai had also spared his brother and were willing to change. He had allowed one on his back, his friends had—Gogo, of all dragons, was perfectly fine with keeping them under her wing.

What if…everything they knew about them was wrong?

And then the bigger issue—he had been thinking of dragons as superior, and then here this nest did what the Yokai had done with Hiro, in stealing a not-dragon for their own use. They weren't better, they were just…all of them living on the same earth, in the same ecosystem, trying to make the best decisions.

And sometimes…sometimes they failed.