Ghost's Reign Chapter 51: Pork is a Nice Sweet Meat, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 51, everybody! Happy Boxing Day, we're good for the next several weeks but at least we're closing the year out! Also apologies if I'm a bit incoherent I just saw Sonic 3 and it was worth all the hype. \.o./

The bit with Obake and Momakase returning to the rabbit island was written well ahead, as was the discussion about Dagur, although the latter recently got shuffled to this chapter after being part of a later chapter and then shuffled up when what I was writing necessitated it not being there anymore. Also Obake's more referencing Guardians of Ga'Hoole since the scientific term for rabbits is lapin.

In other news, when people in the country say they need automatic rifles, it is 100% because of two things: boars and bears. I will never choose the bear, bears are functionally bulletproof against lower calibers, and boars run on the attitude if I'm dying I'm taking you with me and YOU are the other white meat, bucko. Them pigs will eat anything, and for all those disappearances you hear about in the wilderness, my first response has always been "something ate them." Saying this, dragons change the narrative somewhat and I've also recently learned of boar taint? Would explain why we as a country don't go whole hog (pun intended) on hunting these guys, especially considering they're an invasive species here in the US.

Continuing with the pork-related business...blood pudding, AKA black pudding is a UK thing, I think, and is indeed made with blood. As for scrapple...as far as I can tell that's a New England/Mid-Atlantic thing, and as Mom describes it, it's everything that you would usually throw out after doing up a pig. Basically, it's everything but the oink ground up into a processed meat and I...do not like the texture at all which makes it a tad awkward when my parents have it because they don't have that problem.

Assorted tidbits include Obake sort-of quoting Ice Age and Helga referencing what Africa used to be called before Dr. David Livingstone went there—it was called the Dark Continent because nobody knew what the interior was like, between the animals and the natives people usually didn't return. As for the chapter title...that was also a chapter title in the movie Babe, and is usually what I think of when we're having pork.

Momakase sought Obake out a few days later.

"I'll give you a break from the kill ring if you help me with this," she said, sticking her head in.

"I'm not helping you hide a body," he told her.

"This is more along the lines of I need this assembled on-location otherwise people get suspicious. Or do you want me to leave you here so someone can pester you again? I hear Calhoun's looking for you."

Oi. "Give me a minute."

Tadashi's attitude towards this was politely baffled trending towards concerned as they followed Gogo south, not swinging east until they were well out of sight of the island.

"So what endeavor are you needing me for?" he asked her.

"Traps," she told him, lounging back on Gogo's spine to address him. "Preferably ones that can be made on-site, I didn't want to tip anyone off as to what I was doing."

"Ah. And you don't think showing up with rabbits is going to be a big tipoff?"

"Also I need more rabbit furs to line my clothes with, winter's coming and I am not being cold this time."

"Now this is a concept I can get behind."

The next few days were a success in trapping and making a dent on the rabbit ecosystem that was overrunning the island. Considering the occasional scale he found, Obake suspected the dragons had been helping in this regard.

Even better, Momakase had had enough foresight to pack a pot and skillet so they could stuff themselves silly on rabbit meat and fresh greens before heading back. And, after his current stint of doing chieftain work, he couldn't deny that he was more than happy to be reclining and digesting without worry of being bothered. Present company excluded, of course.

"We still need a name for the rabbit island," Momakase said, poking at the fire.

"Lapis Island," Obake said, not opening his eyes.

"Lapis? Like Lapis Lazuli?"

"Lapis like the scientific name for rabbits."

"Nerd."

"Well one of us has to be the smart one." Grinned when she slapped at his legs. "And it won't tip most of the Yokai off, since they wouldn't know."

Momakase considered this. "Okay fine that checks out."

"Glad you agree." Focus on Hiro and Tadashi cantering around so his little smile could be attributed to their antics. He couldn't deny that this had been a good week…had to take a few moments to process that, despite the various annoyances, he couldn't say that the past few weeks had been bad.

"What are you thinking about?" Momakase asked, leaning on her elbow against a log, twirling her knife in the pot like she was debating on one more little chunk of meat.

"Reviewing the past month or so," Obake told her.

She made a noise at that, somehow capturing the entirety of his feelings on the matter with that simple hum. "The start was a little rocky."

"That was last month."

"Oh sure." Eye him like she was debating on how to proceed. "I think the others like having a goal to work towards."

"I'm sure Calhoun and Helga appreciate having something more constructive than a coup to work on."

She wasn't quick enough to hide her twitch. "So you knew about that."

"I had suspected—there's a difference." Frown a little at the fire as he considered those two—their jobs hadn't particularly changed since Callaghan had been ousted, he generally was either in the room or heard shortly afterwards whatever they had reported, but there was something different about being reported directly to, without the buffer of someone else between him and them. In all honesty, he still wasn't so sure about this whole chieftain thing, a variation of the imposter syndrome that had plagued him all his life continuing to pester him now.

Momakase watched him for a while, like she was debating on how to proceed. "I notice the course has moving obstacles now."

"It took me a while to figure out how to machine it up," Obake admitted. "But I'm noticing steeper improvement."

"That usually follows a steeper learning curve," she said; sighed and leaned back, looking around. "The only problem is, now those nudniks are going to find this place."

"I suspect the dragons already knew," Obake said, tapping a knife thoughtfully. "It does make a nice change of pace from fish."

"And fresh greens for once," she sighed, reclining. "Pity I can't get them to grow on Yokai, I know the moment I turn my back they'll get snitched."

"And then the murder happens," Obake said absently, staring into the fire.

She noticed. "What are you thinking?"

"Of solutions to our current problems," he told her. "Because if we can get the items ourselves, then we don't need to be bothering with trade, now do we?"

"You just don't like interacting with people."

"Traders," he muttered darkly.

She leaned forward. "That's your planning face—what are you planning?"

"To use some of Helga's information to our advantage."

After a few weeks of this mess Obake decided that the right proper way to test these fools' progress was to announce a hunt—anyone could memorize an obstacle course even with moving parts, but tracking down and killing prey was an entirely different ball of wax. The temptation of fresh red meat would be motivation enough, he was certain, and the information Helga had brought back from her scouting trips before leaving had given him a general idea of where to try.

Plus, his planned target would certainly weed out the chaff, as it were.

"Boar are a particularly difficult species to hunt," he said, looking over his volunteers. "This, because they do not surrender, they will fight until their last breath and they will eat you once they're done goring you. It takes many shots to bring one down and they will run up a sword or spear in their endeavors to get to you. Theoretically, with the help of a dragon such a hunt should be simple." Eye the current lineup. "Understand that my money is on the boar. Prove me wrong."

"Please do," Momakase agreed, leaning against Gogo's leg. "He did actually bet money."

Calhoun rolled her eyes, ran the others up into the air, rounded on Obake once they were relatively alone. "You couldn't have picked an easier first target?"

"Remind me how you put it?" he asked her. "Something about the kitten fights stopping about now?"

"If we're heading to the island I think we are, every single advantage is going to be with the swine," she grumbled, getting on Kasso and following the others up there. He glanced at Momakase, who shrugged—

Got on Tadashi and hung on, the Night Fury zipping up high above the others before angling away, Momakse on her Nadder helping lead the way to the island. Tadashi took this opportunity to angle around the little flock following them, allowing Obake the chance to evaluate how everyone was doing.

"Well, no one's fallen off yet," he observed, currently sitting backwards in the saddle and reclining at ease, to at least a few peoples' annoyance that he could see. Yes, see how he was doing advanced things on the back of a Night Fury and only asking that the rest of you stay in your stupid saddles. Sit crosslegged as he mostly turned to face forward again, calculating distance and planning on how to handle things once they got there; Calhoun was likely right, the island was heavily forested and would probably have brush and bramble further complicating things. Burning it all out was the quick and dirty way to solve the problem...but then it would likely destroy the ecosystem on the island, and he wanted them to get out of the habit of cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Hence why he directed Tadashi to land on a sea stack before the island proper, evaluating the spit of land as the others came in for a landing.

"You won't be able to use fire for this endeavor," he announced, glancing back to see how this would be taken. "Or explosives," he added, narrowing his eyes at Vinnie.

Vinnie took note of everyone eyeballing him. "Maybe I finish this later, yeah?" he asked, putting the explosive device he had been working on away.

"You're not proposing going in there after them," Audrey said, eyeing the island.

"Where the advantage is with the boar? Not hardly," Obake said. "No, I have some other ideas to test."

The ideas being circling around the island, dragons bellowing to drive the pigs to distraction before having the Furies shoot some plasma bolts into the deep brush to flush them out, Baymax circling behind to make sure the bolts didn't catch, frosting several more patches to limit the animals' options. Nadders carefully aiming so their spines didn't poison the meat, Zipplebacks belching gas into the woods to further disorient and blind—

And when the first boar stumbled out into the open, it was to further distraction, bristling with arrows before barreling clean off the island, having charged angrily at a dragon and rider taunting it, crashing into the ocean to be flamed by a Nightmare, the water unable to wash the sticky fire off.

There was more than one triumphant bellow when the Nightmare flew back up, rider cheering at the dead boar in the dragon's claws.

By then the gas was starting to disperse but more wild pigs were making themselves known, getting crashed into by Gronkles skidding across the field and body-checking them, Markowski and his Rumblehorn actually barreling into the brush at one point to flush more out—said Rumblehorn came out the other side, Markowski with the pig speared and braced as the dragon muscled it off the island to a fate similar to the first's, powering off before another could charge out behind it to take revenge, ending up volunteering to be a roast dinner itself—

Several piglets also tumbled off, and Obake was certain ordering them returned to the island had earned him a few raised eyebrows.

"They need to be bigger than that before we bother," Obake said, trying to ignore the way Calhoun was eyeing him.

"Whatever," Calhoun said. "Are we considering storing some away or are we planning a gorging?"

"Get a few more," he ordered. "We do have dragons."

And dragons were fans of red meat too, as it turned out.

This, they found out because they were happily making short work of the offal discarded and licking up the blood, making Obake hope that they wouldn't have to deal with blood pudding and scrapple—he had his limits, and terrible texture was one of them.

The dragons were also interested in seeing what was done with that which remained, meat set up to smoke (which several Nightmares were happy to provide), a couple of whole hogs treated and buried in a bed of coals, hams and pork bellies set aside for treating, grilled bits of pork, crisped pork skins (dragon fire burning off all the hair saved a lot of effort there), bones boiled for broth...part of it was also likely due to them watching the food, several dragons happy to snap at a bone or scrap thrown at them, but also seeming happy at the general air back in the village.

And the general air was celebratory for once. Several full-sized hogs and a reduced number of Yokai meant that there wasn't the usual brutal fighting over fresh meat, although the dragons might have been helpful there as well. Those with riders weren't tolerant of them getting pushed around, would even jockey with each other, but they also wouldn't tolerate their riders acting out of turn either. Several tried bringing complaints to Obake, only for him to point out "They are, at minimum, as intelligent as you are—more so, in the case of several of you," he added with a cutting glare. "What, pray tell, were you expecting?"

That declaration succeeded in getting the Yokai to quiet down some—possibly the idea that the creatures they had been fighting were as intelligent as they were was as sobering to them as it had been to him. Note Calhoun making her way to him through the rest of the party, waited until she was close enough before addressing her. "I don't actually have to say don't hunt that island by yourselves, do I? Because I was hoping I wasn't dealing with that level of idiocy."

"Good, we agree," she said bluntly. "Letting you know I have a guard on the meat that's curing, depending on the weather and appetites we might want to try another expedition before winter." Glance at him. "Unless you want to share where Momakase got those rabbits."

"I prefer life, thanks."

"Sometimes I wonder," she muttered, looking away—twitch at her Nightmare suddenly sitting up, focused on a point in the night sky. Felt himself getting to his feet even as Calhoun reached for her crossbow, feel for his spyglass as the dragon bellowed—

Had an answering Nadder screech in return.

"I may be mistaken, but that might be Helga back," Obake observed.

"We need markers for these dragons," Calhoun said, waving at the Nadder descending—it angled to land near them, revealing that yes, Helga was on its back, it was one of theirs. Fine, she had a point.

"You people decide to have a party while I was gone?" Helga asked, dismounting.

"We've even got the drinks with the little umbrellas," Dibs offered, holding a finger and thumb up.

"Cute. You come bearing gifts, I hope," Obake told her.

"Something you might like," Helga said, tossing him a little container. He caught it, examined it—spice of some sort. Open it sample the insides—snort when he recognized it as five-powder spice, something that was supposed to keep obake away.

"Very funny," he told her drily, handing it off to Momakase. "Here—I understand that tastes good on pork."

"Oh nice—hey, if I sprinkle this on my doorjamb, does that mean you leave me alone?" Momakase snarked.

"Me bothering you isn't the problem—you bothering me is."

"Sure it is," she said, looking amused as she darted to season some meat.

"Oh give me strength," he muttered, looking skywards before turning to Helga. "About everything else."

She glanced at the others. "Do you want Carl and Calhoun in on this, or am I going to have to explain this more than once?"

Narrow his eyes at her, debating—some parts he didn't want getting around. "Let's see to your dragon first."

Helga didn't comment until she had a haunch of meat and they were leading Kogeki over to a barn. "The part about there being a price on your head is common knowledge at this point."

"Let's not go giving people ideas," he said sternly, unbuckling Kogeki's saddle. "Now what did you find out?"

"I asked a few trader islands—no one can give me a name, just that some guy is asking for a live obake on behalf of his mistress. He sails under this standard," she added, tugging a piece of paper out and handing it to him. It looked like a stylized X with lines going horizontally between the top and bottom parts, something like a twisted ladder. "Blond, probably around our height and build, tan enough to come from further south but not so far south as the Dark Continent."

"That doesn't narrow it down," he muttered, tapping the paper against his chin as he glowered at nothing. "What else?"

"It's possible that he's the guy the Moss-Huts were going to sell you to," she said. "I tried determining where the guy came from but the best I can manage right now is further south in the Archipelago, possibly further east. Not the continent, I can glean that much."

"The continent would make more sense; no one in the Archipelago would actually want an obake," he said, pacing slightly as he turned this information over.

"Barring at least one tribe," Helga said with amusement. "But to brighten your mood, I did find you a magnifying glass—explaining the grief I went through to get it strays out of solely concerning you territory, though."

"I suppose that was the extent of the information you could glean on that subject," he said, irritated at having more questions instead of something he could wrangle into an answer.

It was, which was why Helga was sitting at a table with Obake, Calhoun, and Carl—and the unfortunate additions of Momakase and Dibs, who decided that they saw fit to inject themselves into the situation.

"I picked over that sea glass island to get a proper bribe," she explained as she picked at her meal—possibly she had also eaten well while she was gone, considering she wasn't tackling it with the ravenousness the rest of them had started with. "General reports are the same: some tribe up north along the Meridian of Misery is flooding the market with dragon scales."

"Including Night Fury scales?" Obake asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Best I can get there is that the head of the trader guild has a source and he refuses to give it up; he hasn't even told the other members of his guild how he knows this."

"Someone didn't actually manage to kill off a dragon nest, did they?" Dibs asked, lifting his chin from his crossed arms.

"More likely they found some dead dragons and decided to take advantage of it," Obake said. "That plastic trash doesn't digest, some dragons could have eaten some and died off."

"At a big enough rate to impact the economy like that? Not likely," Calhoun said.

"I didn't say it was."

"So what now?" Momakase asked, glancing at Obake before focusing on Helga.

"For now at least the sea glass is trading well," Helga said. "I was able to use small handfuls of the rarer colors for effective bribes. Until this boom dies off, we can use that to trade."

"So long as we don't flood the market."

"Seems a pity to let those scales go to waste," Obake said, sorting through potential alternative uses for shed dragon scales. "Anything else worth mentioning?"

"Berserker Island had some dealings with an island to the south," Helga said, glancing at him in a way that suggested it was the one with the strange standard. "Understand why I didn't pursue that lead."

"Ulch," Obake noised in disgust. "Maybe we're lucky and that fool Dagur went and got himself killed."

"Do we have a backup plan for the next mercenary meeting?" Carl asked him.

"I suppose we could ask Vinnie nicely to blow up the meeting, that'd brighten his day."

Honey Lemon huffed at him, pawed the air a little to get him looking at her, leaned over a bit, the back of her skull tilted at him the way Hiro did when he was begging for pets.

"You do realize I have a reputation to uphold," he told her, reputation not stopping him from acquiescing to her request.

"Yes, you're terrifying," Carl assured him. "You never did say what we're doing about the meeting."

"Meeting? What meeting?" Dibs asked. "Not the one with all the uh, the mercenary bands—I thought you did that meeting already."

"Other forces are at play and stirring the waters up," Obake said, keeping his tone calm even when he felt his nose and the muscles around it wanting to crinkle. "Another meeting after devastating winter breaks is inevitable—and I doubt they'll buy Callaghan being busy elsewhere and sending us in his stead a second time."

Dibs seemed a little baffled. "So tell them you're in charge?"

"Yes, because I have a death wish."

"Um, hello, you're petting a Fury—you know, the most dreaded of dragons? That waltz in and out of your house?"

"And they're understandable," Obake countered, scratching Honey Lemon under the chin. "The mercenary leaders are not—and did I mention that we have the good fortune to be seeing the Beserkers under new management? I'm not sure if you're in the know enough to have heard of Dagur the Deranged."

Dibs scratched his face, thinking. "What happened to Oswald the Agreeable?"

"He died, as we understood it," Carl said.

"Messily," Obake clarified. "And most likely at the hands of his son Dagur. He certainly struck me as being unhinged enough."

"Yay," Dibs noised unenthusiastically. "And they know where we live and probably the only reason they haven't wiped us off the map is because we do raiding and dragon-killing for them and now we do neither and OH MAN we're dead we're all dead—"

"And that is why you weren't invited to the meeting."

"You have no chill," Carl told Dibs.

Baymax lifted his head, looked at Dibs in confusion, made a hrrh noise that sounded vaguely baffled.

"It's a figure of speech," Dibs assured Baymax, prompting the Wooly Howl to rumble something—Honey Lemon huffed and warbled a little before pawing at Obake and lifting her chin for more scratches.

"I think you'd better think seriously about my suggestion," Calhoun said.

"Which is?" Momakase asked.

"None of your business," Obake told her.

Calhoun crossed her arms and leaned back a little against the wall. "We've been going back and forth about a defensive force since we started with flight training. If you're serious about this, if none of this was in service to going back to marauding, then you're going to have to have a plan for when those sharks come after us."

Unfortunately, this was true—no one would buy Callaghan skipping a second meeting, it was either present himself as the new leader of the Yokai or not show at all, and either one had the potential for presenting weakness.

Exhale slowly through his nose. "We're going into winter—that means we have a couple of months to come up with a proper plan." And it would have to be that—hoping that Dagur went and got himself killed was only dealing with one problem, there was still Alvin and the rest of the marauders...and Callaghan himself. Possibly he realized that things on Yokai were doing better than he had expected, what with seeing riders on dragons...which meant he would be treating them as a serious threat and not expecting to come back to a decimated island.

Glance at Calhoun, saw her arch an eyebrow. "I need another week before I concede," he told her.

"I'll take it," she said, shrugging.

"In the meantime," Dibs said, hooking a pan and dragging it over. "To bacon!"