Ghost's Reign Chapter 55: Caves and Paints, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 55, everybody! Yes more schedule slippage February has not been less hectic than January.

Passing Zootopia reference pretty early on, and Obake is the guy who throws Snape out the window at the office Christmas party. Saying all that, a lot of this chapter and the next chapter was written ahead, so I'm glad to finally get this posted. XD

So since I established in book I that dragon scales were likely made of keratin, it's worth mentioning that burning hair or feathers actually kinda stinks—from experience, burning feathers weirdly smells like burnt popcorn. The inventor Obake is referencing is Thomas Edison—did a report on him for school way back in the day and was amused then and now by the fact that one of the substances he tried for the lightbulb filament was his landlord's beard hair. Like, my dude, what was your plan for if that worked? Also if one of your pots or pans catches fire putting a lid on it smothers it if you slide it in from the side instead of just slapping it down. Eggs, back in the day, were used as a binding agent which is what led me to excitedly yapping at my one friend when Mel mixed an egg in her paints in that one episode of Arcane. Also if you've been following me elsewhere then the word edifice looks familiar because of Edifice Coulee—basically it means construction or house but it often refers to stonework.

In other news, Honey Lemon has discovered art and the rest must now deal with the consequences.

The rest of the holidays passed calmly enough, all things considered. You know, with the issue of everyone bundled together like they were. Felix specifically kept getting asked how long repairs would take, which sent him back to work fairly quickly after New Year's, but considering Obake had retreated to his forge the day after Christmas (his exact words were "I've had enough festivities, now leave me alone"), Felix couldn't shake the sneaking feeling that he should have gotten back to work sooner.

Saying that...there were only so many times he could patch the same hole, and from prior experience he knew that certain things required the chief's approval when performing construction in a village. That the current chief was Obake was...unfortunate. Granted it would have been unfortunate with Callaghan too, but at least he knew how to pretend at affable sometimes.

Eventually, however, his workman's ethics overrode his trepidation, which led to him knocking on Obake's door bright and early that day. Was there a good chance he was over here too early, leading to his untimely death? Yes, yes there was, but certain things couldn't wait and he needed to address things and—

Suck in a sharp breath when Obake answered the door, glowered at him, eventually raised an eyebrow, brought it back down in irritation.

"Is there going to be a point to this, or was your plan to get me in a foul mood early?" he demanded.

"I—well—that is to say..." Deep breath, Obake arching an eyebrow as Felix tried to muster enough courage to forge ahead with this.

"So, before the whole…thing," Felix said, deciding to gloss over the whole dragons exploding through the roof thing that might still have this Yokai sore. "I was kind of hoping to talk to you about some new construction in the village?" Wince, hope the coming swing didn't hurt too bad.

Obake considered him. "Go bother Carl with this."

"Uh, actually, he told me to talk it over with you so…." This was going to end badly, he could feel it….

Wasn't expecting Obake to go "Fine go ahead" and walk off.

"Uh—uh wait!" he yelped, running after him. "The uh, the construction has to be looked at—discussed with—the chief—we…actually have to go over this?"

They had reached the forge by this time, and Obake had his usual resting done face on when he turned to face Felix. "Proceed," he sighed.

Okay so he hadn't expected to actually get this far. Start going over the various issues, pulled out a couple of scraps of paper stuffed to the brim with things they needed, start going over the main issues—mostly that they just didn't have the supplies—

"Knock down some of the worst-off buildings, salvage what you can from that," Obake cut in. "There's no point in letting it rot slowly."

Felix hesitated. "Actually…y-yeah there's…still a-a few of those." He and Ralph had been eyeing them for a while now, Ralph would be more than eager to knock them down. "But ah—there's…there's still the issue of raw wood, it needs to be treated, coated in something to slow it rotting out—"

Obake was looking pensive, and not at him—Felix followed his line of sight to see Hiro scratching at himself, flicking a few old scales off.

"I'll think of something," Obake said finally. "Now go get started on those buildings."

Code for get out. Felix was more than happy to oblige.

And just a mite confused.

Adjust his hat as he took a moment to compose himself…something felt different. He wasn't sure what it was, just that something had changed. Something beyond dragons no longer attacking, beyond Callaghan now being a dark spot on the horizon.

He didn't think it was Obake. Obake didn't feel different at all. Obake was still a terrifying entity in his book. But if it wasn't that, then what?

"Wrr?" Fixit the Terrible Terror noised, circling around him and watching carefully.

"Ah…right," he noised. "Let's just go…tell Ralph." Telling Ralph was a good idea, because then it meant work, and he could lose himself in his work and sort out what was bugging him then.

Hopefully.

Felix's request for something to better treat the wood had finally knocked loose an idea that had been circling tantalizingly close for a while, finally managed to pin it down and drag it in for proper examination and dissection.

And at the very least, it gave him something to do with that excess of scales.

"Wrr," Hiro noised, tipping his head and still somewhat baffled at Obake's experimenting—currently he was sitting on the table and watching as Obake slowly worked down the line he had created on his counterspace in the forge (the first experiment had convinced him that he didn't want to stink up his house).

"We never said experimentation was quick, Hiro," Obake told him, sorting through the buckets of labeled dragon scale, complete with a line of mortars and pestles to help prevent cross-contamination. The idea was that grinding them down would give it more surface area, and then after that it was experimenting with various chemicals in an attempt to convert the scales to a paint-like substance. After that, depending upon which scales took to the experiments would affect color and availability.

Thus far, he had done a good job of eliminating what didn't work and working through their backlog of scales. Also worth mentioning that certain dragon scales tended to explode when mixed with certain chemicals, which would just compound the construction problem but would be something interesting to pass on to Vinnie.

"So I heard that an Ancient inventor proposed that multiple failures weren't to be seen as failures, but as eliminating ways that wouldn't work," Obake said, running the next test. "Thus far I think we've eliminated quite a few ways."

"Wrr," Hiro noised, tipping his head at yet another flaming bowl.

"Yes, I noticed," Obake said, putting a lid on the bowl before pacing. "There's something I'm missing—as near as I've been able to determine dragon scale could just be another form of keratin, and that's a protein; what it needs is some sort of binding agent, like eggs for paint color—" Ah.

Procuring an egg for the experiment was a fetch-quest in and of itself, and the seagulls were less than happy at the act. Fair enough, but sacrifices had to be made in the name of progress.

"Hmm," Obake noised when they tested the latest version, mixing it thoroughly before scraping it along with a knife. "Not quite, but we might be on the right track here." Kind of glad that egg wasn't it, he didn't like imagining the logistics of that.

"Hrr," Hiro noised, sniffing at the bowl before licking up the contents.

"I wasn't done with that, Hiro," Obake sighed, watching as the little dragon had to contend with the powdered dragon scale included in the egg—shook his head, dragged his tongue along the table before pawing at it—

Tipped his head at Obake tipping his head, looked to see the streak of color.

Hiro was more than happy to provide the dragon saliva for the next test, was bouncing on his front paws as Obake ran the tests. Compared and contrasted letting the substance air-dry versus fire-dry, closely examining the end results...

Held up a hand to Hiro. "High five."

Hiro sat and put a paw against Obake's hand, looked at him before balling a paw, to Obake's intrigue. Had to imitate at the little dragon's insistence—

Hiro bumped his nose against Obake's fist before tipping away with all his head nubs flared, making a psshaw noise as he did so. Obake looked at his fist, back at Hiro—

"Fist bump. Good boy."

Hiro's gummy grin suggested he agreed with this sentiment.

Felix was similarly excited about this new development, that being, surprisingly, exactly what he had asked for. No wait, that wasn't entirely true, this was coming along in nice bright colors and was better than he had hoped.

"Wow!" Felix exclaimed, after the first few strokes. "And—you said this paint was fireproof?"

"Mostly," Obake said. "I haven't tested Nightmare scales yet, but these are mostly from Gronkles and Nadders."

"Oh hey! Good news, Wreckit, you can be doing something while we work!" Ralph exclaimed, scratching the Rumblehorn under the jaw.

Obake made a dismissive noise at Ralph before redirecting his attention to Felix. "Focus on where the paint needs to be, and save thicker coats for later—we only get so much a week."

Felix nodded, started calculating which areas needed to be fireproof and painted specifically—asked about thinning the paint because it was terribly thick…dragon spit and scales. Who would have guessed?

And it occurred to him, after Obake left, that he had said this was a limited but renewable resource.

We only get so much a week.

He couldn't help but glance at Fixit, who had squirmed under the supporting strut of a sawhorse and was scratching his back that way—what they got per week was what the dragons shed, he realized.

The old Yokai would have happily slaughtered their resources for the short-term gain.

"Hey, let me try?" Ralph asked, lifting the paint bucket and brush from him. "Save you climbing up the ladder."

"Uh, yeah, sure," Felix said, pacing away. "I need to…prioritize…support beams are probably most important…."

Fixit scurried after him, chirping in confusion—he stopped, kneeled to scratch along the Terror's back…something he wouldn't have dared tried just a few months prior.

And, just a few months prior, his orders were to rebuild the war machines first—not tear them apart for scraps.

Maybe…maybe things were looking up finally.

Obake had happily tested to see if the paint was fireproof, which it was—this was to be expected, draconic outsides tended to be fireproof as well. Case in point being Nightmares, which reminded him: Nightmare scale paint tended to catch fire, especially if Nightmare spit was used. Note to self, don't use that combo.

Saying that, if you didn't get bogged down by that you had access to every color a dragon presented; currently Obake was experimenting with different colors, scale combos, and substances. Yes, it coated wood nicely, but it was a fair shake on stone too, and reacted nicely with cloth, although the latter led him to try conventional dye work with it.

And even better: this gave him something to do with all the Night Fury scales he had been collecting.

But in the meantime, now that they had something to do with all those scales that wouldn't sell (note to self, have some of the traders see what happened with selling paint), he was also forced and able to address one of Calhoun's concerns; namely, making it so they could identify their own dragons.

"A few simple marks, to be renewed, where we can quickly identify the dragon," Obake told her, demonstrating with Hiro, who went cross-eyed and started scrubbing at his nose. "Probably not on the end of the snout."

"Probably," Calhoun said drily. Considered him. "Could put your symbol on them."

"No. Come up with something else."

"It's not like the rune is that complex."

"And you'd fly under that standard?" he demanded. "Pick. Something. Else."

"The extra punctuation doesn't work on me," she said as Kasso looked over her shoulder, Hiro yipping at him and apparently selling the concept; considered it before dipping a couple of fingers in the paint before swiping them along the left side of Kasso's snout.

"That work for you?" she asked Obake, indicating her work. "A few swipes across the left-hand side of the face?"

"That does," Obake said, handing her a rag to wipe her hand on, Kasso licking at his snout and testing the paint. "Simple, easy to work with."

"And still ties back to you."

"How do you figure?" Glowered when she pointedly tapped the left side of her face, where he knew that flared on him sometimes, vividly pink-violet. "Do you just take delight in aggravating me, or is there some deeper motive?"

"The aggravating is a bonus," Calhoun said, taking the paint. "I'll start informing the riders, you can do the chieftain thing and inspect the progress on the stables."

"Stables implies horses and cows," Obake pointed out. "Dragons are neither."

"You can put coming up with a better term on your to-do list."

"Aggravating woman," Obake muttered under his breath as Kasso turned to fly her off.

"I heard that."

The quote-unquote 'stables' were actually the old cave system that Hiro and Obake had hidden out in alongside Enoka and the gaggle of Terrors; Obake had been toying with the idea of expanding them as lodgings for the dragons, since they already favored the caves, had decided to go ahead with that project when Mole finally returned with his maps of the cave systems going through the island. Already Obake had marked a couple of the tunnels the now-absent Whispering Death had dug vertically as ideal shortcuts between the great hall and the caves, was now engineering stairs and elevators for them. Stair-carving had definitely given people something to do during the colder months, to their chagrin.

As for the rest of the system...carved torch chinks had brightened the place up, as did knocking a few holes into the last cave in the line. Several of the caves were filled with hatchlings and mothers, and Obake entering ended up with a cloud of dragonets chasing after his heels.

"That's a good look for you," Momakase teased.

"Very funny," Obake spat at her, doing his best to ignore the feeling of dragon hatchlings hanging off the tips of his longcoat. "Calhoun informs me I need to be inspecting this location."

"Inspect away," she said, waving a hand at the cavern filled with dragons and Yokai, dumped a bucket of fish into a trough. "Also come up with a better term than stables it makes me feel like we should have horses here."

"Ah good, we agree. Cavate."

"Who?"

"Cavate—it means to hollow out or excavate, which a Whispering Death did for us, and is used to refer to cliff dwellings. Hence, Cavate."

"Eh," she noised, shrugging. "Needs an extra something in it, right now it sounds too plain."

"I'll think on it," he said, examining the entrance and the plateau facing it; if you went to the edge you could easily look down on the village, and several dragons were taking advantage of the location and sunning themselves. Worked nicely as a takeoff and landing location, he had to admit that, would need to machine up a faster way to get from the village up to here and vice versa without using dragons.

Momakase followed as he walked through the rest of the system to inspect the work, probably because she didn't have anything better to do. Or, more likely, she was looking for something to be needling about, that sounded like her. The elevator worked when he tested it, and the one shaft sounded like plenty of work was being done in it; Mole had been tasked with starting the initial hole into the great hall from the shaft, since he knew the location of both, and once that task had been completed it had been followed by working a spiraling stairwell into the rock. Look down, could see some light spilling in from the great hall and a few flickering torches.

"You give me the impression you're contemplating something," Momakase said when they reached the end of the cavern system, looking out the round tunnel to the sea.

"Edifice Cavate," Obake told her. "In the meantime, we need a better exit here for the larger dragons, right now anything larger than a Gronkle would have to drop out first." Pace into the first cave, considering the wall. "This could work, we'd have to get Ralph and Mole to go over the structural integrity to see if it could be opened further, and then we'd need an option to close it against weather or discovery."

"Aw, look at you being all chiefy," Momakase teased, looking far too amused for his tastes. "You really think someone would firstly get close enough to this side and secondly be able to climb up here."

"Fortune favors the prepared," he said stiffly. "And I'm less worried about someone getting up here as I am of those inside getting out in case of emergency. Right now this is a pinch point, a bottleneck, the sort of thing you or I would happily take advantage of if we had a target with this weakness."

The noise she made was part dismissive, part agreeing. "Let's be honest, this whole tunnel system consists of pinch points," she said, gesturing down the tunnel they had used. "Most instances, it'd be better to take advantage of that and funnel our opponents in."

"Until they employ incendiary devices, gas, poison, explosives...what we really need is a few alternative routes." Contemplate what he could remember of Mole's maps, didn't think there was another easy way out without quite a bit of mining. "Pity we don't have a Whispering Death handy."

"We'll put it on your shopping list," she said, eyeing some of the Terrible Terrors that had trailed after them. "Find some dragon nest and trade some Terrors for them. Do you remember if Abigail had one?"

"Oh aren't you funny," he said drily; tipped his head at Tadashi sticking his head in. "In the meantime, you and I will test coming in and out of that exit and then you can get back to whatever job you're avoiding."

"And what makes you think I'm avoiding a job?"

"You're needling me, for starters," he said, grabbing the saddle that Tadashi dragged forward. "Secondly I've already talked to Calhoun and I know she's looking for all hands on deck."

"And yet I suspect that as soon as you're out you'll make yourself unavailable," she accused as Gogo came down the tunnel.

"Ah, but see, I have already done my 'chiefy' job for the moment—now it's just a matter of delegating."

"You see what he puts me through?" Momakase demanded of Gogo; examined her critically before looking at him. "Speaking of projects that need addressing, any dragon taller than a Gronkle is going to scrape their rider off in here; as it is, I'm going to have to be hugging her neck on the way out and in."

"And I'll delegate telling Carl that to you," he told her cheekily; tapped Tadashi so he'd go diving out of the bolt hole.

As he suspected, Tadashi's greater wingspan required him to dive out before snapping his wings open; granted, that wasn't a good barometer, as Tadashi preferred to dive off cliffs to get started. Probably most of the dragons did, he reflected as they circled around to watch Gogo exit. Directed Tadashi to return to that exit to see how he handled it, ended up having to hang on tight as Tadashi landed and scrambled up into the hole, infinitely grateful that he had included some functioning safety belts to keep him in the saddle. Hop off once they were in, Tadashi heading into the side cave to circle around, turn to keep an eye on Gogo as she arrowed for the entrance—had to backpedal quickly when her approach for getting in that hole was to aim right for it, throw her feet forward and fold her wings in, basically having to engage in a staggering run to manage. Judging by Momakase's screaming and clinging to Gogo's neck, she didn't approve of this approach.

"About widening this entrance," Obake posed.

"You want me to tell Helga to keep an eye out for Whispering Deaths?" Momakase muttered into Gogo's scales, still with a death-grip on her.

"If you don't mind."

Hiro had told them that the Yokai wanted them all to cycle through the larger cliff cave ("By the way it has an official title now the Yokai are calling it the Edifice Cavate so when they say that that's what they mean"), which meant that, as Light Furies, it fell to Honey Lemon and Cass to ensure everyone did. Light Furies directed dragon flights, would fly high overhead and keep track of everyone, and that sort of thing extended to nest work as well.

Although honestly, she had no idea what the Yokai were doing—some grooming work, yes, which was always welcome and reinforced flight status, but also something strange with each dragon's face on the left side. Pad up to Momakase, busy tending to a Nadder, croon questioningly.

"This is Obake's fault, by the way," Momakase told her. "He gave me the impression Calhoun was looking for me, turns out she wasn't but took advantage anyway. Don't tell him, but there will be consequences."

"Maybe nothing too mean," Honey Lemon offered; watched as she dipped the stick into the bowl, ran it over the Nadder's scales—

Perked up in surprise when it left a long stripe in a new color.

"It tickles," the Nadder reported, shaking his spines a little. "What is she doing?"

"She's…I don't know—she's taking those colors and putting some on your scales," Honey Lemon reported, dipping a claw in one of the colors—it came out dripping and bright. "Using this stuff." Taste it—didn't taste good at all.

But when she put her paw down, it left one perfect claw shape on the floor.

"Oooh!" she noised, wriggling a bit as she moved her paw—same result until she worked the color off. Try another color—same results, and did she detect a pattern? More claws in the next color, this time smearing it along the stones—oh man that was so cool!

"Hey!" Momakase barked as she dipped her claws back in the colors. "I'm using those!"

Honey Lemon wasn't listening, Honey Lemon was busy smearing all the colors together until her claws scraped clean—all together made a muddy mess, but some of them together made new colors, and when she jumped around with them on her paws they left her pawprints everywhere—

"This is so AWESOME!" she squealed, bouncing against the walls and leaving prints there—ooh, she had an idea—

"I give up," Momakase sighed.

Flying was starting to progress a little better, in that Tadashi's back wasn't twitching so much for having a Yokai on it. Said Yokai was also asking about more dramatic flight maneuvers, the sorts of thing that Night Furies liked to do, so that was nice…it was just annoying that it was a Yokai, specifically this Yokai, that was after it.

Mostly because it made Hiro insufferable.

"Will you stop?" Tadashi demanded as they swooped in for a landing. "Yeah, yeah, I get it, you're happy I'm playing nice with your Yokai. Stop rubbing it in."

"Sorry, I am TOTALLY going to rub it in," Hiro crowed, bouncing around before heading into the cave system on the leeward side of the island, the one they were slowly expanding to help give the dragons a space to sleep and be tended to as well. Next big step in the dragon-Yokai alliance, according to Hiro and backed by Fred. "You like him—you like him you're getting attached I win."

"Yeah yeah, whatever," Tadashi grumbled, following him in, Obake trailing after and musing on what to try next.

They froze upon entering.

"Since when did we decide we needed abstracts?" Obake asked.

"Ask your dragon," Momakase shot back from behind a Gronkle that now had more colors than Gronkles generally had.

"You'd tell me if this was excessive, right?" the Gronkle asked.

Which was about the time Honey Lemon went running back to the wall, trailing paint all along the floor as she went, slapping her paws against the wall and dragging them around to make odd shapes before running back to where an awful lot of paint was smeared everywhere.

"Oh wow," Hiro noised.

"Honeysuckle! What are you doing?" Tadashi asked, looking floored.

Attracting attention was the wrong thing to do—she spotted them, practically bursting with happiness, bounded over, splattering paint everywhere—her usually pristine-white scales were coated in nearly every color imaginable.

"Isn't this AMAZING!?" she asked, wriggling mightily. "It's just these colors in bowls but when you put them on your claws you can make patterns and pictures and I'm hearing them keep referring to it as art and it's SO AWESOME!" she all but screamed, pattering her paws against Tadashi's head excitedly before bounding back to the paints. Tadashi spluttered at the wet on his face, shot a glare at Hiro laughing at him. Hiro ducked the swipe to his head, bounded after Obake, who was stalking over to yell at Momakase better.

"And I don't suppose it crossed your mind to stop her, did it?" he shot over to her.

"Yeah," Momakase said, sitting on a ledge and sharpening a knife. "Except the only one around here stupid enough to tell a Fury what to do is you."

"Wow," Hiro noised, as Obake blew an irritated sigh. "Respects you SO much."

"Alphas never get the respect they deserve," Tadashi said, coming up behind them and trying to wipe some of the paint off of his face. "Ugh, some of it got in my mouth."

"Does it taste good?"

"No, surprisingly."

Obake, meanwhile, had turned his attention to Carl, hands on his hips as he glared at the bigger man. "And I don't suppose you made an effort."

"Not really," Carl said, shrugging a little as he went back to scrubbing a different Gronkle's hide.

"Obviously," Obake hissed—Hiro's ears perked; he always expected fire after that noise. "Well, I suppose the pink pawprints all over you are a statement."

"Yeah—they say I'm comfortable with my masculinity."

Hiro had the feeling Obake had been angling for an insult and missed, if the way he rolled his eyes were any indication. Any further comment was distracted by Honey Lemon bounding up and putting several pawprints along the Gronkle's jaw before patting Carl several times, leaving some bright yellow pawprints to go with the pink ones before bounding away again.

"This is ridiculous," Obake muttered, watching her go.

"Do I get a special pawprint?" Hiro called after her.

"Hold on!" Honey Lemon yelped, splashing her paws in the paint. "I need to figure out a way to carry this around—" Run up to him, put a pawprint right on his head—

And then jump on Obake, paws slapping down on his shoulders—the Yokai went down with a yelp, Honey Lemon licking his face before bounding on to her next artistic target.

Carl half-turned to look down at him. "Pink suits you."

Obake looked like he was going to murder Carl when he got back up.