Chapter 56, everybody, and the last chapter of Part 1!

So quick heads up, this fic is going to be on a brief pause until April—always intended to take a month off between parts to ensure that the outline was at least contemplated and the beginning of the next part was ironed out, have the next five chapters done but I definitely want the next story arc ironed out before we resume updates (probably also watch some HTTYD shows too for the vibes). Been doing at least 100 words a day on this fic so if all else fails, updates will be a bit steadier from here on out.

Updates will resume April 3rd.

Back to the fic...yeah Honey Lemon has discovered art and has every intention of making it everyone's problem, specifically Obake's. And yes everything's going to turn out kinda bad when you first start—that's because you're first starting. As Full Sail put it, you have to get the ten sucky scripts out of the way before improvement is a possibility.

In other news, my old art teacher Red Engle taught me that you only really needed five colors—white, yellow, red, blue, and brown. Every single color you can get from those five, including black—blue and brown make black, and depending upon how much of either you add gives you warm or cool shadows.

Moving on—seriously movie 3 gives us this, tells us that Hiccup's outfit is made from Toothless' scales, and then doesn't show the logical conclusion? We should have had a scene where Hiccup fades back into existence right as he sucker-punches Grimmel. How's that, mister Night-Fury-expert!? Yeah I'm still salty about movie 3 and news of a live-action version just has me torn between total apathy and opening up a salt mine. /

Big Hero 6 © 2014 Disney

How to Train Your Dragon © 2010 DreamWorks

Obake did not in fact murder Carl, and everyone had to give up trying to clean up Honey Lemon's mess when she stopped them—she wouldn't even let them clean her up.

"It's art," she told them. "It's supposed to look like this."

"Like your sand scratches?" Tadashi asked.

"Yes but BETTER because it doesn't wash away with the next tide!"

Wasabi tipped his head until his horns were pointing to the ground. "Yeah…but what is it supposed to be?"

Honey Lemon wiggled, thrilled at the opportunity to explain her work and try to share the sheer joy that had gone with it. "Okay, so up there is the sun, and this is the sky, and down here is Yokai—see, it's dark at the bottom to represent its past, but now there's all these bright colors here to represent us all living in harmony—and up here are more dragons, and these are us—see that's Gogo and there's Fred and Tadashi and me and Hiro and Wasabi and Baymax—"

Baymax blinked at the painting. "I am not certain I understand 'art.'"

"Well Carl said it was in the eye of the beholder so it sounds like everyone who looks at it sees something different which is really cool when you stop to think about it AND some of the others were talking about personal touches so that means everyone has a little bit of me and knows how much I care about them is this not the COOLEST thing you've ever heard of!?"

Gogo tipped her head. "It's different."

"I like it Honey Lemon," Hiro piped up.

"I do too," Tadashi said. "Just—not up my nose next time, please?"

"Sorry—got excited," Honey Lemon said, ducking her head.

So in other news having a painting dragon was definitely...something.

"If only I could market these as being dragon-painted," Dibs sighed, turning over some of the dishes and vases he had made; in the interest of not being mercenaries anymore he had enlisted Carl's help in making a kiln and spent the winter trying to make dishes. Now that spring was coming, the idea was they'd sell the least-ugly ones, which Honey Lemon had been nice enough to dandy up. "Can you imagine the markup I could add?"

"Don't get greedy," Carl said, carting some crates full of dishes to the ships.

"Don't get greedy, he says—like anyone would buy these otherwise," Dibs told him, showing a lumpy plate. "I'm terrible at this, Carl!"

"That's only because you just started," Carl told him, putting the crates down on the ship's deck. "Once you get more practice you'll get better."

"You hear these lies he tells me," Dibs said as Honey Lemon touched down on the deck. "Oh yeah," he said when Honey Lemon crooned at the dish he was holding. "We're selling these so we can buy stuff, like bacon. Granted if I was better at this we could buy more bacon—"

"You'll get better at this," Carl told him sternly. "And then you can bring back all the bacon you want."

"Glad someone thinks so," Dibs grumbled—glanced at Honey Lemon—

To see that she was looking up at the sails.

The blank canvas sails.

"Oh no," Dibs said—

Too late—Honey Lemon was already vibrating, back end wriggling before she bounded off, roaring something back at them—

"I say we run now while we have a chance," Dibs suggested.

"Like she wouldn't hunt us down," Carl pointed out.

Indeed, she was flying back in short order, a bucket of paint in her mouth and front paws—put the three pails down before dipping her claws in and getting to work.

"We're not going anywhere, are we?" Dibs asked.

"Not right now," Carl sighed.

Honeysuckle had to do both sides of the sails and then most of the ship itself before she was satisfied, frequently dashing off to bring back more paint.

They couldn't deny that the end result was interesting enough—the sails looked like billowing clouds now, different dragons flying through them, with the prow of the ship decorated with squiggling lines that represented waves with sea dragons in them.

And then there was the deck, which was coated in dragon pawprints.

"This way the sea dragons will know that you're part of a flight," she told them happily, bounding up and down and breathing on some of the paint to get it to dry faster. "And doesn't that look great it's like we're flying with you wherever you go now!"

"Very nice," Carl said, two talons pinched together—not talons, what did not-dragons call them?

"It speaks to me on a personal level," Dibs said, looking like he was going to cry.

Honeysuckle couldn't help but bounce up and down, gleeful that they liked her work so well.

But something else she had been meaning to do—Obake had made himself a new mask based on them, plain white for now, something she knew the Yokai wore. She also knew that they had stripes on these masks, something that Obake had yet to get back to adding. Contemplate it when she returned to Obake's nest—

Dipped her claws in some nearby paint and draw them along the left-hand side of the mask, the one that would match the side that glowed with that odd light. Step back, examine her work...nod with satisfaction. If it worked for the dragons, it would work for the Yokai, a mirroring that emphasized their alliance.

Success.

Obake decided that it wasn't a bad thing to have someone else as interested in new ideas as he was.

Although he had to admit, Honey Lemon was just a bit too enthusiastic about the whole dragon-scale paint thing.

On the one hand, she was now ensuring that he had a never-ending supply of scales, hounding every last dragon when they groomed themselves and each other and collecting the scales together. And she could apparently see something he couldn't, since she insisted on separating the scales first on color and then by some other factor he couldn't determine. And she was more than willing to provide the dragon spit that turned ground-up scales into paint.

Now if she didn't go through it like a fish drinking water, he'd be fine.

He eventually had to share the process of making the paint, if only so he could have some peace and quiet—honestly, it was straightforward enough. And then having to provide more buckets and figure out something that would let Honey Lemon carry paint around without dribbling it everywhere.

It was very annoying.

Also annoying was her insistence on painting on every blank surface she could find—and he meant every blank surface. She was systematically going through the village, painting on every single wall, painting every canvas on every boat—everything, everywhere, if it was blank it wouldn't be for long.

Carl had finally bought them some peace and quiet when he brought back some framed canvas from one of the other villages they were trying to do business with—trying meaning don't let them know you're from Yokai. Dibs, surprisingly, was the one to reverse-engineer it. Honey Lemon, of course, saw this as a wonderful gift—and one she could use to pursue her targets, since she had gotten it into her head to paint a picture of everyone.

It was interesting enough, he decided, especially the way she vacillated between abstracts and as realistic as possible, depending on her mood. There was at least one section of the village that had vibrant abstract swirls, and then the next street over had her doodling all the dragons, steadily getting better at it the more she worked. And then painting on the pots and pottery Dibs was trying to make because apparently that counted as a blank surface—at least those sold though.

Sometimes, he wondered what the buyers would think if they knew the artist was a dragon. At the very least, he was kind of glad that no one sailed through the Ghost Archipelago—the Yokai village steadily becoming a riot of color would probably send the wrong message to passers-by otherwise.

But back to the main problem of the framed canvases, which was that Honey Lemon had apparently been wanting to do portraits of everyone and had been getting very frustrated with him because he refused to stay still long enough for her to do so—like it was his fault he was busy. She had finally caught him when he was busy with a project that required him to be sitting in a singular spot, Momakase chatting at him while she sharpened her knives—Honey Lemon had run off, come back with her paint supplies, and made several very stern noises at him before getting to work.

"I think you were just told off," Momakase told him, grinning.

"I do have better things to do than pose for a painting," he told her—unlike Dibs, who was very happy to sit and pose for the artistic dragon.

But apparently, this particular job saw him still long enough for Honey Lemon to finally be satisfied—she stepped back with a chirp and a nod as he stood up. He walked around to see what she had done this time—

Slapped a hand to the left side of his face when he realized how she had painted him.

Momakase came around to look upon spotting his reaction.

"Huh," she noised. "Your face never did the thing the whole time we were sitting there—why would she paint that?"

Why indeed.

He kept a close eye on her paintings after that—he was relatively assured that his face only did that anymore when one of the dragons licked it or rubbed against it, annoyingly—and they insisted on doing it a lot. And what he noticed was that Honey Lemon, when she wasn't doing abstracts, tried to get as close to what she saw as possible. Everyone looked pretty much like themselves.

Him, when she did him—whether through abstract or realistic art—kept including the way his face looked when it lit up.

"Why do you keep doing this?" he asked finally, pointing at one piece. "I don't always look like that."

Honey Lemon burbled and warbled and generally made happy dragon noises at him, apparently misinterpreting his pointing as him being interested. He was stuck listening until she finished, mostly so he didn't have an upset Light Fury on his hands.

And then apparently she had gotten Hiro in on it.

This, he was clued into by the fact that Hiro tugged a piece of parchment onto the table before lifting up small buckets, Honey Lemon helping, while Obake was trying to eat dinner. The little dragon sitting in front of him wasn't a good sign, neither was him straightening up the parchment before tugging some of the buckets over and dipping his claws into one.

"It's bad enough there's one dragon tracking paint all over the place," he told Hiro. "I don't need a second one."

Hiro looked at him, looked at Honey Lemon, clapping her front paws together gently before waving him on—looked back to Obake before splattering paint on the parchment.

Obake's next several minutes were occupied with keeping paint out of his food and dealing with Hiro squawking at him whenever he moved too much. The end result was very messy.

The end result also had a pinkish-purple color very vividly splashed where the left side of his face should be.

"Please stop, I beg of you," he sighed.

Carl, weirdly, was the one who figured it out.

"Maybe it's something they can see and we can't," he said to Obake upon spotting the man's grief. "Like how Honey Lemon keeps sorting the scales for the paint."

It was something they decided to test, Carl painting a picture of Obake while he worked (because he wasn't about to be wasting time while they were doing this), where Honey Lemon could see.

The Light Fury immediately bounded over to watch, patting her front paws together lightly as Carl progressed.

"Okay," he said finally, prompting Obake to come over and look.

"Really?" he asked drily upon spotting it.

"It represents the depths of the human soul," Carl announced.

"I think we should have gotten someone who actually painted within the past twenty years to do this."

Honey Lemon, meanwhile, kept glancing between the painting and Obake, finally put a paw on Carl's arm and gave a confused croon.

"Does it need something?" Carl asked her. When she nodded: "What does it need?"

In response, she dipped her paw in the paint, reached up—looked at Carl, waited for him to nod before smearing pink on one side, matching up with where the left side of Obake's face would be in Carl's depiction.

He really hated how smug Carl looked when he was right.

One painting project Obake had been focused on, however, was an alternate approach to something he had been wanting for a while.

"I'm finally doing what I told you I'd do," he told Hiro, who watched with interest as he ground up the scales the little dragon had shed. "I'm turning you into a coat."

Hiro tipped his head at this, confused, obliged when asked for the saliva to turn the ground-up scales into a liquid paint. Watched as Obake started painting his coat, spread out on the table.

Granted, this took a while—Hiro was a small dragon and as such only shed so much. Using Tadashi's scales as well helped speed this along, although he did end up having to fight Honey Lemon for them most days.

"Let me have these, you can make black some other way or with some other dragons," Obake scolded her one day, Tadashi huffing and rolling his head in a way Obake translated as an eye roll. Honey Lemon had sniffed at his coat on one of the scaled patches, made a confused warble that was apparently her persisting opinion when she watched him paint a fresh patch. At least she was obliging on helping it dry.

"On the positive side, you finally got that Night Fury coat you wanted," Carl said, when Obake finished the last strokes and had Tadashi blast it to dry.

"Yes, and a much more impressive story to go with it, I'm sure," he said, shrugging his coat back on. Hiro sniffed at it—ears flipped up as he made an excited squawk, jumped up and climbed up to his shoulders. "And hopefully more durable."

"It's easier to renew, at least," Carl said, tapping another nail in. "Don't have to hunt down anything to get it."

Plus he had the benefit of it being a coat that he already knew was comfortable, but he wasn't about to delve into this conversation any further. People might start getting ideas that he was approachable.

"Well if you'll excuse me, I do have other things to do," he said, tapping Tadashi on the head as he walked away. Tadashi chuffed, followed him, Hiro cheering as he put two and two together.

So maybe he wasn't the only one who enjoyed flying at ridiculously high speeds.

One thing he had to say about flying now was that it was infinitely more preferable than when he had started. For one, he was fairly certain Tadashi was no longer trying to kill him.

For another, with the saddle design finalized, with all the fiddly little details worked out, he could finally focus on other aspects of flying. Specifically, the tricks that Night Furies were apparently wont to do. He was starting to get used to flying upside-down, and the G-force moves that Tadashi pulled were much more enjoyable when he was assured that he wasn't about to go flying into oblivion.

Hiro launched himself off of Tadashi's head, spiraling away with a cheer—Tadashi circled around, tracking him for a few minutes, before making a chuff noise that Obake was beginning to figure meant hey watch this! It was why he redoubled his grip and hung on for dear life.

It proved to be the smart decision—Tadashi dove away, wings folded in as he performed tight corkscrews, letting his wings work their way back out before snapping them out fully, angling up, over—backflip, dive—bottom out as he angled back up at breakneck speeds, Hiro a black speck in the sky above them.

"Very impressive," Obake said.

Tadashi huffed in agreement, blasted out one of his power-shots, the kind that made him vanish for a few moments and had startled him the first time he had done it—Obake ducked his head down, face pressed against the saddle—

When he looked up again, it was to find his arms gone.

He stared, dumbfounded, still feeling them, feeling his hands with a death-grip on the saddle still visible beneath him, despite the dragon it was attached to being gone—

His coat started to fade back into view at about the same time Tadashi did.

"I…have something I need to try when we get back," he managed finally.

Honey Lemon came in to see that Obake had gone through their entire stash of Night Fury scales, in every shade of black she had sorted them in. And here she was hoping that she had her stash of black paint back.

"What's going on?" she asked Tadashi, busy watching him work along with Hiro. "What is he doing?"

"Apparently he wants the saddle to match his coat," Tadashi guessed, twitching his wings.

She sighed, not seeing the reasoning behind a matte color when variation existed, glanced at Hiro busily scratching at himself. "Are you okay?"

"We're running out of black scales," he told her. "And it has to be Night Fury scales."

"Little-Brother, you're going to scratch yourself raw," Tadashi told him.

"Then YOU start shedding!"

"Why does it have to be Night Fury scales?" she asked. "You can get black from combining other colors." Specifically blue and brown, she had found this out through experimentation.

Hiro bounced up to his feet, wriggling as he faced them. "Because you didn't see it—Obake painted his coat with our scales—and when Tadashi did the thing—the burst that makes him invisible—it made Obake invisible too! All you could really see was his head and the saddle!"

Honey Lemon's ears shot straight up at that—Tadashi too, she noticed, this must have been news to him. Obake finished up with the last of the black paint, looked at Hiro—Hiro scratched himself before mimicking Obake's palm-up stance.

"I'm tapped out," he told the Yokai, before looking at Tadashi. "It's up to you, Older-Brother."

"Hiro, it took weeks of shedding to get enough for the coat," Tadashi told him. "You're not getting it all in one night."

Hiro looked apologetically at Obake, who was currently sat back on his haunches and pinching the space between his eyes, eyes squinched shut in the way that said he was thinking intently.

Honey Lemon was thinking intently too, padding up to the saddle and considering it. Black paint from Night Fury scales would disappear under their disappearing blast, the same as whole scales—

She pawed at Obake's shoulder to get him to look up at her, nearly bowling him over in her excitement.

"I tried making white paint with my scales but it always turned clear," she told him, pointing at her own scales. "But if Tadashi's scale paint vanishes from his blast—does that mean mine would too?"

Obake quickly caught on, just as quickly made some fresh clear paint to smear across a piece of canvas, held it up for her to test—

She thought she had blasted it clear away before Obake flipped it over, blinking at the results. She started wriggling excitedly at the implications—how many times had she wished she could share her scales' vanishing powers with everyone—loved it when Obake posed the next question.

"Would it work if you mixed it with the other paints?"

The answer was yes—the paint was paler when mixed together with her scales, but came back after vanishing in the firing the proper color. And since her scale paint was clear, it could be painted over existing paintings and painted things to enable them to vanish as well.

Hiro had to run and get Cass, since Honey Lemon was quickly running out of loose scales.

She and Obake were equally as excited though, her showing it more than him since she was bounding all over the place.

"This is so EXCITING!" she exclaimed.

"Are they okay?" Cass asked, busy scratching loose scales off.

"Honeysuckle's happy because Obake caught the painting bug," Tadashi explained, worrying his own loose scales off.

Hiro quickly filled Cass in as Honey Lemon scooped her scales together and deposited them into the waiting bowl—Obake tried grinding a few of her scales together with other dragon scales, which again got the paler paint that fired darker.

"I think I like doing mine separate, so you can see what the color's going to look like," she said, pointing at the previous bowls before pointing at the current one and shaking her head. "You have to guess with this one."

"Well that's why we test it," Obake told her—

They all looked up at a knock at the door, blinked as Carl came in.

"I brought breakfast, since you kind of vanished," Carl said.

He didn't even have time to get his next statement out before Obake jumped him in very Honey-Lemon-fashion. "You have no idea—you have to see this."

Honey Lemon was more than happy to help demonstrate while Obake rapidly explained things to the other Yokai, highly animated in his excitement, not even noticing his face flaring as he talked—usually he seemed aware of it.

Carl was nodding, slowly getting infected with the excitement as he gave Hiro a fish, pushed the basket over for the others to start digging in.

"You've only got two of each, though," Carl pointed out when Obake finished. "And it took a while to get enough for your coat."

Honey Lemon's ears drooped at that—Carl had a point…her dream of being able to coat everyone in her protective hiding scales started to fizzle.

Obake waved the other Yokai's concerns off. "So it'll take a while—they grow new scales every day. We can see how far we can stretch them in the meantime." Consider. "And I'm sure there's more out there somewhere."

Her ears perked up again—yes, that was true, and they shed more during molting season—they could still protect everyone.

As for the question of more Furies out there…that was a good question indeed. She had heard of one that was alpha of the island Berk alongside his trained Viking (had honestly dismissed the concept as Terror gossip before they trained the Yokai), but that was the extent of Furies in the nearby area that she had heard of. There had to be more, though—Obake was right, the world population of Furies couldn't be in this single room.

In the meantime, they had a new painting project.

Obake definitely had something he wanted to try with the vanishing varnish, as Carl termed it. After all, there were two articles of clothing that a Yokai was known for: their black coats were one.

Their white masks were another.

"Since it dries clear I should be able to paint this and still see out of it," he explained to Honey Lemon, watching with interest as he painted his mask with a fresh batch of the varnish. "And I think we've gotten most of the saddle—I suppose I'll have to treat the buckles and such with this if it works."

"Wrr," Honey Lemon noised, flipping her ear flaps up when he finished.

"Seeing as how you're as invested as I am: care to do the honors?" he asked her, taking a step back—she chirped, fired a small bolt of plasma at the mask. Didn't sound like it shattered, which was a good thing.

It also was gone from the naked eye, almost startling when he reached over and felt the shape of it still there, revealing itself when he turned it to the untreated interior. Would have to see if it wore off at the same rate that Tadashi's scales did—wouldn't that be a proper horror story, a headless Yokai. As if they didn't strike terror into people's hearts already.

Although he supposed this wouldn't help matters—the concept of a Yokai vanishing into thin air like it was nothing more than its namesake would certainly be a terrifying one. And maybe it was about time he gave up on that—theoretically what they were doing, travelling far and trading, pretending not to be Yokai as they did so, was the right thing to do, it was an end to their marauding ways. But there had to be something easier, something better, something less time-consuming.

"Wrr?" Honey Lemon noised, watching him carefully as he turned the mask over and watched it fade back into existence.

"Just thinking of the wonderful logistics involved with being me, don't worry," he assured her.

But in the meantime.

Tested a few times with Tadashi on flights, bringing along a little mirror to help keep track of when the mask faded back in—treated his vest and gloves as well with Night Fury scales, minimizing the spots that could be spotted; treating his regular clothes wasn't exactly practical.

But eventually, he was satisfied, had it timed and felt ready to announce it—which he did by having Tadashi provide a blast and then sneak into the upper caverns to find a conversation. Carl, Momakase, and a few others were obliging enough to be up there chatting, allowing Obake to eavesdrop until the scales started fading back into existence—which was when he sat up in the saddle, offered a comment regarding the current conversation, and then cackled at them as they reacted in varying stages of startlement to him suddenly appearing out of nowhere, fading into existence before their very eyes.

And then having to dodge Momakase throwing knives at him, which he probably should have anticipated. At least Carl was obliging enough to stop her.