Ghost's Reign Chapter 58: To Berk, a How to Train Your Dragon + Big Hero 6 Crossover fanfic

Chapter 58, everybody! Also if I sound a little goofy in the notes today it's because I have a cold. :P

So we have Tadashi and Toothless shooting the breeze—dragonbite vipers are in reference to the Wings of Fire book series, by the way. Moving on, Obake has opinions about names and those are canon as it turns out ("Steamer's Revenge"); 'Hiccup' referring to the runt is also canon and mentioned in Riders of Berk ("Portrait of Hiccup as a Buff Young Man"). Obake's also quoting the first Back to the Future movie, by the way.

So as it turned out, Hiccup wasn't being facetious—once Obake actually loosened up a bit, he found someone who shared a lot of similar interests. At least, that was Hiro's opinion.

Tadashi and Toothless, meanwhile, were busy conversing while their riders went over notes and designs and other things, pausing only to light a fire and basically ignoring the fish that Tadashi caught. Well, Hiro certainly didn't.

"So this is an actual improvement over most of our new encounters," Toothless was telling Tadashi. "Mostly there's more screaming and such."

"On whose part?" Tadashi asked.

"Eh, it depends on if it's raiders of some sort or dragons—if it's dragons then it's Hiccup making the screaming noises. He's like that." Glance at Tadashi. "So…you don't know if there's any other Furies down your way, do you?"

Tadashi shook his head. "No Night Furies—a couple of Light Furies, but that's it. Why?"

Toothless sighed. "It's a thing Hiccup's been stuck on. I mean, I want to find other Furies too, but with Hiccup it's been all right." Flick an ear back. "Maybe now he's found you guys he'll stop for a while."

Tadashi made a pensive noise. "How…exactly…." Couldn't help the glance back at Toothless' tail—missing one of the crucial steering fins, instead having one organic and one made of metal and cloth.

Toothless didn't miss the glance. "Oh, that was Hiccup," he said. At Tadashi's incredulous glance: "So as it turns out Vikings are actually smart enough to make traps that shoot Night Furies clean out of the sky—got me, shredded a tail fin on the way down so I can't fly away.

"So here I am, stuck in the woods, all tied up, can't even fly away, and here comes this little beanpole of a Viking to kill me. Well I'm kind of resigned to this ignominious death, right?

"And then he cuts me free."

Tadashi blinked at that.

"I know, right?" Toothless asked. "So I get away—but of course I can't fly away, end up trapped in this little cove, so stupid—and then here comes this skinny little Viking again. Scare him off the first time, the second time he comes back with a fish. Me, I'm so hungry I figure I might as well.

"And then he doesn't act threatening at all, brings more fish—and starts trying to fix my tail," Toothless said, looking back at his tailfins. "And it takes a while, and he can't figure out a way to get it to work without him on me, necessity requires him finagling all this mess on me….

"But we end up flying. And you know, pulling off death-defying stunts is a lot more fun with a Viking strapped to your back, weirdly enough."

"Sounds awesome," Hiro said, yawning as he crawled over to nestle between Tadashi's front paws. Tadashi curled them up, tugging Hiro closer to his chest.

Toothless nodded. "And then Hiccup finds out about the nest, and the queen running it, and then his sire finds out about me—this is after I save Hiccup's idiot self from a Monstrous Nightmare—we find the nest, save the day, convince Hiccup's nest that dragons are just as magnificent and awesome as we are, and life has been…I'm going to say weird. Weird is the appropriate word."

"Yeah," Tadashi agreed. "Totally get that."

"So that's my life story," Toothless said, shifting a little to find a properly comfy spot. "What's yours? I notice YOU have all your fins intact. Although the blue scales are something else."

Yeah. "I…might have challenged the alpha at our old nest and won."

"NICE. What kind of dragon was it?"

"Bewilderbeast."

"By yourself?"

"I was motivated."

"And that did the scales."

"My friend thinks that I might have superheated them." That he had the potential to begin with, but it was something he should have grown into, instead of digging down deep and yanking it out—but it was worth it, he still thought.

Toothless at least seemed suitably impressed. "I am going to have to try that sometime—those must have been some big plasma blasts."

"They were impressive."

Toothless nodded, pointed with his muzzle at Obake and Hiccup, still deep in their notes and discussions. "So where'd you meet Hiccup 2.0?"

Tadashi huffed at that; glanced down at Hiro, who had fallen asleep.

"So…you know this story: an alpha of the nest makes its subjects attack surrounding islands for sustenance, Night Furies take out the war machines, a war machine takes out a Night Fury." When Toothless nodded: "Obake over there shot down Hiro."

Toothless' ears shot up. "And he's still alive?"

That could apply to either Hiro or Obake, to be fair. "According to Hiro, Obake took pity on him and fixed up his broken wing—and Hiro, little genius that he is—" eyeroll to punctuate the sarcasm—"Decided that he was going to train a Yokai."

Toothless flicked his ears to the side, considering. "And here I thought befriending a Viking was craziness—I can't think of a single dragon that wouldn't try killing a Yokai on sight. That's like…licking a live dragonbite viper crazy."

"You're not telling me anything I don't already know," Tadashi said. "So in the meantime I'm trying to get him back, can't because of our alpha, I fight and kill said alpha, lead the flight to the Yokai nest to get him back, fly ahead to find him—

"And then when I do find him, not only is he alive and in one piece, but he's trying to convince me to be friendly to this Yokai."

Toothless' eyes flicked from Tadashi's saddle, to Obake, back to Tadashi. "I'm going to guess he succeeded."

"It took a bit," Tadashi admitted. "While we're arguing Obake gets away, Hiro's trying the whole 'can't we bring it home I'll feed it and everything' bit, I tell him he has until morning and no funny business—"

"I wanted to bring Obake with us because his old alpha was sucky too," Hiro muttered.

"You're supposed to be asleep. So we go to the island to find it smack in the middle of its own alpha challenge." Incline his head at Obake. "Obake won."

"Wow," Toothless said. "There's alphas falling all over the place."

"Yup. It's a mess." Flick an ear. "Except he didn't kill his—just told him to get out, and take anyone who still sided with him along for good measure. A good couple dozen left."

Toothless narrowed his eyes, glanced at Obake. "Why would he do that, I wonder."

"I'm still not sure." Especially with what happened when they ran into the old Yokai alpha; yes sparing him meant that Abigail and her nest wouldn't kill them in revenge, but still. "But now we're in the unique situation of having a flight of Yokai trying to figure out how to peacefully coexist with us. At least Obake's helpful there."

Toothless started laughing, the deep-chested hough-hough-hough of Night Furies. "Just fall right into this sort of thing, don't we? Hey, we should tell other flights to try this, maybe it'd stop all the dragon-killing."

"I doubt it," Tadashi said. "But at least our area is more peaceful now. Mostly."

"Sounds about right." Flick an ear at Hiccup. "Apparently, there's a lot of other Viking nests that are mad at ours because they don't fight dragons anymore."

Tadashi sighed, glanced at Obake. "Now Obake not wanting to let the other nests know he's alpha makes sense."

Toothless flipped his ears up at that. "Why? What's he been doing?"

"The past couple of times he's interacted with other nests, from what I can gather he's pretending like the old alpha is still in charge. The only problem is, the old alpha liked taking them out to kill other nests, and that's what these other nests are wanting them to still do." Flick an ear at Obake. "Except from everything I've seen and heard, Obake's trying very hard to not do that."

Toothless considered this. "Why doesn't he declare his intentions? You know, stand on the highest point and roar everything like a normal alpha?"

"I guess not-dragons don't roll that way. Or maybe it's just Yokai." Flick an ear. "Maybe he doesn't think it's a smart idea, with just a Yokai-nest and a dragon flight—there's a lot of other nests full of very angry not-dragons he's dealing with."

Toothless made a pensive noise, scanned the night sky like there'd be an answer traced out in the stars.

"Pity," he noised finally. "That you don't, say, have an alliance with another dragon flight and their Vikings."

Tadashi's ears flicked up at that. "That is a pity."

"Yes. If only there were two Night Furies in charge of their particular flights who were smart enough to wrangle their not-dragon allies."

"I'm open to suggestions."

Toothless smirked, tipped his head at Hiccup. "Hiccup is actually really easy to get to agree to new plans once you get them across—we go to Berk, and things should snowball from there. Hmm?"

Tadashi scanned the skies, considering. "I don't know—Obake's really hard to get focused on an idea if it wasn't his to begin with."

"Does he have any way to control your flight?"

Stabbing him, maybe, but Tadashi was starting to think that Obake would have done that by now if he was going to. "No, not really."

"Then he doesn't have much choice, now does he?"

Tadashi grinned. "No, not really."

Okay, so Obake really hadn't expected finding someone else who could keep up with his reasoning. Certainly didn't expect that person to be a Viking, no matter how incongruous or loose an assessment that was.

Hiccup (stupid name) meanwhile was apparently thrilled to death to find someone who was on his particular level and understood what he was talking about—probably, such people were in short supply up north in Viking country. They had spent most of yesterday and last night going over Hiccup's various designs, Obake asking pertinent questions and weighing in his opinions and thoughts as to improvement, outlining some of his own designs on spare paper Hiccup produced. Their morning was spent much in the same way, for once not resenting his brain's habit of immediately shifting into high gear when he woke up because it meant they could get right back to the topic exhaustion had forced them to abandon.

"Eh, I should be getting back, though," Hiccup said finally, checking the sun's position. Looked at Obake. "Hey, you could come with."

"Yes, I love the threat of death at any time of day," Obake said drily, packing his things up. "You seem inclined to a nice chat. I'm willing to bet the rest of your tribe is not, and that they wouldn't react kindly to you bringing someone who goes by the moniker of obake to their village."

"Yeah that's fair," Hiccup admitted. "Which bears asking the question of why you stick with that name..."

"You said your name means the runt of the litter, correct?"

"Yeah but people don't have a whole thing about not letting hiccups into the village."

"The name suits me," Obake told him, checking Tadashi's saddle. "But I won't deny that this encounter has been...educational."

"Oh wow that must have hurt," Hiccup snarked at him. "Can't wait to tell everyone I met an obake—I can think of at least two people who'll complain about me not bringing you back."

"Some people just want to see the world burn."

"And then roast a snack on the flames for good measure," Hiccup agreed, hopping onto Toothless' (also a stupid name) back. "But maybe I can spin this to make my cousin jealous—I met an obake and lived to tell the tale."

"Keep jesting and you won't have." Smirked as the boy and the dragon both gave cheeky looks and launched off.

"So while this was refreshing, I have to return to the nuthouse," Obake sighed, climbing onto Tadashi's back. "Get us back to Yokai before something burns down."

Tadashi chuffed, launched into the air as well, circling broadly as Toothless did, the two riders exchanging a final salute before the one Fury angled north, back to the Meridian of Misery. The second Fury continued in the circle until he was facing south—

Suddenly swung around and flew after the first Fury.

"Where are you going Yokai is THAT WAY," Obake told Tadashi, pointing in the opposite direction. Tadashi ignored him, looking far too pleased with himself as he angled himself up to Toothless' windward side.

"Oh hey!" Hiccup greeted, spotting them. "Change your mind?"

"You see that?" Obake demanded of Tadashi, indicating Toothless' tail. "You see that I will do that to you if you don't start taking directions."

"Ah, so you agree with me on toying with the whole nonaggression pact," Hiccup told Tadashi. Hiro chirped at him. "Ha—majority rules, you're coming with us. Besides, we have to show everyone that there's more Night Furies this is a good week for me."

Yeah, no—struggle to get Tadashi to turn around, ended up with an ear flap to the face for his trouble.

"I just want to go on record and say I was against this," Obake sighed, resigning himself. "And that me losing my head will be your fault," he bit at Tadashi, who seemed unconcerned.

"Hey, don't worry, it won't be that dire," Hiccup insisted.

"Doubtful."

So in other news, Hiccup was pretty sure he had been cursed to live in interesting times. Probably by Loki. Because YES finally more Night Furies but at the same time WHY did the first Night Furies besides Toothless to ever cross his path have to have a Yokai on its back? And not just any Yokai, but one who identified himself as Obake.

Okay fine he had heard the stories of the Yokai, malignant marauders that they were, but they had grown quiet over the past several months (of course now he knew why). He had also heard of obakes too—they wheedled and tricked you into letting them into your village, and then they let in all their compatriots to wipe the place out. That the Yokai were rumored to have tamed one was the leading theory as to why they had been so virulent in their destruction.

And now here he was, leading the Yokai's very own pet ghost to Berk.

Okay, real talk, Hiccup was really anticipating the reactions when he got home and seriously hoped the part about more NIGHT FURIES glossed over the major issue he was sure was coming. First step: actually showcasing the fact that there were MORE Night Furies SERIOUSLY he had been totally worried Toothless was the last one but this guy had two? Did Night Furies live wherever obake did or did unholy offspring of lightning and death itself put them in that category?

Shake that thought from his mind, Obake was very obviously a person and besides, the important part was the bit about MORE NIGHT FURIES. Angle Toothless to lead them into a circle, twisted around a bit in the saddle to address the other rider flying above, behind, and a little to the left of him.

"So this is Berk," he announced, gesturing expansively; Obake had that mask back on and Tadashi looked like he was trying for impassive, but the little one, Hiro, was definitely impressed. "It snows for nine months out of the year and hails the other three. We've been here for seven generations, but all the buildings are brand-new thanks to our latest demographic, who used to raid us all the time thanks to some massive dragon egging them on."

"Sounds familiar," Obake observed.

"So it's not just us—good to know. Anyway we hit a few bumps and snags, but now everything's running smoothly—and we have our own fire extinguishing system, see?" he asked, pointing out one in use. "Anyway I think we've been circling long enough—come on."

Toothless dove, Hiccup seamlessly moving the tail to assist in the steeper angle cumulating in a shallow landing, right on the steps of the great hall where they were sure to attract plenty of attention. And as he had hoped, the sight of more than one Night Fury had attracted the proper amount of attention and excitement—now if only the other party wasn't so leery about following, eyeing the crowd below and continuing to circle.

Although, to be fair, the big mass of hair and muscle coming up the steps might have something to do with that.

"Only you," Stoick the Vast said, pointing at Hiccup and sounding like he was torn between aggrieved and amused, possibly leaning towards the latter. "Only you duck out of lessons on chiefing, go galivanting off, and come back with another Night Fury."

"Two, actually," Hiccup said, dismounting Toothless; Toothless sat up once he was free to and started barking and hooting at Tadashi. "And even better: someone else out there that rides dragons."

"Really? Who? Those Wingmaidens?"

"Er, no—further south."

He watched as Stoick did some calculations in his head. "Either it's no one we've heard of, or someone well out of our sailing reach who found out that dragons reduce travel time."

"Definitely the latter." Okay, how to ease into this…. "So as I understand it, they're under new management, the new management likes dragons as you can see by the Night Fury Dad Toothless isn't the only one anymore—"

"Hiccup before you shot him down Night Furies were never even seen—I didn't doubt there was more," Stoick said, not unreasonably, but definitely starting to edge into suspicious chief mode. "Hiccup, who else is with you?"

"Okay so it's very important that we not attack them because technically they've been offered Hospitality—"

"Hiccup."

Hiccup's next comment was cut off by increased murmuring from the crowd, prompting him to look up—Tadashi was circling lower, eventually hovering over Toothless like he was debating—oh please don't do the dramatic landing—

Tadashi did the dramatic landing, front paws on a lower step and forcing his already arching back up, tail whipping and wings still mantled, perfectly framing the figure in black with the porcelain face on his back.

Sigh, take a breath to introduce them—had it come out as a squawk instead when Stoick grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and planted him behind him.

"Stay behind me, Hiccup," he ordered, tugging his axe out. "And you—find a different village to raid, ghost."

Obake tipped his head, leaned a bit to address Hiccup. "So much for Hospitality."

"Uh yeah hold on Dad," Hiccup said. "This was the guy I was talking about and yes I am aware but he and I already had the conversation please focus on the Night Fury."

"Hiccup," Stoick started, sounding like he was about to go into a lecture right after he separated Obake's head from his shoulders. Which, honestly, wouldn't take too long, he'd be slowed down more by getting by Tadashi than anything else—

"Fwuff."

Hiro had slipped off of Tadashi and was apparently trying the cute routine again in the hopes that it would work as well it did the first time—Tadashi and Obake both looked alarmed, Toothless hooted and barked and crouched, apparently opting to ignore reading the room in favor of play, and Fishlegs, somewhere behind and to their left, squeaked "Baby Night Fury."

"Baby Night Fury," Hiccup confirmed. "Which you can study after we get the argument about Hospitality out of the way."

Stoick was glowering at him now. "In the hall. Now."

Oh boy.