Chapter Text
Narrator’s POV
This is Berk. It’s twelve days north of hopeless and a few degrees south of freezing to death. It’s located solidly on the meridian of misery. My village. In a word, sturdy. It’s been here for seven generations, but every single building is new. We have fishing, hunting and a charming view of the sunsets. The only problems are the pests. A sheep is taken. You see, most places have mice or mosquitoes. We have… A boy with dark brown hair, freckles, and green eyes opens a door then rapidly closes that door to block fire from a dragon. He utters one word, “Dragons.”
Most people would leave. Not us. We’re Vikings. We have stubbornness issues. The Vikings try to fight off as many dragons as possible. To stop them from stealing their sheep, burning their crop, and destroying their village. The brown-haired boy ran through the village, trying to avoid as much destruction as possible. My name is Hiccup. Great name, I know. But it’s not the worst. Parents think a hideous name will frighten off gnomes and trolls. Like our charming Viking demeanor wouldn’t do that. An explosion knocks Hiccup off his feet, sending him to the ground. A Viking was running away from a dragon and yelling. When he came up on Hiccup, he said in the politest way possible, “Morning!”
As Hiccup ran through the village, he got a lot of, “What are you doing here,” and “Get inside,” from the Vikings. “Hiccup!” A large burly man with a red beard, and a furry cape pulled Hiccup away from incoming dragon fire. He turned to the people and pointed at Hiccup, “What is he doing…?” then he turned to Hiccup, “What are you doing out?! Get inside!” he ordered.
That’s Stoick the Vast, Chief of the tribe. They say when he was a baby, he popped a dragon’s head clean off its shoulders. Do I believe it? Yes, I do. Stoick asked a villager what type of dragons they were fighting.
“Gronckles. Nadders. Zipplebacks. Oh, and Hoark saw a Monstrous Nightmare.”
“Any Night Furies?” Stoick asked.
“None so far.”
“Good.”
Hiccup kept running towards the forge. When he got there, he slipped off his fur coat and put on an apron. The blacksmith there was another burly man with a peg leg and swappable hands.
“Oh! Nice of you to join the party!” the blacksmith said to Hiccup, “I thought you had been carried off!
“Who, me?” Hiccup asked sarcastically, “Come on, I’m way too muscular for their taste. They wouldn’t know what to do with all this,” Hiccup said while showing off his non-existent muscles.
“Well, they need toothpicks, don’t they?”
The meathead with attitude and interchangeable hands is Gobber. I’ve been his apprentice ever since I was little. Well, littler.
Stoick kept giving instructions to his men, while a dragon burned a roof of a house near the forge.
See, old village, lots, and lots of new houses.
“Fire!”
Six teenagers rushed to that house with a large barrel full of water. They filled up their buckets and went to put the fire out.
Oh, and that’s Fishlegs, Snotlout, my adopted sister Heather, the twins: Ruffnut and Tuffnut… …and… …Astrid. Hiccup stared at her in awe as the house exploded behind them. It was awesome, and completely ruined their job. Oh, their job is so much cooler.
Hiccup stared at them through the window and tried to escape, but Gobber pulled him back into the forge.
“Oh, come on. Let me out, please,” Hiccup begged, “I need to make my mark!”
“Oh, you’ve made plenty of marks,” Gobber retorts, “All in the wrong places!”
“Please, two minutes. I’ll kill a dragon. My life will get infinitely better. I might even get a date.
“You can’t lift a hammer. You can’t swing an axe. You can’t even throw one of these,” Gobber explained while holding up a bola. A Viking took the weapon and threw it at a Gronckle, taking it down.
“Ok, fine, but this will throw it for me,” Hiccup tapped his invention, but when he did, it malfunctioned and fired on a random Viking, knocking him out cold.
“See? Now this right here is what I’m talking about!” Gobber yelled.
Hiccup stammers out something about a mild calibration issue before Gobber says, “If you ever want to get out there to fight dragons, you need to stop all this.”
“But you just pointed to all of me.”
“Yes, That’s it! Stop being all of you.”
“Ohh.”
“Oh yes.”
“Y-you, sir, are playing a dangerous game. Keeping all this raw, Vikingness contained? There will be consequences!”
“I’ll take my chances. Sword. Sharpen. Now.”
Hiccup hefted the sword to the grindstone and started to sharpen it.
One day, I’ll get out there. Because killing a dragon is everything around here. A Nadder head is sure to get me at least noticed. Gronckles are tough. Taking down one of those would definitely get me a girlfriend. A Zippleback? Exotic. Two heads, twice the status.
“They found the sheep!”
“Concentrate your fire over the lower bank!” Stoick ordered. Then he looked down.
And then there’s the Monstrous Nightmare. Only the best Vikings go after those. They have this nasty habit of setting themselves on fire.
A Nightmare burst through the floorboards of the turret that Stoick was standing on, its body in flames. He told his men to reload and that he would take care of this.
A loud screech pierced the air.
But the ultimate prize is the dragon no one’s ever seen. We call it the…
“Night Fury!”
“Get Down!!”
The Fury shot the turret and the blast exploded on impact, crippling the turret.
“JUMP!!”
This thing never steals food, never shows itself, and…
The Fury blasted the turret again completely destroying it
…never misses. No one has ever killed a Night Fury, that’s why I’m going to be the first.
Hiccup walked to the entrance to the forge to see Gobber leaving. He switched one version of his hand for an axe. “Man the fort, Hiccup. They need me out there.” Before leaving he gave Hiccup simple orders, “Stay. Put. There.”
Hiccup looked at him incredulously.
Gobber took this as a question and answered with, “You know what I mean.” Then he charged out of the forge with a battle cry.
Hiccup took the opportunity and rushed out with his invention. He assured the villagers that he would be right back and ran to the other side of the village. He set up the cannon and got ready to aim. He kept turning the cannon, ready to fire at anything.
“Come on. Give me something to shoot at. Give me something to shoot at.”
A loud screech pierced the air.
As if the gods answered him, a Night Fury divebombed the turret next to him. The Fury’s plasma blast burst on impact, making a clean hole through the turret. The dragon flew through the hole, but before it could flee, Hiccup shot at it. The knockback from the cannon pushed Hiccup onto the ground. The bola hit the Fury, sending it to the other side of the island. The screech waned until it was no more.
Hiccup had done it.
He had actually done it.
“I hit it. Yes, I hit it!” Hiccup got excited and jumped up, arms in the air, “Did anybody see that!?” Hiccup was celebrating when he heard a crunch behind him. He turned around and saw a Monstrous Nightmare growling at him. “Except for you.” The Nightmare did not like to be not included, so it tried to eat him. Hiccup, who avoided that first chomp, screamed, turned tail, and ran away from the dragon. The Nightmare spewed fire at him, causing Hiccup to run into the village. He kept running, zigzagging every time the dragon shot at him. He finally took shelter behind a pillar-torch and cowered behind it as the dragon shot fire at the base of the torch. Soon, the fire stopped, and Hiccup turned to his right of the flaming base of the pillar, to see if the dragon was still there. It obviously still was, but Hiccup was just looking on the wrong side, but before the monster could eat him, Stoick stepped in.
He kicked the Nightmare in the face to get it away from Hiccup, then he braced himself for dragon fire. When none came, Stoick saw that the dragon had spewed out only glowing blobs of fire. It had reached its shot limit. “You’re all out,” Stoick acknowledged. Then, with no fear, Stoick fought the dragon with his bare hands until it flew off. He turned back to the pillar.
Oh, and there’s one more thing you need to know.
The pillar’s base, that was completely burned away, collapsed, and fell, revealing Hiccup standing behind it. The bowl of fire on top of the pillar rolled away into the village, causing destruction everywhere. Hiccup said, “Sorry, Dad,” to Stoick, but it was too late. All the dragons that the Vikings had captured got free and left with as much as they could carry. The Vikings stared at the dragons in disbelief.
“Ok, but I hit a Night Fury.”
Stoick grabbed his son’s wrist and dragged him through the village. Hiccup continued his senseless rant until his father yelled at him to stop. Strangely enough, Hiccup stopped talking long enough for Stoick to start talking. “Every time you step outside disaster follows. Can you not see that I have bigger problems? Winter is almost here, and I have an entire village to feed!”
“Between you and me, the village could do with a little less feeding,” Hiccup joked. Stoick however was not having it.
“This isn’t a joke, Hiccup!” Stoick sighed in annoyance, “Why can’t you follow the simplest orders?”
Hiccup replied with, “I-I can’t stop myself. I see a dragon and I have to just kill it. It’s who I am, Dad.”
“Aye, you are many things son,” Stoick replied, “but a dragon killer is not one of them. Get back to the house.” He looked at Gobber, “Make sure he gets there. I have his mess to clean up.”
As Gobber walked Hiccup back to the house, they walked past his peers. Tuffnut and Snotlout jested about what occurred while the others stayed wisely silent. Hiccup didn’t say a word until they got close to the house, then he started talking.
“I really did hit one,” Hiccup started.
“Sure, Hiccup,” Gobber replied.
“But he never listens—”
“Oh, it runs in the family.”
“—and when he does, it’s always with this disappointed scowl, like someone skimped on the meat in his sandwich.” Hiccup then went and imitated his father’s thick accent saying, “Excuse me, barmaid. I’m afraid you brought me the wrong offspring. I ordered an extra-large boy with beefy arms, extra guts and glory on the side. This here, this is a talking fishbone.”
“You’re thinking about this all wrong. It’s not so much what you look like, it’s what’s inside he can’t stand.”
“Thank you for summing that up.” Hiccup was about to go back inside.
“Look, the point is, stop trying so hard to be something you’re not.”
Hiccup looked at him sadly and said, “I just want to be one of you guys,” before retreating into his house. Little did Gobber know that Hiccup sneaked out the back exit to go look for that Night Fury.
Hiccup’s POV
Hiccup looked up from his map, looked down at it, then looked up again. It was not there, just like the seventy-two other places he checked. Feeling a bubbling rage, instead of calmly crossing the place out, Hiccup furiously scrawled on the page, then put his charcoal pencil in his book and closed it. “Oh, the gods hate me,” he started, “Some people lose their knife or their mug. No, not me. I manage to lose an entire dragon!”
“That’s a horrible way to view life,” a voice said teasingly.
Hiccup halted dead in his tracks. He knew that voice. He spun his head around looking for the source of the voice, then he looked up. Lounging on a tree branch was one of the last people Hiccup wanted to see: Ruffnut Thorston.
“Ruffnut?”
“Hey, Haddock,” Ruffnut said smirkingly.
“W-what are you doing here?” Hiccup nervously asked her.
Ruffnut lazily climbed down the tree she was on, turned, and looked at Hiccup. “I might ask you the same thing.” She looked at him keenly, anticipating an answer.
Hiccup groaned in defeat. It was safer (for his well being) to tell her than lie. “I uh, am looking for the Night Fury I shot down.” Hiccup closed his eyes and braced himself for thunderous laughter. Instead, he got a soft chuckle from the girl. He opened his eyes. He did not anticipate that at all.
“Seems reasonable,” Ruffnut chuckled, still smirking at him.
Hiccup stared at her with shock and confusion. Ruffnut was the craziest girl on Berk. It was impossible to think she knew what reason is. “You believe me?”
“Haddock,” the girl started, “you lie about a lot of things. And when you do, you are completely horrible at it. So yes, maybe I do believe you. And besides, I saw you shoot down something."
Hiccup just stared at her, his mouth hanging open. What Ruffnut said was true, he was an atrocious liar. But he did not know what to think about her believing him. ‘She could help me locate the Night Fury,’ Hiccup thought. A smile started to form on his face, but before asking he had to make sure of something first. “Where’s your other half?”
“Tuff?” Ruffnut tilted her head to one side, “Why? Do you think this is a prank?”
Hiccup’s expression answered that question.
She gave him an exasperated groan. “I come here to be alone, Haddock. Yet you wander here looking for a Night Fury.”
Hiccup’s face flushed with embarrassment at her words. “S-sorry. I just needed to make sure this wasn’t a prank.”
Ruffnut blinked twice then said, “You’re paranoid, Haddock,” then started walking.
“I-I am not,” Hiccup countered.
Their argument had somehow bubbled down to a friendly conversation, which had never happened between them before. They were still looking for the dragon but conversed to pass the time. Until Hiccup remembered why they were here.
“Ugh, I’m never going to find this dragon,” Hiccup groaned. He hit a tree branch, which bent back and hit him in the face, but he did not care. “I mean it’s just my luck. I shoot down a dragon and it’s not here.”
“Haddock.” Ruffnut warned.
“I finally do something and what do I have to show for it?”
“Haddock!”
“Nothing! But it is probably a day in the life of Hiccup Haddock I guess.”
“HADDOCK!!”
“What!?” Hiccup turned around to see what Ruffnut was looking at, but what he saw excited him. There was a small gully that was probably made by a large creature. There were claw marks on some branches and roots meaning that this must have been a dragon.
“Still have doubts?” she asked, sarcasm lacing her words. Ruffnut jumped down first. Hiccup gave her a look, then jumped in after her. They walked through the gully looking for the dragon. When she came up to the last branch, she ducked behind it and gestured for Hiccup to come. When he did, they slowly looked at what was behind the branch: A Night Fury. Ruffnut effortlessly drew her dagger, while Hiccup fumbled around with his. She just rolled her eyes at this. The two went near the dragon in total silence before Hiccup broke it.
“Oh, wow. I did it. Ohh, I did it. This-This fixes everything! Yes!” Hiccup put his foot on the dragon, “I have brought down this mighty beast!” As he said that the dragon shifted its position, making the two back up a few steps.
“Still alive,” Ruff whispered to Hiccup.
“Yeah, I know that now,” He whispered back. The two inched toward the dragon while its eye snapped open. Gathering courage, Hiccup said, “I’m going to kill you, dragon. Then I’ll cut out your heart and take it to my father. I am a Viking. I am a Viking!” Hiccup had no idea why he was talking to the dragon, but it didn’t matter now. He raised his dagger and looked into the dragon’s eye, but once he did, he knew he could not kill the beast. The Fury closed his eyes and gave up, which was the last straw for Hiccup and Ruffnut.
“Haddock, we can’t kill this thing,” Ruff said, “I mean, look.” She gestured to the dragon.
“Yeah, I-I know.” Hiccup sighed.
“What do we do?”
Hiccup thought for a second and said, “We cut it free.”
“We WHAT!?” Ruffnut looked at him incredulously.
“I know how it sounds, but if we cut it loose, maybe it won’t kill us.” He said with an uneasy smile.
“Even after you trash-talked it?”
“It can’t understand me,” He said nervously, “Right?”
Ruff gave him a withering look.
“Ruffnut, please,” He begged.
She gave him one last scornful look and replied with, “Fine. But if it kills me, I swear I’ll kill you.”
“Fair enough.”
The two started to cut the Fury free, and when it was loose enough it jumped up and pinned the two to a large rock. They tried to back up, but they were stuck. The Night Fury let out a long roar, turned around, and left. The two were left stunned but overjoyed to be alive. They got up and did what any normal person would do: they passed out.