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Hiccup woke up in a bed.
It wasn't a very nice bed. The straw was definitely moldy and there was almost definitely a family of mice living on it, and the wool on the blanket was coarse and scratchy and smelled like its primary method of getting clean was by being hung outside on particularly damp and rainy days and then placed back inside when the weather got dry.
It was the most comfortable thing he had slept in in a lifetime.
No nightmares either. Huh. That hadn't happened since... Since Flashburn's school of swordfighting. How long ago was that, now? The days on the run sorta... bled together, after a while.
The only concerning part about it was that he definitely hadn't fallen asleep on one.
“Good morning, Dragon Trapper. You certainly slept for a while.” There was a girl, leaning on the far corner of the room, sharpening an axe and looking at him out of the corner of her eye.
Hiccup started awake.
Right, he must have gotten captured. The axe-girl was part of of the most recent set of humans who'd been chasing him as of late. She had a riding dragon, he remembered. Her entire group had riding dragons, it was... Not very many dragons were still loyal to humans after the Red Rage. Hiccup had thought he'd met all of them except...
Apparently not though.
Right, escape plans, escape plans... What could he use?
He was in a dim, sparsely decorated room with wood walls, a roof made of clay and packed straw, and a metal door, lit by only one small window covered in thick iron bars, guarded by a tall straw-haired girl who probably had two feet and six years advantage over him. Not to mention the axe. It was hard to ignore the axe.
Hiccup had... one worn and tattered fire-suit-that-was-probably-melded-to-his-skin-by-now, the blanket, and maybe the bed. His sword was gone so that was the map gone too, his helmet was gone ...hopefully for good this time, and his dragons were gone.
His dragons were gone.
Why--? Where--?
“Where are--?” Oh, he was speaking in Dragonese, wasn't he? That... Hiccup had never done that before. Speaking Dragonese when he had meant to speak Norse. That was embarrassing. “Where are my dragons?”
The girl-who-looked-like-she-could-kill-him-as-an-afterthought looked at him. Stopped everything she was doing and just looked at him. Hiccup was reminded of all those times he had to stare down giant angry reptiles who could shoot lightning out of their eyes.
“They're safe. Free. Somewhere you'll never find them. My turn to ask a question, wha--”
The curious thing about a roof being on fire is that you generally don't notice it's on fire until it's too late and you have a giant pile of burning mud and straw falling down on your head.
Hiccup's axe-wielding guard learned this fact intimately, painfully, memorably, and question-interruptingly.
A large black dragon followed shortly after the straw, and sat on her.
The other dragon behind this arson was doing his signature cock-a-doodle-doo! Of triumph and rushed into hiccup's chest pocket before the dragon who planned the rescue could claim it.
The aforementioned wodensfang also made a beeline towards Hiccup, and started checking him over for damages.
“Oh dear, are you alright? Not too burned or bruised, I hope. I suggested we sneak in through the window and make the escape plan with you, but the others wanted to rescue you immediately and set fire to the roof, so we had to improvise.”
“Well it was a good plan, considering the circumstances, thank you Wodensfang, thank you Windwalker.”
“Hey! T-T-T-Toothless helped too!”
“Of course. Thank you, Toothless. They probably couldn't have done it at all without you.”
“T-T-They couldn't have. The s-s-s-stupid Wodensfang would have spent all d-day w-w-w-worrying.”
The happy reunion probably would have taken a lot longer if the fire had played nice and died down after its part in the plan was over. Unfortunately, fire isn't terribly accommodating to things like “intrepid rescue plans” or “health and safety”, and tends to take every opportunity it can to betray its uses in favor of its own agenda.
Namely, to consume as much as it can as fast as it can.
The only person in the room who wasn't fireproof was currently unconscious and being used as an impromptu chair by windwalker, but that didn't make her any more fireproof, and that didn't make them any more immune to collapsing buildings. So after a quick thank-you hug for Windwalker, hiccup climbed onto him, and they flew out of the little burning hut, scary axe-wielding girl in tow.
“Astrid! Are you okay? I saw the smoke coming from where we were keeping the dragon trapper kid and--”
“Don't worry, Hiccup, I'll be fine. I feel like someone dropped a ceiling on me, but I'll be fine.”
Hiccup helped Astrid up. The dragon-trapping kid was... still here, surprisingly. Looking over his notably not-escaped dragons.
“Astrid... Why does he still have dragons-How does he still have dragons? Didn't the twins and--”
Snotlout came grumbling out of his house, holding a torn and stained piece of parchment. “Alright, Hiccup, I've looked through all your stupid maps, and read all your stupid books, and I didn't find any place that looked like the place on that dragon trapper kid's map. And before you ask, yes I did make sure the little N was pointing the same direction in all the maps. So, if as I suspect, our little dragon-trapper hasn't answered any of your questions yet, let me go and interrogate him Snotlout-style.” He cracked his knuckles at that last statement.
“Well, y'see Snotlout, about that...” Hiccup pointed to the Draggon-trapping kid, who they really needed to find a better name for, and was actually pretty good at pretending to not be listening to every word they were saying.
Three people came riding to the scene on two dragons.
“Fishlegs. Ruffnut. Tuffnut." Astrid smiled like a cat smiling at a particularly plump mouse, "nice job on freeing our trapper friend's dragons so that he wouldn't go and capture them again.”
The twins hi-fived. “Oh, it was no problem”
“None at all.”
“Easiest job in the world!”
“We are masters at freeing dragons from the nefarious clutches of evildoers.”
“Ooh, Nefarious, I like that word.”
“I know, right! It sounds exactly like what it means! Nefarious.”
“Nefarious.”
“Nefarious.”
“Chills. Literal... chills. Down my spine. When I hear that word. Anyway, we took them down to the dragon arena so that nerd-for-brains over here could... nerd out on them for a bit.”
“Then the smallest ones found out that they could basically go through the chain dome without even trying,”
“Only when none of us were looking!”
“Of course! Only when none of us were looking!”
“So... long story short, none of us were looking at them—don't worry about why—and they left, so we let their big friend go with them because he looked lonely.”
“The toothless one bit Tuffnut's butt.”
“Hey! I said it wasn't important!”
“It's not important. What it is is funny.”
“Guys! Can we focus on the Dragons, here!” Fishlegs got out a notebook and flipped to the relevant page, “I tried putting these dragons through all the normal 'new and unknown dragons' tests, but they were too skittish to let us touch them, so most of them were off the table. But what I could learn about these new dragons is fascinating. Only the biggest one likes dragon-nip They all scored a negative on the eel test. A negative! All of them! I showed them the eel and threw it at their feet, and do you know what they did?”
“What, Fishlegs?”
“They ate it. They let the smallest one eat first, then the second-smallest, and then the largest one ate what was left. I think that their group formed a stress-induced hierarchy inversely based on size. Also, only the big one that we used to think might have been a night fury seemed interested in Dragon nip, and when I exposed them to Dragon root, nothing happened. I think they're completely immune! like gronckles! Oooh it's so fascinating! I almost want to go looking for them so we can really study them.”
“Well, Fishlegs, that may be sooner than you think.” Hiccup pointed.
The strange rider and his dragons were walking towards them. Rider in front, almost... shielding his big black dragon from them.
The two tiny dragons were nowhere to be seen.
“Um... hi?” The little rider waved awkwardly “I think we sort f got off on the wrong foot there. Do you think I'm some sort of dragon trapper?”
They all looked at him, and for a moment Hiccup thought he had spoken in Dragonese.
“I mean, I get it,” he continued, making absolutely sure he was speaking in Norse ,“you see a strange, silent soldier In a stupid helmet leaning over and doing something with dragon traps and of course you'd assume that he's setting them up. I mean, who in their right mind would take down dragon traps, am I right?”
“You're still here.” The axe-wielding guard, Astrid apparently, said, “Why are you still here? Normally you'd have done your whole 'great escape super-fast flying' routine by now.”
“Astrid, let's maybe not persuade the person who's been running away from us for the past two months into keeping up his streak. Especially now that he seems willing to talk to us.”
“Yeah, Astrid, shut up and let Hiccup interrogate the fugitive!”
The leader of their group pinched the bridge of his nose, “Not helping, Snotlout.”
Right. Then there was what they were calling each other. Hiccup elected to save that worry for later, when he could actually... deal with that.
“Anyway, kid.” The leader directed his gaze back towards Hiccup, “What's this you're saying about... taking down the Dragon Traps?”
Windwalker was gently headbutting Hiccup's hands. Answering the question could probably wait a bit, Hiccup sat down against a nearby wall and let Windwalker use his head as a pillow. Hiccup scratched behind his horns absently. “Oh, you know, cutting the rope nets, Triggering them with rocks and making sure they can't be reset, damaging the springloaded mechanisms beyond repair. That sort of thing. It's actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it. I can show you, if you want.” Oh, Windwalker had fallen asleep, “...maybe after my Windwalker wakes up.”
The giant blond boy whose name was not Fishlegs no matter how many times people were going to use than name to refer to him's eyes lit up, “ooh! Windwalker? Is that your Dragon's name, or is that the name of his species? I've never seen a dragon that fast other than a Night Fury, what's its top speed? Maximum shot output? How hot does its fire get?”
“If the b-b-big f-f-fat human doesn't s-shut up now, T-T-T-Toothless'll bite him on the n-n-nose.” Toothless peeked out from where he had been sleeping in Hiccup's pocket “And if he does, T-T-Toothless might d-do it anyway.”
The movement on Hiccup's pocket drew the fire-lit eyes of boy-whose-nose-was-in-increasing-peril to Toothless “And-And Your other dragons! I've never seen dragons that tiny before! I mean, not even baby Terrors get that small! I didn't know dragons could be that small! Can they still make fire? What's their metabolism like? Are they even capable of going long-distance or is that too hard on their tiny little wings?”
“Um...” The enthusiastic barrage of questions was unbalancing and disorienting, and the way the guy just ignored the increasing amounts of dragon-menace radiating out of Toothless's body was almost inspiring.
“T-T-That's it, T-T-T-Toothless is gonna bite him.”
“Toothless, no!” Hiccup hissed, grabbing Toothless before he could make an accurate first impression on the gang of potential allies, “don't bite the nice scientist! We want them to like us, so that they don't go chasing after us again.”
“F-f-fine” Toothless huffed, nestling back into his pocket. “J-Just this once. T-T-T-Too t-t-tired f-from rescuing you anyway.”
The Wodensfang would have been proud of this unprecedented moment of restraint, but he was out searching for the sword and the helmet.
Hopefully he wouldn't find the helmet.
The little conversation in dragonese was covered up by one of the... twins? Apparently? On the two-headed dragon, “Okay, is anybody else fundamentally disturbed by mister super-evil-dragon—trapper-kid being all lovey-dovey with his dragons? Why does he even have his dragons anyway?”
“Maybe he brainwashed them into eternal servitude” The other twin said
“Man, that sucks, they didn't cover 'how to un-brainwash your dragon' in dragon training academy. Hey, Hiccup! When are we going to cover dragon un-brainwashing? 'Cuz we kinda need to know that right now.”
The team leader pinched the bridge of his nose “Oh, for the love of... Kid, did you brainwash your dragons?”
“...No! Of course not!”
“That's exactly what he'd say if he did brainwash his dragons. C'mon, Ruffnut, we have to save thosose poor brainwashed dragons from themselves! Ow-ow-ow-ow!”
Astrid held the twins back by their ears “...Or maybe he's actually friends with his dragons and we should clear up this misunderstanding over a nice hot meal.”
“Yes! Thank you, Astrid, for being the only other person here who isn't trying to scare away our guest.”
“Hey!” Not-Snotlout said, “I've been plenty welcoming!”
Their leader sighed. “Anyway, We're the Dragonriders, I guess you know all our names already. But welcome to Berk! I'd say most of the people aren't like this, but...”
“Yeah,” Astrid finished, watching the twins get in a helmet-horn fight with Not-Snotlout and losing. Badly. “They're pretty much all like this.”
“Hey,” The leader said, “kinda awkward question, since we've been chasing you around for a while, but... what's your name?”
Crap, he needed a name. All this time he'd been not-captured on this island, knowing what their leader called himself, and he didn't think to think of a name.
“Rider,” he lied quickly, “Rider the Red.”
“Well, You hungry, Rider?” Not-Hiccup said “The great hall is just up the hill.”