Battle For The Thundering Twister

What's That?

Chapter 39:What's That?

A few days after the race,everything went back to normal.I went to fetch my axe from Gobber's smith and found Zack hammering at something shiny."Hey Zack!What's that?"I called,walking into the shop and looking at the red-hot metal object that Zack was pounding."I'm working on a new weapon of mine.It'll be done as soon as I finish with this and put together everything,"Zack answered.I stood by and watched.Zack was hitting a long piece of metal shaped like a curved claw that was a foot long over the fire.After that,he dipped it into a barrel of water nearby to cool it and examined the claw.Then,he took it over to a table where four other claws were and a sheet of leather.

First,he traced around his hand on the leather with a charcoal pencil and cut out two of the shapes.He then cut off the fingers on the hand-shaped leather pieces and set to work sewing the shapes together to form a finger-less glove.Next,Zack cut out five holes in the knuckle area.Then,he pushed the ends of each claw into the holes and secured them with some thin rope.The finished result was a finger-less glove with claws protruding from the knuckle area and bound together with thin rope to make sure they didn't fall out."The final design is still to be confirmed.Besides,I haven't figured out a way on how to keep the claws in without securing them with rope.But for now,this will have to do.I call it a hand spike.Been wanting to make it since I was ten,"Zack admitted,slicing the air with the claws."Can't you just seal the claws to the gloves?"I questioned,tugging loosely at one claw."Ah,that was intentional.Say if I needed to use this short-range hand spike for long-range combat,I just need a bow and a claw and I'm all set,"he explained.As he spoke,he grabbed a bow,slid out a claw and drew it like an arrow.I nodded,impressed.

"I have a weapon of my own that comes in handy for both short-range and long-range combat,and it's all in one piece,"I bragged slightly,remembering something."It's an axe-bow.Basically,it's a bow with an axe blade attached to one side,so you can use the axe for close-range combat and the bow for long-range combat,"I finished.Just then,the other riders came ambling by."Whoa!What is that cool thing?"Oliver grinned as he gazed at the hand spike in awe."Can we have one,Zack?"Jessica pleaded."If you want a weapon,make one yourself.This thing took me years to design,"Zack refused."Then let's make our own weapons!Just the other day,Gobber left a whole pile of broken weapons out for Trader Johann to take to Breakneck Bog.That's gotta be enough for all of us,"Nevaeh informed everyone.With that,we were all soon scrambling to get the weapons.

Sure enough,in a giant wagon by the docks was a huge pile of rusty blunt weapons.Maces,swords,shields,daggers and whatnot were in the pile.I tried pushing the wagon,but it was way too heavy to budge."It's gonna take all of us to push this to Gobber's smith,"Cassie gasped after trying to move it.With concentrated effort,all six of us together managed to slowly but surely move the packed wagon all the way up to Gobber's smith.When that was done,we took a while to get our breaths back and began planning our weapons.I already knew what I wanted:a shiny new replica of the axe-bow weapon I had during the battle with Dagur and the Beserkers and the dragon hunters.First,I melted a sword over the fire and pounded it into an axe blade before dipping it into water to cool.Then I fetched a spare bow from my house and nailed the blade to the bow and I was already done!I polished the blade,wiped the handle and the bow string and sharpened the blade.

"I'm done,"I announced,holding up my axe-bow.Zack had simply made another one of his hand spikes.The others looked up from their parchment papers to stare at us blankly."How'd you get ideas?Nothing will come into this confounded skull of mine,"Cassie groaned.As she spoke,an idea crept into my mind."If you can't think of something,why not borrow an idea and improve it?"I suggested."Oh yeah?What?"Oliver queried,aimlessly stabbing at his parchment with his charcoal pencil."I don't know,you could use Hiccup's crossbow shield idea or something.The diagrams are right there,"I pointed to a large piece of parchment that had several complicated drawings and countless descriptions littering the surface that was pinned to a wall."I'll take on the challenge,although it seems like it'll take me a century to understand and build that,"Jessica remarked,taking down the parchment and poring over it.Her sister and Oliver and Nevaeh joined in,as well as Zack and I,for we were all curious about how Hiccup's amazing crossbow shield worked.

"Well,the main part of it is that it's a shield that can split into two to reveal a crossbow,not to mention that the middle part can be opened to shoot out a rope with a hook attached to grip onto anything,and there's even a little catapult somewhere,"Zack rambled on from the drawings.Oliver fetched a functional crossbow and a shield.After studying both for a while,we all gave up."This thing is too complicated for us to build,"I sighed,plucking at the string of my axe-bow.In the end,we fell to messing around in Gobber's shop.Jessica was just messing around when she suddenly squealed in delight and brought out a flute."Remember Cass?When we had celebrations back at home we played the flute!"she put the flute to her mouth and began playing a short tune.Cassie pranced around like a madman to the music.After a few seconds,everyone joined in and we were all laughing and hopping around like as if we had eaten too much dragon nip.

"What in Thor's name is going on here?!"a sudden voice made the music falter and the dancing come to a halt.We all froze and turned slowly to see Hiccup on Toothless with Astrid in attendance."Um,a group of rowdy teens dancing aimlessly,"Nevaeh piped up,making us all burst into peals of laughter."In all seriousness,we were trying to recreate your famous crossbow shield and we failed...miserably,"I trailed off."Well,you could've just asked for the shields!A while back,Gobber made crossbow shields for the entire village to defend themselves against enemies.The problem was,many people didn't understand how to use it properly even after I taught them so eventually we scrapped the idea.All the shields were collected and left in the armory.If you want them,take them but don't take more than one each,"Hiccup explained before flying off with Astrid.Before anyone even had time to say anything,everyone was racing to the armory.We entered and immediately saw a huge heap of shiny silver shields piled against a corner in the armory."Yes!We got them!"Oliver grinned in delight.I took one up and looked for the area to press to reveal the crossbow.Then,I noticed a slight protrusion on the shield and pressed it.The shield split open and a crossbow appeared."That's wicked!"Nevaeh cried upon seeing my shield.

"Hey!We can design these shields ourselves!These don't have the Night Fury symbol on them!"Oliver cried out in excitement.With blinding speed,we rushed to fetch some paint and brushes from our homes and began designing our shields.I spent some time working a picture of Castaway onto mine and painted a tiny figure standing beside him,which was me.Jessica had a purple 'J' on her shield.Cassie painted a picture of Frostbite on her own.Nevaeh had the Mystery Class sign on her shield,which was Death and Skull's dragon class.Oliver had a picture of a flaming Monstrous Nightmare on his shield."It's Fireproof in battle mode,"he explained.Zack had a drawing of a hooded figure on his shield."I'm pretty proud of these,"I remarked,wiping a spot of paint off the edge of my silver shield.The others admired their own as well."Well,it's time to test these!I know there's some targets in the Academy,"Oliver hinted to us.Without hesitation,we all got our dragons and flew to the Academy for target practice with our brand-new shields.Cassie,Jessica and I set up a few barrels here and there to shoot at.Oliver,Zack and Nevaeh propped up wooden vikings to aim at.After all the preparation,we decided on a little competition."The person who shoots most accurately wins the competition,"I challenged everyone,who readily agreed to take it on.

Then,something crashed right outside the Academy,shaking the ground.

It was huge.

It was scary.

And it looked blood-thirsty.

A.N. Hi guys!I'm alive,surprise surprise.I've just not been writing lately due to writer's block,catching up on YouTube and absolute procrastination(these three things mixed together equal to disaster,trust me).I really want to thank my good ol' friends for screaming at me to go finish this chapter :D Sorry this is terribly short,because this idiotic brain of mine refuses to work.I promise that the next chapter will be extra long just to make up for everything(give me a mallet to smash my brain and maybe I'll get a better one to replace it) so see ya round guys and thanks for reading :D

-Ernie