I Am Dragonblood: Alpha and Chief {Book Two} (HTTYD Fanfic)

Chapter One - Where No One Goes

The boy crouched low against the dragon's back, his brown suit streamlined for the greatest speed. The Night Fury's wingtips brushed the deep ocean below, sending spray up in a trail behind them. They raced over a pod of Thunderdrums, diving under one of the sea beasts wings and dodging swiftly around a whiplike tail. The boy moved a mechanism with his metal foot and they soared upwards, the Fury's tongue lolling in a joyous fashion. They reached the pinnacle of their ascent, high in the clouds, and the dragon stalled and freefell down. Then he opened his wings and they swept up through the cloud and joined a group of Timberjacks, the graceful, kitelike dragons gliding slowly. They soared past and up, levelling off a few yards above the cloud cover. The boy flicked a small lever on the saddle, took a breath, and fell. His dragon fell with him, batting at his rider like a cat does with a toy. Then the boy grew wings, Night Fury wings, and together dragon and rider soared. The human/dragon hybrid dodged blue fire that his dragon shot, the brightness of them dazzling. Then from the cloud a seastack suddenly emerged, looming huge in front of them, so, so close. 
    'Oh no, Toothless!' The boy yelled in Dragontongue, knowing his Fury friend could not steer well without him. He flipped around and went to land on the dragon's back, but a rogue air current took him and swept him down towards the rock. Toothless roared and flapped after his rider, the stiff metal and red fabric tail hindering his natural movement. He grabbed the boy and wrapped his wings around him, blasting the rock they were hurtling toward to smithereens. They burst through the shattered rock and crash landed on another seastack, falling down through trees and onto the hard, stony ground below. 
    The dragon uncurled from around the boy, who sat up dazedly. Seeing that his metal leg had broken in the fall he flicked a switch and the metal flipped round to an exact replica of the broken one. He stood up as the seastack behind crumbled with a great roar, the burnt rock tumbling into the ocean below. Toothless looked back at it with his ears raised, then looked at his rider as if he expected some reaction. 
    'We gotta work on your solo gliding there, bud,' was the boy's response. 'That locked up tail makes for some pretty sloppy manoeuvres.' The boy took his helmet off and ruffled his brown hair, green, slitted pupil eyes looking out over the country they'd flown in to. He was not a boy, really, but around twenty, tall and slim, unlike most of his fellow Vikings. 'Huh,' he said. 'Looks like we found another one.' 
    'Another one of the hundreds out there.'
    'Probably true,' Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third said. He took out a folded up map and spread it on the ground, taking coordinates from a compass built into his wristband. He began drawing the outline of what he thought the land looked like, only to have it ruined by a tail knocking him over. Toothless began batting him playfully, still full of energy even after the long flight. 
    'He's down,' Hiccup said with a laugh, batting back. 'And it's ugly, Vikings and dragons, enemies again. Arghh.' Toothless flumped down on top of him and started licking his face. 'Urghhh,' Hiccup spluttered, scrambling away. 'You know that doesn't wash out.' He wiped his face and flicked dragon saliva at Toothless. 
    While the dragon was cleaning himself Hiccup went back to drawing the new land on his ever growing map, the charcoal lines smudged in places. 'So what, should we name it?' 
    'I don't know,' came a muffled reply from beneath an armpit. 
    'Itchy Armpit it is.' He wrote that on the map in runes. 'What do you reckon, bud, think we might find a few Timberjacks in those woods? The odd Whispering Death or two in those rocks? Who knows, maybe we'll finally track down another Night Fury.' Toothless gave him a look. 'Wouldn't that be something.' He sat up and looked at his friend. 'Keep going?'
    'No,' the Fury said, looking over his shoulder. 'Astrid's coming.'
    Hiccup hurriedly Shifted to his human form. No one but Stoick, Gobber, Fishlegs and Gothi knew of his secret, and he wasn't keen on sharing it just yet. 
    Astrid's blue and yellow Deadly Nadder, Stormfly, landed on the seastack. A blond Viking slipped down from the saddle and dodged Toothless, who had bounded over to Stormfly like and excitable puppy. 
    'Afternoon, milady,' Hiccup said from his seat by the map. 'Where have you been?'
    'Oh well, winning races, what else,' Astrid said and sat down beside him. 'The real question is, where have you been?'
    He gave Astrid the pencil. 'Avoiding my dad.'
    'Oh no,' she said, sketching the country she could see. 'What happened now?'
    'Oh, your going to love this,' he leaped to his feet, er, foot. 'I wake up, the sun is shining, Terrible Terrors are singing on the rooftop. I saunter down to breakfast thinking all is right with the world, and I get this,' Hiccup put on a surprisingly good likeness of his father's voice. '"Son, we need to talk"'
    'Not now, Dad,' Astrid said in terrible imitation of Hiccup's voice. 'I have a whole day of goofing off to do.'
    Hiccup laughed despite of himself. 'Whahaha, ok, first of all, I don't sound like that, who is this character? And second, what is that thing your doing with my shoulders? Yeah, a flattering impersonation. But anyway...' He put on his Stoick voice again. 'Your the pride of Berk, son, and I couldn't be prouder.'
    'Aww, thanks, Dad. I'm pretty impressed with myself too.'
    'When have I ever done that with my hands?' Hiccup laughed, waving his arms around in a Hiccuplike way. 
    'You just did!'
    'Argh, ok. Just hold, still,' he said, grabbing Astrid's shoulders to stop her doing an impression of him. 'Its very serious.' He took a breath and continued. 'Your all grown up, and as no Chief could ask for a better successor, I've decided—'
    'To make you Chief!' Astrid jumped to her feet. 'Oh my Gods, Hiccup, that's amazing!' She punched him in the stomach, deliberately hitting the button that sprang the fin he'd crafted into the back of his brown suit. 
    'Arghhh!' He wound the fin back up. 'Your gonna wear out the spring coil, the calibration is very sensitive.'
    They heard squawks and growls and saw the two dragons playing tug of war over a branch. Stormfly won and ran off with it, knocking over the humans.
    'Yeah, so...' Hiccup said as Astrid pulled him up. 'That is what I'm dealing with.'
    'What did you tell him?'
    'Well, I didn't. By the time he turned around I was gone.'
    'Huh, well,' Astrid said, gazing out over the new land again. 'Thats a lot of responsibility, the map will have to wait, and I'll need to fly Toothless since you'll be too busy, and...' She stopped, seeing Hiccup's expression. 
    'It's not me, Astrid. All those speeches and planning and running the village, that's his thing.'
    'I think your missing the point,' she said, looking at him. 'I mean, Chief, what an honour. I'd be pretty excited.'
    Hiccup sat by the map again. 'Im not like you. You know exactly who you are, you always have... But I'm still looking. I know that I'm not my father, and I never met my mother, so, what does that make me?' A strange hybrid creature who can grow wings and Shift to a dragon, his thoughts told him. 
    Astrid sat down beside him. 'What your searching for isn't out there, Hiccup. It's in here,' she said, placing a hand on his chest. 'Maybe you just don't see it yet.'
    'Maybe,' he said. Something caught his eye and his pupils turned to slits momentarily, focusing in on thick black smoke rising from behind a hill. 'But you know, there is something out there.'
    'Hiccup...'
    He lifted her chin so she was forced to look, and her eyes hardened when she saw the smoke.

1367 words.
Comments welcome! :D

≈Flitt