Chapter Text
A groan sounded from Hiccup’s bed.
Astrid whipped around. He was awake! Barely, but still. Toothless was already approaching him, ready to bestow the customary licks to his face. His snout hung in the middle of Hiccup’s line of sight, waiting for him to open his eyes.
Slowly, Hiccup’s eyes began to crack open. He blinked multiple times, trying to get his eyes to focus. Suddenly, he gasped. “Get away!” he cried, flinging a weak arm out at Toothless. Startled, Toothless took a quick leap backwards.
Astrid rushed over. She came by his side, in between him and Toothless. She rested a comforting hand on Hiccup’s shoulder.
“Hiccup, it’s ok, it’s just Toothless. You’re safe,” she spoke softly to him.
“Toothless?” Hiccup asked groggily, his eyes half-lidded.
Astrid continued placatingly. “Yes, you hit your head pretty hard, Hiccup,” she said, “just relax.”
“What?” he said, finally managing to fully open his eyes. He looked to his left and right and blinked. “Where am I?” He scrutinized her, squinting. “Who are you?”
“What?” Astrid sputtered. “You don’t—” she cut herself off. This was a common symptom of head trauma, she remembered. Stressing Hiccup out further would do them no favors. He just needed a little time.
Hiccup stared into Astrid’s eyes without a hint of recognition. Suddenly his eyes widened. “Astrid?”
Astrid sighed in relief. There it is. “Yes, Hiccup, I’m here. Calm down.” She chuckled. “You scared me for a bit there.”
For a moment, Hiccup just stared at her in an expression that mingled confusion and shock together. Suddenly, dropping his gaze, he let his body relax and sat up straight in his bed, quick to obey.
He glanced shyly back up at Astrid, who gazed perturbedly back. “O-ok, I’m calm,” he said quietly, then added, “You look different, Astrid. Or maybe it’s just that my vision’s all blurry.”
Before Astrid could guess at his odd behavior, Toothless, having waited long enough and seeing Hiccup less distressed, happily pounced on the bed with a big gummy smile.
Hiccup’s composure shattered. He yelped and desperately located and grabbed Astrid’s knife off her belt and held it threateningly out at Toothless from his position on the bed.
“No, Hiccup! Don’t!” Astrid shouted in shock, snatching the knife away from him. “Why? What—?”
Astrid watched as Toothless instantly backed down, whimpering, and Hiccup cowered fearfully away.
She gaped in shock. She had never seen Hiccup lash out at Toothless.
Dropping her eyes, she turned to the whimpering dragon beside her. In soft tones she said, “It’s ok, Toothless, he’s probably… just still a little shook by the Speed Stingers. That’s the last thing he would remember.” She reasoned, hoping, rather than believing her explanation to be true.
Still disoriented, Hiccup watched the scene before him with wide, bewildered eyes. “Speed Stingers? What’s a Speed Stinger?” he asked in a hushed voice. Suddenly, any remnants of control left him, and his voice rose to a hysterically high pitch. “And what in Odin’s world are you doing? That’s a dragon, Astrid! KILL IT!”
************
Earlier that day…
“Alright, gang! Routine Nadder migration redirection. You all know the drill,” Hiccup’s familiar voice called out. He was sitting on top Toothless, flying in the center of their formation. In the slight morning breeze, the strands of his hair were lifted in all directions.
“Uuugh… why do you have to make it so boring?” Snotlout whined. “Same drill, same formation, same stupid Nadders…”
“He’s right, Hiccup,” Tuffnut stated. “A life of monotony is not good for the soul.”
“I’d hardly call our lives together monotonous, Tuff,” Hiccup replied.
“More like enervating,” Fishlegs added.
“Still, it wouldn’t hurt to shake things up,” Ruffnut countered, ignoring Fishlegs. “How about this? Whoever gets the most Nadders to shoot at them with their tailspikes without getting hit wins!”
“No,” Hiccup commanded. “No games, no scores, no shenanigans.”
“Oh, and why Hiccup?” Snotlout voiced, “is someone getting a little nervous about their flying abilities? We Jorgensons, however, never back down from a challenge,” he sneered, flexing his arms.
Wondering to himself if Snotlout realized that his biceps’ size had nothing to do with his ability to fly Hookfang, Hiccup rolled his eyes and cast a glance at Astrid, who was flying steady by his side as always. She smiled and shook her head in solidarity.
In truth, Hiccup was feeling really good about their mission. He had seen no Hunter ships so far and had no reason to expect them. The Hunters were never active in this part of the archipelago and redirecting the Nadders from flying in the direction of the Hunters’ territory should have been easy.
And it had been. From finding the Nadders resting on a small wooded island (right where they were expected to be), getting them in the air, (not a difficult task), and blocking the wrong direction off (Snotlout and Hookfang’s job), and showing them the right direction (Astrid and Stormfly’s job), to bringing up the rear, (Fishlegs and Meatlug’s job), everything went smoothly and predictably, save a few small stray explosions from the twins.
The actual spurring on of the Nadders, however, (Hiccup and Toothless’ job), was where the problems began.
Toothless was just about to start moving the migration forward when Fishlegs urgently called out, “Hiccup, there’s a Nadder still down there!” He pointed to the forest-covered island.
“What?” Hiccup asked, looking down. And indeed, a single Nadder was still on the island, pacing about. It looked neither sick nor injured, which made Hiccup wonder why it hadn’t joined its flock.
Suddenly a dragon screech filled the air. Hiccup flew a bit higher to peer over the tall trees of the island and caught sight of a second Nadder limp on its side, surrounded by a pack of small aqua dragons. The first Nadder was not too far from the second, unwilling to abandon his friend.
“Speed Stingers!” Hiccup exclaimed, recognizing the flightless dragons. “They’ve paralyzed a Nadder!”
“Where did they come from?” Fishlegs asked.
Instantly, the Nadders nearest the back of the flock bucked, trying to get past Meatlug and Toothless to their fallen friend. Fishlegs whimpered, backing up from the angry dragons.
“Fishlegs!” Hiccup shouted, abandoning his post and flying towards the island, “don’t let those Nadders go anywhere! Keep them still!”
Instantly, Fishlegs retook his position.
“Ruff, Tuff, help Fishlegs and Meatlug! And no explosions! We don’t want to rattle the Nadders any further.”
Seriousness overtook the twins’ features and they flew quickly to back up Fishlegs.
“Snotlout, stay put! Don’t let the Nadders fly in the wrong direction!”
Snotlout remained where he was.
“Astrid! Get the okay Nadder out of there while I take care of the Speed Stingers!”
Astrid immediately joined Hiccup on his way, leaving the others to control the flock still in the air.
Once they had reached the pack of Speed Stingers, Stormfly began coaxing the panicked Nadder up away from the pack while Hiccup and Toothless attempted to rescue the paralyzed dragon. But no matter which direction they came from, the Speed Stringers came between them and the Nadder, baring their stingers. They made it impossible for Toothless to carry the dragon away from danger without getting paralyzed himself. The dragon and rider backed away from the pack and flew a bit upwards.
Stormfly and Astrid, meanwhile, had succeeded in getting the well Nadder to fly up after them and were now making their way up toward the treetops.
Switching strategies, Hiccup and Toothless followed, stopping at a hover about twenty feet above the ground while Astrid and the Nadders continued ascending.
Carefully, Hiccup and Toothless lined up a plasma blast that would scare the Speed Stingers away long enough for them to rescue the injured dragon.
Before they could fire, however, and before Stormfly had flown higher than the tall trees, Astrid heard a rustle to her left. She looked in the sound’s direction. All at once she knew why they hadn’t noticed the Speed Stingers earlier.
“Hiccup, there’s more hiding in the trees!”
Before she could react, a Speed Stinger propelled off a branch below her and caught the other Nadder midair. Its stinger grazed the Nadder’s wing. Within seconds the movement of the dragon’s wings died, and its initially slow descent became a rapid plummet.
And if that hadn’t been bad enough, Toothless, who was still aiming his blast, was right in its path.
“Hiccup!” Astrid cried.
Hiccup flung his head up at Astrid’s cry and panic caught him as he saw the falling dragon. It was coming too fast. “Toothless!” he yelled, making his dragon call off his blast. “Move!” he shouted.
But the plummeting Nadder had already closed the distance between them. Toothless and Hiccup had only managed a slight turn midair before the Nadder’s body impacted their own.
The Nadder’s left wing caught Hiccup on his right shoulder with such a force he was thrown off Toothless’ saddle.
Dazed, Hiccup felt himself lose all contact with Toothless as he watched the treetops grow increasingly smaller and the clouds further away. He heard Toothless shriek and Astrid scream his name. Distantly hoping he wasn’t about to land in the middle of the pack of Speed Stingers, he even thought he could make out Snotlout’s voice from across the island before the back of his head impacted with something hard and everything went black.