It was a rather uneventful journey to where Toothless and I would begin our patrol. I was kind of hoping that there will be something exciting to liven up our patrol, even if it’s just escorting an elderly flier around the racing track, rather than them trying to cross through the racing track because of bad eyesight or forgetfulness. Toothless performed a few barrel rolls, and if I hadn’t had been strapped to the saddle, I’d have fallen right off of him. Or at least flailing wildly and yelling. Even now I was still working on learning how Toothless moved, and despite years of experience he kept pulling new and surprising acts out of nowhere.
It was one of the most important points that Gobber and I drill into any Dragonrider at the Dragon Academy at Berk. Always be aware of your dragon’s movement and behavior. Though Ruffnut and Tuffnut like to ignore this piece of advice, but they’re Vikings. Fighting and pain are second only to the mead we drink at our festivals and at home.
Toothless and I had flown several patrols before we encountered our first spot of trouble. Underneath the massive cloud continent of Vaporia small clouds floated on the underside of the larger, much more massive cloud above it. Two dark ‘cloud’ rods perched at the edge of the cloud, opposite to each other, blueish-white lightning arcing between the two rods, illuminating the edges of the racecourse. The racecourse avoided the blackish looking holes which appeared every so often in the cloud’s underbelly. There were also smaller clouds scattered beneath the much larger cloud, except where the racetrack was concerned. Sewage poured out of the dark holes in the underbelly of the cloud, making me glad that the racecourse didn’t venture anywhere near the openings in the bottom of the dark bottom of the cloud country.
One of the troublemakers was a dragon that positioned its body in a bipedal position, unlike the much larger four-footed dragons. Its arms were similar to a human, with claws like a gryphon’s, but matching the color of his scales, and not showing much color variation from the color of his body. I couldn’t tell if it was a male or female, at least by the shape of his body. But his voice sounded male, so I’m going to say that he was male. His scales started at a bloody-red color at the edges and gradually changed the closer to the stomach area so that it was a vibrant yellowish-gold color. His eyes were golden, with his pupils slitted like a cats.
One was a male gryphon, though again, I was basing it off of his voice, since I didn’t know enough about gryphons to determine gender by body shape, fur or feather coloration, plus unlike mares and stallions, their sex wasn’t obvious. Then again, I wasn’t looking all that hard nor did I want to. I know I’d feel uncomfortable if someone was staring at my crotch for an extended length of time.
He had a pair of yellow goggles resting on his upper brow. His underbelly was a tawny-golden color, while his wings were brown on the smaller feathers, with the medium sized feathers were a light grey color, and his largest feathers were white.
The last was a female pegasus. I’d seen enough ponies to determine that as a general rule, stallions had more ‘square-ish’ and more angular features, while the mares were more curvaceous and lacking the angular features that often serve as visual sexual cues which enable me and anyone else familiar with these ponies in this strange land to determine if the pony was male or female. Her voice was also a determining factor, but it was far easier to tell that this pony was a mare and not a stallion.
“Excuse me? This is the racing track for the Global Endurance race and it’s not safe to be here. Would you mind and take yourselves elsewhere so that both you don’t interfere with the racers. We don’t mind if you watch from off the track though.”
“Huh? And who do you think you are to tell us what we can and can not do, ya bald baboon?” the dragon mocked.
Keeping an eye on the trio, I removed a wooden carved plaque that hung from a cord. On the plaque in bas-relief was the image of a globe, with a small pony and an arc that started from the nose of the pony and wrapped around the ‘back’ of the globe and ended near the tail trailing behind the pony like an unfurled banner. “I am a guard for the Global Endurance Race. All I’m asking is that you vacate the racing track at this point in time.”
“Make us you freak!” the gryphon challenged.
I pointed at the mare, and gave the thumbs down sign to Toothless, as I retrieved the shock stick from the pouch. Toothless snapped his wings, and whipped his tail, making a cracking sound, like a whip as he closed the distance between the mare and us. He and I maneuvered before any of them could get over the shock of how quickly Toothless went from hovering in the air to closing the gap between us. I made a dipping motion with my hand, as I adjusted his tailfin and he used his tail to fly beneath the pegasus mare as I had asked, I jammed the shock stick into her stomach and pressing the button to stun her.
I heard her cry out as she jerked and twitched, before starting to plummet towards the ocean below. I used three of my fingers to make a ‘claw’ hand form and clenched the ‘claw.’ Toothless nodded, closing his wings and snapping his tail again as he streaked towards the still twitching mare. I could hear angered cries behind me, but after briefly looking back, I could see they weren’t going to catch up to us, though once we were burdened by the weight and additional air resistance of the mare, that would change.
I didn’t know what to do, once we caught the mare. I might be more logically grounded, but I am still a Viking. Besides, once I’m in the air I tend to be more geared towards reaction and action. Flying by the seat of my pants, as it were.
Anyways, Toothless caught the mare, and I looked back to see the dragon and gryphon quickly closing the gap between us, now that we had to deal with the the mare. “Toothless!” I cried, pointing towards the dragon and gryphon. I got my stun stick ready to take the assailants on. I saw Toothless give me a tooth-less grin, and I had to scrabble to grip the saddle, as Toothless spun around one, before using his front legs to throw the pegasus mare in the direction of the two other fliers.
The gryphon squawked loudly in surprise and his talons grasped the mare to keep her from plummeting towards the sea. Toothless beat his wings, rising higher and higher, as the dragon roared in indignation at having missed Toothless and I. He had to bank wide and flap vigorously in order to try to attack us again.
I looked towards the gryphon to make sure that he wasn’t going to throw the mare at us, like Toothless had done. So far, he seemed to be watching Toothless, the other dragon, and I as we fought to determine which one would be victorious. The dragon dove towards us again, but breathing fire. Toothless shot off a high speed scorching hot fireball, causing the dragon to roar, and dodge, as his fire didn’t stop Toothless’ attack. Toothless had to lower our position in the sky, to dodge the other dragon’s fiery plume.
A weak fire like that wouldn’t hurt Toothless, and my gliding suit would protect me for a while, but the straps that secured me wouldn’t last long against a fire based attack. Not with how much oils had soaked into the leather to keep it flexible and retain its strength without becoming brittle. Leather gear did have to get replaced once enough wear and tear had accumulated, but that didn’t mean that we couldn’t extend the life of our gear by properly maintaining it. Proper gear maintenance had saved more than one Viking from plummeting out of the skies after falling off their dragon because some strap or belt snapped.
Toothless spun, as I narrowly avoided the dragon’s claws from cutting into my shoulder. I could feel the rush of wind, as the dragon swooped passed us. I heard a whooshing sound, but before Toothless and I could react, a sharp pain shot through my back. The mare had slumped onto Toothless’ back, still having the occasional muscle spasm, but she was showing that she was getting control of her body back through. I was pretty mad that that gryphon had thrown the mare at me like that. Still I did kind of admire that he would attack me like that, even if it put his pegasus friend in danger.
If I had been more like a traditional Viking, I’d have slit her throat and dump the body into the ocean, but that isn’t the kind of Viking that I was.
The dragon was diving towards Toothless and I from the front while the gryphon was diving at the same time from the back. I waited until the last moment, before rolling to the side, the belts keeping me secured to the saddle. Both cried out as sharp claws and talons scratched and tore at each other, their wings beating furiously to get each away from the other.
Not wanting the mare to continue burdening me, I chucked the mare over my head towards the dragon and was surprised when he batted her away from him. Fortunately she had stopped twitching enough to be able to fly under her own power. She, however, started to fly up towards the cloud country above us, leaving her two compatriots and making it easier for Toothless and I. Almost effortlessly, Toothless kept beating his wings furiously and climbing in the air, as the other two also beat their wings to close the gap between them and us. My lips pursed tightly, as I furrowed my brow. Dealing with the dragon and the gryphon would be difficult as it would require getting close.
Groaning, I unsheathed Inferno, waiting for the gryphon to get close enough to me for me to spring my trap attack on him. He closed the gap, as Toothless fired another blue fireball making the other dragon give a rather high-pitched squawk and was forced to dodge the attack. The gryphon’s talons were too close, but I quickly wreathed Inferno in the flames which danced upon its blade, swiping the blade at the gryphon’s wings, seeing the feather’s catching fire. The gryphon dived towards the ocean, taken out of the sky. At least until he could grow replacement feathers. That is, if they can. I’m just glad to have one less foe to deal with.
Toothless and the other dragon used legs and claws to bat at each other, sharp talons raking over their scaly armor. I made a retreating motion with my hand, indicating that Toothless should back up. I released the gas from the hilt of my sword, and when I heard the coughing in the putrid gas cloud, I used the igniting flint in my sword to ignite the explosive gas, I frowned in disappointment as I saw that the other dragon looked like he hadn’t taken any damage from what I thought was a good attack.
Toothless started to fly along the underbelly of the massive cloud, occasionally snapping his tail to gain a burst of speed, as we started to have a rather sizable gap between Toothless and the other dragon. Taking a brief reprieve from dealing with the dragon, I took a split second to shoot a red flare over where the gryphon had landed in the water. Hopefully the medic crews would get to him before he drowned. I could only wonder if I was going to get into trouble for how I handled this issue.
Toothless shot out from the cloud and started climbing. I looked over my shoulder to see the small form of the dragon in the distance. Soon the sun was to our back. Toothless closed his wings, using his tail to maneuver just above the dragon. The dragon didn’t see us, dazzled by the sun in his eyes. However, I heard the mighty roar as Toothless impacted him near the base of his wing joints. I don’t know if they broke or were just badly sprained, as I had wind rushing past my ears, but I didn’t hear any sound of breaking bones.
I hadn’t escaped unscathed either, as one of his claws on his foot went through the dragonscale legging, lacerating my leg in a rather gory triple gash, all parallel. As the dragon fell, I quickly took a belt, and cinched it tightly to keep me from bleeding out before I could get it looked at.
When I was done with my own wound I reached in and fired another medical flare over my current position. “Search, Toothless!” I cried, leaning over slightly to scan the waters for signs of either the dragon, gryphon or both. I didn’t like that they tried to attack me, but I’d feel bad if they died, and I hadn’t done whatever I could to keep them alive.
I spotted the dragon floundering in the water, I lowered a rope with a loop in it near the end towards the dragon. “Grab on! We’ll get you to land!” Toothless flew the dragon and I towards the shore of the largest piece of land nearby. I saw the gryphon already on the shore, shaking itself of any excess seawater. We got to shore. Toothless landing to rest his wings for awhile, as a couple medic team air balloons drifted our way, a couple of fliers harnessed to the basket, letting them go anywhere they needed to be, rather than drift at the whims of the air.
While the belt helped to slow my blood loss, I still couldn’t stop the bleeding completely, so I for one, was really glad to see a medic team show up. I wanted to keep my promise to Astrid to come back to her in the same condition as I left. She’ll probably tear into me for making her worry like I have, what with not being able to return home immediately after discovering these exotic lands. I truly felt bad for causing her worry, even though the circumstances are out of my control.
I reached into my bag, pulling out flexible metal belt and yelled out,
“Toothless, Dragon Cradle!”
As I pointed towards the dragon. Toothless bounded over, tackling the bipedal dragon to the ground, wriggling as the dragon under him struggled to get out from under Toothless’ full body tackle. I held the dragon’s wings down to his side, as I pulled the belt as tight as I could, using a cotter pin to secure the belt in place, in the back. Pulling another belt, also of metal, I leaped upon the back of the gryphon, using my arm to cut off his airway and wait until he was unconscious, before I proceeded to secure the belt around the gryphon’s body and wings, burned though they were.
I pointed towards the unconscious gryphon. “Toothless can you carry the gryphon? I’ll handle the dragon.”
I helped lift the gryphon onto Toothless’ back, while I gripped the belt behind the dragon and started walking with the troublemaker. Toothless walked by my side, eyeing my wounded leg worriedly making a whining sound, laying his ears back on his head.
“Don’t worry too much buddy. I just need to get patched up, but first we need to get these two handed over to the proper authorities,” I tried to reassure Toothless.
Other than the dragon wrenching his body as he fought me every step of the way, until I had enough and knocked him out with the pommel of my sword, before proceeding to carry him on my back, though with his head pointed away from my body, as I didn’t want for him to use his firebreath against me whenever he woke up. I buckled slightly under the weight of the dragon that I was carrying, but considering that I was me, that wasn’t all that surprising.
This was going to take a very long time if Toothless and I had to carry both of these goons back to the G. E. R. guard headquarters.
“Let’s take a break, Toothless,” I said as I unceremoniously dumped the dragon onto the ground, Toothless shaking his body, and letting the gryphon slide off of his own body, though he probably didn’t ache as much as I was. I reached into my small pouch and secured one of the blue flares into the ground before twisting the flare like I had been instructed, watching a brilliant blue orb shoot high into the sky, before hovering high over our current location.
I maneuvered behind the knocked out dragon, my sword unsheathed, ready to knock the dragon out if he woke up and tried to breathe fire at me or caused me any trouble. Toothless rested beside the gryphon, keeping his head turned, keeping an eye on the Gryphon should he wake from his unconsciousness. I placed a couple fingers over the dragon’s airway while I scanned the sky for the additional help that was supposed to be coming. I hated waiting and especially when I had two uncooperative captives that I personally had to deal with. Well, I only really had to deal with the one, but it didn’t change that he’d been a particularly uncooperative captive, and I’d be glad to be rid of this troublesome duo.
It was after about an hour when additional reinforcements arrived. A squad of five pegasi touched down.
“You fired your flare?” the leader of the squadron queried.
“Yeah, The gryphon next to my dragon friend and this here dragon-” I jostled the limp body of my charge. “-attempted to fight me when they refused to get off of the G. E. R.’s race track. But Toothless, as awesome as he is, can’t fly with three passengers, and walking will take a much longer time to escort these two to have done with them in accordance with the laws of your country. So, if you’d like to pick one or both of them to carry back to HQ then Toothless and I would greatly appreciate it,” I informed the newly arrived ponies.
“Right, Peachy Sweet, Luckette, you two get out the harnesses and start attaching them to the gryphon. I’ll be helping to fly the gryphon, so you’ll need three or four harnesses. Berry Shine and Wing Wishes, you’ll be airlifting the dragon, so you’ll need to get three harnesses out,” the leader, who was a light blue colored pegasus mare with a light green mane commanded.
“I know their names, but what about yours?” I asked the leader.
“My name is Wind Chill,” Wind Chill informed me.
“That’s cool, so you must be a pretty … chill pony to be friend with. I hope you won’t give me the … cold shoulder.” I joked teasingly.
Wind Chill rolled her eyes. “Ha ha,” she deadpanned.
“Wind Chill! Don’t be so cold!” I continued to rib her.
Wind Chill exhaled a loud sigh, “Mister Hiccup, are you done, yet? Your jokes aren’t as funny as you think, and actually kind of hurts my feelings, to be honest.”
“Oh … . Sorry,” I apologized to her.
“I forgive you. I don’t think you’re a bad pony, Hiccup,” she replied.
“I’m not a pony at all.” I replied
“Really? I hadn’t noticed,” Wind Chill snarked.
“See, there you go! Loosen up, don’t be so uptight. I’m sure you’re lots more fun when you don’t act like you have a stick up your butt,” I cheered.
Wind Chill’s cheeks flushed as she heard the other pegasi snickering at that, she proceeded over to where Peachy Sweet and Luckette were finishing up getting the Gryphon into a harness, and were attaching straps and spring loaded hooks to the gryphon’s harness.
Peachy Sweet was a light pistachio green colored pegasus mare with a vivid cherry red mane, but several shades lighter than a true cherry red. Luckette, also a pegasus mare, had a light purple-blue coat, but this was much lighter and her mane was a light golden color. Berry Shine was a pale mulberry colored coated pegasus mare with a purple-ish mane that was kind of in the middle on the lightness/darkness scale. Wing Wishes was a powder pink pegasus mare with a purple mane.
“Will you and your dragon be able to get back alright?” Wind Chill asked from over where she was climbing into her harness. There were two harnesses in the front, and one in the rear, and it looked like they were evenly spaced from each other.
“I don’t know. Toothless? Do you feel ready to go back to HQ?”
Toothless roared, flaring his wings and rising slightly off the ground in a brief frontal jump as he shot a blast of plasma into the sky. It was like watching a blueish-white star moving in reverse, instead of impacting the earth like one of the mighty beasts of Ragnarok.
“And that’s why you’re best dragon,” I replied as I eased into my saddle, watching as the pegasi flapped their wings hard and fast, as they gradually became airborne.
Toothless gave a mighty leap, also flapping his wings, as sand was blown in every direction, as Toothless joined the ponies in the sky, his larger wingspan making it immensely easier to get airborne.
Near the base, as the pegasi were escorting the dragon and gryphon troublemakers to the guard’s jail, a flash of cyan caught the corner of my eye.
“Woah!” I exclaimed, as I waved my hands frantically in front of my face, as the cyan pony with the rainbow mane and tail dashed up in front of my face, looking over me, all of me.
“Hey! You’re the punk that was in that cloud on the racing track weren’t you! Now I’m not going to have as awesome a record as I would have,” she complained bitterly, her brow furrowing and her lips pulled tight in a frown, giving me a glare.
“Hey, it’s not my fault! The race track wasn’t marked, or surrounded by a bunch of winged fliers cheering along the track’s edges. It looked like the rest of the sky,” I retorted, feeling upset at her accusation that our collision had been intentional.
She hummed as if in thought. “So, what weird kind of being are you anyways? I’ve never seen anything like you before.”
Toothless turned around, tackling her onto the ground and licking her face. Rainbow started squirming and headbutted Toothless, who wasn’t phased at all.
“I’m not going to let you eat me, dragon!” she yelled at Toothless.
I chuckled, and scritched Toothless under his chin, and he promptly got off of her and jumped onto me, tackling me to the ground, and slobbering all over my face.
“Augh! Toothless! How many times do I have to tell you, that doesn’t wash out! Now I’m going to smell like you, you big lug!” I cried before engaging him in a little playful wrestling, laughing as I did so. After I ended up ‘losing’ and getting pinned, with Toothless bringing enough of his weight down onto me that I couldn’t wriggle out from underneath him, much to his smug satisfaction, I redirected my attention to the pegasus.
“I’m a Viking, and for your information, Toothless was greeting you, not trying to eat you,” I informed her.
“Weird. Is everyone where you come from as weird looking as you?”
“We come in all shapes and sizes, honestly. I’m hardly the typical example of a human, back where I come from,” I explained.
“Still, how awesome that you managed to tame a dragon!” she exclaimed with her wings unfurled and pointed skyward as she trotted around Toothless, looking him over. “I gotta say, I’ve never seen a dragon like him before.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty rare, even in my own homeland. I hold onto hope that one day we’ll find other dragons like him, so he won’t be alone. That he’ll have friends and maybe a lover of his own. But until then, we have each other, our friends, and my family,” I replied.
“Why are you working for the G. E. R. guards anyways?” the cyan, rainbow maned pegasus inquired.
“My gliding suit got damaged enough to not make it airworthy, so my buddy Toothless and I needed some of the local money in order to buy the things that we need to fix my suit. I’m Hiccup, and this big lug is Toothless.” I pointed towards Toothless, who looked towards the sky, while tilting his head to the right. “Hah, innocent my foot!” I barked a laugh at his charade of him being more angelic than he really was.
“Huh. Name’s Rainbow Dash. How fast can he fly?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I dunno. He’s faster than any dragon I’ve encountered back home, and so far, even faster than the great dragons we’ve encountered. We’ve never really tried to find out how fast he goes, I just know that he’s faster than any dragon that I’ve encountered so far.”
“Really now? I mean, he does look fast … but obviously he couldn’t beat me,” Rainbow bragged while polishing her hoof.
“Is that a challenge?” I asked before looking to Toothless who also seemed to pick up on Rainbow’s arrogance. “You hear that, Toothless? I think she doesn’t believe how fast we are.”
“Well how about a race then? First one to that cloud? Oh, and I’m not going easy on you,” Rainbow offered, extending her hoof to point to a certain cloud a good ways up there. After a few seconds of pointing she then moved her extended hoof towards me as if asking for me to shake it.
I grabbed her extended hoof and gave it a shake. “You’re on. Let me hop on Toothless then we’ll count down from three and go on one.”
She simply nodded, still wearing that smug grin of hers as I hopped onto Toothless’ back and began to strap myself in. I double checked the straps before looking over to the rainbow coloured pony.
“Alright. 3 … 2 … 1!” we said in near unison before taking off.
Without a moment’s hesitation Toothless and I took off, with him pumping his wings as fast as he could while I just held on for the ride. I didn’t bother to look and find Rainbow Dash, instead focusing intently on the cloud that was growing and growing closer by the second.
“Almost there!” I yelled to Toothless who just seemed to beat his wings harder, and in a blink of an eye we burst through the right side of the cloud, which was surprisingly bigger than what it originally looked like.
I didn’t say anything at first, but instead instructed Toothless to do a loop and come back around on the cloud. He simply nodded and pulled a nice loop while I awaited the sight of what I assumed a beaten pegasus just making it to the cloud. Instead what I found was her sitting on the cloud clapping her hooves together while still wearing that smug grin.
I groaned in annoyance at this while dragging my hand across my face. “How long have you been there?”
“Not as long as you think, monkey boy. In fact I’m pretty sure we were close to tying … I still won though.” Of course she did, either way if she did win that meant she was damn fast.
“So what now?” I asked as Toothless hovered, though I heard a faint rumble coming from under him. “Aside from breakfast, Toothless.”
“While I am the fastest pegasus in all of Equestria, I have to admit that you two are good runners up. Possibly even faster than the Wonderbolts … which gives me an idea. Tell you what, I’ll buy what you need, if you and Toothless help train me, and keep me in top form. I’ll even throw in some bits every time you need them and pay for expenses. What do you say?”
“Train you?” I asked, eyebrow raised in question. How did she expect us to train her when I knew next to nothing about her race let alone her.
“Oh you know, racing me, making sure I don’t do anything stupid, and all that jazz,” Rainbow said casually at first before she flapped her wings a few times to position herself right in front of Toothless. “Besides, how cool would it be to have a dragon and a … whatever you are again as my trainers! Surely that would get the attention of ponies everywhere, maybe even the Wonderbolts!”
“No doubt! You know what, I think that is probably a better idea than anything else but on one condition.”
“Name it!”
“You need to help me find my way home afterwards,” I offered hopefully.
“Ha, that’s it? I could do that with my eyes close!” she exclaimed proudly at first, “and if by some crazy twist, I can’t, then I know a mare who could definitely help!
“Then you have a deal. I’ll get what Toothless and I have earned at the Freelance Guild. Do you want to come with, or should I meet you somewhere?” I asked her at first before realizing something. “Wait, don’t you need to stay on the course for the race?”
“Ha! The race hasn’t even started for today. This next portion is a night flight so we’re scheduled to leave later, I was just out flying to stretch wings and keep up my awesomeness. I still have to make sure that my saddlebags have everything that I need, so … . Do you see that building off in the distance?”
“Yeah,” I replied, not knowing why she wanted me to observe the tallest building in town which probably could be seen from much farther away than we were.
“That’s City Hall. I’ll fly over there and meet you there once I’m done with what I need to do. Oh! And just a word of advice, you might want to purchase yourself some flight goggles.”
“Alright. I’ll see you later then, Rainbow Dash.” I watched as Rainbow Dash vanished inside one of the barrack buildings, before turning to my buddy.
“Alrighty, Toothless, I want to let Zephyr know what’s going on. I hope she won’t be too upset.” I removed the plaque with the silhouette of Toothless and the circle and a diagonal slash and underneath the circle was a simple image of a sword. I hung the plaque around Toothless’ neck as a precautionary measure, even though most of the ponies within the guard were fairly relaxed as Toothless really had yet to attack anyone.
So with that in place as a precaution, Toothless and I took off back to the cloud city which luckily wasn’t that long of a flight. In fact it was extremely quick because Toothless was probably eager to get some food. No doubt we could bargain a meal from Zephyr before we left her hire.
I arrived at the barracks where Zephyr had her office in and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” I heard Zephyr’s voice respond from the other side of the door.
I entered her office, noticing the pile of paperwork and several scrolls on her desk. Zephyr looked up to me from the cluttered desk.
“Hi, Hiccup. What brings you around?” Zephyr inquired. “I mean I heard about the little fiasco that already happened but it sounded like you guys were still up for patrol.”
“I just wanted to let you know that you’ll want to renew your job posting at the Freelancer guild, if it isn’t still active.”
“What? Why? Has your experience working for us somehow been unsatisfactory? Is it because of the attack on Toothless by one of our own guards?”
I waved my arms frantically in an attempt to dismiss such a notion. “No! No! One of the racers we had run into before we started working here was impressed by Toothless’ speed and wants him and I to go with her as a trainer. I accepted, but I wanted to let you know, so you aren’t unpleasantly surprised when I leave. I wanted to do right by you, since you’ve been so kind to give someone like me a job, when back home you would have been treated with suspicion and fear. Thank you, for letting me work here. Though my time with you has been short, I’ve enjoyed the time we did have together.”
“I see. I can’t say that I’m not disappointed that your tenure with us was so short. Hopefully the Freelancer Guild will have a replacement for me soon. I’ll have to check in with them tomorrow.” She furrowed her brows, and the right side of her swelled as she gave me a sad, crooked smile. “I enjoyed our time together as well, short as it was. Be safe in your journeys. I’m going to miss not having you around, just a little … and only because of your dragon.”
“You take care of yourself as well, Zephyr,” I said as I kneeled down and hugged her goodbye, to which she gave an appreciative hum. “Also, can Toothless have one last meal? Big sap likes the fish here.
“Sure,” she chuckled as we released each other, and I walked to the door, casting one more glance back at Zephyr, seeing her still watching me, her brows still furrowed in a sorrowful look. I waved goodbye to her, and she waved back, before the wooden partition of the door closed behind me and blocking my view of Zephyr.
I went outside and winced as a lance of pain lanced through my leg. Reminding me that I still needed to get my leg properly bandaged. I’m not looking forward to putting whatever they use for alcohol into the wound, but it’s something I’ve seen Old Gotti do, when treating wounded Vikings and while there have been those she couldn’t save, I know that we’d have a lot more graves if it wasn’t for her, well that and my fellow Berkians would see a lot more injured and handicapped Vikings.
I spotted a female pegasus with a pastel sap green coat and a moderate cyan colored mane and she had a tourniquet wrapped around a silhouette of a pony leg, so it was probably safe to say that she was on one of the medical squads. “Excuse me, miss?”
The mare turned to face me before I continued, “Yeah, I was in a tussle earlier and one of the fighters clawed my leg, so I was hoping you’d know where I could go to get it treated.”
“Are you sure you should even be walking?” She inquired, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at me, before tilting her head downward to look at my leg.
“It’s just a bit of a gash. As long as I don’t lose too much blood, I should be fine. Maybe a little weakened, but nothing I couldn’t recover from.”
“That’s not just some wound! Good Celestia above, that must hurt! Don’t move it too much, at least until we get it treated and even then you shouldn’t move that until you’re healed! I’ll go get a wheelchair and take you to Medical so we can have you up and going in no time. Be right back!”
I watched as she flew off. I didn’t even get her name, though to be fair, I hadn’t introduced myself yet. I looked around the grounds until I spotted some mare fawning over Toothless and giving him a belly rub. I couldn’t help but laugh at his expression, as his eyes rolled up and his tongue lolled out and I could even hear happy sounding groans and moans from him. Though I think the nearly empty bucket of fish next to him was more than one reason as to how she got his affection.
I did see a stallion tilting his head, looking at Toothless. I think he was looking at Toothless’ wings as I’d catch the stallion occasionally spreading and moving his own wing in various positions before looking back at Toothless. I just hoped he wouldn’t get wing envy or wing jealousy or whatever it’s called here, and decide to hurt Toothless. I was being a little more cautious, given how one of the guards just attacked Toothless, just because he was a dragon.
As soon as the mare returned with the wheelchair, which looked exactly like the name implied, the whole thing went by in a blur. A blur and a flurry of feathers, fur, and asking questions. Whoever this mare was, she was extremely passionate about her job, almost to the point of it being ridiculous. I remember her wheeling me over to a building that had a large red cross on it before rushing me inside and into a stall of sorts that was only separated by cloth.
From there she had somehow gotten my pants off, much to my embarrassment, and proceeded to dab something on the wound before bringing a tray had some tools on it. Did I mention that whatever she dabbed ended up feeling as though I was lit on fire by a Monstrous Nightmare? Well it did … luckily I had experienced it before so I didn’t scream too badly.
Though apparently through the pain, that was my leg being nearly lit on fire, the mare used some sort of thread to shut each slash of the three claw gash shut. I only noticed it once the fire on my leg died down, and was a little bit speechless at how well the mare did her job.
She tried to keep me from not walking on it, offering the wheelchair to me, but I told her that ‘I might not be a normal Viking but I’m still a Viking,’ and then proceeded to limp my way out of the hospital. It wasn’t too bad, even though it was painful and it still felt sore with each step as I made my way back to where I had last seen Toothless. We needed to get going if we were to get everything down that needed to get done.
That was maybe a quarter of an hour ago, and instead of instantly leaving to do what we needed to do, I have been standing around and watching Toothless roll around in a tussle with a big stallion who apparently needed a wrestling partner. The pony just marched up to Toothless and said he needed to face something that was bigger and tougher than the rest before outright challenging Toothless. So far the pony was able to keep up with him, though I can tell that my good buddy is going easy on him.
If Toothless really wanted to defeat the stallion in quick work, he would simply - whumpff - lay on him. I merely chuckled as the stallion was laid flat against the ground, on his right side as Toothless’ heavy upper body pinned him. No matter what he tried to do, Toothless just held him there with a small smirk plastered on his face. It seems Toothless finally got bored.
“Let him go, bud. We need to get going ourselves,” I said as I limped over to my Nightfury who promptly lifted himself up and moved to close the gap. At first I was expecting a tackle but Toothless instead moved to my left side and began to gently poke me, with as claw, near my gash. I forgot for a few moments that the gash had torn right through my suit thus allowing the patched up gash to be put on display.
Dad would be proud.
“Don’t worry, boy, it’s just a flesh wound,” I said wrapping an arm around Toothless. “Besides, you’ve done worse to me in the past.”
That earned a loud exhale as he bumped me a little. Even to this day, I continue to bug him about that one incident. Only with mild jokes, though. The big lug is tough but he does have a soft spot for me and I wouldn’t want to take advantage of that.
With Toothless finally gathered up, we saddled up for the small flight to and through the town. I didn’t bother hooking in since it would only take us a few moments to actually fly our way to a relatively clear away. Said area was a small park that was rather empty for mid day so it was an obvious choice to touch down in. I expected a small commotion over a dragon and a viking landing in the middle of a park but instead we received silence as it was empty.
In fact there wasn’t a soul in sight aside from the mere glimpses I saw of ponies walking past the streets leading to the park. So devoid was the park that it didn’t even feel like apart of the city. Honestly, the silence was a little unnerving so without any hesitation I bound Toothless’ tail again, much to his annoyance, and proceeded to lead him into the city.
I have to say, I didn’t really enjoy the crowded streets that I encountered when we first arrived, and after returning to them I could say that I didn’t miss them at all. Luckily though I spotted a few stalls that seemed oddly familiar, mainly a flower stall that had the same yellow furred and red maned mare working it. How did I remember her? I couldn’t honestly say for myself but when I spotted the mare I felt a feeling as though I had seen them before. Hmm, we don’t have a name for a such a feeling on Berk, perhaps I could name it Hiccup Sense or something like that.
Either way, it helped invaluably since just a few buildings away from the mare was the Freelancer’s Guild, the sign made it obvious this time. I patted Toothless on the back before hanging that sign on him once more. It was probably going to be a normal part of our carried gear. The usefulness was endless in my eyes, despite the small amount of humiliation that it brought to Toothless. Either way, I had him sit patiently out front while I moved to the front door of the guild.
A small feeling of guilt welled up inside of me, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit bad for taking the job only to leave it within the first day. What could I do though? Rainbow’s offer was much more worthwhile since she would not only pay me but pay for expenses. That just made me question how wealthy this multi-colored pegasus was, but that was a question for when she was around. The here and now was all about dealing with the Guild contract.
I pushed the door open slightly, before hearing a light jingle of a bell. It surprised me a little because I don’t remember there being one before. Perhaps it was there before but for whatever reason I couldn’t remember hearing it. Either way, the bell alerted the front desk mare to my attention and lo and behold it was the same mare as last time. Even better was she recognised me … great, this was going to be awkward.
“Oh, Hiccup! It’s good to see you!” The purple mare called out.
“Heh, yeah … good to see you too,” I replied to which she smiled. I never got her name! This was just getting worse and worse.
“I didn’t expect you to be back so soon, and I don’t think your contracted job is up if I remember correctly. I’m pretty sure you still have a few more days worth of work under the contract … “ she said as she tapped a hoof against her chin.
“Yeah about that,” I said as I rubbed the back of my neck, “I’m actually here to cancel my job.”
“Cancel!?” She gasped, “What happened? Was there and issue? Perhaps abuse and mistreatment of your dragon friend?”
“No, no, no, nothing like that,” I said frantically while waving my hands hoping to stop her from writing something down that could hurt Zephyr. “It’s just, I’ve been offered to help train a racer. They offered something that the contract couldn’t …”
“Is that so?” she asked with a perked brow. “I might not be Master Portsmouth but I bet I could tell you if the guild can counter the offer. So what did this racer offer?”
“Help getting home.”
“Oh ... “ she said, not even showing a sign of contemplating countering the offer. Instead she was a little confused, but that was expected. “Wait, you don’t know how to get home?”
“No,” I said before sighing, “you see I came from across this mountain range to the west but I couldn’t find a way to traverse it and return home.”
“You came from The Echo?!” She nearly yelled, eyes wide. “That’s incredible! No one has ever crossed those mountains before!”
“Great …” I replied. I felt like I had just gotten kicked in the stomach by a dragon nonetheless.
“Oh I … I didn’t …” she proceeded to stumble on her words before getting up from her desk. “Stay right here, Hiccup.”
With that she proceeded to leave the lobby and walk towards the back of the hall, leaving me standing in front of the desk. Standing in front of the desk, hung up on a single thing the mare said. Not a single person had ever crossed the mountains … what have I gotten myself into? The fact that this mare knew about the mountains meant that most likely many attempts were made. Would I even be able to get back to Berk or would I be forced to live my life out in a world that was not my own?
I loosely walked over to a chair and flopped down on it. My energy was sapped as the gravity of what she had told me weighed on my mind. The only time I’ve ever felt worse was when Dad died. What was I going to do? Would Rainbow be able to hold up her end of the employment? I wouldn’t get mad at her if she wasn’t able to, for it was probably something less than futile.
No! That wasn’t how a Haddock thinks, let alone a Viking! I stomped my foot in frustration for letting myself even think those things. I will get home; I will see Astrid and Mom again. I swear on my honour as a Viking that as long as I breath I will try to find my way home.
“Hiccup?” a voice called out, causing me to nearly jump out of my seat. I was so busy thinking that I didn’t recognise the reindeer and pony enter the room.
“Master Portsmouth? I didn’t realise … ”
“Berry Cherry!”
“Yeah, I didn’t realise Berry Cherry had went to get you,” I said, shuffling a little bit nervously.
“Indeed, and she informed me of what happened and as to your present situation,” She spoke with a small frown splaying across her face. “While I am displeased to learn that you opting out of your contract, I can see as to why. Normally we don’t bend the rules except in special cases so I need you to do something for me.”
“And that is?” I asked.
“Hold this,” she said before using her hoof to hand me a small, nearly see through, crystal. I picked it out of her hoof before examining it. I was about to ask her what it does but she cut me off.
“I would like you to tell me where you are from and how you got here. You don’t need to tell me every detail,” she said, while eyeing the crystal.
“Okay …” I said slowly while looking at her. She probably just wanted to hear the story for herself. “Well my home is Berk, a beautiful place where Vikings and dragons live in perfect harmony. At least as harmonious as living with dragons get. From what I can tell is that Berk is across these mountains that Berry Cherry called The Echo, and as to how we got here, well we flew over the mountains. Toothless and I found something odd and decided to check it out, next thing you know we are over here having this conversation.”
“Thank you, Hiccup,” Master Portsmouth said. “Can I have the crystal back?”
“Oh, sure,” I replied, handing the crystal over. “By the way, what was that for?”
“Don’t worry about it, Hiccup,” she said while smiling serenely. “Now, I have work to do with regards to your contract and filling the spot. I’m sorry to see you leave but it is probably for the best. I wish you luck on finding your way home. Berry Cherry will give you your payment and a little bonus on behalf of the guild; think of it as a gift. Goodbye, and good luck Hiccup.”
She turned and left before I could even reply to what she had said. I was a little shocked at what had just happened, as it defied most social convention that I had been taught … let alone any sensible reason. To just leave like that?
“Don’t be sorry, Hiccup,” Berry Cherry said, “Master Portsmouth doesn’t like to take too long chatting.”
“I can see that,” I replied before chuckling a little bit.
“Come, let’s get you some bits,” she said before heading back to her desk.
For the next few minutes I waited patiently while Berry Cherry sorted through some papers while writing down stuff at times. I didn’t say a word during that time for fear that I would mess her up in some way. In the end it proved to be fortuitous as the moment she was done with the paperwork, she plopped a small sack on the top of the desk.
“Here is you payment and a little extra, Hiccup,” she said with a large smile.
“Thank you very much, Berry Cherry” I said while picking up the pouch. “I take it these are ‘bits’?”
“Indeed! Your payment for the single day was one hundred bits since the grand total that you would make was four hundred over a four day period. Now the bonus that Master Portsmouth allowed was another hundred on top of that, as well as a small ticket that you can turn over to any Freelance Guild to ensure you get the veteran bonus,” she explained.
“Really? All of that?”
“Mhm! Master Portsmouth might act rather stiff but she doesn’t like seeing others in trouble, now shoo! Go find your way home!” she said as she mocked shooing me out.
I simply chuckled as I moved to the door, holding it slightly open as I looked back. “Thanks Berry Cherry and give my thanks to Master Portsmouth for me.”
“I will,” she called back while waving her hoof.
The door softly closed behind me, as I re-entered the bustling city. I looked over to Toothless who immediately perked up at my exit. Somehow he had gotten a hold of a fish which was still partially sticking out of his mouth. After seeing those two mares back at the camp grounds, I figured I shouldn’t ask. Apparently ponies either found dragons fearsome … or in Toothless’ case, adorable.
I moved over to the big lug and removed the sign from around his neck, which he was more than happy to have happen. Though I think he also thought I was going to unbound his tail but I just shook my head. Of course he pouted at that response but he should know by know that it hardly works on me anymore. Years of having to suffer from such a thing had built up a fortitude at his attempts to sway me from my decision.
“Well, bud, it seems all we have to do is meet that Rainbow pegasus,” I said as I stowed the bag of bits inside one of the satchels on Toothless’ right side. For a moment I realised something before I proceeded to pack it down at the bottom and in an nearly immovable position. She had promised to pay for the material I needed, so it wouldn’t hurt to just store the bits. Besides, they probably wouldn’t be enough to pay for the materials.
“Alright, let’s get moving. It might be midday but who knows what could happen next.”