A New World, Complicated

Chapter 16: The Defiant One (Hiccup)

I turned Toothless around and flew against the jet stream, trying my best to get as close as possible to him, but just as I was in range, the wind threw Hookfang back and over my head. Snotlout, however, remained in the strong winds, being tossed about.

"Help me! Help me, Hiccup!" Right in front of my eyes, Snotlout was sucked into the center of the waterspout.

"We're coming!" Without thinking, I pushed Toothless into the center in pursuit of Snotlout. I managed to get close enough to catch him in Toothless' claws. "Toothless, get us out of here!"

But the winds were too strong, and Toothless' artificial tail fin was ripped right from its skeleton, disabling us from flying.

"Oh, no. Snotlout, hang on!" Unable to control where we were going, the three of us were tossed from the control of the waterspout, and down onto an island full of dead trees. I managed to steer him onto land, but as soon as we made impact, everything went black.

"Toothless! Where are you?"

I had woken up on the ground to find my dragon gone, and Snotlout nowhere in sight. We were stuck on an island we didn't know, somewhere we didn't know, with no way of getting home at the moment.

"Snotlout?" From the distance, I heard a low, familiar growling, and quickly turned on my heel to run toward it. Thankfully, Toothless was lying among a clearing of trees. "Toothless! Are you okay?" I rushed to his side and picked his head up. "Come on, talk to me, bud." Slowly, his green eyes opened, looking bleary and confused, and he gently licked my face to show he was okay. "Oh, thank Thor. That wasn't our best landing, was it?" My eyes moved down to his tail to see that it was completely bent out of shape. "Great. Your tail is gone, and the connecting rod is a mess. What are we supposed to do now?"

"You could start by getting me out of this stupid tree!" I looked up to see Snotlout dangling from a branch, high above our heads. Toothless fired a plasma blast to knock him down, and as soon as he hit the ground, I made my way over to him.

"Well, that looked like it hurt." Mouth hanging open, Snotlout barely shook his head. "You sure? Can you talk?"

"Go... suck... rocks..." I backed up toward Toothless.

"Hey, he's back! Lucky us," I deadpanned as Snotlout stood up. "Where's Hookfang?" He looked around and started to call for his dragon.

"Hookfang? Hookfang! Where are you? Hookfang, you get over here right now!"

That's how you treat your dragon with respect...

"Hookfang! Hooky?" He stood over a cliff and looked down at more grey rocks. "Fangster?" There was no roar, no fire, nothing.

"I don't think he's here, Snotlout," I cut in regretfully.

"Obviously. Big headed dragon..."

"Don't worry, we'll find him. Now all we have to do is figure out how to get out of here."

"How? Toothless lost his tail fin, Hookfang isn't here, and we have no idea where we are!" I sighed and shook my head.

"Yup, he's back, alright."

Lightning and thunder threatened to bring a storm to us as Snotlout rifled through my bag for something to eat as I attempted to fasten a makeshift tail fin onto Toothless. As soon as it was lined up, I reached down for the connecting rod I had started to form.

"This could be tougher..." I tried to bend it against one of the rocks, but all that happened was the rod snapped back and painfully struck me in the eye. "Ah!"