Age of the Dragons (HTTYD Fanfiction)

Chapter 16

A chapter on the right day? IN THE MORNING?!! Who am I and what did I do with myself?

"This is taking too long!" Soren said, tapping his free foot. "The longer we're flying, the further the dragons get away from us! Philip, isn't there anything we can do?"

Philip scrunched his brow. "We're already traveling at full speed, I don't see how much more we can do! This ship was not built for a chase!" "There has to be some solution..." Lila mused.

The atmosphere in the cockpit was suddenly interrupted by a clinking noise as Ruffnut and Tuffnut rolled around, tackling each other for possession of a small metal object. Stefen opened his mouth to complain, but caught the dangerous glint in Lila's eye, and hurriedly closed it.

Soren groaned. "What are you two fighting over now." he said tiredly. "It's not fair!" Tuffnut whined, "I'm the one who actually stole the Fireworm Fire, but Ruffnut is trying to steal it from me!" "Hey! You had the easy job!" Ruffnut retorted, "I had to distract Hiccup, steal the capsule, and seduce him into telling me how to harvest the fire!"

"Wait." Lila interjected, "you seduced Hiccup?!!" "Loosely seduction." Soren explained, "I believe Ruffnut leering at him probably scared him half to death, and gladly gave up the capsule and information to make her go away." "Say what you want," Ruffnut said haughtily, flicking one of her braids over her shoulder elegantly, "I am a master seductress." Soren and Philip exchanged incredulous glances.

"Well..." Soren said, as Ruffnut and Tuffnut resumed tumbling, "I'm not quite sure I want to get invol... Hang on. YOU'RE CARRYING A CAPSULE OF HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE DRAGON FIRE IN THE VICINITY OF MULTIPLE FRAGILE AND DANGEROUS OPERATIONS?!!" "Yeah. So what?" Tuffnut asked.

Soren hit the lock controls button, and marched out of the cockpit, snatching the capsule. "Hey!" both twins protested. "I'll be taking that." Soren announced, striding back. "I would like to live to see another day, thank you very much."

Ignoring the repeated begging of the two siblings, Soren switched back to manual control. "So what do we do with this Fireworm capsule?" Lila asked. "Hmm..." Soren muttered, fingering it in his free hand, and holding it up to the light. Bad idea.

Tuffnut launched himself into the cockpit, grabbing the capsule and subsequently falling down on the controls. The hoverplane lurched and spun, jerking erratically as various settings were dislodged. Stefen called out in alarm, and yanked Tuffnut away, but fueled by desperation, the lanky male twin pushed him away, sprinting into the main body of the ship.

And so proceeded a ridiculous fight, as Ruffnut and Tuffnut ran in circles around the seats, while Stefen pursued. Of course, it was far more difficult to run, since the ship was spinning rapidly to the side.

"Reset settings! RESET SETTINGS!!!" Soren yelled into the voice control. The screen flashed up red, but the system guide popped up, showing the factory defaults of all different controls. "Yes!" he exclaimed, and both pilots set to work switching back every function.

Ruffnut and Tuffnut were no longer doing so well. Despite being much better at falling from the floor-turned-ceiling to the ceiling-turned-floor, they were losing their battle, as Stefen had secured a jacket, and had used it to hang on to one of the twins when the ship flipped.

And finally, as Soren and Lila were beginning to near the application of all correct settings, Stefen managed to bind Ruffnut's wrist to a chair with the jacket.

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed! "Noooooo!" Ruffnut wailed. "Sister!" Tuffnut exclaimed, then gulped. "Eh...heh heh...ciao!" And he sprinted across the floor, diving into the cockpit.

Tuffnut's eyes flicked over the dashboard as Soren and Lila moved to grab him, searching for a place to hide his precious capsule. Finally, his eyes alighted on a small container that had opened in his initial slam. Without thinking, he shoved the container in just as Lila pressed the button that would close the container if empty, but if full, activate the program.

A green light showed up on Soren's screen, next to text saying: "Secondary fuel source detected. Preparing for application, please wait..."  "Oh no..." he breathed. The final three settings automatically reset to their defaults, and the entire team watched in horror as a small needle punctured the capsule, beginning to suck out the glowing liquid.

Suddenly, all the lights under the setting buttons changed from blue to yellow. There was a rapid beeping noise as the cockpit began to vibrate, and the thrusters glowed yellow. The speedometer blinked off, displaying the message: "Recalibrating maximum speed..." Before coming back on.

Soren gasped. The max speed had been tripled! And then, the audio guide turned on. "New speed detected. Increasing acceleration." And the A-Team was thrown backwards, as the ship lurched forward.

"Adjusting...adjusting...adjusting...adjusting..." the voice control repeated, and the scenery blurred faster and faster, until they were cutting through the air with a whirr. Then, the voice control message changed. "Approaching Mach 1. Hold on!"

The whirring in the ship's interior increased, and it began to vibrate, until...

BOOM!!!

With a resounding boom, the hoverplane broke the sound barrier, cutting through the air extremely quickly. If anyone had been watching, they would have hardly the time to see a shining blur passing by, before the ship was gone into the distance.

Inside the cockpit, there was absolute silence. Then, a whirr sounded through the ship, and the air was forcibly still, until sound returned inside the vessel. "Whoah." was the first thing Soren said.

"Well, who knew?" Lila said, "the twins actually helped us!" Tuffnut, who had been staring at the container where his precious capsule was being slowly drained, burst into tears. "All that hard work! The unicorn plushies, and hanging myself upside-down for four hours, all wasted!"

"Hang on..." Lila asked, "why were either of those involved in getting liquid Fireworm fire?" "Because Ruffnut told me that Hiccup told her that this was the only way to do it! First, cover yourself in mud and do interpretive dance like a chicken for three hours, then hang yourself upside-down from a cliff for four hours, than spend a week sewing a unicorn plushie for the Fireworm to burn, then approach the Fireworm with the plushie (which it burns) and capsule and perform the Nutcracker from start to finish, and finally, calm the dragon and squeeze one of the head spines until enough liquid fire spews out of it! Do you know how hard I worked for all of that?!!"

There was a long silence in the cockpit. Then, everyone else except Ruffnut burst out laughing. "And you actually believed Hiccup?" Soren managed to gasp out. "Of course!" Tuffnut replied, "he is the best dragon trainer of all of us!" This only made the rest of the team laugh harder. "Tuffnut," Lila choked, "that was all a joke. Hiccup was just trying to get you out of his hair for as long as possible!"

Tuffnut looked shocked. "He did not!" Then, puzzled. "So what do you do to get the liquid fire?" "Just calm the dragon and *snort* squeeze the spine!" Tuffnut looked appalled. "You mean, I didn't have to spend a month learning the Nutcracker from scratch?" But the team was too beside themselves with laughter to respond.

Finally, when everyone had recovered, Philip glanced at the map on his screen. "We are making very good time!" he said, "we should be at Scandinavia in an hour!"

"Good!" Soren replied, "because the sooner we find the dragons, the sooner the plan is put in action!"