13. Battling The Green Death

Story Start: The Sky, En Route To Weapon Platforms

The Thunderdrum was flying like it had Hel herself after him, Toothless oh so generously keeping his speed down to a point where he was flying beside him rather than being a far-off dot on the horizon. Of course, the poor dragon couldn't waste the breath needed to be grateful for that right now, a point punctuated by the enraged bellow from said Goddess of Death's avatar.

Mounted on Toothless, Hiccup allowed himself a glance back and winced as he said "It looks rather mad!"

"As long as it's not gaining then it can be as mad as it wants!" Stoick said in a blend of bowel dropping terror and adrenaline boosting excitement, a grin on his face as the Viking Chief was in a battle for his life, even if they were currently in the 'slow' period of said battle. Truly, there was no better place for him to be, especially since it was his son who was beside him at this moment. It was the stuff Viking parents day dreamed of, the chance to spend some quality time with their child in the marvelous act of battle.

"Not gaining is good!" Hiccup said in agreement before he went from looking back to looking down and forward. His eyes swept from side to side before he pointed a little off to the left towards the horizon and said "There's the weapon platforms, turn five degrees port!"

The dragons did as instructed and soon they were flying right over the middle weapon. The dragons quickly turned when they were past and so saw the three teams of three Vikings standing in a single long boat a safe distance from the launchers give massive tugs of the ropes in their hands which were in turn connected to the massive crossbows' launching mechanisms. What happened next was both awe inspiring and slightly terrifying.

All three of the fifty-foot-tall war machines fired so closely together they might as well have been done at the same split second. Their rope bowstrings instantly snapped forward as the tension holding them back was finally released and thirty bolts of pointy death and paralysis shot up into the air as fast as the cannon balls fired from the cannons of the European fortresses Stoik had heard tales of when he was a child. The Green Death was over five hundred yards away from the launchers but the bolts still reached their targets almost faster than it took for a human to blink, never mind react to. And though it tried, the massive Green Death had no chance whatsoever to avoid the onslaught, every last bolt slammed into its body, the one farthest on the left catching at the very tip of its wing. The center weapons platform had managed to get a direct hit on the Green Death's center mass and there was a line of trees sticking ten feet out of its chest near where the massive lungs and heart were. They didn't reach said organs unfortunately but they were stuck far enough in to be problematic, especially with the paralytic poison on them rapidly spreading through the blood vessels they HAD hit with every pump of its wicked heart.

The Green Death's roar of pain and anger was accompanied with the sound of the massive waves the three weapon platforms kicked up as the force of the released bowstrings instantly caused them to overturn, the seventy by hundred foot rafts somehow remaining intact but for a few outlier trees snapping free, a rather telling credit to Hiccup's engineering talent. As the weapon platforms flipped over nine dragons quickly pulled the launcher Vikings off of their boat just in time to avoid the massive wave that had it bopping up and down worse than a seagull in the ocean during a hurricane. Good thing too since within ten seconds it was forced over onto its side as it was thrown backwards with the surge of water.

But as impressive as all of this was, though the Green Death was metaphorically down, it certainly wasn't out. Due to having been flying at around seven hundred feet, with its wings shredded the massive dragon created yet another massive wave as it crashed into the ocean before it could even attempt to recover. It was a good thing they were far from Berk because all of the waves would have absolutely wrecked the harbor. As soon as it had its head above water the Odin damned thing began launching streams of fire at the fifty Vikings riding dragons above it. The dragons were all able to easily avoid the fire by dent of them all being at least a hundred feet in the air. Slightly harder to avoid were the vertical waves of water the thing launched by throwing its shredded wings up from under the water or smashing its mace like tail into the ocean.

Near the top of the flight of dragons Hiccup studied the situation next to his father. His weapons had done their job and even as he watched he noticed that the Green Death had to put a lot of effort in to fight through the paralytic in its blood to try and attack the dragons and Vikings, and the salt in the ocean it was currently in was no doubt going to make it even worse off. However, this thing was still a Titan on Midgard and eventually it would start ignoring them and make for land or even try to use its wings for their intended purpose. They needed to find some way to take it out and fast.

Speaking of which: the Green Death gave another bellow as it slapped its tail into the water even harder than before creating a shock wave to blast the water away from its body. Using that brief few moments, it rapidly flapped its wings faster than Hiccup or any of the other Vikings thought possible and began to ponderously lift into the air. The linear tears in its wings from the giant bolts were clearly hindering it but not nearly enough to fully prevent flight.

"'Well that's not good.'" Hiccup and Toothless said at the exact same time. It would have been funny in any other situation. Instead, Hiccup quickly shouted out "Everyone scatter!" before mentally calling 'Distraction Dive!'

The dragons quickly scattered away from the Green Death while Toothless suddenly shot straight down, Stoik's panicked shout of "HICCUP!" barely heard and ignored. Halfway down Toothless's first shot hit the Green Death right where the head met the neck getting its attention. His second shot got the middle joint of its right wing while the third directly after that got the left, the two shots further hindering the Titan's flying speed before they leveled out and shot past its tail and away from Berk. Letting out a massive roar of rage, the Green Death spun around and took off after the pair with nothing but murder in its eyes.

As it got closer it tried to shoot them out of the sky with its fire breath but Hiccup was watching over his shoulder and sharing sight with Toothless so they were able to easily maneuver around the fire thrown at them. They dodged fireballs for around a thousand feet before Hiccup judged they were far enough away from the other dragons and did an Impressive loop that put them behind the Green Death and pointing straight up where Toothless really kicked it into high gear rapidly ascending. The Titan wasted precious moments getting back into a chase position and much more slowly began climbing up into the air.

The rest of the dragons and Vikings watched as Hiccup and Toothless continued to harass the Titan with highly accurate long range shots keeping its attention entirely on them. Then when they were roughly a thousand and a half feet they suddenly did an abrupt halt directly over the Odin damned thing and began diving. Several calls of worry came from both man and beast as the pair dived, the calls getting louder as the Green Death visibly began inhaling to roast the 'easy target' only for one last long ranged blast of plasma to lance from Toothless straight into the Green Death's mouth before it could properly expel the gas and ignite it. The result was as spectacular as it was immediate.

Immediately upon contact with Toothless' special brand of fire ball, the pressurized gas detonated into a massive explosion that easily shredded the inside of the Green Death's body before ripping several holes through its hide. Even as fire poured out of the holes it continued to propagate inside, quickly traveling to the Titan's internal gas reserves which ignited even more energetically than the pressurized amount if possible, the much better stoichiometry triggering an even bigger fire ball that completely blew away massive chunks of body mass from the rest of the Titan, the wings both blasted off as the longest pieces but by no means were they the biggest. Every single organ was instantly pulped by the shockwave then burned to a crisp in the ensuing fireball killing the Island Sinker instantly.

Thanks to the range they had fired at, Toothless and Hiccup were able to avoid the two almost simultaneous explosions and watched as the now fallen Titan's corpse fell from the sky to the ocean below like a massive meteor falling from the heavens. It's impact with the water threw up massive waves that the lowest flying dragons had to quickly climb in order to be hit and Hiccup couldn't help but do some quick calculations on how far the mini tsunamis would travel before finally dissipating.

Once the threat of drowning was past there was silence for a solid three minutes as dragon and Viking stared at the sight of the figurative Goliath laid low by David. And then, all at once, the let out massive roars and yells of victory, and only the fact that they were in the air on dragon back kept the Vikings from leaping with joy. That fact was also the only thing that kept them from trying to give Hiccup serious spinal damage from back slaps when he and Toothless rejoined the Flight.

Eventually Hiccup was able to get everyone out of their celebratory mood and back into business mode. The trigger long boat was quickly recovered and the weapon platforms flipped over in order to bring back to Berk for resource reclamation, it would be a crime to leave that much wood just floating around at sea, and it wasn't a good idea to let anyone else find them and build their own versions either.

When they eventually came back into Berk, they could literally hear the moment when those waiting on the island caught sight of them because a massive cheer rose into the air. The cheering was so loud that it was actually starting to hurt Hiccup's ears when they reached the docks, and several of the dragons were showing discomfort as well. Fortunately, the celebrational cheering only lasted a few minutes before the Vikings moved onto something much more important than shouting their heads off: getting everything ready for a massive feast.

As food and drink were prepared for the party to end all parties, Hiccup looked back towards the ocean and thought 'Hopefully that's the end of our troubles for a long time.' He then allowed himself to be pulled into the soon to come madness by a grinning Astrid, and for once the only thing running through the young engineer's mind was the girl beside him and the festive attitude around them.

FIN (For Now)

Author's Notes: Update schedule on my profile.

Yes, this is the end of Engineer, but only because we are at the end of the first movie. I DO plan on there being a sequel that will take Engineer's slot on the schedule.