Disclaimer: I don't own How To Train Your Dragon, Cressida Cowell and Dreamworks do. I'm just having a little fun.

AN: I've read a couple of these, and got the wild hair up my butt to write my own. This story will follow the movie as closely as I can, but any scene that Hiccup isn't a part of will be removed and replaced with an original. Enjoy!

"Dragons!" Hiccup gasped as she slammed the door shut, trying desperately to ignore the heat building up along her back as the Nightmare outside breathed fire against it. She was a thin, lanky girl with copper hair drawn back into a braid, emerald green eyes and a scattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. A smart mouth hid the fact that she had next to zero self-esteem thanks to years of being picked on, but the one thing she was never able to hide was that she was smart. Even when her inventions misfired or, on occasion, blew up in her face, she was often the only one who knew how to fix them or even what they were for. Too bad for her, though, was that no one saw the brains behind the inventions, just the destruction those inventions invariably caused.

Ducking out the door when the heat died down, she dodged and wove her way across the village, heading for the only other place she was allowed to go during a dragon attack: the forge. After quickly ducking under a log carried by a pair of Vikings, she jerked to halt with a startled cry when an explosion briefly cut her off. A Viking came flying toward her, driven by the explosion behind him, roaring a battle cry until he landed over her, catching himself before he crushed her. "Morning!" he said with a smile before grabbing up his ax and bounding away, back to the battle raging around them.

Ignoring the calls of "What are you doing out?" and "Get back inside!", she ran for the forge as fast as her feet could carry her only to be jerked to a sudden halt by a hand grabbing the back of her vest, keeping her from stepping into a line of fire shot by a passing Nadder. She barely had a chance to breathe a sigh of relief at being spared before she was hauled up and dangled in the face of the chief of the tribe. "What is she doing-" he started to demand, seeming to talk to the air beside him before turning to her. "What are you doing out?" Before she could answer him, he dropped her and shoved her toward the smithy. "Get inside!"

"Nice of you to join the party, lass," Gobber, the village smith, called as she stumbled in the door. He was a hulking six-six, almost as wide as an ox-cart and with a long, almost golden blond mustache. Missing his left hand and right leg, he still managed to keep up with the demands of the smithy, and could still hold his own in dragon raids. "I thought you'd been carried off."

"Are you kidding?" she replied with a grunt as she hefted a mace and put it in its slot on the wall. "I'm way too muscular for their tastes. They wouldn't know what to do with all this!" She gestured to herself with a cocky grin that didn't reach her eyes before she rushed over to open the shutters that made up the front of the smithy, ignoring Gobber's question of dragons needing toothpicks. She knew she was skinny, weaker than she should be and more than a little bit clumsy, but she did her best.

Grabbing up the dented, broken and bent weapons that were already piling up, she carried them to the forge and pumped the bellows, throwing her whole body into it. Hiccup has been Gobber's apprentice since she was nine, her father having finally despaired of keeping her away from the shiny metals and fire contained within. Gobber had promised to keep an eye on her during raids, and with luck, teach her a reasonable skill that would hopefully keep her out of trouble when there were no dragons filling the sky above Berk. Going back for another load, she quickly gathered the pieces she'd missed before, catching sight of the "fire cart" she'd designed three years ago to replace the bucket lines. Gobber had taken credit for that, and she let him, knowing no one would use it if they knew it came from her. It was mainly used by teens around her own age, as the older Vikings were too busy keeping dragons from their food and livestock to worry about putting out fires.

First to fill his bucket was Fishlegs, a tall barrel-chested boy who spouted dragon statistics as readily as Hiccup did formulas for her inventions. Dark haired and only an inch or so taller than Hiccup herself which never ceased to annoy him, Snotlout, her cousin and one of her main tormentors, followed behind, quickly replaced by the blond twins Ruffnut and Tuffnut. Behind them came Anstred, easily the most handsome boy Hiccup had ever seen. She'd been harboring a crush on him since she was eleven. Taller than Hiccup by at least a head, he had long, wheat colored hair drawn back in a thick braid. He wore a leather band around his head to keep his bangs out of his ice-blue eyes, but as far as Hiccup ever noticed, it did nothing but attract attention to those fabulous eyes.

Leaning out, she forgot that she was on a ledge and it was only Gobber's quick thinking that kept her from yet another nasty bump on the head. "Come on, Gobber," she complained as he lifted her away from the window to drop her next to the anvil, "just let me out. I need to make my mark."

"You've made plenty of marks," he reminded her, poking her in the chest with his prosthetic tongs. "All in the wrong places."

"Please, just two minutes," she bargained, pushing her bangs out of her face. "I'll go out there, kill a dragon, and my life will get better. Who knows? I might even get a date."

"You can't lift a hammer, you can't swing an ax," he countered with a set expression as he picked up a bola and shook it in her face. "You can't even throw one of these!" It was snatched out of his hand by a passing Viking who used it to stop a Gronckle from carrying off a sheep.

"This will throw it for me," she said, moving toward her latest invention and resting a hand on it. She jumped back quickly when it sprang open and shot the bola toward Gobber. Used to such happenings, he shifted his weight and leaned back. It sailed right passed him, knocking out another Viking as he ran up to get another weapon.

"That, right there, is exactly what I'm talking about, Hiccup."

"It's just a mild calibration issue," she started to defend herself, hiding the pained wince at his words. Gobber, even if he never understood her, at least listened when she explained how her inventions worked, and to think he was getting tired of them hurt more than she wanted to admit. She worked quickly to reset her machine before turning back to him.

"If you ever want to get out there, lass," he told her gently, " to fight dragons, you need to stop all this." He gestured vaguely in her direction, unable to be more precise at the moment.

"You just pointed to all of me," she said, biting the inside of her cheek to keep the tears at bay. Gobber's opinion mattered to her, even though she tried to tell herself that it didn't. She had all but given up on trying to win her father's approval: it wasn't likely to happen as she was the wrong gender and barely weighed ninety pounds after she'd been dragged out of the ocean.

"Yes, that's it!" he cried, his tone one he used when she did something he'd been trying to explain for hours and finally understood. "Stop being all of you." They bickered back and forth another moment before he dropped a sword in her arms and commanded her to sharpen it. It was almost as long as she was and weighed just about as much, too. As she carried it to the whet stone, she thought about which dragon she would take down when she got the chance.

Killing a dragon was everything around her village. A Nadder was sure to get her at least noticed. Gronckles were tough and would definitely get her a boyfriend. A Zippleback was exotic, and because it had two heads, it equaled twice the status. Only the best and toughest Vikings went after the Monstrous Nightmares, which had a nasty habit of setting themselves on fire. The ultimate prize, though, was the dragon no one had ever seen. This dragon never stole food, never showed itself and never missed. No one she knew of in the Archipelago had ever seen one, let alone shot one down. Hiccup swore to herself that she'd be the first.

Somehow, her ears picked up the faint, whistling screech of a- "Night Fury!" someone shouted from outside and she ducked instinctively when the explosion reached her ears.

"Man the fort, Hiccup," Gobber told her, switching to his ax hand. "They need me out there." With a quick "stay put", he was hollering a battle cry and hobbling his way onto the battlefield.

"Like I'm going to stay here," she muttered, grabbing up her invention and heading out the back door. Making her way behind the village, ignoring all the shouts for her to get back inside, she set up her machine not far from an abandoned catapult tower and intently watched the sky. The stars shimmered in the black velvet sky, the moon full behind her. Come on, just one good shot, she thought to herself, almost bouncing in anticipation of achieving her latest goal. The screech came again, far off but quickly getting closer. A purple blast of fire exploded against the tower, but the Night Fury moved too fast for her to aim properly. Intently studying the sky where she hoped it was, she saw stars disappear for a brief moment before coming back. The whistle came again, and this time, she was ready. Ignoring the blast, she fired, the recoil stronger than she expected. Knocked to her butt behind it, she leaped to her feet at the roar that seemed to shake the sky. "Yes, I hit it!" she cried, punching a fist in the air as she watched the dragon plummet to the earth. "Did anyone see that?"

With a growl, the Monstrous Nightmare she never saw coming climbed the cliff and with one clawed foot smashed her machine to splinters. "Except you," she groaned before screaming and running back toward the village, dodging blasts of fire the whole way.

Stoick looked up when he heard Hiccup scream, and heaved a sigh at the sight of her running for her life from a Nightmare. She always managed to get into trouble when no one kept an eye on her, and even sometimes when they did. No one could explain how a fire had broken out in the mead hall when she was sitting at a table as far from the fireplace as possible, but Stoic rarely let her out of the house or smithy since. "Do not let them escape!" he called to the Vikings he left behind holding down a net full of Nadders. He weaved his way around combatants, helping where he could on his way to help Hiccup.

She ducked behind one of the torches, her skinny frame fitting easily behind it when the Nightmare bathed it in fire, but just to be safe, she kept her arms in and twisted sideways a little. Once the fire stopped, she peeked over her right shoulder and sagged in relief when she didn't see it, only to nearly jump out of her skin when a green and red blur went right by her head.

Stoick stood, weaponless but unafraid of the monster in front of him that could only breathe embers in his direction. "You're all out," he told it, rushing in to punch and kick it about the head until it had enough and flew away. He turned around the see the torch pole burn through and collapse, the bowl that held the flames rolling down and creating more destruction than the dragons had that night. The dragons flew away, most carrying fish and sheep in their claws and, in one case, the net that had kept them on the ground and was now full of sheep. The sun was just starting to color the sky to the east as he turned to face his recalcitrant daughter.

"Sorry, Dad," Hiccup muttered, shoulders hunched and eyes on the ground. Glancing up, she quickly added, "I hit a Night Fury, though!" Stoick just sighed and grabbed her arm, intent on getting her home where she belonged and, hopefully, she would stay out of trouble until he got there. "It's not like the last few times, Dad," she hastened to assure him, stumbling a little as he towed her behind him. "I really, actually hit it! It went down just off Raven's Point. If we move quickly, we might-"

"Stop, Hiccup!" he shouted, whirling around to face her. "Every time you step outside, disaster follows. Winter's almost here and I have an entire village to feed."

"Between you and me, the village could do with a little less feeding," she joked, hoping to get at least a smile out of her father. The gods, however, weren't that kind this morning.

"This isn't a joke, Hiccup!" he told her, leaning down to put both massive hands on her shoulders. "Why can't you follow the simplest orders?"

"I see a dragon and I have to just kill it," she growled out, trying to sound fierce but not even coming close. "It's who I am, Dad."

"You are many things, Hiccup," he said, one hand going to his eyes as he straightened, "but a dragon killer isn't one of them. Go back to the house." Turning to Gobber, he instructed him to make sure she stayed there, as he had her mess to clean up. Hiccup walked in front of Gobber, one hand rubbing her arm where she'd gotten a little singed by the Nightmare, and trying desperately to ignore the teenagers' taunts as she made her way passed them.

"Quite the performance," Tuffnut sneered as Ruffnut laughed beside him.

"I've never seen anyone mess up that badly," Snotlout put in, trying to look tough in front of Anstred. "That helped!"

"Thank you," Hiccup muttered, not looking at any of them. "I was trying." Snotlout laughed until Gobber smacked him across the back of the head, but it didn't stop him for long. "I really did hit it, Gobber," she told him as they drew near the house.

"Sure you did," he replied, obviously humoring her now that the battle was over for now.

"He never listens-"

"It runs in the family."

"When he does, it's always with this disappointed scowl in his face." She puffed up her shoulders and deepened her voice as much as she could. "Excuse me, barmaid. I'm afraid you brought me the wrong offspring. I ordered an extra large boy with beefy arms, extra guts and glory and on the side. This girl is a talking fish bone!"

"You're thinking about this all wrong," he told her as she put a hand on the door to go in. "It's not so much what you look like, it's what's inside that he can't stand."

"Thank you for summing that up," she replied, her voice flat and devoid of emotion.

"The point is, stop trying so hard to be something you're not," he said as she turned for the door again.

"I just want to be one of you guys," she answered, probably not meaning for him to hear it, but he did and it caused him to think as he walked back toward the mead hall for the gathering he knew was going on. He knew Hiccup spent all her time either in the smithy or at home, but he'd never really looked into why that was. Perhaps it was time to change that. If she wanted to fight dragons, he'd look for a way to make it happen.

He never heard the back door open and close as Hiccup made her escape into the forest to find the dragon.