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Hiccup P.O.V

This is Berk. It's twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death. It's located solidly on Meridian of Misery.

My village was, in one word, sturdy. It'd been here for seven generations, but every single building was new. We had fishing, hunting, and the charming view of the sunsets. The only problem was the type of pests we had. Other places had mice or mosquitoes, but here, we had...

"DRAGONS!", I heard the adults scream, alerting everyone of the danger. The whole sky filled with the winged creatures as they descended onto the ground to steal our livestock.

Any normal village would probably have moved to another island or hide underground by now, but no! The Hairy Hooligans of Berk were some of the most stubborn Vikings in existence, and they would not give in to dragons attempting to steal their livestock. Their Chief was Stoick The Vast; one of the most legendary dragon killers and well... my father. I'm Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the III. Great name, huh. Around here it was believed that a strange name like 'Hiccup' would scare off gnomes and trolls.

Actually, I was a disgrace to my father, who looked down at me like some kind of failure and mistake. I was very different to my fellow Vikings, due to my lack of muscles and size. My father ignored me and didn't make an effort to help me get stronger. At this point, I had accepted that I was different from others, and that I was more brains than brawn. However, even though I had accepted who I was, other people didn't. Since I didn't belong in the battlefield, I served as an apprentice to Gobber, the village's blacksmith. I had plenty of time to work on my inventions thanks to my abilities which were not used very often by the villagers, who instead preferred to ignore me. During the raids, I usually sharpened weapons, but today, I finished my brand new invention that would greatly help when we fought against the dragons!

It was a Bola Launcher, and it could fire bolas much, much, further than any Viking could ever hope to. I dragged my new weapon through the building until I was just outside of the workshop, and I attempted to calibrate it. As I was calibrating the new weapon, I heard many screams from outside, as fellow Vikings were slaughtered by dragons. I also heard countless screeches coming from the dragons that were being murdered by the Vikings. All in all, it was a blood-bath. Just then, everything went silent, and all I heard was an all too familiar screech.

"NIGHT FURY!"

Many of the Vikings screamed as they ran for cover. The Night Fury was the most dangerous of all dragons. It was the fastest dragon, easily double the speed of it's brothers, and it hunted silently, always hidden away into the darkness of the night, and when it fires it's deadly bolt, it never misses. I decided not to bother the Night Fury for today. Today, I would impress my father, and at long last, I would not be the village weakling any more. I would shoot down an airborne dragon and prove to my father that I was useful!

Once the Bola Launcher was out of the Forge and was successfully calibrated, I started to aim it when I heard stomping feet. I had a feeling I knew what was coming...

"HICCUP!"

It was my father who was now running towards me with anger in his eyes. His wild ginger hair certainly didn't make me any less intimidated of his appearance.

"HICCUP! What are you doing here?! Get back in the forge and sharpen those weapons!"

I was finally ready to introduce my weapon to him, maybe he will appreciate me for once.

"Look, dad, I made this Bola Launcher that launches bola's further than any Viki-"

I watched in horror as my father completely ignored my explanation for the weapon and smashed it with his hammer, unintentionally launching a bola into the air. I couldn't believe it, all of this work and my father had chosen to ignore it and destroy it!

"HICCUP! Get back to the forge! NOW! I have no time for your messing around!"

I turned and made my slow walk of shame, all the way back to the forge, trying to not let the tears fall. My own father destroyed my creation! I could understand that it was in the middle of a raid and my father may not have had time, but destroying something that I created! He didn't even listen to me!

I returned to sharpening weapons, like I did every time there was a raid. Even Gobber got to go into the battlefield, despite not having ever killed a dragon before. People kept bothering me and rushing me to fix their weapons, not realising I only had two hands and I could only do so much. When Gobber was around, at least people didn't throw insults around at me, but now that he was out there, I was all alone, and a great target for insults. I grabbed the nearest weapon - very blunt axe - and started sharpening it as I thought about what I meant to the village and how it would be if I was gone. Not just gone from the island, but the world.

After a while, I watched as the five teens started to throw buckets of water on to a fire, to stop it from spreading throughout the village. The teens were Ruffnut, Tuffnut, Snotlout, Fishlegs and Astrid. Oh, Astrid... I continued to keep my gaze on her as a fireball shot behind her, making her look even more like a fighter.

I really disliked all of the teens... apart from Astrid and Fishlegs. Snotlout and the twins were unbearable though! Not only were they annoying, but they would beat me up regularly since I was the perfect victim. Usually it would be the twins pinning me down to the ground while Snotlout would punch and kick me. Not only did they physically abuse me, they also verbally abused me to make me feel even better about myself. If there was a moment of weakness in me, Snotlout would always be there to call me 'useless' and the twins would call me a 'weakling'.

At least Fishlegs and Astrid didn't do that to me. Fishlegs would usually just ignore me because he wanted to stay in the 'in-crowd', and didn't want to be treated the same way that I was. Over time, I came to accept his decision because it was kinda smart, even if it hurt me. Then there was Astrid. How could anyone dislike Astrid? I had had a crush on her for as long as I could remember, even though she would generally ignore me apart from the occasional disgusted look, so it was still hard to tell what she thought of me.

After being bullied for a long time, I started to develop sarcasm as a defence mechanism against my peers. Gobber actually seemed to enjoy my sarcasm and whenever he was near me, nobody would try to bring me down. Thank Odin!

I continued to stare into the skies as the dragons retreated with their brand new catch. We lost quite a bit of the food that was saved for the winter, but I couldn't care less at that moment. All I wanted was to get home, and let myself rest.

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The Next Day...

I woke up to the sight of burned buildings throughout the village. The repairs would take a bit longer than usual, this was one of the worst raids we had had for years!

I walked down to the kitchen to find that my father had already left, he probably went to the mead hall for breakfast or a meeting. Who knows? I didn't know, and I didn't particularly care. After yesterday's events and my father not even giving me the chance to prove myself, I was now stuck at a dead end. What if the village never gave me the chance to become one of them? What if they considered me a lost cause and banished me?

On second thought, that's not a reason to banish your heir, right?

All of those questions ran through my head, refusing to give me peace. On a day like this, I would have loved to just lay in my bed and forget about the world. However, real life was selfish, and I had a feeling things would not get better unless I made myself busy with something.

I really needed to clear my head, so I went out of the back door of my house and towards the forest. The forest was always my escape from the village and the entrance to my happy place. I could hear chirping birds and gusts of the wind all around me as I walked on through the forest. The atmosphere was so calming it was making me want to lie down on the ground and let my worries sink away. My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a strange mark on the ground under my feet. It looked like a large object crashed into it and skidded, leaving a large skid mark. The trail continued over a small hill and then I noticed some strange black objects on the ground. I picked one of them up and inspected it up close.

It wasn't just any old piece of rubble. It was a scale, but not just any scale... a dragon scale. I could feel my fear building up inside me as I braced myself for a possible encounter with a dragon.

I continued to follow the trail of black scales over another hill just to notice a ball of black scales wrapped in what appeared to be a bola. As much as I had wished that there was just a non-sentient ball of black dragon scales in the forest, life was not quite as beautiful as portrayed in dreams.

'Why is there a dragon wrapped in a bola, and why didn't I see it when I came here last time?' I thought to myself.

Then it dawned on me! Yesterday, during the raid, right when my father's hammer destroyed my bola launcher, a bola was fired into the air. If the black scales are to be believed... 'I SHOT A NIGHT FURY!' I shouted in my mind and panicked immediately.

I crept closer to the dragon with caution. As far as I was aware, this was the first time anybody had ever been this close to a Night Fury before. As I was right in front of it, it opened its eyes, showing the slitted, neon green eyes of the Night Fury, and they stared into my soul, freezing me in place. I was going to kill it. In fact, I even went as far as raising my knife towards it, but right as I was about to deliver the killing blow, it closed it's eyes, as if saying "I give up". I was guessing that it realised it couldn't escape and was going to let me kill it. The brief moment when I saw the Night Fury's eyes, I saw myself. It seemed just as terrified as I was. This was shocking, considering I was taught that dragons are mindless, emotionless, murdering beasts.

I thought about how much my life would get better if I killed the Night Fury right there. I already had a knife with me, all sharpened and ready to kill, but it didn't matter, I would free it, not kill it. I quickly fumbled with the knife in my hands, hastily chopping at the ropes until they broke.

After some effort, all of the ropes were either broken or loosened, and the dragon moved swiftly towards me and pinned me to the ground. I could already tell that the dragon would kill me on the spot. The dragon opened its mouth as if to shoot a plasma ball at my head and kill me instantly, but instead it screamed at my face, before running off deep into the woods.

'What was that?!' Was my last thought, before the darkness which ate at the corners of the vision broke free of their restraints and rushed forwards completely blotting out my vision, and I fell unconscious.

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