Disclaimer - I don't own How to train your Dragon, just this little corner of fanfiction.

A/N - My first HTTYD story, I hope you enjoy it. I'm so excited!

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The Dragon Pirate.

Hiccup could hear the sound of the Dragon Queen's wings as they beat the air as the massive and very angry dragon flew behind him and Toothless, furious with their defiance and how the Night Fury had fired his plasma bursts at her massive wings. Hiccup didn't need to look behind him to know the behemoth was chasing them down to the ground again, he could feel them; the force created by the wings as the massive behemoth chased him and Toothless out of the clouds and straight down to the ground again only served to propel Toothless as he flew down as fast and as safely as they could; the pair of them had spent many hours practising flight with the prosthetic tail-fin until they metaphorically became one-minded and could anticipate what the other planned to do.

The constant change in altitude and the residual ashes which were left over when the Dragon Queen had become tired of her wings being targeted and had blasted a stream of fire much like the one she had breathed on the entire fleet of the Hairy Hooligan tribe, virtually stranding the Vikings on the volcanic island.

The ashes were raining down from the cloud now and they still stung Hiccup's currently only working eye while the other half closed thanks to his father's fist.

As he concentrated on guiding Toothless down while more than aware that the Night Fury's prosthetic tail-fin had caught a bit of the fire, but not enough for the young Viking to worry about though he knew he'd have to repair it at some point - the best he could do at the moment was keeping an eye on it, Hiccup thought about recent events and how they'd invariably led to this latest mess.

When he had found out about the massive Queen Dragon, Hiccup had finally understood the rules of the war, and they weren't the simple beliefs that the Vikings of the Barbaric Archipelago thought them to be, and what Hiccup had once believed himself and what had been passed down amongst the many tribes who had fought, for what they'd considered being their own survival.

But like so many things believed by Vikings, it was false.

The Queen roared again, triumphantly as she realised that she had the little human and his dragon, a traitor in her eyes just like Hiccup was considered a traitor in the eyes of his former tribe trapped on a one-way journey to the ground. But Hiccup focused on the flight downwards, resisting the urge to look behind him and see what the Queen was doing; he didn't need to, he knew she was close behind them. He wondered if all those years she had been in the nest had blinded the intelligence he knew dragons were capable of because the Queen didn't seem to realise the dangers behind this dive.

But he couldn't help but take the second to think.

What he'd seen had been another episode in the drama that had changed his life forever ever since he had made the decision to spare Toothless from death when he'd tracked the downed Night Fury in the forest outside the village.

As the massive Dragon Queen chased after them, Hiccup had the chance to think about everything that had happened over his life.

For the last decade, Hiccup, formerly Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the third, had been seen as a runt by the rest of the Hairy Hooligan tribe, the shame and embarrassment of all of them, particularly his father, who also happened to be the Chief of the tribe. Stoick the Vast. Stoick had some pretty clear ideas of what a son or daughter should be. In Stoick's mind, a son of his should be a mirror image of himself; big, burly, with much of his body mass going into his muscles instead of his brain, single-minded when it came to dragons and wanting to become a killer of dragons who would gladly slaughter as many dragons as he could, in the case of a girl Stoick would have wanted a daughter who was a darker haired version of Astrid Hofferson, a girl who was strong of will and body, training 24/7 and dedicated to wiping out dragons without drawing a breath.

But instead, he got a runt. A runt who talked and thought, one who would rather draw and explore the land around him and not care about training.

Hiccup had long since stopped caring about what his father had wanted, ever since his father had started to hit him as a kid. It started when he was seven years old. In a way, it was all Stoick's fault when the chief realised that his son would never be what he had wanted, and so he had come up with the solution; just make him into the blacksmith's apprentice to make him gain those bulging muscles. Gobber the Belch hadn't liked it, but over time the pair of them had developed an almost father/son bond, something Hiccup had never had with Stoick.

And never would, Hiccup thought to himself almost sadly but he quickly threw the thought away; dwelling on it wouldn't change what had just happened on Berk, and so he turned his mind back to when he had made his father so angry that Stoick had punched him in the face.

It had happened when Hiccup, in an effort to make his father see that while his own son didn't have muscles that bulged, but had a mind that could help create machines and devices that could make life easier for the Viking tribe, had designed and built a number of outlandish machines and devices, but they always caused destruction thanks to the stupidity of the other kids.

Snotlout and his lackeys, Ruffnut and Tuffnut who didn't have a brain cell between them, had taken it upon themselves to make his life on Berk a living hell. Hiccup wasn't stupid; he knew Snotlout had only done it at first because he hated the thought of his weakling cousin becoming the next chief when Stock either became incapable of still being chief or more probably a dragon might get lucky and finally kill him. But over the years and as it became clear to his father and the rest of the tribe that he wasn't seen as chief material despite being Stoick's only child, the decision to pass the role onto Snotlout was made.

When Snotlout and the others realised that he was building machines, they had taken it upon themselves to ruin his life. They sabotaged each one, and it caused tremendous amounts of damage to the village. Snotlout and his idiot lackeys had loved every minute of it while the older Vikings had not been happy.

But Hiccup had persevered. He had not stopped trying, although that ended when his father had punched him. Hiccup frowned even as he heard the massive Queen growl behind him, and he felt a growing heat on the back of his neck.

The Queen was behind them blasting them both with her fire. He leaned over the head of the Night Fury. "C'mon bud," he whispered desperately, "just a little further….."

But as they flew closer to the ground, Hiccup couldn't help but remember the past and how his life had changed when he had first received a punch from his father.

He had tried to make a machine that could chop wood. Oh, it could chop alright, it had destroyed a wall and damaged a few storehouses before it was smashed to pieces by his father.

Stoick had been furious. Not only had his own son destroyed a large slice of the village, but the machine had caused some injuries. The twins and their boss had been howling with laughter, but Hiccup had not been laughing. Stoick had screamed and roared at him in his rage, but when Hiccup had tried to get through to his father that was too much. Stock punched him in the face, the force sending his screaming seven-year-old into a wall of there - no, Stoick's house; that place was not home to him. It was a prison.

Stoick had looked askance at his fist, but he had scoffed in disgust when he had seen his son crying at the pain, but after that, it never ended. After that the great Stock the Vast had taken it upon himself to 'put some spine in ta the boy!" All it had done was make Hiccup hate his own father, the only parent he had since his mother Valka had died because of a dragon raid (Hiccup still had some doubts about that night, and wondered what had happened to his mother; if she had been brought here by an unwilling dragon who had been trying to protect himself from the Queen, well he would not be shocked).

The Queen growled once more and Hiccup felt the back of his neck become hotter as the Queen's inner fire continued to build while the gasses in her body hissed as they mixed, adding to the flames building in her mouth, and he realised that the massive monster was building up to a climax that she could enjoy. The sheer sadism didn't surprise Hiccup one little bit; after seeing the way the Queen killed that Gronckle in the nest when he had gone out on that night flight, and how she had lifted her head to make it clear to the rest of her cowering servants she wouldn't tolerate another minuscule helping like that again, he had realised that that thing was no different from Snotlout, Astrid, or even his own father.

"It's time, bud," to his dragon.

This was the moment the pair of them had been waiting for. Hiccup held on tight to the saddle as his dragon turned around while using his wings as an airbrake. Seeing the massive sight of the Dragon Queen with her massive mouth open, revealing her dark, jagged teeth that were as long and thicker than tree trunks, her massive body blotting out all of the light with her massive wings beating the air as she chased after him and Toothless, but all he could see was the flames in the dragon's mouth, and they were growing brighter and brighter as she savoured the moment where she'd blast them both with fire…..

"NOW!" Hiccup cried, and Toothless fired his last plasma burst into the Queen's mouth. The massive dragon let out a cough that shook the air, but it was too late. The last plasma burst had already begun setting off a chain reaction in her body, and she immediately closed her mouth. But it was hopeless as she began to choke, and gagged on the fire in her body that was spreading out of control. The Queen tried to cough and she tried desperately to get the flames out of her body, but it didn't work as the flames in her body ignited the remaining gas pockets in her body that every dragon possessed as a kind of secondary supply in case the dragon burned through the primary supply. Now those gas pockets were burning up and destroying her from the inside and there was nothing she could do about it.

Hiccup watched with barely hidden satisfaction as the dragon began to see that it was hopeless. He had seen this before, only the dragon had been a tiny little Terrible Terror, and for a second Hiccup asked himself why the Terror hadn't looked like it was about to pop like the Queen, and he quickly realised that the Terror had only planned on igniting a small amount of its inner fuel instead of gathering the reserves like the Queen had, or it could have been that because of her size there was much more of the fuel gases in her body that was igniting.

Either way, he didn't care.

With a quick pull, Hiccup managed to turn Toothless around just as the last of the cloud cover was lifted, and he glanced over his shoulder. Now the dragon was exposed to the mediocre sunlight that only just managed to cut through the mists and the cloud cover over the island, he could see her ugly features more easily.

Her eyes had widened in horror and fear as she realised she was flying towards the ground, and the moment she came to that realisation she immediately tried to slow down. She opened her wings wide, but the damage inflicted by the earlier plasma bursts and the damage caused by the burst fired directly into her gaping maw had done their work though the last three hundred years she had spent just sitting in the dark depths of the nest being fed all the food stolen from the various islands in the archipelago had only made her fatter and added to the weight. The stress ripped holes in the membranes of her wings, and new holes were forming from ruptures and tears and they did nothing to stop her momentum.

Hiccup turned and pulled Toothless out of the path of the Dragon Queen, and they both flew as far as they could out of the massive and doomed behemoth's flight path as she headed on a one-way ticket to the ground, and they flew to a rocky hill and Hiccup guided the Night Fury onto it. There wasn't a lot of room on the top of the precipice, but they didn't plan to stay there for long. They just watched as the Queen roared one last time before she crashed into the ground.

In her last moments, the Dragon Queen gave one last roar of rage and fury. She had just lost everything. For the last three hundred years, she had ruled the nest with fear, forcing the generations of dragons that served her into venturing out of the nest, raiding the various Viking villages as far as they could travel, though she hadn't cared or given a thought of the time they would be gone as they left in great numbers to bring back the food that she needed while making sure they could never escape her thanks to the call she and other Alpha dragons were capable of exuding on their subjects. Other Alphas like the one she could sense a long way from here ruled their nests without fear, but she was not so weak; besides, if that Alpha cared then he would have stopped her long ago.

The Queen had never cared or given much of a thought to how many dragons she sent out and how many didn't return to her in order to feed her. In her mind, every dragon was expendable and she didn't care how many of her subjects lived or died, either by her jaws or by the humans and their stupid weapons. The Queen was not stupid; she knew that the humans trained to kill her subjects, but that didn't matter to her since she had lived already for centuries and she would live even longer, and as more and more generations of humans and dragons were replaced in order to serve her then she didn't care. In her mind, every human and dragon lived to serve her. The humans caught and nurtured the food, the dragons collected it and brought it to her, it was that simple. For three hundred years, the dragon nest had never been breached until today, but before her once greatest champion who had now been reduced to a domesticated animal by a human had brought the humans here, she hadn't been concerned. Nor had she been concerned that her subjects had escaped.

Once she had finished destroying the human fleet, she'd planned and calling the other dragons back in order to overwhelm the Vikings. They would have fallen easily while she would watch with sadistic pleasure. The humans had trained to fight dragons, she knew that; her subjects had brought tales back of the captured dragons the humans managed to subdue and keep in cages, but she did nothing for them because they were already dead and it would only be a short time before they were finally and effortlessly replaced, they were trained to fend off the raids. But they had never dealt with a full-on attack before. It would have been amusing to see how the great Vikings fared against such an attack and each and every human was dragged into the air, screaming and kicking as they were lifted up in the sharp talons and then dropped one by one into her mouth.

But now she was about to die.

She was about to die, and she cursed the sudden alliance between a human and a dragon, something that should never have occurred. She had created the world for the Vikings and the dragons to feed her while continuing a cycle of pain and death. But how had it happened? The humans were stupid. They had trained to fight and kill dragons for the last three hundred years and they were both too stupid and too blind to realise that no matter how many dragons they killed it wouldn't make any difference to her because she would keep on sending out the raids.

So how had it happened? How had her empire been destroyed in just a short time?

She knew that the human and the Night Fury were her killers, her executioners. She knew that the moment she had scented the human on the dragon's back in her nest that an abomination had happened, but she had not expected the human to return so soon. The Queen didn't feel any regrets, nor did she have any time to dwell on her life choices before she plunged into the ground. The last thing she saw was the flames that were out of control in her body creating a great and terrible explosion.

On the ground, the Hairy Hooligans immediately blocked out the debris of burnt scales and ashes as the mighty dragon monster exploded when it hit the ground as the pressure of the exploding gases within the thing's body creating an exploding pillar. Stoick and the others had to adjust their postures when the blasts came, or else they'd be knocked off their feet.

The dragon was so enormous that when it exploded, even with the Hairy Hooligans a fair distance away already since they had been virtually paralysed by hat they had just seen, there was a cloud of ashes that clung to the air and made the Vikings choke.

As he tried to keep the ashes out of his eyes, Stoick the Vast was trying to process what was happening as he tried to see through the clouds of ash and burning flesh to see what had become of the massive dragon….. And his son.

The old Viking was not surprised to see the massive dragon explode and the fire reached up high in the air as the explosions followed her body upwards into the air before the flames burnt themselves out until all that was left of the massive dragon were just a few piles of burnt scales, incinerated bones and a massive crater in the ground.

But there was no sign of Hiccup or that Night Fury of his.

Stoick looked around desperately for his son even as he tried to see through the clouds of ash, his mind racing as he tried to think of a way he could make up to his son. But he wasn't succeeding. What could he possibly offer? Hiccup was not interested in becoming the chief of Berk, he wasn't interested in anyone on the island except maybe Gothi and Gobber, and after the way he'd been treated there was no way Stoick could imagine any way anyone could persuade Hiccup to stay.

But Stoick had to try. He had to try to make up for all the years of misery that had been heaped on Hiccup's shoulders, he had to try to make up for disowning the boy and calling him a disgrace to Valka's memory, but then again he was hardly innocent of that either; he had put his own desire to wipe out the nest and slaughter as many dragons inside as he could off the face of the world, not for the benefit of his people and his island, but for the memory of a woman who would never have wanted such a thing.

But Stoick had ignored Valka's oddities in favour of getting revenge.

And his son had also paid the price.

In his mind's eye Stoick conjured up an image of a younger Hiccup, so small and fragile, so incapable of doing anything that a normal Viking child could do effortlessly as they trained up for adulthood, watching him as he left on one of the hunts for the nest, but what really got to him was how he had never looked back on his son. He had already judged the boy as being unworthy of his attention.

Worse, he had punched the boy when he was seven, and then later on if he was truly angry with the boy or he had just become frustrated over anything from dragons to the daily problems then he would just beat the boy in order to blow off some hot air. He had denounced the boy, humiliated him virtually every day of his life. When Gobber had persuaded him to put him into Dragon training he had known that Hiccup wouldn't take part, he just knew it but he had told the boy to try to do well because he wanted the boy to have the chance to do what he'd always wanted.

When he had returned from a stressful hunt for the nest, which had failed and had seen so many warriors die, Stoick had been too tired and stressed to do anything when he found out Hiccup hadn't even tried to do well in the training course. He hadn't even mustered the energy to be disappointed when Astrid had been given the chance to kill the Monstrous Nightmare.

But when Astrid had come to him to tell him she had followed Hiccup into the woods and found him with a Night Fury, and they were apparently…..friends, Stoick had not believed her but Astrid was not like the rest of the teens of the Hairy Hooligans. She wasn't the type to lie.

When he'd gone with her, he had seen it for himself and he had been furious. He had taken a group into the woods and ambushed the pair, and Stoick had been prepared to kill the dragon, the demon that had possessed his son somehow, but then Hiccup had told him desperately the dragon could get them to the nest before he had punched the boy in the eye and then disowned him.

And now this.

Hiccup had saved them all, so there was some hope, or at least he hoped there would be.

"HICCUP!" He yelled, spinning around and trying to look through the clouds of ash and mist that clung to the island, but he couldn't see any sign of his son or that Night Fury. "SON! WHERE ARE YOU?"

As he and Toothless stood unsteadily on the hill, Hiccup watched in satisfaction as the last explosions destroyed the Queen dragon and the flames died down. He looked at his friend. Toothless crooned, and he smiled back at the dragon; ever since he had first seen the nest on that night after his father had returned and had piled even more grief for him not doing well in the training course, Hiccup had noticed that Toothless had been edgy for a while.

Now he seemed to be back to his former self.

His smile faded as he looked over the view. The Dragon Queen had destroyed the entire fleet with a massive stream of fire, but as he'd flown over the fleet Hiccup had noticed that more than a few of the ships were more or less intact. The Hairy Hooligans would be able to return to Berk, though they'd actually have to do some work to repair some of the ships though Hiccup had no intention of helping them. He didn't know what would happen if he flew down there, but he wasn't going to try.

He looked wonderingly at Toothless and ran a hand over the dragon's head and wing. It was over, the Dragon War was over. He had been disowned, but he still had Toothless. Everywhere was open to him, he could go anywhere and do anything he wanted. Hiccup had always wanted to explore the world but he'd never imagined it would happen like this, but he didn't care about the circumstances.

Hiccup was still almost paralysed with wonder over what was going to happen now when he suddenly heard a thunderous voice that even from his height overlooking the island could be overheard.

"HICCUP!" Hiccup jumped, alarming Toothless for a second who crooned at him and looked at him worriedly. "SON! WHERE ARE YOU?"

It was Stoick.

Hiccup came back to the here and now, noting how the man had called him "son" but he felt nothing except annoyance towards his father. And pity. It was strange, but after spending the best part of his life being under the heel of his father, Hiccup felt nothing. He felt nothing, not even anger towards his father for being abusive and using his fists to pummel him to death. And now, here he was, the hero of the tribe, someone his father suddenly cared out because, ironically, he had killed the greatest dragon of all, and now he was suddenly worthy of Stoick's love.

But Stoick didn't seem to realise that it was too late. Hiccup wanted nothing to do with the Hairy Hooligans, he was done being the oddity, the freak.

He was a hero now, how about that? he thought to himself bitterly as he felt it was a switch. He had become so used to the harsh way he had been treated over the years by everyone in that miserable tribe. But, for a brief moment, he wondered to himself what would happen if he did fly down there. Even if he did fly down there with Toothless, the Hooligans would still not understand him, and they would still see him as not one of them. Hiccup wondered how long it would be if he had flown down there before they went back to how they had treated him in the past. A week? An hour? All he knew was he was not a member of the tribe.

Besides, as far as Hiccup was concerned with the whole mess, he wasn't a Hooligan anymore. His father had cut the cords and he was free, now the whole world was open to him. That was even better. Hiccup closed his eyes for a second, wondering just how far he was going to go before he re-opened them again. Now he could go wherever he liked, do whatever he liked, and he could actually live a life where he no longer felt as though he was a ghostly shadow, a prisoner in a world he could see but never be a part of. He had felt like that for a long time, and he no longer wanted to live that way. Toothless had opened up whole new possibilities, especially now he knew the truth of dragons, and what the war was all about.

"HICCUP!" Hiccup winced at the loud volume of his fathers' voice, but he wasn't bothered by the old Vikings yells. The man was not his father anymore. But then again Hiccup had never seen the man as his father for years since the night he had pushed Stoick too far.

For a moment, Hiccup entertained the thought of what would actually happen if he flew down there. What would happen? Would there be hugs and slaps on the back? How long would they last before the tribe went back to its old patterns of ignoring him? An hour? A day? He was still weak and frail, and besides that, he didn't think like one of them and he truly didn't want to. He liked his mind the way it was, he didn't want anyone to tell him how to think.

But what worried him the most was what could happen to Toothless. The Hairy Hooligans may have seen him fight that large Queen, but he was willing to bet they would eventually try to kill Toothless, and his father was not known for his mercy towards dragons.

As if sensing his worries, Toothless turned his head around and crooned at him, and Hiccup patted the dragon gently on his scaled head.

Truthfully, Hiccup had known for a while now he was not one of them, that he'd had no place on Berk. He had known his father would and could never be proud of him, and he had learnt to accept that. He had known that since the night Stoick had punched him for the first time, beginning a long cycle of pain and misery and humiliation.

It was harsh and painful, but it was true. Hiccup still remembered the humiliation he had felt when the rest of the tribe had convinced Stoick though the chief didn't really need much persuading to give the hereditary role of being the chief of the tribe which would have passed onto Hiccup to Snotlout, the only child of the current generation of Hooligans to share their bloodline. Hiccup remembered how upset he had been at first before he realised it was probably the best gift his ex-father had ever given him which didn't involve a knuckle-sandwich. He had never wanted to be chief, though he hadn't wanted to admit it to himself at the time. He had never wanted to organise those wasteful and pointless hunts for the nest, even when he had spent most of his life trying and putting all of his sweat and blood into those stupid inventions of his to make it easier for the tribe to fight off the dragons, and he had never really cared for long-winded speeches.

It wasn't him, it had never been him. None of the tribe had ever respected him or noticed him enough when he wasn't causing problems, that is, he corrected himself. In Hiccup's mind, the chief-hood was a wraith that hovered over him, crushing and smothering him at the same time. When he had first discovered he was going to be chief because the tribe took matters into their own hands and told Stoick it was a bad idea since he didn't live up to their ideals as Vikings, Hiccup had actually been excited before he learnt it was a horrible thing. And over the years, becoming chief was the last thing on his mind.

It didn't matter anymore. He had a dragon now, he could explore the world and see things that even traders and merchants had never even imagined in all the years they'd been travelling and selling their wares. But once more he wondered what would have happened if he decided to forgive his father, and Hiccup almost laughed to himself as he conjured a picture of himself teaching the Berkians how to train dragons and create bonds with their former enemies. The idea was ridiculous, just like the images of his father riding a dragon, and Astrid training a dragon.

No, it was best if he left. Leave now and never look back. He would leave the Hooligans to do how they wanted things done, and if they wanted Snotlout as chief, then they could; they were too one-dimensional enough to think about who was going to run the island, but he no longer cared. So, if Snotlout wanted Berk, he could have it, and even have it gift-wrapped. He no longer cared.

Toothless turned to him, crooning and Hiccup met the Night Fury's gaze, knowing that the dragon wanted to know what he wanted to do.

"C'mon bud, let's get out of here."

Getting gingerly on Toothless' back, being careful of the ledge they were on, and he guided the dragon into the air. But as they flew into the cloud and Stoick's calls died down, Hiccup let himself give in to the urge and he began to let the tears fall from his eyes.

Until next time.