How to View Your Dragons Chapter 1

A/N
You've probably seen many stories about how the canon cast of HTTYD somehow watched themselves in the first movie. But what would happen if their dragons could watch themselves in the first movie? The results will be humorous, touching, and enlightening, sometimes all at once. This story takes place sometime between the first movie and the second one. Rated K-plus to be safe; the language is all K.

o

Snotlout was the first one to leave the hut where he and his friends had just watched the events of the recent past unfold on a flat screen in front of them. He was badly shaken; he had been positive that his contribution to the teens' victory over the huge queen dragon had been vitally important, and it hurt his enormous ego to see that he'd been wrong. The twins filed out next, wisecracking with each other to cover their nervousness at learning the facts. To no one's surprise, Fishlegs had used the exercise to learn more about dragons; he had paused the presentation several times to jot down notes and make sketches of the Red Death. Astrid was still a little pale from having to relive that terrible fall when the Red Death tried to inhale her and Stormfly. That was the closest she had ever come to meeting her own end, and her terrified scream had proven to her (and to everyone else in the little room) that she wasn't quite as ready for Valhalla as she thought she was.

Hiccup was the last to leave. He was very thoughtful; watching those events had dragged him again through the highest and lowest moments of his life. The shock of being the first Viking ever to see a Night Fury... the terror of nearly getting killed in Dragon Training, several times... the thrill, the fear, and the exultation of that first free ride on Toothless' back... the unspeakable pain of being rejected and cast out by his own father... the stunned realization that all the teens were looking to him, Hiccup, for guidance on how to rescue their tribe... the black pool of loss when he realized that his foot was gone forever... it was all there for him, almost as vivid as going through it the first time. The strange man who controlled the flat panel had offered to let him watch it again. "Thanks, but no thanks," Hiccup had told him. "Living it once was enough; watching it again might have been too much. Three times... sorry, but no."

Toothless picked up on his rider's mood immediately. He had been resting outside the newly-built, odd-looking hut where the teens had been sitting for the past hour and a half, attracted by the sound of his rider's voice and the sounds of dragon voices, including some that sounded very much like his own. Now his human friend was in an unusually somber mood, and Toothless wanted to know why. He stuck his huge head into the doorway of the hut. He heard the sounds of a male human singing about "one, two and three," whatever that meant, and saw the strange man standing next to a broad, flat panel that was showing simplistic images of various dragons, with runes of some kind flashing over them.

"Oh, hi there, big fellow," the strange man said casually. He was obviously unafraid of dragons, even scary-looking black ones who suddenly stuck their heads into his hut. "I suppose you want to see the movie, too? Well, we know that Night Furies are intelligent and curious, so I guess you could get something out of watching it." He touched a button on a small, thin black box, and the images and sounds stopped. "But you're too big to fit into this hut, I'm afraid. That's okay, though - the hut is made in sections so I can move it around easily. I'll just take down the front wall." He pulled some shiny bolts out of sockets along the edges of one wall of the hut, and that wall folded up and fell down flat. Toothless jumped back, startled.

His nervousness changed to curiosity the moment the man touched another button on the thin black box. The screen showed a human child sitting on the moon, apparently trying to catch fish. For just a moment, Toothless saw a black shadow against the stars that could only be a Night Fury. What was going on here? Could he figure it out by himself? The other dragons needed to know about this! He let out a honking roar, which startled the man; he hit another button and the image on the screen froze. "What was that about?" he asked the dragon, not really expecting an answer.

But he got his answer in about two minutes, when Toothless was joined by Stormfly, Meatlug, Hookfang, Barf and Belch, along with Sizzle, the yellow Terrible Terror who had once been one of the unwilling subjects of Dragon Training. "Oh, I get it!" the man smiled. "You want to watch the movie with your friends! Okay, no problem. But maybe I ought to fix the language settings so you can understand what the humans are saying." He picked up the black box and hit some buttons, talking to himself as he went. "Main Menu... Settings... page two... oh, there it is! Language. Let's see." The current setting said "Old Norse." He scrolled through the other options as he looked for one particular language. "English... Spanish... French... Russian... Chinese... Hebrew... Sindarin... Klingonese... Dog... Llama... Mole Rat, naked... Mole Rat, fully clothed... Dragon! Of course, they had to put it at the very end!" He hit more buttons and the images began moving again. "I've also enabled the voice controls so you can stop and start the movie. Now I'll go for a walk in the woods, so you can enjoy the show without me. I'll be back in about two hours. Then I'll have to pack up and go; I've got an evening appointment to show 'Frozen' to Queen Elsa and Princess Anna of Arendelle." He strolled away and was soon out of sight. Of course, the dragons understood nothing of what he said.

"What's going on here?" Stormfly asked.

"There's something in this hut that really shook up my rider," Toothless answered. "Your rider was very quiet when she came out of here as well. This man doesn't look like a Viking, he doesn't sound like a Viking, and he doesn't smell like a Viking; that makes him an intruder. I want to know what he did to my rider, and I think we all ought to know what he's up to. It might be important."

"What's the flat thing with the moving pictures?" Hookfang demanded suspiciously.

"I don't know," the Night Fury admitted. "That's one of the things I hope to find out. But I know it was making sounds like my rider's voice and your riders' voices, and I think I heard our own voices here and there as well. This is very strange and unusual, and I want to get to the bottom of it."

"Your rider comes up with strange and unusual stuff all the time, doesn't he?" Meatlug asked.

"Yes, but this isn't from my rider," Toothless said firmly. "If it was one of his crazy inventions, then it wouldn't have shaken him up so badly. Hey, look at the panel! That's a picture of this island!" They all stared at the moving images on the flat panel. Soft background music played as the image of the island grew closer.

Toothless jumped when he heard Hiccup say, "This is Berk. It's twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death. It's located solidly on the Meridian of Misery."

"I can understand him!" the black dragon blurted out. "It's my rider's voice, but he's speaking perfect dragon language!"

"You're right - this is really strange," Stormfly nodded. "For the first time ever, we can really understand what a human is saying."

"And all he's doing is complaining about his own nest!" Barf threw in.

"If he hates it that much, then why doesn't he move somewhere else?" Belch added.

"Vikings," Sizzle said dismissively. "Stubbornness issues."

"Maybe he can't leave," Meatlug suggested. "After all, his father is the Alpha of this nest. Maybe they won't let him go."

"But who ever heard of a dragon complaining about his own nest?" Hookfang wondered.

"Your rider is not a dragon," Stormfly said.

"Yes, I noticed that, too," Toothless said drily. "Let's see what happens next." They watched as the image changed to the houses and shops of Berk. Hiccup's voice went on, "...but every single building is new."

"We had something to do with that!" Hookfang boasted.

"But we don't do that stuff anymore!" Meatlug protested. "The humans are our friends! We aren't supposed to flame their little wooden caves anymore."

"Well, it was a lot of fun while it lasted," the bigger dragon muttered.

"...The only problems are the pests," Hiccup continued. The screen showed two sheep eating grass, with others in the background.

"Those white fluffy things are pests?" Belch asked. "I didn't know that!"

"I guess they're bad because they eat all the grass, and the Vikings need that grass for something else," Barf suggested.

"Maybe we should do the humans a favor and get rid of all of those pests," Belch concluded. "It would give us something fun and different to do."

"Yeah!" Barf exclaimed. "We could pick them all up and drop them in the water, one at a time! We'll play a game to see who can make the biggest splash!"

"Hold on, you two," Stormfly cut in. "He's still talking."

"...you see, most places have mice or mosquitoes. We have... dragons!"

Hookfang was indignant. "Oh, so we're the pests?! I resent that!"

Stormfly didn't like the idea, either. "I thought we were special to our humans! If we're nothing but pests here, then maybe we should go somewhere else."

"No, wait!" Toothless cut in urgently. "I think I know what's happening here. Did you see how a dragon carried off that sheep, and then another dragon flamed my rider's house? Like Meatlug said, we don't do that stuff anymore. Somehow, this flat panel is showing us scenes from the past. We're seeing things that we've already done."

"Well, what good is that?" Hookfang demanded. "If I've already done something, then what's the point in seeing myself do it again? Aside from seeing how awesome I am from other people's point of view, of course."

"Because we're seeing these things the way my rider saw them," the Night Fury answered. "We can understand what the Vikings are saying, we can hear them saying things that we never could hear before... this could be a huge opportunity to learn more about humans in general, and our own humans in particular! We need to pay attention." He shifted his position, and almost stepped on Sizzle by accident.

"Hey, watch it, you big ox!" Sizzle exclaimed as he jumped out of the way. "Be careful where you put your paws!"

The moving images on the panel froze.

"The pictures stopped!" Meatlug complained. "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything! He said, 'Be careful where you put your paws,' and the pictures stopped," Toothless mused. "What could that mean?"

"Who cares!" Sizzle burst out. "I don't have a pet human like you, so why should I care about those pictures? I want to go out and play!"

The images resumed moving.

"Did the strange man do anything to make the pictures stop and start?" Stormfly asked.

"No, he's nowhere near here, or one of us could smell him," Toothless said. "It must have something to do with what we were saying. Paws!" The pictures stopped. "Play!" They started again. "Hey, Sizzle, nice work! You figured out how we can control the pictures."

"Thanks," Sizzle answered. "But what do our paws and playing have to do with controlling those pictures?"

"With humans, who knows?" Barf said, and both shoulders of the two-headed dragon shrugged.

Hiccup's voice continued, "Most people would leave. Not us. We're Vikings. We have stubbornness issues."

"Told you so," smirked Sizzle. They winced as they watched a Viking holding onto a Gronckle with one hand and repeatedly beating him with a hammer with the other hand, until the dragon was able to throw him off.

"My name's Hiccup," his voice said. All the dragons except Toothless burst out laughing.

"His name is Hiccup?" Stormfly cackled. "So that's what his name means!" She hiccuped loudly on purpose. "Will he come when I call him?"

"What kind of tacky culture is this?" Meatlug giggled. "What kind of idiot would give someone a name that's a body noise?"

"No comment," muttered Belch.

They watched Hiccup make his way into the town, suffering near-miss after near-miss as the bigger Vikings ran around aimlessly. When Stoick appeared and nearly threw Hiccup across the path, the dragons hissed and snarled in displeasure. "They say that when he was a baby, he popped a dragon's head clean off its shoulders. Do I believe it? Yes, I do."

"It must have been a very small dragon," Meatlug said.

"She was a distant cousin of mine," Sizzle said softly. "How would the humans like it if we started popping their heads clean off their shoulders and bragging about it?"

Stormfly shook her head. "I keep telling you, we don't do that stuff anymore! But speaking of cousins, why did Stoick ruin a perfectly good cart, just to throw it in the air and stun my cousin for a few seconds? It didn't even hurt her for long! What a waste."

"Paws!" Toothless called; the pictures stopped. "The whole war was a waste, Stormfly. Every war is a waste of lives, time, effort, resources, and anything else that's worth having."

"Then why do people keep starting wars all the time?" Hookfang wondered.

"Because they think they can win," Toothless answered. "Some wars have winners and losers, and some just have a bunch of losers, but even the winners usually lose more than they gain. Our war with the humans was an example of a war with no winners. We lost our friends and family members by the dozen; the humans lost their food, their buildings, and a few friends and family members of their own; and nobody ever really won. It was all the Queen's fault for making us raid them!" They all coughed and hit the ground with their tails, which was the dragon equivalent of spitting on the ground when they heard the name of someone they detested.

"We could talk about that forever," Meatlug decided, "but we're here to watch the pictures, right?"

"Right," Toothless nodded, and faced the flat panel. "Play!" The images began moving again. They watched as the Vikings deposited a double armful of bent weapons in the forge for Hiccup and Gobber to fix.

"Look at that mangled sword!" Hookfang chuckled. "Those Vikings never did come up with a metal weapon that wouldn't bend when it hit one of us."

"Except they kept hitting us," Stormfly objected, "and hitting us, and hitting us! When they ruined one weapon, they switched to another one. They just wouldn't stop!"

"Funny, I don't remember much of that," Hookfang reflected.

"That's because, once they captured you for their dragon training, they saved you for the end!" Meatlug reminded him. "The rest of us had to keep fighting them over and over again. Stormfly is right; they were relentless. If it wasn't for our tough scales, they would have killed every last one of us."

"But we weren't defenseless," Hookfang shot back as they watched another huge dragon set a Viking building's roof on fire. "Yeah, that's how to do it! Burn, baby, burn!"

"Hookfang, we don't do that stuff anymore! Remember?" Stormfly reminded him.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot," Hookfang admitted. "I guess I got caught up in the moving pictures. But is it wrong to admire a job well done?"

"We shouldn't take any pleasure in it," Toothless said. "Not anymore. I blew up more stuff than any of you, but I don't feel good about it now. It was all a colossal mess of misunderstandings! Neither side had any quarrel with the other. If we could have left each other alone, then I think we would have, and there would have been no war."

"I'm not convinced of that," Sizzle retorted. "Those humans love to fight, just for the sake of fighting! I think they would have hunted us and killed us for sport if they didn't have to fight us and kill us to protect their food supply."

"They aren't hunting us now," Toothless said. "Their food supply is secure; in fact, some of us are helping them catch more fish than ever before. But we haven't become sport to them."

"Except for Dragon Racing," Stormfly reminded him, "and we're part of the sport when that happens!"

"Huh. Maybe you're right," the little dragon admitted.

Toothless looked smug. "Of course I'm right! I'm a Night Fury! Let's watch the pictures some more." They saw the other teens carrying barrels of water to fight the fires that the dragons were starting, as Hiccup named them, "Oh, there's Snotlout..."

"Hey! That's my rider!" Hookfang nearly shouted. "He's in the pictures, too!"

"...Fishlegs..." Hiccup went on.

"There he is!" Meatlug exclaimed. "Isn't he handsome?"

"Another stupid Viking name?" Hookfang complained. "Fish don't have legs!"

"Don't insult my rider," Meatlug warned him.

Hookfang smirked. "What are you going to do about it? Make an ugly face at me? Oh, but you always do that!"

"No," the Gronckle growled, "I'll rub up against you while you're asleep, so you'll get Gronckle-bumps all over you when you wake up!" Hookfang edged away from her. Young dragons often teased each other about Gronckle-bumps being contagious; adults knew that the stories weren't true, but Hookfang didn't want to take any chances.

"...the twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut..."

"They're disagreeing already," Barf commented as they fought over the water pail.

"Nothing changes," Belch nodded.

"and... Astrid!"

"Why was he so obsessed with that female?" Barf asked. "She's so thin! Is she malnourished?"

"And she wanted nothing to do with him!" Belch added.

"Human courtship makes no sense," Barf nodded. "They don't do things like us at all. If a male dragon approaches a female and asks to mate with her, and she refuses, he'll find someone else who looks just like her. No heartache, no confusion, no fights... well, not many... and everybody finds a mate, eventually. Why can't the humans do it our way? They'd be so much happier!"

"I guess it's because they're humans and not dragons," Meatlug suggested.

"But our way is so much better!" Barf protested.

"All I know," Toothless cut in, "is that they've been doing it their way for thousands of years, and they seem to be getting more numerous every year, so whatever they're doing, it works." They turned back to the screen just in time to see a Viking hurl a bola and bring down a Gronckle.

"I always hated those things," Stormfly muttered.

"Are there any Viking weapons that you don't hate?" Sizzle asked.

"The ones that bounce off of me were bad enough," the blue dragon went on. "But the ones that would keep me from flying? Those are the worst! A downed dragon is a dead dragon, and I didn't want to be dead." A moment later, Hiccup touched some kind of human machine that threw a bola straight into another Viking's head.

"Why did he do that?" Hookfang wondered.

"He said it was a mild calibration issue," Toothless answered.

Sizzle sometimes had trouble with long words. "Which means... what?"

"I think it means, 'Oops,' " Toothless tried to explain.

Hiccup began sharpening a sword as he said, "One day, I'll get out there. Because killing a dragon is everything around here!"

Meatlug was taken aback. "Your human friend really thinks that way?"

"He used to," Toothless said, "but he changed his mind. He's perfectly sane now."

They watched as Stormfly's relatives made off with some of the tribe's sheep. "A Nadder head is sure to get me at least noticed."

Stormfly stomped her foot angrily. "So that's all I'm good for, in Hiccup's mind? To cut my head off so the other Vikings would notice him?"

Hookfang smirked. "What else could they do with your head? At least it wouldn't gather dust that way."

Hiccup went on, "Gronckles are tough. Taking down one of those would definitely get me a girlfriend."

"Hey, Meatlug," Hookfang grinned, "does that sound like a good trade? Your life in exchange for his love life?"

"That is totally tasteless," Meatlug grimaced.

"A Zippleback? Exotic. Two heads, twice the status," Hiccup said.

"What does that mean?" Barf asked. "What the heck is a Zippleback? Why do they call us that?"

"I think it's because of the way you walk," Toothless suggested. "When you press your necks together, your neck spines interlock so they look like a zipper. Zipperback, Zippleback... they're kind of close."

"So what's a zipper?" Belch asked.

"Umm... it's a human clothing fastener that hasn't been invented yet," Toothless said lamely.

Hiccup went on. "And then there's the Monstrous Nightmare. Only the best Vikings go after those. They have this nasty habit of setting themselves on fire."

"What did he call me?" Hookfang demanded angrily. "A Monstrous Nightmare? Something horrible, then something even more horrible? What kind of a name is that?"

"What kind of a name did you expect from someone named Hiccup?" Sizzle asked.

"Well, they didn't know that we call you Greater Fire-Masters," Toothless tried to explain, "so they had to make something up. I mean, you were always trying to be the most destructive force in this area, so they gave you a name that fit. Surely you can see the logic in that!"

"I can't see it, and don't call me Shirley, and don't call me a Monstrous Nightmare, either! I can't wait to see what he calls you in his own language!" They waited. They didn't have to wait long.

"But the ultimate prize is the dragon that no one's ever seen. We call it the..." "Night Fury!" "Get down!" BOOM! The Viking catapult was torn apart with one shot.

"Night Fury," Meatlug nodded. "It fits."

"I remember taking that shot," Toothless said absently. "I was aiming for the crew, but I hit the catapult instead. It worked out the same; the catapult was out of the battle; but it wasn't like me to have even a near-miss like that. I think I was having an off night."

"This thing never steals food, never shows itself, and..." BOOM! "...never misses."

"Well, we won't tell Hiccup that you had a near-miss," Stormfly said. Toothless wasn't sure if she was comforting him or mocking him. They watched as Hiccup disobeyed his master's clear command and ran across the village with his invention.

"Is he going to have another mild calibration issue?" Meatlug asked.

"We should be so lucky," Hookfang muttered. Hiccup set up his contraption, aimed at the night sky... and Toothless' mouth dropped open in shock as he watched his human friend shoot him down.