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[HTTYD] Factions

Deviation Actions

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Literature Text

Factions

(rough draft)

A DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon fanfic by Raberba girl

 

Summary:  After the events that resulted in Toothless becoming alpha, Berk's vastly changed dragon flock now has three distinct factions.

 

A/N:  This happens really close to Conveyance, though I'm not sure yet if it should be before or after. ^^;

 

o.o.o

 

A child's shrieks exploded through the air.  They were not playful screams; there was a recognizable note of pain and fear.

 

While many humans and even more dragons just stared in confusion, a cluster of Gronckles, Nadders, and a few Zipplebacks immediately took to the air in the direction of the cries.

 

Hiccup, knowing that everything that happened in this village now was his responsibility, flung himself onto Toothless's back and then seconds later was dismounting and striding toward the source of the disturbance.

 

A Snafflefang with a scarred neck, one of the new dragons, was snarling in a low-to-the-ground, spread-wings aggressive stance.  It had a cluster of scarred companions gathering around it in support.

 

They faced a rapidly growing group of defensively growling dragons, all of whom Hiccup recognized as flock members he'd grown up with for the past five years.  They all seemed to be centered around a small point from which muffled sobs were coming.  "Oh no...."  Hiccup headed straight for that central point.  A few dragons detached from the group and sort of drew him in:  two Gronckles planted themselves protectively between him and the other group of dragons, and a Zippleback's hissing heads came snaking past him to add to the barrier.

 

Only half noticing them, Hiccup crouched down and reached out.  Wings were obligingly lifted out of his way, and the Nadder at the very center, curled tightly into herself like a mother protecting her clutch, squawked at Hiccup before slightly loosening her own protective wings.  Hiccup finally caught a glimpse of the edge of a tunic and a pair of very small boots.  "Hey there," he called softly.

 

"H-Hiccup?" the little girl's voice sniffled.

 

"Yeah, it's me, I'm here.  Is that Brenna?" he asked, recognizing the most protective Nadder as the child's mother's dragon partner.

 

"Uh huh."

 

A Terrible Terror slipped out of the Nadder's cocooning embrace and fluttered around Hiccup, chittering urgently.  "I know, little guy, it's okay, I got her," Hiccup said soothingly.  "Brenna?" he called, "I'm right here, will you come out?"

 

"He scratched me," the child said in a shaking voice, then burst into fresh tears.  "He scratched meeee!"

 

"Hey, sweetie, come here, come here, it's all right," Hiccup crooned, reaching out and, with some difficulty, managing to tug the girl into his lap.  He looked in dismay at the bleeding scratch on her arm that she was cradling, and bit back a curse.

 

In the meantime, Toothless was raging at the Snafflefang.  "You hurt a BABY, how DARE you, she is FLOCK, she is OURS, we PROTECT our flockmates and our young--!"

 

"It's not a hatchling!" the Snafflefang shrieked in protest.  "It's a human cub, it hurt me, it threatened me!!!"

 

"She was just trying to play with you, Stupid!" one of the Nadders shrieked back, outraged.

 

"Flockmate marks all over her," a Zippleback hissed.  "Flockmates are not to be harmed, especially young ones!"

 

"How can it be flock?!  It's HUMAN, it's a monster, very many monsters here in this nest--!"  The dragons who had lived in Berk for five years hissed and flared their wings at what they perceived as an insult, and many of the scarred dragons responded in kind.

 

Brenna's mother had been pushing and shoving her way through the crowd of dragons.  She scooped her child into her arms, away from the tongue of a Gronckle who had been washing the girl's wound.  "Brenna, Brenna, what happened?!"

 

"The bad dragon hurt me, Mama," Brenna sniffled.

 

"He's not a bad dragon, Brenna," Hiccup said quickly.  "He looks like he was one of Drago's, which means humans have hurt him in the past.  Maybe you did something by accident to scare him--"

 

"I don't like those dragons on our island, Hiccup," the woman cut in angrily.  Hiccup stared at her.  "I know, I know, our dragons are safe, but all these new ones!  I don't want them running loose around our children!"

 

"The newcomers are 'our' dragons, too," Hiccup said quietly.  He felt like he was floundering, shocked and saddened by an anti-dragon sentiment he thought he'd never have to see again in his village, struggling to think of a chiefly way to handle this.

 

That was when all the dragons surrounding them burst into their angry displays.  Frightened, the woman called for her Nadder and whisked her daughter away to safety, followed by a few of the more maternal dragons who were concerned about the girl.

 

"Whoa, whoa, what's happening?!" Hiccup hurried to his partner's side.  "Guys, calm down!"

 

"This human is your flock consort," Toothless snarled, indicating Hiccup.  "He is not a monster.  He is alpha of OUR humans, and makes them not be monsters.  Flockmates are flockmates, it doesn't matter if they're dragons or humans!!"

 

"Hey there, fella.  Hey."  Hiccup was approaching the lead Snafflefang slowly and cautiously, hands outstretched and eyes slightly averted.  "What's got you all upset, huh?  Are you the one who scratched Brenna?  Did she scare you?"

 

"Keep that...person...away from me," the Snafflefang growled, managing to show the bare minimum of respect for his alpha's consort.

 

"Consort is gentle!" the other dragons insisted.  "He won't won't won't hurt you, he is good!"

 

The Snafflefang only let Hiccup touch him when Toothless ordered him to, and then he hunched low in a defensive crouch, breathing heavily as Hiccup ran gentle hands over his hide.  "Hey, big guy, it's all right," Hiccup murmured.  "It's all right, no one's gonna hurt you.  I know the kids can be kind of rough, I'm really sorry, but she didn't mean to hurt you, okay?"

 

It took a lot of petting and scratching and crooning and some dragon nip before the Snafflefang finally huffed and bared his throat, reluctantly and briefly, to Hiccup.  Toothless reiterated his 'Don't hurt babies' order and dismissed him, and the Snafflefang slunk away.

 

Hiccup watched him go, then sighed and absently patted Toothless's neck.  "This is a problem, huh."

 

Later that day, after Brenna's wound had been treated and she'd had a chance to emotionally recover, Hiccup called the village together for a meeting, making sure the children and teenagers were in the front.  "Okay, guys, listen.  Obviously there have been a lot of changes around here, and one of them is that we have a lot more dragons now, from different backgrounds than the ones we got from the Red Death."

 

Hiccup paused a moment, glancing over at Toothless in surprise.  His dragon was pacing and growling and rumbling and crooning and gesturing wings, head plates, and tail at a large crowd of newcomer dragons.

 

"We are FLOCK, all of us together, new flockmates and old flockmates."  Toothless gave the exact number, in untranslatable dragon fashion, of all the dragons and all the humans who shared this island nest, as well as all the domesticated animals who existed in a strange, very undragonish limbo at the bottom of the hierarchy.  "We are ALL loyal and protect each other!!  We are alphas and flocklings, two halves and companions and friends and partners and mates and parents and offspring and flockmates!  ALL of us who are marked belong together!"

 

"Uh...right.  So," Hiccup continued, "our, um...Red Death, or, no, uh--"  'Stop stuttering,' he mentally scolded himself, and allowed himself a pause to think.  "Legacy.  The, uh, the legacy dragons that originally came from Dragon Island...you know, the old war and stuff...obviously we've known them for a long time, and we've learned how to get along really well."

 

"Humans are people.  Some of them are monsters, but some of them are not.  Our human flockmates are not monsters."

 

Hiccup tried not to smile at (or be distracted by) the impression he was getting that he and Toothless were simultaneously making speeches in two different languages to two different audiences.  Well, except for his mother perched up there with Cloudjumper, who had a slightly frustrated look on her face as she was apparently getting hit with both at once.

 

"But things are different now.  We have a lot of new dragons from the alpha's--  from Mom's--  Uh...."  'I am hopeless at this,' he thought in frustration.  'Stupid weedy little voice, stupid stuttering, stupid speeches, gah....'  "The Dragon Sanctuary.  The ice nest that the white Bewilderbeast king made, not the one who attacked Berk, the other one--"  'It doesn't matter; get on with it.'  "Those dragons were used to a good Bewilderbeast looking after them and feeding them and protecting them, and a lot of them were rescued from dragon trappers.  Mom was the only human in their nest, and all the other humans they probably knew were always trying to trap them, so you guys will have to be careful around them."

 

"They don't have scales or fangs or claws or horns or heartfire to protect them, that's why they make their blades and coverings.  But they don't use blades on us anymore!!  Blades are for enemies, not flockmates!  Their flesh is very soft and fragile, you must be VERY CAREFUL or you will hurt them.  Humans are very so much weak without their craziness, and their cubs are even weaker!"

 

"You can't just march up to them and start poking them or pounding them on the back or whatever the way you can with our--  Not our, ALL these dragons are 'ours,' okay?  I meant the legacy dragons, the ones who've been here for so long.  The legacy dragons are used to us, they can tell we're not a threat.  But the newbies?  You have to be careful.  I know we're Vikings, raaaawrgh and all that, but you still have to be gentle.  Especially if the dragon's got scars, because that most likely means they've been abused by humans and are afraid of us - and scared animals will hurt whatever they think is threatening them."

 

"The cubs are rough, sometimes they like to run at you and jump on you and pull on you and hit you.  They're playing, and they're stupid.  Even if they hurt you, you have to be gentle, because they're babies and they're fragile."

 

"And it's even worse for the poor rescues.  Astrid and the others were there, you can ask them; you can ask Eret, he knows.  The dragons who were in Drago's army were tortured.  They learned to be scared of humans, and they probably learned to hate us, too; we have to teach them, we have to show them that they're safe now.  We have to show them that they can trust us, that we'll keep them safe and take care of them."  The human crowd had been reasonably quiet for a while, but the muttering had been growing, and this was the point where Hiccup was forced to pause and start fielding protests.

 

"Humans are very stupid and crazy, but you have to get used to it, because it's okay that they're stupid and crazy.  You have to be patient and watch them and listen to them, because they can't talk for real but they talk their own crazy way that they think means something even though it doesn't mean anything."

 

"Dragon Training!" Hiccup yelled, trying to get everyone to shut up.  "At the Academy, starting tomorrow.  Everyone who was born less than eleven years ago is required to attend, and I'm going to make a list of all the older people I want to come, too."

 

He pointed at the children.  "You guys are too young to remember.  You were only five or four or three or whatever when we made friends with the dragons--"  He was interrupted by many of the children loudly insisting on their exact ages.  "Guys, guys, stop, it doesn't matter!  The point is that you have to learn how to approach a dragon the right way, not just dive-bombing it and expecting it to put up with you.  Usually people don't learn how to approach new dragons 'til they're old enough to join the Academy, but you're going to start learning tomorrow."  The kids seemed happy at the prospect of soon getting to try something dangerous.

 

"If a human flockmate is scaring you or hurting you or confusing you, don't threaten them and DON'T hurt them!!  Flee away from them and come ask me or Consort for help.  Or Friend," he indicated Stormfly, "or Dragonheart who is a dragon-and-human person.  We will comfort you and help you, and then none of our flock will get hurt."

 

"Guys, we've done this before, and we can do it again.  We're Vikings!"  The cheer they made in response was unexpected, but it gave Hiccup an idea.  "We are HOOLIGANS!" Hiccup yelled, and smiled in relief and pleasure when his people happily roared back at him, proud of their tribe identity.

 

In the days that followed, Hiccup, Toothless, and Valka did a lot of training.  All the humans were taught how to properly approach and interact with a dragon whose trust hadn't been earned yet, as well as the basics of dragon hierarchy and some essential aspects of dragon culture and communication.  (Hiccup was exasperated to discover how many Vikings needed to be explicitly told things like, "If a dragon lowers its head and growls at you, don't make any sudden moves or loud noises."  He was also exasperated by how many Vikings, after being told, would then argue about it.)  All the new dragons were taught how to handle humans without damaging them, and some essential aspects of human culture and communication.  ("Bared human teeth means happy, not threatening!!")

 

Vikings were still Vikings and dragons were still dragons, so of course they weren't able to eliminate all misunderstandings and injuries.  For that matter, there'd been plenty mistakes made even before Hiccup had discovered Itchy Armpit and started the chain of events that had changed Berk forever.

 

However, things did start to improve, and Hiccup hoped that with enough time and guidance, his people and Toothless's people would once more settle into a harmonious and understanding whole.

 

o.o.o

 

Author's Notes:  Again, thank you to everyone who's been reviewing and messaging me!  I'll do my best to reply soon, I'm sorry for being so bad at this!

 

Btw, I have a new poll on my FFN profile.  I like to know what my readers want to see even if I'm bad at actually writing what they want. ^^;;

 

The whole factions thing wasn't planned, it just naturally came up as I thought of the flock's reactions to various things while working on Small Addition.  The legacy dragons (which include any wild dragons who liked Hiccup enough to follow him home and become flock members), the king's dragons, and the rescues sort of act like three 'states,' each with its unique background, general attitude, and preferences, that are part of the same 'country' headed by Toothless.  I was considering writing a long author's note to explain all this, but then decided to just make a story out of it.  So sorry if this fic is lame; it's really just my headcanon rambling that got turned into an expositional story. *sweatdrop*

 

I kind of suck at coming up with cool ward-off-gnomes-and-trolls names, so I just grabbed the name 'Brenna' for the kid in this fic because it's a common one I've seen in HTTYD fanfiction. :/

 

It's times like these that I feel like a failure...constantly three steps forward, then one or two steps back....  Made plans for this weekend to get important real life stuff done; got the most urgent thing finished, but only by wasting more than half a day with procrastination; got nothing else done.

 

Meanwhile, on the fandom front, the fic at the top of my list at the moment is bulbul's fic, which is probably why I'm not writing it. D:  (Maybe I should make a different fic the highest priority, so that I can work on bulbul's fic as a way of procrastinating on it. ^^;)  And because I did something stupid again, I still haven't replied to a lot of reviews and messages, I'm really sorry about that and will try to reply to them soon!

 

And instead of trying to clean up and get back on track, a fic about Hiccup's son was writing itself in my head, so like an idiot, I sat down to draft it instead of working on actual important stuff - but I didn't even get that done, because I found myself writing this fic instead. X''''D *headdesk*  It was originally meant to be a seven-part one-shot, then when I realized how long the first part was, I thought of making it a seven-part multi-chapter, then realized that only one of the other ideas had any meat to it, so I was like, "Whatever; I'll just post what I wrote as a one-part one-shot."  That other idea might eventually be written as an individual one-shot or worked into Small Addition or something.

 

The side-effect of my Fail At Life, which is not really a good one for someone in my situation, is that I've been reading a ton of fanfiction. *sweatdrop*  It's been YEARS since I've gone actively looking for fanfiction on a regular basis (I was writing it way more than I was reading it), but for some reason I've been craving HTTYD reading material.  Binge-reading is really, really bad for me. *sweatdrop*

 

But ftr, my notable finds of this latest round are Prodigal Son by commandocucumber, my favorite of the 'HiccTooth run away from Berk' fics that I've read so far (I still haven't gotten to Midoriko-sama's series yet, even though it's been recommended to me several times, but it's on my 'HTTYD Fics To Read' list); Dragonfriend by dataeatr, an OC fic that's actually pretty good (which is a shocker for me since I have a low opinion of Fan Characters in general [even though I've started making a lot of my own, lol]); Sherlock Holmes and The Black Scale by IonitaMircea32, I always love when people are able to get bizarre-sounding crossovers to work; and a fic I will not name that's such a freaking TEXTBOOK Mary Sue that I'm half-convinced it's a parody. XD XD  I lost interest after the first chapter, but I kind of loved chapter 1 for pretty much hitting every single point on the How To Write A Mary Sue List. XD  I had been idly considering someday writing a HTTYD deliberate Suefic, but now I don't think I will, because this fic I found is exactly the kind of thing I'd wanted to write, so there's no point. ^^;
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Komori-Moon's avatar
I am, once again, amazed at what you write; I hadn't thought about it, but it does make sense that the dragons would consist of three different factions. Where did the name 'legacy' dragons come from though? why not just the 'Red Death's former dragons', or the 'dragons that have been here for years', or something shorter and better sounding....