ya_assemble | [LN] Danger Zone

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[LN] Danger Zone

Every so often, in the rare times where things were quiet on Berk, Hiccup and Toothless would take off and tear around the sky for a few hours to clear their heads. Chiefing, and Alphaing, was difficult work even for those who'd been doing it for years, and the pair's experience with either was less than optimal. The flights were their way of relaxing.

Of course, it'd be more relaxing if they weren't, according to the position of the stars in the sky, suddenly hundreds of miles away from where they were supposed to be, being chased by nine armored humanoid beings flying monstrous creatures that even Hiccup hesitated to call dragons. To top it all off, the nine were followed by a small army of shadowy creatures equally as monstrous as their mounts.

Faced with this, it wasn't surprising that Hiccup had decided to put off figuring out why he could now hear Toothless's thoughts until after he and the Night Fury were out of mortal danger.

Hiccup turned his head back to take a look at their pursuers. "Okay bud, don't panic, but I think they may actually be gaining on us."

What?! Toothless's eyes widened, How can they be gaining on us? I'm supposed to be the fastest thing up here.

"I'm sorry, but apparently you aren't."

So then, what's the plan?

Hiccup shrugged. "Way I see it is we've got one of two options. We can either try to outlast them on endurance, or turn around and take them head on. Honestly, I'm not liking our chances either way."

Well, if we're doomed no matter what, I think we should do our best to make 'em regret it.

As one, the pair turned around, Toothless's spine beginning to glow a bright, luminescent blue. They charged, the dragon firing explosive balls of plasma into the mass of ink-black terrors.

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Tadashi shuffled to the side of the portal before he stopped to gape at his new surroundings.

This was the North Pole. Santa's workshop. And that was the rock he'd tossed through the portal, being thoroughly investigated by a hoard of small jingly-hatted elves.

This was amazing. This was--

Someone was hurt. Tadashi's head whipped around before he even recognized that the thought had come from him rather than being some kind of familiar voice over a public address system. He turned on his heel and bolted for the next room, only half noticing the line of elves he'd had to hurtle in the process.

On the other side of the doorway were three people, two unharmed, one prone on a couch; and one--

"Thaaaaat's a dragon."

It didn't stop him from approaching the group though (the two conscious people didn't seem worried about it, after all), unbuttoning and removing his blazer as he focused on the unconscious man whose state had apparently been enough to set his own head ringing.

"Unconsciousness, low serotonin and norepinephrine levels," he muttered, half to himself. "High adrenaline, low body temperature, pale skin, and that's not a good look for his vitals. Is he sleeping or hallucinating?"

He bundled his blazer up his his hands and tucked it under the man's head, taking a moment to get a better look at him (clammy skin was relevant. The prosthetic leg was interesting, but not relevant to the situation at hand).

"What happened here?"

What happened was her stupid boyfriend had gone and gotten himself hurt.

"Hiccup?"

The way her voice hitched spoke volumes about her relationship with the prone young man. She raced over to where Abed had carried him to the couch, briefly pressing a hand to Toothless' nose in a gesture of comfort and acknowledgement, bodily shoving Tadashi out of the way so she could get to him.

His skin was far too pale and he when she pressed fingers to his neck, his pulse was weak. She pressed her hand to his face, patting his cheek gently to try to stir him awake.

"Hiccup, don't do this to us." 'Us.' Her and Toothless. Of course she acknowledged Toothless. "Wake up. Wake. Up."

He was out cold - in every sense of the word. His skin was icy to the touch, as if he'd been left out in the snow. She frantically scrambled for a nearby blanket and started to bundle him up. That was what you did when someone was in shock, she knew that much.

"What's wrong with him?" she said, her voice demanding, glaring at Abed and Cassie. "How was he hurt? I don't see any wounds."

Yet he was pale as death.

The other man that was there flicked his finger in an odd fashion, as if it was some kind of nervous or habitual gesture.

"It's the Black Breath. He got in a fight with Nazgul - they're wraiths, sort of like ghosts but a lot more sinister. Servants of the Dark Lord Sauron, wielders of the nine rings of power given to them to enslave them and turn them to the Dark Lord's will." He added, "Not Kuk, even though he's technically a Dark Lord - the Dark Lord in the world they're from. Kuk must have pulled them from a world where they're real or convinced them to join It after the kids pulled them in subconsciously."

Abed briefly shook his head, alarmed.

"The Nazgul are able to strike people down with a sort of magical evil aura, called the Black Breath. The symptoms are despair, unconsciousness, hallucinations and nightmares, hypothermia, coma, and then...then they die. The only cure is an herb native to the world the Nazgul come from called athelas, which supposedly is most effective in the hands of the one true king of Gondor."

A pause. "Although that's really unrealistic when you think about it - it doesn't really seem pharmaceutically sound for something to work better because of someone's hands."

Now was not the time but Abed wasn't always the best as figuring out when it was the right time to mull over narrative inconsistency.

Toothless perked up a bit when Astrid arrived, nudging her hand as she touched his nose. Then he settled on the floor, curling up to watch and wait.

At the mention of the Nazgul, Toothless growled a bit, teeth bared slightly in disgust. They were horrible. When they shrieked, it dug into our minds and made us panic like newborn hatchlings.

But as bad as that was, it paled in comparison to what was happening now.

That guy, Toothless pointed his head in Abed's direction, said something about a person with a magic staff that might help, but they don't know if it'll...

The dragon trailed off, curling further into himself, trying desperately not to think of the possibility of Hiccup dying.

"Our spell-caster is on her way," Cassie said in a self-assured voice, hauling the conscious new guy off the floor with one hand. "She'll be here any second now and we can take care of this."

She flashed an approving look toward the new guy. "Glad to get someone else with medical training, Kon and I are strictly field medics."

"Actually, I don't really," Tadashi said, slightly bewildered. "I'm getting the information now, but I'm a robotics engineer. I built a healthcare companion robot, but I shouldn't remember all this stuff or how to treat it. Or be able to tell what's physiologically wrong just by looking at people."

Sam Winchester had mentioned that they'd get 'super powers', but...

Astrid was stuck on something else right now, something besides Tadashi's sudden power up. She was stuck on Toothless' sudden power up.

"You just talked. In our heads," she said, staring wide-eyed at the dragon. "You can talk."

Then she closed her eyes tight and waved a hand because they had to worry about Hiccup right now.

"Never mind, we'll talk about that later." A pause. "Because you can talk."

Edited 2015-03-21 04:08 (UTC)

"Ring Wraiths!"

A teenage girl, younger than all the other humans already present, stormed into the room like her own personal thunderstorm in a dark gray empire-waisted dress with maroon and black accents. She was toting a staff that was clearly either magical or a mark of rank or both, and squeezing an injury on her arm to encourage it to keep bleeding.

"Freaking. Ring Wraiths!"

Nico freaking hated this place sometimes. Good thing Cassie had filled her in when she'd called or else Nico would have just let her arm heal up. This might call for more blood than most things. She was going to have to either create a new cure, create athelas from nothing, or summon athelas through the crumbling walls of reality. And it was probably going to have to be one of the latter two, because the guy on the couch did not look good. Obviously Eowyn and Merry had been able to survive the effects of the Black Breath for a period, but they'd had the benefit of actual healers instead of stupid kids with no idea what they were doing.

Nico gritted her teeth and pinched her injury again, sending a fresh rivulet of blood over her fingertips. "The garden grows with athelas."

One of the other newbies -- the mixed-race hipster guy with the messy hair -- yelped when the mud on the knees of his skinny jeans started sprouting plant-life.

"Who wants to use that on him?" Nico demanded irritably. "Because it shouldn't be me, people get creeped out when they wake up covered in bloody hand prints."

"I'll do it," hipster-guy answered, rallying. "I mean, it is growing out of my pants. And I think I'm working out how to use it."

You had me at opening your mouth first, Nico thought, pointing the Staff of One at the guy. "Hands of the king."

For a moment Astrid looked like she didn't know how to handle the situation. How did one react to a girl storming into the room with a staff that showed she was clearly some kind of elder (that young??) or a seid, making magical plants spring out of nowhere?

But those magical plants seemed to be important and she seemed to be helping and that was what mattered most.

"I have no idea what's going on," she turned to Tadashi, "but whatever is, help him."

Abed had run off at surprising speed the moment the plants had sprung up in Tadashi's pants and had already returned with a bowl of hot water that he placed next to Tadashi.

"You need to crush it and put it in hot water and then the athelas gives off a kind of magical aura that makes everyone smell personalized nostalgic smells."

That was how they'd know it was magic!

"As long as her staff was able to replicate the real thing, it should cure him."

"Great," Tadashi said, taking the proffered bowl pulling leaves off his pants with the one hand (he'd really appreciate it if this reality gave him a little more time to recuperate between magic blasts. Just saying). He figured that it would be best not to just dump everything in at once -- maybe there was a place they could cultivate this so that they didn't have to have this girl bleed all over everything for it a second time. He crushed the leaves in his hands and blinked, surprised, as a fresh smell almost immediately filled the room around him, somehow without being over-powering in spite of the fact his hands were ground zero. He dropped the leaves into the water, and the smell shifted and changed into...

Well, he'd studied robotics, not literature or creative writing. He couldn't really put into mere words how it smelled. He probably wouldn't even be able to write it out in code, but oh if he could code this into Baymax, the smell of late spring mornings out of his childhood bedroom window from before his parents died...

"It..." Tadashi pushed the bowl toward the couch where Hiccup was sprawled. "I think it helps if you call out to him." Because it was magic. He could accept that angle now, but it was going to drive him nuts later. "Astrid and, uh, sorry, never got your name, but you should probably call to him too."

He leaned forward and patted the guy's cheek with his leaf juice-stained hand. "Er, Hiccup?" Seriously, Astrid and Hiccup, those were some interesting naming conventions in Berk. "Hiccup, you don't know me, but you need to wake up. Hiccup, you have to wake up."

Toothless was surrounded by the smell of Icelandic cod, and the scent of the cove on the day he and Hiccup had started to become friends.

He knew what to say. Hiccup had spoken similar words before when pulling him out of Drago's control, and if it had worked then, it should work now.

Hiccup? It's me. I'm right here. You have to come back. You can't ket this beat you. You're my best friend, and I don't know what I'd do without you.

It smelled like a cold ocean wind, and pine, and the musty smell of yak fur, mixed with roasting meat over a fire. The smell reminded her of the thrumming of boisterous voices and laughter in the Great Hall, when the entire tribe was gathered, and the times the door opened to a cold and familiar wind as someone else walked in.

She could also smell juniper and clover and tree moss, the same smells she and Hiccup had rolled around in first time they'd sneaked off with a blanket into the woods and -

Her cheeks flushed just slightly.

In short, it smelled like home. That meant it smelled like home to Hiccup, too. Now all he needed were voices from home to call him back.

"Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third," she said, narrowing her eyes at him, "if you don't come back, I'll have to find some way to go into the afterlife and drag you back and you don't want to see me get that angry over having to make that much effort, trust me."

If anyone had thought she'd get all mushy and gentle here, while his life was on the line, they were dead wrong. But she needed to be herself here, so he knew it was her, so he'd follow her voice instead of whatever other voices might be calling to him in the dark.

"So wake up. And come back to us. Now. Don't make me hunt you down."

For a few moments, there wasn't a response. Then Hiccup stirred, and his eyes opened.

"What effort?" He said, voice slightly weak, "Fairly sure the gods would immediately hand me over just so they wouldn't have to face you in a fight."

Toothless rolled his eyes. Hiccup was definitely back, for better or worse.

You sure it wouldn't be because they wouldn't want to have to hear your jokes?

"Ha ha. Very funny, Toothless."

Astrid rolled her eyes the same exact time Toothless did, and shoved Hiccup by the shoulder, not enough to hurt, just hard enough to jostle him.

He wasn't allowed to scare her like that and then come out of it with a stupid joke.

"I can't leave you alone for five minutes, can I?"

Five minutes! Sometimes he attracted disaster like flames attracted moths.

Hiccup yelped, out of reflex rather than pain.

"I think it was more like fifteen, if we're counting," he muttered, contrite tone belying his words.

He pushed himself around into a seated position, and idly scratched Toothless behind one of his earflaps. "Sorry, didn't mean to make you both worry"

You'd better be, the dragon huffed, Don't ever do that to us again.

Astrid briefly shoved him again at the 'fifteen minutes' jibe but then she climbed onto the couch with him, at his back, so she could support him in case he felt dizzy.

She looked at the others, her eyes darting to each of them. They'd all helped to some degree.

"Thank you."

Her tone made it clear that it wasn't something she said all that often.

"'The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known,'" Abed quoted, looking at Tadashi and then at Nico, his eyes widening and his expression filled with something like delight.

Now that nobody was dying he was letting himself enjoy this a little more.

"I only read the books because people kept trying to say the books were better than the movies and I wanted to be able to argue that they weren't, but then I actually read them so now I argue with people that they are better than the movies, mostly for the rhymes and lore, which a lot of people think are extraneous but I think they make the world seem real. Except now I know that world is definitely real so I guess that means the version in the movies is real, too. But anyway, what I'm trying to say is: this is so cool."

This stuff really was mythic.

Edited 2015-03-21 23:43 (UTC)

"Please tell me that I didn't just agree to become king of anything," Tadashi said, sitting back on his heels. "I don't have time to be king. I'm still hammering bugs out of Baymax's code, and I need to prepare for my project defense, and I'm probably going to need to help supervise my brother's projects, and I'm pretty sure my aunt would kill me."

Still, it's hard not to smile when it's clear that whatever he'd done had worked. Even if it didn't make scientific sense.

He rose to his feet and moved toward the girl with the magic staff. "Here, let me look at your arm, we should at least clean that and bandage it up."

"I'm fine," Nico said, rolling her eyes as the hipster moved closer to her. "It's only still bleeding because I've been keeping it bleeding, it's not that -- whoa!"

The moment hipster guy touched her wrist, the injury tingled like someone had sprayed disinfectant on it and healed over like her already-supercharged myth healing had been taken up to eleven. Hipster guy seemed just as surprised as her, twitching backward and looking at his hands like he wasn't sure they were even his anymore.

"That wasn't supposed to be a permanent spell," she said slowly. "Just for using the athelas."

Tadashi took a step back from the smaller girl, then another, still staring at his hands.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. I'm just...going to go deal with this in another room. Nice meeting you all, bye."

He bolted out of the room before anyone could stop or grab him. He just...needed to find a quiet corner and take a few deep breaths. He could handle this.

He could totally handle spontaneously manifesting super powers. Absolutely. No bones about it.

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[LN] Danger Zone

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