Chapter Text
Fishlegs was in researchers heaven.
The rider may be too intimidating to approach directly, but his notes were fantastic.
Maybe a bit scattered and unorganized; but very informative.
He let out a large sigh. He was going to have his work cut out of him.
So much information, but the system made no sense.
For over a week he had been looking through everything and getting it into something that could be deciphered.
He had to know about more dragon species that he had ever heard of. And he had more information about all these species than Berks book of dragons had pages.
Only none of the information had any order.
For Thor’s sake, Fishlegs couldn’t find any notes on Nadders. And they are fairly common dragons.
It took him days to get the encyclopedia separated from the ledgers and maps.
It was clear that this man was brilliant, but he was unfocused.
The only information that was put together in any way shape or form was on Nightfuries. Everything Fishlegs read made him more and more excited.
But something tickled the in the back of his mind. The rider’s drawings didn’t match his dragon.
Every other dragon drawing and diagram was nearly perfect. Except the Nightfury.
The head matched, the body matched, and the wings matched. It was the tails that were off. It was the tail that was off.
This really shouldn’t matter, but he couldn’t let it go.
So he organized the papers. He searched for any clue.
It took two days of non stop sorting to get the dragon documents organized. He did his best to separate them by class and species.
He could spend the rest of his of his life doing this. He had so many questions about how the rider conducted his fieldwork.
He found nothing to confirm his suspicions.
He would have to approach this from a different angle.
It was time to look at the other documents.
The much less interesting documents.
It won’t be fun, but it would be rewarding.
There would probably be nothing about this in the ledgers. He could look at them later.
It was the blueprints and schematics where he found something interesting.
There were multiple styles when it came to the blueprints. But one of styles was prominent.
Fishlegs pulled them all out to examine them closer. It was clear they had the same designer. And they weren’t like the others.
The ones that caught his attention had nothing to do with traps or ships.
then he found the blueprint to the riders sword.
It was truly a clever thing. Pole that are bent and sharpened into a blade. And designed so the segments collapse into a hilt. And if he wasn’t mistaken it looked like there are parts that could coat the metal in a flammable substance.
Had the rider found a way to collect the oil of a Monstrous Nightmare?
Fishlegs needed to gather the courage to ask the man about it.
But that would be after he found what he was looking for.
He began to look at the other documents.
It took a few more hours before he hit the jackpot.
Multiple diagrams of the Nightfury tails. Or the prosthetics for one.
A memory of his time in dragon training popped up in his mind. Gobber roasting a chicken over a hot fire after telling all the teens the story of how he had lost his limbs.
“It’s the wings and the tails you want. If it can’t fly, it can’t get away. A downed dragon is a dead dragon,”
The rider had found a way to get a dragon back in the sky.
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Gobber couldn’t sleep.
It had nothing to do with the forge running at all hours of the night. The rider did good work, but he clearly wanted to work on his projects alone.
The insomnia also had nothing to do with the dragon the rider spent almost every moment with.
He had spent nights camped alone in the wilderness with dragons much worse than the black beastie.
It was the lads leg that had him thinking.
Gobber was sue that he had seen that design before.
It was a clever thing. A spring in the peg, to mimic the cushion an ankle provides, allowing for extra bounce in the step so that the limp isn’t nearly as bad as in all the pegs he had crafted through the years.
He had seen the plans before.
He had seen the prototypes before.
And he knew where both of those things were.
As silently as he could with his bad leg, Gobber lumbered to the forge.
The fire was dying down. Maybe the man in black had finally gone to get some sleep, people around the village had seen him up at all hours of the day. Always rushing off somewhere. And almost always with his dragon.
Still the large man crept inside. It’s been years since the last time he had to be sneaky in his own forge.
Hiccup had gotten into the habit of working too late into the night before he disappeared. There had been many a time when Gobber had found the boy asleep on in a work bench.
The blacksmith was surprised to find the rider in that same position. His masked head resting on the table. Slightly askewed to reveal the drool dripping from his chin.
Gobber gave him plenty of space as he made his way to the back room.
It was once just a store room, but after he had taken on his best friend’s son as an apprentice he turned it into the lads own work space. Partly to give the boy his own place to work in his own projects, and partly to keep him out of his hair.
It worked for a time to keep Hiccup out of trouble. He often spent more time there than at his own home.
After his apprentice disappeared, Gobber had locked up that room. The blacksmith made sure that none of his boys projects would be touched. If the boy came back, Gobber wanted everything to be where he left it.
But now something was in that room that he needed to confirm.
The door opened silently, the hinges had been well greased and maintained by the boy.
A layer of dust covered every surface of the room but that did nothing to cover the nostalgic smell of paper and iron.
He had to wipe some moisture from his eyes, from the dust.
Gobber went to a shelf in the back that had one of his older journals. The lad was always sketching when he wasn’t tinkering.
In the low light of a lantern the black smith began to flip through the older books.
The boy was brilliant.
Designs for canisters to hold Zippleback gas, not it.
A flaming sword; impractical.
Ah, prosthetics. jackpot.
The designs were so… Hiccup.
There was just a flare to it that he had never seen in a Viking before.
Why had he never thought to hide a knife in his peg before?
Gobber flipped the page and found what he was looking for. A very similar design to what the rider uses.
So the man in black was telling the truth when he said he knew Hiccup. The two must be close if the rider uses one if not more of the boys inventions.
Hiccup probably invented the man’s extendable sword.
Pride swelled in the blacksmiths chest at the thought of his apprentice. Just knowing that he was still Hiccup.
“He has been having the time of his life,” the rider said earlier.
Gobber could be satisfied with that. But oh boy did he miss the lad.
He was about to get up, to lock the room up again until his boy returned.
And then his eyes caught in the journal left on the desk.
It was well worn even though it looked newer than the ones Gobber had been flipping through.
Out of curiosity Gobber picked it up. He remembered seeing Hiccup with the a few times during his time in dragon training.
The first few pages had what he was expecting. Material lists, sketches of the boats in the harbor, shield designs.
It was the later pages that surprised him.
When had the boy seen a Nightfury up close?