Video, after Babadon't

[wherenoonegoes]

Appearing onscreen is a tall, gangly man who already looks fed up with this entire situation. He's not happy, and for that matter neither is the dragon behind him.]

Hi. Figured this is as good a place to introduce myself as any. I'm Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third, Chief of Berk. The dragon behind me is my best friend, Toothless.

Just to get it out of the way, yes, I have heard every possible joke you could make about that. None of them are funny.

Normally this would be the part where I'd say I'm happy to meet all of you, but my wife gave birth to our daughter two days ago. So while I can certainly think of worse possible times for all this, this one is still pretty high up there.

[LOCKED]

If there are any Legionnaires here, however? Disregard that. I [Toothless nudges Hiccup] We actually are happy to see you.

Comments

Re: locked, video

[acroodawakening]

[Guy has already gotten out of his bed and bounced to his heels with enthusiasm.]

Oh. Oh yeah.

Sometimes I forget manners because, uh, I used to not have people to have manners with. I was mostly raised by a very easy-going sloth.

[He holds a hand to his chest.]

I'm Guy. Guy Crood. Toothless, Hiccup, it's nice to meet you.

...Can I come see him now?

Re: locked, video

[wherenoonegoes]

Yeah sure. Go ahead.

[Hiccup lets Guy know where his room is, and sits back to wait.

When Guy finally arrives, he gets up to greet him. The most obvious thing in the room is of course Toothless, who goes over to investigate by sniffing at Guy. The other, assuming Guy notices despite there being a curious dragon in the room, is that while one of Hiccup's legs ends in a foot, the other tapers off into a metal and wood contraption.]

Hi there, nice to meet you in person.

Re: locked, video

[acroodawakening]

[Guy eyes the dragon and his wings, and then leans over to look at Hiccup's leg.]

There is so much interesting stuff I want to ask about here, but first...

[He turns to Toothless and slowly holds out a hand for him to sniff.]

Is it okay if I pet you? Do you like scritchies?

[He asks Toothless, not Hiccup.]

Re: locked, video

[wherenoonegoes]

[Toothless sniffs at the hand, and then nudges it. Yes, he would like some scritchies.]

Ask away. I reserve the right not to answer, but hopefully you're not planning to ask me anything too personal.

[acroodawakening]

[Guy gives Toothless nice neck scritches with the experience of someone used to scritchy-ing an animal of equivalent size.]

Can he actually fly? Or just glide?

He's pretty big so he'd definitely need a lot of lift, but also I know some things have an easier time flying if they have hollow bones. Like birds.

[He may have asked people about manned flight in his last dystopia.]

[wherenoonegoes]

[Toothless leans into the neck scritches while Hiccup takes a second to figure out how to answer that question. It's not a fun one to answer.]

...ideally, yes, he can fly. Unfortunately, about 7 years ago? He lost his tailfin when he was shot down by an idiot who was raised to believe that all dragons should be killed on sight because they wouldn't hesitate to do the exact same thing to you.

That idiot was me, by the way. After I found where Toothless crashed and he didn't try to kill me, I realized everything I'd been taught about dragons was wrong. That didn't do anything to fix his missing fin, though, so I ended up building him a replacement.

Unfortunately, Jorgmund didn't think it was necessary to give it back, so right now he's grounded.

[acroodawakening]

[Guy gives Toothless an exaggerated pout of sympathy and even more scritchies.]

You poor baby.

[He looks over at Hiccup thoughtfully.]

It's good you realized that. I know it's a whole...thing. When people are raised to believe a certain bad thing.

[He goes back to looking at Toothless, sitting down next to him to just hang out and keep giving his neck scritches and pat pats.]

Some of them never change what they believe. I've noticed that about people.

When they grow up "in a society." [Quotey fingers.] It was different for me so sometimes it's hard for me to really understand why it's so hard for some people.

When I reached a certain age I wasn't really raised by anybody. So I didn't really get taught anything I needed to unlearn.