How to Train Your Avengers

“So what’s the plan?” Steve Rogers asked the room as he patted the dragon’s nose. “We need a way to defend ourselves against this Dagur the Deranged, and if his name is accurate, then our normal strategy might be useless.”

Natasha nodded. “Steve has a point. There’s nothing more difficult than fighting an enemy who has no logic and that’s when you’re battling someone who doesn’t have a dragon.”

“Dagur with a dragon?” Hicca asked surprised. “I highly doubt that. Unless it’s a Skrill, he doesn’t have any respect for dragons. He sees them as trophies. If anything I would be more worried of him making an alliance to some of your enemies. He might be deranged, but he knows how to make good war alliances.”

Natasha flipped open the briefing packet, which Hicca had not been privy to. “Is this a Skrill?” she asked holding up the picture of the albino dragon. “Our intell says that this dragon has been seen with him.”

“The Screaming Death,” Hicca gasped. “Nasty temper.” Toothless, who was sitting on his haunches, nodded in agreement. “W-well I guess the solution is easy. We gotta get you Avengers on the backs of dragons.”

Tony scowled. “I don’t need a dragon to fly. In case you didn’t notice, I’m Iron Man.”

Steve put his hand up. “No, Tony, she’s right. We are at a severe disadvantage. And HYDRA would definitely want to make an alliance with someone with the knowledge of dragons.”

“If all he wants to do is kill dragons for trophies, I doubt he’ll be much use for HYDRA.”

“A-actually, he would be quite useful. Even when we were fighting the dragons, we had quite an extensive knowledge of dragons, their shot limits, their weaknesses, their classes, you know. Dagur and the Berserkers know all of that knowledge too.”

“So that’s settled. You’ll have to teach us to ride dragons.”

“If I do, you’ll help me and Toothless get home?”

“We’ll do what we can. No one has time jumped backwards before. Capsicle over here only time traveled forward because he froze himself for seventy years. I’ll figure out some sort of device to get you back to Berk.”

Hicca thanked Tony and silently prayed to the gods that he would be able to send her home. “What other dragons have you encountered?” Hicca asked.

“Other than the purple one on the helicarrier and the ones you see here, none,” Agent Hill replied. “We’ve spotted other dragons but they seem to all be the same species as the ones we already have here at HQ.”

The director eyed Hicca with his one-good eye. “What other dragons should we be on the look-out for?”

Hicca shrugged. “Oh I don’t know. Whispering Deaths, Changewings, Typhoonmerangs, Smokebreaths, Scauldrons, Timberjacks…any of those ring a bell?”

“Why don’t you write down those names and we’ll have our team look into it,” Fury suggested.

Hicca nodded and rummaged through her tan satchel with the Berk crest on it. She pulled out her journal and began to write down the names of all of the dragons she just rattled off and their classes when something dawned on her… “Hang on a second…did I bring it?” She put the charcoal pencil in between the binding of the tattered notebook and placed it on the ground at her feet as she rummaged through the bag once more. “Aha! The book of dragons, everything we know about dragons Fishlegs and I have recorded in this book,” she began to hand it over to the SHIELD agent, but pulled back quickly and hugged it to her chest, “You have to guard it with your life and don’t go copying down any information into your own books. If it falls into the wrong hands, it could be disastrous.”

“We’ll start in the morning. Leave the dragon here and we’ll take you back to Stark Tower.”

Hicca crossed her arms defiantly. “No way, I’ve cooperated with you thus far and there’s no way I’m locking Toothless in another cage today. If he stays, I stay. I’ll sleep on the floor, but I won’t go back to your Tower without him.”

“You’d be more comfortable in the Stark Tower,” Steve offered, but Hicca shook her head. She patted her dragon’s nose as Toothless wrapped his wings around her.

“I’d be more comfortable knowing that Toothless is safe and not in a cage.”

“Have it your way,” Nicholas Fury growled, tossing her a pillow and blanket. The blanket landed on top of Toothless’ head and Hicca grunted as the pillow smacked her in the stomach. Although light, she wasn’t prepared for the impact. Toothless peeked out from under the blanket and chirped playfully.
***
The next morning the Avengers re-assembled in the basement of HQ. Much to their surprise, Hicca was awake and all of the dragons were out of their cages. “How?” Tony wondered, knowing that he had a hand in designing the security system and this 1000-year-old girl had broken into them.

Hicca shrugged. “I-I…oh come on! I have a Night Fury and you expect a little voice to be able to keep the dragons in cages all night?”

Instead of allowing a full-on interrogation to ensue, which Steve Rogers knew both Fury and Natasha were prepared to do, he stepped towards Hicca. “So what’s the plan?” Steve Rogers reminded her a lot of Astrid, always so focused on the task at hand.

“Well, we need you to pick a dragon, gain its’ trust and then we’ll fly out to this place I found last night to train in the open air. It seems pretty secluded, so it should work just fine.”

“Wait, how did you find this place last night?”

Hicca rolled her eyes. “Again I have a Night Fury. And don’t act like we’ve never had to sneak out of somewhere that was heavily guarded before. We’ve been stranded on Outcast Island on more than one occasion and in far worse shape.” The Avengers looked at her disapprovingly, but Nicholas Fury’s gaze was the worst. He was furious that she had escaped their high security SHIELD headquarters without anyone noticing and was fearful of what this Dagur the Deranged might be capable of. “What? It’s not like we could train them in here. Even our dragon academy was never big enough to do real flying lessons. We always flew around Berk and its surrounding isles. We need something more open to fly them on.”

“Well you’re lil’ Houdini act aside, when do we leave?”

Hicca laughed nervously. “We can’t just leave without you having trained your dragons at least a little bit. First step, pick you dragon. I trust you all read the dragon manual I gave you last night…” she glanced around at the group, who eyed her curiously. “What? Uh, okay. This is gonna be like working with Ruff and Tuff times 4…okay…so here’s the Monstrous Nightmare we met last night. It’s part of the Stoker Class and has a shot limit of…”

“10. Weaknesses are eels, inability to open its jaws if you clamp it shut and whatever dragon nip is.” Tony finished for her, boredly.

“I thought you said you didn’t read the manual.”

“How did you read the manual? It wasn’t even in English!”

“Well, old man,” Tony replied, smirking. “I used one of my newest prototypes,” he held up a small, flashlight-like object in his hand. “You press and sustain this button and skim it across the paper that you’re trying to read and then dial this setting to the output language. Eventually it will read it aloud to you, but this is just the prototype, so I still had to hook it up to my computer and download the translated text onto the hard-drive.”

“Well,” Hicca clasped her hands together. “Good talk. Uh, we’ll start smaller then.” She walked over to the Terrible Terrors. “Everyone grab a Terror, and we’ll work on training them. Nicholas, I’m going to need a LOT of fish.”
***
Several hours later, the Avengers had made promising progress with the Terrors, which didn’t surprise Hicca at all. Terrors were extremely easy to train and functioned like a pack, so when one Terror was behaving, they all would behave. Having her own Terror to demonstrate different training techniques and weaknesses made it easier.

“So, I think we can call it a day,” Steve Rogers smiled, feeling quite accomplished with the little Terror perched comfortably on his shoulder. “Shall we return to Stark Towers for dinner?”

At the mention of food Hicca’s stomach growled. She hadn’t realized how hungry she’d been as she was caught up in the excitement of training new riders and dragons. Tomorrow would definitely pose as more of a challenge as they would all be on different dragons and each of the bigger dragons varied on their tame-ability. She grabbed a fish from the crate and put it on the ground next to Toothless. “Toothless, plasma blast!” She instructed and her Night Fury obliged. She picked up the fish and tossed it between her hands; in her hunger she had forgotten that it would be hot.

“You’re not really going to eat that, are you?” Tony asked. “Pepper’s cooking isn’t that bad.”

“I, uh, yes?” Hicca raised an eyebrow. “I try to avoid eating them raw.”

“Come back to Stark Tower with us,” Steve offered and when Hicca immediately shook her head, he held up his hand to silence any forthcoming protest. “The penthouse would be big enough for Toothless to come as well.”

Natasha elbowed him. Steve was being too generous and too trusting. Steve held his ground though. “What do you say?”

Hicca glanced at her Night Fury who cocked his head to the side and gave her his signature toothless grin. “Lead the way.”
***
Hicca sat at the island in the kitchen area. Toothless was laying outside on the Iron Man runway, enjoying the outdoors. The Viking rested her chin on the table and drew a lazy circle with her charcoal pencil onto the blank page of her notebook. Steve Rogers approached her.

“How’re you holding up?” Hicca shrugged. She never thought she’d say this, but she was homesick and she missed her father, overbearing as he was. She was infinitely glad she had Toothless, but she missed her friends and the Academy as well. “Well, you’re a Viking, right? A little time-travel should be nothing compared to all the Viking battles and…uh…other Viking stuff you do, right?”

“A Viking is measure by how hard they can head-butt the ground or how many trees they can tear up by the roots or how far they can throw a house.” She continued to doodle idly. “I can do none of those things and I’m the chief’s daughter…” she inhaled sharply and took on a Scottish accent as she mimicked her father, “Excuse me, barmaid, I think you brought me the wrong offspring. I ordered a Viking warrior with beefy arms, extra guts and glory on the side. This here is a talking fishbone.”

“It’s not what’s on the outside that counts.”

Hicca glanced sideways to Steve Rogers. “Easy for someone like you to say.”

“No really, I know what you mean. I…er…” he wasn’t sure how to explain it, for she had already had a ton of things thrown at her in the past few days and he knew how frustrating that could be. “I used to be scrawny, four-foot-ten, 95 pounds, asthmatic kid. I took a chance with Dr. Eikskrine and he gave me his super-soldier serum. It enhanced everything…”

“Well that’s great. Y-you got any extra of that? ‘Cause without it…”

“Listen,” Steve used his Captain-in-command voice. “I wasn’t finished. The reason they picked me was because of what I had on the inside. He wanted me to be the super-soldier not because I was exactly what a soldier should be but because I was a good man. It’s the same thing for you, your father just doesn’t know how to express that.” Hicca frowned, contemplating the Avenger’s words. “Trust me, if I was the father of a daughter who brought peace to the entire village by being the first Viking ever to tame a dragon, I would be proud.” Hicca forced a smile. She wanted to believe her newfound friend, but he had no idea what a Viking father expected of his child, and she was the child of a chief no less. “Besides, you have a Night Fury. Stark says they’re the ‘unholy offspring of lightning and death itself.’ You trained it, and that in my book makes you a pretty spiffy Viking dame.”

Steve clasped a hand on her shoulder, it was the first time anyone had done that to her in a non-painful and non-“I’m squeezing all of the blood out of you” kind of way. “Anyway, you should get some sleep. We’ll need you to be in tip-top condition tomorrow when we start to work with the big dragons.”