The caterwaul of furious sirens shrieking like banshees suddenly exploded city-wide, smothering skyscrapers and suburban neighborhoods alike in a wall of pure, piercing noise. The screams of ten thousand possessed cats could not compete with the cacophony shoving everyone frantically indoors; and indeed felines and canines and every living creature within a five mile radius rushed inside and sequestered themselves in corners, crumpled to the ground, and hid best they could from the unceasing aural blare. Families rushed from cars indoors and hid under desks or deep within basements, clamping their ears and peering nervously, very nervously, toward the source of the wailing.

For above the eruption of screaming sirens rose the booms of real explosions. The screams of not just an automated warning system, but the screams of real victims dying fiery deaths.

Only one civilian boy rushed toward his bedroom window rather than running away and locking himself in a closet or bathroom. He threw himself upon the glass, peering outward toward the street from the seventh floor of his apartment, and stared intently – almost eagerly – out toward the darkened pre-dawn skyline. Eyes roved city streets to search for any sign of the action unfolding outside. The red burst of fire. The flash of a supervillain raining terror upon the city. Anything. Anything at all to involve him in a piece of the action.

He very quickly darted away from the window for just a moment, hands shaking uncontrollably, to fumblingly punch the television on in his room before charging back to stare outside. He almost tripped over a number of computer parts, textbooks, and half-completed personal projects in the process of returning to his sentry post. And as his eyes desperately scoured over stoplights and stopped cars and streetlamps and abandoned sidewalks, he listened closely to the voice of the news on in the background.

"…unexpected aerial attack on the corner of Hope Avenue and Twelfth Street…"

He darted his eyes to the north, squinting at urban lights. Twelfth Street was not so far northwest of here. Was that… movement… he spotted on top of that one apartment building?

"…reports of Dagger, Savage, Norbert the Nutjob, and up to a dozen other supervillains in the League of Outcasts."

A male voice – another newscaster to complement the steady mezzosoprano female voice who had earlier been speaking – took over, inquiring in a somehow informative manner, "Any signs of Alvin the Treacherous?"

"None."

Still enough supervillains for me to see some action, he thought. The teen vigilantly stared into the street, heart pounding somewhat nervously, somewhat excitedly, in blood-rushing anticipation. He could feel his entire body jitter, arms quivering, knees shaking and knocking one against each other involuntarily.

"Berk's leading superheroes are on their way to combat…"

And then he saw it.

He nearly threw himself into the window pane from the sheer exuberant excitement.

A flash of light. Quick bursts of color and movement in the near-distance. Just enough green and yellow darting across the rooftops to identify some Outcast supervillain. And just a moment after he noticed the rogue charging on top the skyline, an enormous global burst of fire mushroomed out of an upper apartment window.

Then that supervillain collided into a statuesque figure.

Even from his distance peering in the darkness, leaning eagerly against his bedroom window, the boy could see enough of the action to know what happened.

The city's superheroes had arrived to save the day.

The imposing block who halted the suddenly-started Outcast idly wiped a puff of flame from his left armored shoulder pad and leaned in menacingly, preparing to hurl his foe from the rooftop with the superstrength he possessed.

"Chief of Security and famed superhero Skullcrusher takes on Mogadon in a clearly one-sided battle…"

Ten more suddenly jumped him. Shadows sparring on the roofs of Berk. Punches, rock-like fists, an old-fashioned brawl as the impossibly strong, impossibly large, hulking figure beat back every futile attack his opponents attempted. A sudden shock of lighting burst forth, ripping through the skies, sending the Berk hero desperately diving away, somersaulting, turning around again, socking a jaw, dodging a launch of fire and a roundhouse kick from two simultaneous assaulters. Light and dark and light and dark the world pulsed as superability matched superability, fire and lightning and superstrength and some strange form of amplified flexibility.

From the background, more words. Male voice. "…flying in from above, more members of the league and their sidekicks…"

The teen could spy the back-up sweeping in now on helicopters above and vehicles below, rushing in on motorcycles or running deftly on foot flipping over obstacles, each in accordance to their unique superhuman abilities.

"…Nightmare…" a sidekick shooting the world into flames almost moreso than his arson-intended Outcast targets…

"The twins, double-teaming to take down…"

These two sidekicks the young observer could not see from his limited perspective, though he certainly had watched them work before with enormous envy…

"Mindlock, the human computer…"

A geeky, sedentary, yet still enormously impressive superhero assistant, whose mind retained vast quantities of information, situated on the ground away from the action relaying relevant information through earbuds to other members of the team…

"…and the young weather-controlling heroess…"

The teen, whose face had been pressed obsessively against the window panel to the point of squashing his cheeks into a pan face, suddenly screeched in shock as an unexpected angry pinch pulled his ear roughly backward. The explosions, the superheroes, the sidekicks, the urban Berkian landscape – all of it disappeared as he was rearward pulled – and with that visual loss, came the simultaneous loss of entertainment. He cartwheeled away from the window – this time did trip on one of the objects on his floor – and crashed into the great, bulky belly of the man responsible for yanking his pinna.

A somewhat-gruff tenor voice exclaimed, "Hiccup! What are you doing? Are you asking to be carried off and kidnapped by one of the Outcasts?"

"Who, me?" the teen inquired, pulling himself away from the other man in the room and attempting not to glare too obviously up at him. The grubby, blonde-bearded man received a sarcastic quip instead. "Naw, they couldn't carry me off. They wouldn't know what to do with all this… superpowerful…"

The man before him raised a pair of skeptical hamster-thick eyebrows to the top of his bald head. He opened his mouth to a set of horrifically uneven teeth to remark, "You know, you might as well just admit by now…"

"Oh, come on, Gobber! I need to get out there. All those superheroes and sidekicks are doing something so much cooler than what I'm doing! I need to go out and make my mark." He gestured frantically toward the television screen, now showing a live footage image of a squat tangle-haired girl about his age scaling straight down the side of a building.

But Gobber prodded him with one sausage finger right in the gut. "Hiccup. No. You've made your mark, all in the wrong places."

Hiccup deflated, glancing downward uncomfortably. His mind immediately recalled an incident from last month, one which certain made a rather literal and very… permanent… mark on the side of the side of city hall. One which construction teams were still repairing. And would be for a rather long while.

At least I managed to avoid similar damage to the library…

"Maybe if I had some training," Hiccup grumbled, "like every other teen my age connected to the league of heroes, then I wouldn't be making marks like that."

"Hiccup, you know exactly why they're in training and you're not."

This time, he did not hide the glare he gave Gobber. In fact, he sought to make it as angry and potent as possible. He gestured around his bedroom, which, though only cast in the light of the television screen, still very noticeably boasted an incredibly collection of advanced technological gear, metal panels stacked on shelves and spilling out onto the floor; a soldering iron, discarded motherboards, and drafts for cloaking devices and microbots scattered across the surface of a cluttered desk; and even the closet bursting forth in spare parts and old experiments. "I have more than enough talent in other areas to be accepted into the junior league. There's no reason to hold me back from fighting criminals and upholding justice and…" he started fumbling with his hands, gesturing excitedly in some vague gesture that made him appear like a cat clawing at a scratching post.

"Your father's choice is your father's choice, and it's final." Gobber began to turn away.

But Hiccup was not yet done with his line of argumentation. The scrawny boy raised his voice to point out, increasingly frustrated, "He made that choice without listening to me. And he never listens –"

"– runs in the family –"

"– and when he does, it's with this disappointed scowl on his face. Like – like –"

Gobber butted into the conversation a second time. "Look, the point is, stop trying so hard to be something you're not. You'll never be a superhero and you're father's right in that. You know it, too."

Hiccup sighed. The soft noise was masked by the sudden rocking of an explosion coming down several streets down. "I just want to be one of you guys." He turned away and walked right toward the window again, this time not pressing his face against the glass, but crossing his arms and resting both of his elbows on the ledge. This time Gobber did not yank him away. He cocked his head, listening to something not itself in Hiccup's room.

"Look, I uh, just got a call in my earbud from your father to come in for back-up. So. I'll be going. And you… stay… put."

Hiccup glared back as Gobber left the room, pursing his lips irritably. And with determined resolve, he marched up to the shelves in the corner of his room, snatched up a rather impressive looking self-made firearm, and pulled out from his closet a pair of boots with jets attached on the bottom. It was not a minute after Gobber left that Hiccup himself departed the room – though he through the window rather than the door. He cranked the glass open, ran to the far end of the room, and with a determined charge launched himself toward the opening, diving forward, and plunging head-first out the seventh story.

He clapped his feet together, the jets puttered, and Hiccup aimed his heels to launch him toward the fray.

Sudden burst of energy. The world converted into an enormous stream of darkness and parallel lines all directed toward him. His entire body jittered at the propelling speed. Lights streaked forward, and he had to concentrate to understand his visual stream.

Streetlamp!

He leaned backward against the propelled momentum of his boots, cracked his stomach straight into the arch of the streetlamp, and began spiraling forward, forward, forward, spinning around uncontrollably in aerial somersaults.

He screamed. Something – something – large and flat spun toward him at a rapid rate. The side of a building, the sidewalk – he could not tell – could not distinguish up or down or north or south or anything at all – only that he would collide.

Must… gain… control!

He tried to pull back and kick with his feet in the direction of his collision.

Hiccup stopped.

The world rightened itself. Sort of. His feet hovered over the side of a skyscraper near a window, and he stared downward toward the darkened alleyway below, hovering over the earth perhaps by fifteen feet. He was angled ninety-degrees away the direction gravity would expect him to stand. Circular trashcan lids stared up at him judgingly along with one rather stunned feral cat which for some reason had not fled to shelter during the warning sirens' ring.

That was… close.

Hiccup could hear himself panting, feel his entire torso shudder with every frantic inhale. Note to self: recalibrate thrusters later.

And then his boots spluttered and died.

He screamed as he hurled downward again, this time with no way to prevent a collision. The cat yowled, the trashcans smashed against him, and he tumbled into them and bounced off and smacked his body into the alley's cold pavement, head spinning and dazed. Some foul odor emanated over him, and he belated realized that, during his fall, he had knocked over one of the garbage cans and splattered… something... it was rotten and sticky… all over his hoodie. But he was more concerned about the pain in his hip. His side had taken the crux of the fall, and he cold feel it keenly. Hiccup groaned. That'll be a colorful bruise. Always wanted to be a human rainbow. Hiccup rolled from his side, lay flat-back against the concrete, and stared upward into the sky in the direction he had just fallen.

A shadow swept over his eye.

A face leaned in. Cloaked in darkness but for two goggled, shining eyes.

Outcast.

Hiccup screeched.

Enormous blade – was that part of the man's arm – flying down. Roll to the side, flinch, hear the crunch of metal against pavement. Glance up. Glowing eyes. Blade. Dodge again, slam against a surface, curl into a ball against the brick wall with which he had collided. Flinch, wait for pain.

Someone else's scream.

Suddenly the narrow alley channeled a torrent of air. Rushing rapids could not produce such force as the screaming, solid tempest hurling between rows of buildings. Crack of light zigzagging through – lightning – immediate gunshot boom of thunder – and a torpedoing form in the eye of the storm. With a screech she launched herself into the Outcast.

Hiccup stared, wide-eyed, as a woman not much taller than he took on this enormous menace. She screamed with the fury of a tornado – she was a tornado – from her voice emitting howling winds and high-pitched screeches of propelling squalls and the impossibly deep groans of corkscrewing, two hundred mile an hour airstreams. Blue eyes boiled, a moonbeam glow shooting out her enraged, screaming face. Trash cans and rubbish and every last pebble flew toward the Outcast, battering him, bashing him, as she hovered there, directing the shots, cursing out unheard words, howling at the center of her tempest. Only Hiccup, still curled and flinching against the side of a building, remained in the alley; all else shot directly into the woman's opponent.

Who immediately fled, rushing away, intimidating no more.

Storm Fly settled to earth.

Winds ceased. Everything calmed. Hiccup, awed, gawked. He had seen more than enough footage of this young superhero-in-training, news reels and interviews and publicity footage – and indeed followed her quite religiously, placing a poster of her up in the room – yet it was all another thing to meet Storm Fly face-to-face. She was more stunning in person than even he had imagined. There she was, crackling blue eyes and thick, long blonde hair braided messily back, and a lithe, muscular body accentuated by the form-fitting clothing she wore.

Hiccup's mouth felt dry, and it took him a long time to realize he was smiling cheesily up at her. He tried to clamp that gape shut as soon as he realized it, hoping she did not notice.

Storm Fly walked toward him with a self-confident sway of her hips – quite noticeable in her tight superhero uniform – and leaned in toward him. But before he could stutter even the first "th" of "Thank you," she pulled back her arm, opened up her palm, and slapped him – hard.

"What do you think you were doing? You could have been killed! Civilians inside!" Her voice no longer carried the amplitudes of howling storms, yet fury enough burst out of her adolescent voice. She grabbed the baggy folds of his hoodie and lifted him slightly off the ground. Storm Fly started to shake him. He began feeling dizzy, almost more dizzy than when he had spiraled through the skies a moment before. "It's hard enough fighting to save this city from smart citizens without having to deal with idiots like you!" She glared at the ray gun tucked to Hiccup's side and scrutinized his boots. "Idiots like you without superpowers who try to save Berk but just end up getting in the way and making everything worse."

While first Hiccup had been speechless for her impressive presence, now he could not utter a word out of the sheer embarrassment of her chastisement.

She might never have met him before, but every stinging word was completely true.

Storm Fly dropped him, turned away, disgusted, and marched down the street in a pair of sleek boots. "Next time, stay inside. Save us the trouble."

Hiccup did not move for a long time. He thumped his head back against the wall and sat there, waiting for his pounding heart to calm. That never fully happened, but at least the throbbing slowed. Somewhat. Hiccup clenched his teeth together, angry with himself and his failures, and lashed out against himself with just as much fury as Storm Fly just had. Perhaps even more, for this was just one of many failures he had experienced in the past year.

You incompetent idiot! Can't you do something right at least once?

He listened to the sounds of fighting die down across the street, guessing the superheroes had successfully suppressed the Outcast attack.

Why can't I save someone? Why can't I be like my dad, 'Berk's greatest hero'? Shouldn't I have gotten his superstrength? Or Mom's weredragon genes? Or any stupid superpower at all?

In a world full of superheroes, in a world full of extra-human abilities, it hurt more than anything to be "normal". To lack any ability at all.

Hiccup punched the concrete beneath his hand before standing up, brushing himself off, and limping back home, hurrying to return to the apartment before his father could even suspect he had tried – and failed – yet again – to be something special.