This was a thankless job.

Why, oh why is it always him who's in charge of handling the brunt of every kin's problems? He assigned his other kin on to specifically help him for this reason!

Fair enough, he has to handle a few conflicts, he was Alpha; after all. But you'd have a hard time convincing him that he should bring on the whole lot of them. May as well had stacked fifty anvils on his back while they are at it and tell him to trek the entirety of Berk!

Oh wait, those good for nothing rascals wouldn't have the intelligence to impart such delinquencies cos they are bloody self-centred slime.

Instead, they lay the burden on him as a substitute. Instead, instead, he gets, oh:

'I am just a second-in-command, I am going to have you refer to Alpha instead.'

'Oh no, I am not in charge here, take it up with Alpha resting on that crag over there.'

'Oh, nah nah, can't you see I am handling my own problems? Have a problem, call Alpha.'

Geckos!

And do they thank him for any of the pain they put him through every day? No, kind sire, I am going to curl up on that corner over there just to ignore you for the remainder of the day and snore at the top of my nostrils to spite you.

Sometimes he feels like some glorified babysitter rather than an actual leader.

How he hates his species so. Even the most little of problems would be bloated into civil war.

Petty arguments, incessant fighting, dragon culture as a whole! Oh, whose mate did these entitled pricks claim first, hmmmm? Who's the one who claimed their spot on the nest first, huuuuh?

Every single dawn and dusk since his abrupt inception into the job, from the very first minute he wakes up, it had been just work, work, work, everything that drains the essence of life out of you, bottom to top, mind to soul, nothing in between—no life in between for him or his best friend.

Hel, that would be a whole 'nother squirming can of worms entirely.

And what does he get in return, you inquire?

Nothing.

Nothing but muted, bloated, hollow coals of emptiness shoved haphazardly into his paws. You know what, Horrorcow? This regurgitated fish head is fan-fucking-tastic. Now do me a favour and chuck it into the ocean for me, hook. Line. Sinker.

Horse. SHITE that an alpha's greatest gift is serving his people. Just hand him over a bucket of fish plus one good belly rub and he'd be content for the day, full stop.

But noooo, they figured.

His 'kin' decided to do it like how Drago Whateverhisnamewascalled-fist would have done it if he was less homicidal and in hivemind form: like some band of clueless, useless, reptiles.

Ugh.

You know, he ponders as he tries and shifts his body to get into a more comfortable spot on the rock, he pities Hiccup sometimes; sloshing and doing gods-know-what in that cramped space he called a 'negotiations' room.

Stuck in his chambers in the Great Hall for hours on end, almost as if uttering nothing but white noise through the chieftains' right ears.

Because that would be a pre-requisite to being a chief, apparently. The situation has gotten so bad he had to even wear that self-controlled fin thingy every now and down. Oh, how constricted and strangled their lives were!

Toothless just knew he had been dragged into learning Norse for no other reason other than to be the humans' laughing stock. All of that preparation, memorising symbols and writing on scrolls with paws, only to attend a summit with other chiefs and not get a say.

Yes, Hiccup, attending a meeting where you can't even input your thoughts simply because his peoples' intelligence rubbed them the wrong way was a grand-spanking idea.

All he rages on about to the other tribes is the snow belt around the Archipelago dissipating and whatever not, anyway.

Useless.

Thoughts like this simply make him wish they hadn't stopped the Queen and just flew away. What's there to care for or worry about such minuscule problems? Just devise flight plans with your damned selves and everybody will as jolly as a joey.

But those humans are more stubborn than elk; some bloody fat chance he ends up convincing them otherwise.

Pfft, and they think he was the one shoving his head into unnecessary things, oh ho ho ho. Hypocrites.

Posthumously from his dead-from-boredom corpse, he decisively not bothered to go the third time around.

So what, he could have shone the dragons in a more respectable light? He couldn't care less that most of them would think now that he is too bestial to be concerned about such discussions; he simply can't give a rat's arse.

After some precious, precious moment of sulking, he concludes not very much will cheer him up today.

And to think the remedy of flight with your friend was so simple yet so idiotically hard to get, too. Guh.

Blowing his thoughts away bitterly, the black-addled dragon huffs a string of smoke, charging out of his nostrils and into the heavens above. Two paws sprout out like a lion, Toothless lies on his questionably consensual respite atop the Isle of Berk.

His head entombs into his chest, paws shielding from the world that presented him crudely a yield of unending torment.

He wasn't feeling much for another problem today, thanks.

Not even the splendorous sights would coax him from leaving his pocket dimension of darkness and what-may-as-well-be maternal fatigue. From his perch laid before him a Berk the size of a Kill Ring, an overlook where a daily survey was relatively plain to exercise.

Ahead, a sunset as bright as an egg yolk canvased the skies ablaze, sunrays piercing through the clouds' gentle, dewy overlays and pouring upon the skies a prudish assault of Auburn, flinging its elegance over the sky for all the lands to see. Trees lofty and proud encircle his creek as if they communed a ritual. The town below where the common villager resides was bustling and radiant more than ever.

As did the Viking traditions hold, when the ice settled, and the shortened days reached their frostiest, the pines that enclosed the place were adorned with sentiments and trinkets. Gifts and decorated ordainments were laid out plainly in waiting for the day to arrive – little ones scuttered about with their baby humans, dragons play-fighting through the village round-about... and their village caretakers... merely part of their eye-lines watching the children... and their rest of it? Locked dead-on into their bubbling pints of Nordish Ale.

Only one event could stir up such a ruckus in Berk; an event that wielded the power to degrade heroic and prideful warriors into laughing drunkards and hedonistic coryphées.

...

It was Snoggletog, of course.

Even the dragons caught on to their festivities, though they arranged their events in a less… cordial manner – not brightly if Toothless was to put it bluntly. Their poor replicas of the humans' ornaments were quite the eyesore to the nest. Even uncaring Toothless never saw the point.

The other dragons didn't have the mental capacity to find meaning between any line, much less attach themselves to religion; they may as well be glorified crosses of mules and dogs.

The only difference that distinguishes the three of them though?

They can fly.

And when any species can fly, you can just guarantee that they would fly from the furthest ways possible from predators. That's what makes a miserable breed like them stand a hair-strand taller than the rest.

Thus, like a yearly ritual and primarily the reason why Toothless decided to bring this up as a form of bargaining for the emptiness lingering in his heart and… something else; when the snow hails upon the tribes of Berk, they fly far – far away to sate what millennia has coded their evolution for his winged family: to mate.

And not even their own humans could halt Mother Nature on that end, even if it means thinking that their ways of doing are...

Special?

Even so, the humans thankfully respect that stance... and in this season... this one in particular, they had found that their dragons' comforts on that secluded island was just as if not more important than this year's Snoggletog.

Wouldn't want to have a repeat of the last 5 years, now, would they?

There, his gaze shifted the radiating sun. Dragons, paw in paw, wistfully flying off into the sunset to create new spawn.

…

…the same situation can't be said for him, unfortunately.

For all his life, he simply assumed that to sire a hatchling nigh impossible.

Twenty years. Twenty years, he waited for the day he sees another one of his blood, soaring the skies and through the clouds. Twenty years, he waited to be somewhere he felt like he belonged. Twenty years, he was alone, not a single one of his kind seen or heard, not a single pack to call…

Family.

Alas, such necessities were refutable in accordance with Life's moral code, and he eventually came to accept the cruel reality of the situation: he was the last Night Fury alive.

Well, be that as it may, that still doesn't detract that he was more than willing to settle for the next best thing…

Squawk!

As sudden is as sudden does, a call from below his perch hurls with a panic to rival his brother's into his ears, rattling him awake right away. Normally, he would reply with a groan, or if he was feeling particularly pale – a moan – but he knew that no dragon would so squawk so brashly as this one did.

Something horrible was afoot.

Quickly, his four paws achingly scrounge the ground to the edge, throwing his head off the side. There he sees tip-tapping her feet in a frantic manner: Stormfly, breathing agitatedly atop a crag lower to his. That was when the severity of the situation really started to tumble upon him.

She was put on scout duty today.

A croon rumbles out his throat, impatient and feverous to assess the situation. Concerned bleats between gasps for air bite back at him. Soon, she shifts from the crag from which she erected on and onto the edge, jutting her head up and down to the beaches. Her pupils, standing but a little thinner than the sharp end of a knife, pierces into his bright, green eyes. Now is not the time to dawdle, dear Alpha.

Thus, without so much as a hint of doubt in his decision, he takes off, flying as fast as his wings could take him and into the sands.

Wings pulled tautly and its girth trembling, he gazes from the comfort of the beach's overlook, eagle eyes scouring the beige land empty. They plunge like fishing bait into the sand, turning over every nook and cranny.

Soon, rather conveniently, he might add, the clouds suddenly broke apart, showering sunrays upon the sands below, illuminating its glittery wonder. Seizing his good fortune, his visionary hook weaves and turns, before finally catching and reeling a figure off at the side.

Now that he thinks about it, he didn't even need the Sun to see such blinding white. A white, lingering motionless as the rolling waves ram against it.

He tries to make it out further as his eyes adjust for clarity, and, when he finally sees it, even if it is too early to suggest anything conclusive, a disenchanted taste soon embeds itself upon his taste buds.

All this drama, all this panic, all this bestial vigour from Stormfly,

all for this… white limp…

thing.

Damn, he mutters to himself. He had hoped for something noteworthy to happen today.

…

At least it looked sparkly.

Tumbling down the slope, his four paws carry him over closer to the sun-bathed figure. Just from this distance, he could just make out it's… features, if he could call it that. Eventually, he gave up and resorted to flying instead. His quest for better calves was swiftly thrown out of the window in a matter of seconds.

Gods, am I unfit.

Maintaining a steady pace, he glides through the musty air and closes the distance between the white figure.

Soon enough, more and more detail began to settle on the figure, managing to reach his sights. Something red, something pottering like a fluid from its… body.

So, it is something living then?

…

Holy shit.

He hastens his wings, the very real possibility that this figure could be dying or dead not lost at the back of his mind. After what he felt was seconds spanned out to eternity, he finally reaches mere metres from the body, a good deal away from any ports residing in Berk. No wonder only Stormfly found it.

Again, his feet land and come into contact with the sand, seeing no further reason as to go any further; a decision he would soon come to regret and lonelily loathe over: this Alpha business was killing his body slowly.

It had not even been two years yet.

Shaking it off, he growls under his breath as he looms ever-closer to the gleaming creature's body, his worst fears not far from becoming reality. New features that previously went unnoticed soon become achingly noticeable as he fast approaches: a cratered back with tears tearing its skin apart, a tail with a shape that eerily resembled, resembled, his and… are those wings jutted in its back, he sees?

He's a sheep's toss away from its lingering corpse by now, and what he figured to be a pear-white dragon was now more visually apparent than ever. The sparkles weren't simply an illusion of the eye: they actually were a part of it.

Deep down, he knows he should go back and get Gothi to come and handle this, buuutttttt he had had nothing stimulating or exciting happen today, as you know.

And the more he contemplates about it, the more he thinks it was a good idea.

Yeah! What could possibly be more exciting than potentially discovering a whole new species?

With the cruel hand of curiosity guiding his, he stands an arm's distance from the creature – front-side tucked away in the pasty sand. The claw grabs ahold of its hip, lingering only but a few moments more.

A sigh.

Finally, it rolls.

His claws clinch the ground.

His mouth evaporates.

His limbs go limp.

His heart quakes.

Blood rushes to his cheeks.

Its frontal features were far too realised, far too familiar to ever stray him away from the contrary train of thought.

He never thought he'd live to see this day. It—she. This dragon was his blood. A fellow Fury.

And it just so happened that she was in the rapid process of dying, too. Great.

An eye, or what remains of it in its mush, hangs by a thread of veins just out its left socket – breathing laboured and weak; wheezing. Scales, battered and torn, wasted onto the brittle sands a steady gush of blood. Gods.

Whatever – or whoever – had really done a number on her. He dares not what think of what would happen should she stay on the sand any longer than she already has.

He bellows a terrible moan.

Air-taxiing that old, miracle-working hag like she was a younger Hiccup was going to be a pain in the arse.