A New World, Complicated

Chapter 28: Appetite for Destruction (Hiccup)

        I kept a close eye on the two Nadders in front of me, and when the second one landed, I pelted the bags of paint at them. The yellow stain appeared on their necks, tagging them.

"Okay! These Nadders get tagged yellow!" I called up to Reign as she and Shriek hovered. "That's how we know they belong on Sorrow Island."

"Like this?" She pelted two bags of yellow paint at Nadders that were flying away, somehow hitting them perfectly. One managed to get away from her, and she flew to chase after it, nailing that one, and then another off on the horizon. "Feel free to join in anytime," she teased, looking back at me. She tried to hit another Nadder, but it moved out of the way, and the bag of paint fell into the sea.

"Okay." Reign flinched as the two of us shot over her head and pursued the missed Nadder, weaving back and forth between the sea stacks. Toothless and I managed to get in front of the wild dragon, and when it noticed us and tried to turn around, I pressed the trigger on my shield to bring out the slingshot and fired the bag of paint at it, coloring its chest bright yellow.

"All right, I have to admit: that shield is pretty cool." I held it up, then looked at her for a second, confused. Didn't she use this thing to save her life one time? With Dagur?

"Why, thank you. I quite like it, too." I ran my fingers along the rim. "Okay, I'm gonna go check on the twins. They're supposed to be marking the Crescent Island dragons."

"I'm sure that's going really well," I heard her deadpan as I flew toward the neighboring island. Reign probably had a point, but I could still hope maybe they'd gotten at least a little bit of work done. As we got closer to the island, I followed the sound of shouting, and I emerged from the other side of the rocks to see the twins pelting bags of paint at each other. One would've hit my face if I hadn't ducked out of the way in time.

"Guys! You're supposed to be tagging the dragons, not each other!"

"You know, if you think it through, Hiccup, this is pretty much your fault," Tuff accused.

"How do you figure that?" I crossed my arms against my chest.

"Uh, hello? You armed us with paint. Where'd you think that was gonna go?" Ruff turned to her twin. "And we're the stupid ones..."

"How many of these do we have to do, anyway?"

"As many as we can. The more dragons we tag on each island, the better we can keep track of where they belong, and where they may migrate to."

"Wow, that was..." Ruff glanced down at the bag of paint. "Uh..." She seemed at a loss for words.

"Fascinating?" I offered.

"What's the opposite of fascinating?"

"Hiccup!" I looked up to see Reign and Shriek landing. Azure scampered back and forth on her shoulders, as though thrown into a frenzy. Ever since she'd gotten that Terrible Terror, he refused to leave her side, and acted as a warning system for her. Of course, sometimes he warned against me, which didn't help. "Isn't it supposed to be one dragon color per island?"

"Yeah. Why?" She pointed to a group of Gronkles eating some boulders.

"I see two colors down there." Sure enough, one Gronkle was marked purple, while the other had a green spot. "Have we been using the wrong one?"

"I don't think so."

"Don't look at us. If we had green paint, you know where it would be."