The Bookworm Strikes Again (open)

[first_in_time]

Who: Barbara and Anyone
Where: The Media Library and possible roaming
Summary: Research, tea, discussion and all that jazz. Feel free to simply come and bug her.
Warnings: None

After watching the Daligig slaughter the previous crew twice, Barbara went in search of any kind of material on the Daligig, Stacey, pod-popping and the crews which had traveled on Stacey. She didn't expect to find much more than what GLaDOS had told her but it was worth a look. Especially with all this talk of rebellion and distrust.

So, in a corner of the Media Library Barbara sat with piles books, stacks of visual recordings and audio recordings, plus pot of tea which had been sitting empty for a while. She was lost in her own world, memorising what she could and trying to gain a better picture of the ship, the war and everything else which could be considered relevant.

Comments

[first_in_time]

"Barbara," she replied and shook his hand firmly. "That's an interesting name, 'Hiccup'. Where's it from?" Barbara said conversationally as she walked with the young man out of the media library.

[boobhat]

"Good old-fashioned Viking name," Hiccup said. "Vikings name their kids ugly names to scare off gnomes and trolls. Why my mom and dad though 'Hiccup' would be intimidating, I have no idea, but I guess it's ugly enough."

[first_in_time]

"Viking?!" now that excited Barbara, "what time did you live in? And where? What was your role in your tribe or village -depending on the time you lived, of course- and where did you pillage and take over?"

[boobhat]

He told her the year he was from, or at least as close as he could figure it by the modern calendar, since so many seemed to go by that. Roundabout the 800s somewhere.

"I lived in a little village on an island called Berk, in the North Atlantic. I'm the son of the chief, formerly was completely useless in the village, but was head dragon-trainer by the end, and we didn't really do much of that whole pillaging thing. Part of why my ancestors settled on the island and started a colony there was so that we'd have enough to live comfortably and independently, without having to take anything from anyone else. Although, my dad did lead some raids against pirates when times got tough, but they stole all of what they had from Viking tribes anyway."

[first_in_time]

Barbara frowned. She hadn't read about any dragons in her history books? "Dragons? Are you sure? Large lizard type creatures that breathe fire and sometimes fly?"

[boobhat]

"Preeetty sure. You know, considering all the times they burned down our village, and the fact that one of my best friends is one."

Apparently, his world wasn't quite like hers, even if some parts of its history were similar.

[first_in_time]

Oh. Well. That's...

"I see."

Barbara had to remember the parallel realities and their vastness of life. What wasn't real in her world was potentially real somewhere else. She would get her head around it. Eventually.

"Tell me about the dragons." Because asking about the history of his Vikings probably wouldn't entirely line up with the Vikings of her Earth.

[boobhat]

"Are you sure you want to start me up?" Hiccup asked her, holding out his hands as if cautioning her that danger lie ahead. "It'll be hard to get me to stop. It is, without a doubt, my favorite subject."

Most. Favorite. Subject.

If there was a Dragon Studies Degree in Dragon University, in the city of Dragon, in the United States of Dragons, on Planet Dragon, he'd be right there cramming for finals right now, with plans to someday get his Ph.Dragon. If this was going to start up, he wasn't going to stop for a while and the notebook with his sketches was going to come out and everything.

[first_in_time]

"Well I know nothing about dragons," Barbara chuckled a little, "they don't exist where I come from."

[boobhat]

Okay, hold on to your hat, Barbara, it's going be a barrage for a while.

"Well to start with, the dragons in my world are sort of big lizards. Dragons in other worlds people have talked about seem to be magical a lot of the time but where I'm from, they're not--at least as far as I know. They're just big lizards that fly and can breathe fire that come in a bunch of different breeds."

[first_in_time]

"I have heard of them being magical, but that's in our fiction stories," Barbara smiled kindly and held the door of the tea shop open for Hiccup. "What do you do to make them burn down your village? Or is it a luck thing?"

[boobhat]

It was good she held the door open because he was barely paying attention to where he was going as he talked and might have walked into it otherwise. This was definitely his favorite subject.

"There was a slight conundrum that both of our species had to deal with--survival. Berk is a small village on a small island, in a climate where the winters were so cold we sometimes had to chisel the sheep off their water troughs. We did okay for ourselves, but we depended a lot on our livestock and fishing to get by since we couldn't grow much. Some of the winters could be a bit rough."

He went on, "And the dragons depended on our livestock just as much to survive as we did, even though they didn't need to eat all that much. We didn't know it for generations, but there was a massive dragon in their cave on their island about the size of a small mountain, and if they didn't feed it enough food they were eaten themselves. It controlled them like a queen bee controls the hive, and they were terrified of it. But they couldn't leave because there weren't a whole lot of places for them to live where they could survive, either. We couldn't leave because we'd have to go back to the Mainland with no lands or anything, when our culture was a lot different than the Mainland Vikings after being apart for generations."

He lightly knocked his left fist into his other hand.

"It was an unstoppable force meets immovable object kind of thing, though I have no idea which fits which since both do. They stole our food, our village fought them, they killed and maimed us, we killed and maimed lots and lots of them. Seven generations of war, with both sides too stubborn to try to live somewhere else."

[first_in_time]

Barbara was enjoying Hiccup's talking. If anything else, it meant she didn't have to think terribly hard which was nice after so much research.

"So what happened? Did someone try and chase off the larger dragon?"

[boobhat]

"It's a little complicated and ultimately resulted in this."

He lifted up his prosthetic leg, balancing on his other leg, and tapped on it.

[first_in_time]

And cue Barbara's bleeding heart.

"Oh! You poor thing!" she cried, looking down at the prosthetic leg, "how long have you been like that?"

[boobhat]

"A good while now. Maybe a year or more--hard to tell how time passes on the ship," Hiccup said, taking a seat at one of the tables. "It's not that bad. It's automail. I can move it like a real foot."

He flexed his ankle to demonstrate.

[first_in_time]

It was more than admirable that he had managed to live with only one leg for so long. Barbara smiled happily, although she still felt quite sympathetic toward him.

"How does it work?"

[boobhat]

"It's pretty complicated, but there's a housing surgically implanted into what's left of my leg at the base of it, that ties into my nerves to power it and sort transmits the nerve impulses to the rest of the automail so the right things move for what I need it to do," Hiccup explained. "It's all mechanical, though, gears and other complicated moving parts. Pretty intricate. I have to do a lot to maintain it."

[first_in_time]

"Goodness." That was the best reply that Barbara could come up with, not having an understanding of mechanics. Which was just as well, for a waitress came to take their orders.

"What do you have to do to maintain it?" she asked once they'd ordered tea and sweets to eat.

[boobhat]

"I have to take it apart to clean it a lot and make sure I get all the moisture out. Do maintenance so the clockwork stuff stays aligned. Replace parts that are wearing down..."

So, basically, a lot.

"It'd be less muss and fuss if I just got a cloned leg, but I don't really trust Stacy, and we don't know where those are from..."

He went on, "And I could get a more advanced technological one, but I like the automail because I know if we ever fix our homes and go back, it's within the scope of the technology I can make there."

[first_in_time]

"The fact that you're coping so well is, well. Admirable, really," Barbara gushed, "and I wouldn't trust Stacey, either. Not with something like a spare leg."

Their tea arrived in beautiful pots with matching cups, saucers, small milk jugs and sugar bowls. Barbara thanked the waitress and rearranged her own things the way she liked them. Then folded her hands in her lap to let the tea settle before she poured.

"What do you usually drink at home, if you don't drink tea?" she asked by way of continuing the conversation.

[boobhat]

"It's not really all that bad. There's a lot of people back home that lost limbs to the dragons--like Gobber. He was the blacksmith I apprenticed under. He was missing a hand and a leg," Hiccup explained. "And mead usually. Beer. Wine on special occasions. Water sometimes, but you know, that was always risky unless you boiled it and that was a lot of work when you could just drink mead."

[first_in_time]

"Right." She supposed that wasn't as complicated as it sounded. Or perhaps she was tired. Whatever the reason, tea would fix it.

The aromas from the teapots began to waft around them as Barbara poured their tea, starting with Hiccup's.

"Try that as it is, then add sugar or milk if you want."

[boobhat]

Hiccup blew on it until it was cool enough, tried it, wrinkled his face in a rather comical way, but then added some sugar and milk. Then he tried it again, still wrinkled his face, and added a whole lot of sugar and milk, until it was less tea with milk and sugar and more milk and sugar with tea in it.

He seemed to like it then, taking a nice, long sip and then looking relaxed after.

"Okay, okay, I'm starting to see the appeal now. Not bad."

[first_in_time]

Barbara laughed, only having added a dash of milk and a teaspoon of sugar to her own tea.

"If you want to drink it properly, you'll have to ween yourself off the amount of sugar and milk you have."