Part 71: Final Chapter - How to Train Your Ninja

This is a tale of an event that took place long ago. So very, very long ago. Even I, with my powers of precognition and psychokinesis, could not have foreseen it. Now, I am as old and withered as great pine. I've traded my motorbike for a mobility scooter, and instead of wearing young women's underpants on my head, I've taken to wearing depends around my waist. I am so very far from being the young troublemaker I once was that I feel as if I have to tell this story as though we were two completely different people. Who could've guessed that such a thing would've transpired? Why, it's as if it were straight out of a storybook...


It certainly wasn't Hiccup's day.


But, his parents had always warned him: you keep up those ridiculous teleporty shenanigans and you'll materialize with your hands where your ears should be and your eyes where your fingers should be.

As if he would've taken them seriously. Nobody had that many eyes!


Well, now he was really in up to his neck in it.


By Loki's Lackadaisical Ligaments, he swore that if he ever get out of this, he would listen to what his dear departed mum and dad told him from now on.


And what was he ever going to do with his comrades? By Tyr's Tight Thighs, one of them was a screaming neanderthal!


Hiccup really had no idea what sort of place this was supposed to be, but he'd read about these strange things called "sewer levels" (according to martial law, books had been strictly forbidden in those days, and Hiccup had raged against the machine not by getting hugely buff or overdosing on heroin, but by reading a good book or two hundred, which explained his atypical physique for his profession) and assumed that this might've been one of them.


If there was one thing that Hiccup's new linguistically-challenged friend was good for, it was borrowing equipment from. Why, he was even carrying around a very strange rock that made Hiccup feel nearly twice as bright just by keeping it in his pocket.


It was quite a rock of smugness indeed.




They also found some odd robe in that sewer. Hiccup wasn't sure how it had gotten so completely bloodstained, but there was absolutely no way he was going to be caught wearing it. A Japanese viking descendant needs to have a sense of fashion, you know.


This sewer was home to some particularly suspicious holes with eerie blue flames licking out of them.


They were not, in fact, flames at all, but souls!


They were tortured things, utterly unable to utter even a single utterance.




But Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Fourth knew exactly how to put their souls to rest.


Incidentally, it seemed like a lot of them said the same exact thing.


By far, the most terrible thing living in this sewer--worse, even, than the batty old cat ladies disguised as feudal-era magistrates who had dressed their cats up like puppies--were these awful Ouroboros-men who desperately needed to invest in shirts.




However, Hiccup's other new friend, a real live ninja inexplicably named after a twenty-first century American president (Hiccup figured that he must have, in fact, been a time traveler), made quick work of these fiends.


This sewer was truly full of wonders. Hiccup had finally learned what happened to those baby elephants that people took home from African safaris because they thought they were such darling things, and flushed them down the toilet the moment they started to get much larger than a dog.


It seemed that this was part of a fallen kingdom. It's not as if the reader isn't completely aware of what transpired here, but Hiccup, of course, had no idea.




"By Sif's Slender Spleen!" Hiccup declared, "If a fellow wonders if the apocalypse is his fault, it probably darn well is!"




It seemed to Hiccup that he had found a number of unique-looking (and therefore very important) people in this dungeon. He felt, in his gut, that it was finally almost time for him and his friends to make their exit from his accursed sewer.




But not before he found REAL VIKING TREASURE!


Suddenly, before him stood a woman with purple hair.


Hiccup never saw her face on account of the fact that she was covering it with her hands.


This was probably because someone had torn it off and eaten it. Probably.

And then,

in the blink of an eye, they were out of that sewer and back in an empty town center.

Hiccup decided to give that grand glove a gander.

It was a fantastic fit.




He could now punch crabs so hard


that it in fact destroyed the hideous melty-face monsters that accompanied them.

Hiccup had always wanted to see the inside of a castle. So that's exactly what he and his comrades did.








Having no idea what he had just seen, Hiccup left without saying a word.




Hiccup also happened across a rather reticent cowboy sort of fellow.


He knew this cowboy would be very troublesome to find, so he gave chase.


The warrior from the west wouldn't stop no matter how hard Hiccup endeavored to make his acquaintance.


They found him next asleep, as if this were some sort of game to him.


Hiccup even gave a mighty viking war cry. "BWAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH!" he shouted, but the cowboy didn't even jump.


... And since he was there, well, what kind of Great Viking Hero wouldn't have his share of looting and pillaging?


He donned his spoils of war and continued on.


They also managed to find a Unicorn Horn in a vase.

Of course, it wasn't a REAL Unicorn's horn--everyone knows that unicorns are just urban legends, after all--as was evinced by the little etching on the plastic that read, "Made in China."


So Hiccup appropriately gave it to his new Chinese friend. He had no idea what she was meant when she spoke, but he figured that, from her wild and pointless flailing whenever she tried to execute one of her legendary kung fu arts that she just wasn't quite getting what she was supposed to be doing. Perhaps this little boost would help?


And as if to insult Hiccup and his friends further, by the time they found that cowboy next, he'd just finished polishing off that bottle of fine brandy.

With nowhere left to run, they finally chased that greedy cowboy to the castle gates.

"Because you didn't even share a drop of your brandy!", said Hiccup.


"Well, you should've just asked," said the cowboy.








After a very one-sided conversation, Hiccup's new acquaintance welcomed himself into their little group.


... But there just wasn't enough room.


There never is.


For now, well, Hiccup had other things to take care of. He might even get to make friends with that Clint Eastwood fellow someday. But he knew, deep down, that his friends wouldn't forget about him.

They'd definitely remember to bring him to the final battle.