Polynya

“Like fick I did!” The goblin yawns. “It’s about goddamn time you showed up. We’ve been sitting at the entrance to the catacombs for like three hours now. Fick, am I glad DD’s BBQ delivers.” He tosses his finger at a series of greasy sacks. “Good eating. Twixy can attest.”

“It didn’t give me any buffs, but it wasn’t bad!”

“Twixy here wouldn’t try the deep fried cat tail, but I won’t hold it against him. Fick if cats aren’t good eating. Kittens are better though, and don’t tell me you need to go to your safe place after hearing that.”

“I didn’t say anything.” Ryuk turns away from the goblin, hoping that will shut him up.

“Hey! I’m not done telling you about eating cats. Fick, I bet Lassie over there would love himself a nicely marinated slab of feline meat.”

FeeTwix approaches Ryuk and puts his hand around his shoulder. “Everything all right in the real world up there?”

“You two are some real poofters,” Hiccup chortles. Wolf approaches the goblin and they both growl at each other for a moment.

“It was … fine.” Ryuk smiles briskly.

“Well, you’re developing quite a good number of fans.” FeeTwix points at his black eyes. “Say something to them!”

“Hi.”

“Fick me, Marbles, you really need to figure out how to turn up the charisma. I used to have a copy of How to Make Friends and Influence People, but I loaned it to Spewy. Anyfick, it’s no wonder Tammy never let you get past first base.”

“Leave him alone,” Zaena says, interrupting her conversation with Enway.

“You’ll have a chance to see some of your fans tonight at the concert,” FeeTwix says. “And from what I heard, there will be close to a thousand Fickers there.”

“How many people are going again?” Hiccup asks.

“Usually these concerts have up to thirty million people in attendance.”

“Well, it sounds more like there will be up to thirty million fickers there. Ha! See what I did there?”

“No, Fickers,” the Swede says, “your fan club. Lots of people are coming out!”

“Do they have drugs?”

“Maybe?”

“Good, come on over here, Twixy, so I can give them a piece of my mind.”

“Okay, but after this it’s time to head to the catacombs and kick some ass! One more thing–”

“Twixy, let me say my piece before you start doing an ad read.”

FeeTwix stops in front of Hiccup, giving his viewers a nice, downward looking view of the chubby goblin sprawled out on a lawn chair. Hiccup points a dirty finger at FeeTwix’s blackened eyes. “Listen, Fickers, all thousands of you that are coming. Drugs and booze, capiche? Not necessarily in that fickin’ order, but bring what you got and pay tithe to your favorite cantankerous goblin. I’ll bring the Wizardous, ouch!”

Hiccup dives for cover as Zaena whops him again on the head with her konoshlo.

“Don’t encourage people to do drugs,” she says as she approaches.

“What the fick are you, the T-DEA or something? Fickin’ shit, Liz, nothing wrong with experimenting!”

Enway laughs. She has Yangu in the backpack slung over her shoulder. The dragon sleeps, as always, and Ryuk wonders if the dragon will be this somnolent when he’s older.

As Hiccup and Zaena bicker, Ryuk approaches Enway and thanks her for looking after the baby dragon.

“Ahem!” FeeTwix announces, but everyone's too busy holding their own conversations to hear him.

“Really, thank you,” Ryuk says, bowing his head. “And thank you for looking after Oric. I believe he will be a great addition to our group.”

“What makes you think that?” she asks.

“Just something I’m intuiting, I don’t know, we were pretty badly betrayed, like I sort of explained on the way to Katiyana, but we can’t let that stop us from adding new members.”

“Hiccup had me fill out a stack of forms, by the way, so extreme vetting is apparently in full effect.”

“He did?” Ryuk shakes his head. That damn goblin.

“It’s fine,” she giggles. “The questions were pretty easy, stupid too.”

“Like?”

“Um, let me think. Okay, there was one about your opinion on Thuleans.”

“But we have a Thulean in our guild.”

She winks. “I excel at test taking, so I wrote what he wanted to hear. There was also a question on who you voted for during the last Tritanian election. I played it safe there and said I sat that one out. Let me see … oh yes! There was another question about my opinion of goblins, harems, and a question about my opinions on healthy heads of hair. That one was odd.”

“He actually made you fill all that out?”

She touches Ryuk lightly on the shoulder, sending a spark down his arm. “It’s fine, I did it so I could join you guys and he can’t claim that I wasn’t vetted.”

“I’m sure he’ll figure out another way to hate you.”

She shrugs. “Maybe, but I think he means well. He really seems to like you.”

“Like me?” Ryuk starts to shake his head.

“Yeah, I think he just gives you a hard time.”

Ryuk hits the deck at the sound of machine gun fire. He glances to see FeeTwix standing with one of his shooting irons, the receiving end smoking. “Sorry, everyone! Just needed to get your attention.”