Hey, guys! :D So, hiatus is breaking, technically tomorrow, but I got this chapter typed out earlier and I just thought, "Eh, what the heck." XD So, this is just a what-if for the Race to the Edge episode, "Big Man on Berk." The story really speaks for itself. ;)

Oh, and this idea came from the amazing Omegaman17. Seriously a brilliant author. If you guys haven't looked at their work yet, I'd advise you check 'em out. Pretty awesome over there in awesome town. ;) Thanks for the idea, Omegaman! :D

"FIRE!"

Bolas shot up at the sky, tearing through the air, the chains thick and menacing. Dragon proof, too, so firing at them wouldn't make a difference, nor would it stop them from hitting their target.

"Fishlegs!" Hiccup shouted across the sky; Berserkers littered the ocean below. "When I give the word, you and Snotlout go down! Give it everything you've got, but only after I give the signal! Not before!"

"Okay!" Fishlegs shouted back.

Snotlout pumped his fists into the air in silent triumph, although they hadn't won anything yet. "SNOTLOUT, SNOTLOUT! OY, OY, OY!" the boastful Jorgenson cheered wholeheartedly.

"Astrid, Ruff and Tuff!" Hiccup called. The twins and Astrid snapped to attention, their heads lifted in his direction. "You're with me!" Hiccup said. "We're gonna take the front as soon as I give the signal!"

"Got it!" Astrid shouted back.

"On it!" Tuffnut said. "Wait, what was the signal again? Did he actually have a signal planned?" he asked Ruffnut.

"I think he's winging it," Ruffnut whispered back to her brother.

"Hey, Hiccup!" Tuffnut shouted. "How much of this are you ad libbing!?"

"All of it!" Hiccup said. "Problem?"

Tuffnut frowned. "Uh...wait...what?"

Astrid shook her head. They hadn't been prepared to come across Dagur; of course Hiccup's plans were all improvisation at the time.

They'd been following a new map from the Dragon Eye when they ran into Dagur and his army of Berserkers. He was still building his armada, so his army wasn't big, yet it was large enough to slow Hiccup and the other riders down. Besides, the Berserkers had bolas, and crossbows. They had the advantage in weapons.

Astrid knew it was going to be insane the moment she saw the ships. "Hiccup!" she called over to him. He jerked his head in her direction. "We aren't ready to fight them!" Astrid yelled. "We don't even have our weapons!"

"We don't need to fight them!" Hiccup said. "We're just going to protect ourselves and fend off their attacks long enough to bypass them! It shouldn't take long! Trust me!"

Astrid nodded uneasily. She didn't feel completely reassured, but she trusted Hiccup. Besides, she felt too tired to actually argue with him. Astrid tried to ignore the headache she had picked up from somewhere, but it seemed almost impossible. She'd been feeling awful ever since she put on Stormfly's new saddle that morning, but she didn't know what it was from. Maybe she'd picked up some sort of cold.

Either way, she wasn't at the top of her game. She was glad the others hadn't noticed yet. She knew how freaked out Hiccup got whenever something happened to her.

"Come on!" Hiccup shouted; the rest of the group filed in V formation behind him. "Wait for my signal!"

"WHAT IS THE SIGNAL!?" Tuffnut cried.

He was ignored. "NOW!" Hiccup shouted. "Snotlout, Fishlegs, go! Astrid, Ruff, Tuff, follow me!"

"Oh!" Tuffnut said. "He meant THAT signal! We're on it!"

Fishlegs and Snotlout spun and headed behind Dagur's ships while Hiccup led the twins and Astrid forward, taking the ships head-on. Astrid could hardly thing anymore. Her headache was still coming.

She turned her head and coughed into the crook of her elbow, hoping no one noticed. Her throat still itched and burned, and she sniffed. Had she always felt this congested?

"Catapults!" Hiccup shouted. Astrid saw, in the corner of her eye, giant rocks flying through the air, towards her and the other riders. Astrid turned Stormfly, and her dragon swerved out of the way, just barely missing them.

Unfortunately, the spinning did nothing to help the way Astrid was feeling, and she couldn't stop Stormfly's spinning. The dragon continued spinning out of control, until she crashed straight into Ruffnut and Tuffnut's Zippleback.

"Hey!" Ruffnut protested. "Watch it - AH!" More boulders were shot up towards them, and Stormfly leveled out at length while Barf and Belch ducked and dove to avoid getting smashed by the rocks.

Hiccup looked back and yanked on Toothless' saddle horn. "Astrid!" he shouted. "What happened? Are you guys okay?"

"Yep!" Astrid sniffed. Thor, her voice sounded terrible. She hoped Hiccup didn't notice, but unfortunately, he must have, because he instantly looked back towards Snotlout and Fishlegs and shouted.

"Abort!" Hiccup shouted. "Abort the mission! Get back to Dragon's Edge!"

"What!?" Snotlout yelled. He pulled up on Hookfang, narrowly avoiding more bolas and earning angry shouts from Berserkers. "Why!? We can take 'em! I want to see where that map leads to!"

"Not today!" Hiccup called. "Everyone, back to Dragon's Edge!"

Astrid wanted to protest, but she knew that staying in the air and trying to defend herself and Stormfly wasn't a good idea when she had a headache like this. She would only put herself and the other riders and the dragons in danger of being captured by Dagur or wounded by one of the Berserkers.

Except, she really didn't like how worried Hiccup sounded, and she knew that as soon as they got back to Dragon's Edge, she would be getting a lecture on "why didn't you tell us you were sick?" and "you could have been killed!" and "you are not getting up until you're recovered, you hear me!?"

Maybe he was right.

They doubled back around and shot out of sight, away from Dagur's men and his ships, moving as quickly as possible as to leave no trace. They didn't want Dagur finding out where their base was, of course. That would have been a nightmare.

The flight back to Dragon's Edge was anything but easy, especially with how Astrid kept coughing and sneezing and protesting when her friends asked if she was alright and needed to land. She didn't want them worrying about her, really, but at the same time, she really couldn't protest very much.

They would never listen, anyways. Especially Hiccup.

When they landed on Dragon's Edge, Astrid coughed harshly into her fist and sighed.

"You and your spinning nearly got us KILLED!" Tuffnut yelled angrily.

"Calm down, Tuffnut," Snotlout said. "You lived!" He twirled his finger in the air. "Yay, us," he said sarcastically.

"No thanks to her!" Ruffnut snapped, jabbing a finger at Astrid. "What was that all about? And why did we abort?"

"Yeah, why?" Tuffnut questioned. "We didn't even get to blast anything!"

"We had to pull back," Hiccup said. "Astrid's sick."

"I'm not sick," Astrid protested, although she was lying, and she knew it. "I...I don't ever get sick." The others simply stared at her. "What!?" she snapped angrily. "I don't see what the problem is! Everyone coughs and sneezes sometimes!"

"Yeah," Tuffnut piped up. "But not like a honey covered yak on an anthill."

Hiccup's face was priceless, and Astrid would have laughed if laughing didn't make her coughing worse. Right now, she was trying to focus on not coughing in front of the others and freaking them out again.

"What?" Tuffnut said, his shoulders slumping. "You mean you've never seen a honey covered yak on an anthill? Because they sneeze...and scratch...it's terrifying. The horrors still haunt my dreams."

Astrid rolled her eyes. "I really don't feel sick, alright?" she said, although her mere voice gave it away. She felt congested, and her voice showed it for certain. "I promise, I'm fine-"

"No, apparently, you're not," Hiccup jumped in, stepping right over her words whether he meant to or not. "If you really don't think you're sick, I don't know, maybe you're just allergic to something."

Astrid didn't want to agree with him, but it was sick, or allergic, and honestly, she would go with having allergies over being sick. She didn't like being sick, because it made her powerless, but if she had an allergy, it was something that could be fixed.

"Alright, fine," she said. "But not sick. I don't get sick. I'm clean, serene-"

"And a coughing machine!" Ruffnut said, snapping her fingers, a smile plastered on her face.

Astrid probably would have attacked her if she hadn't felt as she had. "Ruffnut," she threatened, "if you do that again, I'm getting my axe."

"Might I interject?" Tuffnut asked, stepping in between Ruffnut and Astrid. "We at the Thorston house have a very simple allergen detection system. It has never failed!"

Ruffnut peeked out from behind him. "That's a system?" she asked.

"It is now," Tuffnut said back.

"Okay, fine, then," Hiccup said, taking a step forward. "What is this 'system'-" He made quotation marks with his fingers, "of yours?"