Chapter Eleven: To the Visitor's Center

With Valka and Gobber safely back on solid ground, Astrid instructed Hookfang and Stormfly to pull the camper back onto the ground as well. It took several tries, but eventually the two dragons successfully pulled the other half of the camper back up from its dangling position over the cliff's edge. Valka and Gobber inspected the remains of the camper. It was definitely not drivable any more, but it would still be able to hold supplies and shield them from the elements.

Astrid climbed back into the camper through the windshield and began to grab some emergency supplies. "What are you doing?" Snotlout asked.

"I'm going after Hiccup. The Bewilderbeast took down Toothless. Gods only know what trouble he's in."

"We should stay together," Valka said. Before Astrid could protest, Valka elaborated, "And we should search for Hiccup. There is strength in numbers and carnivores will not try to attack a full group. You're more likely to be attacked if you are on your own, especially if the carnivores are pack hunters like wolves or lionesses."

"Dragons don't eat humans," Astrid replied. Valka gave her a look and Astrid rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine, you're right. Can we get moving then? I'm worried he's fallen into Changewing territory or Speed Stinger territory, and both are super territorial and none too friendly."

"Let's get Fishlegs and the twins and then move out," Valka suggested.

Astrid laughed to herself. "Heh, yeah, I guess we should relieve Fishlegs from babysitting duty. The twins hopefully haven't torn him apart either."

The group trudged back towards the High-Hide. Snotlout pressed the button at the base of the High-Hide, which brought Fishlegs and the twins down. To everyone's surprise Fishlegs was still in one piece and he had a large schematic in his hands. "Look what I found guys! It's one of BioSyn's, well, actually it's one of InGen's that BioSyn stole."

"What is it?"

"A treasure map!" The twins said.

Fishlegs glared at them but chose not to indulge in any of their crazy fantasies. "It's a schematic of the entire island."

Gobber snatched the schematic from Fishlegs. "Here, we'll go here," he pointed to the Visitor's Center, "Hopefully one o' the long range radios will work an' we'll be able t' call fer help."

"What about Hiccup?"

"It's in ta direction tha' he fell anyway."

The group mounted onto the dragons and took off towards the Visitor's Center. They weren't flying for very long before all of the dragons began to lose altitude. In the distance, the group could hear a low humming. Without warning the dragons shook their riders violently from their back and flew off in the opposite direction.

As Gobber stood up and cradled his aching wrist, he said, "Do they usually do that?" The group shook their heads. "Well, let's continue on foot to the Visitor's Center."

"But what about our dragons? My poor Meatlug! She's probably so scared and alone," Fishlegs whined.

Astrid pulled several leaves out of her braid and cleared her throat. "We need to get to the Visitor's Center and contact the mainland. And we need to find Hiccup and now the dragons. This is a mess, but as Valka pointed out splitting up sets us up for being Changewing bait. So I say we head to the Visitor's Center and hope that Hiccup has a plan for getting the dragons back." The others nodded and they continued their journey on foot.

Meanwhile at the BioSyn base camp…

Dagur gripped the cage where the tranquilized Bewilderbeast was and smiled maliciously. "What else are you taking back with you, Ludlow?"

"Just it."

Dagur pivoted on his heel and grabbed Ludlow by his collar. He lifted the shorter man off of the ground and growled, "This was meant to be my fee. You can't have it! It's my dragon!"

"You wanted the adult, not the baby, you said," Ludlow pointed out. "N-no one is stopping you from getting the adult. If anything we probably helped to lure her to you."

Dagur huffed. He had lost the Night Fury to that scrawny boy, what was his ridiculous name? Hiccup or something. And now Ludlow had double crossed him and was taking the Bewilderbeast. "So why just it?" Dagur asked.

"We're going to raise it in captivity. The Zoo won't be able to release it into the wild if it's been raised almost its entire life in captivity. I venture the Bewilderbeast as it grows will have the 'wow' factor we need. Then we'll be able to use the public's money to come back here and get more species of dragons to bring back to the Zoo."

"The Haddocks won't let you do that. And what about Hammond?" Dagur asked as he pulled Ludlow closer to him, their noses practically touching.

"If all goes according to plan, this will put BioSyn back on the map and InGen will be bankrupt. Did you know that Hammond is currently engineering phones because of the hit they took with these parks?" Ludlow laughed to himself. Dagur found nothing funny in the statement and shook Ludlow to his senses. "Anyway, it's all business. Don't you worry. Zoos are highly underfunded and eventually Mrs. Haddock will cave under the pressure. And Hammond won't have a say."

"You are pure evil, Ludlow." Dagur inhaled sharply and exhaled into Ludlow's face. "I like it. You smell like evil genius." After a brief moment (too long in Ludlow's opinion), Dagur released him and asked, "Now how are we getting the baby to the mainland?"

Ludlow pulled out a map and unfolded it on the ground. He and Dagur crouched down in front of it. "There's a communication center here," Ludlow pointed to the building on the other side of the Visitor's Center. "It's the main structure and Hammond ran everything on geothermal power, so it was never supposed to need replenishing. It should still work. If we can get there, we can send a radio call for the airlift."

"Whoa, whoa, wait? Why can't you just use our own communication?"

Ludlow sighed, "Well, when those bandits came and freed all the other dragons, the attack on the camp destroyed our satellites. Our short range satellite phones work on the island, but I can't make connection with the mainland."

"Well then let's get this walking feast moving."

"Uh, Dagur, sir," one of the dragontologist piped up.

Whirling around, Dagur removed Ludlow's hat and hurled it at the poor dragontologist. "Don't. Ever. Eavesdrop. It's. rude." Dagur practically sang the last word. Ludlow sighed and picked up his hat from the ground.

"There may be a problem getting to the communication center," the dragontologist said and Dagur raised an eyebrow, daring him to continue. "That would take us straight through Changewing territory. The Changewings use the communications center and the area West as their territory, and since you captured the Bewilderbeast, you've probably unintentionally changed the Bewilderbeast's territory as well. That could push the Changewings closer to the Visitor's Center or farther away, hard to say exactly."

"I just came through that way and I was fine." Dagur said, decisively. "Load the Bewilderbeast onto the truck and move out."

"But…"

Dagur shouted, "I said load the Bewilderbeast onto the truck and MOVE OUT!"

Hiccup and Toothless had gotten away from Dagur mostly unscathed. The new prosthetic was causing some imbalance for Toothless. "There's a learning curve, bud, don't worry you'll get used to it." Hiccup encouraged his friend. "Remember I used to need a cane to walk? Pretty embarrassing."

Toothless tilted his head under his body to look at his tail again. He adjusted his real fin and the prosthetic mimicked the behavior. It wasn't perfect and the split second delay had put them into three trees so far. One of their collisions with the trees had crushed Hiccup's satellite phone, and Toothless had cooed apologetically. Hiccup had dismissed the apology by saying, "Don't worry, bud, it's not like the phone worked most of the time anyway."

The pair flew over a meadow with a small lake in the middle. There were tons of adults dragons flying in a circle. The motion seemed almost robotic. Toothless shook his head twice and tried to fly the other direction, away from the circling dragons. On the ground the babies played, seemingly unaware of the robotic nature of their parents in the air. Hiccup tugged on Toothless' shoulders, "C'mon, bud, let's check it out. I've never seen dragons do that before."

Toothless growled and flew the in the opposite direction that Hiccup had wanted. "Toothless, where's your sense of adventure?" Toothless grumbled but continued to follow his instincts to try to find Astrid and the others instead. Hiccup rolled his eyes, but let Toothless go anyway. He knew better than to try to override animal instincts. His mom almost lost her fingers once when she tried to do that, and he did promise Astrid he wouldn't come back to her missing any more limbs. "All right, you win. Let's go find Astrid."

[a/n] Thank you so much for reading. Please let me know what you think. And I have the remainder of the fic outlined, but I've been having trouble getting everything into cohesive words. So there may be a slight delay between the next few updates. My apologies.