Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; if you're on this site, you know the drill. Also, thanks are owed to athingofvikings, who gave me a much-appreciated sounding-board for a few aspects of my planned world-building for this particular crossover; hope you like it.

Feedback: Appreciated as always.

The Dragon of Wanheda

Clarke had experienced some rough nights since she landed on Earth, ranging from just the challenge of sleeping in the dropship with all the other delinquents until they could build something else to the few nights she'd spent on her own after leaving Camp Jaha until she found Griffin, but none of them could match the night she'd spent hiding around the Edge trying to avoid what could only be the dragon hunters. She didn't know what they were looking for, but as she waited just close enough to see that the hunters went into each hut and came out empty-handed, she was privately relieved that she could reach down and feel the weight of the Dragon Eye in her jacket pocket; she'd just brought it along so that she could look at it when she got tired of her earlier training, but if it wasn't the very thing these hunters were after, she'd be very surprised.

As it was, she had to spend a good couple of hours making sure Griffin didn't do anything too impulsive while she tried to keep an eye on the hunters' ship. As much as she wouldn't trade the bond she had formed with Griffin for anything, his hot air attacks weren't going to be much use against a whole ship full of armed and experienced dragon hunters when she had nothing more going for her than her own dragon and some very fragmentary lessons in self-defence. She winced as she saw the hunters throw various things out of the huts, ranging from some of Astrid's weapons to fragments of cloth and metal that she guessed were some of those other wingsuits she'd suggested that Hiccup could work on, but had held the dragon back unless they showed signs of doing serious damage. The dome in particular lost a few bits of cloth, and some of the storehouses would need to be rebuilt, but the hunters didn't seem interested in actually taking any of the stores, so Clarke was willing to let those slide…

Finally, after what felt like hours of silent watching, the hunters returned to their ship and departed, a definite edge to their manner that Clarke could only interpret as frustration. Griffin looked at her in a curious manner as the ship pulled away, but Clarke urged him to stay put, keeping a careful eye on the ship until it had gone past the horizon. Once the ship had vanished from view, she urged Griffin onwards and she and the dragon entered the Edge, and Clarke immediately hopped off Griffin's back and began to pick up the discarded items outside each hut.

"I may not know where anything goes, but I can at least make sure it's all in some kind of order before they get back, right?" Clarke glanced at her dragon as she gathered up Hiccup's wingsuits and carried them back into the hut. "See if you can… get everything piled up a bit?"

She wasn't sure if she should feel stupid for giving that kind of order to her dragon, but as she watched, Griffin seemed to nod and took a quick 'hop' over to Fishlegs' hut, where he began to gather some of the rotund Viking's books and scrolls into a sort of pile in front of the hut with his wings. He glanced over at Clarke as though seeking approval, and Clarke nodded and smiled back at him as she picked up some of Hiccup's own papers where they had been left on the ground. Glancing over a few of them, she was surprised to see that the papers contained notes about the Dragon Eye, but guessed that the hunters who'd been sent here either didn't read or had been so interested in the Eye itself that they hadn't paid attention to anything that wasn't what they were looking for.

Putting the rest of the papers back in the hut, Clarke was surprised to see a few large tail-fins on the back walls that had been left untouched, along with a small desk that seemed to be Hiccup's primary workspace. It was easy enough to work out that the fins were alternative fins for Toothless, but she couldn't work out what was different about them beyond the colour, and this wasn't the time to examine the fins in more depth.

Turning her attention back to the other gathered items, Clarke smiled at the opportunity to take a more direct look at each of her new friends' huts. Astrid had a more armoured hut with a design on the front that strongly resembled Stormfly, while the interior was practically swarming with fallen weapons and shields; what had been tossed outside just seemed to be some of the larger specimens. For a moment, Clarke regretted that she couldn't do a better job, but decided to just be content with getting everything out of the open air and hoping Astrid wouldn't mind having to re-organise them when she got back.

When she reached Fishlegs' hut, Clarke sighed in frustration when she saw a few broken shelves on the walls around her; it looked like the hunters had been in a particularly foul mood when they got to this area. Fortunately Griffin had done most of the work getting Fishlegs' things together before she got here, even if her dragon partner had done some damage to the rock garden positioned alongside the hut when he walked through it.

"We'll just tell him the hunters did that, shall we?" Clarke smiled over at her dragon before she moved on to the twins' hut. The double entrance seemed a bit pointless, but considering the mismatched design of the exterior, she supposed that the important thing was that it all fit together and wouldn't fall apart. She still didn't get the point of the pit at the bottom of the hut, but for the moment she would just appreciate that there wasn't that much to worry about putting back; unlike the others, the twins seemed content with a more minimalist style rather than collecting weapons or papers.

With the rest of the huts cleaned up, Clarke sent Griffin to do what he could to clean up the rest of the camp while she moved to look over Snotlout's hut, but soon realised that the contents of this would be harder to just replace. She had no idea why he had so many jars and pots, but most of them had been broken while the hunters were searching, although it looked like the shields on the walls had been left relatively alone. She had just finished helping Griffin gather up the last of the broken jars before she heard the familiar roars of the other dragons, looking up to see the five familiar forms flying towards the outpost. Her relief faltered when she noted that there were only the five familiar sets of wings when they had made it clear they were expecting to take at least one prisoner and retrieve Heather at last, but put her questions aside until they had all landed on the wooden platforms.

"Hi-" she began.

"What were you doing in my hut?" Snotlout looked pointedly at her.

"Putting things back after the hunters threw them out." Clarke looked coolly back at Snotlout; if she could deal with Bellamy at his most arrogant, Snotlout was hardly a challenge even if he was annoyed.

"There were hunters here?" Hiccup looked urgently at her.

"Well, they didn't exactly identify themselves, but they were definitely here looking for something, and I feel safe assuming they weren't your friends," Clarke explained, as she indicated where Griffin was 'sweeping' some of the debris from the damaged storehouses with his tail. "Luckily, Griffin and I were training in another part of the island when they arrived, so we saw them coming in time to just hide out and keep an eye on things-"

"You hid?" Astrid looked at Clarke in a cool manner.

"Well, what else was I going to do?" Clarke shrugged. "I was one person who's been with her dragon for a few weeks against trained hunters; I like Griffin, but I wouldn't like to bet on our chances in that scenario."

"Fair point," Fishlegs observed, and Clarke noted Astrid give her a slight nod of approval.

"What did they even want here?" Ruffnut looked around at the open hut doors and gathered piles Clarke still hadn't managed to put away. "I mean, aside from mixing up our stuff?"

"Well, I appreciate that I'm the new girl here, but I think they were looking for this," Clarke answered, taking the Eye out of her jacket pocket.

"You had that?" the twins and Snotlout looked at her in surprise.

"She's been studying the lenses with Griffin to see if he turns up anything new," Fishlegs explained before looking at Clarke with new curiosity. "Did you-?"

"Their ship arrived while I was still practicing staying on this guy while he's in the air, so it wasn't exactly a good time to try something that would involve light," Clarke observed as she patted Griffin on the wing. "Anyway, we kept an eye on the Edge from the woods so that we could step in if anyone looked like they were going to actually try and damage the outpost, but once they left, we decided that it would be easier to just try and get everything back inside now so you could sort it all out yourselves."

"Did you have to-?" Tuffnut began.

"We appreciate the help," Astrid interrupted him with a grateful smile, even as she glanced into her hut and winced. "This is going to take a while… once we've dealt with Viggo."

"Ah," Clarke said, looking around and confirming for the first time that there were no unfamiliar faces in the group. "I take it that the sting operation didn't go well?"

"Sting operation?" Fishlegs asked.

"A term my people use," Clarke explained. "You set up a scenario where you lure in a criminal or some kind of target by making them think they're going to make a big score of some sort, and they end up being captured when they basically walk into your trap."

"Huh," Hiccup said. "'Sting operation'… I like that."

"Anyway," Astrid cut in with a cool stare, "we got to the Flightmare's island, but Viggo must have been expecting us; he brought more ships than we were expecting, and Heather and the Flightmare ended up getting captured while we were trying to fight them off."

"Ah," Clarke said, lost for a better response to learning just how badly things had become. "That sucks."

"Tell me about it," Snotlout shook his head. "We ended up getting lost in the fog trying to find them afterwards…"

"Well, at least that explains why he let Heather's infiltration last this long," Astrid observed as she indicated the Edge. "He must have assumed we'd go after him at full strength once we got the chance and didn't expect that we'd leave someone behind."

"Or that the Dragon Eye would be somewhere other than your huts," Clarke put in.

"Yeah…" Hiccup nodded, looking at Clarke with a thoughtful smile before he turned to look at the rest of the group. "OK, we did what Viggo was expecting, and now we've got to get Heather, Windshear and the Flightmare to safety or this is just going to get worse."

"But that's what we do," Astrid said (Clarke tried not to over-analyse the way Astrid said 'we'; she was pretty sure she was only being included in that statement because she was standing here). "We clean up the mess. All of us."

"We can get the A-Team from Berk, load up whatever weapons we can and go in, dragons blazing!" Fishlegs speculated enthusiastically.

"A-Team?" Clarke asked curiously.

"A reserve team of dragon riders Astrid trained up to defend Berk while we're away a couple of months back," Hiccup clarified.

"Check," Clarke nodded in understanding, while privately wondering if the name purely a coincidence or if this was another sign of something from the pre-apocalypse culture.

"Yeah!" Snotlout yelled in glee. "We hit 'em with everything we've got and really show 'em what we're made of!"

"Can I bring Macey?" Tuffnut asked (Clarke really had to wonder what this man's obsession was with that particular mace). "She's been begging to come along on a mission."

"No!" Hiccup said firmly. "No, we're not going anywhere. Nobody is going anywhere. Not yet anyway. Think about it. We do what we do really well. We're a pretty smart group. We're fast, we're fearless and we ride dragons. But this guy, Viggo, he manipulated us like we were a bunch of inexperienced little kids. If we have any chance against him, we can't go in dragons blazing like we usually do. No, that could get Heather and Windshear killed. That could get one of us killed."

"Well, I, for one, am definitely against getting us killed," Tuffnut put in. "Or at least my getting killed."

"Yep, I have to agree," Ruffnut said. "And not just because we're twins and we always think the same way."

"So you just want to leave Viggo to hunting and hurting dragons at will?" Astrid looked at Hiccup in surprise. "You want to do nothing?

"I want to do the right thing," Hiccup corrected. "And that is going to take some thinking."

As Hiccup's expression became grimmer, one thought came to Clarke; after what Viggo and his hunters had done to her new friends' allies, she had a definite sense that her time just staying on the Edge was coming to an end…