"Did you say dragons?!" Donna nearly shouted in bewilderment.

The Doctor placed a hand on the console of the TARDIS and stared into space, thinking. "Giant winged reptiles that spit flame so hot it can melt your bone marrow?" He looked at his companion. "Yes, Donna. Dragons."

"And you think I wouldn't be interested?"

It was times like this that the Doctor wanted to chuckle (maybe even hug her) and say, 'Oh you silly little humans with your silly little minds! Don't you see that there's something bigger going on here than what you see?' But he had to remind himself that humans are fairly primitive life forms compared to Timelords.

And it was this reminder that made the Doctor picked his words carefully so as not to get Donna all worked up (Rassilon help him if she ever got worked up over anything) and explained, "Of course there were dragons!"

She looked at him with a shocked expression, and snapped back, "Ever heard of imagination?"

The Doctor chuckled. Humans were odd like that—anything out of the ordinary, even something as insignificant and miraculous as a new creature discovered was treated like a bomb counting down to zero and treaded with denies and skeptism. Complete overreaction, if you ever asked the Doctor himself. Yet, their reactions to new wonders never ceased to amuse him. "Oh humans and their mythology…"

"And even then," Donna continued, flailing her arms around for emphasis in only the way she could. "Why don't I see them flying around back home? Dragons, for God's sake, that's something no one would miss!"

"You see, dear Donna Noble," the Doctor explained, walking over to her. "I'm afraid something happened to them and that they are no longer with us."

Donna gave him a look. "Like the dinosaurs?"

The Doctor shrugged his shoulders. "I never bothered to find out."

The ginger woman sputtered as she attempted to wrap her mind around the fact that dragons once graced the earth, just like sheep and lions, just like any other ordinary animal, and that somehow they were gone. POOF! Just like that, the species ceased to exist. And the Doctor—she had known him for less than a few months, yet he seemed like the type of person who would insist on a species to be saved from extinction, especially one as intriguing as a dragon, apparently an animal real not only in the minds of the imaginative. So why, why would her beloved Doctor let something as tragic like this happen—

"Fixed point." The Doctor looked at Donna and she could tell he was serious. "Like the dinosaurs. Believe me, I would've tried if I could. And that's," he sighed. "That's why I avoid dark-age Northern Europe."

xXx

"The only way to properly search for a dragon, is to be on a dragon!" the Hiccup-boy explained to a gaggle of teenagers, all waiting to be instructed on their expedition to find Hookfang. They were in an enclosed arena of sorts, stone walls encircling the center, where the Hiccup-boy was talking. Oddly enough, for a hiccup, his peers seemed to look at him with some kind of respect, as it seemed he took charge of the group often.

"Oh, and this is Dogsbreath," he said, introducing Hiccup, hanging on his own. "We found him in the woods."

A collective groan, more or less, erupted from the group. "Oh no," started one of the boys, a brutish-looking teen. "This isn't going to be Heather all over again, is it? Beautiful girls washed up on the beach, yeah, I like that, but a little kid who got lost in the forest…"

The Hiccup-boy tried to reassure the other boy by saying, "I promise this won't be a repeat of the Heather-Incident, guys…In fact, Dogsbreath is going to help us find your dragon, 'Lout. And if that's it," the Hiccup-continued, clasping his hands together. "We'd better be off before sundown! Twins—" he gestured to two blonde twins, a girl and a boy, who both grinned when the Hiccup-boy addressed them. "You guys can search Berk's forests."

The boy-twin, groaned and said, "How are we going to do that? That place is huge!"

"Try looking for a large, red Monstrous Nightmare flying through a primarily green and brown setting, c'mon, guys, this isn't that hard," the Hiccup-boy responded, exasperated. Something told Hiccup that this happened often.

The duo looked at each other and shrugged nonchalantly. "I see no reason to not go," said the girl-twin. "C'mon, full reign of Berk's forests? When has Hiccup ever let us do that?" She chuckled and high-fived her brother before slipping out on their own two-headed dragon.

After the twins had left, the Hiccup-boy continued, "Astrid, Sno—"

"Aw, COME ON!" Astrid shouted, clearly annoyed with her assigned partner. "Don't pair me up with him, Hiccup!"

"Astrid—Astrid," he responded, trying to calm the girl down. "Look, it's not that bad! You're one of the best riders and he doesn't have a dragon! It's only to the East Islands. And besides, I'd like to take Dogsbreath along with me because he's new to Berk."

The blonde girl let out a huff and angrily crossed her arms, but made no further protest against the sort-of leader.

A thuggish boy, who reminded Hiccup an awful lot of his cousin back home—walked up to Astrid, quite happily. "Well now we can finally have some alone ti—" His flirting was cut mercifully short by the girl's fist, which made a nice thwack against the boy's cheek, discouraging him from further words as they flew off on Stormfly the Second's back.

"What about me, Hiccup?" asked a heavy-set blonde boy, the only teen left besides the two.

"You and Meatlug can check on the West Islands—they seem to be a favorite spot of dragons these days," he explained, smiling.

It was not long before the Hiccup-boy and Hiccup himself were the only ones left in the ring, as 'Meatlug' and her rider swung out through the open gates. The brunette sighed and turned his body over in Hiccup's general direction. "So it looks like it's just you and me, Dogsbreath!" He looked back towards the sky to the outline of the recently dispatched dragons

"So are we riding a dragon?" Hiccup asked curiously, and somewhat eagerly. He had always loved riding Windwalker.

The brunette nodded and smiled a grand, toothy grin. "We're riding Toothless!" He shouted to another dragon, the last dragon in the ring, a great, black, scary-looking dragon whose name was apparently 'Toothless'. "Toothless! C'mon over here, bud!"

The dragon's head shot up before it practically danced over to the boys. Its green eyes were wide and friendly and the great beast's mouth hung slightly ajar to reveal soft pink gums, in place where teeth might've been.

Hiccup couldn't help but laugh slightly. "He is literally toothless!"

"Yeah," the Hiccup-boy said, smiling wryly. "Who'da thought? A Night Fury of all things, being toothless." He put a small hand on the dragon's forehead and continued, "It's because he had teeth, but they're retractable."

Hiccup looked on with interest. A dragon with retractable teeth! The only other creature he knew with that capability was Wodensfang, and he had never asked what species Wodensfang was. "And you fly him?" he asked curiously.

The Hiccup-boy nodded brightly and said, "Have you ever ridden a dragon before, Dogsbreath?" He swung a leg over the leather saddle.

"Yes I—" Hiccup started. But his voice trailed off as he got a good look at the other Hiccup's leg…Or at least what was left of it. From knee down it seemed to be made of metal, tied to a flesh stump with rope. Hiccup had seen many amputees in his lifetime—most of the people he knew were Vikings; it was an occupational hazard to lose a limb or two. But never had he seen an amputee so young. But the Hiccup-boy didn't seem hindered by his injury. "Do you need help getting on?" he asked, smiling widely. Hiccup—who made an effort to be more polite than most Vikings—murmured a 'no thank you' and asked not about metal leg.

"So your dragon's name is Toothless?" he asked. "I've only met one other dragon with retractable teeth," he said, thinking fondly of Wodensfang whom had gone missing.

The Hiccup-boy looked surprised as he turned around to face Hiccup. "Really?" he gasped. "It could be related to Night Furies! Imagine that, a whole new species of dragons…"

"I have a dragon too," Hiccup continued now comfortable discussing dragons aloud. "And it's funny, because his name is Toothless." He let out a small laugh. "Although that's because he just never grew any teeth."

'How did I get here?' Hiccup wondered, looking down at himself. Toothless, Wodensfang, and the Windwalker were left back in a dense woods somewhere...To be quite honest, he wasn't entirely sure what island they might be on, not even positive what island he was on. The inhabitants claimed it to be Berk, but Hiccup knew quite well that he had been traveling five days southwest of Berk's general direction, in an uninhabited branch of the Archipelago.

'There's no turning back now,' he concluded. Hiccup crouched down next to the black beast and scratched gently between what might've been the dragon's ears, where large dragons preferred to be handled. "Hello," he whispered in clear Dragonese. "You're the first Night Fury I've met!"

Toothless let out a grunt and stared, his acidic eyes completely focused on the boy in front of him. Here was where Hiccup experienced the hypnotic power of a dragon's eyes in full effect. It was an expression of vague understanding, maybe none at all, for the dragon did not respond.

When Hiccup was greeted a few moments later with silence, he assumed this dragon wasn't the type that liked to talk. He stood up, only to be asked by the curious bystander, "What did you say to him?"

"I was talking to him in Dragonese," he admitted.

The Hiccup-boy's brow furrowed, but then he suddenly broke into a wide grin. "Dragonese, eh? That's the first time I've heard of it."

"No, no," Hiccup assured him. "It's a weird language, but it is a language. It's the tongue of the dragons." And with that, Hiccup climbed into the saddle of Toothless. Well, he tried. You got to give him credit for that. You also had to acknowledge the fact that he had never ridden a dragon as big as the Night Fury in front of him. So it was after several failed attempts, Hiccup managed to haul his body onto the back of the leather saddle, just inches away from Toothless's shiny scales.

"C'mon, bud, let's go!" That seemed to be a familiar phrase between dragon and rider, as Toothless responded immediately to the boy's words. A small skip forward, and his large, leathery, bat-like wings extended horizontally and the dragon swooped below the ring's entrance and soared into the sky.

Hiccup clutched tightly to the Hiccup-boy in front of him and squeezed his eyes shut. Wind roared in his ears and sunlight splashed everywhere once they entered open air. He could feel warmth radiating off of Toothless's body, mixing with the cold sting of rushed air. The stirrups that promised to keep him somewhat in the saddle most of the time were now gone. There was nothing keeping Hiccup from tumbling to the ground other than the person in front of him. Instead, the stirrups were occupied by the Hiccup-boy's feet, a regular booted foot in the right, and the mechanical one on the left. It was attached, he noted curiously, to a complex system of gears and metal sticks, which, as he saw from peering down to the tip of Toothless's tail, was controlling a mechanical fin. In fact, there seemed to be no tail fin at all.

"We go to the surrounding archipelago to look for Hookfang," the Hiccup-boy shouted over the background wind, interrupting Hiccup's observations. His head shot back up from staring at Toothless's tail. "He's a bright red Monstrous Nightmare, yell if you see anything!"

"What if he's hidden in the trees?" Hiccup had looked down and noticed that Berk and the surrounding islands were encased in either stone (in which case Hookfang would be easily spotted) or thick forest. Monstrous Nightmares, as any dragon naturalist would know, were hunting dragons. One of the obviously larger breeds hunting dragons (than, say, Toothless), but a hunting dragon nonetheless and hunting dragons never were much larger than a newborn foal.

"I'm sure we'll spot him," the Hiccup-boy responded. "A gigantic, scarlet dragon that has a tendency to set itself on fire—kinda hard to miss."

Hiccup looked at his companion with disbelief. "Are you sure? My cousin has—or had—a Mountrous Nightmare as a hunting dragon." He thought some more and then added blankly, "Sets himself on fire?"

The Hiccup-boy nodded (although it was a bit hard to tell, considering the angle Hiccup was looking at him). "Just like all Monstrous Nightmares."

"...Are we talking about the same species here?"

"To be honest, I've never heard of a hunting dragon."

Hiccup laughed, slightly hysterically. "It's like you're not even from the Barbaric Archipelago!"

"Me?" the boy whined in mock-hurt. "You're the one that shows up in the middle of Berk and tries to talk to a dragon in some made-up language!"

"Dragonese is a language, thank you very much!"

The two boys laughed for a moment and Hiccup suddenly felt more relaxed around this person he had just met than he had in months. It was probably due to them sharing the same status as a hiccup, he assumed.

"By the way, what tribe are you from?" Hiccup asked. It was a personal question, a sensitive topic that might be wanted to be kept private, but it had occurred to Hiccup that maybe the Viking tribes from which these people resettling Berk might hail from could be useful allies in the war.

They trained dragons, after all.

"Hairy Hooligans through and through! Me and Astrid and the gang are all from Berk, after all." It was clear that the Hiccup-boy was trying not to be rude, but still confused as to how Hiccup could be so painfully oblivious to such a blatantly obvious fact.

Hairy Hooligans on Berk again? "Is your chief there?" Hiccup inquired, curious to see how Snotlout's reign was doing, or if the settlers were rebels breaking off from his cousin's rule.

The Hiccup-boy frowned. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure...I just saw Dad a few hours ago, supervising some shipbuilding."

Hiccup had no idea how Snotface Snotlout had anything to do with this hiccup's father, so he asked again, "Is Snotlout with you guys?"

The Hiccup-boy seemed to come to a realization. "Oh! Snotlout! Yeah, sorry we didn't have time to introduce you two, we were in a hurry looking for his dragon and all."

"You were looking for Snotlout's dragon?"

"We still are, aren't we?"

Hiccup started to feel a bit dizzy. Maybe it was the altitude, maybe it was the queasy sensation of Toothless's body in motion, or maybe it was the the fact that things were all wrong. Very wrong. How much had the world changed since his absence?

And there's another place, believe it or not, just like this very glen here, but not exact. There's something out of place. Maybe a man lived when he shouldn't, or maybe an entire empire survived. You know, small things like that.

Oh no. Oh no. Hiccup remembered what the Doctor had said. And it didn't make him feel comfortable, not one bit.

Hiccup swallowed nervously. "Have you had rebel dragons recently?" he asked, trying to sound composed.

Seated on the front of the saddle, the Hiccup-boy couldn't see the miniature freak-out his companion was going through. "No, never, that I can think of. Why?"

The evidence was irrefutable. Here Hiccup was, looking for Snotlout's Monstrous Nightmare, just past the peaceful island of Berk where they trained dragons. And right in front of him was a boy with his name, who had a dragon named Toothless.

We're in an alternative universe.

"How's the mighty Roman Empire doing?" Hiccup could hear his blood punding in his years, anticipating the Hiccup-boy's response. It could've been two seconds or two years before he replied,

"The what-empire?"

Woot! The Doctor and Donna are back just in time for the 50th Anniversary! I'm so sorry for the long wait, though. I think I might post a chapter once a month. Probably. Yeah, once a month sounds good. I'm not so proud of this chapter, but it's the best I could do at the moment.