A/n: Hi guys! Haven't put up as many chapters as usual today, but I kinda got distracted with writing the plot for How To Train Your Avengers (yes, that is the name and no, I'm not any good at names). In other news, the reviews problem is sorted, which is nice.

This suggestion comes from Mikowmer.

Getting knocked quite a distance into the freezing ocean when you had only one arm and it was being used to grab onto the dying dragon that was going down with you was not enough to kill someone, and anyone who thought otherwise was an idiot.

Drago hoped that there were a lot of idiots in the world, because otherwise there'd be people after him, knowing that he was still alive, drifting through the ocean, suitably vulnerable and sitting on a piece of ice created by the late bewilderbeast.

He wasn't afraid of being found - he could take any Viking on one-handed and he was willing to prove it - but it would complicate matters somewhat. He also wasn't sure where he was going, and all of his human followers had abandoned him long ago - he was sure of this, despite having never seen it happen, for why else would nobody have come to collect him? - so for now he had to drift.

But he would survive this, he would come back stronger, and he would make that blasted dragon tamer see the terrible mistake he'd made in choosing friendship over fear as a leadership tactic. Because it was a mistake, even if it was the only reason he was drifting on the damned piece of ice.

A piece of land appeared on the horizon, and Drago's scarred lips pulled up into what couldn't be classed as a smile, on account of the fact that it held no joy and was more terrifying than comforting.

He'd take this land for his own, enslave any people he found, and amass his dragon army again, from the ground upwards.

It'd be simple; he'd done it before.

Fate had it in for him. Or perhaps Thor, or Loki, or one of the other obscure gods everyone cursed to any secretly feared. The blasted island was the dragon tamer's - Berk, he'd called it - and there was no way that he was going to take this land. Not yet.

Your options were always limited when you were missing an arm, but Drago felt that perhaps this was a more trying experience than other's he'd come across. No matter; he'd just have to be sneaky. Get in, grab a boat, get out. Nobody even had to know he was there. Maybe he could even steal some food while he was at it; raw fish lost its appeal rather quickly when it was the only thing available.

That was the plan, anyway. It didn't hold for long, because apparently bewilderbeast ice was different enough from other ice for a dragon rider to notice it several hundred feet up and get curious, which meant that the dragon the chief was riding before he'd died ended up coming straight down to meet him and, joy of all joys, it was Eret that had taken Stoick's place as a rider.

Curses.

"The tables have turned now, hey?" Eret smirked, all smug grins and superiority but apparently not revenge, for he didn't blast him on sight and Drago knew that Eret knew that he wasn't wearing his coat, so why didn't he?

It occurred to him, several feet up and caught in the claws of the hunting dragon, that it was probably the dragon tamer and his ridiculous notions of mercy and second-chances. What a bunch of weaklings.

So Drago ended up on Berk a few hours earlier than expected, having been seen by several more people than expected, too.

He still growled at everyone he was led past, scaring them into silencing their jeers even without a weapon or dragon to call his own, and he held his ground even as he stared the new chief in the face.

While his own expression carried anger, clearly wishing death on the boy, Hiccup's did not.

"You're not going to kill me." Drago said, and it wasn't a command; it was fact. Hiccup nodded, but still didn't speak.

"I know that you're just going to go and start again." Hiccup told him at last. "You're going to build an army and try to extract revenge. And then, I'm going to stop you. Because while you are starting all over, Berk already has the trust of our dragons, and your fear-mongering will never come close to what we have."

He was a sentimental idiot without a backbone, but he was right. Not about the friendship, but about Drago's plan.

"And you're going to let me go free, with a boat and another arm, because you do not know what true power is." Drago returned, in the same even tone as Hiccup.

"Close."

He didn't get his arm back, but he did get a boat, and a warning from the new alpha, the night fury that the dragon tamer had impossibly - because it wasn't friendship - pulled back from the previous alpha's command. Toothless had growled in the tongue of dragons, and Hiccup had translated: "touch my rider again and you'll lose more than a fake arm."

It was a nice threat, but an ineffective one, all the same.

Drago grinned as his boat left the port, getting his last good look at the island that would one day be his.