The fire crackled lazily, smoldering and sometimes sending up hopeful sparks into the black oblivion of the night. Its amber flames illuminated the clearing with a hazy glow, and sung upwards into the sky, twisting, leaping, and convulsing in a mad dream dance. The stars splashed across the airy skyscape, following winding paths under and through the cloudless sea.

Below the ethereal reflections, the clearing was a haze of dreams. Hiccup, the Tabby-Jack, and Toothless-Cat were curled up against each other for warmth, with two additional members. Two Terrible Terrors had run across their path earlier that day, and were all too eager to come with them. They had travelled the rest of the day without a thought, and the now mysteriously changed Kitten-Terrors made four dragon-cats.

The ghost of a thought drifted through Hiccup's dreaming mind and flew away, bringing a peaceful smile to his face.

It was all according to plan.

(Astrid Pov)

The night sung sweet lullabies, floating along thoughts and crooning the tied-up Vikings into a restless sleep. Astrid stirred and shifted her weight, trying to ease the discomfort of sleeping standing up. She hesitantly opened one bleary eye and peered at the dreary scene.

The hulking, three-headed figure of the Crazy Cat Lady's dragon hunched atop a roof, its ragged wings stretched out over the plaza, their shadow blocking all but slivers of the moon's blue light. It was an intimidating scene on its own, to be sure, but when the motive of the oppressor has kittens involved, you can only be so scared. Astrid rolled her eyes, exasperated at the sudden and strange turn of events. You can't add kittens to every franchise…right?

Shoving the thought away brought back others on strings of discord and imagination, to pull her along through unbidden memories. Always at night they showed, purple with warmth. They tugged her features into a myriad of smiles and sideways grins, and she floated among them with ease. Sleep began to lay its soft, heavy fingers on her, when just on the brink-

"Mew?"

Disgruntled, she blinked and looked down, identifying the speaker as a smallish, pale fuchsia kitten, fluffed up with cold, and looking up with large, imploring green eyes. Astrid wasn't so moved by this performance.

"Mew to you." She said dryly and closed her eyes, attempting to fall back into oblivion's embrace, but with no such luck.

"Mew! Mew! Mew! Meeow! Meowmeow! MEW!" protested the creature, proceeding to cling to Astrid's legs and attempt a climb. She looked down, annoyed. The kitten was stuck like glue.

"What do you want?" she questioned irritably, "I'm tied up, and there are like, three thousand other cats around here. Why me?"

The kitten merely slid back down and looked up forlornly, curling around her foot like a slipper.

"Meowmeowmeowmowmeowmeowwwww…" it began.

"…Shut…up…please…I beg of you…" Begged Astrid, but the kitten ignored her entreaties, and night was far from over. Desperate, she attempted to wiggle free of her bondage, if only to silence the creature. As she shifted, a wayward tie tightened and tripped her over, leaving her half-suspended in the more reliable threads, dangling precariously above the ground in a literal cat's cradle.

"Well, this is just great…" she muttered, while the dragon-turned-cat looked mischievously up. It extricated itself from around her foot and leaped onto the diagonal hammock, stepping gingerly into Astrid's arms and curling up into a prompt, tight, warm and sleepy ball of fuzz. Astrid sighed, defeated.

"Anyone want a free scarf?" she joked to herself, picturing just how stylish Hiccup would look when wearing the pink dragon-kitten-scarf. A chuckle escaped her tired lips. Why the normally feline-free island was suddenly assaulted by cats in such a random manner was a pleasant, humorous mystery, merely serving to waste a few more hours of unsuspecting humans' time. Or maybe it was just a deranged dream, contorted by the subconscious' view of the waking world.

Whatever the case may have been, she was glad when a pale finger of light creeped up towards the near-black horizon, slowly illuminating all that was and wasn't. The stinging fangs of Winter's cold hesitantly crept back an inch, determined not to lose its grasp, but nullified by the sun's gracious rays. Flakes swirled flippantly and fell as a breeze gasped and sighed, happy to see the approach of dawn and settling into a pallid, but peaceful sleep.

Daylight grew and swelled like thunder.

Or was that just the dragon snoring?

Odin's underwear! Tell me it hasn't been a year! O.O…it has, you say? NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuu… I apologize, my dear readers, for the dull normality of human life is rather discouraging to writers of kitten-oriented fanfictions. I also regret how short this chapter is, but action is hopefully coming and there wasn't much more I could do with this sequence. If you have stuck with this story all this time, you are the best human in existence and you deserve a cookie. Like, right now. SOMEONE GO GIVE THIS PERSON A COOKIE!