A/N: Dearly god there's a lot of comments. Uh I'm going to go ahead and skip responding this time. I do have some things to explain myself at the end tho, so see you guys then. In the mean time, enjoy :)

oOo

Hiccup got up early the next morning, nerves running through him. Thank Odin that they had the day off from dragon training; he needed the time to get some last-minute flying practice in. Breakfast was snatched from the Meade Hall, as well as some fish, before he ran out into the woods.

If he was being honest, a part of him was surprised to find Toothless still there. He'd tossed and turned all night, imagining Astrid sneaking out after they'd returned and killing the nightfury anyway. Toothless gobbled up the fish and Hiccup pet the dragon's rough hide, grounding himself in the feel of the scales under his hands.

"Big day, today." Hiccup told him. Toothless warbled back. He then went about getting the gear on the dragon, checking and double checking that the straps were tight enough, that nothing was going to fall off suddenly, that the tail still opened and tilted like it was supposed to. They'd flown a couple times without the aid of Hiccup's chart, and it came easily and naturally, but now Hiccup found he wished he still had it, if just so he'd have the knowledge right there.

They flew low and quiet, mostly gliding just above the sea and weaving around the rocks that jutted out. Simple, easy.

I could fly away from Berk.

Hiccup blinked in surprise at the thought, unsure where it'd come from. The thought felt weirder than it had last night, now that he was well-awake. It was true, though. He could grab some basic provisions, some clothes, and just hop on Toothless and leave. It'd never been an option before - he didn't know how to man a boat, much less on his own, and one of the fleet would be noticed if it went missing. But nobody aside from Astrid knew of Toothless. And would he be missed? He was just Hiccup, after all.

But no, even if it seemed tempting for he and Toothless to just continue out into the unknown, to the edge of the world, he found that he still cared about Berk, and he cared about the dragons who'd still be killed, and he didn't know what he was going to do about that other than that he needed to do something, and then there was the whole mystery going on with Eret and Horrendous…

He guided Toothless back to Berk, back to home, and they settled back the cove to wait for Astrid.

She came with little fanfare, quiet and light on her feet. She still had an axe and was dressed in some thicker leather than she'd had on last night. Toothless dropped low and growled threateningly. Hiccup set a hand to the dragon's snout and motioned for Astrid to stop.

"Put down the axe, or he won't let you get close."

"Smart dragon." She said and her voice had a venom in it that Hiccup hadn't realized had vanished until it had now returned. She slowly set it to the ground, hesitating just before she completely let it go. Hiccup let out a sigh of relief. He didn't doubt that she was till plenty dangerous without a weapon - Hel, he'd seen that for himself - but it was nice, and good to know that for how much he'd ruined their growing trust, some last embers must've still held on.

"Alright, well, if you'll just come over here…" Hiccup motioned for her to come forward, and she did, slow and cautious, eyes never leaving Toothless. Toothless showed her the same amount of caution, ducking out from under Hiccup's hand to place himself wrapped around Hiccup, head off to one side of him and tail snaked around his legs.

"Now what?" Astrid demanded.

"We, uh, we ride him." Hiccup said, shifting his feet awkwardly. Toothless growled again. "Hey, bud, please." Toothless huffed but unwound himself from Toothless, standing straight and tail slapping the dirt ground.

Hiccup climbed on, getting his foot into the stirrups, and then followed the weirdness of Astrid getting on behind him. The saddle barely accommodated for two people, and as far as Hiccup knew, Astrid had never ridden anything. There were tales of distant Vikings who had deer-like animals they rode, but Berk had none itself.

Just as Astrid started to get settled, Toothless took off.

"Whoa, hey, bud!" Hiccup shouted as the dragon took a running start and then snapped his wings open, quick and jarring as he lept into the air and with a great down-beat they were rocketing upwards. Behind him, Astrid screamed, grabbing him around the stomach for dear life.

"Toothless, what are you doing?!" Hiccup did his best to match Toothless' movements, and if it was a little less life-or-death he might have been proud of himself for doing so successfully. As it was, it took all his mental capacity to keep up and try to calm the dragon down. "Toothless, we need her to like us, remember?"

Toothless yowled and dropped suddenly, wings tucking in as he spun his entire body - as well as his passengers - in their downward dive. Hiccup leaned forward, brushing the side of the nightfury's head.

"Please, bud, we can do this." He begged.

He felt more than heard the dragon's answering rumble.

Toothless snapped his wings open once more, a bit slower this time, and leveled them out.

Hiccup sighed in relief. Astrid's hold on his stomach loosened every-so-slightly.

"I'm sorry, he's, uh, he's not usually so moody."

Toothless snorted and shook his head. Astrid didn't say anything at first, and when Hiccup looked back at he saw she was staring off into the distance. He followed her gaze. She didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular, just the view of the sea, some rocks jutting out of the water into an area Hiccup had been enjoying flying through recently. It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before. And yet, he thought he knew what she was looking at. Even now, it still took his breath away.

"Wow." he heard her whisper. Hiccup found himself grinning. It'd been nice, thinking of himself as the only 'viking' who'd ever seen these sights, and yet, it felt so much better being able to share it with someone.

"... so, do you believe me?" He asked.

"Yeah, yeah I do."

And now… now that they were on the same page, they needed to deal with Eret and Horrendous.

"So-" Hiccup started, but stopped when he felt Toothless tense underneath them, "Toothless?"

At once, Toothless tilted to the side. Hiccup automatically matched his movement even as both he and Astrid let out twin cries of surprise. The reasoning was clear in a moments as a large dragon flew out from the maze of rocks beneath them, hurtling to nearly the exact spot they'd been a moment before.

It was then that Hiccup realized Astrid's scream was still ongoing, as well as getting further away.

"Astird!" Hiccup shouted, looking down at her falling form.

The new dragon was already moving, diving and biting down on her leg. Hiccup and Toothless followed right after, chasing the dragon as he flew off with Astrid still in its mouth. There was a hum coming from Toothless, an acidic smell, that Hiccup recognized as Toothless preparing to let out a shot of fire.

"No, you can't hit him, Astrid might get hurt!" Hiccup insisted. Toothless closed his mouth and growled, pushing forward faster. They were coming up on a familiar land mass, a familiar cliff, where the new dragon came to a stop and dropped Astrid. Toothless and Hiccup had been right on their tail, and Hiccup jumped up and off of Toothless to attend to Astrid while Toothless barreled right into the other dragon, growling and roaring.

"Astrid, are you okay?" Hiccup looked her over for injury. She was holding her hip, but looked confused, a confusion that was quickly infecting Hiccup as well. They were… on Berk. Usually the dragons carried their prey far away from here. And… it'd just sort of dropped her, hadn't it?

"I… I think I am." She admitted, uncertain. While her boot clearly had marks where the dragon had bit it, her leg was still there, very clearly not bitten right off like in that tale Gobber told over and over again. They looked over at Toothless and the dragon. Toothless was still growling, staying between the dragon and the humans, but the other dragon didn't seem all that concerned about the action. In fact, it almost looked confused.

The dragon was like none other that Hiccup had seen before. It was big and burly, sort of like a gronkle, but with a much smaller head and eyes, as well as a long tail that ended in a club-like lump. Like a gronkle, it had six limbs, but the wings were far larger. Its looked almost beetle-like in appearance, with its scales forming dense plate-like armor around its neck. Its coloring was iridescent red and greens that gleamed as it tilted its head around and then let out a low rumble.

Toothless hissed, but there was something calmer about the sound now. The other dragon rumbled again, and this time Toothless responded with a warble. There was a short huff let out from the beetle-dragon's snout and then it lifted its head and sniffed the air before unfurling its wings and taking flight again.

"... what just happened?" Astrid asked. Hiccup was, quite frankly, speechless, mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out as he watched the dragon fly away. It was staying relatively close to the island. In fact, it almost looked like… "Wait, is it heading for the village?!"

"Of course it is!" Hiccup shouted and then pressed his head into his hands. He had no idea what was going on, but he did know that nothing good was going to come from a dragon going to the village, especially in the daytime.

"Well, we need to get back there!" Astrid stood up and then winced at the pressure on her injured leg. Hiccup was at her side in a moment, but she waved him off. "I'm fine, it's just bruised."

"Let's get back to Toothless' cove first, then we'll decide where to go from there." Hiccup suggested and Astrid nodded. They both climbed back onto the dragon's back, and while Astrid got on without complaint, Hiccup didn't miss how tight she was holding onto him this time. It made guilt swirl in his stomach. Maybe they'd be able to get out for another proper flight sometime, without Toothless purposefully trying to sabotage, or another random dragon messing it up. He didn't want it to stay ruined for her.

The flight back was, luckily, completely uneventful with a side of boring, and they landed right by the little pond.

"You don't want to tell the village about Eret and Horrendous, do you?" Astrid said. It was the first words said by either of them since they'd started back.

"I'm not going to risk Toothless." Hiccup stated decisively. He took a few deep breaths and then straightened his back, looking at Astrid and daring her to contradict him. She held his gaze for a while and then looked away, shrugging.

"I figured. We've been working on this just the two of us this long, anyway, might as well keep it like that."

Toothless straightened suddenly, and when Hiccup followed the nightfury's gaze, he saw the strange dragon was back. It stood at the edge of the hole for a moment before hopping down. It strode right over to Hiccup, and although Toothless growled a warning, the dragon didn't stop the other from sniffing Hiccup. It let out a sad-sounding warble and then trotted off to one end of the clearing, lying down and closing its eyes.

"W-well then, uh, nice to meet you…?" Hiccup coughed.

"Hiccup, look." Astrid pointed to the dragon, and Hiccup didn't know how he'd missed it before.

The dragon had a saddle on its back.

A dragon, surprisingly kind to humans, with a saddle, that had flown to the village.

Hiccup had a bad feeling about this.

"We really need to get back to Berk."

oOo

Eret's morning had been going pretty well. In fact, it'd been great! He'd gotten a full night's sleep, woken up later than usual, and was ready to get out and start his day. He was supposed to show Gobber some ways he used to deal with dragons, methods for bringing them down. Oh, he was going to leave out the more lethal methods, of course, but it was also sort of nice to get the chance to talk about the job he'd spent so much of his life doing again. After all, he'd once been very very good at his job. It was the knowledge that Horrendous and the others had let him impart on them, and was useful, sure, but those conversations were always tinted with this weird feeling of guilt and fear that he'd say something that would make them decide he wasn't worth the trouble to keep around.

So, the last thing he expected was to step out of the Haddock house to shouting and a dragon roaring.

Even less, he didn't expect to recognize the dragon.

Eret's heart plummeted into his stomach upon seeing Skullcrusher flying around, dodging attacks, and calling out.

There were many things Eret could've done in that moment, things that might've kept his cover while still getting Skullcrusher out of the situation safely, but all of them had flown out of his head in a sudden and desperate need to get to his dragon and get him safe.

"Skullcrusher!" Eret shouted, running at full speed. The dragon's head snapped towards him and he roared a greeting. The distraction was enough for someone to finally get a good aim in, a bola wrapping around one of the rumblehorn's wings. He let out a howl as he spiraled to the ground, hitting the ground harshly. Eret didn't stop running, pushing and shoving through the crowd of vikings and already pulling out his knife, sawing at the rope of the bola.

Skullcrusher was astoundingly calm considering the situation, letting out a low rumble as he stared at Eret.

"The Hel are you doing?!" Somebody shouted and tried to pull Eret off, but he turned and slashed at them with his knife, the tang of blood now in the air, before returning to his task. He was nearly through it.

"You gotta get out of here, okay? Get somewhere safe, try and find Hiccup and Toothless, alright?" Eret said, almost too fast to be understandable. The rumblehorn hummed, and when the last strand of rope was finally cut through, the dragon's wing snapped open again, hitting the nearby vikings out of the way, and the dragon was flying off again.

The vikings were upon Eret in a moment, grabbing him, tearing the knife out of his hand and wrestling him to the ground. Eret didn't even try to fight back. He recounted stickier situations he'd had to get out of. He could do this. This was going to be fine.

"What was that for?! We had him!" Eret recognized Spitelout. At least the older people in the village looked more or less the same. The entire Hairy Hooligan Tribe were bad enough to deal with in the 'present'. Eret had only ever heard stories about how insufferable they'd been in the past. He was not looking forward to this conversation.

"He's mine." Eret huffed. He'd been pushed into the ground so fast and hard the air had been forced out of his lungs and he was still trying to get it back.

"We would've let you kill it." Spitelout said. Eret shook his head, glaring.

"I wouldn't kill him. Skullcrusher is my dragon. Nobody kills him." His proclamation was met with confused and surprised whispers throughout the crowd. Gobber came up next to Spitelout and the two exchanged some whispered words.

"He's clearly insane." He heard from Gobber.

"We should kill him." He heard from Spitelout.

"You're not chief."

"He's dangerous to keep around, especially if there's another attack soon."

"We'll keep a close eye on him."

"I'm not going to."

"Fine." Their little two man huddle broke up and Gobber cleared his throat, raising his voice so everybody could hear. "We're going to lock this maniac up until Stoick returns. I'll keep watch of him personally and make sure he doesn't cause any trouble."

There was more murmuring, mostly of agreement, although Eret did catch some people who seemed to think the only cure for a head sickness was to toss him back out to the waves. In all honesty, that didn't sound like half a bad idea. If he could swim far enough out, Skullcrusher could pick him up.

As it was, he was just going to have to wait for Horrendous to return.

oOo

A/N: that's right! This fic isn't dead! It just, uh updates really slowly. I'm sorry guys, I just have a lot of homework to do, as well as other projects that I'm currently more interested in :/ That being said, I do hope to finish this. I think we're getting decently close to the climax now, so there's that. Also, sorry for no fall out between Valka and Horrendous, that'll be in the next chapter, I promise :)