Chapter Three:

I leaned down over Toothless as we flew quickly across the vast ocean. Briar had fallen asleep a while ago, much to our relief since we could only handle her questions for so long. This is going to end very badly you know? Last I checked the flock you were born into hates dragons...

"I know bud. But there isn't much we can do about that... besides Briar needs to get back home." I glanced down at the child to make sure that she was still nestled safely in my arms. Funny really... she looked a lot like Dad... shoving that thought out of my mind, I glanced over at the horizon to see some sort of armada leaving Berk, which was still far enough away to appear as if it were a tiny dot... if my mask didn't have zoom lenses built into it that is. "Get us as close as possible to Berk without that armada spotting us, bud."

On it... still think this is a really bad idea...

I bit my tongue to keep myself from pointing out that he thought most ideas of mine were bad ideas. I reached a hand up, quickly readjusting my lenses so that I could see what was down on the lead armada ship. Wait... "Hold up... there's a dragon down there... standing next to Dad. On the lead ship."

Okay... what do you want me to do? Swoop down closer? Say hello to this dragon... by the looks of things I say its a Stormcutter.

"Try to stick to our original plan Toothless. Besides... I really don't feel like explaining to whoever that is that I can understand dragonese." I patted my best friend on top of his head, nodding to where Berk was at... an proximity alarm built into my suit went off loudly, startling both of us. Quickly readjusting my lenses once more so that it was more focused around the air around me, I felt my stomach tighten upon spotting an arrow headed straight for us. "Toothless! Barrel Roll!" I tightened my grip on Briar so as to keep her from falling as Toothless quickly barrel rolled out of the arrow's path.

We've been spotted.

"I can tell! They're shooting at us!" I snapped back, unfortunately my yelling woke Briar up.

"Um? Why are we upside down?" Fear edged her voice, probably because she had never flown in a battle field before.

"Your tribe's shooting at us... so we have to use some evasion techniques to avoid being... AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" I yelped loudly as an arrow buried itself into my shoulder.

"Mommy!" Briar cried out with terror as we tumbled off of Toothless, who of course automatically lost control of his ability to fly the second my prosthetic left the slot that allowed me to control his own prosthetic tail.

I wrapped one arm around her, even as my eyes slid shut my heart thudding loudly in my ears... we jerked to a halt suddenly, throwing me off, though Briar merely scrambled out of my arms. Groaning, I reached up, gently pressing a gloved finger against my shoulder. Pulling it back, I winced at the sight of blood darkening my otherwise black glove. Closing my eyes, I turned my head to the sky even as my body finally registered the fact that I haven't slept a wink for the past three days...and everything went eerily dark.

~Stoick's POV~

I tightened the grip on my axe as the dragon began to plummet down after we finally hit its rider. If only Briar had screamed before we had hit the rider and the two of them fell off... shoving this thought to the back of my mind, I watched tensely as my wife and Cloudjumper flew up and caught them. Cloudjumper even going as far as grabbing the dragon in his claws. Whirling around, they flew back towards Berk. "Turn around! We've got Briar back! And one of the fools that took her in the first place!" I hollered to my men as I moved across the ship towards the steering wheel.

"On it chief!"

"Daddy!" I quickly scooped up my precious little girl, hugging her close to my chest as I released a sigh of relief.

My wife slid down from Cloudjumper's back, the unconscious kidnapper hanging limply in her arms. I scowled upon noticing that he was wearing a mask that covered his entire face. "Pull that mask off. I want to see what the man foolish enough to kidnap my little girl looks like."

Briar pulled back a little at that, confusion creasing her brow. "He no take me. Bad guys take me. His friends made the bad guys place go boom and they brought me to him and he said he was gonna take me back home and now I'm here."

"What?" Stoick suddenly felt very foolish for automatically presuming that this young man was part of the wicked tribe that Johan warned him against. Clearly there were apparently two dragon riding tribes. And by the sounds of things they have some sort of rivalry. Shaking his head he gestured for Bucket to pull off the mask. "Quickly now. We need to see who this fellow is... especially if what Briar said is true then he was trying to help us."

Bucket pulled off the mask... and Stoick felt like someone just punched him in the stomach. "Oh no..."

~Hiccup's POV (Few Hours Later)~

I groaned as I turned my head to the side, feeling as if someone just stabbed me in the shoulder during training. Forcing my eyes open, I stared blankly at my old desk from when I was a child. Wait... Shoving myself into a sitting position, I scanned the room I was in. Sure enough, it was my old childhood room. Shaking my head, I shoved the scratchy wool blanket off of me, quickly scanning myself to assess what was going on. My suit itself had been removed so that I was only wearing the brown tunics that I had on underneath it, my shirt having been removed as well. There was a bright white bandage wrapped around my shoulder and upper-body, hinting at why my shirt was removed. My prosthetic was still in place, though the low throbbing from it was a pretty good indicator that I must have been a sleep for a while.

Standing up, I moved my way over to the door so as to leave the room. Pausing next to the desk, I glanced at my old designs. None of them looked like something that we could use back at the Edge... the sudden creak of the stairs made me tense instantly, quickly reaching down towards Inferno, I couldn't sense Toothless nearby, which for me was really not a good thing. People were more likely to talk if one had a night fury backing them up...

The door banged open as Briar darted in, a huge grin splattered on her face. "Guess what?! Daddy says your my big brother!" She leapt up, nearly knocking me over as she wrapped her tiny arms around my neck.

I quickly clipped Inferno back into place as I wrapped one arm around her to keep her from falling. "Oof... wait. Your Stoick the Vast's kid!?"

"Yep!"

"Son?" Dad appeared in the doorway, eyeing me almost nervously like.

Shaking my head at him, I sat her back down on my bed, before turning to face him. "Where's my suit... and shirt. I also wouldn't mind having Toothless back."

"You are in no position to make demands... besides that we need to talk." Dad crossed his arms, the look he was giving me reminded me of, well me when the twins were pushing my buttons and I need them to be serious for five seconds.

A/N: Reviews!

MarauderPrime12: No... it is not Fishlegs.

Toothless Lover 13: I think Hiccup's still alive..? Oh yeah. He is definitely still alive, Stoick is on the verge of grounding him.

Guest: Don't worry too much about it.

omega13a: Of course they're gonna do that! Especially since, well... Berk is about to find out who the real enemy is. Hiccup is very protective of what he considers 'his'. Also here is ten virtual cookies for correctly guessing that Eret is Rumble Crash! Uh... I might do a chapter that covers that, I'm not really sure though. It's pretty similar to how it happens in the movies though.

catlovingmermaid: Good reasoning... especially it got you ten virtual cookies! Of course it backfired! The twins were told to go blow things up! Once the mask was off, Stoick and the others recognized him. Obviously... I mean Hiccup woke up in his room.