-First Time Author Warning-

My first time publishing a long-form one, anyway. If you don't trust first-time authors on principle, then don't read. Just know that I'm doing my damndest not to A) Abandon the story B) Write a bad story or C) write improperly (in the realms of grammar and spelling).

That is all.

-FTA Warning End-

-Alternate Universe Fic Warning-

In the process of writing this fic (my first released fic) around chapter two I became incredibly afraid I'd Mary-Sue one of the canon characters. Because I'd rather not get you guys interested in a fic, then change some character you like for the silly, here are the changes-from-canon that I'm applying to the various characters and species. I'll also be justifying them, where necessary.

Night Furies:

Edge of Tomorrow-esque time control/jumps. Understanding of spoken Norse. Communication using some dragon-language with the other dragons of this 'intelligent' caste. (I'm not going to write dragon-dragon dialogue, but I will describe them talking from Hiccup's perspective)

Justification: With this simple control over time allowing the minds of the dragons to live theoretically forever (as long as they jump back to some early point, and don't set any later anchors) they can have plenty of time to learn languages, even of species that may (or may not) be considered the enemy.

Bork the Bold (/the Very Very Unfortunate):

A time-loop experience with a Stormcutter (which allowed him to gather so much information on dragons without dying.) He catalogues the dragons in The Book Of Dragons but catalogues the whole time thing in a restricted tome (as Hiccup said in the first movie, a "sequel, book or pamphlet or something") called The Tale Of Dragons. Bork was eventually removed from the loop(s?) when he lost an arm and a leg, and a healer performed a rudimentary mimicry of a blood transfusion, which flushed the Stormcutter's temporal influence from his veins.

Justification: How else would someone go from worse-than-Hiccup to best-in-village? I like this explanation for how Bork and his work never got destroyed by the dragons he studied: Both did, repeatedly.

-AU Fic Warning end-

-Rating Justification-

Violence: T for Major Character Death and implied Family-Unfriendly Death.

Language: T for Innuendos. No overt sexual references or suggestions of off-screen relations.

If you're looking for specific ages or a movie-theatre style rating, I'd say this story is rated the same as your local government rated Edge of Tomorrow.

-Rating Justification End-

Chapter 1 | The Day Before Battle

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was a true Viking warrior, a perfect embodiment of everything Viking, just like a chicken was an embodiment of everything dragon. The boy had big, 'beefy' arms that were a whole three centimeters thick, a quarter the arm-size of literally everyone else in the village. His legs also embodied the Viking spirit - whereas everyone else in town had short and stubby legs used only for jumping into battle, Hiccup's legs made up nearly 40% of his height - seemingly designed entirely for the 'very' Viking-like activity of running away.

As if all those other features weren't Viking enough, he was also the most graceful in the village. Climbing out of bed in the morning was an affair that never, ever involved pain from accidentally hitting his head on-

"Ahg- dang. G'Morning to you too, bedpost! Thanks. For that." Hiccup complained to his empty room. Green eyes still bleary, he shrugged out of yesterday's tunic and trousers, exchanging them for an off-white shirt and pair of brown cloth leggings from the chest at the foot of his bed. Still not entirely woken up, he glanced out the window above his bed and admired the view of Berk afforded by his family's privilege, and the incredibly rare blue-skied day.

Below him, the village stretched down a somewhat steep incline to the ocean's edge. His house, the Haddock residence, was placed at the highest point still really a 'part' of the village, just below the treeline. Down a path and off to the left was the village square, (which was, in point of fact, circular) surrounded by the forge, a storehouse, and several mid-class residences. Even further down lay pastures, and at the base of the hill the docks. Everywhere in between his home and the docks, Vikings busied themselves with the tasks of village life. Hiccup, noticing all this activity, looked up into the clear sky, and realized how late he'd slept in.

Quickly now, He clambered down the wooden staircase into his living room and burst out the front door, letting it swing closed behind him. Running down the hill, he ducked under several Vikings carrying a log, and jumped clear over a cartful of scrap wood. The admonishments of the Vikings left in his wake went ignored, as he finally made it to the village square and rushed into the forge.

The one-armed, one-legged forgemaster, Gobber, looked up from the blade he was hammering straight. As he spoke, his underbite pressed into his ground-reaching moustache, "Hiccup! Nice o' ya to finally sho' up. Was startin' to think you got carried off by trolls."

Hiccup chuckled at Gobber's attempted humor, "Gobber, I'm not just a kid anymore. I know trolls aren't real."

"Trolls are real!" Gobber countered, "They steal your socks. But only the left ones. What's up with that?"

Hiccup looked down at Gobber's right peg-leg, and his left intact-leg, then turned back to taking broken weapons down from the rack. "Sure Gobber, Sure."

Once Hiccup was holding so many broken blades he could barely stand (a whole four of them) he dumped them on the forge, then struggled to pull down on the bellows.

The two of them worked in companionable silence for the next few hours, Hiccup moving weapons and prosthetic-left-hands around the store - occasionally sharpening the former - while Gobber hammered said weapons back into a usable shape. As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, Gobber finally broke the silence, "A'ight, it's been a few hours, and I know y'been itchin' to work on some project o' another o' yours. I think we've got more than enough blades to handle a raid, so I'm headed off to the great hall for the evening. Don't burn down the forge. While I'm gone. Y'know."

Hiccup lifted the sword he'd just finished sharpening onto the rack, "Have fun drinking Gobber. Try not to swallow your fake tooth again."

As Gobber left the forge, he complained loudly, "Tha' was one time!"

Once Gobber was lost in the bustle of Vikings outside, Hiccup slipped into the back room of the forge. Here, Hiccup had his writing desk, a pile of parts relating to his half-completed project, and other various knick-knacks he'd picked up over time. Gobber left this room all just for Hiccup because, hilariously, the overweight forgemaster couldn't fit through the door.

First Hiccup went to the writing desk, shifting some of his papers depicting some kind of bola launching machine. Then he turned around to the actual thing on the other side of the room. The contraption was designed to fold down into a small log base barely a foot in diameter. Said base had mounted wheels and handles to be pulled like a small cart, or pushed like a wheelbarrow. Hiccup pulled on one part of the lid, and the launcher itself popped up out of the base into a readied position. All he had left to do was make some nails to affix the wood that'd be holding the firing tension to the body of the weapon. Retreating back into the forge, Hiccup set several chunks of scrap metal on the forge and began to heat them.

An hour later, the sun reached the horizon. Hiccup was finishing the last nail when a blonde girl about his age and height - but outfitted in a studded leather armor - came waltzing in. He looked up to stare up at the new customer, and his next hammer blow took the front two inches of the nail clean off.

"Oh- Uhh, Astrid! Hi. What can I, y'know the forge, do for you toda-" Hiccup began to stammer.

Astrid rolled her eyes at Hiccup's now usual inability to speak in her presence. "Axe. Need it sharpened. Dulled it out practicing on trees this morning."

"O-oh, yeah, sure." Hiccup took the proffered two-headed waraxe and moved to the whetstone.

"So… Uh," Hiccup continued to stammer, inadvisably continuing the conversation, "practicing for what?"

Astrid gave Hiccup an incredulous stare. "Dragon training? The thing that gets a kid noticed around here?" She huffed, "I suppose you wouldn't need to worry about getting noticed."

Hiccup began to formulate some sarcastic or defensive reply, but the response died on his tongue. Quietly, he worked on the axe blades.

After about a minute, Astrid spoke up again, "The nail you were working on when I came in, is it broken now?"

"Oh, that, nah, it's just… a little weaker." Hiccup replied.

Astrid looked at the half of a nail, left unattended on the anvil. "It looks to me like you broke it in half."

Hiccup glanced over, then returned to sharpening her axe, "In this case, it's not the size that matters. I only made the nails as long as I did for additional strength."

"So size doesn't matter?" Astrid asked.

"Yeah, not in this- Oh. Very funny. Thanks for that."

Astrid laughed. An actual laugh that devolved into a bit of giggling. As soon as she had control over herself again, she took the now finished axe from Hiccup. Before he knew what was going on, Astrid had pinned him to the floor, the handle of the axe pressing into his throat. "Tell anyone about that giggle, and I will end you." she snarled.

"Yes, yeah, whatever you say." Hiccup coughed around the axe.

The axe was removed from his throat, and as he clambered to his feet Astrid calmly left the store, axe on her shoulder like nothing was wrong. Hiccup rubbed his throat and muttered, "Girls are so weird." Then, he picked up the finished nails from the floor - and the broken one - and retreated into the back room.

As the last of the sun's rays left the top of the mountaintops, Hiccup finished his bola launching contraption. The design essentially functioned like a crossbow crossed with a ballista, but the tension spars were vertical and the ammo was a bola, rather than a crossbow bolt. If he was lucky and had good aim (both two things of which he had an exceptional paucity) he'd manage to take down a dragon, and get some (positive) recognition from his village. With the sky darkening overhead, Hiccup loaded and stored the launcher, then left the forge. His goals: back home for dinner, then rest for the next day of mundane smithing.

Up the hill he walked, Vikings around him moving lumber and livestock to prepare the village for the coming evening. As the bustle fell away, he reached the end of the path and stepped up to his front door. He turned, closing the door and locking the cold air outside. He turned back to the embers of the fire, grabbed a few logs from the nearby woodpile, and threw them on. He was about to reach for kindling when, outside, a sound echoed that was neither Viking nor livestock.

Forgetting about the cold hearth, Hiccup ran to the door and swung it open. Outside, a Monstrous Nightmare - a large red dragon with a huge wingspan and no forelegs - flew after a Viking, who in turn was running after some escaped livestock. In midair, the Nightmare turned, spotted the scrawny Viking watching it, and fired a blast of fiery death straight at Hiccup.

Hiccup, with reflexes he didn't know he possessed, slammed the door shut just before the fiery saliva engulfed the front of the building. Breathing heavily, he whispered to himself, "Dragons!"

Once the door cooled enough that the other side wouldn't kill him, he threw it open and began to run back down the path he'd already traversed twice today. The closer he got to the village square (circle) the more Vikings wielding weapons he had to dodge, many of them admonishing him, this time for being outside during a raid. In his wake he left a cloud of, "Sorry!"ies, which calmed noone.

As he came down some steps, he heard and felt flames reaching toward him on the right as a dragon swooped to scorch the Vikings on the ground. All the Vikings around him dodged out of the way, but he was lifted bodily by the scruff of his neck. The man lifting him from harm's way shouted in his face, "What are you doin'-" he cut himself off and turned to the crowd of Vikings, "What is he doing out again?!" Turning back to Hiccup, he set the boy down then gave him a shove, with a curt "Get back inside!"

Hiccup, not one to argue with the chief of the village himself, ran in the direction he was shoved and entered the forge.

Gobber looked up from the blade he was hammering flat, just as he had that morning. "Hiccup! Good ta see ya'! Was beginnin' to think you were carried off by the dragons."

Hiccup lifted a heavy warhammer that had dropped to the floor in the chaos of the raid, replying, "Who me? Nah, I am way too muscular for their tastes. They wouldn't know what to do with all… This." He gave his best attempt at bulging his bicep, which made his arm look even smaller than it had at his side.

Getting back to work, Hiccup went to the window to retrieve another pile of weapons left for repair by the village's warriors. His gaze was drawn to the group of other kids his age hauling in a water barrel and preparing to fight the fires developing on all the surrounding buildings. Tuffnut and Ruffnut, as usual, were fighting over the same bucket, wearing their hair the same way, and wearing matching brown tunics over grey leggings. Snotlout - Hiccup's cousin - was wiping his nose with his entire forearm, ruining the black fur of his tunic. Fishlegs, the overweight one, wore only a fur coat and brown leggings. As Hiccup watched, he tripped over a flagstone and dumped his bucket of water on himself. Behind them all, Astrid threw water on a fire and actually managed to put it out, until it was relit by a passing dragon. Unbidden, a comment slipped from his lips, "Aww. Thier job is so much cooler."

At that moment, Gobber came up from behind Hiccup, hoisting him up in the air with his prosthetic-arm's tongs.

"Let me out, please, I need to make my mark!" Hiccup whined.

"Ach, you've made plenty o' marks, all in the wrong places!" Gobber shot back.

Hiccup, not one to back down from banter - even at his expense - continued to whine, "Please, two minutes. I'll kill a dragon, my life will get infinitely better - I might even get a date."

Gobber took the logical side of the argument again, "Y' can't lift a hammer, y' can't swing an axe, y' can't even throw one of these!"

The 'one of these' - three rocks tied together with a rope - Gobber was holding up was taken right out of his hand by someone outside the window. The person outside proceeded to twirl the rocks around, then threw the rapidly spinning bola at an incoming Gronkle. The bola wrapped around the dragon's legs, adding weight and altering its flight path so that it collided with a building.

Hiccup refused to back down, "Okay, fine, but this will throw it for me!"

He set his hand on the lid of the bola launcher he'd finished that morning, which promptly (and unexpectedly) popped up into its ready position and fired a bola out the shop window, into a crowd of Vikings waiting for weapons, knocking over several.

"See, now this right here is what I'm talking about! Hiccup, if you ever want to get out there and fight dragons, you need to stop all…"

For a moment Gobber was silent, as if searching for a word.

"This."

Hiccup rolled his eyes, complaining, "But you just pointed to all of me!"

"Yes!" Gobber exclaimed, "That's it! Stop being all of you."

Before Hiccup could find another way to continue the argument, Gobber dropped a sword in his arms with the curt command, "Sharpen, now."

Hiccup worked on the sword uneventfully for almost half a minute, lost in thought until suddenly cries rose up from outside: "Night Fury!" "Get down!" Hiccup dropped the sword and stared out the window, looking for a hint of the elusive Night Fury itself as one of the town's siege catapults on the lower parts of the island was torn apart by its fire. Behind him, Gobber replaced his tongs prosthetic with an axe.

Gobber then proceeded halfway out the door, then stepped back in to give Hiccup some orders. "Man the fort Hiccup! As in Stay. Put… There. Y'know what I mean." He then turned and gave a battle cry, limping out into the fray.

As soon as Gobber was lost in the smoke, Hiccup ran to the back of the shop and re-packed and re-loaded his bola launcher. He quickly tied a rope around its housing to prevent it springing up during transport, then rolled it out of the shop and off toward the hill where several torch towers cast a comforting glow that kept the dragons away. Once again, as he passed dangerously close to Vikings running every which way, cries of "Hiccup!" abounded.

Once Hiccup reached the cliffside just below his home (now a good distance from the village) he dropped to one knee, pulling open the rope over the launcher. The housing swung open and he stood, lifting the weapon to its active height. and pulling the four tension spars into their open and locked position. Then he waited, looking at the one remaining siege catapult to which the village could lay claim. For almost a minute, silence reigned over his grassy knoll, the sounds of battle in the town below fading to near indiscernible as he waited for the Night Fury to show itself.

Suddenly a screeching whistle echoed across the island. Many Vikings in the lower village ducked for cover. Hiccup watched a plasma bolt streak seemingly out of empty sky and decimate the siege tower. There! He caught the outline of a black shape swooping past the bright explosion. He lead his aim forward of the shape's path, closed his eyes in a silent prayer to Odin, then pulled the launcher's release lever.

The launcher fired. The bola flew. Before Hiccup saw the bola hit anything, he noticed with dismay that one of the tension spars - the one secured with the nail made faulty by Astrid's presence earlier in the day - had broken free with the force of this full shot. The tension of the rope connecting the arm to the accelerating bola had sent the wooden chunk hurtling at his face. He closed his eyes, began to raise his arms.

And...