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Chapter Text

ASGARD

A shadow blotted out the moon; some Men called it a “new moon”. 

A moon blotted out a sun, on another side of the board. Inter-dimensional board games often had to deal with separate Aspects of the many-layered universe; it was part of the fun.

Loki, self-made god of tricks, looked down at these vast realities as small as a chessboard beneath his fingers. "King to Chief Two." a piece as small as dust moved, shifting another spider-sized piece out of its place. 

Woden grumbled. "Dirty cheater," said the Allfather. "they weren't even praying to you!" 

"They weren't praying to you either," Loki pointed out, a grin parting his bearded lips. Loki's beard was thin and greasy compared to the Allfather's forest of whiskers. "It was fair game." 

"As if you care about fair game," Woden said gruffly. His adopted son always made the most interesting opponent. Thor, bless his muscly heart, went smashing up the game whenever he made a losing move, and Freya always had to take her cats for a walk whenever Woden asked her to join him for a game. But Loki was trouble, and trouble was always interesting.

"King takes Berserk," Woden said.

Loki let out a laugh. "I didn't know you'd grown a sense of humor, Allfather." 

Woden allowed himself to smile. Even Loki, his smartest son, could be tricked after all.

KING

Hiccup woke up tucked between a warm body and the wall. Someone was snoring against his neck, and his arms had somehow found their way around this mysterious blonde someone, and his leg was wedged in an extraordinarily uncomfortable position that sent little bolts of pain up his calf. 

The only person he knew who was blonde enough for this to make anything remotely resembling "sense", was Camicazi. And, not to make any insults to Camicazi's character, but she was the last person Hiccup ever wanted to wake up in bed with. He knew for a fact that she slept with knives on.

But if it WASN'T Camicazi, then who was it? 

The mysterious person grumbled, and shifted against Hiccup's body.

Hiccup remained as still as possible, just in case it WAS Camicazi, because she didn't always look before she stabbed. 

The wood ceiling above him didn't look particularly familiar. He couldn't say he'd never seen it before, but he had no idea where he'd seen it or how he would've ended up here. He'd gone to sleep in his own bed, in the castle on Tomorrow.

Rolling over and away from him, the mysterious person sat up, and stretched. 

Blonde hair hung in front of her face, mostly blocking it, but Hiccup could already tell she wasn't Camicazi. This woman had brushed her hair sometime recently, and probably made a habit of it too. 

"Babe?" the stranger asked, cocking her head to the side. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Hiccup realized he must look terrified, plastered against the wall like she was a stranger. Because, well, she WAS. "Are you okay?" 

WILDERWEST

"Fishlegs! Fishlegs? Ugh. FISHLEGS!" 

"No," the dozing boy complained, and rolled over in an attempt to avoid Camicazi's prodding. She grabbed him by a handful of curly hair. "Fishlegs, now isn't the time for beauty sleep."

"You BARGED into my ROOM," Fishlegs said grumpily, blinking awake with baleful eyes. "This had better be important."

"Hiccup's gone crazy, and I think you're the only one who might be able to talk him out of it." 

"What happened?" Fishlegs sat up slowly.

"Just come on!" Camicazi pulled him out of bed by the hair. Fishlegs was barely able to grab his spectacles off the night-stand. 

"Look," Hiccup was saying irritably when Fishlegs opened the door, "I don't know who any of you are, and I'm no more happy about this than the next guy who woke up in someone else's body, but--" 

Hiccup's hands were tied to his bed-posts with the dismembered sleeves of his own shirt. Windwalker sat on his feet, looking down at him with concern. 

"Well no wonder he's crazy, you invaded his room," Fishlegs was about to snark, but Camicazi strode forward, announcing to the room: "It's all right, I've found Fishlegs. (Don't let up, Windwalker.) We should have him back to normal in no time, Fishlegs should be able to talk the crazy out of him." 

"Fishlegs?" Hiccup's face brightened, and he strained up to see. "Thank Thor, you've got to--" He paused. 

"You're not Fishlegs," said Hiccup, eyes flicking over the room once more. "Where's Fishlegs? And Astrid? And Toothless?" 

The small green dragon made a noise of injured pride from beneath the night-stand, where he'd probably gone to sulk. 

Hiccup looked at Fishlegs like FISHLEGS was the one who had gone crazy. Then he seemed to realize something, and his head sagged back onto the pillow. "Right," he said, staring at the ceiling. "Different body, different place. Why wasn't I expecting that."

Hiccup didn't recognize him. That had only happened once before, during what might have been the worst year of either of their lives. That wasn't a particularly good sign for Hiccup's sanity OR Fishlegs' ability to bring him back to himself.

Fishlegs approached the bed with little hope. "How long has he been like this?" 

"When I went to bed, I was in my own body. When I woke up, I was here," Hiccup said. "So... anywhere from an hour to... uh... a night." 

"I told you." Camicazi popped up beside Fishlegs' elbow. Had she always been there? "He's gone stark raving mad," she informed him in a loud whisper behind her hand. (Hiccup clearly heard every word she said.) 

Fishlegs crossed his arms. "I'm afraid I have to agree." 

The Wodensfang fluttered up to Fishlegs. "May I?" asked the old dragon, in Norse. Fishlegs turned up his palm, and the Wodensfang sat down serenely upon it.

(Hiccup's eyes were wider than dinner plates surprised out of their minds.)

"Camicazi was unwilling to listen before she left to go fetch you. Toothless was dismayed at this situation, which woke us both." (The Wodensfang was undoubtedly being polite about the whole matter, considering the claw-marks on the walls.)

"Do you know anything?" Fishlegs asked, hope rising.

The Wodensfang's expression, such as it was, wasn't very reassuring. "I am afraid… Something has gone... very strangely, young Fishlegs. Very strangely indeed."

BERK

Astrid stared at Hiccup.

Hiccup stared at Astrid.

Hiccup was pretty sure she didn't believe him. 

She tossed him a shirt and said, "we're going to Gothi's.”

WILDERWEST

There wasn't much of an explanation for this mess.  

Fishlegs scratched his head, staring at the picture before them in bafflement. “And you’re… quite sure this hasn’t been a gigantic misunderstanding?” he asked, a bit hopelessly, of the Wodensfang. 

“I’m afraid so,” said the old dragon. 

Camicazi crossed her arms. She didn’t take her glare off the gawky teenager tied to the bed. "So, whoever that is, that's not Hiccup." That had been the only part of the explanation that had really stuck in Fishlegs' mind so far, and evidently hers as well. 

“Our Hiccup, at any rate.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say,” said the Hiccup-who-wasn’t-Hiccup. He looked like Hiccup. But Hiccup would never wake up and claim to be a different person stuck in Hiccup's body. Who was, apparently, *also* named Hiccup. 

"We should get Old Wrinkly," Fishlegs said. "He'll know what to do."

"You go do that," Camicazi said, not taking her scowling gaze off the prisoner in the bed. "I'll stay here." 

Camicazi was very protective of those she considered friends. Fishlegs could tell she didn’t quite believe Not-Hiccup’s story. He wasn’t sure if HE believed it, to be honest.

“He’s already tied to the bed. What’s he going to do?”

“He already stole our Hiccup’s body,” Camicazi pointed out reasonably, “we don’t know what else he may be capable of.”

"I didn't STEAL IT," said the Hiccup-who-wasn't-Hiccup complained, but no one in the room was listening to him. 

"Wodensfang, you and Windwalker make sure she doesn't... beat him up or anything," Fishlegs told the two dragons, gently settling the Wodensfang next to Windwalker on the bed. 

"Psh, don't be silly , Fishlegs. I'll only beat him up if I have to." 

That wasn't remotely reassuring. "Make SURE," Fishlegs warned the Wodensfang, and hurried off. 

CHIEF

A thin finger prodded Hiccup’s tongue. 

Old Wrinkly reminded him a bit of Gobber the Belch, if Gobber was thirty years older and exhausted with just about everyone. He also seemed to be the only one there who had any clue what was going on, even if he'd forced what better not have been sheep droppings wrapped in cobwebs down Hiccup's throat. 

"Well, Wodensfang, I believe your initial hunch was correct." Old Wrinkly addressed the tiny leaflike dragon on his shoulder. "This isn't OUR Hiccup, but it is A Hiccup."

"How is that possible?" the thin, curly-haired boy with broken glasses asked. 

"Well, I have a theory," Old Wrinkly began. Everyone in the room groaned. "Now don't judge too quickly, now. Have you ever considered that our timeline isn't the only one?"

"Don't make me laugh, I'm trying to keep him from escaping," Camicazi said. Hiccup’s wrists were currently being crushed together in the small girl's impossible grip. 

"Let him go, Camicazi, he's harmless." 

Hiccup's arms were released. Camicazi stepped away from him. Hiccup rubbed his thin wrists, trying to get feeling back in his hands. He had always been skinny, but this kid's body felt starved. Like he'd gone years without a decent meal. And this body had both feet, though his pinky toe was barely there anymore. What had happened?

"Please skip to the part where what you're saying makes any sort of sense ," Fishlegs sighed. 

For the first time, Old Wrinkly spoke directly to Hiccup. "We must figure out how to get you back to your own world, young man." 

Hiccup let out a breath of relief. 

"So we can assume it happened sometime between when you went to bed and when you woke up. Does anyone have any idea what Hiccup was doing last night?" Old Wrinkly asked the room.

“Which one?”

“Either and both,” Old Wrinkly said. 

Hiccup blushed guiltily. "I, ah, I don't remember. Sleeping, probably." (It was half true.) "Nothing remotely body-switching could've happened. Trust me." 

"I was with Hiccup-- our Hiccup-- till ten," Fishlegs said. "Then I went to bed." 

The Wodensfang translated for the small green dragon. "Toothless says our Hiccup went exploring... underneath the castle, I believe."

Dragons talked in this world. Hiccup made a mental note of that. He didn't want to forget a second of what he saw here. How much did the two worlds overlap? Could he learn to talk to Toothless in the dragon language? Could dragons learn to speak Norse?

"Then that's where we've got to look," Hiccup said. "Something down there that he touched, maybe? Did he touch anything?"

The small green dragon again chittered at the Wodensfang. "Toothless says he doesn't remember," said the Wodensfang. 

"Well, it's not like there's a whole lot underneath the castle," Camicazi said confidently. "I bet we'll be able to figure out just what it was in no time." 

Chapter Text

KING

“That’s TOOTHLESS? Toothless? ” Hiccup repeated incredulously. 

the large black nightmare loomed above and behind Astrid, a warning. It didn’t look anything like a Common or Garden dragon. 

“Howdeedothere, Toothless?” Hiccup spoke slowly, his mouth struggling with the Dragonese.

A laugh burst out of Astrid’s mouth. “Um, what did you just say?” 

A wordless threat rumbled deep in the dragon’s throat. His eyes were intelligent, watching Hiccup carefully-- which only baffled Hiccup more. 

The Night Fury-- Toothless-- sensed something was wrong, but not quite what. 

“Who else would it be?” Astrid made soothing/stalling motions at the dragon. 

“Well, he looks a bit like Windwalker, but--”

“Who’s Windwalker?”

“You mean Windwalker isn’t here?” 

Nothing about this made any sense. If Windwalker wasn’t here, did that mean he was still enslaved by the Lava-Louts? Or just un-chosen by the other boys in the Pirate Training Program? Why on earth would he not choose Windwalker as his riding dragon? Why didn’t Dragonese work in this world?

Hiccup knew the answers to these questions, of course. 

If neither Windwalker nor his Toothless were here, that meant Wodensfang probably wasn’t here, and the Wodensfang usually knew about these things.

Someone flicked Hiccup’s chin sternly. 

“Sorry, Gothi,” Astrid said. “Didn’t mean to distract you.”

Berk’s old, old healer adjusted her grip on Hiccup’s face, turning it sharply towards herself.

A thin finger pried Hiccup’s eye wide.

the wizened old woman they called Gothi squinted thoughtfully at him, and dribbled strange-smelling liquids down his throat. Occasionally the swarm of Terrible Terrors that Gothi kept in her hut caught Hiccup’s eye-- which she then poked to keep his attention back where it apparently belonged. (Hiccup’s eyes were now watering.) 

Despite the prodding of eyes and the pouring of awful medicines, by far the most uncomfortable thing about this situation was the way everyone was looking at him. 

Astrid stood behind Gothi, watching with foot-tapping impatience. And behind Astrid, the gigantic dragon they called Toothless had insisted on coming inside, to stare with petrifying green eyes over her shoulder at Hiccup. 

A strange woman Astrid had called “Valka”, whom Hiccup was probably supposed to recognize, watched Hiccup out of the corner of her eye. Watched him like he’d developed the unlucky habit of disappearing the minute she took her eyes off him. 

"She believes you," the tall, thin woman who smelled like deep-air dragon-scent translated for Gothi. "That's about all she knows."

"How… how is that even possible? " 

"He might know better than we,” Valka translated for Gothi’s quick notations in dust on the floor. 

Everyone in the room turned to look at him directly, and a small part of Hiccup wanted to squirm out of his skin. 

(A very strange, small part of Hiccup wished that he was actually her Hiccup, who’d just temporarily gone batty for whatever reason. It would’ve been so much easier.)

"I’m sorry, I haven’t the foggiest," Other Hiccup said. “It must’ve happened on your side.”

“That’s not possible.” Astrid’s tone brooked no argument. “You-- he was perfectly normal when I came by last night.” 

“And all day yesterday,” Valka added, although her attention had already shifted; instead perusing Gothi’s collection of mystical-looking items. What was she looking for?

Knock.

Knock.

Knock. 

“ Gothiiiii ,” someone whined from outside. The knocking continued. “Ack’s house is on fire again. I think he’s burned or something? Do you know where the Chief is?”

Astrid swore. Astrid and Valka looked at each other, a realization that struck them both at the same time. 

 “I’ll run him off,” Valka volunteered. She was out the window in the blink of an eye. 

“Is Father missing?” Hiccup asked. Everyone knew when Stoick was around. He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. Even if he did try to sneak off for some time to himself, which wasn’t likely, he preferred naps, it wasn’t like he was particularly good at it… 

Astrid startled. Gothi gave them a brief, sad glance. 

“I’m sorry, Hiccup,” Astrid said. “Stoick’s dead.” 

“...Oh.” The word was small. But that didn’t make sense. This place was different, after all… but it couldn’t be THAT different. He hadn’t thought, because he wouldn’t have asked whether the sun still rose in the east, whether dirt squished between your toes when you walked barefoot on Berk in the summertime. 

A different, darker time blurred Hiccup’s vision. He’d known that his father was probably alive-- enslaved, in danger, but most likely alive. If Alvin had had the mind to execute Stoick, he would’ve done it to draw Hiccup out of hiding. (Right? Right?)

Somehow, he’d never felt farther away from home.

“There was a war,” Astrid said. She wasn’t really looking at him anymore, more as if she saw some battlefield etched in the wooden floor. 

Hiccup’s stomach knotted. “I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

The Night Fury Toothless rumbled sadly, his head bowed. 

Astrid reached up to pet his neck gently. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.” It wasn’t clear whether she was talking to him or the dragon.

Hiccup sat, quiet. Gothi did not disturb the silence.

Astrid took in a deep breath. When she turned back around, she was already composed, determination set in her jaw. “I have an idea.”

CHIEF

Hiccup's head hurt. So did most of the rest of him. 

A dragon had sat on him. This body was a lot smaller, maybe younger, and it bruised a hell of a lot more easily. He hadn’t been this sore in years . 

One dragon had sat on him, another had thrown a temper tantrum, and the third SPOKE NORSE.

If he hadn’t been sat on already, Hiccup would still be exhausted and his brain cranking a million miles a minute. 

It wasn’t even ten in the morning .

"Well," Hiccup muttered to the ceiling. "I really have lost it."

For a brief moment,  Hiccup questioned whether he had just forgotten. Whether his Berk had just been a vivid dream. 

But nope, his memories were still there. Some lingered in his mind like a bad smell, whereas more pleasant ones-- such as yesterday afternoon, with Mom and then Astrid-- were stubborn as the burn of sunlight behind his eyes. 

And his captors were still arguing about what to do with him.

Fishlegs and his wild-haired companion huddled at the doorway, whispering what must be an intense conversation to each other. Their whispers were not actually very quiet at all. Camicazi’s arms were crossed.

"No. We have no idea who he really is,” Camicazi was insisting. “Or where our Hiccup is. He could be lying about this whole rotten business.”

“Old Wrinkly said--”

“Old Wrinkly is a TERRIBLE soothsayer!” Camicazi snapped. “Hiccup nearly died because he couldn’t tell one small boy from another. All he REALLY knows is that our Hiccup isn’t where he ought to be.  I’m telling you we should LEAVE him here and look for the stupid thing ourselves (if we can’t shake the answer out of him).”

“We won’t find any answers if we don’t go looking,” Fishlegs said with some irritation. 

“Just tell the Hairy Hooligans Hiccup wants the castle cleaned out before he wakes up,” Camicazi said reasonably. 

“Hairy Hooligans should not EVER be allowed near magically dangerous artifacts of ANY KIND. Be sensible , Camicazi.”

( That part was true of both worlds, at least, remarked some snarky part of Hiccup’s mind that had already accepted this, sat back, and begun eating popcorn to entertain itself. At least SOME things were the same.)

Fishlegs sounded even more tired and frustrated than Hiccup felt. “You get more flies with honey, not by setting them on FIRE. The sooner we get Hiccup back, the fewer people we risk finding out. 

“There will be a massive crisis once word gets out of Hiccup’s… predicament. I don’t want to do politics, not today, we have enough problems.” 

“If it makes you feel better, we’ll bring him along with, like, his ankles in a ball-and-chain, so he can’t hijack our Hiccup’s body.” Fishlegs came up with a diplomatic solution.

Camicazi huffed. “Fine.” 

“If it makes you feel better,” Hiccup remarked, “pretty sure I couldn’t hijack this body even if I wanted to.”

“Uh, not to interrupt,” Hiccup said, “but if you guys have that settled, we should probably get going. Your friend’s probably not gonna want to spend any more time over there than he has to.” Astrid might think he’d hit his head too hard on a bed-post or something. 

“What’s going to happen to him?” Camicazi marched over, presumably to nudge Windwalker off his chest and untie him, but clearly just to interrogate Hiccup some more. Her eyes were sharp and bright. 

She was just a bit worried. Perhaps a tinge of fear, somewhere. But she was all fight. She and Astrid might have been best friends, or tried to kill each other. 

(Hiccup was awkwardly sandwiched between Camicazi and Fishlegs. They kept tripping over each other’s feet. 

“Why’s the King in shackles?” a passing Warrior of the Wilderwest stopped walking to stare. 

A heartbeat. 

“We’re, ah, teaching him how to pick locks,” Fishlegs explained blithely. “Isn’t that right, Camicazi?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes. That’s what we’re doing.” Camicazi elbowed Hiccup.

“That’s what we’re doing,”  Hiccup said, putting on his best “everything is fine please keep walking” smile.

The Warrior squinted at them a bit more. “How’s it going?” 

“Well, I mean.” Hiccup shrugged, displaying the chains on his wrists. “Still got a long way to go.” 

The Warrior squinted at them a beat longer. “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” they said, and walked around the corner out of sight. 

(“I say, Fishlegs, when did you get so good at lying?” Camicazi thumped her friend on the shoulder.)

That was the entirety of what their afternoon of searching accomplished. 

FISHLEGS

Grimbeard had been a bit of a hoarder, apparently. The bowels of the Castle on Tomorrow were just… corridors filled with… well… junk. Covered in dust. And mud. 

Camicazi was knee-deep in grime, occasionally uncovering the shiniest and strangest things from Grimbeard’s long-abandoned makeshift closet. Fishlegs, soaked to the knees in mud older than he was, wasn't much better off. 

The only thing to do was to sort through everything, pile by pile, to search for anything vaguely… well… there was really no other word for it but magic, Fishlegs reflected. (All Vikings were a bit superstitious, after all.)

But somehow Fishlegs doubted any of these things had anything to do with their Hiccup mixup. Because most of them were wigs. Large boar-bristle wigs, those tiny white powdered things stolen off some poor Peaceable sap’s head, wigs in all shapes, sizes, and stages of decay. Fishlegs shuddered and dropped a pile of hair, as soon as it shifted in his hands. A rat scuttled out, unruffled by the sudden drop, back into the heaps. 

Fishlegs felt a pang of regret for leaving Hiccup-- his own Hiccup, that is-- on his own. Maybe if Fishlegs had been there, or convinced Hiccup to go to bed at a reasonable hour instead of staying up eye-bleedingly late ...

"So Fishlegs and I don't exist in your world, is that right?" 

Cami’s question clearly caught the Hiccup-who-wasn’t-Hiccup by surprise. "Ah... I mean--" 

“How’s that?” Fishlegs asked Cami. 

"Well, he didn't recognize us," Cami said matter-of-factly, though more to Fishlegs than the gawky teenager with Hiccup's name. “I’d say we’re pretty memorable, so either he hasn’t met us or…” She let the question hang. She was trying to trick Not-Hiccup into giving up some key piece of information. Slyly. Subtly. 

Fishlegs realized that Camicazi was probably just as frightened, worried, and confused as he was. She just dealt with it differently. Ze Great Camicazi did not give in to fear. She punched it in the throat and told it to run.

Not-Hiccup scratched the side of his head. "I know someone named Fishlegs... might be a common name though. This place is… it’s pretty different from the place I know.” 

“So you don’t… recognize the Castle on Tomorrow at all,” Fishlegs said. This fact worried him more than he could really put into words. “How different IS it, then? Did you ever learn to speak Dragonese?” Did there ever end up being a war, he wanted to ask. Didn’t ask. 

Not-Hiccup stared at him like he’d just asked “so where do you keep your third head?” 

“You have a dragon LANGUAGE?” 

Camicazi scoffed. “You don’t? ” 

A world where Hiccup and Fishlegs weren’t best friends? That thought shifted something deep and dark and long-buried in Fishlegs. Hiccup was his family , as much a part of him as his toes. The Pirate Training Program had been awful, but awful hadn’t been so bad, because there was someone just about as small and loser-like as Fishlegs himself was. 

Fishlegs’ time in Prison Darkheart had been easily worse than that, because not only was the entire Archipelago in flames, his best friends were missing, presumed dead in the case of Camicazi, and hunted by damn near everyone in the Archipelago, in the case of Hiccup. His anxiety had been crushed by a heavy grey Knowing. Fishlegs had known Hiccup was in danger (if he was alive at all) and there was absolutely nothing Fishlegs could have done about it. That made him feel more useless than any insult the Hooligan boys had ever thrown at him.

On a logical level, he knew that the Hiccup standing before him wasn't the Hiccup who'd been his best friend all his childhood, but it still hurt, just a little. 

Now Hiccup was... gone, in a strange predicament that hurt his head to think about, and the one thing they could do about it wasn't turning up any leads whatsoever. You can imagine Fishlegs' frustration. 

Camicazi, suddenly right up next to Fishlegs’ ear, whispered very loudly: “You know, I think he may be A Hiccup after all. He’s too much of a nerd to be any real threat.”

“I’m glad you’ve come to that conclusion, Camicazi, but we really do have to focus on putting all Hiccups back where they should be.” Fishlegs shook out a vase full of rat’s nest and wig. Nothing magical fell out.

They continued as they had, in silence, for the next few minutes. Till Fishlegs’ burgeoning frustration, sparked by the Hiccup Situation and stoked by Camicazi, came to a boil when he got to the bottom of a pile and realized that it really had been wigs all the way down.

Fishlegs threw his hands up in frustration. “I don’t suppose he tried on the wrong WIG, did he,” he said, gloom weighing his voice, and kicked a stray knot of hair off his shoe. 

Then his foot hit something. 

Pain flared in his toes, shot up his veins. 

A crack, like something breaking. (Fishlegs prayed it wasn’t his foot.)

A flash of light tore the air.

ASTRID

(Later, Hiccup's going to... well. Pace isn't exactly the word. Wear a groove into the floor in front of the fireplace, occasionally gesturing wildly as he talks through the wild events of the day, is more like it. Later, he'll probably let himself freak out the way he was meant to. "Dragons TALK to him, Astrid! And he TALKS BACK! Do-- d'you think-- is there like a dialect difference between species? Are humans even capable of making noises our dragons would understand? Gods, I gotta tell Mom about this--"

Astrid will laugh, because she can't help herself-- flustered Hiccup is one of her favorite sights, all pink and sputtering, each limb going in a different direction. Almost as amusing as imagining him imitating Toothless' throaty greetings back to the unamused dragon.

It's exciting for her, too, she'll admit to herself even later than that. She and Stormfly have always been on the same wavelength, words were hardly ever needed ... but to have actual conversations, that's a whole level Astrid's never even considered before.

But that is all for later.)

Right now, Astrid had a different problem:

Namely, the earthquake.

Chapter Text

KING

“EARTHQUAKE!” someone bellowed high in the village, unnecessarily, as the houses began sliding downward with the roar of crashing wood and metal. 

Then, they stopped. (Mostly.)

A bunch of things suddenly rained out of the sky on Berk Village. 

“Where’s the Chief??” a villager bellowed in dismay as he tried to outrun a toppling house.

“It’s an attack!”

“It’s Ragnarok!”

“RAGNAROK ATTACK!”

A flame-red dragon shot out of the sky, its rider already bellowing in a pompous voice that reminded Hiccup just a bit of the Hooligans of his world, “Everyone, everyone calm down, Snotlout is here to fix everyth-- AAGH!”

A chamber-pot broke itself over his head. He toppled unceremoniously off the dragon’s back. 

Astrid cursed colorfully and dashed out to try and restore order. 

(To be fair to the Hairy Hooligans, it’s rather difficult to be calm and rational when things that have no business dropping from the sky start dropping from the sky. One must have truly impressive nerve and calm to keep one’s head during such a bizarre happening. The Hairy Hooligans were not calm people.)

“Where’s the Chief?” “What’s happening?”  several Vikings could be heard shouting.

A tug on Hiccup’s arm startled him into stumbling under the eaves of a nearby wreck. Then his eyes were covered in woolly darkness. 

“Can’t have anyone seein’ ye,” Valka explained, and Hiccup realized she’d covered him in a cloak. 

“But it’s chaos out there!” Hiccup pulled the cloak down onto his shoulders, away from his face.

Valka’s green eyes regarded him with curiosity. “Ye know what’s happening, then?” 

“Oh, I haven’t got a clue,” Hiccup admitted. “But--” He was about to say ‘I’m the King’ out of instinct, but Valka stopped him. 

“If ye go out there, ye’ll spend the whole day sortin’ out things ye know nothing about, and it might blow yer cover.” Valka’s hands rested on his shoulders gently, but firmly. “Astrid and the Riders have it handled.” 

Hiccup noticed an odd movement behind Valka. 

A rope ladder dangled down out of nowhere. Rather than falling, it unrolled down to earth, anchored to nothing at all.

“Actually,” Hiccup said, “I may know something about what’s happening after all.”

CHIEF

The chamber around them, by all rights, should be structurally unstable. The castle SHOULD be falling down around their ears right about now. 

More than that, Hiccup was fairly sure he recognized the bit of land below the impossible hole in the floor. Not entirely used to viewing it on his feet, rather than on Toothless’s back, but once you’d seen the bumpy chaos of Berk Village from above, you never forgot it. 

(“How does breaking a bowl make THAT happen?”

“Where did it come from?”)

“I think,” Hiccup said to the room at large, “that we’re going to have to go down there.”

Fishlegs muttered some truly unprintable observations. 

KING

Pulling his cloak over his head, Hiccup darted out, skirting the village as best he could. The prosthetic slowed his movements, chafing the stump where his borrowed body’s foot had once been.

The rope ladder hung above the lip of the island, where the ground fell sharply away to a fifty-foot-drop preceding the sea below.

It wobbled and swung back and forth. The rope looked as if it had been chewed in several places. 

Hiccup glanced up. 

Slowly, a great tangle of blonde hair with a corresponding pair of feet made its way down the ladder into Hiccup’s sight. 

This was a new level, even for Camicazi.

Hiccup’s surprise only grew when he saw who was (slowly) following her down to the ground. 

OUTSIDER

From any of the perspectives-- either of the two Hiccups, Fishlegs, Camicazi, even Astrid and Valka-- this scene would have been nearly incomprehensible in its  strangeness. Let’s look at it as an outsider, as if we were just looking over our skinny, glasses-wearing Fishlegs’ shoulder. 

There they all are, finally: Camicazi, Hiccup, and Fishlegs on one edge, facing Valka and the other Hiccup. 

The two Hiccups stared at each other. 

Camicazi scrambled over to where her Hiccup stood. “ Hello, Hiccup, we were just talking about you,” she greeted him casually, as if switching bodies were as mundane an accident as a stubbed toe. “Chief Hiccup, meet King Hiccup.” 

“He’s the KING? Of the whole Archipelago? ” the Hiccup-who-wasn’t-Hiccup’s mouth opened and closed, stammering out his surprise. 

“Yep. Chiefs are still sticking around, though,” Camicazi informed him. “One-man governments aren’t nearly as easy as the bards made them sound.” 

Hiccup-who-wasn’t-Hiccup looked boggle-smashed. “That’s… a lot.”

“Well, there aren’t as many of us as there used to be,” Fishlegs said. 

“Three-way genocidal war tends to whittle down the population a smidge, you know how it is.” Camicazi’s tone was careless, but a bit lacking in her usual cheer. “ Most of us Bog-Burglars are still around. Can’t say the same for the Meatheads, poor saps.” 

Awkwardness followed.

“You’ve got the leg on crooked.” The Hiccup-who-wasn’t-Hiccup changed the subject quickly. He gestured at where the metal prosthetic sagged. “Here, you’ve got to buckle it a bit tighter, I’ll show you.” 

“Oh thank you,” said Camicazi’s Hiccup eagerly. “You know, it’s a really clever piece of work. Did you really make it yourself?”

Of the two Hiccups, one had a keen eye for strange inventions, being an inventor himself. the other, while never having had the chance to be one, took to the trade like a Sea-Dragon to water. It helped, too, that the other was a bit more familiar with Grimbeard the Ghastly’s tricksy ways than the first. 

In fact, they quickly became so preoccupied talking that they briefly forgot the impending task of getting everyone back into their proper bodies. 

Astrid striding over to them was as good a reminder as any. "Oh. Hi." She took in the strangers with a brief glance

Fishlegs and Camicazi were growing antsy. Valka glanced between her son and the boy occupying her son’s body.

Both Hiccups’ heads whipped around to stare at Astrid. She shrugged, and grabbed the taller Hiccup’s hand, pressing it to the shorter Hiccup’s hand. 

A brief blink of white light passed between them. Hiccup and Hiccup stumbled back a few steps away from each other, apparently a bit dizzied as the light dimmed and disappeared. 

“All right, is everyone back in their bodies? No one got stuck?” Fishlegs asked, glancing anxiously between the two Hiccups. 

The taller Hiccup held his hands out at arm’s length. The shorter Hiccup was still wobbling. Camicazi caught him. “I’d say so,” she said cheerfully. “Welcome back, Hiccup.” And she grinned down at the King, who grinned back.

(Snotlout had stumbled over with the intent of asking Hiccup a question, and Valka quickly went over to run interference. “Is anyone ever gonna explain to me what’s going on?” Snotlout complained to no one in particular. “Who ARE you people?” 

“It’s a long story,” Valka told him.)

The rope ladder hung there patiently, forgotten by nearly everyone. 

The two Hiccups were still deep in conversation twenty minutes after they’d gotten back into their proper bodies. 

“... I can’t imagine that dragons wouldn’t speak SOME kind of language. I had to experiment with a few different sounds before I got the hang of it-- try this.” The shorter Hiccup made some bubbling screech noises with his mouth.

Tall Hiccup scratched his head. “And those are words?”

“Yes, it means ‘I have no idea what you’re saying’.”

Fishlegs tapped the shorter, redheaded Hiccup on the shoulder. “Let’s go home,” Fishlegs said. “I don’t know how much longer Camicazi’s willing to stay out of trouble.” Both boys cast cautious glances over to the tangle-haired girl, who was currently spinning a dagger like a baton to pass the time. The dagger halted between her first and middle fingers when she looked back at them. 

Fishlegs, for his part, was really looking forward to going home, maybe to a nice nap after all this trouble. He’d learned enough about the universe for one afternoon. 

“Yeah.” The taller Hiccup’s eyes kept flicking back to the crumbling noisy mess that was his village. “I’d better get in there and help.”

“Yeah,” the younger Hiccup said, shifting on his feet awkwardly. “Well. It was nice meeting you.” (This was a very genuine feeling on his part.)

Neither of them noticed, but the two Hiccups’ smiles were very like one another.

“See ya,” Camicazi said, much less conscious of herself than Hiccup was of himself, and tugged on her Hiccup’s shoulder. 

Then Camicazi and Fishlegs ushered their Hiccup rather insistently up the rope ladder. Astrid’s Hiccup watched them go for a moment more.

“HEY! CHIEF! THE WATER SYSTEM JUST--” a Berkian’s disgruntled shout was cut abruptly short by a gushing flood of water. 

Chief Hiccup didn't see the rope ladder get pulled up into the invisible hole in the sky. Several days later, between improvising a fix for the water system and keeping count of how many people had to sleep up in the Great Hall tonight because of the mishaps with the village houses, he happened to glance up at the sky.

As blue as ever. A few clouds drifted by. Nothing strange at all.

Part of Hiccup hoped he'd see the other Hiccup and his companions again. Mostly, he hoped that the bowl was the only volatile bit of magic in Grimbeard the Ghastly's trash-hoard, and that the effects had stopped when he got his proper body back and everyone went back where they belonged.

But seeing as it's Grimbeard's trash-hoard, he was wise enough not to bet on it.