Uncharted

by Converse_On_The_Tardis

Summary:

The bomb explodes as Sherlock's bullet hits it, blowing John and Sherlock into an adventure of Vikings, dragons and eel sushi. Who else will end up in this nightmare?

Chapter 1: John

As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes in a land called Berk.

To all intents and purposes, I was slumped against the wall, spent of adrenaline after Sherlock had wrestled the bomb-laden coat off of me.

Every muscle in my body was ready to pounce. The laser of the sniper, shining down on Sherlock's black suit, was something I was too familiar with from the war. I knew that if I could time it exactly right, I would be able to throw myself at Sherlock before the sniper got the signal from Moriarty that was sure to come.

But then Sherlock looked at me, just a quick glance. It was enough. I knew exactly what was running through his mind.

Moriarty was a danger, not just to Sherlock, or me, or London, for that matter. If Sherlock didn't do anything, Moriarty had the power to endanger the world. Even if Sherlock and I died, if we brought Moriarty down with us, it would be worth it.

I nodded. Sherlock slowly pointed the revolver at the bomb, lying on the ground twenty or so feet away.

The few seconds it took for Sherlock's finger to pull the trigger stretched into several million years. It was at least long enough for me to switch position. I watched Sherlock's finger tighten on the trigger, as if in slow motion. As soon the gun went off, the powder and sparks making a slow motion Ritchie-esque explosion.

I hurled myself, with all the might my legs could muster. I bowled into Sherlock the exact moment the bullet hit the bomb.

If I could just hit the pool before the bomb ripped the world apart, then it was at least possible Sherlock and I could escape death.

I held my breath, hoping against hope Sherlock was doing the same. He made no struggle against my tackle; obviously he'd deduced that I would make some sort of heroic attempt at saving us.

A crushing whiteness enveloped us. I'd experienced such things in the war, of course, but never at such a close proximity. I couldn't do anything. All my senses were overloaded. All I could see and hear was rushing white. I think it was so loud, my hearing had shut down.

All I was really conscious of, at that moment, was the feeling of Sherlock and the crushing fear of not surviving this. And then the fact that we hadn't hit the water in the pool yet.

I knew that time was going slowly, but that slowly? No, that wouldn't work. I might have tried to open my eyes to see what was going on, or maybe to check if we were both dead already, or something. Either way, I couldn't see a thing, due to either the whiteness of the explosion, or that my face was buried in Sherlock's black jacket.

It must have been about then that I let out my breath.

Right after I exhaled, we hit the water.

We must have sunk about ten feet. The significance of that didn't even hit home, even when my lungs almost burst from trying to get to the surface. Sherlock was a lot heavier than his physique would let you know. He was also extremely awkward to carry.

My head finally broke the surface, but it was either too bright to see anything or my vision was damaged quite extensively from the explosion.

These thoughts rushed through my head with no order. Adrenaline made my thoughts whirl about my head the way I fancied they did for Sherlock when he was bored.

I think I first subconsciously realized something was very wrong when my feet hit the muddy bottom of the pool. Somewhere in my brain, it probably registered that pools didn't have muddy bottoms.

At the moment however, my army medic training took over and I didn't think. Pulling myself and my companion out of the water was no easy task, as Sherlock seemed to have doubled in weight, but of course I managed.

Tending to my friend was higher on the list than myself, even though my ears were rushing and I felt extremely lightheaded. I bent down to check if he was still breathing, or if I needed to administer CPR. My numb fingers felt for his wrist, or maybe his neck, I'm not positive.

My bleary eyes saw the impossible, my fingers felt the impossible at least a minute before my brain finally caught up.

It wasn't Sherlock collapsed on the sand next to me.

It was a great leathery black dragon.

Chapter 2: Sherlock

As taken from Sherlock Holmes' perspective on the matter of Berk, and of Becoming A Dragon.

I could still feel the rush of horror from when John stepped out of that dressing room.

My first thought, was, naturally, why was he here?

But before he even started talking, Moriarty's words in his mouth, I knew exactly what was happening.

I might not have foreseen what happened next, but at least in that moment I felt an acute sense of guilt. Indeed, John was working with me, but we'd really only known each other for a few weeks. He didn't exactly deserve to share my grave.

When he jumped on Moriarty though, I was struck by the possibility that maybe he felt the same for me as I did him; that we'd known each other for far longer than we actually had.

It was a scary moment, that. Things slowed down and sped up as I battled my wits and vocabulary with Moriarty's. (I would have said tongue, but I know those creepy fangirl shippers are out there, waiting to pounce when they read this record.)

(Ship it as you please, however, I had to get that bomb off John. No matter how we felt about each other, he really didn't deserve to die.)

"...People might talk."

I caught the end of his statement.

"People do little else." I rubbed my head with the object I held in my hand. John's widened eyes told me that it was probably not a good idea, but I needed to collect myself.

Take it as you will, as soon as John was out of bomb's way, my head cleared. Moriarty would be back, in a minute or two, I knew. We weren't very different at all.

His singsong voice floated out into the room and bounced off the pool. "Just kidding!"

I saw the laser hit me as I pointed the revolver (John's?) at Moriarty. Regular Mexican standoff.

Maybe it didn't have to be though. My eye caught the flashing lights of the bomb that, minutes ago, had threatened to blow my friend to pieces.

That was when I looked at John. A split second glance that I knew he would understand.

He nodded.

That was all I needed. John would die with me tonight, there was no getting around it. I pointed the revolver at the bomb and pulled the trigger.

Something slammed into me from the side.

John.

Of course.

He wouldn't be able to die without some showy act of heroism.

Well, if we got out of this alive, I'd owe him my life.

Funny thought, that.

I let my body go limp, knowing what John was trying to succeed. If we were in the pool as the bomb exploded, damage done to us would be significantly less.

I held my breath, waiting for the impact. I couldn't hear or see anything, just what seemed to be white noise. I knew my eardrums had been overwhelmed by the sound of the explosion.

Were we dead? Was it over? We hadn't hit the pool yet. Or had we? My mind seemed to be moving faster than time was progressing.

My breath was still held, so maybe only a few seconds had gone by. John's face was buried in my chest, he was so short. I felt him exhale.

No, I wanted to tell him. We've not hit the pool yet.

The impact of the water hit me in the back and neck, like a belly flop done from thirty feet up. Maybe higher. The force was enough to drive all the air out of my body and knock me out.

The last thought I had was, naturally, the hope that John was smart enough to get us out of whatever jam he found when he got us out of the pool.

The next thing I was conscious of was darkness. Appropriate, I suppose. I could hear perfectly well, surprisingly well, for someone who's just been though an explosion.

My eyes were shut, and I opened them a crack. John was standing above me, holding a very nasty wound together with his hands. I shut my eyes again. I didn't want to see him hurting, particularly when he didn't deserve to be.

Through the noise John made, binding his wound, I could hear other noises. Primarily, birds.

This took a minute to register in my head.

Then I heard something else. It was a crunching noise, like someone walking over leaves. Strangely, I could tell the noises were being made about two hundred feet away, behind the boulders that seemed to ring this clearing.

I waited, my breath shallow, as whatever creatures they were entered the clearing. There was a young boy, and behind him, a huge winged lizard.

My surprise at this was quickly overtaken by the more immediate problem of John being severely injured, and the look on the winged lizard's (dragon's? No, that was impossible) face was not at all friendly.

I don't know what happened next, but I suppose I tried to knock John over onto the grass that surrounded the pond we must have fallen into. My mind was on overdrive, something that very rarely happens.

I got to my feet, quite quickly, I guess, because John's eyes grew wide and he tried to get away.

He hadn't even noticed the threat that was entering the clearing at this very moment. Stupid John.

He made some sort of cry, and that was the moment I realized that, while he was short, he was never three feet shorter than me.

I looked down at myself, a split second glance.

Leathery blackish skin, short scaly arms (paws?) and a long tail.

What?

The danger was coming closer however, and I didn't want John to get further hurt, so I launched myself at him, probably meaning to cover him up, or maybe just make him a smaller target, I don't know.

The effect was immediate, and sadly, irreversible. John fell to his knees the second I realized I had claws. Sharp claws. The fresh blood pouring out of deep gashes on his back were more than I could stand.

The boy coming into the clearing, at least, looked harmless. He would probably be able to help.

I knew I wasn't. I ran (flew?) into the undergrowth as fast as I could.

John would be okay if he wasn't around me. I would hide here and try to figure something out.

John would be okay.

He wouldn't die.

He wouldn't.

Chapter 3: John

As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes in a land called Berk.

I stared at this impossible thing, this dragon on the ground beside me, for what must have been several minutes.

Obviously, my mind, though not as coldly logical as my companions, was not one to grasp this scenario. Despite my lightheadedness, I tried to make sense of it. However, nothing I thought of at that moment made any sense to my mind.

It was about then that I realized I was standing in a rapidly accumulating puddle of blood. Clapping my hand to my shoulder, I felt a large piece of shrapnel, blood pouring out around it. This explained my feeling of lightheadedness, which was growing stronger.

I might have made noise, or I might not have. Pulling out the large piece of wood was rather painful. I thought I might have kept quiet, due to army conditioning and what-have-you, and I suppose ripping my shirt apart to bind the wound was slightly loud, but no noise I made could have provoked what happened next.

I had just finished tightly tying the cloth around my shoulder when the unconscious dragon at my feet awoke. Its actions were not unlike Sherlock's, now that I dwell on it, but at the moment they were extremely manic, and quite terrifying for someone significantly smaller standing next to it.

With an extremely feral growl, the dragon launched itself at my figure. With a cry, I dropped to the ground. Not as quickly as I would have liked, and the dragon's claws caught me across the back.

Needless to say, they were beyond sharp, and I didn't feel a thing. I could feel the wetness seeping out the back of my shirt, and that was enough to know I'd been irreparably wounded.

As I succumbed to darkness, my last thought was, naturally, for Sherlock.

What I didn't expect to do was wake up. Usually, you're taught that when you die, there are no second chances.

Obviously, I must have gotten one. Even though my eyes were still shut, I could feel the ache that spread over my entire body.

Maybe not a new life then. Someone had found me. Obviously someone with medical talents, as I was still myself, felt relatively normal and could function.

I must have groaned about then, unable to keep quiet with the pain I was enduring.

"Hiccup! 'E's comin' 'round!" A gleeful voice cried, in a cadence I could not begin to describe or match.

My worry at this was then quickly overtaken by the fact that I was in a place where they named children after bodily functions. Who would they call for next? Flatulence?

I felt a slight pressure near my elbow, and I opened my eyes. It was, I could see after my eyes adjusted, a teenage boy with floppy brown hair.

"Nice to see you're awake." The boy's voice was much clearer than the first voice, and sounded like it was slightly Americanized Scottish.

I cleared my throat, dry after sleeping for so long. "Can you tell me where I am?"

"Musta been a pretty hard crash," the boy said with a crooked grin. "You're in Berk."

"Berk?" My knowledge of geography had begun and ended with memorizing London's back avenues; Sherlock's idea of important knowledge.

"Yeah, Berk." The boy grinned wider. "It's in the coldest part of the sea in the loneliest part of the world."

It was then I realized what the boy was wearing. "Is that a Viking hat?"

The boy nodded, then laughed nervously. "Yup." He didn't disclose any more information.

"Interesting." I couldn't make any sense of this place. I wished Sherlock were here.

"Could I ask you a question?" The boy leaned closer to me, a bright light in his eyes.

I cleared my throat again. "Sure."

"Where did you get a Night Fury?"

It was about a day longer before I felt good enough to get out of bed. The boy, Hiccup, as I learned his name was, stuck next to me, as if I had the answers to the universe.

As it turned out later, perhaps I did, in a roundabout sense.

As soon as I could walk without major pain, Hiccup decided the time had come for me to answer all his questions, as he'd been answering all mine.

As I found out from his stories and answers to my questions, Berk was a Viking village. He had no idea where it was in relation to Britain, which he didn't even know existed. Actually, to be more exact, he thought it was a type of pastry.

Anyway, dragons are a fact of life here.

It wasn't real, I deduced that night, after I'd recovered from the shock of it all. It was some drug-induced nightmare, and I would wake up soon, and I'd be in the hospital, wrapped like an Egyptian mummy in white bandages.

Sherlock would be there when I woke, most likely, as well as Lestrade. Hopefully my wounds wouldn't have been life-threatening.

Sherlock would be fine as well, as I would have borne him up to the surface of the pool, after I'd shielded him from the brunt of the explosion.

Thinking of his complaints about slight bruises made me smile.

Hiccup poked his head into the room. "Gobber says 'time t' ge' outside.'"

"Excellent." I set down the papers I'd been writing on and took up my cane, a wood affair, inlaid with black dragon designs. Sitting inside gets boring after awhile, especially after the lifestyle I'd been introduced to.

The door opened, and the daylight burned my eyes. It was nice to breathe fresh air after such a long recovery. Well, two days cooped up in windowless house with no company but an antsy teenage boy made it seem longer.

"The dragons are harmless." Hiccup told me, not for the first time. "Nothing to worry about."

"Right." I nodded, and took my first real look at the village of Berk.

There were dragons everywhere. They were swarming over houses, cooking Viking food, watching Viking babies along with their own broods.

Hiccup whistled, and a great black shape whirled down from the roof.

"Hey buddy!" Hiccup rubbed the dragon's nose. He pointed to me. "This is John."

The dragon coked its head and allowed Hiccup to scratch under its neck while it regarded me.

The features were eerily reminiscent of felines, perhaps of an overly excited domestic housecat. However, as I watched, its body language could really only be described as canine. While it was sitting still at least. When it leapt back up on the roof, it was back to being a large cat.

"That's Toothless," Hiccup said, with his trademark crooked smile. "He's my dragon."

"Yours?" I asked, interested in spite of myself.

"Well, yeah." Hiccup rolled his eyes. "Haven't I been telling you? Everybody on Berk has their own dragon. Even you."

Chapter 4: Sherlock

As taken from Sherlock Holmes' perspective on the matter of Berk, and of Becoming A Dragon.

I will admit, the hours that followed my accidental attack on John were not restful. I'd assume my cast in the role of 'sociopath' indeed, my self-cast role, makes one believe I would not be one to worry about someone else. The most well-known online encylopᴂdia, in fact, even cites symptoms of my 'disorder' as 'callous unconcern for others.'

Well, even as a child I'd been known to undermine everyone's ideas of me.

Despite this fact, I needed to use these hours to deduce what had happened to my friend and I. And yes, I used the word friend. I think that if I was as worried as my head and, indeed, my heart, felt, friend was not too strong a word to be used here.

But, back to the immediate problem. I was a dragon.

This was enough to make me laugh actually. Sherlock Holmes, the most logical person in Britain, nay, in the world, had been transformed into a dragon, the epitome of make-believe.

Well, if I could actually laugh, I would. As it were, I huffed slightly when I thought of it.

It was hard to decide what to do first. Should I investigate what happened to me? Should I find John? Should I try to find out how we got here?

It was obvious, using a slightly clichéd line, that we weren't in London anymore. Using the landscape was of course, the most feasible explanation, for people of average intelligence. But I could tell by the air, the way it was easier to breathe.

On second thought, maybe I should concentrate on the smaller things. Very well, I would concentrate on myself.

The clearing was abandoned once again, John having been borne away on the back of the other dragon, the boy looking panicked, glancing behind him to where I'd disappeared; no doubt nervous that I would jump and attack him as well.

I tried to slink out of the underbrush, but fell on my face. Becoming a quadruped after a lifetime of walking on two legs is not easy. It was easier if I settled into a rhythm, not unlike playing the violin. You had to get the right motions. I couldn't move without thinking yet, but I could at least move. I would only fall once. Mistakes at moments such as these were unacceptable.

Once out in the light, I took another look at myself. Of course, my original deductions were perfectly sound, but now I could look with a more critical eye.

The reptile I had either transformed into, or been forced into the body of (both horrifying (inevitable?) conclusions to this slightly, well, interesting case) was actually rather large. The body, including the tail was about twenty-five feet long. Ground to shoulder was about five.

I gingerly moved parts of my new anatomy that hadn't existed before, namely, the wings. Unfurled, they were a staggering thirty-five feet across.

Attempting to fly right now, although extremely tempting, could very well be suicidal.

Extremely dangerous.

I eyed the cliffs.

If I could calculate how the wings worked...

Using those dangerous claws, I made my ungainly way up a medium-sized boulder. It was only about ten feet up. It would be easy. I unfurled the wings and waited for a slight updraft.

I jumped lightly.

The landing left much to be desired. I tried to rub my snout, where the rest of my body weight had apparently landed.

The short feeling of being aloft, however, was unrivaled. I couldn't wait to actually fly for real.

Maybe this wasn't so bad after all.

A mysterious smile would be the best suited to the moment. Of course, it was almost impossible to smile in this body. The best I could do was twist my snout and nonexistent lips into some strange shape.

I looked around. Hopefully no one saw that.

That would be an issue. I would have to find different ways to express my emotions, not using extraneous words.

But wait.

A terrible thought occurred to me.

I couldn't speak, could I?

Chapter 5: John

As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes in a land called Berk.

Hiccup had been retelling the stories of his heroism while I was stuck recovering. Luckily for me, recovery only took a day and a night.

Don't get me wrong, of course his stories were interesting, and gave a lot of insight toward the way people acted here. It was the way he told his stories, with the maximum amount of hand gestures, and leaping off his stool, and mimicking the cadences of the other Viking's speech. (Which I will, however, admit was quite amusing.) It got a bit tiring after a while.

So I knew from his stories that everyone in Berk had made particularly good friends with one or two dragons, and these dragons were quite attached to their various humans. All the younger citizens of Berk had their hands full, training their own dragon to respond to them and work with them.

I also knew that the only people who had dragons were indigenous Berkians. No matter how I got here, be it through time vortex, an alternate universe, whatever, it was practically impossible that I would have my own dragon.

I told Hiccup as much.

"That's stupid." He glanced at me for a second. We were traipsing through the verdant green forest, on some invisible path that Hiccup claimed to see.

"What's stupid?" I asked in confusion. "The fact that I'm not from here? The fact that I really can't have my own dragon?"

Hiccup shrugged. "Of course you're not from here. Your weird accent is proof of that."

"Thanks."

"Sorry." He flashed an apologetic grin. "But you really do have your own dragon."

"How did I get it?" I asked him.

"I dunno." Hiccup shrugged again. "But it was there, with you, when Toothless and I found you."

"When you found me..." I didn't remember, and told him as much.

"Oh yeah." Hiccup graced me with another sheepish grin. "You were passed out."

"Well, you want to tell me?"

"Sure." Hiccup looked forward, into the bright green of the forest. "Nearly there... Anyway, Toothless and I had just gone into the clearing, cuz that's our clearing, you know, from when we first got to be friends, right? Well, you were laying by the edge of the pond with your dragon looking really worried and standing over you, and you were bleeding all over the place. Your dragon looked up at us, and it did look rather scary, but then it took off into the underbrush like a black streak of lightning. But really, the first thing I saw about the dragon was that it was a Nightfury, like Toothless, which of course, you probably know don't live around here, at all, which is kinda disappointing, cuz-" He stopped for breath.

"I see." I really didn't see, but whatever.

"So your dragon's a Nightfury." Hiccup finished. "The rarest type of dragon ever."

He looked about for a minute. "We're here," he whispered.

"Where?" I found myself matching his volume.

"To see your dragon of course."

He pointed to a wall of boulders, with barely enough room to squeeze between them. Hiccup did it with no problem, and I've had more than my fair share of hiding in small spaces. (You're actually right, Sherlock, now that I try, it's quite difficult to word things in ways that can't really be taken as some sort of creepy reference.)

The boulders opened onto the same valley I found myself in little more than a day ago. Now that I looked at it, it was a stunningly beautiful place. The pond we'd fallen into, not actually as big as I remembered. The soft sandy ground reaching into the pond and the soft grass everywhere else. Quite beautiful.

Hiccup hopped lightly down the relatively steep slope into the valley. I made my slower way down. By the time I looked up, Hiccup was poking his nose into the bushes and undergrowth of the valley.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, watching him poke and shake the bushes.

"Trying to get your dragon out." He kicked the bushes. "Maybe he's not actually in here."

I looked around the small valley. "Could he be somewhere-" My eye caught a flash of black and locked on. I pulled at Hiccup's fur vest. "There!"

He whirled around to see what I had spotted. The dragon, identical to Toothless, was perched on a boulder, not thirty feet away.

Hiccup grinned. "Excellent. Does he come when he's called?"

"How should I know?" I asked. "I never set eyes on him before yesterday."

"Whaddya mean you never set eyes on him?" Hiccup asked. "He's your dragon."

"No he's not." I shook my head. "He attacked me! That's how I got hurt!"

"But dragons don't attack people!" Hiccup said furiously. "That's impossible!"

"Well, obviously not." I was starting to get slightly annoyed now. "Because I was hurt in my fall and I made a noise and he attacked me."

"Are you sure?" Hiccup asked with narrowed eyes. "Because I really don't think that happened."

"I can assure you it-" My eyes, drifting back to the dragon after glaring at Hiccup, found the dragon much closer than before.

"Shh." Hiccup told me. "Don't move."

"I wasn't planning on it," I hissed back. The dragon's nose was less than five inches away from my own.

I looked into the gray-blue eyes of the dragon, frozen with fear for the first time in a long time.

Those eyes looked awfully familiar.

I was struck with an idea. An impossible idea.

I reviewed what had happened during the aftermath of the explosion. I had tackled Sherlock, definitely Sherlock, and tried to hit the pool. I hadn't let go. We'd hit the pond and I pulled out a dragon.

So, either Sherlock was on the bottom of the pond and I'd somehow lugged up a dormant dragon sleeping in the pond, or...

It was utterly impossible, but-

"Sherlock?" I whispered.

Chapter 6: Sherlock

As taken from Sherlock Holmes' perspective on the matter of Berk and Becoming A Dragon.

Finally.

Even if John was a soldier, trained in the art of obeying, not questioning, and the world of the hive mind, he was still human, and therefore had the amazing capacity to accept the impossible.

Me? I had the capacity to accept the impossible only if it was the only thing left.

He (John) seemed to be doing rather well, given the fact that he almost bled to death. Maybe it was a trick of the soldier-boys. Pretend to die and no one else will hurt you.

Okay, I was over thinking this too much. I concentrated on the fact that John had just recognized that I had been turned into a dragon. I was debating the possibility that he would actually recognize me, as turning into a dragon isn't really the kind of the thing you see day to day. But John was the kind of person who understood things like that. Things you don't see every day. Why else would he have been a soldier? Why else would he have agreed to see that case of the pink lady through?

I dragged my mind back to the problem at hand. One of these days, my mind was going to eat itself, and that was not going to be pretty. Imagine John, coming out into the main room at 221B, seeing me sprawled on the floor, with my head-

"Sherlock, you-"

John's voice dragged me back to reality for the third time. I had to concentrate dammit.

"You are Sherlock, right?"

The inability to speak, once a minor problem due to my incessant habit of talking to myself, was now quite detrimental. The one thing I wanted to do was roll my eyes and tell John that, yes, of course it was me, there is no other explanation.

Of course, I couldn't do that. But I settled for rolling my eyes, which I knew I could do.

It went to show how amazing John really was when he recognized me from that simple moment. And also how mind-numbingly normal he really was when he was sent off into gales of laughter because I, Sherlock Holmes, couldn't actually speak.

"I'm sorry," he gasped, wiping his eyes. "You can't shoot out sarcastic comments. You won't be able to tell anyone how stupid they are!" This sent him off again.

This was, irritatingly, the one thing I wanted to tell him right now.

Once he'd finally calmed down, he started asking more questions, watching me carefully for the way I reacted.

Of course, the next obvious question was harder to answer using body language.

"So." John began, with long-suffering pursed lips. "What happened to us exactly?"

Naturally, a day was not quite sufficient in determining what happened to us, but I had managed to come up with a series of hypothesis, which, while scarily illogical, did suffice to explain why we had landed here.

What I wanted to tell John was this:

There are several scientists out in the world, usually hidden in dark corners by their embarrassed colleagues, whose life's work is to prove the existence of all the phenomenon that their colleagues don't believe in and the general public likes to make up stories about. One of their theories is on the subject of wormholes and weak spots in the space time continuum.

Obviously, I didn't know much more than that, as everything about the subject was poppycock, naturally. But unless John and I had dreamed up our existence in London (not likely), here we were, proof that these strange anomalies did, in fact, exist.

Two paragraphs later, I was still unable to speak. John was looking rather worried, about me, or himself, the both of us, or my sanity, I was unsure. Probably a mixture of both. He did seem to be the type of person who would-

I dragged my mind back around. This was getting out of hand. Concentrating on the matter at hand, I turned toward the expanse of soft brown dirt leading down to the lake. Or pond.

Carefully, I maneuvered my hand/paw/extension thing so I could write in the dirt. John watched me working for several seconds, before it became apparent that I was transcribing the two above paragraphs in the dirt for him to read. He turned away, back to the young boy, who, I presume, was still standing there. I didn't bother to look.

I could still hear their conversation.

"Why are you asking your dragon questions?" The boy's voice was high-pitched, like he'd barely reached puberty.

"It's all a bit confusing." John replied, after a moment.

"You're, um, talking to your dragon like he's smarter than you are." Hiccup tried to explain better. "Why?"

I did my best to laugh. Almost. If I knew how to laugh, I would have. As it were, I coughed up a ball of purple flame.

"Sherlock?" John asked. "You all right?"

At least I could nod. I did so, and gestured for him to go away.

I almost heard Hiccup's eyes widen.

"Your dragon-"

"It really is too complicated to get into right now." John sighed. "But I'll tell you later. Maybe."

He looked at my handiwork as I moved back from the soft brown sand, now covered in small letters. It was the entire two paragraphs written out in the sand.

I sighed, and wiped my paws together. I wondered if it was at all possible to grasp a pen in my paws. I scrutinized them. No opposable thumbs.

Damn.

I would need to find some way of communicating that didn't involve getting my paws dirty.

As John read, a frown growing deeper on his forehead, Hiccup moved closer to me.

I glanced out the corner of my eye.

He gulped, and sat down beside me.

Currently, I was curled up, much like a cat, on the grass surrounding the dirt. Hiccup reached over and touched my head.

I'm really not used to random people touching me. It quite frankly creeps me out. So I jumped back with a growl.

Hiccup jumped back with a small cry.

"Behave yourself." John didn't even turn around.

How long did it take him to read, anyway?

I resumed my curled position, a few feet further away from Hiccup, who went to look at the sand with John.

"What are those weird squiggles?" Hiccup asked. "Is your dragon an artist? Toothless is too."

My annoyance at being called 'your dragon' waged quick war with the curiosity of this Toothless character. The annoyance won, and I moved, almost too smoothly, it seemed, to right behind John.

"Jesus!" John jumped. "Sherlock!"

"That's his name?" Hiccup asked with interest. "Sherlock?"

John floundered for a moment.

I nodded emphatically.

Hiccup looked between the two of us, and decided to take my word for it. Well, not word. Ugh.

"Bit of a stupid name, isn't it?" Hiccup asked.

John raised an eyebrow. I wrote in the sand with my claw, Toothless?

John read it out. "Sherlock wants you to know that Toothless is just as stupid."

Huh. I hadn't realized that John could read out what I'd written. Good. He needed something else to do. This made things slightly better, even if he was incapable of putting the correct amount of sarcastic emphasis on every other word.

Hiccup crossed his arms, looking annoyed. "Look, Sherlock, I-"

I tuned out the rest of what he was saying in favour of an annoying whistling sound that reverberated through my head. It was getting louder and louder.

I looked up at the sky. There was something small and black falling quite quickly toward us. On its current trajectory, it was going to fall right on Hiccup's head.

I let it fall.

Hiccup fell to the ground, temporarily KO'ed. I looked with interest at the thing that had knocked him out.

It was a revolver. Specifically, the exact revolver that I had blown up the bomb with.

That was a bit odd.

Unless, of course, the wormhole had swallowed everything in the explosion up, to deposit it here. Hmm. That was an interesting thought.

Everything.

And everyone.

Which meant, if the revolver was anything to show for it, there was somebody missing.

Somebody, who, from some sort of strange timey-wimeyness, hadn't fallen through yet.

As if this could get any worse.

Chapter 7: Mycroft

As taken from the confidential files of Mycroft Holmes on the matter of Berk

Worry is such a funny emotion. Emotions in general are funny, which is why I limit myself to three a day. But worry will always be there, ticking away in my subconscious.

Worry about Sherlock, naturally. Constantly. Tick tock.

That night, when everything changed so drastically, I think he sent me a text. Probably. That night was all sort of a blur. It was after midnight after all.

Well, I guess that wouldn't really matter. I rarely sleep.

I thought, foolishly, at one point, that having John Watson around my brother would be a good influence. Perhaps sleeping once a week wasn't out of the question, maybe after a few months of being around Watson.

Obviously not.

I didn't know that when I got the text though. I'm not even sure when my brother sent it, but it was just a few words long.

Pool. Bomb.

I trust you can come pick us up?

Well, our bodies anyway.

SH

His attempt at humour was not appreciated. I put everything in the government on hold, as this was slightly more important.

I only had one little brother after all.

I got a car, calmly raced to the scene of the crime, as the case may have been.

I was still a block away when, it seemed, London gave a shudder. Brakes screeched. I rounded the corner.

Flames were pouring out of the pool building. Glass shattered everywhere. The building seemed in danger of collapsing.

And Sherlock had been inside that building.

It was all a bit of a blank after that. I vaguely remember entering the building, calling for Sherlock, calling for Watson, kicking at rubble. Another man joined me, Detective Inspector Lestrade (marginally competent), and we called and searched a while more.

It was near the pool, I think. There was a black piece of cloth sticking out from under a very large piece of rubble. My heart stopped. Then Lestrade was right there, and we were shoving the rubble away, and somebody slipped.

Whoever it was, the other tried to grab them. It only succeeded in propelling us into the pool.

We hit the water after a deceptively long time. I began to wonder if my mind had started betraying me.

It was quite spectacular. The impact, that is. I imagined a ten foot spray of water launched up in the air.

If I imagined, which I don't.

I don't remember anything after that, which is probably because I passed out.

For the first time in my life actually. How undignified. If Sherlock had seen he would never let me live it down.

It was only nice because the sense of worry went away with everything else.

When I woke up, John was staring into my face.

"Mycroft!" He looked more relieved than I thought I deserved. "Sherlock, he's awake!"

Sherlock was here too? The worry in my head subsided and increased at the same time. How was that even possible?

A huge black thing with eyes came into my field of vision. I had a moment of complete mind-whiteness. A dragon?

I closed my eyes. This was impossible, and impossible things did not exist. Therefore, by process of elimination, this was a dream. What sort of dream, I actually wasn't quite sure.

This is why I hated legwork. Too many loose ends to figure out and no way to replace the management with someone more competent.

Sherlock had gotten all the energy of the family.

If I was in a dream, why couldn't my subconscious have thought up something better than a dragon for God's sake?

Chapter 8: John

As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes in a land called Berk.

Kneeling next to Hiccup, trying to get him to wake up, trying to get Sherlock to realize what he did wasn't nice and thanking the heavens that Hiccup was out cold was one of the rather more difficult times I have found myself in.

Sherlock was poking at the black thing that had fallen out of the sky, and, even if he was a dragon, I could tell something was terribly wrong.

"What's the problem?" I asked him, wanting to know, but dreading the answer.

Sherlock shook his head and stared up at the sky.

He had a rather striking profile. His ears were somehow part of a ruff around the top of his head, which seemed to float up and down depending on his mood. His eyes were huge, and looked like glassy orbs filled with storm clouds.

He was huge. Standing so close to him seemed dangerous somehow, even though, written at the bottom of his explanation in the sand, were the words "I'm sorry for hurting you. I'll be more careful."

His tail swished back and forth across the ground, and I wished, for the first time in my life, that I had learned more about animals.

Hiccup moaned at the same time Sherlock perked his ears up. Sherlock was so laughably adorable in dragon form I found myself hiding a smile.

Suddenly, in a whirl of wings and black, Sherlock was standing over us. Protecting us, it wasn't hard to tell from his growl and raised ears.

A loud splash came to my ears then. Very loud. Like when Sherlock and I had fallen through the wormhole into the pond.

Sherlock moved out of my vision. I could see two heads making their way to the edge of the pool. Apparently Sherlock didn't want to be seen, and he disappeared in a whirl of black into the underbrush.

After a minute, I could recognize one of the faces. It was Lestrade.

"Oh my God." Without a second thought, I waded into the pond and swam out to him, as he was apparently bringing the second person to shore. It was Mycroft. Passed out.

We dragged him up onto the beach.

"John." Lestrade panted, sprawling out on the beach as well. "My God, what happened? You were dead!"

"What?" This was new.

"We were in the pool building. There was a coat. A shirt. Sherlock's." He stopped for breath. "We fell, I think." His eyes bugged out. "We should be in the pool. The pool, in London. Where are we?"

He was in shock.

"We're in a place called Berk." I did a cursory check over Mycroft, just making sure no bones were broken. He was fine. I didn't really like touching him. It seemed the type of thing I could be executed for.

Lestrade's eyes bugged out even further as he looked behind me. He made a strangled noise and passed out as well.

I turned to see Sherlock, snaking his way across the grass. There was no other way to describe the way he moved. It was a combination of slithering, walking, running and hopping. It was amazing to watch.

"What was that?"

Great. Hiccup was awake.

"You were hit on the head with something." I told him. "It knocked you out. You should be fine."

Hiccup shook his head. "Did Sherlock do it?"

"No."

Hiccup frowned, turning to Mycroft and Lestrade. "Who in Thor's name are those people?"

"Friends," I supplied. "Good friends. From Britain."

"Um." Hiccup said. "Listen, I- I think I might have to go see Gobber. I'm supposed to be working for him, and I really don't want to get in trouble and I think Toothless might be missing me as well and I might be back."

"Go ahead." I waved my hand. "We'll probably come into the village soon."

"Cool." Hiccup scrambled across the grass and disappeared.

Mycroft gasped, coming to.

I scrambled over. "Mycroft!"

Sherlock perked up behind me.

"Sherlock, he's awake!" I called behind me.

He scampered over, peering at his brother's face.

Mycroft closed his eyes.

"Stay here." I warned him. "Don't pass out."

He shook his head minutely.

After a moment's hesitation I grabbed his arm and shook it. "Mycroft."

He didn't move, but I could see his eyes flicking back and forth behind his eyelids, just like the way Sherlock's did when he was deducing something.

"Sherlock's got everything figured out." I moved to sit beside him.

"Where is Sherlock?" He finally spoke.

I looked over at where Sherlock sat in the grass. He nodded.

"He turned into a dragon." I cringed at my own words.

Mycroft gave a harsh laugh. "And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"If you'd open your eyes, you'll see there's no other choice." I told him quietly. "Sherlock wrote everything down. You can read it."

Finally he did open his eyes. I breathed a sigh of relief.

He didn't look toward Sherlock, who, I realized, had disappeared again.

"Where is everything written down?" He sat up slowly.

"There." I pointed. The words were slightly worn out, but still readable.

My attention was taken up for a few minutes by Lestrade coming to. He floundered about, babbling about the dragon he saw. I made him sit up and relax.

"Very well." Mycroft came back over to us. "I suppose I might be able to accept that."

He had his umbrella back. When had he got that?

"It is an interesting proposition, but I might have no choice to accept it..." He trailed off, looking behind me.

"Accept what?" Lestrade gripped my arm. "What are you talking about?"

"Turn around, Detective Inspector." Mycroft's voice was dry. "A picture is worth a thousand words. Or in this case, about one hundred fifty."

I turned with Lestrade.

Sherlock was about thirty feet away, crouching on the ground. His tail swished back and forth, but his eyes were wide.

Mycroft looked at the dragon resignedly, while Lestrade drew in a sharp breath.

"Bloody hell." He scrambled to his feet. "Is that real?"

"We're seeing it, aren't we?" I got to my feet as well. "And I've been here for almost three days. I've exhausted any possibility that this is some sort of dream."

Sherlock scampered closer and closer until he was right next to us. Still taking it slowly as to not frighten the two men.

"See?" I said. "It's fine."

I reached out to pet his ears. Slowly. I still hadn't forgotten what those claws could do.

Luckily, Sherlock let me. His scales were rough and silky at the same time. The colour, up this close, wasn't actually black. It was like every scale was a different shade of the night sky. It was rather stunning.

Sherlock leaned into my hand. Apparently he liked it.

Mycroft sniffed disdainfully. "You're quite positive this is Sherlock?"

"Yes." I nodded. There was no doubt in my mind any longer.

Mycroft wouldn't be so easy to convince, I could tell. So could Sherlock. He jumped away from my hand, grabbed Mycroft's umbrella in one fluid movement and started furiously writing in the dirt with it.

He stepped away from his handiwork after a second. Mycroft, Lestrade and I crowded around the small blurb in the sand.

Hello Mycroft. Was it a good dessert buffet?

SH

Chapter 9: Lestrade

As taken from the personal experiences of Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade on the matter of Berk

This was completely confusing. Having Sherlock around often is, but at least in those cases I can have respite every once and a while with the comfort of my house, wife and a pint.

Here, wherever here was, was no respite. Forests covered everything. The air was nothing like London, although that detail was rather nice.

John and I were making our way to the village that he somehow knew existed, while Sherlock caught up with Mycroft. The threats that were no doubt occurring down in that little valley were probably curdling the air.

"So~" I began, once we were out of the Holmes' brother's earshot. "Maybe you could explain to me in a normal way what's really happening?"

John chuckled. "Sure. Basically we got sucked into another dimension and timeline, where Vikings and dragons live together."

This sounded like some sort of adventure novel. "Um. Right. What are we going to do about it?"

"I haven't the faintest." John shook his head. "But we've got the two smartest people in the world stuck right along with us, so we aren't in bad shape. Let them puzzle it out for several days."

"Days?" I felt my heart sink. "It'll take days?"

"It's not exactly the Sunday crossword." John looked out of the corner of his eye.

"Dammit, John." I was slightly panicked. "People'll think we're dead!"

"Time moves faster here," he responded. "We were here almost three days before you two came tumbling down."

"Right." This did little to assuage my fears. "...You aren't worried?"

He laughed again, this time without humor. "Well, I don't really have anyone that'll care if I'm dead or not. Why else would I have joined the army?"

"Oh." I cringed slightly. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" John shrugged. "I don't mind. All my friends are here with me, in this so-called adventure novel."

I couldn't help but grin.

"Hey, look at that." John pointed. "The village."

I peered down his arm and saw what he was pointing at.

"That hardly deserves the name of 'village'" I grumbled as we made our way towards it. "There's what, ten houses?"

John chuckled. "Don't tell the Vikings that. They'll probably replace one of your limbs with iron. And their surgery technique leaves a lot to be desired."

That thought left me in scared silence for the last thousand feet or so. Iron limbs?

The last few hundred feet were out in the open, and as soon as we emerged from the forest, we saw a teenage Viking hurtling toward us.

"John!" the mini Viking shouted. He looked vaguely familiar. "I was just about to take Toothless and come get you guys. We're having a welcome party now that you're awake!"

"A-" John seemed at a loss for words. "A part-"

"Yeah." Hiccup ran over John's words without apparently hearing him. "A Welcome to Berk party. Y'know, with beer and dancing and music. My dad's arranging it."

"Beer?" Suddenly the prospect of being stuck here got slightly brighter.

"And your dragons have to come too, and those new people that apparently fell from the sky, and-"

Suddenly he stopped and gave me a funny look. "You're one of those people, aren't you?"

I nodded. "At least, I think so."

"Huh." This didn't seem to matter. "Well, are you finally coming to the village? You're not allowed in the great hall, but you get to come and stay at my house while they're setting up the party. C'mon, you guys can meet Toothless and I still need to learn the new people's names."

He chattered on as we walked over the field to his house atop the hill. I paused for a minute, looking over the village. It was rather interesting, perched on the edge of a cliff that seemed to go straight down to the ocean I could just barely see. There were a lot more than 10 houses, it was obvious. All the Vikings I could see, which weren't actually that many, did seem extremely happy with their dragons tagging along behind them.

"C'mon Greg." John's voice was slightly harried. "You've got to meet Toothless. Also Hiccup says there might be tea."

Tea. What a wonderful thought. I quickly entered the large house.

It was comfortable, and warm. While outside was by no means cold, the fires burning in three different fireplaces made everything seem okay. And that was what I really needed.

"Is your dragon and your other friend going to show up soon?" Hiccup asked, rifling through the kitchen cupboards. "Should I make some tea for him too?"

"Nah." John shook his head. "If he wants some when he finally gets here, we'll make some for him."

"Oka- Ah ha!" He vanished into the cupboard almost entirely. "Got it!" He pulled out a wooden box.

"So, what exactly happened to you guys?" Hiccup asked as he dragged an iron kettle over to one of the fireplaces. "You said you'd tell me."

I kept quiet. John would have to get out of this one for us.

"We're all from Britain." John began. Maybe he was hoping Hiccup would draw his own conclusions.

"And Britain is... Another island?" Hiccup asked.

John nodded, clearly relieved. "Yeah."

"Do you have a dragon problem there?" Hiccup asked. "Or have you made friends with them like we have?"

"They don't bother us there." John said. "We hardly know what they are."

"Really?" Hiccup dipped three mugs into the now-hot water. "Well, where did that Night Fury come from?"

"I don't know." John floundered. "I um- Have no idea."

Hiccup frowned. "Hmm. Well, maybe he saved you, or something. He seems pretty attached to you. And you gave him a name, so that helps the relationship along quite well, I think."

"Either way." John cleared his throat and took the mug of tea Hiccup handed him. "I have no idea."

"Huh." Hiccup shrugged. "So, do you remember how you got to Berk? Were you on a ship and fell overboard? Did you fly here?"

"I fell. We both fell." John hid a laugh. "Both of us. Right out of the sky."

"Right." Hiccup shook his head. "I don't get it."

John shrugged. "Neither do I."

Hiccup opened his mouth, presumably to change the subject, when there came a loud knock on the door.

Hiccup ran to answer it, and came back into the room followed by Mycroft and a very annoyed looking Night Fury.

"Did you figure anything out?" I asked, looking askance at Sherlock's death expression.

"No." Mycroft's mouth was twisted downward, into a disapproving frown. "Is that tea?"

Hiccup had already filled another mug and pressed it into Mycroft's hands. "Do you want some?" he asked Sherlock.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, giving Mycroft a death glare, but nodded towards Hiccup.

"What did you do to each other?" John sighed. Obviously he was used to this strange sort of sibling rivalry.

Sherlock carefully maneuvered behind the table, crouching behind John and me. His glare would have killed any normal person.

John reached a hand behind him and Sherlock head-butted it. Hiccup placed a dragon-sized cup of tea in front of him.

"Under specific instructions to keep quiet?" John asked. "Will Greg and I have to go back to London with the bodies of the Holmes brothers? Murdered each other in a fit of sarcastic snarkiness?"

Sherlock growled into his tea and Mycroft turned his back.

Hiccup looked lost. "Wait- brothers?"

Chapter 10: Sherlock

As taken from Sherlock Holmes' perspective on the matter of Berk, and of Becoming A Dragon.

“Just. Come up when you’re ready.” John reached out to touch my head, but drew back his hand at the last minute. “See you there.”

I nodded, not looking toward Mycroft until Lestrade and John had disappeared into the forest. When I did, he had his ‘thinking’ face on.

I waited quietly until he shook his head, coming back into the present. Well, I couldn’t have waited any other way, due to the inability to speak.

“So,” Mycroft began. “You have most definitely ruled out any possibility of this as being some sort of hallucination, correct?”

I nodded. I was somewhat of an expert on determining whether or not a vision or experience was being brought on by my imagination or other... various substances. The fact that John was hallucinating along with me further cemented the proof that this was actually happening.

“So there is no other way to explain this.” Mycroft finished. “Save that it is indeed happening.”

I nodded again.

“And you were the only human to have... changed.” Mycroft’s mouth twitched up for a nanosecond. Long enough for me to see and know that he found this amusing.

I still hadn’t gotten the hang of the claws and teeth, so I couldn’t show him exactly what I thought of his reaction to this predicament. So instead, I just nodded. Again.

“You are completely incapable of speech.” It wasn't really a question, just an affirmation.

Huffing out a breath of warm air, I nodded again. The annoyance was building up inside my chest, somewhere in the vicinity of my lungs. It felt like fire. Before, when I’d coughed up that fireball, I hadn’t been quite conscious of it. It was like sneezing. But I could feel this fire. It was ready to blow up at Mycroft, because he thought this was funny. This was far from funny. He’d feel the same, if he was a dragon.

But no, for some inexplicable reason, I was the one who’d been transformed. I would have thought it had to do with intelligence, but Mycroft had effectively ruined that hypothesis. That’s what he did. He ruined things.

“...the ones who are going to have to figure it out, I’d assume.” Mycroft had been talking that entire time. As if he’d been expecting me to listen. “John and that incompetent officer aren’t going to be much help. I don’t see why you value John’s input at all, he’s just going to be a nuisance. What have you been doing here for the past, what, three days?”

I wished I was capable of giving Mycroft a nice show of teeth and claws and fire to properly convey my current mood toward him. But I was being contained. I wasn’t going to kill-

“Well?” Mycroft asked imperiously. “What have you been doing?”

Carefully in the sand, I wrote ‘Studying’.

Peering over my shoulder, Mycroft sniffed. “Studying. Yourself? What about the culture here? The people, the customs? I don’t suppose you know anything about that?”

‘Ask John.’ I wrote. That was what John was good for. Doing the things I wasn’t inclined to like doing.

Mycroft seemed to arrive at this assumption as well. His turned up nose and another sniff told me that he was about as much annoyed with me as I was with him. Good.

“Exactly how do you plan on getting out of this disaster?” Mycroft asked me then.

I gave him a shrug. I hadn’t come up with a single idea. (Physics: mostly boring, except for ballistics and quantum encryption, but the weird space-time fabric multiverse stuff could safely be ignored. Except for now, of course.)

The unbearably smug, ‘older brother know-it-all’ look crossed his face.  Of course he would know. He probably had a bunch of scientists working on some top-secret science-fictiony spaceship or something. And he probably went and looked at their notes. Just to annoy me eventually, of course. Flaunting his knowledge at me.

At least I had the knowledge that I hadn’t manipulated my way into a career. I was legitimate.

“Well, I’ll be able to figure something out.” Mycroft smirked. “Just give me a week. Go and be social, figure out some dragon hierarchy.”

I glared at him. He was getting more and more infuriating. Dragon hierarchy, indeed.

“On second thought...” He had the upper hand and he knew it. “On second thought, you’d probably botch that up too.”

That was just plain nasty. He realized that as soon as it came out of his mouth.

He was scared, obviously. We were in a new place he knew nothing about. It was enough to make even Mycroft scared.

And if it was enough to make him scared, it was certainly enough to make me scared. I saw the realization of this fact dawn on him.

“Ah.” He frowned. “That was-”

Uncalled for, he would finish. As if that even came close to what it really was. I can’t believe at one point in my life I had trusted my brother with my life.

“Uncalled for.”

This conversation wasn’t going anywhere. I really didn’t need to hear Mycroft talking right now. I started walking away, hating him, and hating myself a little too, for getting John and myself into this in the first place.

“Sherlock, I’m sorry.”

A few seconds passed.

The significance of that moment crashed over me.

Mycroft had just apologized, and meant it.

I turned toward him once again. But I wasn’t forgiving him.

“We can go up to the village, and just figure something out, okay?”

He was trying to give me the reins of the conversation. I wasn’t going to take them. I was going up to the village and getting away from my brother.

“We’ll get back home, I promise.”

Oh, now he was using the tone of voice he once used when we were little, when I’d get scared. I really had had enough now. Mycroft was annoying me beyond words. Forgetting that I was incapable of speech, I opened my mouth to tell him to bugger off. Or something worse.

“Get the hell-”

Mycroft’s mouth hadn’t moved. Mine had. I had heard words.

Had I just-

“Sherlock!” Mycroft’s eyes shone with interest. “You spoke!”

I had spoken. Somehow. Getting annoyed enough had made me forget that I was physically incapable of talking, and I had spoken.

Obviously not physically incapable, then.

Mycroft advanced on me, his eyes conveying his desire to interrogate me. Not happening. I could still smell the faint traces of John and Lestrade’s path up to the village. I took off in a whirl of black scales and slight elation.

I could speak!

 

Chapter 11: John

As written by Doctor John H. Watson, as an account of my adventures with Sherlock Holmes in a land called Berk.

“Brothers.” Hiccup pressed. “You said brothers. Why’d you say brothers?”

I floundered for a second. “Um-”

Great. How was I going to talk my way out of this one? I could practically see Sherlock and Mycroft waiting for my explanation.

Suddenly, in a fit of random brilliance, I had the perfect answer. “Greg and I just call them brothers.” I laughed inwardly. “It’s because they bicker all the time, like siblings.”

Hiccup nodded. “I see.”

Well, that was easier than I thought. My triumph was short-lived, however, as Mycroft cleared his throat in an annoying ‘listen to me right now’ sort of way. I could tell Sherlock loathed it.

“If I could speak with you in private, John, Greg, Sherlock?”

Shrugging, I got up, with an apologetic “We’ll be right back” to Hiccup.

He looked sort of forlorn, sitting back at the table by himself. It sort of reminded me of... well, me, when I was that small. Ignored by my parents in favor of the problem daughter and the issues that occurred daily. Hiccup was a lot like me, I realized. His mom was unmentioned, his father too busy being a leader to really pay attention to his son. All he had was his dragon.

That was, on second thought, all I had as well.

I made a mental note to try to spend some more time with Hiccup and try to ignore his annoying habits.

“I haven’t got all day.” Mycroft’s icy voice cut through my thoughts.

“Right, sorry.” I hurried after my friend’s retreating backs.

Once the door had shut behind us, cutting off all the warmth from the house, Mycroft began to speak.

“Sherlock, I believe you have something to say to these gentlemen?”

“That’s hardly nice, Mycroft,” I said angrily. “You know he can’t speak-”

“Acshully-” Sherlock clapped a paw to his mouth.

Mycroft chuckled.

“You can speak?” Greg and I stared aghast at Sherlock.

Sherlock nodded.

“How?”

“Let us just say he got more than a little annoyed at me,” Mycroft explained. “He forgot his incapacities.”

“What did you do?” Greg asked.

“It goes better unsaid.” Mycroft’s mouth turned down. “I don’t wish to repeat it.”

Mycroft was uncomfortable. That was new. But I ignored him and turned toward Sherlock. “Are you okay?” Whatever Mycroft did that he was guilty about must have been beyond awful to Sherlock.

Sherlock nodded, still not speaking again after his lisping ‘Actually’.

“What we also must discuss is what we’re going to tell these... villagers.” Mycroft’s voice held a bit of distaste.

“John’s sort of already done that.” Greg turned to face Sherlock. “I’m not exactly sure what you’ve said so far though.”

I thought for a moment, trying to remember everything I’d told Hiccup, Gobber and Stoick, when he’d popped in for a minute to see Hiccup.

“We’re from another island, called Britain, where we aren’t bothered by dragons.” I tried to remember the rest. “We, um, fell, and we aren’t sure where Sherlock came from.”

“Sounds good to me.” Greg rubbed his arms. “And I think I’m going back inside.”

The door opened and shut, and Sherlock poked me in the back.

“Ow.” I turned back toward him. “What do you want? Are you going to talk now?”

“Moriarty’s going to come here. He might be here already.”

The voice of Sherlock dragon was the same as Sherlock person. It just seemed a little louder and a little more booming.

Then I realized what he’d just said.

Wrapped in semtex, Moriarty’s voice in my head, telling me what to say. Sherlock, seeing me step out of the dressing room, his eyes widening in horror-

“John!”

I came back to reality. What had just happened? Was I suffering from panic? That didn’t make any sense, I’d been in Afghanistan. Why would I be scared of past experiences now, for Christ’s sake?

“Maybe you’d better get inside.” Sherlock didn’t seem at all uncomfortable with talking, but it was slightly weird to look at and see a dragon talking perfect English.

“No, no I’m fine.” I really was, I just couldn’t figure out what had happened to my head. “Just tell me. Tell me what’s going on. What you figured out.”

“This is news to me,” Mycroft said sharply. “Moriarty?”

“James Moriarty.” Sherlock nodded. “He was in the explosion.”

“James Moriarty.” Mycroft repeated. “I know a James Moriarty. He’s been in contact. If he was in the explosion-”

“James Moriarty is the most dangerous man in the world.” Sherlock looked worried. “What do you mean he’s been in contact with you?”

“I am in contact with a lot of people, Sherlock.” Mycroft frowned. “Not all of them are strictly what you would call good.”

“He’s a criminal mastermind who wrapped John in a bomb jacket.” Sherlock moved closer to Mycroft. “What do you mean, he’s been in contact?”

“He texts me, frequently.” Mycroft pulled out his mobile. “Damn it, it’s been ruined by the water.”

“Frequently?” Sherlock looked about ready to murder his brother. “Frequently? And you never thought to tell me?”

“I do not ‘just tell you’ things.” Mycroft looked daggers at Sherlock. “My place in the government requires utmost secrecy. I don’t tell my little brother everything he wishes to know because he thinks he deserves it. You have also never mentioned a ‘Moriarty’ before.”

“Can we please not murder each other?” I laid a restraining hand on Sherlock’s scaly neck. “Just tell me what’s going on, Sherlock.”

Sherlock turned around, much like a cat, being sure to place his tail in Mycroft’s face. “Moriarty was in the same explosion as we were. If he wasn’t killed, which was very unlikely, as he is the type of person to always have plans B through G at his very command. So, if Mycroft and Lestrade could fall though this ‘wormhole’ after the initial explosion, Moriarty will be falling through at any moment. If he hasn’t already.”

“But wouldn’t he have fallen through at the same time as us?” I asked. “We were in the same explosion.”

Sherlock huffed. “Use your brain John. Mycroft and Lestrade were at the scene of the explosion minutes after it had happened. They didn’t fall through until after three days had passed here. Time is relative.”

“Okay, fine.” I shook my head and wished I was faster on the uptake. “But my real question is, what are we going to do about it?”

“We have to stop him.” Sherlock was quiet now. “Here, or in London, it doesn’t matter. He needs to be stopped.”

I nodded. More people would die if he wasn’t stopped. Sherlock was the only person who had the ability to stop him. And hopefully he would let me come, so he’d be less likely of dying.

Chapter 12: Moriarty

From the top-secret files of James Moriarty on the confidential matter of Berk and Becoming A Dragon.

Of course I knew what Sherlock looked like. I was less-accustomed to the looks of John Watson, but once I'd seen him nicely wrapped in that warm green jacket, I got a nice good look at him.

Quite frankly, I didn't see how Sherlock could stand to look at him on a daily basis. He was so... normal. Ordinary. Dull.

But he was the one real connection I could easily get with Sherlock, so into the bomb-laden-jacket he went. All the others had had some semblance of elegance to them. The old woman wasn't difficult, just some senile old blind woman forgotten by her family. The child though, that was good. I hoped Sherlock had found that to be particularly invigorating.

Because that's really all I cared about. I wanted to make sure Sherlock had a good time. He was in my best interests. I swear. That's why John Watson had to be the final person I put into the jacket. The pool, I will admit, was a touch of brilliance on Sherlock's part (although, yes, I had known that was where he'd pick to meet.) It was so dramatic.

I have a particular weakness for dramatics, that's why I let them think I left. Just like a great big cat, playing with its prey before it eats it. I've naturally been compared to many things before, a spider being the most reoccurring. But I preferred to think of myself as a cat.

Certainly Sebastian agreed with me in that case.

Ah, yes. Lovely old Sebastian. Sebastian Moran, the best marksman in the British army. The second best was, of course, John Watson. I got the best. Sherlock got second best. Take that.

Anyway, Sebastian, I suppose, could be compared to John Watson, as more of his evil counterpart, just as I could be to Sherlock. Sebastian was so much more than some BAMF little soldier-boy following his captain around. Sebastian could cook for one thing. He was also good for several other things.

Anyway, the reason I was currently alive was because of Sebastian. I hated owing people though. Hated it. I usually just killed them if I owed them something. I didn't think of it as murder though, partly because I didn't have the blood on my hands, and partly because I thought of it as simply paying them back. Surely they'd rather die while they were young than waste away, right? I always made sure they were comfortable deaths, such as an accidental overdose, or just a simple poison. Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

Buuut, back to this extremely interesting story of mine.

I'd watched Sherlock pull the trigger on that foolish black revolver (my snipers were much more elegant, thank you.) I'd known it was a possibility that I might have died. I was much closer to the bomb than Sherlock. Out of sight of Sherlock and Watson, I could see Sebastian getting ready to jump at me. Knock me into the pool, that way we'd be slightly safer from the blast.

Watson was probably doing exactly the same. How adorable. Sherlock and I must go for tea one day and just talk about life.

Provided, of course, we didn't die right now.

It all happened rather quickly after that. I suppose that's how I like things done anyway; quickly.

The most irritating part of that was that I blacked out when we hit the water. I woke up quite quickly, apparently Sebastian had managed to get us to the side of the pool without much harm. I'd probably have to punish him for letting me pass out but I guess you could say, if you had a touch of the romantic about your head, that I owed Sebastian my life.

Buuut, I had already paid that back. I'd gotten Sebastian off the streets, trying, as so many of these veterans do, to live in London off an army pension. Thick stubborn idiots, the lot of them. He'd been kicked off the army for several minor transgressions piling up against him, and when he got caught in that blast that almost killed John Watson the army thought it easier to send him home rather than deal with his problems. He escaped the explosion completely unscathed.

All the better. Anyway, back to this curious story. Sebastian had managed to get us to the side of the pool and was lying, quite unconscious, next to me. I felt perfectly fine and got to my feet. Except my feet weren't there anymore. Looking down at myself, I realized I had short stubby green legs and what felt like a parrot's beak on my face.

What was this? I turned around and around, trying to figure out what had happened. The answer was there, right in front of me, I just had to make the connection. This didn't involve the fact that we were in a totally different place, and outside to boot.

It came when I got a clear view of my back, not an easy thing you see, as I was only about a foot and a half long. The answer came when I saw the miniature wings sprouting out of my back. I was a dragon?

The answer came to me at the exact moment Sebastian opened his eyes. "Jim!"

"Calm down idiot, I'm right here." My voice was squawky and annoying.

Sebastian's eyes met mine. "Sir?"

"Yes, it's me." Curious, the ability to talk didn't go away with the physical transformation. I still had a tongue, and teeth, which is really all one needs to speak.

Sebastian didn't look at all convinced, but I could tell he wanted to get out of the open valley area. Soldier's instincts, you could call them.

Surveying our surroundings seriously for the first time, I noticed caves built into the rocks that surrounded the valley.

"There." I pointed with my tail.

That was strange in itself. I had acquired a fifth limb and automatically knew how to use it.

This could actually be fun.

Naturally, however, I needed to figure out how to get back to Britain. Well, eventually. If there's one thing I've learned during my years as a consulting criminal, it's that you should really just let fate lead you where it will. Of course, there are many times when you determine the course of fate, but this wasn't one of those times. I'd been shoved into this adorable little universe, chances were that I'd find myself shoved right back into my own when the time was right.

For now, I was a dragon!

And I was still a dragon a day later, when, from my perch in the cave above the valley, I saw Sherlock and John Watson fall from the sky. And I was still a dragon, albeit a hungry and irritated one because Sebastian was late with his stolen food, that I saw Sherlock's brother and that incompetent Lestrade character fall from the sky.

Well, this was going to be interesting.

Chapter 13: Hiccup

As taken from the private diary of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III on the matter of the Visitors From Britain and Their Strange Dragons.

                Dear Diary,

Today, the fourth day after I found John and Sherlock in my and Toothless’s valley, two more people ended up in the same valley. John says that he and everyone else fell from somewhere. He told me their names, but I only remember Greg. The other guy had a sort of long, weird name.

In other news, dad’s hosting a party for the new people. It’s almost unheard of to get visitors on Berk, so they all get treated like kings. I don’t complain, mostly cuz there’s good food.

Looking back at all the stuff I wrote before, I didn’t actually put in stuff about John and Sherlock and Greg and the other one. So I guess I’ll write it here.

John’s really nice. He’s short and doesn’t mind the clothes I gave him. He especially likes the vest. He listens to everything I have to say and doesn’t cut me off like almost everyone else. He also calls me his friend, which is something even Fishlegs doesn’t say. He wants to learn all about Berk. It seems like he loves Sherlock a lot, which is strange, because John told me he hadn’t seen Sherlock until four days ago, when Sherlock attacked him. But the way he keeps looking around to make sure Sherlock’s still there makes me think otherwise. I’ll look into that later.

Anyway, Sherlock. Sherlock seems like a nice enough dragon, and I even saw him and Toothless getting to know each other, which was cool. It seems like he’s super smart for a dragon. Smarter than Toothless even, which is amazing. (And no, I’m not jealous. John deserves a smart dragon.)He’s always looking around for John, but they never seem to see each other looking after the other, if that makes sense.

...I guess it really doesn’t. Oh well. Greg is the other one, and he seems nice too, if a little tired. He didn’t care about the clothes I gave him either. He seems to really like John too, and they get along. They like to make fun of Sherlock and the other guy fighting and they let me join in too, which was nice. I may have been accepted in the community, but that didn’t make me popular. Well, okay, maybe it did, but I’d still rather hang out with Toothless than be social.

Anyway, the other guy, who I can’t remember his name, is really annoying. He didn’t change into the clothes I got him and he looks down his nose at everyone, except Sherlock, for some reason that I have no idea of. But he especially hates me and Greg, whom he calls Lestrade. He seems to deal with John. Like he’s accepted the fact that John exists. But he doesn’t accept the existence of me and Greg.  Which is annoying, and I don’t like him very much. Neither does Sherlock, for that matter, which is funny to watch.

My hand is really hurting from writing all this, so I’m going to go get ready to take John and Greg and Sherlock and the other one to the party. I’ll come back and write about that too.

 

Dear Diary (again),

Well, I’ve figured out the annoying one’s name. It’s Mycroft. How weird is that? No wonder I didn’t remember it.

Anyway, the party was a success. The town got to meet the visitors and John and Greg got to learn more about Berk. The two of them are very social and everyone loved them. Sherlock disappeared halfway through the party and Mycroft (stupid name) just hung around the food the whole time.

But John and Greg were talking with everyone and they brought me along so I could tell them about people and customs they might not know about. I thought I was really good at it and John thanked me when it was over. I sort of wish there was a job I could get doing that. Just telling people about other people and helping them understand. It was the same deal with the dragons. Helping us and the dragons understand each other.

What else happened?

Oh yeah, John tried to dance with some of the little girls of the village, who all really like him, but he ended up falling on his face. Sherlock was in the room at that point and it looked like he was laughing. Greg had to help him up and he sat down and talked to the girls instead.

That was when Astrid grabbed my arm and dragged me behind a pillar. We watched Sherlock being concerned about John and then the little girls swarming all over Sherlock, who made a mad dash for freedom, scattering little Vikings behind him.

We laughed, and then kissed for a little while.

She told me she wants to come over to my house and talk to John and Greg. I told her she should come up any time she wants. It’ll be nice to have someone my own age there. 

Anyway, then the party was over and I brought John and Greg and Mycroft back up to my house. They’re staying there until Dad gets them a house ready. Dad’s staying at Gobber’s until tomorrow. He’s having one of the old houses on the hill cleaned out for them.

Sherlock was already up at the house, laying on the floor looking, for all intents and purposes, pretty dead. John went into the room first and he didn’t panic like a normal person would have done, he just gave Sherlock’s tail a kick as he went past into the kitchen, with a “You’re not fooling anyone but Hiccup and that’s just nasty. Get up.”

Sherlock’s head came up and he narrowed his eyes at me, but he didn’t seem mad or annoyed. I showed everyone where they could sleep, but Sherlock didn’t want to sleep outside like all the other dragons did, so I let him sleep next to John on the floor. After John made him promise that he wouldn’t destroy anything, cuz my dad would murder me if a dragon wrecked anything.

Well, my hand is about to die again, so I’m going to stop now. Tomorrow I’m taking John and Greg to the training arena to show them how I help train dragons for the little kids. Sherlock seems pretty well-trained, so tomorrow might even be a good day to show John how to ride a dragon. I’ll have to find a dragon for Greg to ride, because he seems pretty brave and he’ll probably want to ride one too if John does.

Should be interesting.

Chapter 14: Hiccup

As taken from the private diary of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III on the matter of the Visitors From Britain and Their Strange Dragons.

Dear Diary,

Today was super, majorly exciting. So much happened, and I have to get it all down here before I forget. I hope I'll be able to use my hand afterwards.

The day started when Toothless woke me up. I went outside for our morning ride, but as I went around the house, I saw Mycroft heading across the field into the woods. As if this wasn't strange enough, it sort of seemed like he was stumbling, tripping across the field into the woods.

Toothless came down from the roof to catch me if I fell, and I pointed to the man stumbling into the forest. It's nice that he understands me totally sometimes. He bent down and I climbed onto his back. In that Night Fury way of his, he swept across the field like a shadow, following the mysterious Mycroft.

We were halfway there, when I glanced up and saw that we weren't the only ones following Mycroft. Sherlock was ahead of us, running faster than Toothless. He hadn't seen us. John was on his back.

I hung Toothless back slightly, disappearing into the forest a little further away from where Mycroft and Sherlock had gone in.

I heard them talking though. John, at least. Someone else was talking, but I wasn't sure who it was. It didn't sound like Mycroft.

Toothless moved soundlessly through the undergrowth, until we could peer through the bushes at them.

Mycroft was lying on the ground, so I couldn't see him clearly. John was bent over him, talking to Sherlock. This wasn't weird, until Sherlock started talking back.

I sort of started silently freaking out. As far as I knew, no dragons had the ability to talk, regardless of where they came from.

That's probably the point at which two things happened simultaneously. One, John shouted, kind of loudly, while looking at Mycroft. Toothless and I strained to look at what was happening, but Toothless went a little too far. I fell down into the undergrowth with a crash.

I opened my eyes right as Sherlock grabbed my vest in his mouth and hauled me over the bushes. Toothless growled and they got in a growling fight. I turned around to John and Mycroft, but it wasn't Mycroft anymore.

I don't know how it happened, but Mycroft had turned into a dragon. A fairly huge dragon. In the spur of the moment, I tried to remember the Dragon Book's information.

I couldn't though. Now I know exactly what type of dragon he turned into, but I didn't remember until we'd dragged the unconscious green form into one of the abandoned houses on the hills. I figured since my dad wasn't there to make decisions, I could.

Sherlock stood over the unconscious Mycroft, while John and I collapsed on the floor.

Naturally, I demanded, once we'd caught our breath, why Sherlock could talk and how/why Mycroft had turned into a dragon.

John told me, again, about how Britain was a different island where there were no dragons.

I listened a little more carefully this time, even though I was really scared. But, I gathered everything John knew, and I'm putting everything down here, so in case something happens, it'll be here.

John, Sherlock, Greg and Mycroft are from Britain, where they were all actually people.

I haven't decided if I'll really believe this or not yet, but it was clear John was telling the truth. I guess I can just tell sometimes, y'know?

Anyway, Sherlock turned into a dragon when they fell from the sky, which, if it wasn't impossible, would make sense, as Sherlock doesn't seem very dragony to me in behaviour.

Neither John nor Sherlock knows how Mycroft turned into a dragon. Sherlock kept grinning in a really creepy way and telling John his hypothesis was right, that it did have something to do with intelligence, but I didn't pay attention because I was too freaked out that Sherlock was talking.

Greg was still asleep in my house this entire time, so he doesn't know yet that Mycroft turned into a dragon.

I guess I'm being all together too calm about this, but when you've gone through the stuff I had before, you'd be calm about a lot of stuff.

And I should know the best that we've barely scratched the surface of the secrets that dragons hold. We've got a lot more learning to do about them.

So. After John told me all about that stuff, and he and Sherlock tried to figure some more stuff out, they started talking about someone named Moriarty.

Apparently, Moriarty fell through into this world as well, only he's not nice like John, Greg and Sherlock. He's smarter than Mycroft and eviller than… we'll say a gargantuan swarm of Terrible Terrors. And he's here.

This adventure is just beginning.

I'm so lucky. I get two adventures. Hopefully I'll keep myself together this time.

It's Sherlock and John, Greg and Mycroft, Hiccup and Toothless.

We all have dragons now.

Perfection in a helmet.

I've got to teach them to fly now.

Got to.

Before this battle of epic scale anyway.

Which apparently could be any day now.

I can't wait.

Chapter 15: Mycroft

As taken from the confidential files of Mycroft Holmes on the matter of Berk.

Inexcusable.

I had antennae.

I was a dragon and I had antennae.

I was also about 6 metres long and lying inert on the floor of an abandoned Viking house.

And Greg Lestrade was dozing off to my right.

Carefully, I cracked my eyes open. Quite obviously, from my position, several people had done their best to shift me into a marginally comfortable position. They had failed quite desperately. I wasn't aware I had back legs until I tried to shift slightly and sent waves of pain down into my legs, and yes, into my tail.

At the slight noise I made moving, Greg Lestrade woke with a barely audible gasp. Or at least, it would have been barely audible had I been in my normal human form. As it were, I could hear the small noise as if he had practically shouted in my ear.

"My- Mister Holmes!" His voice was rather too loud, and I could almost hear his wince. "Are you feeling slightly better?" He continued in a quieter voice, rising from his no doubt uncomfortable position on a wooden chair. "D'you want tea, or food, or something?"

Hesitantly, I shook my head. Truthfully, tea sounded like heaven, but I wasn't going to exercise my possible ability to speak until I'd had at least a moment of practice. Alone. If the speech didn't work, as I was quite obviously a different species of dragon than Sherlock, or, indeed, any I'd seen as of yet, I didn't want to have the embarrassment of making some ungainly noise in front of any other living being.

Manoeuvring so I could exit this claustrophobic, dark house, my actions less careful than I would have liked; the stress of this transformation was taking over my whole mind, not just the area I'd assigned to stress so many years ago.

To his credit, Greg Lestrade had spent so much time with Sherlock, he knew what the general look of a cooped-up Holmes was, and he hurried and opened the door for me; I disappeared in a flash of brown stripes, not looking back at Greg Lestrade's slightly disappointed face.

Not looking back. At all.

Once in the cover of the forest, I paused and began walking slightly more sedately, letting the stress and panic wash over my mind and wash out of my mind.

Can't help Sherlock anymore Might not be able to talk Intelligence hasn't transferred with the transformation Only John and Greg Lestrade are humans now Will they be able to do what we need to get back Doubtful Moriarty is still on the loose Won't be able to plan with Vikings will wonder what's happened to me Can't tell them plan must be made Can't plan like this Can't help Sherlock like this Can't protect Sherlock like this

Taking breaths slowly helped cleared the inundation of panicked thoughts from my head. Once they vanished, I could answer each of them with a logical plan of action.

Firstly, I might not be able to talk; that was true. Raising my head slightly, I closed my eyes and began to recite, as if I were still human.

"'Twas brillig and the slithy toves / Did gire and gimble in the wabe / All mimsy were the borogroves / And the momeraths outgrabe"

Feeling marginally better, I crossed that off the panic list. Speech was fine. And so was my intelligence, obviously. I remembered that poem from reading it in Lewis Carroll's collected works over thirty years ago. My intelligence was, and always would be, unconditionally perfect.

The next item was actually slightly worrying. John and Greg Lestrade were the only humans from our London crowd. Would they be able to function?

…Well yes, of course they would. John was about the most competent man I knew, aside from myself, and Greg Lestrade seemed competent enough; he obviously was good in a crisis, as he'd shown before. They'd be perfectly capable of presenting any offensive plan toward Moriarty to the Viking community; however, I was almost certain that any offensive plan would be just the four of us. I hoped the three remaining Londoners would have the same sense when it came to interfering with culture that was not our own.

Luckily, that took care of most everything on the list, except for the first and last. The most important item. Certainly, once I'd realized my capabilities as a dragon, I'd be more physically equipped to protect and help my younger brother; however, ever since he was born I valued my ability to answer any question he might have. Now that we were in an unfamiliar place, turned into unnatural creatures, I did not have any answers for him. Undoubtedly, he would take offense at my wanting to help him anyway, but I still recalled warm summer nights, lightning flashing and thunder crashing around us, Sherlock huddled in his favourite orange blanket, shivering from fright but demanding to know what made lightning storms. I was still his older brother, no matter if he loathed me or not, I still felt responsible and I still wanted him to be safe.

Naturally, John and Greg Lestrade would be invaluable to any endeavour until I returned to my natural state; they were marginally clever and extremely likeable, indeed, they might even be better than I at communicating with members of the lower intelligence quotient.

And not much else could be done out here. I needed to research. I had to find out what type of dragon I was, what I could do, what could be done about Moriarty, how I could get us back home.

I wasn't sure how much time had passed in our world, but I was sure the longer I stayed away, the worse Britain would fare.

Chapter 16: Moriarty

From the top-secret files of James Moriarty on the confidential matter of Berk and Becoming A Dragon.

Sebastian Moran, bless his overprotective soul, was not the brightest pear in the bushel.

Why was he so STUPID?

Composing myself, I hurled my insignificant form off the edge of a cliff, catching an updraft with my puny wings and rising to a steady cruising altitude of about 500 feet.

::Hey, hey it's Moriarty!::

Scanning the airspace around me, I finally noticed another dragon flying crazily toward me, his mental voice sounding much too enthusiastic.

That was the most interesting part of being a dragon; that is, the ability that dragons had to communicate telepathically. It was overwhelming when faced with many dragons, but as I'd been around a lot of dragons recently, I was getting used to the constant streams of information.

Because as Sherlock was learning how to fly, and his adorable older brother tried to ignore that bumbling police officer and John tried to ignore and protect Sherlock simultaneously, I had been doing what I do best. Plotting, that is.

This little, insignificant Viking world, planet, universe, whatever, was perfect for a project I'd had in the back of my mind since I first attended preschool. It was not a pretty sight, as all the other children suffered from the same affliction that ails Sebastian and John, that is, severe lack of intelligence. I quit the day after I got in trouble for playing world-domination with all the sandbox toys and didn't let any of the other kids have them. Some snivelling brat went and told the, quite frankly, trollishly ugly supervisor what I was doing. I was clapped in irons and set down for the first, and only, time out I would ever have to face.

But here was my chance. With this tiny little world, and this gargantuan waste of living heavy artillery, I could become the ruler of the world. I'd have to come up with a catchier and less clichéd title, but the crown would sit very nicely on my head.

::Moriarty, hey MorMor!:: The irritating dragon flapped ungainly alongside me, unintentionally using the couple name I'd come up with for me and Sebastian in a fit of romantic inspiration.

I narrowed my eyes and flew a little faster. This aggravating dragon was one of a huge congregation of all species deep in the forests of this island. The whole group was united against the thought of humans and dragons working and living together, and had been plotting an avengement of their species for quite some time. I'd been able to outline my plan had they immediately decided to scrap their old one for mine.

I knew it would happen, but it was still slightly gratifying when I could present my ideas to a bunch of creatures and have them adopted.

After that, I was able to fix something for Sebastian, which had been irritating me since he started complaining that he couldn't keep up with me when I was flying. Apparently this Viking air has something of the rebel in it, as he refused to listen to my orders to infiltrate the village, or something he was equally good at.

He'd seen John get on a dragon at the ring while he was spying and now he wanted one. He couldn't ride me, obviously, and even if I was larger, I would have the same sentiments as Sherlock. That is, I wouldn't let anyone ride on me. Degrading to the maximum.

So I'd had to ask if one of the larger dragons wouldn't mind carrying him around sometimes. Those foolish Vikings no doubt thought up unintelligent names for each of the species, but I wasn't going to duplicate their obtuse habits. I had yet to think up intelligent names for the species that I had yet encountered, but Sebastian wouldn't settle for anything less than the one that could burst into flames at will.

The tiny idiotic dragon continued to tail me.

::We all want to spy in the village! Will you let some of us?::

::No, my friend is going to spy on the village.:: Sebastian had claimed the role quite vehemently. He'd already snuck to steal some Viking garb, and looked quite the part, even I had to admit.

::Aww, c'mon, please? The older dragons won't lemme do anything without asking you and I don't know why cuz you just came in and told us what to do and you're really annoying because you won't let me do anything-::

Luckily the small size allowed me to move fairly quickly. I watched the tiny dragon spiral down into the forest, his wings punctured through.

The older dragons were accepted as the leaders in the group of feral dragons that I had befriended, and they accepted my leadership. Therefore, all the others must as well.

Perhaps it was time more havoc was wrecked. The small dragon's whine sang away in my subconscious as I flew straight toward the hollow where the dragons habited. John Watson spent too much time in the forest, as reported by my new draconic scouts, and was heedless of the dangers present.

Like feral dragons, for example.

Perhaps it was time for a rude awakening.

And time to let my London friends know I was in business.