Three years had gone by since Hiccup had left Berk and while it had been three years of growth for him, for his former home it had not been as kind. Without Hiccup there too help out in the forge, Gobber got backlogged with work and whenever he tried to take a new apprentice, almost all of them failed. Snotlout wouldn't stop showing off or trying to flirt with Astrid whenever she brought her axe in while Fishlegs would spend more time in his books than helping in the actual forge itself and reading never did him any good as he didn't have the hands-on experience.

Gobber didn't even try with the Twins as he knew that they would only work once Ragnarok started. That left Astrid, who was always training to become a better warrior and shieldmaiden of Berk. Whenever she wasn't training, she would often come into the forge to help Gobber sharpen the weapons. Sometimes she would go into Hiccups backroom at the forge to relax as it was the only place, outside of her own room, that she could. She didn't know why she felt that way, she just did. Maybe it was that she and Hiccup used to be friends before he received his nickname of useless, or that he had never hit on her like Snotlout does.

Only now was not one of those times; now was a dragon raid. Since Hiccup had left, Astrid was the technical winner of dragon training. Though she didn't get to kill the Nightmare as it had gotten away during all the confusion at the time, her first kill happened during the next raid. As the raids went on she got one or two kills per raid until one day, about a year and a half ago, when she was out training in the woods, a red Deadly Nadder landed in front of here with its tail spines raised and ready to fight. Before the two could fight, a blue Nadder came out of the forest behind Astrid and stood in between the two, protecting Astrid from the other Nadder. Astrid just stood there and watched as the two dragons fought each other.

The blue Nadder seemed to win the fight as the red one flew away with a screech. Astrid then prepared to fight with the winner but all it did was fly away after giving her a look of longing when it noticed she still had her axe up and ready to fight. Since that day she had even more doubts about the dragons with what she knew of how Hiccup left. Since that day she hadn't killed a dragon in any raids, just fought them enough to get them to leave without any of the Berkians food.

"Hey babe, look at how well I can protect and provide for you!" Snotlout said as he rushed past Astrid to take on a Gronkle that was in front of her. That was the seventh time during that raid that he had done that and it finally caused her to snap at him. She threw her axe so that it skimmed right off the top of his helmet, knocking him to the ground.

"See, I knew you needed me to help protect you! You can't even throw an axe straight, you hit me instead of the dragon." Snotlout said as he picked himself off the ground to see her standing next to him picking up her axe.

"I wasn't aiming for the dragon." Astrid muttered under her breath as she walked away from him to find another dragon to 'fight'. She wandered around the village for a few minutes before she found herself following Stoick for a few minutes as the raid ended with the rising sun. The chief looked around the village and gave out a few orders to get the village up and running after the raid before he walked back to his house and shut the door. Sometimes people would hear his voice or crying coming from his house. He had started doing this about a year earlier and nobody, except for maybe Gobber, knew why he did it.

"Hiccup, Toothless, Wraith! I got some news you guys might want to hear." Ragnar said as he walked out of the elevator and into the forest. He knew they were in there as it was a favorite place for them to hang out. Ragnar waited around near the entrance to the elevator for a few seconds before he heard a rustling coming from his left.

"News? I hope it's good news." Toothless said as the three of them came out of a few bushes.

"Well, it's news. I don't know if it's good or not." Ragnar said to them as Wraith walked up behind him and laid down, allowing the young man to sit back against him as Hiccup and Toothless did the same thing.

"What is it, Ragnar?" Wraith asked him.

"We are being deployed," Ragnar replied back.

"Really? Where to?" Hiccup asked, not really knowing how he should feel. He knew he was trained as a soldier and that meant he could be deployed. Though due to the secretive nature of Wraith and Toothless, they were not really expected to deploy like any other special forces team.

"The Middle East, Iraq to be precise."

"What are we going to be doing? Or do you not know?" Hiccup asked.

"The Iraqis invaded Kuwait and now a US lead coalition is planning to take it back. The reason we are going in is to search and destroy Iraqi SCUD launchers. They are being used to terror bomb the area around where coalition forces are." Ragnar informed them.

"Ok, when are we leaving?" Hiccup asked, not liking acts of terror or bullying for the obvious reasons.

"We leave in twelve hours, so tomorrow at 0700 hours. All four of us are getting on a C-130 that is bound for a FOB where we will fly out to our patrol sector."

"Copy that."

"So what exactly are we doing?" Toothless asked Ragnar. "I know what search and destroy is but what are we exactly are we doing over there?"

"We will be flying around and looking for Iraqi SCUD launchers and when we find them we destroy them. Hopefully, it's before they can launch their rockets." Ragnar responded to the dragon.

"How about one final night flight before we leave for war?" Hiccup suggested to everybody. Looking around he got a collective nod from everybody and so they all mounted up and flew out the building and into the night sky. They stayed out flying in the night sky for a few hours till they returned and got some sleep, even though they would have nothing to do on the plane ride to the Middle East. The next morning the woke up and got onto the C-130 as the only living passengers as to maintain the secrecy of the program. It took them about half the day to fly from their base to the FOB in the Middle East.

"Are we going to stay on the plane or is there a place for the dragons?" Hiccup asked Ragnar as they came in for a landing.

"We are going to stay in the plane until night time and then leave. Just be prepared for the heat."

"Ok," Hiccup responded as they landed. There was nothing for them to do as they waited a few hours for night to fall before they could leave.

"Are you ready to go?" Ragnar asked Hiccup and Toothless as Hiccup finished looking over his and his dragons gear. There was the special holster for his rifle, the saddlebags for his gear and supplies, and the radio. The one special point of note for him to check was a new radio that the two young men had worked on together that would be small and light enough to not affect the dragon's flight, yet have a large enough range that they can talk to each other from a fair distance away.

"Yes Sir," Hiccup responded as he finished.

"What about you guys? You ready for this?" Ragnar now asked the dragons.

"Ya, we're ready" Wraith responded after the looked at each other.

"Good, then let's get going," Ragnar said as they walked out of the back door of the C-130 before taking off into the sky and off to the north towards their search area. They flew for a few minutes before they heard a roaring sound and saw a light fly up into the sky and turn south, towards Coalition lines.

"Hiccup, go intercept that missile while I take care of the launcher," Ragnar ordered out over the radio as he dived towards the ground and the mobile launcher.

"Come on bud, let's go get it." Hiccup said too Toothless as they turned to intercept it.

"Gotcha!" Toothless responded, getting closer to the missile. The got closer to the missile and Hiccup gave Toothless a signal they had come up with for him to fire. Toothless fired a plasma blast at the SCUD missile, blowing it to pieces.

"Good shot Toothless!"

"Thanks!"

"No, let's go find Ragnar and Wraith." Hiccup said so they turned back towards where they came from.

"Ragnar, you there?" Hiccup asked over the radio, looking for the pair. There was only static on the channel.

"Right here." Hiccup heard Ragnar said, but it came from above him so he looked up to see them flying upside down above them. It was the first time that either of them had been in such a situation so Hiccup was concerned for his adoptive brother. After doing a quick visual inspection when he saw his friend and saw there were no visual injuries, he relaxed internally.

"Good to see you're ok." Hiccup said, with Toothless grunting in agreement.

"Same, now let's finish getting to our section." Once Ragnar and Wraith flipped right side up and got next to them they kept on flying towards their search section.

Hello all, so we finally get to the part that I was thinking of when I first got the idea for this story. Well, actually it was Hiccup and Toothless flying side by side with an F-15 but then it got to them being a part of the anti-SCUD launcher spec ops teams during the Gulf War. So what do you guys think? Like it, don't like it? So yea, we see the start of somethings back on Berk.

So in case you are not a personal follower, I have posted a new HTTYD story called "For the Deaf and the Telepath". It was an idea that got stuck in my head during my ASL class and well it's explained there. So this is a two-part informational text. Part one was to tell you guys, and if everybody who has read it is to believe, it's a fantastic story. Part two was to tell you guys that because I now have two stories, I will be alternating writing. I will write a chapter for "Moving On", then "For the Deaf and the Telepath".

Semper Fi,

Thearizona