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Dog Days in the Horde and Other Etherian Tales

Chapter 14: Cinderblock

Summary:

From a conversation / anon ask going around someone's tumblr proposing that "Beast Island" was a lie and that the term was merely a euphemism for swift executions.

Notes:

Warning: Incredibly dark.

Chapter Text

Cinderblock 




Funny the things that went through one’s mind when one was about to die messily.  

Entrapta was on her knees, her hands bound and her hair bound - the guards got lucky overpowering her when she tried to fight them off.  It took ten of them, but they’d brought her down.  They didn’t bother with the use of any cutting implements on her hair (they wouldn’t have gotten through the hidden control-wiring, anyway) and pretty much had bound her with what they had on hand.  The Princess overheard them talking about how executions needed to be quick... and something about orders handed down from a Force Captain.  

Catra. Entrapta remembered everything.  Catra wanted her to open the portal despite her warnings.  She was running to tell Hordak.  There was a pain in her back and the familiar pain of electricity coursing through her.  She woke up from a dream - no...something more than a dream - about another life, a lonely life - but Adora came to her for help as reality was cracking apart.  Then she had awakened, being dragged through a hallway by armored guards, a goat-faced woman telling them: “Ship her to Beast Island. Catra’s orders.”   

That’s when she fought to get free and that’s when she’d lost. 

“Eh, heh, I think I’m gonna have fun with this one,” one of the guards by her side said as he (or she? The voice sounded masculine) held up a blaster and shoved her from an interior corridor out into an open yard walled in cinderblocks.  “Never thought Hordak would get tired of his pet.  Always spooked me scuttling through the vents.”  

“Let’s see how big her brain is splattered against a concrete wall!” another soldier mocked.   

“Wait! What?” she demanded.  “I thought you were sending me to Beast Island? This is a mistake!  A horrible mistake! I need to see Hordak!” 

A third captor, one nursing a hurt hand laughed.  “Beast Island?  Girl... there ain’t no Beast Island!  Hordak just made up stories because some of the cadets are more afraid of monsters and slow starvation in a wilderness than just gettin’ shot!  Fear of monsters keeps uprisings down in a way that simple oblivion wouldn’t!”  

“Hey, don’t worry!”  A fourth person said.  “This maximizes efficiency!  It’ll be quick!”  

“No! Please! I have to see Hordak!  I can explain everything!”  

“Don’t you just love it when they plead for their lives?”  

Entrapta felt a boot braced on her legs to keep her steady.  She felt the tip of a blaster pressed against the back of her head.  

She stared ahead at the dark splotches on the cinderblock walls around her - hosed down, perhaps, but stained in a way that gunk got into the cobble and couldn’t be washed away.  Her heartrate was rapid.  She felt a strange feeling of acceptance wash over her. It did not mean that she was not afraid, just that she knew that it was the end and that trying to fight in her bound state would only make things worse.  Better quick and efficient than to get herself wounded from thrashing around and to die in pain that way.  

What was her lab partner going to do when he found out that Catra had sent her to this? Would he even know? 

“Any last words?” her executioner asked. 

“Yes,” she answered with a pause and some courage.  “Can someone tell Hordak that he’s loved?”  

This earned some confused grunts.  

“What?” one of the guards laughed.  “What, really?”  

“Tell him to take a look at the crystal, okay? He probably can’t read it, but maybe he’ll be able to someday. And please, someone tip my mask down?  I know what kind of exit-wound your weapon is going to cause... and I don’t want anyone to see my face after that, okay?”  

She heard the laser-unit in the blaster charging up.  She closed her eyes.  One of the guards was kind enough to fulfill her request of putting her welding mask down over her face. 

“Goodbye, Emily...Scorpia...Imp....Hordak. Hordak, I’m sorry.”  

“HALT! WHAT DO YOU WORTHLESS IMBECILES THINK YOU ARE DOING?!” 

“Lord Hordak?” 

Entrapta opened her eyes as she heard the laser powering down and felt the tip of the blaster leave her head.  Through the red lenses of her mask she saw the guards she could make out around her all standing at attention.  

“UNBIND HER AT ONCE!”  

She felt her hands being untied and someone hauling her up.  Her hair was loosed.  She immediately tipped her mask up.  Hordak was standing at the entrance to the yard.  

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!” 

“Well, um...sir...lord...oh, infinitely merciful one!  We were handed down orders...we thought they were from you!” 

“I should gut you all for incompetence,” Hordak hissed.  “Entrapta, come here.”  

Entrapta choked and tears from pent up stress flowed from her eyes and ran down her cheeks in a messy display.  She leaped toward Hordak and hugged his side, wrapping her hair around him.  She caught her breath as he rubbed her back with one hand.  

“No more harm will come to you.  I assure it.”  

Overwhelmed with relief, Entrapta did not know if she should say anything about Catra.  Hordak had to have found out that she was out here some way.  She did not know if he’d caught wind of what Catra had done to her or if he found out that she was “on the transport to Beast Island” by some other fashion. Entrapta had a feeling that Catra would be kneeling in this yard as soon as Hordak found out about the sabotage of the portal information.  As apparently suicidal as Catra was, Entrapta couldn’t do that to a friend.  And Catra was her friend.  Or was she? Did Catra even know about this little secret?  Or was she in the dark? Maybe Catra thought that she’d just be sent to an island somewhere and had a chance to survive in exile.  

Once she’d regained some measure of her composure, Entrapta looked up at Hordak.  She gave him a little glare, the same stern look she’d given him when she’d demanded answers about who he was, why his body was in such bad shape and why he was growing fetuses in tanks.  

“Hordak, I don’t think you should ‘send people to Beast Island’ anymore.  There are too many variables in this system.”