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Chapter Text

Prompt:  Entrapta kidnaps Bow’s dads, not knowing they are Bow’s dads, but just because, as historians, they have useful information. Comedy in a tense situation. Obvious Glance, hints of Entrapdak.  (Written during Season 2). 

Interrogation Lessons



“Okay, so I’m supposed to wave this in front of them and say ‘I’ll drag whatever you know out of you?’  Wait a minute…hmmmm.”  

“Stop taking the baton apart! You’ve already got three of them in pieces on your work-table!  I saw them this morning!”  

“Okay, sheesh! You don’t need to get huffy! Alright, so I turn it on, wave it in their faces and they’ll talk?”  

The two trussed-up men looked warily at the two figures pacing around the room in front of them.  They had been arguing earlier when the two had briefly been out of the room regarding their respective identities.  Lance was certain that the cat-girl was a member of the lost race of Magikats.  George had asserted “No, no, no, they went extinct 200 years ago! Every last trace of them!  That one has to be some sort of Horde genetic experiment!”  They’d both shut up as soon as the two Hordeswomen entered the room again, the purple-haired one with a shock-baton in hand.  

Come to think of it, the one that was spider-walking on her hair didn’t resemble a Horde soldier at all.  She was dressed in a dirty shirt and overalls like a mechanic or builder of some sort.  This figure waved the shock-baton around haphazardly in her hair, way too close to Lance’s nose for his liking.  

“Please!” he yelped.  “We are not involved in the war in any way!  We’re just humble historians and library-keepers!”  

George, for his part, narrowed his eyes and set his gaze defiant - his old Rebellion soldier training kicking in.  Lance knew that the Horde was going to get no information out of him, even if they pulled him apart.  Lance, as a non-veteran, did not know if he would fare as well, especially if his torture involved watching George get pulled apart.  It is not like they had anything on the current status of the Rebellion, anyway.  Their one soldier-son didn’t share any high-level operations.  The most he ever shared with them was a few blueprints for inventions he was working on that they didn’t understand in the slightest.  

“We are family-men!” Lance continued.  “We have thirteen children and that’s not a lie! We really do!  Oh, our poor youngest!”  

“Bow would not like to see you pleading so pitifully,” George said.  “Stay strong, Lance.”  

At this, the purple-haired woman’s ponytails perked.  “Bow?” she said.  “Is he in the Etherian Maker’s Guild?”  

Lance nodded. 

“Oooh! I know him!  He’s my friend!  Or he used to be!  He’s with the Rebellion, right?”  

Lance glared daggers at George.  George immediately wore an “Ohhhhh shiiii…” face.  

“Entrapta!” Catra barked.  “Focus!  You want First Ones’ tech secrets out of these guys, remember? It’s why we kidnapped them?”  

“Entrapta?” George asked.  “You’re the Princess of Dryl, aren’t you?  Our boy’s talked so much about you!”  

Lance sighed in frustration.  George gave him a look that silently communicated “I think I’ve got a tactic for getting us out of this!”  

“Really? Bow talks about me?” Entrapta excitedly asked, bouncing upward on her hair.  “What does he say?  Oh, and technically, I kind of don’t have Dryl anymore… I sort of gave it to Hordkins in exchange for supporting my research. He just looooves shows of loyalty and all that.  How is Bow, by the way?”  

Everyone paused like beasts caught in searchlights at Entrapta’s term “Hordkins.” After that awkwardness had passed, another arose. When she asked how Bow as doing, Catra smacked her face with her palm, grateful that she remembered to retract her claws.  

“Oh, Bow is great!” George continued, seeing if he could play upon the good graces of at least one of their captors. “And yes, he talks about you all the time - or your work, anyway!  He really admires your engineering and your scientific process!”  

“He is rather disappointed that you’ve joined the Horde, though,” Lance spoke up.  

“Lance!” George hissed.  He turned his face back toward Entrapta. “We can… tell him how you’re doing if you let us go back to him.  Perhaps we can even broker a scientific-exchange! You know, on the non-war stuff.  You aren’t just making weapons these days… not the world-famous Entrapta!”  

Entrapta pented a pair of hair-fingers.  “Well, no.  I still make household-help bots and research-gatherers!  Ooh, and I’m working on a shrink ray! Hordak wants it to be a weapon, but I started on it just to miniaturize big food, but it has many theoretical applications!”  

“ENTRAPTA!”  

“Well, if you want to rough them up, Catra, you can go ahead!” Entrapta huffed.  “But you are being very rude right now.  We’re having a conversation about science.  I don’t think we need to be mean to them to get the data I need!”  

Catra stalked over to Lance, her tail lashing.  She got in his face.  “How about you tell your friend…”

“Husband.”  

“How about you tell your husband that if you don’t fork over the locations of all First Ones shrines you know about on the planet AND the location of the Runestone fragment that I’m going to let our resident mad scientist dissect you!” 

“Not interested,” Entrapta chimed.  

“What?”  

“These two are just standard humans.  You would be far more interesting to dissect!”  

“What?!” 

Entrapta waved a hair-tail.  “Oh, I don’t mean right now!  I mean, if you die in a battle or something!  Hordak already approved the order!” 

“What?!”  

“Oh, you didn’t know?”  

“Anyway, focus, focus.  I’m trying to teach you how to do a proper interrogation of prisoners!” 

“How am I doing?”  

“You are FAILING. Miserably.”  

“Oh, failure!  I can get some valuable data from that!”  

Chapter Text

Making Beauty on a Battlefield 



It was good.  It was astoundingly good.  

Scorpia was dumbstruck.  She was pretty good at drawing stick figures and little cartoon doodles of her friends but Kyle… He had talent!  An angry red gargoyle stared back at her and sent shivers through her tail.  

How in the world did Kyle achieve that with just a spray can?  

“What do you think?  I mean, I’ll probably get in trouble for deviating from the logotype, but I can’t do anything… I’m not good at fighting, so…”

“You’re doing art?” she asked, putting her claws together.  “Can I join you? Please?” 

“Huh, really?” Kyle yelped.  He rubbed the back of his neck.  “I didn’t think anyone would… Do you really want to hang out with me?”  

“Well, yeah!  The Horde doesn’t have a lot of artists and I had no idea, Kyle!  Can you teach me?” 

Kyle choked and nearly fell over.  “TEACH you?” 

She took the paint can out of his hands.  “This is just about all I know how to do, Oops, slippery!”  She dropped it, then picked it up again and managed to get it secured in a claw.  She found a blank wall and painted a serviceable standard Horde logo and stick figures of her and Catra holding hands.  

“You and Catra, right?” Kyle said with a smile.  “That’s not bad.”  

“But…YOU!  That creature you drew! It’s downright scary!” 

“Well,” Kyle said, toeing the ground with his boot, “I figure if I can’t fight too well I can at least strike fear in the hearts of the rebels with that?” 

Scorpia handed Kyle back the paint can.  She had sparkles in her eyes.  “Can YOU draw me and Catra holding hands?  I wanna see how you do it!” 

Kyle shook up the can to make sure he had enough paint and found another blank wall on a rounded building.  “Alright, I’ll do my best.”  

He proceeded to paint something that had some dimension to it, exquisite shading and little details on Catra’s fur and Scorpia’s chitin.  

Scorpia was bouncing in her heels.  Kyle looked at her quizzically as her tail lashed back and forth like a dog’s tail-wag.   

“Whoa! Watch your tail!” he cried.  

A third pair of boots stamped their way.  Lonnie glared at them, her hands on her hips.  “JUST WHAT IN THE” (an explosion in another part of the village cut her off) “ARE YOU DOING?” 

“Um…art?” Kyle said, shivering.  

“We’re doing art!” Scopria chimed.  

“WE’VE GOT INSURGENTS!” Lonnie yelled.  “LET’S MOVE!” 

Chapter Text

Flesh and Bone

Hordak stood tall, facing the strange, bony-framed Princess.  Her eyes were gray and milky.  She looked blind, but assured him that she could see him perfectly-well.  Her hair was white and stringy.  She wore a necklace of string with a pendant made from the bleached skull of some kind of rodent.  

“If you are uninterested in purchasing my wares, I’ll be back to the Underground, then.”  

“We shall buy all of the provisions you offer if you would listen to our proposal,” Hordak offered.  Entrapta patted him in the back with her hair.  He was getting better at this whole “diplomacy” thing.  

“How did you find me?  The Underground is not known to many.”  

“Oh, you were one of my trading-partners, remember?” Entrapta chimed. 

“I do not remember you.” 

Entrapta looked down sheepishly.  “I don’t think you would.  I never came here!  You’d remember my robots, though!” 

“Oh, you’re that Princess of Dryl, aren’t you? The one who only wanted tiny fish?” 

“Yep!”  The addressed Princess held out her gloved hand.  “Princess Entrapta of Dryl!  Well, I’m kind of living in the Fright Zone now, actually.”  

“Princess Melonchola,” the stringy-haired young woman replied, taking Entrapta’s proffered hand for a quick shake.  “So, why are you with him and why are you here?”  

“Well, why I’m with Hordak is a long story, First I was with-” 

Hordak cut her off. 

“That is not important,” he intoned.  “She is my lab partner.  As it is, once I learned of your supposed powers, my interest was peaked.  I have given much thought to forming an alliance with you and your kingdom.  If you are interested, we may discuss terms.  First, I would like to see if the rumors are true. I take it that all of the other royals on this backwards planet fear you a great deal?” 

“That, they do,” Melonchola answered.  “Many consider my powers to be quite wicked, though, if that were true, why would I have the Blood Ruby runestone?  Why would the First Ones even construct it if it was not meant for something?”  

Melonchola cupped her hands together and closed her eyes with a breath.  Hordak stared as dark red blood dripped between her fingers.  She opened her hands to reveal a pumping heart.  

She smiled an unnerving smile.  “This is what I do.”  

She crushed the heart in one fist, dissipating it into so many spatters of blood that vanished.  She put out her free arm and blades of bone erupted over its length.  “And this.”  

Melonchola glared meaningfully at Entrapta.  I work with anything organic, including things like keratin.  She retracted her bone-blades and spun a finger in the air.  Entrapta screamed as her hair-tails suddenly shot upward and wrapped over themselves.  A pair of bone-spikes erupted from her skull, were quickly covered in a bloody wrapping of thin flesh.  Her hair wrapped over them and tightened, winding around and around until the hapless scientist was sporting a pair of long horns resembling those of an ibex.  

Entrapta kept screaming and reached up to grab her horns.  

“Entrapta?!” Hordak called.  He narrowed his eyes and roared at Melonchola.  “Undo what you have done at once!”  

“Very well.”  Melonchola twirled her finger the other way.  Entrapta’s horns became hair once again, unwound itself and the bony horn-cores retreated back into her skull, leaving her as she had arrived.  

Entrapta caught her breath, still in panic-mode.  

“There is no permanent damage done,” Melonchola said flatly.  “Get ahold of yourself.”  

“I should strangle you where you stand!” Hordak growled.  

“But you won’t, will you?” Melonchola replied.  “Because you are impressed with my powers, are you not?”  

Entrapta got herself together.  “We need her, Hordak, we do.  I’m okay. Really!” 

Hordak looked between the two Princesses skeptically.  

“I can sense by your very stance that your body needs help,” Meloncola said. “I may be able to aid you.”  

Hordak’s ears perked.  

“We’ve been working on it…together,” Entrapta offered.  

“Here are my terms,” Melochola said.  She pointed beyond Hordak and Entrapta to the gathered cadet-squad that had followed them to this place.  “I am rather interested in getting to know some of your soldiers.  Perhaps some ‘dates’ are in order?”  

“Dates?” Hordak asked, quirking an eyebrow.  

“I would like to take each of these soldiers into my kingdom and hear what they have to say about you and the Horde.  I must know what I am getting myself into, after all.”  

“They shall be worthy sacrifices,” Hordak said.  

“If they are not rude, I shall return them in one piece,” Melonchola assured.  She pointed at Entrapta.  “Lastly…her.  I’d like to date her, as well.”  

Hordak took a protective stance beside his lab partner.  

“Don’t worry, Hordak! I’ll be fine!  This will be fascinating!”  

“If you say so.”  

Chapter Text

Scorpia’s Friend-Fiction

“No!  Don’t mess with that!” Scorpia cried out. 

“Oh, what is it?” Entrapta asked, picking up various inked pages with curls of her hair.  

“Put that down, please?” Scorpia begged.  

“And Catra curled up in a sleepy ball in the strong arms of her beloved Scorpia…” Entrapta read aloud.  “Fascinating!  Is this some kind of scientific log?” 

Scorpia’s face was beet-red.  “No…” she confessed, sheepishly putting her claws together.  “It’s my um… friend-fiction.”  

“Friend-fiction?” 

“It’s um… fiction I write about my friends?” 

Entrapta picked up another page.  “Ooh, I’m in this one!” 

“Don’t!”  

“Hordak turned to Entrapta and told her; ‘I am afraid I have fallen in love with you, my lady.” 

“No, no, no…” 

Entrapta ignored her and continued reading.  “I’m a lesbian, his crush said.  He didn’t know what to do with that.  He loved her with all his heart.  She was his reason to live and now, it’s like she’s gone.”  

Scorpia hid her face and curled up her tail.  “I never meant for any of you to read this stuff!  I was just having fun, I swear!” 

“There’s nothing wrong with exploring social experiments!” Entrapta assured her, a strand of her hair held high.  “But, I don’t think the situation with me and Hordak would go that way.”  

“Okay…”  At this, Scorpia got an excited look.  “Do you…actually like him, Entrapta?” 

Entrapta flustered and blushed a little.  “Um… we’re lab-partners, Scorpia. And I’m not really, um… anything. Um… I don’t think? I’m married to Science!”  

“Oh.” 

“Why did you want to make me a lesbian in your story anyway? Have I ever given you any indication that I might be of that persuasion?”  

“Not really… I just kind of thought it would be cute to pair you up with Princess Perfuma of Plumeria or with Princess Glimmer of Bright Moon.  I don’t know why.”  

“Ooh! You did illustrations!” 

“Gah!  Don’t look at those!”  

Chapter Text

Cat People


“I only keep you around for Adora’s sake,” Shadow Weaver intoned, her glare at Catra stern.  “She is attached to you.”  

“You’ve…you’ve told me this before.”  

“A bright young child should have…pets,” the sorceress continued.  “However, you have been growing a little too attached to her, of late.”  

“Too attached?  Too attached?  She’s my only friend!  She’s the only one around here who treats me halfway decently!” 

“You have failed to bond with the remainder of your squad.  It is understandable, given what you are, but you are growing up and so is Adora.  Do not think that some of the closeness of your actions towards each other have escaped my notice.”  

Catra’s tail bristled.  That witch! Of course she was spying all over the place.  It was only a peck on the cheek and it was a comfort-move.  Adora had had a nightmare.  She was being nice!  

“You have no idea what you really are, do you?” Shadow Weaver spoke low, curling her fingers into one another.  “Your species is rare - for a reason. Your kind does harm to all they touch.” 

“All they touch?”  

“Yes.  You don’t just have fur, ears and a tail.  On the day or night you…how do I put this delicately… lose your virginity, you shall gain the ability - and curse, mind you, of turning into a ferocious shape-shifting beast.”  

“What a load!”  

“It is true, little one.  Why do you think I chose to spare you? You will become a terrible four-footed beast, sharp of claw and tooth - even moreso than you are now.  You shall also lose your mind and become…shall we say, the perfect attack-animal under the proper confines.  A great, if mindless asset to the Horde.  All that needs happen is for you to engage in coitus with another.”  

At this, Shadow Weaver narrowed her eyes.  “I would prefer you gain closeness with Kyle, or one of our other less capable cadets.  I will not have you tearing apart Adora.  Do you understand?”  

“It’s… its a load,” Catra repeated to herself. She was shivering, trying to convince herself that this was just another of Shadow Weaver’s lies.  Still, she was frightened.  She’d have to see if she could hack the computers for records.  Adora could help with that - maybe.  Or maybe not.  Neither of them had been able to uncover their origins before.  

“You are dismissed, Cadet Catra.”  

Chapter Text

Thorns

It started with withering.  Snaking vines dried out and lost their leaves.  Flowers fell.  Perfuma couldn’t bring herself to burn the monument into soil-enriching ash - too uncomfortable, fire, considering previous assumptions - but allowing it to go into disrepair and to decay like any untended garden felt right.  She looked up at its face, half-broken off by the wind at this point.  

“Traitor!” she hissed, spitting on the ground before the topiary. 

She couldn’t believe the news she’d heard from Bow.  “Entrapta’s alive!” he’d said.  At first, she thought that he’d had some particularly vivid dream and was confusing it for the waking world.  (The Universe knew that she’d had several only to wake up to the cold, hard reality that her friend was gone).  Then, she thought that he was raising wild speculations based upon wishful thinking.  He’d disassembled a Horde-bot and it was apparently quite advanced inside.  There were explanations for that aside from the-person-they-clearly-saw-get-incinerated working for the Horde.  Perhaps a Horde-spy had gotten into the Crypto-Castle and had stolen some of the late scientist’s designs?  Bow had insisted, however, that no one but Entrapta could create a robot like that.  He and Glimmer also claimed to have talked to her through a video-feed.  That, too, was something that Perfuma questioned in the beginning, assuming some kind of dastardly Horde-trick.  

That had all changed when she’d seen a pair of familiar pigtails on the far side of a battlefield.  Perfuma did not have a chance to engage her then.  A retreat had been called - the Rebellion having no choice but to cede some ground to the Horde if they all wanted to make it out alive.  The Horde bots had improved laser-canons.  The ground troops’ armor had showed improved functions.  Even the troop-formation and tactics had gotten better.  Adora had sensed Catra’s hand in that.  

Catra.  In a strange way, Perfuma thought that she’d understood the baddie a little bit more now.  Perhaps it was the Plumerian philosophy of compassion and karma, but she’d found her heart wandering to thoughts of “humanizing the enemy” as it were, of putting herself in her place.  Adora had told all of the Princesses stories of her and Catra growing up and, despite the destruction that Catra was creating as a new Second in Command of Horde forces, “The She-Ra” was convinced that Catra was still a good person, somehow.  

Love is blind, as they say.  

Perfuma looked back up at the wilting monument.  Yes, she felt it - what Catra must feel.  A friend, perhaps someone who could have and would have been more - saying goodbye and cutting ties just like that. Switching sides without a second thought…  

It may have been a tragic mistake that had stranded Entrapta in the Fright Zone, but it had been entirely her decision to stay and to work for them.  It had been her choice to turn her back on the Rebellion.  

To turn her back on Perfuma.  

Perfuma willed a thick vine to emerge from the ground at her feet. It curled up next to her.  She thought about the next battle.  The Rebellion had designs on retaking the Talon Mountain foothills.  Swift Wind had come back with reports of Horde-robot activity and mounting operations with mining equipment. This meant that the purple-haired traitor was likely to show up.  

Long, straight thorns shot out from the coils of the vine.  

Perfuma would be ready.  

Chapter Text

The Future Past and Mini Cupcakes

Entrapta startled when she heard a tapping behind her.  Something tap-tapped on the floor at the entryway to her personal lab (separate from Hordak’s sanctum, where she’d been doing most of her work of late).  She whipped around.  

“Catra? Scorpia? she asked.  “I’m almost done here. I’ll be out in a minute!” 

“No.”  

The scientist froze.  She recognized that voice.  She hadn’t heard it in ages - not since before she joined the Horde - not since before she’d joined the Rebellion, even.  What was it, about two years since she’d made a journey to Timely to adjust the trade-deals the kingdom had with Dryl?  It wasn’t like the place was easy to get to.  She mostly only agreed to visit rather than bring its ruler or her diplomats up to Dryl because the clock makers of the court always had new “creatures” for her to study.  Timely had its own technological traditions - far different from her own work.

A tall figure stepped half-into the light.  She tapped the butt of the grain-harvester’s scythe on the floor once more and regarded Entrapta with a frozen expression. 

“Empress Futura?”  

Futura nodded.  Wow, she was wearing a death-glare today!  It was even more dour than her usual expression.  

Entrapta decided upon a friendly demeanor.  “So…what brings you here to the Fright Zone?  On a study-mission?”  

“I was looking for you.” 

“Well, okay, alright.  I didn’t even know you knew I was here.  You’re so isolated.  Ooh! Ooh, we should catch up!  I kind of got recruited into a war…then I joined the other side… and now I’m working on portals!  Lord Hordak says we aren’t alone - that there are other worlds out there! And…and…you’ve just gotta see my progress!”  

Futura tapped her scythe, loudly this time.  

“I am not making a friendly-visit.  I have forseen your activities.  I said nothing to the Rebellion and did not make any effort to attempt to alter your choices, for I saw many outcomes, both for well and for ill.  I’ve never been one to take sides when there are many possibilities.”  

“So…how goes that….scrying thing you do?  Eh-heh?  Find anything interesting?” 

Futura gave her a look she’d known before during her visits to the Empress’ kingdom, the look that said “You cannot hide anything from someone with the ability to see through time.”  Granted, Futura didn’t see through all of time - it came in trance-states, both random and induced and what she saw lay more in “probabilities” than in a fully-scripted destiny.  Entrapta had done some studies on Futura’s trances.  It was truly bizarre to watch and left the Empress vulnerable as it was akin to being catatonic for several minutes. 

“I can control the states better,” Futura assured her.  “Now, then, I came to see you.  BOTH of you.”  

Entrapta froze.  

“So the… that gray-haired person is…”  

“You from twenty-five years from now?  Indeed she is.  I must say, the purple really grays out rather nice - kind of like steel, wouldn’t you say?”  

“I didn’t believe it.  I mean… why is it short? It only goes down to her mid-back… and it’s not as fluffy…”  Entrapta was holding out one of her tails in front of her, hugging and stroking the mass like a pet, her face in a worried expression.  

“You wouldn’t.  You were captured by the Rebellion at one point.  They gave you a buzz-cut as an anti-escape measure.  It didn’t work.  You killed a lot of people that night.  You - or she- rather, has been trying to regrow your hair ever since.” 

“I killed people?”  

Futura nodded grimly.  “Did you suddenly forget that you’re in a war, Entrapta? And that you’ve chosen to work for a side bent upon conquest?” 

“I’m on the side of science.”  

“That may be, but consider who you are working with.  When you work for conquerors, sooner or later you will be sent out to conquer.  You haven’t even begun to see the destruction your captive has witnessed.”  

Entrapta paused for a moment, then asked an obvious question, suddenly curious.  

“How did she get here?  Do I build a time-machine in the future?  Ooh! Do I hack into the Chrono-Quartz?”  

She suddenly shrank back as Futura gave her a deadly look.  “You hacked into the Black Garnet,” she answered.  “That sent the planet out of balance, if you could care to remember!  The effect reverberated through all of the Runestones including mine and thus Time itself.”  

“Ooooh!”  Entrapta had now pulled a notebook and pen from her hair.  “Tell me everything!”  

“You shouldn’t ask me, you should ask ‘Es’tra’ - well, when she comes off of the sedatives.  I only saw the vision.  She’s the one who lived that particular timeline.  She can tell you all about the rift that opened up and how she found a way to harness it - all of the technical details.  I’m just here to try to help you two set things right.”  

“How are you going to do that?”  

“Well, first, we’re going to give her these.”  Futura reached into her leather hip-satchel and brought out a package of miniature cupcakes.  “They’re NOT for you. They’re for… the other you.  She will become much more cooperative once she’s had a snack that’s been denied her for years. 

Entrapta’s face fell.  “No…cupcakes…for years?”  

Futura sighed.  “Things really don’t ‘come up Entrapta’ in the timeline-thread I saw once I felt the quantum disturbance, hon.  The sad thing about it is that it’s all your own fault, but…yep.  Shaved head.  No cupcakes.  Among other things, like the horrors of a planet-wide totalitarian state.”  

“Well, I knew it had to be serious if she was willing to risk negating her own existence.”  

“Well, old friend…” Futura said, gripping her scythe, “If things don’t work out between the three of us trying to set right what once went wrong - I might have to kill you both, myself.”  

Chapter Text

Vampire Kisses 


“Okay, Pascal, we’re almost done! Hurry up and finish scrubbing! We’ve got to get out of here before the others arrive!”  

Entrapta was speaking to a waterproof robot she’d specifically designed for shampooing her massive load of hair.  There was only so much she could so herself between her hands and using the hair itself to cleanse its full length.  It tended to get heavy when wet, to the point that it was difficult to move.  She was only comfortable with bathing alone (save for her robots) because she was accustomed to her privacy.  Everyone knew when she’d pinched a shower ahead of other soldiers and staff because the drains were always half-clogged with a few sheddings of long, purple hair.  

The scientist froze when she heard voices and footsteps.  

“Gah! Entrapta’s been here!” Catra groused, bare feet making wet slaps on the shower-tiles.  “It’s like navigating a spider-web whenever she’s been here!” 

“Uh, Catra?”  

Pascal beeped and ducked down defensively in front of his master to shield her exposed body.  Catra and Scorpia were likewise nude and were completely nonchallant about it.  Soldiers’ training, Entrapta figured.  She took the opportunity to examine them.  

“Fascinating!  Your chitin extends all the way down your spine!  And you… you have light fur all over your body!  Your biology is amazing!”  

“You can go ahead and finish up,” Scorpia offered.  “You really don’t need to be so shy around…us…”  

Entrapta shrank behind her robot as Scorpia’s eyes went wide.  She tried to duck and dodge but found her soaked hair keeping her down.  Pascal beeped and gestured in protest, but he could do nothing to protect his master, as he was not built for battle.  Scorpia held Entrapta by the shoulders and uncomfortably looked her over.  

“WHO HURT YOU?!” she yelped. 

“Huh?  What?”  

Scorpia started shaking her.  “Did Hordak do this?  Are you okay?!”

“Aaaaah! Scorpia, stop it!”  

Catra noticed the red marks standing out on Entrapta’s skin.  A few of them looked scabbed over with dried blood, but none were serious.  

“Just…some…um…experiments gone a little…unexpected,” Entrapta attempted to explain, twidling her fingers and trying desperately to wrap her hair around herself, but finding it too drippng and heavy to lift.  “Don’t worry about it! I get hurt in my work all the time!”  

“Those aren’t tool-wounds,” Catra said, failing to suppress a snicker.  “Those are bite marks!”  

Suddenly, she was doubled over and slapping a knee.  “Don’t tell me… Oh, by the moons!” 

“What? What?”  Scorpia asked, clueless as usual.  She whipped around and grabbed Entrapta again stark worry in her eyes.  “HORDAK BIT YOU?” 

“Uh…uh…” 

“OH, YOU POOR THING! Do you need me to take care of you?  To nurse you back to health?  If Hordak is hurting you, you shouldn’t work in his lab anymore!  I knew he was mean, but…this! Oh, Entrapta!”  

Entrapta found herself awkwardly hugged right into Scorpia’s bare chest, past the marshmallow-hell, her cheek squished right into the larger woman’s hard sternum.  She surmised that she would have likely been given a bruise if not for being shielded by one of Scorpia’s mammary glands.  

“Let her go,” Catra ordered.  “She’s fine.”  

Scorpia let Entrapta go; “But those wounds…”  

“Ugh,” Catra grumbled.  “Do I really have to explain this to you, Scorpia?  You’re not a kid.” 

“Hold on, ‘Trap, I’ll get the first aid kit!”  

Catra held up a hand to stop Scorpia from running off naked. “No.”  

“I’m fine, really!  Well, aside from the…abject mortification.  My bot can go fetch it if you’re really concerned.” 

Pascal beeped unhappily from the corner he was exiled to.  

“You see, Scorpia… when a man and a woman love each other… or when a woman and a woman, or sometimes a man and a man…uh…when two people love each other…sometimes….”  

“We were conducting experiments,” Entrapta sighed before brightening up and holding her pointer finger in the air “We’re lab partners!” 

“Well, if you ever need patching up…” Scorpia offered. She looked unomfortably at Catra, wondering how much wildcat bites hurt.   

Chapter Text

Pie(s) aRe Squared-Off 


So, it had come down to this.  

It was a year after the last of the Horde’s forces had surrendered.  Catra had been tired of fighting what had become a pointless war after Hordak’s death. He had been done in by a particularly unusual method - one that was celebrated in a dark-humor sort of way at the Freedom Festival.  She smiled, showing her fangs, as she took her chair.  She honestly didn’t know that Bright Moon had it in its collective culture to be so grimly smug in its celebrations.  She liked it.  There was hope for these sparkly Princesses yet.  

While what was left of the Fright Zone had come to more-or-less friendly terms with the rest of Etheria’s kingdoms, it would be inaccurate to say that conquest was not still on Catra’s mind.  It was very much in the forefront of her thoughts today, hence why she sat before a bench loaded with stacks upon stacks of pies in many flavors.  Adora sat beside her, giving her a flirty grin.  

“You aren’t allowed to be She-Ra for this,” Catra reminded her.  “I’m going to beat you hands down.” 

“Don’t be so sure,” Adora replied.  “None of these are minced-mouse.” 

Catra flattened her ears and growled.  

The two Champions sat before the crowd, awaiting the signal to begin their latest battle.  This was the Freedom Festival’s most anticipated event: the Pie-Eating Contest.  It was the central event of the day, for Hordak had fallen…to pie.

 A saboteur had entered the Horde’s kitchens and had prepared for him a doomberry pie that was served to him when he was working late in his laboratory one evening. Doomberries were a kind of fruit known to be highly poisonous to most humanoids - and apparently it was so to whatever species Hordak was.  There was much speculation as to who was behind the assassination: Some thought that Entrapta’s kitchen-staff had grown bold and desperate in wanting to free themselves (they had been captured specifically to make food for Entrapta while she was in the Horde’s employ). Some cited a disgruntled ex-associate who was off trying to take over another planet (interesting stuff they’d all learned through the portals…) Some people even believed that Catra had poisoned him.   

In any case, Hordak was gone and Catra had taken over, abandoning Hordak’s goals and turning the Fright Zone into a kingdom of outcasts that had become relatively peaceful once their new queen had decided that the war was no longer worth the effort.  

The pies piled upon the bench came in many flavors (thankfully, none of them doomberry).  Catra and Adora glared daggers at each other.  

“What makes you think you can beat me, Adora?  You can’t win.”  

“I don’t think you understand what you’ve gotten yourself into,” Adora replied, a smug smirk plastered upon her face. 

“Go, Adora! You can do it!” Bow called from the head of the crowd.  

“Yeah! Show her what you do at the castle-feasts!” Glimmer cried beside him.

“They aren’t tiny, but your formidable stomach-capacity should be able to handle a sizable load!” Entrapta called to Catra. 

“Go, Wildcat, go!” Scorpia yelled out with a claw-pump.  

The contest-overseer counted to three and waved his hand.  The contest was on!  

Catra tore through the pie-tins with the ferocity of a wild beast, grabbing handfuls of sticky, juicy fruit and cramming into into her sharp-toothed maw without any regard for manners of any kind.  

Adora, ignoring the spray she was getting from her opponent, popped pies right out of their tins and into her wide mouth - not quite as messily, but with as much gusto.  

“Go! Go! Go!” the crowd chanted.  

“A-dor-a! A-dor-a!” went the shouts from Bright Moon’s citizens.  

“Cat-ra! Cat-ra!” cried the Fright Zoners.  

Entrapta bounced on a seat made from her hair and craned to get a good look, recorder in hand.  “Five minutes in and the two test subjects are still going strong!” she spoke into it, “Although! Yes! Some signs of acute distress have begun to appear!  They both seem to be perspiring. I believe this is called coloquially ‘the food sweats!’  Fascinating!”  

“Go! Go! Go!” 

Catra hiccuped.  

Adora was face-first in a chocolate-creme, the distinct sound of “Nom, nom, nom,” issuing from her.  

Catra laid her head down on the table.  

Adora didn’t notice, finding another pie to tear through.  

“We have a winner!” the overseer announced.  Adora!”  

The crowd cheered.  

The overseer stared as the Princess of Power took no notice of the outcome. 

“Adora…the contest is over now.  You can stop eating.”  

“Nom, nom.”  

Catra held up a hand and moaned.  

“Doomberries….please…” 

Chapter Text

Be Gone, Cat.



Hordak’s long ears twitched when he heard the clacking of claws upon the floor.  He picked up his head and looked beyond the force field to see Catra standing before his cell, clad in her new Rebellion colors. He gave her a fanged grin. Of course it had been her to take him down in the end.  She-Ra might have been the planetary protection-protocol scion, but, somehow, he knew that his downfall would be Catra.  

“To what do I owe this visit?” he asked. 

“Well, I’m not here to give you your last rites,” Catra replied.  

“Hmm.” He grunted.  “Be gone, cat.”  

Catra inspected the claws of her right hand. “I really didn’t think that the people of Bright Moon had it in them, but they are researching execution methods as we speak.”  She smiled. “It seems that you have been deemed too dangerous to be kept alive. Quite a pity that you’ve had so many enhancements done to your body and that you are of such an…alien nature.  The guards slated to the task have yet to find anything that they think will be painless, not even using her studies.”  

Hordak grunted.  

“You should be glad. They’re trying to be as merciful as they can be.  Bunch of wimps.  It’s more than you deserve.”  

“So you are here just to pester me,” 

The fallen warlord turned his back to the force field. He stood straight and tall, showing Catra the many scars on his un-armored frame.  He had failed utterly and had lost everything.  All that was left for him now was dignity.  When they’d finally decided upon a method, Hordak would go to his death with his head held high.  He might be weak now, but he at least had that strength. As far as he was concerned, he owed nothing to his former second-in-command and she’d never know his secret admiration for just how masterfully she had double-crossed him. It had been beautiful, really, in its way.  

He repeated himself.  “Be gone, cat.”  

“I have one question,” Catra spoke up.  

“Did you not hear me?  Be gone, cat.”  

“If you could have chosen your path from the start, what would it have been?”  

Hordak kept his back turned to her as his gaze regarded the floor.  He did not have an answer.  He was born into the house of Horde Prime.  He was bred to conquest and was modified, upgraded, torn apart and reassembled throughout his life – which had lasted eons compared to the mortals of this planet all to that purpose.  He had known nothing but war.  

“Perhaps I would have been a painter.”  

This elicited a low growl from Catra. Hordak laughed.  

“You’ve never been one to tell jokes,” she observed.  “Why start now?”  

“Did I say it was a joke?”  Hordak responded.  “The question is a poor one because the matter is irrelevant.  I never had a path but the one I was placed on. You, too, were raised to be a soldier. You fulfilled your fate, even as you switched sides. There was no other path for you, or for me.”  

“Why a painter?”  Catra did not miss his point; she just wanted to know the origin of his bitter joke.  

Catra would never see his subtle smile. “She collects art,” he said.  “Not particularly good art, mind you, but I can’t help but think that if I’d taken some time to try making velvet paintings of big-eyed kittens, it would have made her happy.”  

“She’s not happy, you know,” Catra sighed. “She is very lucky that they decided to spare her from the chopping-block.  Some in Bright Moon think she deserves it just as much as you do.” 

“Will she be stopping in?”  

“No.  She has been forbidden from seeing you.  You wouldn’t want to see her, anyway.  They cut her hair short as a precaution even though she is complying with the house-arrest.  She just doesn’t look right without all that hair.”  

Hordak grunted again as he sat down on his bunk.  “I would have very much liked to see Entrapta before the end.”  

“Which is why you aren’t going to.” Catra couldn’t hide her growing grin. “She has been deemed ‘too easy to influence.’  Something like that.  She has agreed to work with Bright Moon to put a stop to the projects that she began with you.  She’s gotten a kind of science-community-exception regarding war crimes just as Scorpia and I became informants upon our defection.  It’s not a full-pardon, mind you… with the house-arrest and the hair-punishment, but…it’s surprising how easily she’s sold you out!”  

Catra laughed.  

Hordak tried to hide it, but the sadness showed through the glow of his eyes.  

“So much for love!” Catra taunted.  

“She was always more loyal to the work than anything… to the purity of science. I knew that from the beginning. The knowledge I’ve shared with her will live on.” 

“You just tell yourself that.”  

“Be gone, cat.”  

“You should be happy to know that Queen Angella has signed an order to allow her to study your remains.”  

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Be gone, cat.” 

“Wouldn’t it have been lovely if we could have chosen different paths? Now you have lost everything and are going to die and there is nothing you can do about it!”  

Hordak watched as Catra turned and walked back down the hallway, her tail swishing.  He was certain that he heard something beyond the sealed doorway.  

Entrapta’s voice.  And she was crying.  

Chapter Text

Ice Cold

 

The robots lay in sparking wreckage. 

“Frosta, what are you doing?”Glimmer screamed.  

“What?” Frosta protested.  “I’m doing war! I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, aren’t I?”  

“Get her out! Get her out!” Bow yelped, panicking, dancing around the giant ice-pillar, pounding it, trying to free the frozen figure inside.  

Catra and Scorpia sat, tied up, eyes wide.  Mermista and Sea Hawk, respectively, stood beside them, holding them on improvised leashes.  

Frosta was all smiles.  “She was a traitor and I took care of her!”  

“Adora, help!” Bow screamed over the field.  

Adora was already transformed into She-Ra, dealing with the last of the drones.  Her eyes widened when she sprinted over the field and caught sight of the ice-pillar.  She took the Sword of Protection and, in a mighty swing, cracked its base.  It shattered, releasing its captive.  

Bow was quick to catch Entrapta.  Her extremities were blue and she wasn’t moving.  Her hair fell all around him, completely limp.  

“Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” he gasped, bending down with her and rubbing her shoulders to try to warm her up.  “Come on, Entrapta, BREATHE!” 

Perfuma was quick to Bow’s side, as was She-Ra.  

Glimmer grabbed Frosta by the front of her shirt.  “What did you DO?!” she demanded.  

“Look!” Frosta explained.  “Entrapta is our enemy!  She betrayed us!  She was ATTACKING US WITH WAR-BOTS!  I’m totally the hero here.”  

“She is our friend!” Glimmer shot back. “Or was.  Okay, it’s hard to tell and we needed to fight her, but… killing?”  

“The Kingdom of Snows has been at war with the Selkies for generations.  My parents sent out soldiers to kill to keep our people safe.”  

Bow looked up, still clutching Entrapta close.  “In Bright Moon, we avoid killing if we can capture!  You know that!” 

She-Ra’s hands glowed where she touched her former-friend-turned-enemy.  Healing - it was a recently-learned power of hers and rather precarious.  

Some of Entrapta’s hair twitched weakly.  She drew in a sharp breath and shivered.  Perfuma wrapped her in vines to try to keep her warm as her hair was a cold, wet mess.  

Bow sighed in relief as he rose, cradling her.  “Let’s get back to Bright Moon. Quickly.”  

“Is she going to be alright?” Scorpia asked as Mermista gave her a little kick to the carapace to get her to her feet.  

“I don’t know,” Bow said, shaking his head.  

Frosta walked at the rear of the party.  She did not understand why everyone was fawning over the traitor.  She hoped that Entrapta wouldn’t make it.  It would make one less enemy to deal with.  

In her kingdom, she would have been sentenced to exile in the far tundra for her crimes, not helped and healed.  

Chapter Text

Relative Dimensions


Angella floated in the Void.  She’d done it.  She’d seized the Sword of Protection and loosed it from the portal to drop back down to the surface of Etheria and to Adora.  It was up to Adora to take care of everyone now and the queen had utmost faith that she would.  Poor Glimmer - Bright Moon was on her shoulders now, far too soon, but Angella had faith in her daughter, too.  

Faith… it was all that was left to her.  

Angella flexed her wings and wondered if this was what death was like.  She’d never been forced to think about her own mortality before, given that she was an immortal being.  She’d contemplated the deaths of others - oh, so much, too much and, of course, had a curiosity over what it was like, but didn’t think she’d ever see it.  She still didn’t experience it, as she was alive.  This was a worse state - consciousness in an empty world.  She tried not to think about how she couldn’t see anything or hear anything…how she couldn’t even feel a breeze on her skin.  When her mind wondered to such things, she felt herself starting to go mad.  Instead, she steeled her mind to concentrate on the many people she loved, past and present.  

She opened her eyes to the nothingness and stared ahead, thinking of Glimmer.  Then she thought she saw a glimmer in the distance.  A spark of light.  

Dumbfounded, she willed herself to drift toward it.  

Whatever it was, it was spinning.  As she got closer, she could see something distinctly blue.  

As it came into focus, Angella could see the mysterious object was like a shack or building of some kind.  It was a large box that looked like it could hold one person and had a door.  There was writing above the door - First Ones language and she could read it.  

“Police Call Box?” she said to herself.  “What in the world is a ‘police call box?”

The door on the box opened.  A young man’s head topped with fuzzy brown hair and a fez popped out.  

“Oh, hello!” he said. “Care for a jelly baby? Let me guess...a bit of self-sacrifice to save the world, had to leave yourself out of what came next? Yeah, been there, that’s what put me here, too.  I’m expecting a plot-hole I set up just before to get me out shortly, though, if you’d like a ride.  Love the wings, by the way. Much nicer than the ones made of stone.” 

Angella smiled.  She did very much want a jelly baby. “A ride?” she inquired, “But...” 

“It’s bigger on the inside.”  

Chapter Text

Bad Bluff

“Just hold on a sec!  I’ve gotta secure these dampeners or things will explode when we’re gone!” 

“Hurry up.  We are already late.  When I am not timely in handing down my orders the troops become restless and therefore dangerous.” 

“All done!”  

Entrapta bounced up beside Hordak as he pinned his flowing robe over his new armor.  He slicked back his hair and and checked his look in a mirror.  He needed to look as intimidating as possible.  

“Oh, no… it’s five minutes past already!” Entrapta said, giving her data pad a glance.  

“Indeed,” Hordak intoned.  “Make up an excuse for us.  I do not wish for the underlings to be given to certain rumors.” 

“What kind of rumors?”  

Hordak grit his teeth.  He’d overheard a few of the cafeteria-conversations among the soldiers courtesy of Imp.  They ranged from the base and the vulgar - accusations of him and Entrapta sharing a bed to more irksome ones regarding failures of scientific projects.  There was even a rumor that they’d been working upon a devastating biological weapon together - this actually gave him ideas and could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  In any case, the rank and file had no business speculating about what was going on in the Sanctum.  It was far above their pay-grade.  

“Just rumors I wish to see quashed,” the warlord said.  “Just… come up with something.  The more mundane the better.  I do not wish to lose face in the presence of the Force Captains.”  

“Okey-dokey.”  Entrapta put a curl of hair to her chin, thinking up a quick excuse as they entered the throne room.  

Scorpia, Catra, Grizzlor, Octavia and some lizard-man who Entrapta never got the name stood straight and tall and saluted.  

“Our uncustomary tardiness comes with a sound reason,” Hordak addressed. 

“HORDAK HAD DIARRHEA!”  Entrapta blurted out. 

Hordak rounded on her, teeth gritted, his ears blushing an angry blue.   

The Force Captains looked around nervously.  It was Scorpia who first lost her composure.  She doubled over, a claw to her stomach, laughing.  After that, there was no containing them.  The entire throne room was in an uproar.  

“You have too much of Entrapta’s tiny food?” Catra taunted, “A bad cupcake?” 

“NO! NO! THAT’S NOT WHAT HAPPENED AT ALL! I’M SORRY! I’M BAD AT LYING! I…!”  Entrapta tried valiantly for a save.  

For his part, Hordak wandered to his throne and sat down wearily.  He put his face in one hand.  His ears drooped and twitched.  

Entrapta had meant well.  She was just… horrible at deception.  He would have to train her.  This was his fault, really.  He had neglected certain lessons and exchanges with her, being too focused on their technical work.  

As for the Force Captains… the room held all of them.  He couldn’t execute all of them least he create a logistical nightmare in the running of the Fright Zone.  

He gave up.  It pained his very being, but he conceded defeat in this case.  

“No more miniature spicy curry,” he groaned.

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.”  

Chapter Text

A Blank Canvas


She slept a lot at first.  There wasn’t anything else to do.  It was a common tactic of people in solitary confinement to get through their days.  Days… there weren’t any of those anymore, were there?  No…there weren’t.  

Angella always thought that the worst aspect of time that could happen to her was to watch it pass on by her - that she would be both blessed and doomed to watch history unfold before her, the seasons change in cycle, to live through the wars and the rumors of wars and to watch any and all mortals she ever cared about leave her.  She knew that she would be alone in the end.  In truth, it didn’t really bother her until she fell in love.  Even then, she tried not to think about her own immortality in relation to the short lives of everyone else too much.  She had it in her power to give her people good lives, so she thought.  

Was this what it was like being dead?  People had many different beliefs on that - afterlives, ghosts and simple nonexistence.  Angella supposed that even mortals were immortal in a way.  If there was an afterlife, there was that; Death was merely a change in state.  If everything about the mind and spirit ceased to exist, on the other hand, well, how would one even know it had happened? 

Currently, she was in a state of nonexistence, but simultaneously in a state of awareness about it.  

Sleep was doing no good because the dreams stopped.  

She concentrated on many things.  Her breathing, the fact that she could still feel her body.  She could even see for a short space out in front of her as she could put her hand up before her face and still see her fingers.  Beyond that was the black.  Angella thought about everyone she’d left behind - the threads binding her to the mortal world.  If she could hold onto them…pull on them… maybe they could lead her home… 

The Queen took to singing and humming.  How long was she singing that lullaby she used to sing to Glimmer to get her to sleep?  Five minutes? A week? A month? An hour? A year?  

They took the stars, they did.  Mara. The Horde.  

Angella didn’t know how long it took for the colors to start appearing.  She saw swirling colors out in front of her and they took on shapes.  She was running under the trees of the Whispering Woods from some gargantuan animal.  No… there was a royal ball - the last “Princess Prom” that Bright Moon held.  Micah was dancing with her.  

“Angie? Angie?” He reached out to her, but his fingers slipped from her grasp as he fell into the void.  

“Micah?!”  she shouted into the ink.  

Blood, lasers, smoke, dust.  

The King and Queen of the Kingdom of Snows…. showing her how to butcher a walrus.  

The King and Queen of Dryl… commanding autonomous warriors on the battlefield…. the explosion… The letter in her hands… then… well, she decided that their young daughter was owed an actual visit, an envoy.  Her servants said they’d take care of her.  Snot dripping from the little girl’s face.  She said that she had voice-recordings of Mommy and Daddy and that she’d build new ones, whatever that meant.    The face of a grown young woman, lifting up a mask.  “Oh, I died in a fire, too! Except not really!  I made this, place! Do you like it?” 

Angella swatted the ghost away.  

Adora hugged Glimmer.  Bow looked up at her with anger in his eyes.  “How could you leave?  How could you leave?!” he demanded.  

“You,” Glimmer shouted at her, “You always stay behind!  You’re just so paralyzed by fear!”  

“I’m a coward, Glimmer, I know,” Angella said softly. The image disappeared.  

She was surrounded by everyone and no one at the same time.  The images turned into skulls and bones before her before dissipating into the darkness. 

Angella wrapped her arms and her wings around herself.  “I…I must keep myself together. For them.  If I ever get out of this place?”  

“You’re never leaving!” echoed in her mind.  She heard it as a voice - a deep voice that she did not recognize and was apparently conjuring by her mind.  “Forever! Forever! FOREVER!”  

She looked at her hand again.  It was bones.  

She looked again and it returned to flesh.  

Both awake and asleep, dead and alive.  Eternal and finite.  

No escape, no esape, noeescapenoescapenoescapenoescape foreverforeverandeverandeverandeverandonandon… 

Chapter Text

Playtime in the Horde 



Entrapta found herself riding Emily around the scrapyard, an empty bag in tow, looking for some useful scrap, bits of iron that could be smelted down, discarded copper wiring and the like.  Honestly, Hordak’s people could be so wasteful! They didn’t seem to understand how many uses some of their broken things could have!  

She came upon a group of young children in cadet-uniforms skipping rocks and metal bits in some sort of game.  

She hopped off Emily and grabbed one little girl’s hand with her hair. “Be careful! That’s sharp!  Oh, and it’s just what I’m looking for, too!”  She deposited a bit of jagged steel in her bag.  

One of the boys looked up at her.  “Miss…Miss Entrapta?” 

“Yes?”  

“Please don’t tell anyone we’re doing this, okay?  We aren’t supposed to be playing games.”

“What?  You don’t have games? Or toys?” 

“Toys?” another child asked.  “What are those?”  

“Um…something you play with?  Objects that help you have fun?” Entrapta tried to explain.  

“You mean like the scraps?” the girl asked.  

Entrapta tipped up her mask, her face reading disbelief.  “So, what you’re saying is that you don’t have any dolls, or building blocks, or stuffed animals,  or crayons, or little wind up robots or anything?!”  

“What’s all that?” the boy who’d spoken before asked. “We play with rocks and stuff, but we aren’t supposed to.  I heard that the Force Captains have games, though, ones they don’t have to draw in the dirt.”  

“Okay, kids, I’ve gotta go now,” Entrapta said, tipping her mask back down and hopping back onto Emily.  “Try not to get hurt, okay?”  

Emily sped off with her, as fast as her janky tripod legs could carry them.  

When the sliding doors to Hordak’s sanctum opened, the overlord of the Horde beheld a short silhouette with bristling hair, filled with fury.   Hordak paused in his work with Imp turned and looked.  She so rarely came in by this way, typically preferring a scuttle through the ventilation system.  

“HORDAK!”  

“Entrapta?” Hordak asked, more dumbfounded than anything.  He soon found himself backed against a vitrine, a finger waved in his face and many tendrils of hair writhing around behind the owner of the finger like an angry purple octopus. 

“What is the meaning of not giving the children toys and games?”  

“What is the meaning of this?!” he growled.  “I thought you were taking a rest-day.

“I was!” Entrapta replied.  “I decided to go down to the scrapyard to find some stuff I could recycle to improve Bot 553, or Herbert, if he works out like I hope he will!  I found some of the children there just sitting in the dirt and playing with rocks!  They don’t have toys, Hordak!  How can you not give them toys?” 

“Which children, Entrapta?”  Hordak said with an edge of irritation to his voice.  “The children-in-training have well-defined training-times, meal-times and rest-times.  If they are not sleeping during their rest-times, they need to have their rest-hours reduced.”  

“I’m not going to tell you who they are!” Entrapta barked.  “How can you not allow for play?  Don’t you understand that children need play-time and toys to stimulate their brains?  They aren’t developing properly!”  

“Play is frivolous,” Hordak grumbled.  

“No, it is not!” Entrapta retorted.  Her hair dropped and her eyes suddenly got soft and sad.  “You… you’ve never played, have you?  You didn’t get to, did you?  Did any of Horde Prime’s clones get a childhood?”  

“No,” Hordak said flatly.  “We emerged as adults, all of the basic information we needed downloaded into us, essentially battle-ready.  The birth and development that most animals go through is…inefficient.”  

“Well, Etherian people just don’t work that way, Hordak!”  Entrapta yelped.  “You can’t expect children to think only of work!  It’s bad for their development!”  

“You work at least as hard as I do.”  

Entrapta’s ponytails flailed in frustration.  “That’s because, for me, work IS play!  That’s what happens!  If children are allowed to play and given toys, they develop interests and find out what they’re good that!  They gain skills!  They find passions!  More importantly, key parts of their brains develop!  It helps them to become smart and you want smart soldiers!  Smart soldiers win battles!”  

Hordak sighed, knowing that he was hopeless when Entrapta was on a tangent.  He idly pet Imp’s head as Imp sat on a console beside him.  Imp made a noise of sympathy.  Entrapta was going to be on this for a while.  

“I wouldn’t be the scientist I am today if I didn’t get to play!” Entrapta continued.  “I had lots of building toys.  Interlocking bricks, dolls and a dollhouse… one of the reasons why I like tiny food, by the way… bottle rockets…and Daddums gave me my first robot-building kit for my birthday…”    She sighed, wistful.  

Then, she hopped onto one of the computer consoles, typed furiously and brought up several diagrams of the human brain on the display screen.  “Okay! Okay!  I am going to tell you exactly how play affects the Etherian human brain, as well as the Etherian satyr-type brain, and the Etherian minotuar-type…” 

Hordak sat down on a spare chair.  Imp crawled up on the arm of it.  They weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.   

Chapter Text

Good Morning

“Hissssssss!”  

Bow clutched his head and groaned.  “Who’s…letting air out of a tire?” he mumbled.  He’d been dreaming about bicycles.  Why bicycles? His head felt like his brain was trying to explode.  

There was a low growl followed by a “Don’t touch me, you freak!”  

Bow turned around to find right there among the disheveled blankets of the bed in the spare room that he was, himself, tangled up in - Catra, of all people. Her ears were flattened against her head and her tail was frizzed up.  She held up a hand in a defensive gesture, claws out.  

Bow held up his hands.  “I’m not touching you! I swear!”  

They both blinked at each other.  “DID I TOUCH YOU?” he yelped in a panic. 

“DID I TOUCH YOU?!!” Catra responded.  She held her hands to her head, tail lashing, ears twitching in panic.  “I can’t remember anything from last night!  Well, the hard cider and the champagne… Entrapta swinging from the chandelier… Frosta making ice-slides…Yeah, she wasn’t allowed to drink, but made those and everyone was sliding around on them…”  

“Was Adora dancing on a table?” Bow asked.  “Yeah…yeah, she was…and Perfuma took away her sword… but after that… I don’t remember anything, either!”  

They stared at each other.  They mutually checked their clothing.  They were still clothed, at least, in the garb they wore last night, but it was all mussed up. 

Bow clutched his head and pointed at Catra.  “Did we?  We didn’t, did we?” 

“I don’t even like boys!” Catra yelped.  

They both just looked at each other and blinked before a mutual scream escaped their lips.  

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”  

A ceiling tile popped loose and clattered to the floor and a head clad in a welding mask popped out of it.  “Keep it down!  I’m trying to sleep in here!  My head feels like someone’s put a quantum harmonizer in my photonic resonation chamber!” 

Catra blinked as she looked up at Entrapta.  “What?”  

“Oh, and don’t worry. You two didn’t do anything but sleep! I watched Glimmer bring you in last night.  She was as flummoxed as the rest of us and forgot to put you in separate beds.”  

It was Bow’s turn to blink.  “You watched us all night?”  

“Well, I couldn’t sleep with this headache!” 
   

Chapter Text

Wingnut for a Wingman 



“I have an idea for an adjustment to the data crystal’s containment field that just miiiight work.  Or explode. I don’t know which yet.  I’ll be back in a sec!” 

Hordak held his hand out.  “Entrap-” 

“Eheheheeh!” Adora giggled.  She was tied up against a pillar in the sanctum and she would not stop her inebriated laughter.  

“HOW DARE YOU LEAVE ME ALONE WITH THIS…THIS SPECIMEN!” He roared.  

The door slid behind Entrapta and Emily as they exited.  Neither of them acted like they’d heard him, or if they did, that they cared.  

“Aw, is Hordikins in a bit of a tizzy?” Adora slurred.  

“You will NOT call me by that name!” Hordak growled in response. 

“‘Trapta did it. I heard her.”  

“I repeat, YOU shall not call me by that name!  I cannot.. exactly control my lab partner.  She is useful to me and therefore, I have begun to ignore her…quirks.” 

“You liiiiiike her, don’t you!” 

“Our relationship is professional.  Arrgh! I don’t even know why I am speaking with you!  You are a defector, a traitor, an enemy and a test-subject.  You are also currently mentally compromised - severely.” 

“Your ears move when she’s in the room, kinda like…kinda like Catra…when we…” Adora yawned heavily. 

Hordak scrunched up his nose.  He did not need to hear this.  He went over various calculations regarding what he and Entrapta had termed the “Berserker Catalyst Crystal” on a data-pad. 

“You talk big words and stuff when you’re together, but I’ve seen the way you look at her. It’s cuuuuute. You should tell her how you feel.” 

Hordak grunted.  His old would-have-been Force Captain was worse than his current ones when they decided to partake of the moonshine they sometimes brewed with equipment that mysteriously “went missing” from the commissaries and yards.   He knew about it, but didn’t punish it so long as it did not impact performance.  He’d had to make examples of some drunken field-units from time to time, but most of the time, it wasn’t a big deal.  In any case, he knew what “drunk” Etherians looked and acted like.  He also knew what they looked like when on the kind of heavy medications issued for injuries whereby given combat units could be salvaged.  Weakness was looked down upon in the Horde, but sometimes, an injured soldier was worth saving.   Adora was currently worse - and more annoying - than anyone Hordak had seen in either of these states.  

He tried to ignore her.  

“I don’t think she wears a bra,” Adora drawled.  “I mean… just that shirt there and the boobies just bounce around and around…”  

Hordak stiffened.  

“I think you like that a lot.”  

Hordak closed his eyes and titled his chin to the ceiling.  He clenched his fists. “I can’t kill her, we need her.  I can’t kill her, she’s still a test subject” he said to himself.  

Adora just started laughing again.  

Chapter Text

A Respectful Distance 

Hordak stared down at the foolish rebel warrior.  His eyes were wide as he lay upon his back, a hole blasted clean through his chest.  It had been a while.  Hordak had forgotten just how ghastly a fresh kill could look close-up.  This one wasn’t even particularly messy - a gaping hole where the victim’s heart once was, but the laser-blast had mostly cauterized both the entry and exit wounds.  Hordak had memories of messier situations.  Still, the open eyes, staring with dilated pupils at nothing set in an expressionless face proved…unnerving.  

He shook his head, his thoughts annoying him.  Was he feeling pity?  Such weakness!  This was war and the victim was in the way - only so much trash to be disposed of.  It was not that Hordak killed needlesly.  If the fool had surrendered, he would not be dead.  As it was, Hordak had let him get entirely too close.  Over the years, he’d become used to doing behind the lines strategy - then, not even that as he focused upon his scientific pursuits and in creating the communications portal.  He’d delegated power.  Much of the combat the Horde did was via automatons and what needed to be done by actual people was done by those kept well-trained to see their targets as merely targets - in other words, not to think too much about the morality surrounding injury and the taking of lives.  All machines - or people well-attuned to machine-thought-patterns.  

He remembered killing was barely an afterthought to him.  How many beings with how many eyes in their heads had he seen slain upon how many different planets?  How many of his own brothers had he stepped over in pursuit of their targets when they failed to survive?  Becoming a general did mean that he became someone more on the delegation-end of destruction and conquest, but he’d had enough front line experience that this poor wretch’s blank skyward stare shouldn’t be bothering him as much as it did.  

He’d gotten rusty.  

More rebels came charging up the hill.  He grit his teeth and charged up his canon.  The adrenaline hadn’t worn off from the quick-trigger instinct that led him to the kill he’d just made.  This time, he wasn’t caught by surprise.  His assailants screamed the name of their friend as his arm-canon, turned to full power now, obliterated them in a wave of light.  

Hordak grit his fangs in a smile.  Oh, what a rush!  Ah, yes…battle…this is what it was like!  It was at once surprising and instinctual - it started with fear, then it turned to this!  The dominance!  The pure destruction!  His superior technology now that his reflexes were working!  

The armor was working in sync with his muscles as he moved unnaturally quick.  

The battle-drones around him sent out their own volleys.  

Targets tried for him with their pitiful, primitive weapons.  Tridents.  Bows and arrows.  

They were targets.  

Then they were gone.  

The smell of smoke and the heat of fire surrounded Hordak.  He’d shaken off his worries, those strange, weakening feelings.  Now he was a god of death.  

   

Chapter Text

1.21


Hordak’s ears perked.  “A time machine?” he asked.  

“Well, if my theories are correct... I could rework this bit of First Ones Tech we recently found into something that I call a Flux Capacitor.  And if I could rig it to a vehicle...”  

“I’m listening.”  

The prospect of time travel would have seemed silly to Hordak if it hadn’t dropped from Entrapta’s lips.  In his time working with her, he was convinced now that she could do just about anything - or that she at least had a solid theory for everything.  The only thing she couldn’t do was to “perfect” Emily and to keep the occasional explosion from happening (apparently, the robot got “too exicted” now and again), but Hordak knew that Entrapta didn’t want to entirely fix Emily.  She loved the quirks.  She loved having a continual project.  She loved Emily’s “emerging personality.”  If she’d set her mind to something in full, however, Hordak was certain that she could do it.  

It frightened him a little, to tell the truth.  At the same time, he liked it.  

“You see, the secret is that you aren’t traveling THROUGH time, but making time travel AROUND you! It’s a lot like the wormhole principle that we are using for the portal, actually!  We would just need a LOT of power!”  

“How much?”  

“1.21 gigawatts.  I could obtain it from certain stockpiles of First Ones’ tech or possibly from harnessing a bolt of lightning.”  

“And the vehicle?  I could slate a skiff for you if you wish to do this.”  

“I need one capable of going 88 miles per hour!”  

“Consider it done.”  

If it worked (and knowing Entrapta, it would) Hordak had ideas for how to shape Etheria in his image.  He had many regrets regarding his early attempts at conquest - things he could have done to expand his empire more quickly.  Perhaps he wouldn’t have destroyed some of the population centers wholesale, only taking the children... the adults would have made fine slaves and find conscripts, given the right conditions.  

Perhaps he’d have more time to figure out the degeneration of his body or to perfect one of his clones.  

“If we go back in time, Hordak, instead of forward, don’t meet yourself, okay?  It could cause a space-time paradox that would destroy reality!  Or just make you both faint, I don’t know which!  Ooooh, this is gonna be so much fun! I just hope I don’t accidentally keep my parents from falling in love or something!  That would erase me from existence!”  
   

Chapter Text

The Contract



“She went straight.  Okay, so that is the wrong word, but… she went law.  She’s a part of the Bright Moon police forces now.” 

Hordak coughed.  He didn’t think a smoky bar would bother him given the pollution that hung in the air in the aptly-named Fright Zone.  He sipped his whiskey, attentive to the feline femme fatal - Catra, otherwise known as the Crimson Cat.  

The two Bosses had lairs not far from one another.  The Horde was a generally organized criminal gang in Etheria City while the Crimson Waste out on its edges was full of bandits playing at a post-apocalyptic aesthetic. The two gangs occasionally worked with one another upon enterprises of mutual interest and financial benefit. 

“She is in the superhero division, is she not?” Hordak asked.  

“Don’t play coy with me.  You know that she and She-Ra are one and the same.  Everyone sees through that disguise.”  

Catra handed him a photograph.  He quirked an eyebrow - or what passed for one on his ghoul-like face.  There definitely was a resemblance between this person and the latest superheroine that had been making some of his criminal enterprises significantly more difficult of late.  

“I’ve lost a lot of mooks to her. Incompetents all, but still an embarrassment.  She is already on my kill-list.”  

“So, you’ll do this for free?”  

“On the contrary.  For you, I’ll charge double.  I take it that you’ll want a token to prove her demise.  For that, I shall have to refrain from using high explosives.”  

“Is that all?” Catra asked, slamming back her bottle of beer.  “If you can’t get me her heart ripped freshly from her chest…bring me her sword.”  

Hordak grunted.  “It shall be done.”  

“So, what’s your story, old man? Who’s the hit you want me to go after? Some idiot mook that blabbed to the cops under pressure?  That hairy heavy you’ve got?  That one little weasely blond kid?”  

“Entrapta.”  

“No way!  Your chief scientist?  And wasn’t she your wife?”  

“She was…until she absconded with some important schematics.  We were working on a project together.”  

“Let me guess.  You were going to carve your name into the moon.  That’s very like you.”  

“Please, cat! It was much more expansive and important than that!  The project is classified.  She left me and took our plans and scrubbed the Fright Zone computers of all of the data.”  

“Ouch!  Welcome to mad science, I guess!” 

“Academia is indeed a harsh mistress.  Anyway, I want her dead.  I don’t care how you do it.” 

“What do you want as proof of the deed?”  

Hordak smiled ruefully.  “Her scalp.  She was always so proud of her hair… and it was… lovely.  No one has hair like Entrapta’s.  I want it. All nine yards of it.” 

“Attached to skin.” 

“I wouldn’t be so vulgar as to ask for her head, but I will hang that hair as a banner in my sitting-room in the Fright Zone as an example to any other would be collaborators of the price of betraying me.”  

“I never liked her,” Catra said with a swish of her tail.  “Consider it done.”  

The two villains parted, eager to begin the hunt.    

Chapter Text

What Wicked Webs We Weave

“I’m farming them for silk!” Entrapta happily explained.  “Did you know that the common orb spider spins silk that is, per micron, stronger than steel? It’s even stronger than my hair!  I want to test the properties of it.  Maybe if we can successfully transfer the silk-protein making genes into a a bio-mechanical construct or into the embryo of a larger animal we can create a whole new cable-system for the Fright Zone’s building projects! Ahahahahaa!” 

Entrapta’s evil cackle was coming along nicely, but Hordak held his hand to his forehead.  

“What’s wrong, Hordak?  Do you have a headache?  I’ll fetch you a tiny cup of tea right away and you’ll feel much better.” 

“I require no medical assistance,” the lord of the Horde answered curtly.  

“I don’t know if the spider-silk spinning process can be successfully transferred into people,” Entrapta went on.  “I know that Netossa does something similar with magic, but it’s not the same thing.”  She suddenly gesticulated with her hair. “Think about it, Hordak! We could create super-soldiers able to swing from high structures by shooting webbing out of their limbs!”  She put a bit of hair to her chin, contemplating that thought for a moment.  “No…no…that’s not right!  Spiders spin from the abdomen…so, it would be more logical for people to have the spinnirettes in the hind-end…” 

An image came unbidden to Hordak’s mind of that scrawny young blond cadet - “Kyle,” was it? Swinging around through the alleyways of the Fright Zone’s outbuildings by his butt.  

He involuntarily grunted and bit his lower lip with an errant fang.  

“Oh, Hordak! You’re bleeding!” 

“I am fine.”  

“No, no, no, it’s really bad!  I’m going to go get some stuff to clean it up and the ointment!  Stay right there! Be back in a sec!”  

Hordak approached the terrarium where Entrapta’s “exciting” new pets were being kept.  He narrowed his eyes and glared at them.  “My lab partner is welcome in my sanctum, but you are not.”  

A spider looked up at him with its many beady little eyes and twitched a pair of pedipalps.  

Hordak did not know why he disliked the creatures.  They would seem to fit the general aesthetic of the Fright Zone.  Too many legs, perhaps.  The battle drones had fat little bodies attached to spindle-legs, but those were always three-to-four at most, like a proper animal…efficient, not overdone.  Maybe it was because they did not quite fit what he thought should be their natural niche - something parasitic rather than predatory.  He looked down at one of his arms.  He had been taking a rest out of his armor, letting his skin breathe.  The spreading disease present there resembled spider-webbing.  

He sat down.  Imp took over chattering at and tapping the glass of the spider-tank, offended on his behalf.  

“Enough of that,” Hordak warned.  He did not want Entrapta to walk in to Imp’s shenanigans.  

He had an idea for why Entrapta would enjoy such pets beyond the scientific research.  The animals trapped their prey in their intricate webs, and, as she had happily informed him, by other means, depending upon the species.  There apparently was a “Trapdoor” version of this animal that hid underground and sprang itself upon intended food.  She’d said that she’d been inspired by spiders for some of the anti-burglary and “fun-gauntlet-run” devices in her castle back in Dryl.  

Hordak still couldn’t bring himself to like the eight-legged beasts.  

Entrapta returned, seated on her hair, using it to walk, a bowl of water, a towel and a tube of antibiotic resting in her gently crossed legs.  She ambled by the spider-tank.  

“Oh, no! George is missing!”  

Hordak’s eyes went wide and his ears went down for a split-second.  He immediately looked to his feet and inspected his body.  He thought he saw a shadow scuttle under his couch.  

He would call Catra later to brief her on a secret mission - one of assassination. 

Chapter Text

Crawl Out Through the Fallout


“Horde-Tec Log, January 24th, Year 2270…”  

Overseer Vesselak made her daily morning log - 5 A.M. - like clockwork. Wake-up call for the Vault-dwellers was at 6 A.M. Breakfast was to be served at 7 A.M. Today was special.  It was the Overseer’s birthday and celebration was mandatory.  She didn’t make a big deal of it, but her husband did and no one wanted to tick off Hector.  

He was presently on patrol.  As she sat at her console, the Overseer saw him out of the corner of her eye slowly trundling along in his power armor.  It was a set that she had modified herself and was quite proud of.  Even its fusion core had been modified for maximum efficiency.  Vesselak wasn’t quite sure if she had cracked the code to cold fusion just yet.  She was monitoring the experiment, but Hector had been using his armor for a full year without depleting the core.  He’d had a good full workout in it, too - another uprising among the Vault that had to be suppressed 5 months, two weeks and one day ago. 

Those happened from time to time, mostly due to complaints about the food.

The original Horde-Tec supplies were beginning to run low and they’d had to source some of the mutated wildlife that had managed to creep into the Vault.  The place was supposed to be secure, but there were cracks in the walls here and there.  This was why she was still Overseer, actually, and why her dear Hector was still happily married to her.  He was going without his helmet today.  He turned his noseless face to her.  He had been one of the more fortuitous victims of a radiation-leak they’d had to patch, although he had taken more physical damage from it than she had.  If anything, she thought he was even more handsome now.  He didn’t believe it, but even suffering her own deformities, he had never stopped calling her “His beautiful Es’tra,” or, at times, his “Lovely Entrapta” - a nickname she’d picked up from him for having “a smile that had fully entrapped him.”  The Vault-residents had a more derisive meaning to the nickname.  They wanted out.  Radiation-levels outside were supposedly equaling off to levels suitable for human habitation, but the Overseer’s executive decision was for the experiment to continue. 

It was not like she wasn’t protecting her subjects.  She didn’t think all of them would be able to withstand the radiation as well as they thought.  She’d be fine if she’d left.  Much like her lover, she was a ghoul now.  This was why she was Overseer since the Vault had closed.  No change of power, no successors, all due to that radiation leak.  Losing her hair had been the hardest part of it, but she’d managed to create a technological replacement, a computerized system of purple “hair” wired through her skull directly into her brain.  She could control it like extra limbs.  Easy wash. No tangling. 

Emily floated up beside her - her robotic assistant.  Technically, she was a modified Mr. Gutsy unit, full weapons-capability, but Vesselak referred to her as “female” and used her principally as a data-storage unit and personal assistant. 

“Oh, Imp is upset again?” she asked the unit.  She turned around to meet the gaze of a pissed-off gray-skinned molerat. “Imp… don’t worry!  You’re NOT on the menu today!  You NEVER will be!  We only take other mole-rats!  Besides… one will feed everyone for a week!” 

The Overseer sighed happily as she brought up old logs on her main console.  “Now, maybe one-hundred years ago, we’d have to worry, but look! The chemical appetite-suppressants have worked wonders! So many early deaths, but so few now!  And look at this…” she typed away until she brought up some diagrams.  “The biological data is AMAZING!  The populace has adapted! The current generation has evolved smaller stomachs and more efficient bowels! They don’t even need a lot of calories anymore!”   

A gleam shone in her eye.  Her Vault had been assigned a certain physical survival-based human experiment.    

“Maybe… very soon… I can make the food EVEN TINIER!”  

Chapter Text

A Bout of Explosive Amnesia 

Entrapta was convinced that she could improve the engines on the skiffs.  Hordak had gruffed to her about it, claiming that his own design was sufficient, but she was certain that she could build a new kind of engine that would use less fuel and give a skiff a smoother ride.  Hordak had never cared about the vehicles being particularly smooth, as long as they got troops from Point A to Point B.  She was adamant and so Hordak was bent down, passing her tools and watching carefully as she busily tinkered on an engine-block.  They’d hit a stalemate on the portal-project anyway, something they decided that they’d have to “sleep on” before they figured out the numbers.  It turns out that “wait and the eureka-moment will come to you” was a tactic they both used.  

“You do know the matter-engines are unstable, don’t you?” 

“Of course I do! It’s why I have my mask down!” 

“You ought to wear full body armor.” 

“Hey, Hordak! Pass me that - “  

WHOOM!  

Half of the Sanctum exploded in light and fire.  Hordak was blown back.  His armor held and aside from an ache in his bones from a rough landing compounding his usual chronic pain, he was unhurt.  Imp screeched, flying around in circles before landing in front of him as he picked himself up.  

He whipped his head around, looking.  “Entrapta?” 

Emily was deploying a fire-extinguisher attachment that her “mother” had recently gifted her with to quell the remains of the engine.  

“Entrapta?”  

“Here!” a voice called back.  A purple ponytail waved from a shadow as a humanoid shape slowly picked itself up.  Entrapta rose to her feet and staggered.  Hordak was at her side immediately.  

“Are you uninjured?” Hordak asked simply, not wishing to lose dignity.  

“Yeah, yeah,” Entrapta replied, lifting up her mask.  

An ugly black and purple bruise stood out on her forehead and there was a small amount of blood.  She could have come out with worse if she’d failed to wear the mask.  

“You’re hurt,” Hordak said.  

“No, I’m not.  Back to work!”  She stepped forward with a stumble and caught herself on a pillar of her hair.  “Ow!”  

“Allow me to examine you.”  

“Okay.”  

Hordak brought her to a bench to sit on, near his own medical-maintenance equipment.  Emily trundled up with Imp perched upon her, offering a wet cloth. Hordak grunted and took it.  He gently wiped Entrapta’s face.  “Look at me,” He ordered.  “You aren’t having any vision problems, are you?” 

“No. I’m fine. Just a little jostled.”  

The warlord tenderly took his lab partner’s arms in his own and stretched them out, each in turn to check for injury.  Entrapta winced but didn’t appear to have any breaks or fractures.  Stretching her left leg earned him a sharp “Ow!”  She almost slapped him away with her hair.  

“Can you roll up your pant-leg?”  

There were no signs of serious injury, but there were some terrible bruises.   

“I’m totally fine!” 

“Indeed, you don’t seem to have any serious injury, but you are not ‘fine’ as you put it.  We are done for the day.” 

“But...”  

“Done.”  

“Alright,” Entrapta said, “But can I stay here a little while?”  

Suddenly, Hordak got an armload of small scientist cuddling into his chest. “Huh? Wha?” he asked. 

“I don’t really feel like moving,” Entrapta moaned, “And you feel kinda nice.”  

Hordak didn’t have any choice in the matter as he soon found herself wrapped up in her hair.  It snaked around his waist and shoulders.  If anyone else had treated him like this, he would have growled out dire warnings and pried them off of him, but as it was, he did not want to cause his new asset any undo harm.  She was obviously more frazzled than she let on.  

Before he realized it, he found himself stroking her hair and her shoulders with one hand as she nuzzled into him.  It wasn’t only unlike him, it was unlike her.  Entrapta didn’t like touch much and tended to avoid it.  

“I am worried.  We only keep a basic infirmary here so as not to encourage weakness, but I believe your condition calls for it.  You are not acting like yourself.” 

“Mmm....no...” 

“Entrapta...” 
 
“I like how you feel. So firm. You smell like oil, too.  I like that.” 

Hordak blushed.  He had to admit that he rather liked how soft she felt against him, and warm.  Her hair around him was warm.  However, he knew that they could not stay like this.  This was worrisome.  

“I believe that you have a concussion.  I have no expertise to treat this in your kind, but the staff physician for the soldiers does.”  

Before she could squeak a protest, Hordak hooked his arms under Entrapta and carried her to the medical wing.  

She awoke with a start, a stuffed scorpion-doll in her arms.  Entrapta was in an unfamiliar room.   

“You’re awake!”  Scorpia’s voice.  Entrapta’s fuzzy vision cleared.  Scorpia was seated in a chair beside her bed.  “I was super-worried about you!” 

Entrapta sat up. A dull ache ran all the way through her.  She felt a the sticky plastic of a bandage-strip on the right side of her forehead, just above the eyebrow.  

“Why?”  

“You got hurt yesterday.”  

“Why do I have a plush toy?” 

“Oh, that’s mine,” Scorpia explained.  “You were clingy.  I thought it would make you feel safe.”  

“Thanks... I guess?” Entrapta said, passing the doll back.  

“I need to tell Hordak that you’re awake right away! His orders!” 

Before Entrapta could say anything else, Scorpia was out the door.  

Several minutes later, Hordak’s imposing form entered the room.  

“Hiiii, Hordak!” Entrapta greeted.  

“How are you feeling?”  

“Really sore, but I don’t know why.” 

“The skiff engine explosion.  You don’t remember it?”  

“No...I don’t.” 

Hordak paused as his gaze roved over her, assessing her condition. 

“Oh, skiff engines!  We were going to work on those today!  I’ve got so many great ideas!” 

“We were working on that project yesterday, Entrapta.” 

“Were we?  Oh, I’m pretty sure we didn’t.  Yesterday, Emily was having a spaz-out and kept spinning like a top and I had to give her a tweak.” 

“That was the day before yesterday, Entrapta.”  

“I’m pretty sure that was yesterday.”  She started getting out of bed.  “We need to work on those engines! Come on, let’s go!” 

Hordak held up a hand.  “Back in bed!” He demanded.  “You were hurt yesterday.  An engine exploded. You sustained a concussion and severe bruising.” 

“Aw, again?  Did I get anything on my recorder?  I hate losing data.”  

“Entrapta, you lost an entire day!”  Hordak quirked a brow.  “Again?  What do you mean again?” 

“Oh, it happens all the time!  I usually get at least partial data on my recorder before something explodes.  I used to wake up to my staff or my bots hovering over me all the time.  Ah, good times!”  

Hordak’s face fell.  His eyes softened.  He lumbered over to the chair by Entrapta’s bed and sat down.  “How... much of your life have you lost this way?” 

“None at all! I’m still alive!”  

She paused, rifling through her hair looking for her recorder.  Hordak produced it from a pocket of his armor for her.   She hit the play button on it to be greeted by her own voice slurring.  “Hordak...he’s... carrying me to the infirmary for painkillers or somethin’.  I’d like to stop hurting, so that’s really nice of him.  I never knew he was shoooo nice. Mmmmm.”  

Hordak made haste to hide his blush. His ears dipped, then he regained his composure in an instant.  

“I don’t remember any of that,” Entrapta said, staring at the device.  “Did you really carry me here?” 

“It was... a necessity.” Hordak said.  “At present, you are my foremost science officer.  If your injury had gone untreated, we would have lost valuable time on the portal project.” 

“I see,” Entrapta answered.  “I’ll get right back on it!” 

“No. Bed. You are still unwell.”  

“Okay.” 

Hordak left to his own daily duties and rituals.  He couldn’t show her or anyone the ache he was feeling right now. She’d said that this wasn’t the first time this kind of thing had happened to her - and, in fact, that it had happened often.  

How much of Entrapta’s life had she missed out on? 

Chapter Text

Rescue Me



Swift Wind snorted to a new smell in the area, his ears pinned back against the island’s ambient sounds.  Bow, Micah and Adora turned their heads to where his nose suddenly pointed.  Pookas squweaked and ran.  Some of them appeared to fly as if kicked.  Stomping from out behind the jungle was something that none of them had expected.  

“Hordak?!”  Adora exclaimed.  He casually kicked pookas aside as he cut a path with an arm-mounted laser-cannon.  

Immediately, Adora transformed into She-Ra.  “Stop!” she said, pointing her sword at him.  

Hordak glared at them.  “I don’t have time for this.”  He took a long glance at Micah, who was forming a spell-sigil.  

“Why are you here?” Bow demanded.  

“You sent me here to die!” Micah shouted.  

Hordak quirked an eyebrow.  “King MIcah of Bright Moon. It has been a long time.  If you still live, there is hope.”  

And with that, he turned and walked out through the technological jungle, ignoring the entire party.  

They exchanged glances.  “Did that just happen?” Swift Wind asked. 

“Apparently,” Micah said.  He shouted back into the jungle “What? No interest in finishing the job?”  

Hordak had vanished.  

Bow’s jaw dropped.  “He’s here for Entrapta!” he said.  “We have to get to her before he does!”  

“What?” Adora asked.  

“Do you remember what Scorpia said?  Catra sent her here.  We don’t know if he knew.  He’s either going to take her back for the Horde or… if he signed off on it, maybe exile isn’t enough. Maybe he wants to… finish things.”  

“Oh, no.”  

The group made haste in the direction they’d seen the leader of the Horde go off in, but they became lost in growing vines.  

Hordak snorted as he walked on his way.  He had no time for those children, that stupid horse or even a former king.  He’d seen Entrapta’s broken welding mask near the shore.  His breathing was heavier than usual.  He found himself subconsciously pawing the crystal on his armor.  His long ears caught an unnerving sound.  He was getting closer to the center of the island.  

His sight caught a dormant creature unlike any he had ever seen.  No… the beast-like structure had an open dome in its front and appeared to have switches inside of it.  It was a cockpit-controlled robot.  Hordak smiled.  Entrapta was here and she was being resourceful.  

It was just like her to make the most of an island of death.  

He found something of a spring of his step as he walked along.  Was this…hope?  Yes, he would surely find her, probably making some other creation out of some of the less corroded ancient wreckage.  

If that sorcerer had survived, perhaps a scientist was thriving.  

He saw her.  Yes, it was unmistakably her and he stood still.  

She was slumped against a large crystal that was growing out of the ground and her body was covered in vines.  They were the same vines that Hordak had been swatting away from his own person all the way here - the ones that were the reason why he’d made this place his exile for traitors in the first place… the “hungry beast” that ate the unwary.  

Hordak immediately approached her and dropped to his knees. 

“Entrapta?  Entrapta!”  he called as he brushed the offending tendrils away from her face and hair.  

There was no response.  Her eyes were closed.  She was unconscious - the island already having had its way with her mind.  

“Entrapta!” Hordak shouted desperately, authoritatively.  “As your lab partner, I order you to wake up! There is work to do!” 

He grabbed her and tore her away from the vines that were holding her to the wall.  Adora, Bow, Swift Wind and Micah came upon him just as he was cradling her in his arms and gently trying to nudge her awake.  

“Entrapta!” Adora called.  

Bow stepped forward, Adora held him back, not entirely certain of what they were seeing.  “Lord Hordak?” she asked.  

He stayed still, holding their friend as gently as possible with the most grief-filled expression on his face that any of them had ever seen.  Tears were falling from his eyes.  

“I am… not familiar with this kind of thing,” Micah said, “From normal people yes, but…from him?  The rutheless overlord of the Horde?”  

“He’s not going to hurt her?” Bow asked, hesitant, but ready to save his friend and inventor idol should Hordak make any menacing move.  

“I saw them in the lab together,” Adora gasped.  “I… by the way they interacted…I kind of think they were falling in love? I know, I know, it was strange.” 

For his part, Hordak made no move of menace to any of them.  He simply crouched down and held Entrapta’s small, limp body.  

Adora could do nothing but stare.  The specter of fear and authority that had loomed over most of her life, the dignified great leader was here, on his knees, in a state of utter woudedness. 

“Entrapta,” he whispered, “Please.  Please wake up.”  

Her lips parted.  “Leave me,” she whispered.  “Everyone leaves me.” 

“Entrapta!  No… I’m not going to leave you!” 

Her eyes slid open.  “Hordak?” 

“Yes, it is I.  Catra did this to you.  She lied to me and said that you…were elsewhere….of your own volition.”  

“Why?” Entrapta weakly croaked.  

“Because she wishes to become a fur rug,” Hordak said with a clench of his teeth.  

“You should leave me….everyone…everyone leaves me behind….this island wants me….everything is here…the knowledge..the secrets…they’re here….” 

“No.  Listen to me, Entrapta.  The island is lying to you.  It wants to kill you, but you’re with me now.  I will not let it take you.”  

“Really?  You…you came for me? You didn’t send me here?” 

“Catra tricked me.  She did not like your place at my side and made pains to deceive me.  I hope that you can forgive me.”  

Entrapta’s eyes narrowed. “My data proved incorrect.  Catra is a bad friend.” 

“Entrapta!” Adora called.  “We’re here, too!  We came for you as soon as Scorpia told us what had happened!” 

Entrapta cleaved closer to her lab partner, unsure about Adora, who had abandoned her previously.  She did not now yet whether or not to believe her when she’d said that the Princesses had no wish to leave her and thought she’d been killed.  All she knew was that she was more sure of Hordak.  He was the one who was holding her in his arms after all.  

“I don’t know how Hordak got here, but we came in a First One’s spaceship! Wanna see?”  

Entrapta leaped out of her lab partner’s arms.  “Boy, do I!”  

She swayed, unsteady on her feet.  Hordak caught her.  “You’re not yet well,” he intoned.  

Adora, Bow, Swift Wind and Micah exchanged a look with Hordak.  

“I’m not sure if we should share this information with you,” Adora said, matter-of-factly, but… we kind of need Entrapta to keep the entire planet from being destroyed.” 

Hordak let Entrapta lean on him.  “So be it.  We can take up settling our differences later.”  

The unconventional expanded party made their way to the shore.  

Hordak vowed to never let his lab partner out of his sight again.  

Chapter Text

Bow Collects Cheesy Romance Novels

Entrapta was rifling through Bow’s book and magazine collection.  

“Archery Monthly, A Scholar’s Guide to Ancient Talon Mountain Pottery, The History of Bright Moon: First Era… Scientific Etherian - Ooh, Issue 22, I wrote an article for this!  Oh, what’s this, Bow?”  

Bow’s jaw dropped.  “No, no, no! Put that down! Don’t look at that! I didn’t even know that I had that in among my back issues of SE!”  

Entrapta held the paperback book before her face in a tendril of hair.  She looked at it quizzically.  “Entrapped?”  

“Oh, by the moons, Entrapta, put that down!”  

“She infiltrated the Horde…and infiltrated his heart. Book 1: Portal of Desire.  What is this, Bow?” 

“It’s nothing! I swear!”  

She held the book upside down and then right-side up again.  “The painting on the cover… Is that supposed to be HORDAK?  Is that supposed to be ME?” 

Bow accepted defeat.  “Yes.  It’s a part of a series of romance novels.  Some writers capitalized upon your fame with Hordak after the war.  I’m sort of…collecting them?”  

Entrapta turned to Bow.  “For a historical record?”  

Bow quickly lied.  “Yeah! Yeah, that’s right!  For history!  I mean, it’s ridiculous, right?”  

“Well,” Entrapta mused in her nasally voice, drawing out the l-sound, “The cover artist seems to have made me more…generously endowed than I actually am?” 

Bow was squirming and turning red.  

“I measure precisely 32.8 Etherian common-units and the proportions here look like they’re at least 40.0.  And Hordak! Don’t get me started on Hordak!  I don’t know what kind of chest he had when he was healthy, fresh out of the vitrine, but he is thin and still has massive scarifcation.  His health has improved considerably as a result of our medical experiments, but still…”  

“You can’t judge a book by its cover, right?”  Bow offered, shrugging.  

“Indeed, you cannot.  Hmmm.”  

“No! Don’t start reading it!”  

“Why not, Bow?”  

“It’s…fiction?  I mean… I don’t want you to be offended.  We all know that your life is more complex than a fairy tale romance.”  

“It’s alright.  I like stuff like this, too!  Scorpia wrote an entire series of friend-fiction featuring me and Perfuma once!”  

Bow was thunderstruck.  “Really?”  

“She got bored doing the Horde’s filing.  It entertained her, although I’m afraid that I am not interested in Perfuma.”  

“Oh.”  

“She wrote about her and Catra a lot, too.  Adora always wound up being…” Entrapta curled a hair tail under her chin, “A complete pathetic loser’ in those, as I recall.  Sometimes dead.”  

“Okay, I really didn’t need to know this information!” Bow groused.  

Entrapta was flipping through Portal of Desire until she came to the middle and read a random passage.  

“This is a rather…imaginative…take on the reproductive act!” she said.  “In fact, it is not physically possible without causing a severe degree of pain to both parties.  Did the author do any research at all?!”  

“Um… okay, so those parts are kind of dubious,” Bow said, deflated, “But… the cuddling and kissing scenes are kind of cute.”  

Entrapta was flailing about the room now, tearing up the bookshelves looking for more of these novels.  “We must make announcements!  We must set the record straight!”  

“Entrapta…”  

“Everything is just so WRONG!  So many inaccuracies!  We must correct these right away! For science!”  

Chapter Text

Trapmaster


Horde Prime studied his new acquisition.  It was from an ancient and venerable manufacturing company, one that the Horde had done a hostile business takeover on centuries ago (not all conquest was a matter of war and weapons, very often, money and negotiations would suffice).   They’d been allowed to keep their name since it was the name denoting a pinnacle, an apex.  They were stationed on a little “blue” (mostly oceanic) planet and shipped to all Horde planets within the known universe and directly to the Armada, even to the Velvet Glove, itself, whenever Horde Prime ordered it. 

The ACME Corporation made everything.  They always had.  Every conceivable consumer-product was their domain, plus many unconventional items.  There weren’t many worlds that had a high demand for blacksmith’s anvils, for instance – only primitive worlds with landmasses difficult for robots to navigate, necessitating the use of beasts of burden that needed iron shoes to do their work.  A good anvil did have a conceivable use for pounding out dented drone-components, but Horde forges were generally more technologically advanced.  Horde Prime stood in awe of this thing of an ancient make. 

He fitted steel cables around it and fitted it to a pulley-system.  He carefully worked with the trigger-device.  Carefully, oh, so carefully, he placed the plate of tiny pancakes with butter and syrup atop it, a stack of three, each no larger than a standard Prime-stamped gold coin.  The plating came complete with a dollhouse-sized fork. 

It was simple.  Perhaps simplicity would succeed where complexity had failed. 

He had a feral scientist aboard his ship.  He had brought her aboard originally out of simple curiosity.  Clone Hec-Tor-Kur (Serial Number: “5-8-3” in the native Horde tongue) had abundant memories of her before his reset-protocol was engaged.  The memories denoted that she could be useful, but she had soon gotten out of hand.  She had refused a place upon the Velvet Glove’s science division unless that worthless defect clone was restored to a malfunctioning state.  She was constantly disassembling the ship’s robots and breaking into encrypted files. She seemed to have an instinct for it. Perhaps worst of all, she could walk around and swing from the rafters on her hair.  She’d proven to be ambitious and dangerous. 

It was because of her that he had lost both the young queen and the felid-humanoid who were both key to gaining access to the Heart of Etheria planetary weapon.  She had stayed aboard the ship, refusing to leave without Hec-Tor-Kur.  For the defect’s part, he was still plugged into a reconditioning chamber, his physical body in too weak a state to be undone from it without causing instantaneous death. 

Simply killing him would be a loss of face.  Unacceptable.  Additionally, his presence, even comatose, seemed to be the only thing keeping this “Entrapta” from hacking into the Velvet Glove’s guidance systems and destroying the entire fleet.  A knot in the pit of Prime’s stomach told him that she could do it and she had threatened it more than once. 

While his clones and his drones were chasing down the “Princesses” on the weapon-planet that he was orbiting, he was left chasing down the one loose on his ship.  He’d tried nearly everything to do away with her.  First, his loyal clones were ordered to bring her before him, or her head, whichever they could retrieve. 

He’d caught the lot of his shipbound servants in one of the supply-chambers brewing flavored carbonated beverages and fawning over her as she brushed their faces with her hair and told them stories about the “First Ones,” utterly charmed by her.    

He’d sealed the room and flooded it with radiation.  He’d lost an entire crew.  She’d escaped.  He had no idea how, but she’d escaped. 

Every time he heard a rattling through the oxygenation system, his teeth were set on edge. 

A simple, elegant blaster had failed to do the job.  She was too good at dodging and her hair had unnatural properties.  She’d been able to shield herself with it.  Before he could reload the core, she’d whipped it out of his hand with a tendril and had dismantled it, saying “Oooh, what a fascinating and efficient design!” 

Horde Prime had set every security-turret on the ship to target her, specifically.  Again, she dodged every bullet and laser.  She’d dismantled the lot of them, as well.  Not only was Entrapta running wild aboard the caverns and engineering floors of the Velvet Glove, she now had a crew of robot servants that manufactured tea and tiny sandwiches to serve her.  A few of them were armed and served as her personal defense-force. 

Horde Prime was using white pancake makeup to cover a burn on his right cheek he’d gotten from one of the things. 

It was desperation that turned him to ordering shipments from ACME.  Dynamiting the food-replication area had done nothing but destroy a week’s supply of his army’s supplements, causing the Etheria-bound clones to start becoming restless. 

He painted one wall in an empty area of the ship with inter-dimensional paint.  Any surface that it was painted upon would become a hollow area, like a tunnel.  Any creature that wandered into that tunnel hoping to use it for passage would become trapped inside of it and compressed into a singularity. 

Entrapta, of course, and simply ambled through it and found easy passage to another room.  When Horde Prime saw her go inside and succeed instead of perish, he was dumbfounded.  That’s when he heard a distinct whistling noise and could have sworn he saw an ancient means of conveyance bearing down on him. 

He was certain thereafter that the paint-fumes and caused a powerful hallucination.  Every worker in the paints and stains division of ACME was ordered launched, via rocket, into their local sun.   

So, this brought Horde Prime to the anvil, his most desperate act yet. 

Soon after he’d left the room where he had set up his simple baited trap, he heard a loud “CLONG!” and felt the floor shudder. 

He stepped back inside to find Entrapta happily perched upon the fallen anvil in the severely-dented floor, eating the plate of tiny pancakes. 

She smiled at him and waved with one of her hair-tails, shaped into a hand.  “Oh, hiii!” she said.  “You know, you set the counterweight all wrong.  This was easy to dodge! And so much fuuuuun!” 

Prime clenched his teeth and balled up his fists.  “Why won’t you die?!” he growled. 

“Better luck next time, Primey-poo!” the true trapmaster chimed as her hair grabbed a ceiling-strut and she zipped off into an air-passage.    

Chapter Text

One Punch Woman 



“Huh?” Bow asked, his eyebrows raised.  Everyone had noticed that Entrapta had become slightly more subdued since the events on Beast Island, but this was entirely unexpected.  

She pented her index fingers and put her mask down with her hair.  “I didn’t exactly mean to kill anyone, but I wasn’t thinking about the potential human cost of the experiment at all.  Adora and Bow say that trying to make up for mistakes is a part of being friends.” 

Huntara grunted.  “I never said that I wanted to be your friend.”  

“Fair enough,” Entrapta said, putting her mask back up. “I’m still sorry.”  

“No!” Adora shouted.  

In an instant, Huntara hauled back a fist and punched Entrapta straight in the face.  The former Princess of Dryl flew several feet and skidded in the sand, landing in a pile of limbs and hair.  

“Entrapta!” Bow yelped.  

Adora tried to grab one of Huntara’s sizeable arms, but was brushed off.  “We can’t give into revenge! It won’t bring your friends back!  We have to work together!”  

Entrapta sat up, wincing one eye shut.  Blood ran down her lip and chin from her broken nose.  She tried to wipe it away with the back of her hand. 

Huntara didn’t approach her.  Instead, she stood and started laughing.  

Bow helped Entrapta up.  

“My offer for the other four still stands - ow!” she said softly.  

Huntara shook her head.  “That’s enough for me, kiddo.  I didn’t hit you for revenge.”  

“Wha?” Bow, Adora and Entrapta asked Huntara at once.  

“I just did it because I know Havoc and Gristle would have found this funny.” 

Chapter Text

My Beautiful Robot-Daughter 



“I wasn’t good enough for you, then? So you hooked up with my daughter?!!” 

Entrapta was throwing a fit.  

“No! It’s not like that!”  

Perfuma held up her hands.  It was her own fault, really.  As host of the Plumeria Spring Festival, it was up to her to provide sound catering to all of the guests and she had forgotten that Entrapta preferred fizzy drinks to all other kinds.  She’d neglected procuring soda.  The only fizzy beverages were champagne and various beers.  

Entrapta hadn’t touched the teas or the big punch-bowl, and had stuck to all things with bubbles.  As a result, she was now very, very drunk.  

“I can’ believe this!  Have you been getting any fluids on her?  She’s not built for it!”  

“Um…. no…” Perfuma answered, embarrassed.  “It’s not really like that!  With Emily, it’s more like… heart-to-processor…I guess?” 

“We like to snuggle,” Scorpia added.  

“You touched my beautiful robot-daughter!” Entrapta cried, “Both of you!”  

Emily gave her a “Please, Mom, you must understand!” beep.  

Entrapta glared at her creation, her crimson eyes narrowed.  “You….you whore!” 

“ENTRAPTA!” Scorpia yelped, completely taken aback by the language.  She shrugged and sighed.  “You’re a mean drunk.”  

“I am NOT drunk! And Perfuma! You… you used to like me!” 

“Well,” Perfuma began to explain, “That kind of faded after you betrayed us and went with the Horde and all….”  

“SCORPIA IS A HORDESMAN!” 

“None of us are Hordesmen anymore, remember?  Well, maybe you are, since you’re with Hordak!” 

“Hordak has nothing to do with this!”  

Scorpia put her claws on Entrapta’s shoulders and looked her in the face.  She earned a downed mask for this.  “Trap… please… just come with me and we’ll get you some coffee or something, okay?”  

“I WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR PERFUMA AND NOW SHE AND SCORPIA ARE SCREWING MY ROBOT!!!”  

Everyone in the party paused their various conversations and dances to stare straight at Entrapta, Scorpia, Perfuma and Emily.  
“

Chapter Text

And Then the Judgement... 



“Who are you?  And for that matter, where am I?  …. WHERE’S EMILY?!” 

Entrapta looked around herself.  She was in some kind of a room with steel and crystal walls, lined in runes.  She could read some of them - First Ones language, but could not manage them all.  

A tall woman with brown skin and a high ponytail was standing before her.  

“My name is Mara, or it was, when I was alive.”  

“When you were alive?  What’s going on here?!”  

Mara gave Entrapta a sad smile.  “Do you remember when you implanted the red-vine virus into the Horde mainframe and brought down Horde Prime’s ship?”  

“Well, yes… Emily, the Princesses and I… and Bow, and Sea Hawk…and Catra and Hordak… we were running to an escape-pod… but Hordak couldn’t run very well, so I had to go back for him… Hordak!  Where is he?”  Entrapta held her head and paced around the room on a chair made of her hair.  “There were a lot of explosions… and then I woke up here?”  

“You didn’t make it, Entrapta,” Mara said.  “Everyone else did.  You were speared through the back with flying shrapnel just as the escape-pod doors closed.  Hordak is holding your body as we speak.  Your friends are grieving you, whether you choose to believe it or not.  From what I’ve observed from my place here, you’ve always had trouble with feeling abandoned. They didn’t leave you behind this time.”  

Entrapta paced and gesticulated with her hair.  “I don’t believe this!  Did I hit my head? Am I hallucinating?  I understand that consciousness is a mystery and that other dimensions exist!  Hordak and I sort of accidentally created one!  But… I can’t be dead can I?  I have searched for YEARS and found no solid evidence for the existence of ghosts or anything in full affirmation of any of the Etherian religions.”  

“You’ve kept an open mind, though,” Mara answered her, “like a true scientist.”  

“Well, yes, but… I didn’t find any evidence.”  

“Some things aren’t physical,” Mara said, pacing around her.  “And for all you know, this might be a near-death hallucination.  I prefer to think of it as the place between physical dimensions.  I was the last She-Ra of Etheria, before your Adora.”  

“The Key to the Heart of Etheria!”  

“Yes, unfortunately,” Mara said, glancing down.  “But I became the planet’s protector.”  

“You’re a First One!  Tell me EVERYTHING!”  

“You seem to be forgetting your current state, Entrapta,” Mara laughed.  “It’s good to see that you can bounce back from bad news so quickly.”  

“Bad news?  I’ve been studying the First Ones all my life!  And now I’ve finally gotten to meet one!  Well…besides Adora, but she doesn’t know much.  I want to know EVERYTHING!  The Heart of Etheria, how the planet works! Why we have a glow-moon instead of a sun like Hordak says is proper… Where you came from… can you tell me about the stars?!!”  

“Easy there.  I’m afraid that you have to be judged first.”  

“Judged?”  Entrapta cocked her head quizzically.  “Oh, are you going to weigh my heart against the Feather of Truth?  I read about that in an old book of myths!” 

“Oh, we don’t use the heart and feather anymore,” Mara informed her, “Now, we practice due process.  It’s more of a courtroom setting.  The Seer is the judge.  I’ll be acting as your defense attorney.” 

“A defense attorney?” 

“I’ve become something of a public defender for Princesses and Princes after they meet their fate. The common people have various others, and then there’s one for artificial intelligences. You’ll meet Light Hope shortly. She will be assisting me. You’ll love her.” 

“Okaaaay.  What is to become of me if you lose my case?” 

“There are three outcomes to this.  If we win, you get to become a Watcher.  You’ll get to watch over Etheria and all of your friends.  It’s more or less a state of learning forever, but with no more pain.  If you lose and it is decided that you are a lost cause - too dangerous and evil to continue to exist, you shall be erased from existence.” 

Entrapta gulped.  Her eyes went wide and she shivered.  

“There is a third option.  If you are deemed to be too even a mix of good and evil, you shall go through what we call an Ordeal.  It is like a refiner’s fire or a hospital for sick souls.  It is extremely unpleasant, but it will sort you out and leave your better nature.  You can ascend to becoming a Watcher after that.” 

“How is your track-record?” 

“I’ve had a few ascend immediately to Watcher status.  In the case of Queen Angella, she merely returned to her ancient post.  Most go through the Ordeal.  I only lost one case - a young man named Keldor.”  

Entrapta hugged her shoulders.  “I really… want to just go back to my friends.”  

“I am afraid that it is not possible, but the noble thing that you did for them does help your case.  You do have many strikes against you, I’m afraid.  The Black Garnet hack disrupted Etheria’s ecosystems.  Several species were effected as well as many people.” 

“It killed people, didn’t it?”  Entrapta asked dully. 

“Yes,” Mara answered with a wise, sorrowful gaze. 

“I didn’t mean to kill anyone.” 

“It did nonetheless.  It also killed the last dragon and the remaining population of kowls.” 

Entrapta’s eyes widened in shock.  “I…” she began.  “I learned so much about how Etheria worked, but… I set science back! Oh no, oh no! No future scientist will be able to study a kowl in its natural habitat again!  Oh, maybe I deserve to be erased!” 

“Now, now.  You also gave Princess Scorpia a valuable friend.  You showed Hordak his worth.  You saved Princess Glimmer and Bow when Catra and Scorpia kidnapped them.  You created Emily.  You were instrumental in putting a stop to the conquests of the Galactic Horde.  You had friends and they are mourning your passing - just as they did the other times they thought you had passed, only now you really have.  Take heart!  I think you have an excellent case.  If all goes well, you’ll be able to watch over your friends and maybe even give them a little help from this side.   

“Thank you, Mara.”    

Chapter Text

Hot Stuff

“Oh, you had pranks in the Horde, too?” 

“Well, yeah.  Catra and I would team up and prank some of the superior officers.  It didn’t always end well…when we got caught.”  

The Best Friend Squad was talking about the subject of pranks and victims.  

“I used to try to prank my mom, but it’s too hard!” Glimmer complained.  “She always catches onto what I’m trying to do and then the one time I laid a trap that seemed successful, it all went south on me!”  

“Oh, the pepper incident!” chimed Bow.  

Adora was intrigued.  “So, what happened?  Peppers?”  

She winced, as well.  Adora was still growing accustomed to Bright Moon’s food. The ration bars of the Fright Zone were nutritionally-balanced and good fuel for soldiers, but the flavors of Bright Moon’s many offerings were nothing short of astounding.  The ex-Horde soldier found herself gravitating toward sweet things. Ice cream was her favorite thing in the world now.  The belly aches and brain-freezes she got from eating too much, too quickly were a small price to pay.  She had to be held back from overindulging.  In fact, learning the concept of “dessert” as light topper to a meal or a sometimes-snack and not as a meal unto itself had been a hard sell, but she had made herself sick enough times to start getting it.  

Peppers and certain other spices, however, had proven to be overwhelming.  Ground black peppercorn had made Adora sneeze and cough.  A dish topped with roasted green chilis - assured to her to be one of the mildest of of the spicy foods - had set her mouth ablaze (and her hands reaching for a dish of ice cream to cool herself down).  

It had come as quite a shock to her to learn that some people liked what they termed hot-peppers and sauces made from them.  It shocked her even more that some people ate these with ease and actually sought out and tried to breed peppers with high levels of heat because they couldn’t get enough.  There was something called the “ghost” pepper that grew in Plumeria.  No one told Adora what it had to do with ghosts (other than making some people wish to become them to end the pain after they tried eating them).  

To Adora’s surprise, Bow was a fan of hot peppers.  He collected sauces and knew of a few kinds of wild chilis that grew in the Whispering Woods.  

“Bow helped me collect some red dragon-peppers in the woods when we were kids,” Glimmer said.  “We snuck into the kitchen and hid them among the pickle slices in one of the lunch-sandwiches and a salad that the head chef was making for Mom.”  

“They aren’t as hot as the ghost-chilis, but they’re pretty up there on the heat-index.”  Bow added.  

“And we snuck around the castle… and we looked in on Mom and my Dad eating lunch - he was still around then…”  

“King Micah’s face turned RED!” Bow exclaimed.  “He downed…an entire pitcher of milk after he took a bite of salad!”  

“And what happened with Angella?” Adora asked.  

“Oh, Mom just kept on eating, like it was nothing!” Glimmer threw her arms out, shedding exasperated sparkles.  “I didn’t even want to get Dad, just Mom and it didn’t even affect her!  She called the healers for Dad, then, you know what she did?” 

“What?”  Adora was wide-eyed at the story.  

“She caught us in the hallway.  She looked right at us, pulled apart the sandwich and gave me this knowing SMIRK.  She just SMIRKED at me!”  

“Completely immune, then?” 

“Yes!”  

“I’ve always wondered if it has to do with her wings,” Bow said.  “I mean, a lot of birds like hot peppers because they don’t have the same kind of taste buds that people do.  I’ve heard that some don’t even have a sense of taste at all!  Perfuma said that plants that make peppers make them for birds because birds eat the peppers and spread the seeds, but that the way mammals eat doesn’t do that - So the plants make the heat to keep mammals from eating them.  But… some humans like that kind of pain, so we’re a bit different, but to not be affected by it at all…” 

“Bow, for the last time, my mother is NOT a bird!”  

Chapter Text

Conquest of Comfort


Glimmer’s heels click-clacked upon the smooth surface of the big open main hall of Bright Moon palace as she approached Adora.  An unexpected problem had arisen with one of the castle’s not-entirely-wanted-but-strategically-important houseguests.  A mutual ur-enemy had, indeed, created strange allies of late in this war.  Tactical needs, however, outweighed any desire for meting out of justice for the time being. 

The newly-minted queen found her friend.  “Adora, we need to talk about our ‘guest.”

Adora sighed.  “I know how you feel.  He robbed both of us of a normal childhood, but he’s the key to defeating the greater Galactic Horde.  It’s not like we can think of a fitting punishment…now…Just hold on for a little bit longer, okay?”

“It’s not about that!” Glimmer huffed.  “If I was going to have him strung up, I would have done it by now! I’m already going against half the kingdom and most of the rest of the kingdoms by NOT doing that, but no one wants a war with Dryl and…ugh!  Like you just said, we need him!” 

“Then what did you want to talk with me about?”

“Our beds, Adora. Have you seen our beds lately?”

“Beds?  I… still sleep on a cot.  I keep killing the beds.” 

“Arrrgh! You know how we have that spare room for prisoners but we removed all of the pillows from them?”

“Yes?” Adora asked with a blank stare. 

“The pillows are GONE!  Every last one of them!” 

“Gone? Where did they go?” 

Glimmer narrowed her eyes.  “Hordak ‘annexed’ them all.” 

“He what?”

“He’s been holing up in the other guest room – you know, the one with the big feather bed – with EVERY PILLOW IN BRIGHT MOON!”

“Huh, say what now? Hordak did this?”

“Hordak did this.  Everyone but Entrapta and Shadow Weaver are too afraid to approach him and I don’t want to confront him alone, even without his power armor. You understand Horde-manners better than I do.” 

The two startled as Entrapta popped out of a hole in the ceiling, hanging upside-down by her hair.  “Well, he doesn’t have much muscle-mass!” she happily explained (as if they hadn’t seen him lacking armor by now – a precaution he was held to for the time being).  “He used to sleep in this pod with a jelly-like center back in the Fright Zone!”

Adora and Glimmer exchanged glances.  Entrapta remained in her perch.  “His bones are rather sensitive because of his condition,” she continued on, “So he needs something soft to get proper rest!  Sometimes the pod, sometimes wrapped up in my hair if he got sleepy when we were working in the Sanctum…”

“TMI! TMI!” Adora and Glimmer cried at once. 

“What?  Anyway, I haven’t seen him get as much rest as he’s getting here in Bright Moon!  He slept for 12.4 hours last night and into the day! I think it’s really helping him!” 

Glimmer scrunched up her nose.  “You watch him sleep?” 

“Well, yeah!” Entrapta explained as if it was the most obvious and normal thing in the world.  “It’s a vital part of my xenobiology studies!” 

“I’ll go talk to him,” Adora said as she started walking away. 

Before Glimmer could catch up to her, she went to one of the spare rooms, one with a repaired featherbed that she was too embarrassed to use again.  She cautiously knocked on the door. 

“Hordak?” 

“Go away.” 

Ignoring his growl, Adora gently opened the door.  She beheld a sleepy ex-warlord flopped upon the bed cuddling – yes cuddling – and practically buried in a mountain of pillows.  Imp was near Hordak’s bare feet, belly-flopped atop a pillow that resembled the face of a rabbit made of marshmallow. 

Imp hissed at her.

At least Hordak seemed to be wearing some kind of a nightgown, from what Adora could tell.  

Hordak pulled a blanket and a few pillows protectively over his upper half.  His red eyes glowed from what was effectively a fort. 

“Get Out!” he demanded. 

Adora stepped forward cautiously, as if approaching a cornered wild animal.  Hordak continued to glare from the depths of his comfort-cavern. 

“Um, Hordak?” Adora said with a salute since she thought that it would make him more receptive.  “The Rebellion will do everything to see to your medical needs – with Entrapta’s help, but… um… sir?  You’ve taken EVERY pillow in the palace.  Other people need them.  You know, for their heads.  At night.” 

Adora received a low rumble in response. 

“I have conquered the pillows!  Get! Out!” 

Chapter Text

Just Another One of Those Freaky Fridays 
Part 1: The Accidental Warlord 


The first thing that Bow noticed when he woke up was the pain.  His muscles did not want to move! His bones were in agony! He was having trouble breathing.  Had he been injured in the assault yesterday on the Fright Zone?  Perhaps a drone-bot had exploded in his vicinity, like that one near-death experience he’d had before.  No... after Adora had healed him, he was tired, but felt himself.  Bow decidedly did not feel like himself.  

He felt longer? Taller?  And like he had aspects that he lacked? Was he still dreaming?  He brought a hand to his chest and felt metal.  It was like he had a washer implanted into his skin.  A port of some kind? He ran the tip of a talon along its inner-rim.  Wait? A talon?  

He shot upright in...bed?  No. A transparent canopy hissed above him as it unlatched.  He was rested upon some kind of squishy, gellid material.  The sides of this cradle were metal.  Some kind of a pod?  

He felt the ends of his ears twitch.  

Bow felt the ends of his ears twitch! 

As he blinked away sleep, he looked down the length of his body.  At least he had some kind of skirt over his legs, but everything else was wrong.  Blue and white greeted his vision.  Much of the skin was scarred and raised and it seemed to be just barely stretched over a skeleton.  He took one good look at his right arm.  Nothing but a radius and ulna barely wrapped in skin in an unnatural fashion.  

He screamed.  

A door at the end of the room slid open and a shadow stood in it.  

“Oh, Hordak! You’re awake!  Good, good.  I had to run some tests on you while you were in your sleep-cycle.  I hope that’s okay!”  

The owner of the chipper voice stepped into the light.  Bow blinked. 

“Entrapta?” 

“You were hurt pretty bad and were down for 12.8 hours!  Imp was getting worried!”  Her hair had divided into multiple tendrils that reached to various shadowed parts of the room and into the ceiling, most of them aimed at a strange apparatus with various mechanical arms.  “If you can get up on your own, I can help you dress if you’d like!” 

“Help me dress?!”  Bow sputtered.  He felt his ears dart down and heat come up in his cheeks.  

“You had to take off your armor to take the sleep aid, and you needed that after the battle.  It looks like the pod did its work!  Too bad it only works on acute injuries, huh?  I think if we keep working on it, we could get it to start healing your illness, but as you said, you think that’s too deep, too late... ‘in the blood.”  

Bow held his head.  “Armor, pod.... injuries...illness?”  

Bow suddenly found himself grabbed by a strong tendril of hair and set on his feet.  In an instant, his arms were spread out at his sides - aw, the sudden movement hurt! - and various bits of smooth metal were clamped onto his body.  He felt sections of it enter the ports on his back, sides and limbs and suddenly, his muscles relaxed.  Everything felt less stiff, less painful.  He felt energy and strength course through him.  

Entrapta stood before him, admiring her work.  She’d always been short, but was she shorter now?  She blinked at him owlishly.  “Are you ready to get to work?  Oh! I know! I should page for breakfast first!  One ration bar or two?” 

“Ration bar?” 

“The gray kind?”  

“Entrapta, where are we?”  

“Oh... you must still be disoriented.  Remember... your name is Hordak.  Hor-dak!  I’m Entrapta! En-trap-ta!  The little guy over there is Imp.  If you aren’t up to working on the Portal today, I’ve got another project!”  She produced a slender, golden object from out of one of her ponytails. “Take a look at this!”  

Bow gasped.  “My arrow!”  

Entrapta beamed.  “When the Princesses attacked the other day, Bow shot this at you.  There was an explosion and you were both caught up in it.  I’m afraid the Princesses all escaped - they had to drag Bow away because he was unconscious. A pity...I was hoping to capture him to turn him into a research-assistant!  Or maybe a test-subject!  He’s really smart and skilled!  You were hurt, too, so I brought you back here to your pod! The arrow was damaged, but look at THIS!  Bow’s been attempting to incorporate First Ones’ Tech!  Just like me!  He doesn’t seem to understand all of the power-bypasses, but I’m impressed!  I wanted to do a thorough dismantling and study of it, but I need you.”  

“You...need me?” 

“Well, of course, Hordikins!  We’ve been doing all our science together now, haven’t we?” 

Bow’s breath caught in his throat.  “Hordikins?”  

“Yeah, yeah, I know you don’t like the nickname, but it’s soooo cute!  Anyway, as soon as you feel up to it, you need to address the troops today.  I can ask Commander Cobalt to handle it if you need more rest.”  

Bow sat down on the edge of the mysterious “sleeping-pod.”  “Yes... I am feeling unwell.  I need some time.”  

“Okie, dokey!  I’ll be back later!”  

With that, Entrapta hauled herself up on her hair and disappeared into the ventilation-system, followed by the creepy winged baby-thing, which gave Bow a strange, narrow-eyed look.  

“What happened?” Bow asked himself.  

He found a sink in the chamber - apparently Hordak’s private room - over which there was a mirror.  He stepped over to it cautiously.  He beheld his face reflected in it, but it was not his own face.  He was looking at the dull expression of Hordak with red, glowing, pupil-less eyes.  He touched his cheek and one of his ears.  

His “reverse polarity” arrow was supposed to reverse the gravity in the room.  He’d hope that it would hold the enemy in place.  They were going to stop whatever Hordak was doing...perhaps even get Entrapta back.  Bow had tested this arrow on targets teleported around by Glimmer and the gravity-effect had worked without a hitch.  

Apparently, on living beings, there was a mind-exchange?  

HOW WAS HE GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS?!! 

“Alright, Bow, don’t panic, don’t panic,” he told himself.  “You can do this!  You already learned more about Hordak in five minutes than the Rebellion has been able to glean about him in years!”  

He touched his face in the mirror again.  The skin was cool, but not as cold as he always imagined that Hordak would be.  There was the warmth of blood beneath the skin.  Bow grew up thinking of him as some kind of mysterious monster.  This made him more... human?  

The power-armor eased his movements, but there was still an undercurrent of ache.  Hordak - who appeared strong, invincible, imposing... under his armors he was sick, very, very sick.  Bow could feel what he thought were metal bits beneath some sections of skin and within the flesh.  Robotic components keeping him alive?  

Entrapta seemed so concerned with him.  Her manner with him told him that she didn’t feel forced to work for him nor the least bit afraid of him. In fact, she seemed quite close, quite intimate - like she had taken it upon herself to be his caretaker.  And that “Hordikins” line.  The soft look in her eyes that made him feel squeamish and like he was being rude without meaning to.  

He fingered the crystal at his collar.  This armor had all of the hallmarks of Entrapta’s designs - “Dryltech” or “Entraptech” as the Maker’s Guild often called it.  Her lines, the buffed metal, and of course, the smooth integration of First Ones’ crystals.  It had something written on it that he could see in the mirror.  

Bow couldn’t read First Ones’ writing, not much of it, anyway, but he knew a few letters, a few bits and pieces from his fathers’ research - And this looked very much like Papa’s “Love” tattoo (that Adora oh-so-helpfully pointed out read “Lunch”).  He could see the “L-U-V.”  He caught the last letter.  “D.”  

“Loved?” he whispered to himself.  

He immediately hunched over holding both sides of his head.  “Oh, no, no, no! Talk about bad taste in partners!  Dammit, Entrapta!”  

“You called?”  

Bow stiffened as he heard her voice and saw her head popped upside-down out of the main vent-opening.  

“Nevermind, Entrapta,” Bow said, using Hordak’s voice to try to sound imposing.  “I’ll be out shortly.”  

“Okay!” 

And she was gone.  

Bow tried to get himself together.  He wondered if he could give a speech? Maybe he could disband the Horde!  Maybe he could tell everyone to lay down arms and go home?  But the Fright Zone was home to most of it’s people.  What to do, what to do?  

If he could find a way to send a message, he could tell Adora and Glimmer about his predicament... and about Hordak’s weaknesses.  

Oh, wait... if he was in Hordak’s body..that meant.... was Hordak in his?  

Oh, no! 

Chapter Text

Just Another One of those Freaky Fridays
Part 2: The Accidental Archer 


The first thing that Hordak noticed when he woke up was a ferocious pressure in his lower belly.  No, not just pressure...pain!  He moved and there was a stab of pain.  He rolled out of bed.  Bed?  He untangled himself from too-pink sheets and blankets and could have sworn he felt something sloshing around in him.  He felt something wet along his inner thigh.  He concluded that he was full of water and needed somewhere to go release it.  

His soldiers had toilets in their barracks - a need for Etherians of various species.  It was a need for him occasionally, too, but rarely, as the waste-recyclers in his body made any waste minimal.  So, too, the Horde species was generally built to make use of every drop of water.  A need for release happened every 40-Etherian Days and came in the form of a thick brown sludge that caused minimal inconvenience.  

Searching around the strange, gold-tiled and too-sparkly room (was he dreaming?) he found a commode.  Relief swept over him as he dropped his pants and let fly.  It just kept coming. And coming.  An ocean!  When would it end?  What was wrong with him?  

He’d ask Entrapta to take a look at him.  This was not normal.  

Wait. He noticed his hands and other notable parts of his body.  

They were not his.  

Hordak blinked the last of the sleep from his eyes.  His skin was brown and smooth.  His arms had muscle-tone.  

He felt better.  It took him a few minutes to notice (damn water-filled belly!) but he didn’t feel the constant ache that was the background-sensation of his life.  He was standing strong on his own, no armor, no struts.  He looked down.  Boots - Standard Etherian make.  

He pulled up his pants - also standard Etherian-make, and wandered to the bathroom mirror.  He bit his lip to choke off a scream.  

He was that archer-kid?  What was his name...Entrapta talked of him often.  Bow.  His name was Bow.  

Why was his mind within the body of this inferior creature?  

Memories flashed into his brain of an arrow whizzing through the air, an explosion.  There was a shining First Ones’ Tech crystal embedded just below the head of the arrow, worked through with circuitry.  He’d felt a strange gravity-field, then nothing - nothing at all.  

Hordak looked over a room that was some kind of a guest-chamber, or perhaps a boarding-room.  There was a quiver of arrows and a bow against one wall. There was a bookshelf.  There was a stack of magazines.  He picked up one.  

Scientific Etherian. 

Entrapta used to write for that, so she said.  

Hordak explored his new body.  He touched his hands to his face, to his sides...to his belly (an exposed midriff... and that top he saw in the mirror with the heart-shape just above where an Etherian heart would be... )  He couldn’t fault the boy’s courage for making himself such an easy target.  He must be confident in his skills.  He stretched out his legs and his arms.  

Ooooh, this felt nice!  All of the strength of youth!  Muscles un-decayed.  He walked around the room with such fluid ease!  

Hordak could scarcely remember the last time he felt this way!  It was like being fresh out of the vitrine!  It was like he’d felt when he was given his first troops to command!  

He soon found himself dancing - outright dancing!  

“Bow! You’re up!”  

He immediately stopped when a shimmer of sparkles phased into the room before him.  

“Y-yes,” he ventured, not wanting to give away the game.  

“The healers said that you just needed some sleep.  Come on!  We’ve got a War Room meeting!  We’re also having breakfast!”  

Before he could entertain thoughts of murder, Hordak found himself being grabbed by the hand (Bow’s hand) and teleported?  right into Bright Moon’s War Room.  The sensation of phasing wasn’t unlike that of a tractor-beam.  

He plunked down in a chair that Queen Glimmer guided him to.  He was right next to the flower princess.  Why wouldn’t she stop looking at him?  

Adora, the traitor, sat across from him.  She stood up after summoning a three-dimensional map on the table.  “Alright, guys... Horde activity has been up on the edges of Elberon and they have asked for our help...”  

“Bow? You look a little off,” Perfuma asked.  “You’re hardly touching your breakfast!”  

The yellow mash of bird-ovum that had been presented to him along with toasted bread didn’t appear to Hordak to be very appetizing and the clamor of the Princesses chattering at once was giving him a headache.  

Oh, seriously now?  THAT was their strategy?  By Prime, that horse annoyed him!  He kept imagining it ground up into brown ration-bars. Fed into the hopper.  Alive and kicking.  

He had two choices while he was stuck in this body (how long would it take?  Was there a way to get a message to Entrapta? If anyone could fix this, it would be her).  Would he undermine the Rebellion, or...would he actually teach them to FIGHT PROPERLY BECAUSE THIS WAS AN EMBARRASSMENT?!  

HOW WERE HIS SOLDIERS LOSING TO PLANS LIKE THIS?!  

Mermista was laughing.  “Yeah, those Horde troopers really have the worst aim!” 

“They depend on their robots too much! Good! They’re fun to smash!”  - Oh, that little ice-princess was a barbarian!  

“Your opinions, Bow?” Glimmer asked him, giving him a point-blank stare. 

“Um...stay the course?”  Hordak tried.  “I...um...really want to keep hearing from everyone else.”  

Ah! Hordak decided, listening in to the War Room conversations was enlightening.  He was learning so much about the incompetence of his field troops - ways he needed to shore them up.  Marksmanship training... better logistics for the armory.  

These Princesses had no idea how much they were aiding the Horde right now.  

Wait.  A thought struck him.  

If he was in the goofy archer’s body... who was in his back at the Fright Zone?  

He had to get a message through and set this right!  

Bow would run it into the ground!  An unwitting Scorpia would probably help!  

The last thing he heard before falling over the table in a dead faint was Adora’s voice. 

“Bow?  Are you sick? You just turned green!” 

Chapter Text

Day by Day

She was just following Catra’s orders.  This is what she told herself day by day. It wasn’t like she was innocent. She was a weapons-designer either way - first for one side of the conflict, then the other.  Even before the war came to her doorstep she’d been designing weapons-systems for fun.  She liked making things explode, seeing how high-powered she could make a laser and engineering her maze and anti-burglary devices.  Trapping wildlife for research, trapping people for research, trapping herself for research... it was all super-fun!  Hordak was impressed with her, too!  He was such a fascinating friend - he understood everything she talked about and valued her input instead of zoning out like so many other people did.  

Entrapta told herself that she was happy working for the Horde.  They gave her every resource she could ask for and didn’t seem to mind if her experiments got a little explody.  As such, she’d been allowed to study the fascinating effects of the corrupted First Ones’ virus on She-Ra without limit.  The Ethics Board of the Etherian Maker’s Guild would have never let her go so far in her studies.  Party-poopers.  

Catra had captured Adora as an asset.  Entrapta was certain that in some other universe, the Rebellion had rescued her, but not in this one.  Day by day, she subjected Adora to the crystal and watched the red tendrils trail up the sword and into the body of the She-Ra form.  Tests of her abilities initially pitted her in cage-matches against robots and large wildlife.  When Entrapta had discovered and implanted some limiters into Adora’s body that worked to counter She-Ra’s raw strength (it took a LOT of juice to properly electrocute her into paralysis and likely would kill the average mortal), Catra ordered her to be sent out on field-missions.  

She took many towns, a sea-port, and other key strategic locations.  She’d be brought back into the lab, temporarily paralyzed, strapped down and relieved of her sword.  Adora was back to her mortal form, but always in the “floppy” state that was similar to inebriation.  

Entrapta found her to be a surprisingly enjoyable chatter-companion.  The scientist would rattle off on one of her theories and projects.  Adora would nod and smile and repeat back to her the things that she said.  She seemed to know an amazing amount of history about the First Ones in this state and Entrapta plumbed her for information.  She would even retain some pieces of these conversations when she came back to her normal self and begged to be let go.  

“Can’t. Catra’s orders,” Entrapta always said.  

Adora told her that everyone among the Princesses missed her.  She didn’t know whether or not to believe that.  They had abandoned her, after all.  

During one of Adora's rest-days in the lab, Entrapta reminded her of this. She was primarily with the Horde for science, but felt like she wasn’t hiding the fact that there was just the tiniest bit of vengeance mixed in, too.  They had hurt her.  

“Entrapta, we thought you were dead,” Adora said bluntly.  “Bow said that you got trapped in a flame port.  They thought you were burned to death!” 

“Then why didn’t anyone try to retrieve my body?  Most Etherian mourning customs dictate the presence of the deceased at the ritual of parting.”  

“They had to get out of there! The entire Horde was hunting them down!  They thought you were ashes! And... I, I’m sorry, Entrapta. I thought you were something worse.” 

“Hmm?”  

“When I was a kid, Shadow Weaver took my squad to see a ‘fool’ who didn’t practice safety regulations around the ports. His body was....I still have nightmares about it!  Burnt and bloody...I didn’t want anyone to see you like that.” 

“So you left without even checking!”  

“I’m afraid so.  Again...I’m sorry.” 

“It’s for the best.  I really like it here with the Horde.”

“We had a funeral for you.  Perfuma made a statue out of plants in your honor.  It’s still up because she is hoping that you’ll come back to us. Wow...how long have I been here?  The Daisy Festival in Plumeria should be coming up soon - you said it was springtime, right? I wonder what kind of dance Perfuma is going to do.” 

Entrapta looked uncomfortably at a poster tacked to a wall out of the strapped-down Adora’s line of sight.  There were images of all the Princesses on it.  

Perfuma’s was crossed out with a large red X.  

Entrapta put her mask down. 

______________________________________

Day by day the research continued.  

Catra and the troops would bring Adora back from the battlefield and would raise a bloodied sword with fresh news about a key Rebellion member being vanquished. 

Sometimes Entrapta was given filed-recordings of the She-Ra induced deaths of some random Bright Moon general she’d never heard of.  Sometimes, it was someone she’d known.

One of these days passed and in the evening Catra tossed her a holo-recording.  

She took a red pen and crossed out Mermista’s image.  

________________________________________

“Bow has been experimenting with First Ones’ Tech!” Adora excitedly told Entrapta one afternoon.  “You’d be fascinated...well, if only you’d let me go and we get out of here.  He really wants to work with you again.”

“Excuse me,” Entrapta said, her mask firmly down. “I... need to check on the progress of something in my other lab.” 

Adora heard a loud sob through the wall.  She didn’t know what to make of it. 

____________________________________________

It was over.  No more orders. An accident, a too-quick trigger.  Scorpia wandered through Entrapta’s lab, white faced and moving stiffly.  She looked like a ghost.  

Adora eyed her as Entrapta guided the scorpion-woman to the prison cell they were currently keeping her in.  

“What’s the matter?” She asked, getting up from her cot, groggy.  

“We’ve decided to leave...with you,” Entrapta said.  “Both of us, although we do not know where we will go.” 

“Back to the Rebellion?”  Adora asked. Her chipperness made Scorpia wince and Entrapta turn away. 

The latter shook her masked head, “No, not there. We can’t.”  

“Where’s Catra? I haven’t seen her around lately?” 

Scorpia fell to her knees in a shiver.  

Entrapta did not know the protocol for how to gently let one down that the remains of a former friend were being scrubbed off the training room walls by Kyle and Rogelio. 

Chapter Text

Tax Season

*Knock, knock*  Princess?  Are you home?  

Mr. Buckley nervously adjusted his tie as he stared up at the looming purple door.  It was tightly sealed.  He was sweating. He’d narrowly avoided a swinging trap-door that was at his feet moments before and found purchase by what seemed to be the actual doorway of the castle.  

Mr. Buckley had been here before.  He knew about the spike-pit.  The man was repeatedly sent here because he was a skinny, nimble fellow with high-anxiety who had a good ear for the tiniest of sounds and quick feet. In short, he was the best candidate for this job.  

He’d spoken to his immediate supervisor about hazard-pay.  
 
Not even the Twigget Scouts came to the Crypto Castle, promises of tiny cookies aside.  He’d heard a rumor that a salesman offering sets of steak knives had gotten in once and had gotten out in one piece - but that was only a rumor.  

At least it was a sunny day, rare for the area.  No danger of being fried by an errant bolt attracted by the lightning rod at the top tower of the palace.  

“Princess Entrapta?”  

He hoped he’d be greeted by one of the servants.  There were tales of the castle’s keeper - frightening tales.  Some stories - from the Maker’s Guild, mostly - painted her as friendly enough once someone got an audience with her, but she was notoriously distrustful.  He supposed a renowned inventor would be - afraid of thieves after their designs... or perhaps she’d suffered some kind of trauma that had her piling her residence with traps upon traps.  Maybe she just felt the need to live up to the rather unfortunate name her parents had given her.  Was it even her real name or a nickname at this point?  

People said that she worked with robots and historical technology, but no one around Central Processing wanted to risk their flesh and blood.  Mr. Buckley had been pushed into it.  

He rapped on the door again.  There was no answer.  

Fine, then!  He’d wait until nightfall if he had to!  This matter was urgent.  

He took a step to the left.  

Oh, no!  

No, not again!  

His feet slipped out from under him and he found himself barreling down a slide.  He clutched his suitcase to his chest and bunched up his legs.  what was going to be at the bottom of this?  A spike-pit?  Crocodiles?  A man-eating cow?  

His body slammed into a hard surface.  His sensitive ears caught the sound of metal locking into metal.  

He sat and caught his breath, pondering his new surroundings.  

A giant birdcage wasn’t such a bad place to be in, considering rumored and witnessed alternatives.  

He shivered and wondered if it was worth it to signal his presence.  If he was lucky, one of the castle servants would find him, or perhaps a service-bot designed to let visitors free. She’d built one of those, hadn’t she?  

He hadn’t heard of Princess Entrapta having a penchant for murder.  Then again, she was rich and the wealthy had ways of covering up such things.  The thought made his confidence flag.  

He chanced it.  

“Hello?  Is anyone here?  Hellooooo!  I need a little help!”  

He cringed back and yelped when he saw something move in the shadows of the hallway he was facing.  A black ooze fell out of the ceiling.  The creature crept closer, closer.  It resembled an octopus.  Was this some kind of biological experiment?  

Good Moons, was it feeding time?! 

Into the light popped a cheerful face.   “Oh, hello there!”  

Mr. Buckely recognized her from a file photo.  “Um...Princess Entrapta?”  

“The one and only!” she chimed, lifting herself up on her hair.  “It seems like you’ve gotten yourself into a predicament!” 

“Yes, um... one of your security measures?  I’d really like to be let out now.”  

She produced a recorder from one of her pockets.  “Fifty-fifth capture of the slide-cage trap!” she spoke into it.  “Subject is a man in a suit, looks to be about mid-fifties.  And you are?”  

“Mr. Joseph Buckley?” 

“Mr. Joseph Buckley.  Subject appears to be unharmed.  He also appears not to be a Twigget Scout and therefore is unlikely to have cookies to sell me.  Too bad. I really had a hankering for the mint kind.”  

“Um... Miss Entrapta?”  Mr. Buckley asked.  “Your attention, please?”  

“Oh, right!”  

“I’m um... I’m from the Etherian Revenue Service.  You failed to file your tax paperwork this year and we’ve sent you multiple notices.”  

“Oh, that!  I must have forgot!” 

The man stood up in the cage, dusted himself off, adjusted his tie and hat and held his suitcase at his side.  “This is a very serious matter.” 

“Why do I even have to pay taxes, anyway?” Entrapta asked.  “I’m a Princess!  I sort of… you know, collect them?”  

“Not for Bright Moon, which is why I’m here.  Don’t you remember the treaty you signed?”  

“Oh, yeah, that thing!  Where I’m supposed to make weapons for the Rebellion or something?”  

“Yes, that.  Bright Moon collects taxes to go to the war effort and the general infrastructure of the united kingdoms.  Were you not made aware of this?”  

Entrapta waved him off with her hair.  “Yeah, I was... I just didn’t want to pay it!  It takes away from my research-funding!”  

“Princess Entrapta, your Highness, your Majesty... you do know that refusal to file your taxes carries criminal penalties, some of them quite serious?”  

“Oh, I’m not worried.”  

Mr. Buckely sighed.  “Why not?”  

“Because I’m not gonna let you go until you let me go.” 

The tax man’s face fell.  He looked around himself.  He couldn’t argue with that.     

Chapter Text

Ransom 



Angella folded her hands as she leaned over the table.  Adora, from her tied-up position next to Glimmer, could do nothing but stare.  The Queen was being surprisingly calm about all of this.  Bow was cringing.  “Never meet your heroes,” they say.  He never expected to get a detailed rundown of his inventor-idol’s bedroom-life. 

“Did you talk with him about it?” Angella asked.  

“A little,” Entrapta confessed, eyes darting to the side and down as parts of her hair curled nervously. “He was kind of cagey about it.  He is an alien, you know, but he does have some basic functions common to Etherian mammals…” 

“Mom!!!” Glimmer cried.  Her wrists were shackled behind her back.  What she would give for some earplugs.  

“I want to bleach my brain!” Bow moaned.  

Adora bit her lip.  “Don’t think about your former boss naked,” she said to herself, “Don’t think about your former boss naked…” 

“Well, did you get consent?” Angella inquired.  

“That’s what I’m asking about,” Entrapta insisted, “I did, technically, but… He does like me, so it’s not that, it’s just…”  

“Are you familiar with the term ‘asexual,’ Entrapta?”  

“Weeeellll,” the scientist began, “I am familiar with aesexual reproduction!  It is common to simple animals such as sponges, echinoderms and some insect species such as aphids, and it’s very common in plants! Oh! And this one time, I attempted to create a self-replicating series of servant-robots, you know, to clean the rain-gutters on the Crypto Castle, what’s termed a Von Neuman Machine…” 

“Entrapta,” Angella brought her to attention, “That is not what I am talking about.” 

“Ooh, ooh!  Do you suppose that because Hordak’s a clone, that his species exclusively reproduces aesexually through the cloning process?  Then why would he have…” 

“STOP!!!”  

Glimmer was screaming at the very top of her lungs now.  

“GLIMMER!” Angella scolded, “Princess Entrapta and I are trying to have a conversation.  I will get you out of here, I promise.”  

Entrapta put her mask down and twiddled the ends of her hair together like fingers.  “You were saying?”  

“I’m not talking about reproduction,” Angella said, “But about… um… orientation.” 

“Oooh!”  

“Everyone has different degrees of sexual desire, some very little to none at all.” 

“Bow, I’m listening to my mother talk about sex!  Can you reach your arrows? Kill me! Kill me now!” 

“GLIMMER!”  

Adora had closed her eyes and was singing what seemed to be a lullaby from her childhood - save that it had incredibly dark lyrics.  One of Shadow Weaver’s gifts to her.  Right now, it was strangely comforting.  

“So….” Entrapta said guiltily, “Hordak might just… not enjoy it.”  

Bow got a pang of sadness as he watched her head dip.  This wasn’t exactly the kind of conversation he wanted to be a part of, either, but she looked so crestfallen that he couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.  

“That could be,” Angella answered.  “I’m sure that he enjoys spending time with you, partaking in your mutual interests, engaging in other displays of affection.”  

“Oh, yeah! A lot!  He’s a great kisser!”  

“UGH!”  Glimmer was banging her head against a wall now.  

“AND THE SHADOWS SHALL CONSUME THY SOUL, LITTLE ONE, LITTLE ONE, MY SWEET!” Adora sang.  

“So…what do I do?” Entrapta asked.  

“Well,” the Queen said, “You two will just have to work it out.  Some people who are asexual are willing to partake just to make their partner happy.  Don’t pressure him, though.  Just ask and he might be willing even if it is not the part of your relationship that he derives the most pleasure from.  And if you both can live without it, maybe you’ll have just as fulfilling a relationship as any.”  

The three captives were lost in their own respective worlds. 

“AND THY BLOOD WILL RUN FOUL AND BLACK, MY SWEET, MY SWEET!” 

“Why! Was! I! Born!” 

“Aw, I hope things work out between you two!”  

Entrapta hopped down from her chair, her mask up and her face cheery.  She was swift to untie everyone.  “Alright!  We have reached an agreement! The ransom has been paid!  You’re free now!”  

“Let’s go home,” Angella said.  “Provided, of course,” she glared at Entrapta, “You do not trigger an alarm.” 

”Oh, of course not! I’ll just blame it on Emily glitching up again.  She was supposed to be on guard-duty.  Hordak won’t even know!” 

Glimmer was giving her mother a look.  “There is not enough soap in Bright Moon to wash out my ears!”  

Chapter Text

The Aliens and The Princesses




Hordak’s ears were flattened against his skull and held back, rather like a cat’s, Castaspella thought.  

“Why, pray tell, are you bringing this up with me? Don’t you have an execution to plan?”  

“My brother has decided to show you mercy,” Castaspella answered.  “More than you showed him.”  

Hordak cuddled deeper into his mound of pillows.  He’d convinced the staff at Bright Moon that they were a medical necessity for him since they were keeping him without his armor.  Given the obviously diseased state of his body, this was difficult to argue against.  It still rather amused many that this once-feared dark warlord was so fond of pillows.  

He grunted.  

Castaspella paced about the room, around his fort-bed.  “You are disabled without your armor and well-guarded.  There is no particular need to kill you at this time, although we are trying to figure out just what to do with you.  In the meantime, we wish to avoid hostilities with the Princess of Dryl and that requires that we bestow you mercy. As for the rest…” 

“You asked me a highly personal question.  You would do well to withdraw it and leave.” 

“I thought that you might like to know - “ 

“I know perfectly well these biological processes.”  

“I was just going over everything from scratch since you are not Etherian.”  

“The Horde studies the inhabitants of every planet we plan to conquer.  I know about biologies and sexes beyond your pitiful imagination.  Now leave me be!” 

Castaspella pented her hands and went into full “wise aunt mode.”  “Well, we all know that you are very close to Princess Entrapta.”  

“Yes.”  

“We all want to make sure that you are treating her properly and that you know…how to… um… serve her needs.”  

Hordak glared at Castaspella.  “She has expressed no sexual needs to me.”  

Castaspella was taken aback.  “She hasn’t?”  

“She hasn’t.”  

“But…we thought that you were…she and her… were…um… very close.” 

“We are.  We are lab partners.”  

Castaspella was flustered now.  She waved one of her hands.  “Oh!  I’m so, so, sorry, Mister Hordak!  We thought that you two were romantically involved!” 

“We are.”  

“Yes, but?”  

Hordak smiled wickedly.  He was enjoying the sorceress’ little freak-out.  “Entrapta and I have discussed these matters.”  

“You have?”  

“Did you just assume things of her?  Entrapta is asexual.”  

“Oh! I am so sorry! I didn’t know! None of us did! She just seems so, well, wild…” 

Hordak grunted again.  He truly wanted this woman gone.  At least Imp was elsewhere - off with Entrapta and Emily studying the Bright Moon gardens so he wasn’t going to get a recording of this conversation played back at him at obnoxious times.  

Castaspella sighed.  “I… I hate to ask this,” she said, penting her fingers again, “But are your needs being met?” 

Hordak openly laughed.  Castaspella stepped back, shocked at the depth and heartiness of it.  

“Do you think that I would even be able to serve such needs in this body?”  

“I am so sorry, sir.  You… must have sensitivity. What with you skin…and bone…”  

“I am what your people would term asexual, as well.  By design, actually.  My brother would never allow unauthorized mingling of his genetic code.” 

“I am sorry, sir.” 

“Don’t be.  It does not trouble me and it should not trouble you.” 

“Well, as long as our Entrapta is happy.” 

“She is. We are.  Now get out.”   

Chapter Text

Antagonist in Mourning


The Princess Alliance and former Hordespeople stood stunned, watching as Catra held Adora.  

“WAKE UP, YOU IDIOT!” Catra screamed.  

The Horde was in ruins now - so much crashed space-ship debris littered around the Fright Zone from the crown-ship, the rest having gone into orbit with their crews of highly-confused, leaderless clones.  Catra, in the end, had sought to usurp even Horde Prime.  What had started as a ruse to save Etheria had turned to her ambitions, but as she had learned as she had lost every friend she’d had, one by one, power was hollow.  

She-Ra, with renewed purpose and a re-created sword untied to the First Ones’ former projects, came in to save the day, as usual.  Adora had her chronic hero-complex as usual.  The Princesses had fought together and Catra had expected to lose.  She’d wanted to lose.  She just wanted to see Adora again. She thought something would happen - some kind of path of defeat to save face.  Too bad the sword’s magic was only a transformation-key and wasn’t one of those “unable to be wielded by all but the chosen one” things like so many weapons were in stories.  It would transform only the chosen into the She-Ra of Etheria, but anyone could use the sword as a basic sword.  

Catra’s reflexes had been quick in the fight.  Survival instinct and her natural agility had taken over.  One of her palms was cut from where she’d deflected what she knew was going to be a disabling-but-not-killing blow (Adora was a sap) and had turned the sword around, inward.  

And right through the middle of the girl she’d loved.  

“Someone!  Help! Help her!”  Catra demanded at the stunned crowd.  

Not even Hordak was moving.  He was standing next to Entrapta, one eye red and one eye green.  He wasn’t “fully rebooted” according to her. Half-himself, half lobotomized - Catra supposed that he was safer this way for the moment, given that the last time he was himself, he was trying to kill her.  Entrapta, of course, was inconveniently-alive.  Scorpia stood beside her, her face saying volumes.  Catra’s mind echoed the memory of her voice saying quietly “You’re a bad friend.”  

Micah and Castaspella pushed through everyone.  

“Let us see her!” Micah called, already keying up his magic.  

“Do you think a healing-spell will really work?” his daughter, Glimmer asked.

“Is she still breathing?” Casta asked.  

“I don’t know, she doesn’t look like it,” Entrapta added.  “I’m pretty sure that wound is fatal, but I’d have to have a go at taking her apart to make sure!”  

Bow grabbed the scientist by the shoulders. “Can you do surgery?!” he asked desperately.  “I know you mostly know robots, but…” 

“I’m an expert on humanoid anatomy, too!” 

“Then get to it!”  

Catra stepped back.  She nodded to Scorpia and Huntara, who took her by the arms.  Perfuma brought up her vines to bind her.  

“I don’t care what happens to me,” Catra choked out.  “Just save her, please…” 

She got a glimpse past where Entrapta, Castaspella and Micah were working.  She saw it.  It filled her with both pain and hope.  

Adora lurched up slightly and took a breath.  

Chapter Text

The Window 


Curator Stevenson was having a day like most others.  Another walk down the main hall of the old museum, another class of fifth-graders to share history with.  She loved her job here - her life being filled with art.  It was made possible by the sacrifices of prior generations, their stories being what she shared working-day after working-day with the visitors.  Some of the by-wrote recitations on the cue-cards had gotten old, so she spiced up the storytelling every time, catering to various age-groups.  

Elderly visitors tended to already know the stories, as did the art-geeks and the history-nerds, which is why she most liked the children’s field-trips.  

Sunlight streaming in from the great cathedral windows in her favorite wing painted their faces - some excited, some bored, in a dazzling array of colors.  

“No electronics, please,” she told one boy who had his eyes and thumbs glued to a video gaming unit.  

“Listen to the curator, Bobby!” Their teacher, Mrs. Henderson snapped, drawing the child’s attention.  When he bothered to look up, his eyes went wide.  

“Now,” Ms. Stevenson began, looking down at the class, “How much do you know about the Legend of She-Ra?” 

Several hands shot up.  One girl was particularly figity.  Curator Stevenson didn’t know if she was eager to answer the question or if she needed to use the restroom, so she picked her.  “Yes, you, there?”  

“She-Ra was a lady with a sword!  Oh! And she was a guardian of the whole world!”  

“Very good.”  The curator pointed to a window done up in glass panels of red, white and pale yellow struck through with pale cream swirls.  The pieces of glass had been painted for a more realistic effect and accented in places in touches of 24 karat gold.  “This was the She-Ra Adora.”  

“Whoa, who’s that?!”  Bobby, the child who had been previously playing a game and was now talking out of turn gasped.  He pointed up to a window with main colors of black and green with an imposing central figure.  The man (if he could be called that) had the appearance of both a devil and a saint.  The figure held a child in one arm and his other hand was cupping an image of the Planet Etheria with its many moons as if offering a prayer.  He was framed by sharp-outlined wings in abstract and the arm by which he cradled the planet was held in the grasp of what appeared to be a purple vine or cloth.  Above his subtly-haloed head was a purple crystal with First Ones etchings.  

“That is Hordak the Named,” Curator Stevenson answered.  

“Is that what he really looked like?”  one of the other boys asked, casting a skeptical eye at the window.  

“I suppose all of these portrayals are bit embellished,” the curator confessed.  “They are art-pieces, but we do actually have good records on Hordak thanks to the Horde’s bookkeeping and the logs kept by his wife.”  

“They really are just learning the She-Ra Unit,” Mrs. Henderson told the curator before turning to the children.  “Now would any of you like to learn about Mr. Hordak here?”  

“Why is he called ‘the Named?”  one of the crowd inquired.  

“Well, that is actually quite a long story,” the curator began, “He ended up naming himself because he didn’t always have one.” 

“That’s sad,” one girl said.    

“And why is he in among all of these royals?” one of the other kids asked, noting the brighter colored windows with figures that were a bit more familiar to them.  “Isn’t that old Queen Angella?”  

Curator Stevenson gestured to the window.  “You see,” she said, “Hordak was once a very wicked man, but he was saved by love.  It all began when Princess Entrapta invaded his laboratory one cloudy afternoon…”  

Chapter Text

The Boop 

Hordak snarled, taken aback.  

“Oh, I’m sorry! Did I hurt you?”  

He narrowed his eyes at Entrapta.  She had touched the top of his nasal-frame with her gloved index finger.  He had felt no pain from it, but was completely surprised by the sudden close contact and also its casualness.  

He clenched his teeth to avoid yelling at his lab partner.  He wasn’t truly angry, just baffled.  

“What was that…Entrapta?” 

“Oh, a boop?” 

“What, pray tell, is a ‘boop?”
 
“What I just did to you!” Entrapta answered.  

“Why?” 

“Oh, for science!” she casually answered.  “As you know, I am incredibly curious about your body.  Your nasal-bridge is unlike any humanoid I’ve seen!  I was just dying to figure out how it worked and was overcome with an urge to just…to just touch it!” 

Hordak deftly dodged a second attempt at a “boop.”  

“Cease this tomfoolery at once!”  

“It’s also oh, so cute!  I don’t know why, but many Etherians have the urge to boop the noses of small animals!” 

“Do I look like a small animal?” 

“No, but you are cute!”  

Hordak’s ears dipped and he immediately wore a deep blush.  He recovered quickly, hoping that Entrapta had not seen it.  Judging by the ear-to-ear grin she wore, she had, indeed, seen it.  

Chapter Text

It Had to Go

Glimmer sat uncomfortably at the table, all pent-up nerves.  Her fight-or-flight instincts were going crazy but she had to maintain calm. She had to get through this - and whatever games she’d have to play in the near future if she any chance of saving her world.  She spared a glance at Catra, seated at another part of the table, next to what appeared to be the roasted meat of some vertebrate-beast (there were ribs jutting out of the glistening flesh).  She did not want to ask where it had come from - fearing that she’d get the answer that the creature could talk when it was alive (or now!)

Their captor bade them to eat from the plates set before them.  Glimmer eyed what was supposed to be food dubiously.  This was alien to her - it could possibly kill her since biochemical barriers did exist between species, even among Etherians.  She pressed her spoon to the jiggling cube,  knowing that if she refused Horde Prime’s hospitality, she definitely would be dead, or worse.

She lifted the scoop of whatever it was to her lips. It looked like a dessert, but it tasted like some sort of fish? Fish caked in mayonaise? And tomato?  And crunchy…something?  She forced herself to swallow.

 "That dish is from a planet that no longer exists.“

 Her spoon clinked upon the dish as she immediately dropped it.

She watched, tense, as Horde Prime bade the screen behind him to show her and Catra images of her home.  Her people and her friends were in danger.  Her heart pounded like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. And she couldn’t get that fish-taste out  of her mouth!
 

"Eat up.”

That smug bastard smiled.

“Oh, by the way,” he added… “The planet that little dish came from had it coming, wouldn’t you agree?  I do so hate bad food.  Their cookery was atrocious!”

Glimmer’s eyes went wide.

Catra gave her a sidelong glance and looked back to Prime.  "Then why did you feed it to us if it was  sub-par?“  she asked.  Oh…she was brave, Glimmer thought.  Brave, reckless, foolish… 

 "Why,” Horde Prime  answered, “I keep such recipes around as a form of discipline!  When any of the creatures in my keeping become, shall we say… unhinged…  all they need is a taste and they’ll fall right back into line!”

Glimmer made a mental note to practice suppressing her gag reflex.  She was likely going  to be on this ship of horrors - and forced to eat from its galley - for a long time.

Chapter Text

In the Green

It was a day at the beach. It had started out as a diplomatic-kind of thing - Entrapta and Hordak sharing some of their technological ideas with the council of Sailineas regarding rebuilding the kingdom. Mermista wasn't particularly happy with them there, but the truth was that they had good ideas and Adora had convinced her to give Hordak a chance to "atone."

After morning debates and deliberations, business was adjourned for a break and the day had somehow turned into a Princess Alliance beach party. Everyone was amused at how Frosta was attempting an ice sculpture and kept getting frustrated at its quick melting-rate in the heat of the afternoon. Everyone ran around in swim-wear that was a little more revealing than their usual clothing, except for Bow, who insisted upon a short shirt over his chest that did the usual exposure of his stomach. It seemed like he never liked going bare-chested anywhere and just insisted on his middle showing only.

"Oh, come on, Hordak! The changing tent is right there! I'll help you!"

Hordak wrinkled his nasal bridge at the whole affair.

"I have no plans for swimming," he told Entrapta. "I hardly think why changing out of my armor matters or not. Besides I do not want everyone to see..."

Entrapta hushed him with her hair. "You're healthier now, you know."

"I still have scars and they are... unsightly."

"I don't think so."

He smiled.

She continued. "And Kadroh doesn't mind wearing those shorts with the flowers and palm-fronds on them!"

"I know." Hordak coughed. "They look ridiculous."

"Well, I packed something for you, anyway." Entrapta grabbed a pair of black shorts with a purple gear-design printed on them from her beach-bag. "Let's hurry up! I promised Kadroh, Imp and Emily that we'd build sandcastles together!"

After Hordak strode out of the changing-tent, he could feel the eyes upon him. At least Kadroh also had exposed ports, though not the scars. It made him feel less alone somehow.

"Hey, brother!" the clone called as he scooped sand with a little plastic shovel up against a mound that vaguely looked like it was to become a construction-project.

Imp was riding on Emily and apparently was bringing back a twig from the forest off the beach, one with a little leaf on it to act as a flag for the sand-castle.

Catra was seated on beach blanket, several feet away from the roll of the surf. She was watching Adora swim and splash with Glimmer and Bow. Without thinking, Hordak sat down next to her, allowing Entrapta to jabber on to Kadroh about the physics-properties of sand and water.

"Hey," she said.

"Not going for a swim?" He asked.

"You know cats. We hate water."

Hordak grunted, something of a "Me, too," statement.

He heard Scorpia calling from where she was digging up clams. "Imp! No! Don't run off like that!"

The bat-winged toddler had gotten away from Entrapta and was scampering on all fours toward the surf. He dodged past Scorpia's claws. Entrapta had promised to teach him to wade later, but everyone knew that Imp couldn't swim.

Despite his aches - he had gotten a health-boost in his time with Prime, but he still had some body pain - Hordak was up and off like a rocket, running after Imp, hoping to catch him before he hit the waves.

The former overlord winced as his feet hit moistened sand and his legs plowed into the cold, salty water. He grabbed Imp and flung him forward. That's when a wave knocked him off his feet and he was caught in an rip-current.

"Hordak!" Catra screamed.

Everyone who was splashing in the shallows turned around.

Hordak, for his part, was locked into sheer panic.

Suddenly, the water that surrounded him was not a muddy blue. It was green - pure green, thick and electrified.

It was this way for Catra, too. Without thinking, she'd dove in after him.

The arcs flew over her as she was pushed down and under.

Four green eyes glared. The chanting droned in her ears.

"You will be at peace little sister," whispered into her mind.

Hordak breathed deeply as he was pulled further under. His lungs and his re-breathers filled up with seawater.

"Catra!" Adora called.

Catra felt strong arms around her, lifting her up. She coughed and sputtered. She flailed and she clawed.

Prime was taking her again, rearranging her, erasing her!

Jolts went through her joints. She felt her bones being cooked.

"Catra! Catra! Catra!"

That voice... it was so familiar.

She was being dragged up onto a sandbar. A grey-eyed face was looking down at her. "Adora?" she asked tentatively.

Faces beyond knees were surrounding her. Princesses, all of them, were looking down at her. Perfuma held her hands to her chest. Bow touched her neck, trying to examine her. She clawed a red swath into his arm.

"Come on, Catra....breathe! Breathe easy!" Adora encouraged her.

Catra shivered. "Green...green..." she began.

She shot up. "Hordak!"

She found that she had one hand wrapped around a gray-blue wrist.

"Took care of it," Mermista sighed. Once she'd heard everyone screaming, she'd directed the ocean to bring everyone back up to the beach.

Hordak was curled on his side and still.

"B-brother?" Kadroh ventured.

Entrapta was examining him. She knew his various bypasses, various ways in which his body differed from the standard Etherian.

"Is he... is he...dead?" Scorpia asked.

Without warning, Entrapta pulled a screwdriver from her hair and stabbed it into one of his flank-ports. Everyone gasped.

Hordak spasmed and coughed up water.

Adora sighed relief.

Catra wrapped her arms around herself. She looked up slowly at Adora. "We were both in the green..." she said.

"Both in the green? What does that mean" Adora asked.

Hordak's eyes slowly opened. The first face he saw was Kadroh's looking down at him in concern while Entrapta tried to steady him. He let out a strangled cry and clawed backward on the sand.

"B-Brother?"

Everyone stepped back as Hordak's face went skyward and he let forth a gut-wrenching scream.

His claws flexed in the sand and when he ran out of breath he caught another and continued screaming.

"Is he, like... gonna stop anytime soon?" Mermista asked.

"It's me, Hordak," Entrapta said gently. She pushed everyone else back, making motions with her hair. "Give him space! I'm here, Hordak. Do you recognize me?"

Catra gave him a shocked and pitying look. She stood up and glared murder at all of the Princesses save Adora and Entrapta.

"What are you standing around for? Get him a blanket or something!" She flexed her own claws and started screaming. "You don't understand! You weren't there! You didn't see him!!"

"What...what are you talking about?" Perfuma asked in innocence.

Kadroh looked up at her. He understood. He was trying to bring his brother back around, but he was shivering, too.

"The pool," he said slowly.

"The pool? What pool?" Frosta asked.

Catra let Adora hug her from behind. "You'll never know," she whispered. "You never saw his white eyes..."

Wrapped in Entrapta's hair, Hordak had screamed himself into a dead faint. "He's alive," she assured everyone, "But... I'd better get him inside somewhere. Away from the water."

"Th-there was a pool," Catra tried to explain. She was gripping one set of claws into her own arm, hard enough to draw blood. The little bit of pain kept her in the present."On Horde Prime's ship...there was a pool. It's how he disciplined his acolytes. It was... it was..."

"All beings must suffer to become pure," Kadroh said with a deep frown. "He lied to us. Lord Prime never suffered as we did."

Catra narrowed her eyes. Perfuma was crying. She didn't have the right. At least Scorpia was holding her composure.

"There was...electricity," Catra said, "and something about the water. It made you forget everything. It felt like it was seeping into your bones and fading your soul."

Hordak jerked awake. He curled up in a fetal position and tears were flowing from his eyes. "Sssh...sssh," Entrapta soothed him.

"Don't... don't take her away from me again," Hordak choked.

For just a moment, Adora wondered why she had ever feared this man. For the moment, she felt nothing but dread and sorrow.

"I... I am Hordak..." Hordak whispered, holding his head.

"Yes, yes you are," Entrapta said. "And I'm right here! And Emily and Imp! And Kadroh and Adora and everyone! We aren't going anywhere."

Imp was sniffing at his "father." "Right here," he repeated in Entrapta's voice.

This seemed to calm him for the moment, but the former leader of the Etherian Horde would be in and out of a catatonic state for several days.

He was never asked to come to the beach again.

Chapter Text

I’ve Felt Worse

“Ooh! Ooh!” Entrapta said in sheer excitement, shaking her hands and bouncing on her hair, “When we go further inland, there’s all kinds of cool First Ones tech!  It’s amazing!  But we have to be careful.  There’s this signal that makes you depressed.  It makes you doubt yourself and gets you all sad so you don’t want to move and the island can eat you.  Come along, now!”  

Hordak’s eyes widened in concern.  “Entrapta, are you going to be alright?” he asked. “Perhaps we should go no farther if it is that dangerous.  The weapons-capabilities do intrigue me, but it may not be worth the risk.”  

Entrapta waved him off with a hair-hand. “Oh, don’t worry! The signal only got to me the last time when I realized how much trouble I had with the whole friendship-thing and I was reminded that I was away from you!  Now that you’re here and I know you and Scorpia didn’t abandon me and everything was just Catra being a butt,  I’ll be fine!  We’ll be okay if we go together, I promise!  If you start getting bad memories of Horde Prime, I’ll snap you right out of it!”  

Hordak wore an easy smile on his face as he followed behind Entrapta.  “Catra being a butt.” 

“Well, she’s not as much of a butt anymore.”  

Suddenly, Hordak stood still as ringing sounded in his ears.  Shining eyes in the dark surrounded him.  

“Hordak?”  Entrapta called as she looked behind her.  She went back for him and reached out for his hand.  He was frowning.  

“Is that the signal?” he asked.  

“Yeah.  I know, it’s awful, but I’m here.”  

Hordak grunted and walked past her before she caught up.  “Is this all this island has got?” he wondered aloud.  “Pheh.  The stories are overrated.”  

A pooka ventured out from its hiding place.  It hobbled close to the pair and stared in wonder at the stoic-one.  

Entrapta kept a hair-tendril on one of Hordak’s shoulders.  She was starting to feel the signal’s power and made a logical move to assure herself.  Data didn’t lie.  Hordak was here with her.  She was able to have friends.  

More pookas scuttled out into the light and made no move to attack.  They just looked on in curiosity.   

“This is amazing, Hordak!” Entrapta said excitedly.  This was some entirely new data!  “The signal doesn’t seem to be affecting you at all!”  She brought a recording-device out of her hair.  “Beast Island Reclamation, Day 1, Hour 3 and 3-quarters: I am feeling mild effects from the depression-inducing signal by which the techno-organic matrix of the island hunts. I am using logical psychological-tactics to compensate for this effect.  Hordak, however, remains wholly unaffected! Fascinating!  Perhaps this immunity is a trait of his species?  Note to self: Ask for experimental volunteers among the clones! Oh, this is so exciting!” 

Hordak looked around with a frown.  He contemplated kicking a pooka that got particularly close to one of his feet.  “I’ve felt worse,” he said.  

“Oh,” Entrapta said, clicking off her recorder.  

In that very moment, the ground tremored and the tendrils on the blackened “trees” snaked about.  The pookas crept close to them, but made absolutely no hostile moves.  

One of them cocked its head and looked directly at Hordak.  

A raspy hiss came out of nowhere - from the pooka, from the collective of them, from the island itself, neither Entrapta or Hordak knew.  It reminded Hordak uncomfortably of the Horde hive-mind, but it had a decidedly different inflection. 

The pooka nearest to him flexed its jaws.  “Curious,” the overreaching voice said.  “We were just planning on eating you, but you seem to be immune to our world.  Your sadness surpasses what we can instill.  Do you need help?  We would like to help you.”  

Entrapta’s jaw dropped. Her recorder fell to the ground.  

Hordak looked on, ears pinned back against his skull as he looked straight onward.  “As I’ve said, I have felt worse.”  

Chapter Text

Hordak and the Pookas

Hordak sat idly on the throne he’d constructed in the Hell that was Beast Island.  He and Entrapta had cleaned up one area of the island sufficiently to create a little home for themselves.  They deemed it time to rest for the day and one of their unexpected new pets hopped up on Hordak’s shoulder.  He gave it a scratch under  the chin like he used to do with Imp.  

He missed Imp and hoped that he was doing well with his new adoptive parents.  He doubted that Beast Island was the place for him.  

Entrapta was making a hammock for herself out of her own hair.  Once she’d hung her hair up from some dark tree branches and settled into a gentle swing on it, she did her last day’s log.  

 “Beast Island Reclimation Log, Day 3, 1900 hours.” she yawned.  “The signal has died down on this area of the island, coordinates marked! I have yet to ascertain whether or not our new pooka-friends have anything to do with it.  I have reunited with Big Bertha and she is now resting in our new hangar! Today has been a great day!  Hordak is bonding with our friends! He even seems less bummed out about not being bummed out over the island’s signal!”  

Hordak gave her a soft smile and continued affectionately petting the small monster that had taken to a settled position on his lap.  A troop of other pookas surrounded his throne.  His companion cocked its head at him.  

“Are you becoming easier?”  the hissing, voice of the pooka-collective asked.  

“I do not know what you mean,” the former warlord replied.  

“Are you becoming less depressed? A little happier perhaps?” 

“I suppose that I am.”  

“Good,” the pookas intoned.  “We cannot eat anything that is in greater pain than what our island can put them in.”  The one on Hordak’s lap opened its mandibles.  “It ruins the flavor of the meat.”  

Chapter Text

Matching-Wounds

Hordak thought that he was done with war but he had never, in his entire life, been lucky.  Well, he was lucky in one aspect - exceedingly so, but the rest of it seemed like an incessant series of problems with no easy solutions.   

About a year after the defeat of Horde Prime, he and Entrapta had found themselves in a situation that they never thought that they’d be in:  Once again, they were involved in a rebellion.  So, it really was the second time for Entrapta, as Hordak’s rebellion against Horde Prime had been entirely personal, but here they were, fighting a new power-that-be.  That power, strangely enough, originated from Etheria.  

He had done what he could for his bewildered brothers after the dissolution of the hive mind, as grumpy as he was about it.  Entrapta was a better counselor in his opinion, but some did respond better to his touch.  One of the unforeseen consequences of the ex-Galactic Horde harboring on Etheria was the utter docility of most of them without Horde Prime’s presence.  Much like the clone who was formerly known as “Wrong Hordak,” the brothers were eager to please their “new brothers.”  This sadly led to some Etherians - typically ones that were landed and accustomed to luxury, though not in royal positions, recruiting clones for factory and farm jobs.  Since the clones were new to the concept of pay, some of these landowners chose to use them as Horde Prime had: A ready work-force given only the bare-basics, and in many cases, not even that, in other words, in the mushroom farms of Erelandia and the river-belt farmlands of Sand Valley, large groups of Horde Clones had become slaves.  

They didn’t even think to complain until some of their number had starved to death because some of their masters didn’t see fit to even give them food, considering them expendable constructs or “not true life.”  Word of this took quite some time to reach Hordak, but when it did, he had a war to start.  

She-Ra was not involved.  She was off on some other planet when the fighting started, along with several friends who could have prevented this in the first place.  It had been weeks since Hordak had rallied his brothers to free themselves.  Some of the forgotten Princesses had stepped in to secure the status-quo.  Entrapta, of course, was with him and the clone-army.  The Kingdom of Snows was an ally and they’d gained the ally-ship of a mysteirous time-empress that Entrapta used to trade with, but that was it.  Etheria was in a full-on civil war with a New Horde, this time led by a Hordak who’d become an unexpected freedom-fighter.  

The last battle for the Tam River had been fierce.  The fighters that Erelandia had brought in from Thaymore and the mercs from the Crimson Waste were armed with some high-caliber firearms.  Entrapta’s battle-bots had pushed them back, but not before she was pinned by heavy fire.  

Hordak had thankfully seen her and came in with the force-field shield that she’d installed in his armor.  He’d ducked in front of her and enacted the shield before she’d got her head taken off.  Unfortunately, he’d taken a bullet to the shoulder doing this.  

After the victory-cheers from their forces were raised, the two spent time in the medical tent in the camp.  

Entrapta grasped one of Hordak’s forearms with a lock of her hair, examining bruises and abrasions.  “You’re lucky you didn’t get a break,” she said.  

“Hold still.”  

Hordak stood while Entrapta sat on a cot.  He gently cleaned a cut on one of her forearms and began winding a bandage around it.  He’s already taken care of her ankle, sprained as she’d ducked into a foxhole.  

“Looks like we’ve got matching-wounds.”  she noted of the gunshots in their shoulders, hers on her left side, his on his right.  Thankfully, they were more or less grazes.  All-in-all, the two of them would be fine with some rest.  

Some of their men were not so lucky.  

“I’m sorry,” Entrapta said.  

“For what?” Hordak asked.  

“For Etheria.  That we’re like this.  It never used to be like this... some scuffles between the kingdoms now and again... but never like this.  You’d think that bringing the planet into the greater universe would get everyone to want to do scientific discovery!”  

“Not everyone here is as smart as you are, and trust me, once one has tasted power, it is a difficult thing to give up.”  

“Your people are dying.”  

“With your help, my people will prevail.  We gained new territory today, thanks to you.”  

Entrapta looked up into Hordak’s red eyes and couldn’t help but give him a cheeky smile.  They were both glad to be alive - so glad.  

“You’re trembling,” she observed.  

“I almost lost you today.”  

“But you didn’t.”  

With that, she stood up from the cot, mindful of her injured ankle.  The two moved as one to embrace each other and kiss.  

They had survived.  They were alive for another day.  They’d gained a victory.  

Chapter Text

Food Fight 

The Princess Alliance – and Hordak, were seated at Bright Moon’s round table, enjoying a feast put on by Queen Glimmer before everyone discussed the business of their respective kingdoms.  Wrong Hordak – who had adopted the name of “Kadroh” sat next to Bow, putting Emily between him and Hordak, who was jealously shielding Entrapta.  The entire group had been given salads and fruits. As it turned out, Horde-clones were biologically-compatible to have a basic diet of fruit in the absence of easy-access to Horde Prime’s amniotic fluid.  It was far healthier, as well, as it was not laced with the various chemicals that Prime used to keep his clones docile and worshipful.  They were what Entrapta called “mostly fructivorus omnivore-mammals.”  

This was what made one order of business fairly awkward and one that Frosta probably shouldn’t have brought up at a dinner. 

“There are reports of some of the Horde-clones eating their dead on the edges of the tundra,” she said, matter-of-factly. “There were some dead ones found by the spire that landed in MY kingdom.  They were kept pretty fresh by the cold, I suppose, but some of the newly-freed living ones have been seen cutting them up and eating them in pieces!” 

Most of the Princess Alliance collectively made faces.  Bow put a hand to his mouth, trying to keep himself from throwing up.  

“Ewwww, gross!” Mermista complained. “Weird.  Why would they even do that?” She glared at Hordak.  “Aren’t you going to make them stop or something?”  

Adora, Catra and Scorpia seemed puzzled. They had not expressed any sign of sickness-neither had Hordak or Kadroh.  

“Why would you want my brothers to stop?” Kadroh asked innocently.  

“Because they’re…urp! Eating people?!” Perfuma exclaimed.  

Adora’s eyes went wide.  “What?  You don’t mean that you don’t do funeral rites?” 

“Funeral rites?” Glimmer asked, “What are you talking about?  Of course we do funeral rites!”  

Adora looked at Micah and at Glimmer. “I… I felt so sorry for you that they had never recovered your father to do a proper roast-and burial of the bones! But he’s alive, so that’s good! Oh, both of you!  I am so sorry that I wasn’t able to recover Angella!”  

Micah and Glimmer just stared at her in shock. 

Kadroh was on his feet, one finger in the air, putting on airs to explain.  “In the Galactic Horde, we subsisted upon nutrient-rich amniotic-fluid, but if a flock was stranded upon a planet, Horde Prime blessed us with the survival-skill of eating the battlefield dead until rescue could be secured.  It repurposes resources and is an efficient and clean way of remains-disposal. Do people on Etheria not do this?” 

“No, people on Etheria don’t do this!” Glimmer growled, standing with her hands on the table.  

Scorpia, Catra and Adora looked at each other awkwardly.  Hordak calmly ate a banana.  

“Oh, no,” Mermista groaned, shooting Hordak a look that could kill.  

“We knew the Horde was evil, but…cannibalism?” Sea Hawk whined.  “I mean, it may be a grim necessity if one is stranded at sea with a fallen comrade, but…don’t tell me…”  

“The Horde did this all the time, didn’t they? Ugh!” Mermista sighed and facepalmed. “Ew, gross!”  

“What’s the big deal?”  Catra asked.  “It repurposes resources that would otherwise go to waste!  You make the dead a part of you! It’s an honor! And it’s not like it’s dangerous if you cook the meat!”  

“Can we stop talking about meat?” Perfuma begged, putting her hands over her ears.  

Kadroh had sat down and was penting his index fingers together in a show of bashfulness.  “You cook the meat?” He asked.  

“Etherian stomachs are sensitive,” Hordak rumbled.  

“Oh, it’s not a good idea to do that at all!” Entrapta chimed in.  “While about 80% of a humanoid body is consumable, there are certain organs that need to be strictly avoided!  One must never eat the brain or the brain-stem because there is this disease called Kuru which is caused by a warped protein that comes from the consumption of brains!”  

“Entrapta!”  Perfuma wailed.  She got up from her seat and found a potted plant.  She apologized to said plant as she gently uprooted it from its vase, setting the root-ball and its associated dirt gently upon the ground.  She proceeded to use the vase as a personal sick-bucket. 

“I was made aware of that early on in my life on Etheria,” Hordak explained to his lab partner.  Heads, spines and livers from all species were incinerated. 

Bow had joined Perfuma at the impromptu sick-bucket.  

“Tell me all about it!” Frosta said ethusastically.  “My parents told me all kinds of survival stories about hunters who got stranded on the tundra and the ice floes!  I always thought they were kind of neat!”  

“Don’t tell me that if you died that these Princesses wouldn’t have given you the honor of eating you!” Catra yelped at Adora.  

“I… I guess not?”  

Scorpia had started to cry.  “Perfuma, does this mean that if I die before you, that you’re not going to eat me?”  

“Of course not!” Perfuma cried.  She went to Scorpia and hugged her tight.  “Of course I would never eat you! That’s sick!” 

Scorpia pushed her back, holding her shoulders with her claws.  “But… how will I be a part of you for eternity?”  

“You’re not going to eat me, are you?” 

“Well…” Scorpia twiddled her claws.  

“Aaaaughg!”  Perfuma was holding the sides of her head.  

“Okay, I won’t… I won’t if it will upset you, okay?  I promise…I promise I won’t eat you…”  

(Later on, Scorpia kept a list of secret stew recipes that would include all of Perfuma’s favorite vegetables into the pot should she be unable to help herself in honoring the culture she had grown up in regarding honors for the dead should she ever lose Perfuma).  

Entrapta was furiously typing on a data-pad. “Ooh, cultural differences are fascinating!  And apparently create a LOT of conflict!”  

Hordak finished eating his banana.  

“Are we doing things wrong, Brother?” Kadroh asked.  

“Nobody’s eating anyone!” Micah announced. 

“But…” Adora said, hands curling to her chest, “General Sundar is a part of us now.”  She looked again to Catra and to Scorpia and spared a glance to Hordak.  

“He is and always shall be,” Hordak assured. “He was an excellent soldier and deserved to live on within us all.”  

“Ugh, can we please stop talking about this?” Mermista demanded.  “We all knew Hordak was a monster, we just didn’t know how much!”  

“Am I a monster?”  Kadroh asked tearfully.  

“No, you aren’t!” Bow said, hugging him. “You just weren’t raised right!”  

“Alright, everyone just come to order!” Glimmer demanded.  She sighed heavily. 

“If we take the time to talk calmly,” Micah intoned, “I am sure that we can work out our cultural differences.”  

Chapter Text

Repentant Sinners

Catra’s eyes darted warily as they sat in her room on the ship - just her and Entrapta.  She wasn’t sure how she felt about the scientist giving her a pat on the head with her hair and declaring an easy-forgiveness over sending her to Beast Island.  It was no less than attempted murder, although Catra hadn’t been thinking about that at the time.  She had been acting on impulse, not rational thought.  The former Force Captain suppressed a shudder.  She could have easily killed Entrapta had the setting on the stun-baton been higher.  

It didn’t feel like it was enough.  Catra had basically resigned herself to die on Horde Prime’s ship.  She’d gotten Glimmer out - her one good deed in a rotten life and was prepared to have done with it.  What she’d faced was far worse than extinction.  Even absent the chip, she could feel a sort of residue in her mind and her bones of Prime - a cloying, sickeningly-sweet whisper at the back of her mind, abject violation masquerading as peace.  

Now that things were “Squared away” between them, as Entrapta had put it, the Princess of Dryl had asked her a question that she had utterly dreaded and was at a loss to answer.  

“Did you see Hordak?  On the ship, I mean?”  

Catra tried not to give herself away with the nervous lashing of her tail.  Her eyes darted to the floor.  Memories flooded her of Hordak denying his name, of him kneeling before Horde Prime, asking to be de-burdened of his memories, his feelings, his independent thoughts - his very self.  Her heart dropped into her stomach.  She had caused it.  It was running into her that had brought his thoughts back.  A chance-meeting... her desperation for familiarity when he had absent-mindedly called her “Catra.” She had called him “Hordak.”  It must have brought back everything to him - his failure at conquest, their last moments together fighting in the Fright Zone and the loss of Entrapta.  Dear Moons, the poor fool must have thought that she was dead!  

Catra was trying to find an answer.  Entrapta was looking at her imploringly, tears at the edges of her magenta-red eyes.  Catra had read the signs but somehow refused to fully believe it or let it sink in.  At the moment, she was thunderstuck.  

The idiots really had been in love!  

Hordak had chosen amnesia over grief.   It was her fault! All of it! Her mind was filled with his screaming as electricity arced over his form - and the chanting, by Etheria, the chanting!  All of this mixed with her own recollections of being forced beneath the acid-green waters, electricity over her fur and skin, chanting for her sake and Horde Prime wrapping his talons around her soul.  Hordak had chosen it because before Etheria, her, Scorpia, Shadow Weaver, Entrapta... it was all he had ever known.  That poor fool.  

“Catra, why are you shaking your head? You didn’t see him?”  

Catra snapped to attention and stared at her, her pupils going to pinpoints.  “N...no,” she said, “I mean.. I saw him. I did see him.”  

Entrapta clapped her hands together, suddenly excited.  

“Entrapta...”  Catra held one of her arms and looked down again.  “I don’t know how to tell you this...”  

Entrapta was suddenly straight-lipped and wearing a glare that could kill.  She looked like she was bracing. Catra was surprised that she did not tip her mask down.  She must have wanted to face the truth head-on.  

“Entrapta...he’s...not well,” Catra finally said quietly.  “You know when you’ve seen the other clones?  Wrong Hordak before you and Bow adopted him?”  Catra sighed.  “When we were beamed aboard the ship, he and Glimmer and I... we were right in Horde Prime’s throne room... his command-center...whatever.  Hordak fell to his knees before him, so sure that he would be impressed that he’d conquered Etheria for him.”  

Entrapta was leaning forward on her seat, rapt.  

Catra’s eyes darted to the other side of the floor. She switched the arm she held.  “To put it lightly, he wasn’t.  The only reason why Etheria is still here is that I told him about the Heart of Etheria.  He was going to blow it up to erase Hordak’s ‘failure.”  Prime... cannot stand any individuality whatsoever.  Hordak was never a general like he said he was...well, not unless there are some kind of rankings I didn’t see?  He was just a cog in the machine, built to be a zombie like the rest of them.  He plugged some kind of cables into the back of Hordak’s neck and... He erased him, Entrapta.  He completely destroyed Hordak’s mind.”  

Entrapta’s lip pouted.  She was trying not to cry.  She tipped her mask down.  

“There’s more, Entrapta,” Catra said slowly.  Entrapta tipped her mask up, a hopeful look suddenly appearing on her face.  “I ran into him in the halls of the ship. Literally.  I wasn’t watching where I was going and ran right into him.  I knew it was him because he called me by name.  I think it was a slip.  He wasn’t supposed to remember, but he did.  He recognized me - somehow.  I called him by name and he... he wasn’t happy.  The clones are not allowed to have names. I think... I think he remembered everything...because of me.”  

Entrapta was bouncing.  “That means!  That means he’s okay!  We have to go  back for him, right now!”  

Entrapta darted up.  Before she could tell the others to change course or change course on Darla, herself, Catra made a lucky grab and caught her by a pigtail.  
“No, Entrapta!” she shouted, digging her toe-claws into the floor.   “It won’t do any good!”  

“He’s waiting for me! I have to help him! Let go!”  

“Horde Prime erased him again!”  

That made Entrapta pause.  

“It was worse the next time,” Catra breathed out.  She was beginning to hyperventitlate.  Entrapta immediately sat down on a bench again, all of her attention on Catra.  “There was... a ritual.  Hordak reported himself to Horde Prime and we were taken to a room with this...” she shivered violently, “A pool.” 

“Adora told me that you said you were dunked in an electric pool before he put the chip in you?” Entrapta asked.  

Catra nodded.  “Yeah.  Hordak... he fell to his knees and asked... BEGGED for...what happened next.  He... he stepped into the pool.  There were clones everywhere....chanting... as Horde Prime activated it.  ‘Cast out the shadows!’ ‘All beings must suffer to become pure!’ Over and over again.”  Catra’s eyes were wide.  “The electricity started.  Hordak was screaming.  Not his usual yelling either, just... screaming.”  

Entrapta began breathing heavily.  She looked panicked.  Her hair frizzed.  

“At the end of it all... his eyes were white for a moment and he was blank. He just looked BLANK, Entrapta!  Horde Prime declared him the purest of them all!” Catra was weeping now.  “He did it because of me, Entrapta!  I brought his memories back and he... he must have remembered everything that went wrong!  I’m sure that he thought you were dead.”  

“Why would he think that?”  

“Hello? Beast Island?  People don’t come back from Beast Island.”  

“I did.” 

“You’re the first!”  

“And King Micah.”  

“King who?  Anyway... Entrapta... I think that Hordak is gone. Like... gone-gone.”  

Entrapta closed her eyes and blinked back tears.  

Catra pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them and curled her tail around her feet.  “When Horde Prime got to me... I felt...blank.  It was like having worms inside me!  I don’t think you can ask Wrong Hordak about it because he’s too...new...and...weird.  But, Entrapta... the clones... that’s their entire lives!  I thought the Horde on Etheria was a shithole to grow up in, but... what Adora and I grew up in... it has nothing on where Hordak comes from.”  

“Adora says that we’re going to stop Horde Prime.”  

“I’m so sorry, Entrapta.”  

The mask went down.  

“You shouldn’t forgive me.  I’ve taken too much from you.”  

“It doesn’t have anything to do with you.” 

“What did you say?”  Catra was utterly dumbfounded.  

“I forgive you because I want to.  I can’t move on if I stay angry.”  

“Are you even capable of feeling anger?”  

“It gets in the way of science.  Now, let’s get back to our friends! Save Etheria! Stop Horde Prime! Free Hordak!”  

Catra laughed a soft, nervous laugh.  “Nothing ever gets you down, does it?” 

“And we need to give Wrong Hordak a hug.”  

“All...right?” Catra said with an awkward smile.

Chapter Text

The Lonely Kingdom


“Will your people be comfortable with this decision?”  Hordak asked.  

“People?” Entrapta questioned, cocking her head curiously.  She wore a big smile on her face and waved him off with one hand, a hair-tail mirroring the move.  “Don’t worry! There aren’t any people in Dryl!  Not organic ones, anyway - Well, except for us, and my staff - they’re only three people and they’re very friendly.  They already love Wrong Hordak!”  

“No...people?”  

Hordak couldn’t place it, but there was something decidedly wrong with her smile.  He wondered if he was just seeing things, since he had trouble reading Etherian emotions sometimes.  There was something he found uneasy in it.  If Entrapta had long, flexible ears like his people, he guessed that they would probably be slightly drooping.  

“Nope! The last few families fled when I ceded the kingdom to Horde-rule.  I’m not sure they want to come back, but they are welcome to!”  

“So, there weren’t many to begin with?”  

Entrapta walked around him, a bit figity.  

“What is a kingdom without people?” Hordak asked.  He narrowed his eyes at the castle before them before casting his gaze at the valley below him.  There were buildings, but they did, upon close inspection, appear to be ruins. They were solidly-constructed, miners’ barracks and the like, tracks for a mag-lev train, but the area appeared overgrown by nature and there was no movement on the pale tracings of roads.   

“Don’t let my robot-friends hear you so down!”  Entrapta said.  “There are lots and lots of them. They aren’t quite as smart as Emily - yet, but you should be nice to them!”  

Hordak was still looking at the valley below.  It has obviously been inhabited at some point.  The buildings had the marks of human habitation, not mere holdings for robots.  

Entrapta’s eyes suddenly got wide and before Hordak knew it, he found himself being dragged by the wrist inside the main hall of the Crypto Castle.  

“Wha?” he yelped.  

“I almost forgot!  We’ve gotta get you vaccinated - right away!” 

“Vaccinated?” 

“I just give you a little shot.  It barely hurts at all.”  

Hordak pinned his ears back.  “I am familiar with the concept of vaccination. I required it for my soldiers as a safeguard against a variety of native pathogens.” 

“Good, good!  Ooh!  And the clones, too!  I’m gonna need to make up a bunch!  Unless... are your kind disease-resistant?”  

Hordak shook his hand loose from her grip when they got inside a sitting-room. “What is the meaning of this?” 

Entrapta shrunk. “Please don’t be mad!” 

“I am not angry,” Hordak said, realizing how rare not being angry actually was for him. “I merely require an explanation.”  

“Welll,” Entrapta said, patting Emily on the top as she trotted up, “There is ample evidence that it’s been eradicated, but anyone living here needs to be inoculated against Influenza Type AD 1020 also known as Dryl-plauge.”  

Hordak grunted.  “An endemic disease?” 

“Yes!” Entrapta said holding up a finger.  “It’s super-deadly, and not in a fun way like all of the cool stuff on Beast Island!  Like I said, it’s probably been wiped out, but it’s best to be sure.”  

“I see.”  

Emily beeped, her optics aimed up at a large painting of a young Entrapta and a pair of tall androids.  

“My biological parents died of it,” Entrapta continued, “Back when I was little.  Most of Dryl did.  It was a new disease at the time.  It swept through and killed...”  she looked at her feet and tipped her mask down.  “Almost everyone. Mumsy and Daddums worked on the vaccine.  They... put me in the tower of the castle... with the robots - their models.  I’ve improved on them since then.  I think I was there for two years?  They said they didn’t want me to get sick, so the machines took care of me.”  

“I see.”  Hordak really didn’t understand the concept of parents beyond the general life-cycles of most non-cloned organic beings.  He considered Etherian infants and children something of a larval-stage and knew that they needed a large amount of supervision.  Most beings on most planets did.  He’d known that much before he’d even been trapped here from the hive mind downloads.  He had a vague sense of how much parents and offspring typically cared for each other - something that he’d used to tactical advantage in the past, but he couldn’t say that he truly understood the details of it.  

“They succeeded with the vaccine, but... it was too late for them.  Baker was around back then.  She gave me the news...and the shot.  I missed them so... I built ‘bots that looked like them.  That’s them in the painting.”  She toed a boot into the floor and held her hands behind her back.  She turned her masked face to Hordak.  “Is that weird?  I’m pretty sure people think that’s weird.”  

“Not at all,” Hordak assured her.  

“Thanks.”  She slowly tipped her mask up.  

“I quarantined myself for a while, too, soon after coming to this planet.  I took some time figuring out what I could and could not catch.  And... I suppose I know what it is like to be separated from my family.”  

Entrapta gave him a smile.  “Well, that’s not gonna happen anymore, because we’re going to have lots and lots of your brothers here real soon!”  

Hordak allowed himself a small smile.  

“Now let’s get you that shot!”