#She-Ra fanfiction

[freedfromthegalactichivemind]

Of Echoes

She-Ra fanfiction Rating: Teen and up      Main characters: Catra, Hordak (sort of).  Tragedy, Comedy, Science Fiction.  (Mostly comedy, despite the subject-matter).  

Summary:  In the years after Etheria's last war, Catra and Hordak had learned to accept each other - kind of of - in an uneasy alliance for the sake of their wives. They also had an ongoing prank-war with each other. It is now Hordak's funeral and Catra is uneasy. She attempts to step out for a breath of fresh air. There is something that doesn't feel right - and not just the awkwardness one would expect at a memorial service for a long-repentant ex-warlord. Strange things are afoot at the Crypto Castle.   A loose sequel to Project H.O.R.D.A.K.      Also found here if you prefer Ao3: Of Echoes                                                                                                                                                                                               

Of Echoes She needed to get away.   It was amazing how stuffy such a cavernous room could feel.  The high, vaulted ceilings and long dark walls seemed only to catch the echoes of the multitude of murmuring people.  Bits of conversation pinged off them like ball bearings in a washing machine. Her ears were sensitive and could catch far too much of low-speech and whispers uttered by people with far less acute senses.   She really did not need that one guy’s sexual fantasy; that was for sure.   That was from some Maker’s Guild inventor she did not know – someone who had a taste for Horde-clones, apparently, as well as scars and deformities.   Catra cringed and flattened her ears. She wasn’t about to kinkshame monsterfuckery (she was of a rare species, herself, and, despite appearances, her wife was the member of an even rarer one), but this wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted to hear conspiratorially whispered within her earshot first thing in the morning.  Well, okay, it was more mid-afternoon, but the sentiment still applied.  It absolutely wasn’t anything she’d wanted to hear about a…friend? Enemy? Enemy turned friend? Frienemy? Lover of a friend who was kind of an enemy and then a friend again?   What had Hordak been to her, anyway? Difficult to figure out, yes.   Most of the conversation going on in the room concerned philosophy (particularly as it related to the concept of “redemption,”) invention and technology, politics, personal interactions both positive and negative, the old long-disbanded Etherian Horde and the half-forgotten Fright Zone (now New Scorpionia), history, health matters specific to space-born clones of a long-dead galactic emperor and a few snippets here and there of small talk about snacks, pets and the weather.   Adora and Bow were talking with Entrapta on the other side of the room.  Catra had greeted her earlier, but was avoiding her now.  She did not like the sleet that she saw in her hair.  Most of it was as purple as ever and seemed to have grown longer since the last time she was up in Dryl.  Entrapta was among the oldest of them and of course would probably start graying early with all of the stress everyone had gone through, not that she’d ever seemed stressed at all.  In fact, in situations that would have the average person a puddle of misery in a corner, Entrapta would just build robots, usually ones designed to explode. Fireworks during holidays at Dryl were legendary.   Catra ducked and weaved between bodies, careful to avoid Entrapta catching a glimpse of her.  It was not hard.  The woman had a welding mask down over her face and had been wearing it that way for most of the day.   Catra did not know what she could say that had not already been said.   The altar at one end of the room burned with many candles – red ones, black ones and a few small ones that were dark blue. Pictures in frames were laid out upon it including one large painting in the center. Of course, the table also held a six-sided hex-driver.  Most of the little photographs had a shock of purple hair in them, as aside from the Royal Portrait, there were very few pictures of Hordak where he was alone. He and his mad scientist were practically joined at the hip… …until now.   The formal part of the memorial service had gone smoothly.  The Horde Clone Reaper’s Guild of Etheria had done a respectful job – to the point that one could be forgiven for forgetting that Hordak had once been a vicious warlord. It wasn’t like Catra, herself, was innocent.  Adora assured her constantly that she had more years of making the right decisions than of making the wrong ones.  Hordak had done his part, too.  He and Entrapta had developed many useful technologies together, things that had saved and improved many lives.  Catra, for her part, didn’t like to think about abstract philosophical questions regarding the number of lives positively impacted versus the number of lives negatively impacted or lost due to any given person’s actions or existence. Lives didn’t really work that way – individuals were not a numbers-game.   Maybe that was one of the core-reasons why she found the clones so unnerving.  Catra didn’t bear any particular prejudice against them, not in their post-Prime lives, in any case.  She could never bear any gathering of them singing in unison (and had avoided part of the funeral-proceedings for this very reason) due to some of her long ago and far away initial experiences with them, but she had long accepted their victimhood under Prime.  

 She’d even accepted Hordak’s, not that he was ever someone to be coddled.  He’d done many crimes against her that could not be erased, but they had come to an understanding over the years.  

 The closeness of their wives had pretty much forced it.  

Bonding between them was what most outside observers would have called awkward, if not a bit toxic. Conversations were often peppered with physical threats and descriptions of various tortures they might put each other through should a mission fail or one of their significant others be made to cry. They’d had martial-contests, testing out the latest model of Entrapta’s body-armor against a new training-regimen. Sometimes, bonding meant joining forces to evacuate their lovers and friends when a negotiation between them and one council of one nation on one planet or another had gone south or narrowly avoiding a full intergalactic incident.  There was, of course, the barbeque they’d hosted together in which one quarter of the Whispering Woods had burnt down before being healed by the touch of She-Ra.  

 Good times.  

 It was some good barbequed sand-drake, too.  Who knew that both the ex-warlord and his ex-second-in-command would take so well to culinary delights and the making of them after they’d gotten out of a military-mindset?   Catra was feeling trapped.  Entrapta had assured her that she had disabled all of the traps in the Crypto Castle – not just for her guests – but most of them had been disabled years ago for the sake of the number of Hordak’s brothers that lived there.  There were so many of them here... not all of them that were on the planet by any means, but a great number.  They all had differing eye-colors, hair colors and clothing now, whatever suited them. Still, each and every one of them carried a certain melancholy that went beyond mere grief.  It was something unique to them, even in joyful times – something that Etherians, or, indeed, any member of a people born free – could not touch. They outnumbered Etherians here. After all, Hordak had helped many of them in regards to accepting their independence in a post-Prime universe. Most of the Etherians here were ex-Horde, but Hordak had never had many friends.   The friends he did have… well, that had started with Entrapta – his first and for the longest time only true friend. Catra shivered as she caught a glimpse of her again.  She ducked behind a doorway.  She had to get out of here.  She couldn’t face Entrapta again right now.  Just let Adora talk to her…that’s right.   When she’d spoken to her earlier today, she had said the strangest thing. “Oh, don’t worry!” she’d said with a smile. “Hordak’s all around us!”   Catra shook her head thinking about that, trying to dislodge the notion.  Such a saying was so…unlike Entrapta!  That was the kind of fluffy, quasi-spiritual annoying thing that Perfuma would say, nothing at all suitable to the mad scientist that she knew.   Hordak had died two weeks ago, so the report went.  It shouldn’t surprise her that Entrapta was taking it in a weird way.  In fact, Catra was surprised that they weren’t seeing some kind of hastily-built Hordak-bot walking around.  The pictures of Entrapta’s Parental Units she’d seen told Catra that Entrapta did that very thing when she was missing someone – their image in mechanism, attempts at replacement.  However, Entrapta had grown in the years that they’d known each other – not just in a few more wrinkles about the eyes and the few long strands of gray in her hair (as motile as the rest), but she seemed to understand friendship with organic beings more.  Well, as much understanding as could be had.  Catra wouldn’t say she understood people much, either.   Whatever.  She knew that she couldn’t go through the main room with the milling people and way too many somber clones to go outside to get some fresh air, but maybe one of the corridors lead that way, or, at least, she could find a set of stairs to one of the balconies.  Melog, for their part, had gone to one of the gardens.  They had wanted some space away from everyone’s strong and varied emotions and Catra had told them to go ahead and go and that she’d meet up with them when she could, and not to worry.  It was much easier for someone in four-footed animal-form to get out of these things. Swift Wind had the excuse that he couldn’t fit through the front door! (It wasn’t true, Entrapta’s main room was huge, but he pretended that he couldn’t get his horn under the doorframe). Lucky horse…  In any case, a balcony sounded like just the thing for a breather. Her ears pinned back when she remembered that time that Entrapta had threatened to tape a slice of buttered toast to the top of her head and push her off the edge of the topmost balcony – For Science! It had come from some conversation between her and Hordak after his motor-skills had become iffy and he was dropping some items at breakfast – an observation of the rate at which toast landed on the floor butter and jelly side-down versus the old legend of how cats, when falling, “always land on their feet.” Entrapta had wanted to see if “a feline, properly affixed to a prepared slice of toast might suspend itself in midair and form a perpetual-motion kinetic spinning machine.”   It was a joke, of course, but something in the gleam of Entrapta’s eyes told Catra that she’d wanted to test the hypothesis in earnest.   Of course, Entrapta had not wanted to hurt her, but it had taken Adora to intervene to keep curiosity from killing the cat. She walked down a dimly-lit hallway, listening to the soft clack of her toe-claws echoing on the stone.  For all of the technological advancements that Entrapta had made to the place, the Crypto Castle had been built in an old style – solid construction in stone, punctuated by added metal elements.  Force of habit had Catra’s ears turned to the absurdly spacious ventilation-shafts above. She didn’t want Entrapta to come popping out of a vent to scare the willies out of her and, as usual, she had no idea where Imp was.  Hordak’s old experiment had grown up and had a life of his own now, but he was short and of a small-build.  Much like Entrapta, he could fit into small spaces.  Catra was pretty sure she’d last seen him out in the main hall, but she was cautious over being tailed.  The lack of beeps and boops in her proximity told her that Emily hadn’t followed her, at least. “Forgot how confusing this place was,” she muttered to herself.   As she stepped through a doorway, she heard a low groan and then a quick sliding sound.  In an instant, a door came sliding down right on top of her! She leapt ahead and came just seconds from it slamming down on her tail!   She panted on the floor and caught her breath. She stared wide-eyed at the closed-off path behind her.  The tip of her tail had lost a few hairs.   “What was THAT?” she yelped.   Light streamed in from a window.  As she picked herself up, she looked around for any kind of control-panel.  There wasn’t one visible – it would seem that this was a door that could only be accessed from the other side.  

“HEY! What is this?” she yelled at the door. She gave the door a swift kick with the flat of her foot.  “Dumb malfunctioning piece of junk!  What I get in Entrapta’s castle, I guess.”  

 The door began sliding open. It hitched up and down, up and down, making a sound akin to… laughter?  It slid back into place.   “Weird,” Catra concluded as she shrugged and continued on her way.  She ascended the spiral stair.  If this was where a window was, this stairway led to one of the balconies – probably. It had been a while since she’d been here.  It was this moment that her brain decided to remind her that she had no navigation-pad and that even Entrapta couldn’t get around the place without a map. Catra grit her teeth.  

 Just as she ascended the spiral stair, up around a central pillar, the stairs collapsed.  Each stair shunted into itself, interlocking with the other stairs, forming a rather slick slide.   “Aaaaaaaiiierrrgh!” Catra screamed as she slammed her claws into the former staircase.  She scrambled with her back legs, her tail puffing out, as she held on desperately with her hands. She felt a couple of her claws chipping as she slid right down, leaving pale streaks in the stone.   She was left at the foot of the staircase and the door that had almost pinched her tail was mocking her.  It slid up and down, up and down – a gaping mouth laughing at her.   “I disabled the traps!’ Entrapta’s such a liar!” she grumbled.  “She probably forgot all about this wing.  No wonder Sparkles still has nightmares about this place.”   She stormed down another path.  If she couldn’t go up the stairs from this wing, perhaps she’d try another.   That’s when she ran into the trap door that plunged her into a dank pool of water.   “Hiiissssss!”   Alright, something strange was going on here! And not the usual Entrapta-strange, but strange-strange!  Catra climbed out of the hole – it was quite shallow and she was subject to a tidbit of memory: Way back when he was first being domesticated, not all of the government officials in Dryl had welcomed Hordak as Entrapta’s “boy-toy” – er, “Prince Consort.”  Not all of them had welcomed the idea of Dryl becoming a clone-haven, either, or of any of the other ways Entrapta had wanted to do things upon re-taking her birthright-queendom.  In a bit of playful sadism, she’d installed a trap-door in the Royal Reception Room.  A button was placed on Hordak’s throne to control the door and whenever they had to deal with a particularly bothersome bureaucrat, Hordak had the freedom to send them into a rather cold pool located in the basement.  Pretty soon after that, people had stopped complaining about Entrapta’s methods of rule.

Hordak had tried to pull that trick on members of the Princess Alliance and visiting ex-members of his Horde many times; as he had found the trap door way too amusing (only Kyle consistently fell for it – quite literally).  The trick to it was that the trap door was made moveable and they’d never put it in the same part of the floor twice, so it was difficult to dodge. (And if they had, there was another door that would open up right under them!) – The entire Reception Room floor was probably made of false tiles! Glimmer had, of course, been able to teleport whenever she’d felt a hint of gravity.  Bow had rope-arrows.  Adora and Catra had acute reflexes and could dodge whenever they heard the tell-tale click of it opening, but even Adora had taken the plunge a few times. Hordak was lucky he hadn’t been arrested for it, but Entrapta INSITED that he was just being playful. After all, no one had died. This one had apparently been installed with a silencer. Catra tried to shake herself to dislodge the uncomfortable wet.

 Catra had heard a rumor that Entrapta had started building robots for Hordak to send through the doors to keep him entertained… The Reception Room trap-door had been a Decant Day present, after all.   Entrapta was eventually commissioned by Queen Glimmer to install one in Bright Moon as well.  Prince Consort Bow successfully kept the queen from using it (most of the time). It did not surprise Catra that there would be a few more of the things around this place.

“Alright, don’t trust the floor,” she said to herself as she tiptoed down her new chosen path, hoping to find some stairs that did not become a Super Happy Fun-Slide.  Before committing to step anywhere, she cautiously tapped each tile ahead of her with her toe-claws.  There would be a tell-tale sound if the floor was hollow.  She hopped and skipped and figured out a solid path.   She found another path and turned right. Ah, yes!  She actually remembered this part of the castle and that it led outside!  Catra was feeling better already.   She almost stepped on the vacuum-cleaner. A disk-shaped robot beeped and whistled indignantly at her and raised its circular scrubbing brushes in an argumentative gesture.  It then spoke to her with a synthesized voice.  Green letters appeared on a screen on the top of its chassis, reading out the same words:

 “You have made it this far, Force-Captain. Congratulations.  Greetings, Force Captain.”

 Catra suddenly felt heat by her ear and heard a “SHOOM!”  There was a tiny, smoking hole in the wall in front of her in an instant. She felt the ions in the air as she jumped and rolled, dodging a barrage of lasers fired from rotating turrets in the ceiling!   She found a moment, caught her breath, jumped, dodged and clawed out a turret.  She jumped between the walls, doing the same for as many as she could find. She grabbed a debris-fragment and flung it straight into the last one at the end of the hall.  She found herself at the end of it all panting heavily, her hands on her knees.

She wasn’t a spring chicken anymore.  She was still young, but this was like the obstacle courses in the Horde!  

 The robot came scuttling by her feet again.  She was about to kick it until it spoke to her again.  “Are you feeling too old for this shit?”  its tinny voice asked.   She thought she’d heard the same question echoed from somewhere up above her, but in a voice that was deeper, somewhat more familiar… Her eyes widened.  “Hordak?!” she asked her surroundings.

 Okay, that was IT!

 “WHERE ARE YOU?” she demanded.  “I swear, I will find whatever control room you’re running this shitshow from, I’m gonna break your kneecaps and I will drag you out for all to see!”  She shivered in fury.  “It is just LIKE you to fake your own death!  What did it for you?  Tensions with Sparkles?  That negotiations-breakdown with Aarboria?  The bounty you’ve got on five planets because you and Entrapta blew up that moon?”  She sighed and laughed bitterly, “Oh, don’t tell me it’s some kind of ‘ultimate penance’ of yours!  Some kind of plan to free Etheria from your shadow!  I thought you’d gotten over that! Pathetic!”  

 Catra stormed through the hall, every hair on her body bristling, wary for any new tricks.  “Oh, and it’s just like you to mess with me! I’ll find out where you’re watching from!  I’ll get past all of your little traps…and lasers…”   She looked around, checking for any cameras or screens.  She found a vent-grate and hauled herself up halfway into it.  She wasn’t a nice fit for scuttling around in the thing like Entrapta was, but she could get a decent look around with her gifted feline eyes. A few robotic cockroaches skittered about and there was nothing to be seen.  She hauled herself down.  

 She walked down the hall, ears swiveling, senses alight.  Catra remembered the prank-war that they’d had going on before Hordak had gotten very sick.  It was all delightfully stupid.  Sure, there were the threats they’d made to each other and the many insults of endearment. Glimmer had taught Catra many an interesting swear-word to tag onto Hordak.  Hordak, in turn, had taught her many Hordish-language insults by using them on her.  He’d also managed to convince her that the sentence “I want to lick Horde Prime’s lubricated asshole” was “Hey, can I borrow your screwdriver?”  This led to many puzzled and offended looks among clones when she had been trying to borrow tools that Bow had requested of her.  It took her a week to figure it out and when he’d shared what the words really meant, he’d laughed and laughed.   For her part, she liked knocking things off his lab-tables when he was working (a “typical cat”) and of course, there was the time when she’d replaced his hair dye with razzleberry syrup, leading to much unwanted attention from the Freedom Forest bees.  She’d also one time (after she’d learned a little baking) crafted him a pie with fruit that was found to have a certain laxative property in spacebats… And, of course, there were the fisticuffs. They always knew how much of a beating they could take.  (And Entrapta had redesigned all of Hordak’s armors with Catra’s claws in mind:  Try as she might, she couldn’t ‘equal the playing field’ by taking out any of his power-drive crystals).  

 Until now, Catra had always been able to dodge Hordak’s trap-doors. “I just know you’re running things from somewhere, Hordak!  How about you stop being a coward and show yourself?  You’ve had your fun faking your own death, but it’s over now!”

She rested her hand against a wall and suddenly found the wall flipped.  She was suddenly in another room.  It was dark.   “Okay, you can come out now.  I won’t tell your bounty hunters or Sparkles, I promise, but Adora ought to know that you’re okay.  She was beside herself when she couldn’t give you a healing the last time… when it was….too much.  She was broken, you know?  She’ll be so happy when she finds out that it actually wor-”   Catra paused mid-sentence and went stark-still. In the gloom she could make out the shine of long glass-pods.  A chill ran through her bones.  No…not here, anywhere but here!   Her gaze caught a sign along the top of one wall, a screen with lighted green and red letters.  “Techno-Organics Laboratory 5: Morgue.” Now, one strange thing that Catra had learned from working with Bow was that there were different definitions to the term “morgue.”  It could, indeed, refer to a paper-filing system in which old designs – both graphic design and technical, as well as old publications were kept.  Entrapta probably did keep one or more of these kinds of morgues around but Catra knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was where Entrapta and the medical-clones that lived in Dryl kept the bodies of clones that had been donated to science.

  In the years post-Prime, the sacred mission of finding clones that had fallen in the war was complete, but the Horde Reapers’ Guild of Etheria had turned to normal undertaking services for clone-kind.  Very few had died post-Prime, as they had been designed to be healthy and apparently long-lived (although their true lifespan was unknown, due to them being slated as cannon-fodder).  Until the post-Prime era, no clone had known a “natural death.”  To be killed as part of violent conquest for the Glory of Prime (or to otherwise be decommissioned for imperfection) had been their fate. After the Last War and the initial rocky adjustment-period, some did die via accidents or the occasional manifest genetic-illness such as the one that Hordak had, although it was few and far-between enough for the Reapers to almost not be needed at all and they all, indeed, did other kinds of jobs independently.  Part of the time, fallen clones were buried or set upon a pyre as per the custom of whatever Etherian family or community they had been adopted into, but donation to science in Dryl for the furtherance of understanding of clone-bodies among Etherian healers, particularly of pathologic specimens, was common.  

How Entrapta could keep enough of a detachment to do these kinds of studies on people she’d considered valued friends (she’d practically adopted every clone that came her way) was something that Catra would never understand.  

She remembered when she was with Adora, Glimmer and Bow when they’d entered one of the old offices in Bright Moon shortly after the end of the war… They’d found a few sparkling feathers, shed at some point by Queen Angella on the floor and Glimmer freaked out.  She’d had a full-on panic attack at being confronted with the remains – and they had not even been the full-remains.  It was just a reminder that her mother was gone and it had hit her in full-force after the immediacy of surviving Prime had been taken care of.  King Micah wasn’t in great shape that day, either.  

Eventually, the “late” Queen had been recovered.  Entrapta and Hordak had worked to create another portal, one that could reach into that “in-between” place that had been created by the prior existence of Despondos. Catra had been a part of the retrieval, wearing an Entrapta-created personalized exploration-suit.  She wasn’t about to let Adora risk her life again – not for something that had been her fault to begin with.  Getting Angella back was on her, Entrapta and the old bat – it was their thing to make right.  Angella had thankfully survived her ordeal and the fact that the place she’d been to wasn’t as empty as everyone had assumed it to be had helped her keep her sanity intact.

Funny how they’d all gone from being enemies to how, for several years after that, Angella and Hordak would meet to play Chess on Tuesday afternoons…

Angella’s recovery was long ago, a story that Catra could recount at another time when it was more relevant.  

What was relevant to her in the moment was the memory of the panic-attack over a few feathery remains and how… well, Hordak and Entrapta had been so…different.  Some… did not like the idea of keeping any remnant of a body in a place of the living.  Them? Well… Catra blamed the way that clones were built and raised in the Hell that was the Galactic Horde, a system where death was a way of life, for the way that Hordak could have a certain detachment from his brothers at the right times, such as with aspects of medicine.  She blamed Entrapta’s views toward greater goods, such as the pursuit of knowledge.  She’d always had a bit of morbidity to her – what with her fascination with explosions, apocalyptic potentials and how, on every space-journey in which she was a part, she’d rattle on about the many different ways that one could die in space with an…admiration for natural powers greater than themselves.  

Catra’s heart-rate increased and her palms sweat.  In time with a “Rrrzzt!” sound, several pods lit up.  She bit off a scream.  They were empty – just pods from Horde Prime’s ship, empty of all but green fluid, lined up in a row.  One of them was covered in a black sheet, held by robotic clips.  With a “Click! Clack!” they un-snapped systematically, dropping the sheet to the floor just as the pod lit up…  

All of the hair on Catra’s head, tail and body bristled.  He had an undergarment on, at least, a set of black shorts, close to the skin. Everything else was in full-display – every scar, every bit of discoloration… the grotesque holes in his arms… His hair – dark blue, that had not changed, flowed with the subtle motions of the fluid in the tank, as if in a gentle breeze.  He had no black liner over his eyes, which were thankfully closed. This looked unnatural for him.  

It was definitely him.  He wasn’t hooked into anything, no tubes or wires.  He looked very much like the specimens of creatures that Catra had seen in Shadow Weaver’s old alchemy room back in the Fright Zone when she’d wandered there as a kid.  The stillborn Whispering Woods four-eyed piglet had stood out the most in her memory, although she also remembered the shed-tail of one of the Horde’s lizard-troops being there.  

In any case, Catra stared up in shock at a pickled Hordak.  

She stroked the glass and whispered to him, noting his concave stomach and how thinned out even his once rather muscular thighs were.  “You look… so much sicker since the last time we saw each other.”  

After she paused, just looking at this very-much-a-corpse, she set her gaze to the floor and her ears down.  “So what is going on here?”  

Words came in machine-echoes throughout the room, screens lighting up with corresponding text.  “SHIT!” she shouted as she clutched her chest and frantically looked around.  

“As you can see, I am very much deceased,” the voice intoned.  It WAS made up of a recordings of Hordak, although the words were stilted (much like Imp’s were when he spoke via playback of various recorded voices).  

Catra grit her teeth and held her claws out. She looked around the room.  Her eyes kept darting back to Pickled Hordak.

“My original body is very, very dead,” the voice said, “Yet, thanks to Entrapta’s brilliance, I remain.”  

“This has got to be some kind of stupid joke! Where are you?  Did you two set this up just to mess with me?”

The lights shut off on all of the empty pods, leaving only Hordak’s illuminated.  Catra remained bristling.  

“Alright, you’ve had your revenge for that time I benched you over that table… and for that time I gave you that pie that made you fart for three days…”

“Heh, heh, heh…”  

Screens along the walls pulsed with green light, shutting off into dark in fluttering sequences.  Catra pawed along the walls, looking for some source of a pre-recording.  

“Take a run, little cat.”  

A section of wall flipped suddenly back around as she was inspecting it, putting her back out into a hallway. Several humanoid robots with dubious levels of functionality and red eyes were there to greet her.  

Catra breathed heavy.  She took off in a dead heat, followed by murder-bots, laughter and lasers.  

Every single laser missed hitting her, but came close to singing hairs.  In the insanity, Catra started to notice that it seemed deliberate that they were missing her.  The robots, too, seemed to know just where to not swing their crowbars and chainsaws.  

Metallic laughter echoed through speakers set into the wall. A large screen craned down from the ceiling and she almost ran into it.  It bore a cartoon-style image of the face of a Horde-clone, winking and making a two-fingered “peace” sign in mockery.  The icon’s one open eye, in contrast to its white-green lines, glowed red.  

A trap door dropped out from beneath Catra’s feet.  She screamed as she fell an entire floor down…

… right onto the plush purple couch of one of Entrapta’s tea-rooms.  

People screamed.  

Mourners were gathered into the room – Hordak’s first liberated brother, Kadroh, wearing a black dress with a veiled little black hat (which looked quite odd against his pink-dyed hair), Adora, Perfuma, and Scorpia who was having quite a difficult time trying to hold a tiny teacup in one of her enormous claws, Emily, settled beside Imp and, of course, Entrapta.  

“Are you alright?” Scorpia asked, dropping her cup, which Entrapta grabbed in a tail of hair before it hit the floor.  

“What happened to you?” Adora asked, “You just disappeared… I thought you were just getting some air, but you obviously got lost…and you look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

Catra gripped the couch cushions.  “You… you won’t believe this, but…”  

“Chamomile tea?” Perfuma offered.  

Catra caught her breath.  “Hordak’s still alive!” she huffed.  

“What?!” Scorpia yelped, dropping yet another teacup she’d picked up to enjoy some chamomile tea with.  Once again, Entrapta caught it with her hair.  

Adora looked down.  “I couldn’t heal him, remember?”  

“No!  He’s messing with me!  He’s in the castle! Like, wired in somehow! Some kind of Horde non-local consciousness tech bullshit!  I don’t know how, but…”  

“I told you - Hordak is all around us,” Entrapta said, lifting up her mask and coyly smiling.

[bluedandylyon]

Hey so remember when I made this post? I actually did start the AU hehe

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62023054/chapters/158614819

I just finished watching HSM 1 and I realized how similar Troy and Gabriella’s dynamic is to Catradora?

Troy/Adora: the gifted popular kid with the expectations of everyone on their shoulders, hiding their feelings and wants to focus on their duty.

Gabriella/Catra: An absolute genius, the only one who asks the other what they really want and encourage them to pursue it. Get hurt when the other sacrifices their connection for their duty.

I might need to write an AU?

[garrywantspasta]

I’m rewatching She-Ra to relax and my old crushes are coming back…

[phantomstatistician]

Fandom: She-Ra

Character: Catra

Sample Size: 13,367 stories

Source: AO3

[largemovingtorb]

Illustration from my fanfic, Traces of Crimson.

Illustration commissioned from Henar Torinos of @ilikeyoucatradora

The fanfic can be found on AO3, link below:

Traces of Crimson

[thestargayzingetherian]

You know, there are genuinely some days I want to write the supposedly "toxic ireedeemable" version of Catradora that's in the heads of the Catradora antis. I bet you ten bucks I could make it very messed up, very well written and very damn hot.

This isn't even like a vent thing, I just think it would actually be kinda fun to do that lol

[karo-lynn]

The first illustration I’ve created for the @spopbang event!! I had the pleasure to be working with @n7punk and their fic “Lightbeam” is just fantastic!! 🧡🤍🩷

“Lightbeam” by n7punk on ao3

| Post on Twitter |

[echo-has-queries]

"Proxy"

This is art for my She-Ra fanfic "All Is Fair In Love And War" :)

People hate to see a girlboss winning.

Obligatory: Click for quality <3 [Edit: actually the quality looks fine I don't know how this hell site works]

Coloured line-art version

[gothamite-rambler]

Bruce meeting his son Damian pt. 2

Context: After Bruce Wayne has regained his bearings and been dragged to a lounge room at Ra's castle and has been retold that he has a son with Talia, Jason knew and now his in-law is Ra's Al Ghul. (links to the first two parts below).

Bruce, still in his bat suit, rested on the ground in Talia's study trying to remain his usual calm and composed self, but can only repeat a mantra.

Talia: Bruce, my former love, are you feeling better?

Bruce (monotone and stunned): I have a child with Talia. I have a child with Talia. I have a... child with Talia. I have a child with Talia. I have a child with Talia...

Talia: You are being such a drama king, can you not be happy that that our night of passion produced a child.

Bruce (whimpering): Oh God I'm linked to you through a child!

Bruce buried his face on the floor groaning loudly.

Talia (angry): My father was right, you would hate Damian! If you're going to be like this then you won't be around him!

Bruce (clarifying): I do not hate Damian. I hate you. There's a difference. And you are not depriving me of any further time with him!

Talia shook with rage, but chose to not stab him, taking a long sip from her tea to calm herself.

Bruce: I didn't even get the name of Thomas Jr.! Although Damian isn't a bad name. This is not what I needed though, I can't believe I'm a father again.

Talia: Bruce, while I don't care much for your Robins, you raised three kids already! For Ra's sake, you adopted Dick when he was 8!

Bruce: I wasn't secretly his biological father, unaware he existed because the petty mother and her psychotic father refused to inform me of that!

Talia (honest): Well when you word it like that it makes us look bad.

Bruce (calm, but enraged): Talia, how old is Damian again?

Talia (deadpan): He turned eight a few months ago.

Bruce (panicked): That's what I'm FUCKING saying! I missed another birthday, he's been around- Oh my God it just dawned on me he's been around Ra's Al Ghul. Ra is that precious boy's grandfather. Oh… no.

Talia smiled hearing Bruce call their son precious.

Talia: You're stressed and shocked about having a child that I neglected to tell you about, for your own safety as well, but we can co-parent him since you know about him now.

Bruce (V.O.): That's not the point, he is my son you loony tune!

Bruce (outloud): Thank you so much for giving me that option eight years later. I'm not upset I have a son, that's... fine. You are correct about the fact I've raised three kids, working on things with Jason, but yes I'm not new to parenting. I’m having a lot of racing thoughts because the woman I thought I cut off ties with is now linked to me through said innocent child. Oh and the fact you kept him secret for eight years!

Talia (missing the point): Our relationship wasn't that bad. You have to admit we had good times together.

Bruce sat up, bringing his knee to his head and thinking about the good times... Those bad times entered the narrative quickly.

Talia: Bruce, it was for the best I never informed you of Damian’s existence earlier, father would’ve killed you.

Bruce: You refused to tell ME I had a son, because your father who bathes in the pit when he has a cold might’ve killed me? That’s what you’re trying to tell me… you’re telling me that as if I can’t fight for myself!

Talia (hesitantly): I made… what I assumed was the smartest decision.

Bruce: Yeah Kim thought the same thing with J.D. on Scrubs, at least he found out before the baby was born.

Talia: Okay I did not watch much of that crap show, but don’t compare me to that woman, I’m ten times better than her! Plus our night of passion was far different from what they did.

Bruce: No, it was a one night stand. A fun one, I won’t deny that, but one I had planned to be a ONE NIGHT STAND! I'm supposed to be smart, why did I buy those condoms, why did I put one in my wallet?

Talia: You are pissing me off to no end, but slip-ups like this can happen to the best of us. Neither of us expected a condom with the word 'condom' misspelled on it would break so easily.

Bruce: I can't ignore the fact you had him around that man. You let him talk to Damian, be around Damian, probably teach him how to kill. I am burying so much rage at the moment, but it's a thin thread, Talia. It's a thin thread!

Talia rolled her eyes while drinking from her tea cup.

Talia: I'll have you know, my childhood was only filled with normal discipline, he stabbed me in my ankle three times and then stopped. Mostly because I expected those sneak attacks.

Bruce: Talia, I swear to Christ if he has done that to Damian I will murder him three times.

Talia: No... not that I'm aware of.

Talia took another long sip from her cup while glancing away from Bruce.

Bruce (despondent): I've been deprived of that cute boy's eight years of growing up. He could have had a semi-normal childhood. I saw you with the baby too, but I thought nobody would be STUPID enough to have a kid with you. I'm the stupid one.

Talia (smirking): You think he's cute?

Bruce whimpered to signify he meant yes.

Talia: Our DNA worked together well.

Talia giggled, but Bruce wasn't in the mood.

Bruce: You're as delusional as I remember.

Talia: Bruce, get up, sit next to me. Have some tea.

Bruce stood up and sat a good distance from Talia. He removed his cowl and sighed accepting he had a son with Talia, but his worry for his child's safety remained.

Bruce: I'm glad I'm not shooting blanks, the issue is- I mean no offense... kind of do- I did not want a child with you after I realized I can't be with someone like you. You and I have clashing ideals and now we have a child. I have to co-parent with a woman who harassed a Kohl's worker to the point the woman got institutionalized ... and that's the tame shit! What am I going to tell Damian about your entire history?

Talia: Okay first of all, that worker was racist, she had it coming and second, I've made decisions you do not agree with, some that I don't look back on fondly, but for most of Damian's childhood I raised him with the love I barely got from my father. I'm doubting the decision to raise him as an assassin.

Bruce: I can make the final decision there, he's not becoming one.

Talia (chuckling dryly): Guess we'll have to compromise with what Damian wants. To be honest, Bruce I'm not that mad with your overall reaction, but I'm glad the issue isn't our son. Because whether you want to be with me or not, I want you to be a part of his life. Eight years later, yes, but I've known you for a long time and I see now you'll be a great father to him.

Bruce (rubbing his forehead): Freaking reassuring after I missed so much of his life... He's leaving today with me and will never return here again. Yeah, yeah that's a good first step as his father.

Talia: Okay, let's test the co-parenting here. How about you take him to Gotham and spend a few weeks with him so that way he can get to know you more. You're rich, not as much as us, but hopefully he'll be used to your lifestyle.

Bruce (serious): You said that as if he's visiting for vacation and then returning to this kingdom of evilness. He's not returning here! Ever!

Talia: Oh come on, I'm raising him incredibly well.

Bruce: Around Ra's Al Ghul?

Talia: Y- Yes. On his birthday we have him fight assassins and punishments aren't that bad, but last birthday he didn't have to do that I was generous.

Bruce (seething): You had him fight assassins?! What punishments- You got me fucked me, Talia! You got me fucked up! You have me talking like I'm from lower Jersey! I get you find me silly for wearing an awesome batsuit to save the city, but let me make this clear: He's living with me, I am taking... custody of him. I'm getting his stuff, he'll get on my jet and Gotham will be his permanent home! That is my son! Not just yours and damn sure not Ra's! I have a say in my son's life!

Talia (impressed): Okay, I like this energy. He'll want to return here for proper raising, I'm confident in that, but he can spend two or three months with you and then we'll humor him and see who he wants to stay with.

Bruce: Me. Me. He's living with me. I might have him visit- What am I saying?! You can visit him, I won't deprive YOU of being around him. Not Ra because if he hurts him any further, I will BEAT that man to an inch of his life and render him comatose!

Talia (pretending to be ignorant): Yeah, he'll stay for a let's say a year. I'm getting what you're putting down.

Bruce: You're seriously not! Talia look into my eyes, Damian WAYNE will be living with me from here on out. Got it?!

Talia stood up, placing her tea cup on the table.

Talia: Mm-hm, Mm-hm, Mm-hm, we'll see what Damian decides. Aren’t you happy I gave him your last name.

Bruce rubbed his forehead, trying not to cuss Talia out. She wasn't always the most stable person especially when it involved allegiance to her father, but he was resolute in his decision.

Damian would not set foot back in that castle for as long as Bruce lived. Although he accepted there was no point in arguing with Talia.

Talia (standing up): I'll go tell him to pack his things, you're going to have to talk to my father and I'm not sure if you remember this, you blacked out at a certain point, but Jason was fully aware I had the child, kept it secret for this long-term revenge, Damian has visited Gotham to be babysat by him, and he helped raise him for 8 years. He was actually the one who told me a few months ago it was time to let you see him so don't be too hard on the kid. Okay, whew got that off my chest. Damian, let's talk!

Talia scurried out of the room as Bruce stood there, shocked at this new information. He had blocked out that particular part, remembering it now made his face turn red with rage.

Bruce (whispering in rage): He had his reasons. He had his reasons. He had ... his reasons. He ...had his reasons. He had his... reasons. He had me send him that money for three years after I SAVED him and he sat on his information until a few months ago!

Bruce left the tea room in a huff.

Bruce: Jason, let's talk!

"You knew this entire time?"

Bruce find out about Damian

Jason knew the entire time

[srslylini]

the best kind of experience is reading a fanfiction from a fandom you are actually in but with couples you do not ship.

Which sometimes turns out to be the best media you have ever laid eyes upon, even though you do not ship the main couples and never start shipping them even with the fanfiction existing

[fanlore-wiki]

Featured Article: Don't Go (She-Ra story)

For this week's Featured Article we're reading Don't Go, a She-Ra and the Princesses of Power story by Annacharlier.

Don't Go is a "missing scene" fic taking place after the canon events of 5.05 ''Save the Cat''. However, what makes this story special is that many fans believe it was penned by She-Ra showrunner ND Stevenson!

During a charity live stream ND Stevenson revealed that they had written a fanfic about scenes they wished they could have seen more of in the series and posted it to Archive of Our Own. Following the live stream fans quickly mobilized and scoured Ao3, deciding this fic was the most likely candidate.

Have you read this fic? Come visit it's Fanlore page!

------

We value every contribution to our shared fandom history. If you’re new to editing Fanlore or wikis in general, visit our New Visitor Portal to get started or ask us questions here!

[freedfromthegalactichivemind]

The Gray Kind

She-Ra fanfiction  Mild shipping.  Catradora, Entrapdak, others hinted at / mentioned.  Characters: Adora, Catra, Bow, Glimmer, Scorpia, Entrapta, Hordak, Horde Clones  Genres: Slice of Life, Comedy. Post-canon.   Rating: PG / Teen, just because Catra uses a few naughty no-no words as a treat.  Inspired by: A trip to see my family across the country and a visit to get some takeout from a hole in the wall that I grew up with.   Summary: Adora is nostalgic for a few things - small things - from the Horde.  She finds herself missing ration bars, of all things, and seeks out the secret to their lost recipe.   Also on Ao3:  https://archiveofourown.org/works/46812565

The Gray Kind Adora picked at her plate of food at the royal table.  It was laid out with a fancy gelatin, beautiful fruits cut into fancy heart and star shapes, delicate cured meats and cheeses and delightful, fluffy biscuits. This was not normal for her, to pick rather than scarf and her friends noticed.   “What’s wrong with you?” Catra asked through a mouthful of ham and biscuit.  Glimmer gave her a glare from across the table.  Catra had never had the best table-manners and, then again, neither had Adora.  People who’d been raised in the Horde encountering good food for the first time tended to be none too delicate in their devouring.  Catra got, perhaps, a special pass just because everyone was glad that she was navigating basic morals and learning how to live a life not based on conquest.  She was also fairly new to eating at the royal table after spending the last year and a half in encampments working on rebuilding projects as per her reformation guidelines and being used to soldier’s mess-tents, where eating food quickly took priority to eating it delicately.   Adora knew better and had learned to be dainty enough for the Queen’s guards and dignitaries, but she’d never been this dainty before.   “Oh, nothing,” Adora tried to deflect.   “We haven’t seen you pick at a plate like this since we fighting the Galactic Horde!” Bow pointed out.  “Please tell us what’s wrong. We’re your friends.”   “I promise I wasn’t in the kitchen this time!” Glimmer joked, holding up her hands.   Adora took a little bite of a star-shaped white fruit and looked wistful.  “It’s wonderful, really, but I’ve just gotten to thinking how much I miss ration bars.” Everyone’s eyes went wide.   “Huh?” Glimmer half-yelped.  “Are you insulting Chef’s cooking?  If so, I’ve got to know, I mean… she’s not going to be happy if she’s off her game.”   “Are you sick?” Catra asked.  “Seriously, Adora, do you have a fever?”   “No, the food’s great!” Adora assured, “As always!  It’s better than I could ask for!  It’s just… I guess I’m feeling nostalgic…or something.”   “For the Horde?” said Bow, incredulous.   “A little,” Adora admitted.  She gave Catra a demure glance.  “I mean, the best part of being in the Horde is right here, but…” “It was terrible.” Catra huffed.   “Not always!”   “All we did was train.  Or sneak off somewhere and had to worry about getting caught doing ‘unauthorized activities.’  Things could fly under Hordak’s lack-of-nose but not a lot got past Shadow Weaver.  It was dismal and stinky…”   “Says the person who wanted to rule it,” Glimmer noted, snarkily.   “We’re all allowed to be young and stupid, right?”  Catra held her upper arms uncomfortably.  “Let’s… not bring this up.”   “Besides,” Glimmer added, “It’s not like you can’t go back, it’s just different now, better!  New Scorpioni is lush and green because of the She-Ra magic and the safe release of the Heart of Etheria!  I bet we can find all of your old make-out spots and revisit them and they’ll look a lot better now!”   Adora looked at her boots, her face going absolutely red at the joke about “make-out spots.”  Catra’s fur was puffed up.   “It’s not really that,” Adora said after a pause.  “It’s just… have you ever gotten a taste for something and you haven’t had it in a long time?  I haven’t had a ration bar in forever!  They were hearty and filling…” “And bland.  And weird,”  Catra added. “Good riddance!” “I thought you liked actual food!” Bow questioned.   “I do! I do!  I love it!” Adora said, holding her hands up.  “You know me!  I deplete the ice cream stocks almost as bad as Mermista!  It’s just… you know… I guess I’m a little tired of… fancy.”   “This isn’t fancy!” Glimmer retorted. “This is a pretty basic dinner. You were right beside me at my coronation, and at the Primefall ceremony and…” “I know, this is everyday, but it’s still ‘fancy’ to me.  It always has been.”   “I know!” Bow gasped, “It’s the party-thing all over again!  You had to get used to parties!  You didn’t even know what they were!”   “Pheh, Adora’s such a square,” Catra teased. “Always by the book, we could barely get her into anything contraband because she believed in the Horde’s mission to save the people of the planet from the eeeeevil princesses.  But… yeah… we didn’t do a lot of fun stuff in the Horde except beating each other up.  I still can’t believe you’re nostalgic for the food, though!  How can that even…be a thing?”   Catra stuffed another meat-laden biscuit into her mouth.  She munched and swallowed it down dramatically.   “The stuff was objectively garbage.” “I know, right?”  Adora said sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck.  “But they had just the right amount of salt on them… and that red sauce that Commander Cobalt made sometimes – I don’t know it was made from, where he got it or what it even was, but it was perfect with the gray ones! It even made the brown ones taste better!”   “They were nutrition, not pleasure,” Catra reminded.   “Yeah… but… I kind of miss some things from… what used to be home.”   ____________________________ Later that night, Catra was hanging up her daytime clothes while Adora was washing her face in the bathroom sink of their private chambers.   “Do you really miss the Horde?”  Catra asked, “I don’t miss anything about it. Everything about it was miserable – except maybe when I took over and got to push ol’ Hordak around.  I have to admit, that was kind of fun.  But… you know… it’s hard for me to be nostalgic when the only reason I was there was because I got dumped off there in a box and Shadow Weaver only let you ‘keep’ me because you thought I was a kitten.”   “You are a kitten,”  Adora said, turning around with a cheeky grin.  

“But I grew up. Surprised the hell out of everyone that I wasn’t the species they thought I was.  We’re free now. We aren’t following anyone’s orders, living in fear anymore and we get to eat what we like.  Why would you want anything else?”  

“Just a flavor I miss,” Adora said, shirking on a sheer white nightgown over her underclothes.  Whether it, or they, would stay on the entire night was up to them. Catra was giving Adora a frisky smile while Adora was giving Catra a tired one.  Maybe it was going to be just one of those “cuddle and talk” nights.  

Catra sighed as she sat down on their bed. The tip of her tail lashed with a tremor of agitation.  “To tell the truth,” she admitted.  “I kind of miss them, too.”  

“Heh, really?” Adora asked.  

“Maybe not the brown ones.  The green ones were a little better.  The gray ones… were actually kind of good – especially with that weird sauce.  The stuff was just a little bit spicy, not too much.  I don’t know if it would go with anything else!  It was just perfect with the bars – they somehow, SOMEHOW worked! I swear, Adora!  The people here in Bright Moon just put cream sauce and their fancy berry jams on everything… If I never see a béchamel again, It’ll be too soon!”  

Adora softly laughed.  “I know they’ll never understand it!  Horde-food is, as you said, just ‘objectively bad.’  The most cost-effective ingredients…reconstituted whatsit!  We could have been eating a bunch of bugs for all we know!”  

“I have to keep up appearances, you know,” Catra said, her ears drooping.  “Sparkles and Arrow Boy and the staff and the citizens all accept you and whatever quirks you have because you’re She-Ra.  I screwed up in a way I can never come back from, so I can’t talk about missing anything about the Horde.  I have to be polite and eat their food and just get used to being all…civilized, I guess.”  She turned away when Adora sat down next to her.  “I’m still only here because I’m your pet.”  

“I wouldn’t say that.  You did a lot…in the end, I mean… fighting Prime.  You were the key to his downfall – you and I and all of our friends. Don’t ever forget that. I would not be here without you.”  

“It doesn’t really make up for the damage I caused up until then.  And… if Entrapta is to be believed, even fuckin’ Hordak helped to take down Prime and you don’t see anyone inviting him over for tea.”    

“He wouldn’t come,” Adora offered.  “I actually invited him once.  Entrapta said he wasn’t feeling well.”  

They sat in silence until Catra turned back to Adora.  “I feel like I have to try so hard… so they don’t feel like I’m a threat anymore, I mean.”

“You don’t have to try as hard as you think you do,” Adora offered.  She cupped Catra’s cheek and ran a thumb over it.  She ran the tips of her fingers up to touch the back of her ear in just the way that Catra liked.  

“Maybe we can take a trip to visit Scorpia and see if she knows anything about our old crappy food,”  Catra said.  “It would be just like her to keep making the junk.”  

“It’s been a long day,”  Adora replied with a frisky smile.  “I think we should both go to bed.”  

____________________________________

 “I’m afraid we don’t have the technology anymore,” Scorpia said as she, Catra and Adora walked in the shade.  “Those machines all broke down when the vines got up in them and no one’s bothered to fix them.”  

Various people milled about. Many carried or carted construction-supplies as even over one year after Primefall, there was quite a lot of repair to be done, as well as new building of infrastructure and housing as people moved into the former Fright Zone.  Gardeners in big floppy sun-hats trimmed vines and bushes – and not all of them had metal shears. Some had claws. Scoriponi people who’d been scattered throughout Etheria were returning to their ancient homeland under the rule of their ex-soldier-Princess (although Scorpia would be the last to say that she really ruled the land, the Princess-stuff being new to her.  She billed herself more like a loose organizer with something of a Force Captain’s ways, still).  Ex Horde-soldiers that both Catra and Adora recognized seemed to be making a good life for themselves here.  There were even a few clones.  

“Do you know the old recipes, at least?” Adora implored.

“Nope! Can’t say that I do!  Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have some of my special tea?  Or crumpets? Perfuma taught me how to make great crumpets.  Oh! And Entrapta’s kitchen staff taught me a recipe for these miniature scones! They’re just wonderful!”  

“Nah,” Catra said, pointing a teasing finger at Adora.  “Blondie here is really hankering for some old school straight-up garbage-food.”  

“Do you know where Commander Cobalt got off to, at least?” Adora asked.  “We need something from him, too.”  

“The last I saw him, he and Captain Grizzlor were going to make a new life for themselves in the Crimson Waste – they were going to try to open up a bar or something.”  

“We like what you’ve done with the place,” Adora offered.  

“I’m not sure it’s what my family had when I was too little to remember…before the Horde.”  Scorpia was sheepish.  She rubbed the back of her neck with her right claw.  “I’m trying, though… and making it our own.  We’re keeping most of the growth here, trying to make it into gardens.  Perfuma and I kind of…have extended visits with each other?  I don’t really like living out of a tent or in a tree-hollow in Plumeria, I’m more of an indoor-gal, so it’s kind of a compromise.”  

Catra held an arm and lashed her tail. “I can’t say that I’m not still getting used to the Bright Moon lifestyle, either.”  

“Yeah… it can be a little much,” Adora admitted.  “It’s why we’re getting a bit nostalgic.”

“For crap,” Catra asserted.

“Yeah…for crap…I guess,” Adora conceded.

“You could try asking Hordak,” Scorpia suggested.  “He invented the ration bars, so he’d know all about them!”  

Catra turned on her heel and put herself into a position to walk straight back to the skiff that she and Adora had come in on. “Nope!”  

________________________________________

 Adora found herself alone on the dark mountain trail leading up to the Crypto Castle in Dryl.  She was bound and determined to find answers, even as Catra was content to forget about it and go back to cream sauces and berry jams over smoked river-fish and delicate cured meats.  

Being greeted by robots did feel unnatural and being greeted by clones almost as much so – each face essentially the same, save for how many new eye colors and hair colors they were now displaying. As uncanny as they were by their left-of-standard-humanoid nature, the clones in settlement in Dryl made Adora smile. They were very warm to her, welcoming. They were experimenting with a wide variety of clothing – trousers, dresses, big weird hats with feathers…sandals with socks.  They’d developed a variety of little quirks, somewhat exaggerated in each individual expressly to stand out – as individuals.  They certainly were developing their own culture apart from their collective past quite rapidly and Adora had never before seen people so full of what seemed to be a collective joy.  

They were free now and they reveled in it.

A lovely spacebat with eyes that had gone a warm light brown named Acorn escorted Adora inside.  “Oh, and you might want to duck now,” he casually said after several minutes as they walked along.    

At that moment, Adora sensed a disturbance in the air and heard a “Whoosh!”  Acorn grabbed her shoulder and they ducked down just as a blade swept past their heads, parting a hair at the very top of Adora’s head.  Her eyes were wide and her teeth were clenched.  

“Entrapta has disabled most of the castle traps,” Acorn tried to assure her, “but a few parts of the security system are still armed.  We’ve all gotten to know which ones and where by now, but guests need a little help.”  

“Um… thank you… Mr. Acorn,” Adora squeaked out.

“ADORA!”  

That loud, nasal voice could only belong to one person.  Entrapta slipped down out of the ceiling and ambulated on her hair to greet her in the front hall. “I’m so glad you’re here!  Will you do a She-Ra transformation for me up in my lab?  I wanted to run some more tests…”  

“Um…” Adora said awkwardly, penting her index fingers together.  “Believe it or not, I’m actually here to see Hordak.”  

“Oh, I’ll tell him right away!”  

________________________________

 “If this is about the prosthetics-project, tell the Queen that we are still working out some critical errors in the cybernetics.”  

Hordak stood with his back to her.  His armored arms were crossed.  He stood over a table upon which was what appeared to be an artificial arm composed of a kind of material somewhat resembling First Ones’ crystalline.  It had a gap in the middle, composed of an independently-swiveling radius and ulna.

“And the Salineas water-purification machines should be ready in a month’s time if Mermista’s engineers decide to actually follow our blueprints instead of insisting upon their stubborn continuance to be suspicious of us.  Let it be known that Entrapta’s brilliance more than makes up for my… war criminal inclinations.  I will go back to that kingdom in chains once again if it would assure the populace of my contrition…”  

“I’m not here for any of that,” Adora said with an anxious, insincere laugh.  “I am here asking after a recipe.”  

“A recipe?”  Hordak turned around, his ears perking up with utter incredulousness. “You may wish to speak with Baker regarding your request.  I have barely begun to understand…food.”  

“He loves mangoes!”  Entrapta chimed.  She stuck her face in her tablet and let her fingers slide over it. “We’ve got some more heavy-ore to trade if Plumeria is interested in sending us more fruit and seeds and tree-saplings!  The bats are just wild about fruit! And Dryl has many new subjects to keep fed now that they’re weaning off the amniotic fluid! Any kind! It doesn’t matter!  Did you know that they can even eat berries that are poisonous to us?  I had a panic when Wrongie got into some nightshade, but he was just fine!”  

“Ration bars,” Adora asked, ignoring Entrapta’s tangent and looking Hordak straight in his deep red eyes.  “I want to learn how to make the old Horde ration bars.”  

“Ration bars?”  Hordak asked, “Whatever for?  Does not Bright Moon already have a nutrition program for their army?  Are you planning another interstellar journey and require something easy to store?”  

“Okay, this is going to sound weird, but here goes…”  Adora caught her breath.  “I kind of miss the taste of them?”  

Hordak snorted.  His ears went sideways.  

“Do you also wish to know the makings of Galactic Horde amniotic fluid?” he sarcastically inquired.  

“No, no,” Adora said, holding her hands up, “That’s fine.  It’s just… I got so used to eating the bars as a kid that I sort of miss them now that I haven’t had them in a long time?”  

“And I thought that once one discovered flavor that one was never supposed to go back,” Hordak said, turning around again, tinkering with the arm on the table.  “As you wish.  I will share the components of the bars.  No doubt you will find yourself disappointed in them all over again.”  

“Thank you, sir.”  

“I am no longer a sir or a lord,” Hordak reminded her.  “I am merely a failed conqueror, a defective clone, a war criminal making pitiful attempts at atonement and… Entrapta’s.”  

Hordak grabbed a tablet off a shelf and pressed several places on the screen with casual clawed fingers.  “Ah, yes, here it is.  Brown, green and gray.  Each had a base of common grains – generally wheat and barley, whatever we took from annexed farmlands.  Vegetal components consisted of sea grasses harvested by the Horde navy and freshwater algal blooms, spirulina and the like… Ah, yes… a protein component of various insects that infested the Fright Zone – pest control and nutrition all in one. Imp couldn’t control all of the pests on his own as much as he liked to try…”  

“Insects?”  Adora made a face.  

“Four-footed livestock animals were thrown into the mix when we were able, but yes,” Hordak said with a nod, not looking away from the pad, “Insects were the most reliable resource.  I assure you that they were thoroughly cleansed and cooked so that the ones found in the sewers would not infect the soldiers with any of the diseases that the planetary natives are so prone to in regards to contact with waste and the creatures that happen to live in it.”  

Adora made another, more wrinkled up face.

“Tell me that sewer-bugs weren’t in the gray ones…” she pleaded with a wince.  

“We tended to source the higher quality gray mix from annexed farmland.  Most of it was made of what you would call…what is it again?  The curled-furred especially stupid animals?  Mutton? And the eggs of the common domestic birds?”

“Yep!” Entrapta chimed.  

Adora breathed a sigh of relief.  King Micah had been trying to impress upon her the joys of insects as cuisine, but she had yet to take to it – and even he eschewed the idea of the spindly-legged crawly brown sewer-scuttlers.  

At least one thing she’d liked to eat in the past – her favorite kind of bar – was made of something decent.  

“Oh, and myself,” Hordak added.  

“Huh?”  Adora asked.  

Hordak set the pad down on the worktable and regarded her with a straight face.  He gestured to his chest.  “Myself,” he repeated.  

“I…am afraid that I do not understand?”  

“The gray bars provided an extra nutrient-boost to the troops.  A part of their component was a cloned matrix of my own cells.”  

Adora’s jaw dropped in horror.  

Hordak smiled wickedly as he tugged at one of the thigh-slits of his tabard-dress.  Entrapta grinned ear to ear.  “Remember, Entrapta, how I showed you the harvest-point? Right here, from a small sample of my right thigh-muscle.”

“Well, those thighs are your best feature other than your brain!”  

Hordak smacked his thigh playfully (for Entrapta) and put down his dress.  His ears were perked and he had an undeniable sharp-toothed grin at Adora’s discomfort.

“Oh, dear moons, I know what you taste like…”

“He’s quite a snack, isn’t he?”  Entrapta said, sidling up to the spacebat and wrapping a tail of hair around his waist.  

“I…know…what…you…taste…like…”  

“Not truly,” Hordak said.  “The treatment necessary to foster vat-growth rendered out any flavor you might find in conventional meat.  It should come as no surprise to you.  Clone-components made up a significant portion of our amniotic fluid.”  Hordak’s ears tipped back and he looked ceilingward, thoughtful.  “What used to be ‘waste-management’ and ‘humanoid-resources’ in space is something we have since rejected in regards to a newfound respect for personhood, but I cannot say that I had these qualms back when I ran the Etherian Horde.”  

“I’ve…eaten you…or some of you…”  

“I am afraid so, Adora.”  

“Adora?” Entrapta asked in concern, “You look a little green…”  

_____________________________________

In the end, Adora somehow tracked down the recipe for Commander Cobalt’s special sauce – a mix of tomato and peppers with a few stray seasonings thrown in (all vegetation-based).  

She found out that it was quite good with fried potatoes and with crispy fried fish.  

Adora was content to never eat a gray ration bar again.  

__________________________

END.

[tippenfunkaport]

Internet, I don't want to be dramatic but I have had a really super garbage day and I hate everyone and everything so I am not feeling the happy Tumblr posting, you know?

But I have just completed my Chipped!Glimmer fic, that I worked very hard on, and which has been bugged to high hell on AO3 so it never showed as updated and was hidden from most readers, buried pages below other, older fics no matter what I did. This has generally been a very frustrating fandom experience because I didn't find out until the fic was mostly finished that no one was actually seeing it to read it and I was basically writing into a vacuum.

Even now, at this exact moment, when I updated it five seconds ago, is it the most recently updated fic? No, it's freaking on page 3 and I only got it to actually show as the most recently updated by changing the date into the future... a thing that isn't even supposed to work but that's just HOW bugged this fic is for some GD reason.

So.

There's that.

Anyway, upon this, the posting of the last chapter, if you could so kindly go check it out and maybe leave a nice comment, I would super appreciate it because I have just had it with everything and need something to bolster my spirits so I don't pull some kind of lever and destabilize reality just to cope.

[cleoinspace]

I remember having a lot of fun writing this fic.

The Library of the Whispering Woods

This General Audiences fic brings together characters from Samurai Jack and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. This is part 3 of “An Unlikely Alliance Against Evildoers,” my multifaceted crossover fan fiction. It is a continuation from part 2 of this series, where Samurai Jack went to the Crystal Castle with Bow, Glimmer, and Adora as part of their quest.

See the master list for An Unlikely Alliance Against Evildoers here.

Romantic pairing: George / Lance

Friendships: Adora & Bow & Glimmer & Samurai Jack, George & Lance & Bow

Words: 3.8k

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19822051

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/1254818004-an-unlikely-alliance-of-evildoers-the-library-of

Characters: Adora/She-Ra, Bow, Glimmer, Samurai Jack, George, Lance

Keep reading

[wxwrites]

what do yall want next ⁉️

I NEED REQUESTS PLS SEND ASKS OR DM ME

(i only write wlw/lesbian content btw)

[largemovingtorb]

But something unwelcome happened as the expedition approached the end of their journey: an insidious subversion that disrupted what Catra perceived, twisting it into forms that diverted from reality. The sweet scent of flowers and the aroma of earthy resin were replaced by the electric tang of ozone, oozing up into her nostrils to sting her brain.

The music of animals, the hum of insects, and the soft whistle of wind were dominated by a plugging drone, the submerged sound of flailing limbs as someone fights to escape restraining hands.

And last but not least, the sensation of the sun on her body, the pleasant warmth subsumed by the claustrophobia of cold fluid. It surrounded her body with its violating perception, locating the correct avenues to her identity for deletion, replacing it with a new persona.

Horror seized Catra as she was transported back aboard the Velvet Glove, restraining hands forcing her into the green pool of electric energy as Horde Prime watched with smug glee. She had choked on the thick slime as the clones held her below the surface, the whole time thinking of Adora as her mind was erased. Catra had thought she had given up before this; the dice had been thrown and damn the consequences. She believed there was nothing to lose after all, but as the recollections of a blonde-haired and blue-eyed angel slowly disintegrated in the emerald blaze of annihilation, Catra knew that there was much to lose. It was, in fact, everything.

Illustration by @iriaabella, a.k.a., @ilikeyoucatradora, for my fanfic, Traces of Crimson!

My fic can be found on AO3 by following the link below:

Traces of Crimson