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freedfromthegalactichivemind · 2 years ago

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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.

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