Chapter Text
The King of Loneliness
“I’ll keep on making those new mistakes
I’ll keep on making them every day
Those new mistakes” _ Try Everything, Shakira for the film “Zootopia”
Chapter 1: Ethical Dilemmas
“Sixty-three? Has it really been that many already?”
Entrapta was going over her record of recent ethical dilemmas. The “dubious moral choice” she’d made on the last one had worked out surprisingly in her favor. It was one of those that she’d decided “It wasn’t a crime if you didn’t get caught” on – except that she had been caught, but it had worked out for the best.
She rewound the record to some months ago and listened to the first conundrum she’d had since the turn of the year. Her own voice played back at her. “I have just signed a weapons-production contract and gotten Dryl involved in a war.”
That contract had been for the Rebellion. Dryl had stayed out of the war since it had begun and Entrapta found herself unexpectedly recruited to a side of it within the space of a stormy day. She’d had to do something in return for having her life and the lives of her personal staff saved from an experiment gone wrong. Recruitment was what her saviors had wanted, and they were particularly interested in any applied science she could give them – despite the failed experiment they’d all just survived. It was a quick decision, but it had made sense at the time.
She fast-forwarded to “Fright Zone Log: Day 3, Hour 12: Have begun assessment on drone-systems for the Horde under Catra’s orders…” Now she was improving and making weapons for the Horde, and had been for some time.
She mulled it over in her head, the apparent defection. As she had told Bow in a brief communiqué a few days ago, she was not “on any side,” just “on the side of science.” The Horde had better equipment to work with and presented greater opportunities for learning and growth in her skills. They offered much more potential for getting her hot little hands on First Ones tech. She had chosen to remain in the Fright Zone as a matter of engaging in discovery and progress. In her eyes, any pursuit of science would come back around to help the world as a whole one day, even if it didn’t do so immediately and even if sacrifices had to be made.
The more Entrapta thought about it, the more she realized that she did not care about the ideology of this war on either side. War was inherently illogical, and weapons were inherently destructive. Did it really matter which “side” used the weapons? The Horde used their drones and tanks to destroy, suppress and subjugate. The Rebellion used magic, swords and arrows to do the same right back.
She’d studied a wound that Rogelio had received on a scouting mission after the squadron he was in had encountered some Rebels. Kyle was quick to bind it up and to offer him words of comfort. This had disappointed Entrapta, who wanted to use the opportunity the wound provided to do a little study on the anatomy of lizard-men, but it had bled a great deal and Rogelio hadn’t been cooperative in letting her prod it. In fact, she’d narrowly avoided being bitten. The wounding and after-action patch-up was usually the other way around with him and Kyle, with how often Kyle would get hurt in training scenarios, but this time, it was big, brawny Rogelio that had suffered. Both of these young Hordesemen had been as kind to her as Bow and Glimmer had been (before they’d left her behind). So again, did it really matter who she was building war-machines for? Each side hurt the other.
Science didn’t have any bias toward anything other than the truth. It seemed like whatever side of a fight one was on, people were going to get hurt, and therefore being on the side of science felt the most at home. There was such a thing as ethics in science, but, on the whole, it was straight and clean – not like politics. And so, after mulling over her litany of ethical dilemmas, Entrapta decided that she could set politics aside to focus upon what she saw as a master-good.
And if there were a few spectacular explosions along the way, surviving those would be fun. Emily exploded a lot, but was getting smarter and more agile with each upgrade.
Being naughty on Number Sixty-Three had yielded interesting results and an abundance of new opportunities. Her quest for a six-sided hex driver and found her entering Hordak’s laboratory (his “sanctum” – she really liked that name for it). Hordak had found her and was extremely rude at first. She’d found some things to fix up, things that looked like they were jury-rigged that could use a proper re-wiring.
Lord Hordak was impressed when it turned out she was right. Upon discovering some written calculations she recognized the theories behind, the two of them got to talking. He not only spoke to her of theories she’d been investigating for a long time, apparently – HE HAD BEEN THERE!
This…this was a game-changer!
No one knew where the First Ones had come from. There were many ideas about them, ranging from the mundane to the religious. Some people thought of them as ancient gods. A few thought of them as ancient, planetary natives, simply the first civilization of sapient beings. What most believed – and what most evidence pointed to – was that they were beings from another dimension, from somewhere beyond Etheria. However, dimensional gates were nothing that anyone on Etheria had been able to create, at least in known history. All that was known for sure was that the First Ones were technologically-advanced beyond anyone’s current understanding and that there had been some kind of “fall” in history to set people back. Etherian civilization was something that was re-building and shaping itself anew over at least the last millennium after a mysterious sharp severing.
Entrapta was keenly aware that her role was merely as a scavenger. She was trying to build a puzzle with most of the pieces missing or warped.
As for the Horde, everyone knew that they had come from somewhere beyond – but it was unclear where. The Fright Zone had started off small, but, like a malignant tumor, had grown. Entrapta loved it here – with all of the freedom given to her so far and all of the tools and technology in advance of most Etherian things, however, the Horde was clearly a scavenger-culture, too. Entrapta could see it in how most things she encountered seemed to be quick-rigged and how the wiring of things like searchlights and electrical connections were inefficient. Not-surprising. They hadn’t had contact with Dryl until recently and didn’t know how things were done there – like most of the kingdoms. The Fright Zone was a far cry from the “off the grid” kingdom of Plumeria or the hard-bitten tundra-lands of the Kingdom of Snows, but there were plenty of things to fix.
And here she was being told that dimensional gates could be achieved and that worlds beyond the sky were real. Hordak wasn’t just a bogyman from stories, a trumped-up figure from a misunderstood kingdom. He was a bona fide alien.
This could not have intrigued Entrapta more.
Too boot, getting a closer look at him than she had before (boy did he like to sit around in the dark) she could see that his armor was not merely armor. It was fitted into his body. He was partially robotic – what was known in technical terms as a cyborg.
The more she talked with him, the more she wanted to learn. The way he spoke – it was on a level she’d never encountered and he listened to her. She had such a tough time getting anyone to listen to her theories. People simply didn’t ask her about them outright and when she tried to share them, more often than not people would tell her that she was boring them, that she was weird or they would start out interested and then zone out when she started getting to things beyond their grasp. Even members of the Maker’s Guild would get lost when she’d tried to explain her First Ones technology-integration methods because she was apparently the only person on the planet that had developed the ability.
So, here she had just discovered someone who knew things that she did not know and was easy to share them and who, in turn, hung upon her every word.
She’d first entered the sanctum days ago and had come back for more. Hordak had even invited her to sit down in his throne room now. He seemed to understand that she didn’t particularly like having to look up at someone when talking to them (a consistent problem for her, since she was so short – and propping herself up on her hair sometimes elicited an irrational fear-reaction in a subject). He solved the problem easily by simply sitting down upon his throne and letting her perch on an arm-rest.
When he smiled at her, Entrapta could not help but notice his very interesting teeth. Although there were some animals that had very yellow or even reddish teeth, she’d never seen an enamel-color quite that deep a red. Fascinating.
She could not quite figure out if Hordak’s eyes were natural to his kind or if they were among his cybernetic implants. She supposed he’d tell her in time. Perhaps she could extort it from him in exchange for one of her integration-projects or fixing some of the Fright Zone’s security-computer coding. They flashed yellow and red, it would seem, depending upon his mood and were always luminescent. She really wanted to know how they worked.
He was polite to Emily, too. It seemed like everyone in the Fright Zone rather liked her – unlike the other Princesses, which had seemed afraid of her. It was understandable, since she’d started out life as a Horde battle-drone and therefore a thing meant to hurt them. As of now, no one, not even Hordak, was upset that Emily was no longer fighting and had become Entrapta’s assistant and best friend. Instead, when the subject of her came up, he seemed intrigued by her emergent behavior after Entrapta’s upgrades.
Entrapta had gained much from her recent ethical dilemmas. She did not know if she was getting her solutions to them “right” or “wrong” in the conventional sense, but she was now on the cusp of great things and had an interesting lab partner. On some level, she understood why other people were afraid of Lord Hordak, being as tall as he was, pale and cloaked in darkness- but she was not. He struck her as more interesting than terrifying.
He warranted further study. Much further study.