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Chapter Text

“You are taking a big risk, Doctor.”

The voice was a deep, synthesised growl, every syllable steeped in suppressed rage. It was a voice that could make “here, kitty, kitty” sound like a threat.

“Your pet experiments with the technology are becoming…inefficient, Weaver,” continued the speaker. “Letting these tests run this long has no doubt impressed some of your fellow technicians, but I grow weary of your delays. You have proven that you can achieve a stable mesh. Why squander our technological resources on two cadets? Integrating it with our true forces will offer a much swifter conquest, and be more reliable.”

Doctor Weaver’s eyes narrowed behind her mask. “Just a little longer, my lord; long enough for one more test. Either they will pass…or they will fail. If they pass, it will give us field command once we pierce the barrier; if they fail, well, a defective machine is just another source of parts, is it not? Your new age has waited so long; another few days are hardly going to pose a problem.”

A low, furious hiss issued from the first speaker. “You presume too much, Doctor. Very well. You shall have your final test.”

“I thought you’d see the wisdom in my approach…my lord.”

***

The two warriors stared across the ring at each other, eyes narrowed between their visors. Anticipation filled the air like smog, and the smells of oil and ozone mingled. Weapons crackled and hissed as the circuits came online, charging up for battle.

A harsh, mechanical voice boomed out, “Final round: 4DR-4 vs. CTR-4. Victory conditions: defeat. No deactivations. Three…two…one…Fight!”

The warrior in the blue corner, her sword thrumming with power, hurled herself aside, narrowly avoiding the slashing wrist blades of her adversary. The one from the red corner pressed the attack, launching a vicious, unrelenting onslaught. Sparks and slivers of metal flew from the ground as the wrist blades tore into it.

The blue warrior launched a spinning strike, smacking the flat of her blade into her adversary’s head, then smoothly shifting into a circling cut that almost connected, but the red warrior leaped back before it could strike.

The blue warrior gritted her teeth. For some reason, although she was one of the best at using a sword in Batch 413-4, none of the variations on the weapon she’d ever tried had felt… right. As if there was a perfect sword for her out there, somewhere, and this wasn’t it. She needed to be careful of that feeling; in this fight, there was no room for hesitation. Her opponent wouldn’t hesitate to punish her for it.

She stepped back, narrowly avoiding a vicious horizontal swipe that would have opened her plating like a tin can. A second swipe carved chunks off her left gauntlet in a spray of sparks, the hasty block costing her balance. Her fingers twitched as the damaged systems went haywire.

Sensing victory, the red warrior surged forward, her attack carving deep into the blue warrior’s leg –

Sparks flew as the blue warrior brought up her sword with the speed of a striking snake. The humming blade plunged into the red warrior’s shoulder, emerging from the back in a gout of stinking black oil and a crackle of electricity. The red warrior went limp, and a low, resentful chuckle sounded over the helmet comm.

“I thought I had you that time,” said CTR-4 – or, in the soldiers’ argot, Catra. “Now get this pointy stick out of me and help me to a repair chamber.”

The blue warrior – 4DR-4, or Adora to her friends – picked herself up as best she could – her damaged leg wasn’t helping – and pointed into the audience. “Lonnie,” she said, indicating LNE-7. “Come down here and help me get Catra to a repbay.” She stumbled as one of her leg servos gave out. “And then you can help me get me to a repbay.”

***

Adora drifted in an endless white light, feeling calm and at peace with the world. In here, she didn’t have to worry about anything. Not herself, not Catra, not failing the trials, not Weaver, not her first mission – whatever that ended up being. A pleasantly warm feeling swelled on the front of her chassis, the warmth taking a shape that seemed…familiar, somehow. She needed to remember it-

A rhythmic tapping sound broke through her reverie, and she snapped back to reality, shifting out of sleep mode. The repbay had finished putting her wrist and leg back together, and she’d just been recharging and…dreaming, she’d heard it called by some of the techs. It was a good word.

Her optics rushed through a quick boot sequence and shifted to low-light mode, and she recognised Catra grinning through the thick glass of the repair chamber. Her friend had always been a unique figure in the conformist confines of the Fright Zone – the mismatched blue and yellow optics, the fang-like structure of her teeth, the flecks of discolouration on her cheeks. If the two of them hadn’t been Doctor Weaver’s pet projects for whatever reason, Catra would probably have been given some modifications to bring her more in line with the Horde’s standards…whether she liked them or not.

Judging by Adora’s chrono, it hadn’t been long enough for a full repair job given the damage inflicted, and indeed the armour where Adora had impaled her was a raw, gunmetal-grey scar – presumably, Catra had once again disengaged before the systems could finish putting her back together.

Adora popped the chamber glass and told Catra, “You really do need to stop getting out early. If Weaver found out-”

“Weaver’s not going to find out.”

“You’re walking around with a giant exposed weld,” pointed out Adora.

 Catra looked at her torso with an expression of mock surprise. “Why, so I am. Sure would be nice if I hadn’t needed repairs there, right?”

“They – you-” Adora gave up. “Never mind. Are you here for a reason, or did you just want company while the bay took care of that scar?”

“Adora, please. Why would I ever want for company?” Catra gave a dismissive gesture, as if to indicate that the thing where all the other cadets only put up with her grudgingly was completely irrelevant. “Actually, Weaver called down. Wanted someone to kick you out of bed and tell you to report to her.”

A hiss escaped Adora’s teeth, a strange little reflex she’d always had. Dealing with Weaver this early in the morning was never pleasant. “All right. I’m on my way.”

***

Weaver loomed.

It was a skill she’d apparently been working on for years. Her reddish-purple lab coat clung to the metal plates of her armour like a layer of skin, and her helmet visor concealed everything except a pair of faintly glowing eyes. There were several bets going on about Weaver behind the scenes; if someone cracked open her armour and found that she was 1) human and 2) only about five foot four, Catra was going to, however briefly, be the richest person in the Fright Zone.

Weaver’s eyes focused on Adora. “Ah, you’re here. Excellent. You’ve impressed me, 4DR. More than that, you’ve impressed Lord Hordak.” Weaver never used the shorthand when talking to anyone. Adora thought it was because she tended to be very precise; Catra just thought she didn’t give a – anyway. She couldn’t get distracted; Weaver was continuing to talk.

“You’ve been deemed ready for your final trial, 4DR. Complete this satisfactorily, and you’ll be promoted. You may even make Force Captain.”  She turned to Catra, seemingly noticing her for the first time. “Take CTR with you. It’ll be good practice for when she completes her own trials.”

“Why not make this her trial? She’s ready!” demanded Adora, and Catra flinched. “She’s been training for this as long as I have.”

“To much lower effect!” snapped Weaver. “She’s reckless. She’s impulsive. Otherwise, she would not be walking around half-repaired! So no, she will complete her trials when I deem her ready, and not one moment before! We will not put a defective machine in a command position!” For a moment, there was no sound but Weaver’s ragged aspiration, and the faint hum of technology. “Your mission is simple. Take a skiff and Patrol Four-One-Three. Take it through the barrier; we’re testing some new technology. Stay there for one hour, or until it starts to seriously affect you, and then return. 4DR: I want you flying the skiff. Do not allow a Patroller to operate it.” She gestured, and a pair of high-tech armbands marked with the Horde’s bat-wing badge floated out of the darkness behind Weaver and hung in the air before them. “Wear these.”

 “I won’t fail you,” Adora said, saluting.

“See that you do not,” hissed the towering figure. “You are one of our finest machines, 4DR. Go out there and bring us victory.”

As they left, Weaver spoke once more. “Oh, and CTR…if you return, and 4DR does not, I will disassemble you. Piece by piece. Restrain your creativity.”

***

Everyone in the Horde called it “the barrier”. It made it feel less humiliating, somehow – it wasn’t that Horde robots failed spontaneously upon reaching a forest, it was that it was the barrier. Speculation on who built it ran riot through in the Horde: some blamed the mysterious “First Ones”, others thought it was a natural phenomenon, but the majority favoured Rebellion magic.

The Horde hated magic. It wasn’t predictable, it wasn’t controllable, and it especially wasn’t controllable by the Horde. Only Weaver had ever shown any real understanding of the phenomenon, and she wasn’t sharing.

***

Most cadets found the Patrollers creepy, and Adora was no exception. It wasn’t their blank visors or their all-covering armour that upset them; cadets got used to that kind of thing pretty quickly. The big worry with Patrollers was their personalities. Or personality, rather; they didn’t tend to differ much. Patrollers were all loyal to the Horde, devoted to their orders and unfailingly controlled and professional in the field, but there was invariably a sense of something missing. Even the most independent Patroller lacked the drive to adjust their orders for new scenarios; many recently-constructed ones would follow their orders literally, even if the literal interpretation of the order made no sense. They rarely had interests or hobbies, never expressed emotional connections, and in general came across as…it seemed hypocritical for an android to think this, but robotic. Cold. Mechanical.

Patrol Four One Three consisted of eight Patrollers in the standard dull green armour: a sergeant in a red helmet, and seven troopers. After being ushered onto the skiff, they took their positions and sat, barely moving except or speaking except insofar as it was necessary for their tasks.

At the controls, Adora gritted her teeth. She’d never felt safe on these skiffs, especially not at night – the moons were dull tonight, and the big, dark void overhead always made her feel slightly uncomfortable. Knowing that one mistake could be disastrous, and the skiff didn’t have any ability to fix it, she clenched up with nerves whenever she took control.

Catra, of course, was reclining behind her. As the skiff cut through the trees, Catra started talking.

“I don’t need your help, Adora.”

Adora swerved at the last second to avoid a tree. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me. I don’t. Need. Your help.” Catra’s voice had an edge that you could shave with. “I don’t need you to stand up to Weaver for me! I’m going to show her that I’m ready, and I’m going to make her regret doubting me – and I don’t need your endorsement for it.” Her friend’s lip was curled with disgust, revealing her fangs. “All you do when you do that is make her angry.”

“I’m sorry,” said Adora, avoiding another tree. “It just…it makes me really angry when she ignores you like that. You deserve a real chance, and soon.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Catra. “You don’t want to be associated with a failure, so you try and force her to let me be a success.”

“That’s not-”

Before Adora could finish the sentence, a garbled electronic scream burst from all eight Patrollers at once, and they slumped over. The skiff skewed wildly off course, and while Adora wrestled with the controls, a tree loomed out of the night-

***

Adora drifted in an endless white light, feeling calm and at peace with the world. The warmth on her chassis grew, once more forming that strangely familiar shape.

Adora.

The white light began to fade, revealing a dark surface dusted with a fine scattering of lights. Adora’s heart leapt to see it, and then a fork of violet lightning split her vision. As Adora watched, the distant lights began to go out, one by one.

Etheria seeks a hero. Find the sword. Come to me.

Rise.

Can you hear me, Adora? Adora?

“Adora?”

Adora snapped back to reality. She was lying next to what was probably once the skiff, surrounded by scattered Patrollers. Catra was looking down at her, her expression hard to read: her right eye looked worried, somehow, but only anger hummed in her left. (Perhaps it was just the colour; Catra’s blue eye always looked less angry than the yellow one somehow.)

The tension visibly eased in Catra’s body. “Okay, you’re still functioning. I was worried you were going to end up like these guys” – she kicked one of the Patrollers for emphasis – “and I was going to have to drag you back to HQ.”

Adora picked herself up, and said, “I’m fine. Just…got knocked into sleep mode, I think. I was having the strangest dream…” She shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s get back to the Fright Zone. The armbands seem to work; we can arrange a salvage run when we get back.”

***

Debriefing was…strangely easy. The loss of a skiff and eight Patrollers didn’t seem to concern Weaver; indeed, after verifying that Adora had sustained no damage beyond some minor dents, the Horde’s chief scientist had seemingly dismissed all concern for the casualties. Adora had been issued with a command pin, and then Weaver had told them to go and recharge – the assault on the fortress of Thaymor would be any day now, and they needed to be at full strength.

“I was expecting her to be angrier,” murmured Catra as the duo left the debriefing room. “I lost a Patroller to a stray round in the last set of live-fire drills, and Weaver gave me both barrels. Either she expected to lose them, or her pride and joy is getting an easy ride again.”

“You don’t send troops to the barrier without anticipating some losses,” pointed out Adora. “It’s honestly a good sign that anyone got back. These armbands must be really something.”

“Of course, you’re right,” said Catra, without conviction. “I got dinged up a bit when you crashed the skiff. I’m gonna head to a repbay.”

“Good idea. I’ll join you there in a bit. Got one or two things to take care of first.”

***

“This doesn’t look like a repbay,” said Catra from behind her, and Adora started. “Looks a lot more like the exit to me. Anything you’d care to share with the class?”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” said Adora, in the voice of a student caught looking at the papers before a test. “I just need to go out for a moment and…” don’t sound crazy “…get some air.” Nailed it.

Catra’s smirk was on the verge of causing structural damage. “Get some air. Right. You want a good sniff of that classic Fright Zone smog. To calm you down after tonight’s excursion, no doubt. Smells like home, right? Come off it, Adora. You couldn’t lie to save your life. What are you really up to?”

Adora looked down, and mumbled, “I need to follow something up in the forest.”

“Go back to the first lie,” said Catra bluntly. “‘Stupid’ is a better look for you than ‘stupid and crazy’.” She stepped back. “…You’re serious. Did that crash knock some wires loose?”

Yeah, probably. “No.” Adora shook her head. “I just…I need to make sure of something. I’ll be back by dawn. I’ve got a nearly-full charge, it’ll be okay.”

“Fiiiiiine ,” hissed Catra. “But I’m coming with you. I’ll get my armband back from Weaver – you’re lucky she didn’t make sure to get yours…”

“No, Catra. I need you to stay here.” Adora cut off her friend’s objection with a raised hand. “As long as we’re looking out for each other, we’ll be okay, right? Well, I need you at this end, looking out for me. Covering for me.”

Catra’s eyes narrowed, but after a long, frozen moment, she sighed. “All right. But make sure you’re back by dawn! I can’t cover your tracks forever.”

“Thanks, Catra. I’ll let you know if I find anything interesting.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get going before I change my mind.”

***

The forest was much harder to navigate on foot, and Adora began to wonder if she’d perhaps bitten off more than she could chew. (A strange comparison to use; it wasn’t like she ate, after all. Must have picked it up from a tech during routine maintenance.) Still, she knew just about where she was going…Yes, there was a broken piece of the skiff. It hadn’t been there long enough to develop much dirt or become wreathed in vines.

There was something… right about this place. Something about the air, perhaps; the forest smelled of life. Not here, admittedly; ‘here’ still smelled of smoke and metal. But when she was further away from the wreck, it smelled of life.

This direction felt right. It was almost like being drawn to a magnet. She needed to make sure to remain on guard, though; just because she was out here on a mad quest for nothing in particular was no reason to do it stupidly.

Metal glinted in the moonlight, and she stepped forward into a clearing to see a sword lying, abandoned, sticking out of the ground, amazingly clean and intact despite being festooned with vines. She reached out, and took hold of the hilt…

***

Adora drifted in an endless white light, feeling calm and at peace with the world.

Adora. You have arrived, at last. I am Light, and you could be Etheria’s last hope.

“Where am I? What’s happening?”

There is not much time. You must answer the call. You must call upon Graysku-

“FREEZE, HORDE SCUM!”

Adora snapped back to reality to see two shapes ahead of her…

…lit by the pink-purple glow of a charging weapon.

Oh boy.

Chapter Text

Earlier

Princess Glimmer stared out the window at the elegant spires of Brightmoon and sighed heavily. It was so unfair. What was the point of even giving her weapons and armour if she wasn’t supposed to use them? Fall back, fall back, fall back – what was the next plan, tell all the androids to hide and set up shop in the forest? The line was almost at Thalmor. Shortly after that, it could be pressed to Brightmoon itself.

But no, now she was grounded. Because she’d helped people. How dare she use her abilities to protect other people and not just herself!

A “thunk” sound broke through her reverie as an arrow embedded itself in her desk. Well, at least she wasn’t going to suffer alone. She touched a control on the arrow, and a tiny holographic screen hummed to life. It had the resolution of a patchwork quilt and more artefacts than an archaeological dig, but it was still impossible not to recognise Bow.

“Hey, Glimmer. Heard you were back. Got something you’re going to want to hear.”

Glimmer thought for a moment. Bow was probably on the ground floor. That would take a while to reach in the standard fashion, even overlooking that she was grounded, but she had a way around that…

A couple of very swift teleports, and Bow’s boots clattered against the floor. Time and experience had built up the archer’s resistance to being yanked through space, and he barely seemed unsteady at all as Glimmer began unloading.

***

“The Horde attacked, I rallied the defenders, but no, we’re not supposed to defend our villages apparently-”

Bow had heard this little speech before. Multiple times, in fact. Glimmer was his best friend, and he of course cared about her, but the my-mother-doesn’t-understand-me 

“-and do I get any appreciation for it? No!”

It sounded like the diatribe was dying down, so Bow moved in. “You know that she’s not a frontline commander, Glimmer; of course she’s not going to be all that impressed by picking fights, even useful ones. You need to play it strategically.” He tapped some controls on his wrist unit, and called up a map. “Look: a First One tech signal in the Whispering Woods, and a big one. Came online earlier this evening. If we find and tag it, who knows what we could get out of it?” 

“Oh, Bow…” Glimmer sounded more exhausted than angry. “It’s a great idea, but I’m grounded-”

There was a knock at the door.

“Glimmer! Is someone in there?”

Purple light flared.

***

Dangling from the balcony outside Glimmer’s window was the sort of thing Bow had gotten rather reluctantly used to over the last few years. Just in case it became necessary, he readied a grapnel arrow while he listened to the argument.

 “Everything’s. Fine,” Glimmer said in a voice that could have cut paper.

“I don’t appreciate your tone, young lady-”

“And I don’t appreciate being wrapped in four feet of lambswool while we carry out your cunning plan to lose this war by inches!”

There was a little more shouting, a door slam, a few harsh, mechanical noises, and Bow found himself teleported to the ground. Glimmer stood next to him, clad in her purple armour, a blue cape slung over her shoulder and her focusing blaster mounted on one wrist.

“I’m packed,” said the Princess of Brightmoon brusquely, and the visor on her helmet descended, giving her face a faint blue tint. “Let’s roll.”

***

Now

After a split second, Adora’s optics adjusted, and she got a good look at the threat. Two rebels. One, clad in purple armour, was pointing an energy weapon at her face; the other was wearing...a strange, midriff-bearing outfit, and had what appeared to be a bow of some description, which seemed needlessly archaic.

Unfortunately, archaic or not, they had weapons levelled at her, and she had a sharp stick that was stuck in the ground. Glaring, she took her hands off the hilt and placed them behind her head.

“Keep her covered, Bow,” said the one with the energy weapon, powered down her attack, and pulled out a length of cable.

Adora quickly weighed her options. On the one hand, if she launched her attack at the right moment, even bare-handed, she could probably take down the one in the heavy armour down before she could fire back. That would just leave the archer, and what threat could such an archaic weapon pose?

On the other hand, if it wasn’t at least somewhat threatening, he probably wouldn’t be using it. So biding her time was probably the better option. It shouldn’t be too hard to get the cable off eventually; they probably couldn’t put it on too tightly.

***

The cable was alarmingly tight, and was leaving streaks of silver on her armour. She probably was not going to be able to get this off eventually. This could be a problem.

“Come on, Horde spy,” snarled the one in the armour. “We’re taking you back to Brightmoon.”

“Designation 4DR, Batch 219-4,” snapped Adora. “Do anything you want, you’ll get nothing else out of me.”

“What, anything?” said the unarmoured – Bow. His name was Bow. “Anything at aaaaall? How about…” His voice dropped to a hushed whisper.

“… the puppy-dog eyes?!”

Adora wasn’t entirely sure how he managed to make his eyes expand like that, but then, she wasn’t an expert on humans. Perhaps this was something they could all do.

“Bow, stop clowning around with the prisoner,” ordered the one in the armour. “It’s nearly daybreak; we should get going.”

***

Glimmer checked over her shoulder to see that the prisoner appeared to be talking to Bow. She cranked up the gain on her suit’s audio sensors – no sense taking risks. The First One sword they’d taken from the prisoner felt weird on her back, like it was trying to drag her backwards, just a little bit. 

“-the Horde, you wouldn’t need to be pushed onto the front lines by whatever defective machine you have back in Brightmoon -”

Bow’s jaw audibly dropped. “What?” Glimmer suppressed a smile; yeah, there was no way Bow was going to fall for that one. “First, Angella’s a person – same as me, same as you. Second, I’m not being ‘pushed’ to be here. I’m out here with Glimmer because she’s my friend, not because she’s in charge of me. Third, I’ve seen enough of what the Horde does to want no part in it.”

“What the Horde does is bring order and peace to Etheria-”

“Etheria doesn’t need that kind of order.” There was a clicking, whirring sound, presumably from Bow’s wrist unit, and her friend called out, “Glimmer, could you pull back a little bit? I’m getting some weird readings.”

Thirty seconds later, he punched the air.

“Found something interesting?” said Glimmer, smiling. 

“You could say that, Glimmer…” Bow tapped his wrist unit, igniting a flickering light – a projector, Adora figured. “That First One signal the sword gives out? If it was just going up because you were getting closer, it’d look like this.” Up came a graph that Adora could just about understand. “Instead, it looks like this.” Another line was added to the graph. It shot up a lot higher, a lot faster. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it seems to like 4DR here quite a bit.”

Glimmer shrugged. “We’ll figure it out in Brightmoon,” she said. “It’ll be light in a few hours; we can get it into a proper lab, see what’s going on.”

***

They emerged from beneath the canopy of trees to find the ruins of a village. The air smelled of rot and smoke, and the toppled ruins of the buildings showed obvious signs of fire damage.

Glimmer gasped. “This isn’t…” Her eyes darted to something lying broken in the dirt, and the tension visibly flowed out of her body.  “No, all right. We just got turned around somewhere in the Whispering Woods.”

“What happened here?”

It took Adora a few seconds to realise that she’d said that.

Glimmer rounded on her, fists clenched. “You did! This place was destroyed by the Horde. For all I know, you were part of this yourself!”

“The Horde wouldn’t do this,” shot back Adora. “It built me to help Etheria-”

“Uh, 4DR…” said Bow from somewhere off to the side. “You may want to take a look at this before you finish that sentence.” There was a clang, a thud, and a rolling sound…

…and the unmistakeable shape of a Horde assault drone rolled out of the rubble. It was missing a leg, and its spherical body was battered, but it was instantly recognisable. Adora had seen hundreds of them around the Fright Zone.

Bow jumped down after it. “If the Horde wouldn’t do this, then what, exactly, is this doing here?”

Adora suddenly didn’t have anything to say.

“Order, huh?” spat Glimmer, vibrating with anger. “You burn our villages, hurt our people, strip-mine our land, pollute our air and water – for order? And you think you’re helping?” She made a noise that had no meaning and yet effortlessly conveyed a lifetime’s worth of rage. “You lurk in the Fright Zone – real subtle name, by the way – building armies of slaves to help? We don’t need or want that kind of help-” 

There was a shriek, and one of the ruined buildings exploded outwards in a spray of dust and wood splinters. A monstrous insect erupted from the wreckage – no, wait. Was it an insect? Something about it didn’t feel right. And yet, in some other way, it felt familiar…

Glimmer yanked violently on the length of cable, snapping Adora out of her reverie and nearly pulling her off her feet. “Process it on your own time! Run!”

***

“Uh, guys? Little help here?”

Adora spun around to see Bow dangling from one of the beast’s claws. He’d managed to wedge his bow so that it couldn’t do much worse than bruise, but there wasn’t an obvious way out either: while they were back in the forest, he didn’t have anything convenient within reach.

“Bow!” shouted Glimmer, dropping Adora’s leash and vanishing in a flash of purple light.

Huh. Adora hadn’t known she could do that. Definitely something to bear in mind.

Light flared again, and Glimmer descended on the monstrous insect, firing blasts of light from her wrist-mounted weapon. “Get down!” she yelled at Adora, charging up another blast.

One of the creature’s other limbs lashed out, and Glimmer grunted in pain as she slammed into a tree. The sword was jolted loose from her back, and flew through the air – 

Landing right next to Adora.

She dived for the weapon, scooping it up as she rolled. If she could get the cable off her wrists, she could at least do…

Do what, exactly?

Get out of here, said one part of her. They’re the enemy. They tied you up, stole your sword, dragged you through the woods. They may end up taking you apart. This is the chance to run you’ve been waiting for.

Help them, said another. If all they know about the Horde is ruined villages and scary names, no wonder they’re so hostile; they’re afraid. Show them you’re not like that. Show them what the Horde means to you. Also, they could have abandoned you here to face this monster, and they didn’t. That has to count for something.

She just knew she was going to regret this.

She stood up, holding the sword awkwardly in both hands. “Hey! Over here!”

The creature paused, its crushing claw inches from Glimmer’s head, and turned to face her. Adora was sure it wouldn’t be able to digest her, but those teeth looked a lot bigger than she’d been anticipating – 

“Execute: Grayskull!”

Again, it took her a moment to realise that the words had come from her.

The world lit up.

***

“Did I hit my head harder than I thought, or-”

“No, Bow,” said Glimmer. “That’s real.” She knew she was doing a very bad job of sounding like she believed that, but she had, in fact, just seen their captive pick up the sword, yell a meaningless phrase, and change in a flash of light.

White armour shone in the darkness, gold patterns twinkling on its surface. The near-featureless Horde helmet had sprouted wings, and a red gemstone glittered at its front. There was even a cape. Most notably, however, the sword was no longer an independent item. Instead, it appeared to be part of an ornate gauntlet on 4DR’s right hand, giving the impression of a giant punch dagger. The layers of dirt on the blade had seemingly vanished, revealing a circuitry design close to the tip.

4DR pulled her wrists apart, and the cable that had been holding her firmly up until right this second snapped like old, worn thread. Energy flared on the edge of the blade, and a punching motion converted it into a crackling streak of power, directed at the monster.

The creature hissed and disappeared into the woods, apparently deciding that discretion was the better part of valour.

4DR stood dramatically, cape flapping in the wind, and then, very slowly, fell over.

***

Adora’s eyes snapped open, and after a moment, she recognised Glimmer and Bow looking down at her. Glimmer’s face, behind her visor, was twisted with suspicion, and she was holding the sword close to her body. Bow just looked confused.

A few seconds of goggle-eyed staring passed, and then Adora sat bolt upright. Wood splintered; there had apparently been a branch on her way up that she hadn’t registered.

“What just happened?” shouted Glimmer and Adora simultaneously. “I was-” “And then you were-” “But-” “What-” “HOW?!”

Bow coughed. “Should we start heading for Brightmoon again, Glimmer? If that bug is around…” His voice was calm, but it was easy to tell how much effort was going into keeping it that way.

Glimmer breathed out. “You’re right.” She looked at Adora, and said, “Here’s my offer: I keep the sword, but we don’t try and tie you up again. You come quietly, and we’ll try and figure out what that was. Deal?”

“That sounds fair.” Adora reached out a hand, and Glimmer took it and pulled her to her feet. Flakes of grey-green paint fell from Adora’s chassis as she stood, and she looked at her arm; the Horde colours were beginning to peel. “I’m not going back until I get some answers.”

“Come on, then,” said Glimmer. “I’ve got my bearings now. Brightmoon is this way.” She pointed into the forest.

As first light began to seep into the sky, barely visible between the trees, Adora realised she was going to have to break her promise to Catra...but it couldn’t be helped. Even if she started now, she’d never make it back to the Fright Zone by dawn - and if she did...No. She needed to know.

***

“So, I’ve been wondering,” said Bow, “how does a Horde soldier end up this far into the Whispering Woods, anyway? I thought the First One tech caused a bunch of problems for robots.”

“I’m not going to tell you that.”

“Fine, fine, suit yourself. It’s not hard to work out, though. Your armband, right? It’s not exactly standard issue.” Adora didn’t say anything, but Bow smiled. “Thought so. So, uh, does it worry you that it came off twenty minutes ago when you did that thing with the sword?”

Adora grabbed frantically at her upper arm, finding nothing. “This isn’t funny! I could - I -” She stopped. “Wait. We’re deep enough in here that the field should have shut me down several minutes ago. Why hasn’t it?”

“It’s fun asking this sort of question, isn’t it?” said Bow with a grin. “You never know what kind of answer you’re going to get.”

“It’s not really the kind of question we’re supposed to ask.” Adora paused for a moment as she tried to formulate her next sentence. “I’m supposed to ask questions like ‘what’s the priority target here’ or ‘where are their reserves’. Figuring out whys, hows - that’s a job for people. I’m just a machine. They build us to fight, and to lead in combat. Nothing else.”

Bow looked away. “That sounds awful. Fighting is my choice; I can’t imagine not having any other option-”

He managed to stop just seconds before he would have walked straight into Glimmer.

"Okay," said Glimmer, looking at the structure ahead of them. "Brightmoon was not this way." She made a frustrated little noise. "This is, in fact, a First One ruin. Just once, just once, I'd like to go into the Whispering Woods and come out without getting lost twice."

Bow shrugged. "The stuff that makes it hard to navigate also makes it a good defensive wall. It's why the Horde can't march its troops right through. Except our friend here - wait, what are you-"

"Eternia," said Adora, looking at the First One runes on the door.

It hissed open.

Glimmer made some more frustrated little noises, apparently trying to invent some new words to convey rage.

Bow rubbed his chin. "Okay, so. The First One field around the Whispering Woods doesn't affect you. A First One sword is actively reaching out to you, and when you touch it, and say an activation phrase, it gives you superpowers. This doesn't work for, say, Glimmer." Glimmer looked scandalised at this. "I saw you trying it, Glimmer. Anyway. First One field, First One sword, and now you can read the First One language, a thing that some of our greatest scholars have worked on for years without success. I'm starting to notice a pattern here."

***

The interior of the ruins was old, cracked, dark and dusty.

Glimmer conjured a light, and Adora hurriedly shifted her vision to normal mode. Now it was still old, cracked, and dusty, but now it was lit up! A little. In purple. It wasn't helping much.

Bow gestured towards a wall mural, and said, "Oh hey, this looks familiar."

It showed a helmeted, armoured figure, a blade extending from its wrist. Adora peered closely at it. "Wait, is this what I looked like when - uh, that happened?"

"Pretty much," said Bow. "What's it say?"

"She-Ra," said Adora, unsure of what that meant.

"Error," said a voice from all around them. "Administrator detected. Administrator not detected. Error."

"Well that clears it all up," said Glimmer drily.

Adora gestured to her. "Give me the sword. It probably wants, um, that."

"We agreed on this," said Glimmer bluntly. "You don't get the sword back."

"Security alert," said the disembodied voice pleasantly. "Intruders detected. Initiating lockdown."

"Glimmer..."

The doors began to slam shut, one by one, and a loud mechanical chittering began to echo through the chamber. Even sprinting didn't help; the door they were heading for would invariably be the next to close. More worryingly, large mechanical insects were beginning to stick their heads out of hatches dotted around the chamber; even with whatever the sword let her do, Adora didn't think she'd be able to fight them off.

"Okay," said Glimmer. "I'll get us out of here."

"Are you crazy?" Bow's voice was almost a shout. "You've never teleported three people before, especially not when one of them is a robot! Why not just give her-"

Purple light flared.

"-the sword..."

***

The ground hurt.

After a few minutes of pain and general self-assessment, Bow was the first to rise. He moved out of Adora's field of vision while she was running a quick structural diagnostic. "Glimmer! Glimmer. Please tell me you're okay-oh, thank the moons." There was a groan of pain that sounded like it came from Glimmer. "That probably took a lot of your power. Take it easy, OK?"

Adora picked herself up and gingerly tested her leg. A little unsteady, but bearable. "What's happening?"

"She doesn't have unlimited teleport power," said Bow. "So, when she does something stupid like teleporting three people into midair, it burns a decent amount of reserves."

Glimmer glared at him, bleary-eyed. "Stop giving away our secrets," she said bluntly, "and help me up. We still need to get to Brightmoon. I think we're closer now, at least."

***

Before too long, Glimmer called a halt.

The Princess of Brightmoon gestured out of the forest. “I nearly forgot: it’s the Daybreak Festival here. Everyone’s out and about, but it’s the straightest road to Brightmoon we’re going to get. We can’t exactly frogmarch a Horde soldier through it...even one whose paint is peeling.” She tapped Adora’s helmet. “Does this come off?”

Adora looked at her for several seconds, and then reached up and lifted it off. Glimmer made a face. “At least helmet hair is treatable.” She flickered out of existence for a second, and then tossed Adora some clothes. “These should fit you, but throw the cloak over the top in case anything shows; there are enough robots around here that nobody’s going to make a big deal about it. Meanwhile…” She reached up and removed her own helmet. “I need to look the part, right? Gotta pack this away.”

Adora raised a hand. “What’s...going on?”

“They’re having a party,” said Bow. There was a pause. “They don’t even let you guys have parties?! I knew the Horde were bad guys, but this? This is unforgivable. Not even birthdays?”

“Almost nobody I know was actually born,” pointed out Adora.

“Right. Good point. Construction anniversaries. I don’t know. Something to celebrate.” Bow rubbed his forehead. “Never mind. It’s a thing where you do stuff and have fun.”

“We can’t stay long-” said Glimmer, and Bow did the thing with his eyes again. “Oh, come on Bow! Not the puppy-dog eyes - okay, okay, fine. We’ll stay for a little while, and then we’ll head to Brightmoon.” She disengaged her armour, which folded up into two tightly packed chunks with a clank. “Just keep her out of trouble, Bow. Oh, and we’ll need something to call you that’s not a serial number.”

“Go with Adora; that’s what my squad called me back in the Fright Zone.”

Bow nodded. “Weird name for the Horde, but it works. Welcome to being treated like a person, Adora.”

***

It was thirty minutes later.

“I didn’t know H - your, uh, design could eat,” said Glimmer, looking at Adora’s fourth plate of fruit.

“It’s for energy,” said Adora between bites. “Redundancy purposes. Need to be able to do without a charger for a while.” She took another large chunk out of an apple. “These are a lot better than ration bars, though.”

Bow smiled. “Setting low bars today, aren’t we?” Glimmer looked at him quizzically. “She met a horse.”

“So magnificent,” hissed Adora.

“Okay,” said Glimmer. “We’ve had our fun, we’ve introduced Adora to the concept of happiness, now we should probably say goodbye to Thaymor and head to-”

Adora didn’t so much stand up as go straight from sitting to fully vertical without passing through any intervening space. Fruit flew everywhere. “Thaymor? This is Thaymor?” She picked up Glimmer by the collar. “There’s not some giant fortress hidden just over that hill?” There was a momentary pause, and then she realised what she was doing and lowered Glimmer to the ground. “Sorry.”

“Adora,” said Bow, putting a hand on her shoulder. “What’s the big deal with Thaymor? It’s just a town.”

“It’s just a town that the Horde thinks is a major fortress!” Adora steadied herself. “The attack is probably on its way already. You need to get these people out of here. I’ll try and reason with them!”

She tossed the cloak aside and started running.

Glimmer looked at Bow. “You get the people out of here. I’m going to go and see what happens when reasoning with them doesn’t work.”

A giant smile split Bow’s face. “You’re going to rescue her.”

“Maybe,” said Glimmer grimly. “Or maybe I’m just going to hold them off for a bit while you get everyone to safety.” She pulled her armour components out of the sack she’d been carrying them in. “Either way, we need to save these people.”

Chapter Text

A vicious grin split Catra’s face as the tank company moved into formation, hulls glinting in the half-light. It was almost a pity Adora was going to miss this; all that training, all that work, and now she was too busy rambling in the woods or something on their first proper combat action.

Her comm crackled, and Weaver’s voice hissed, “Remember, if you see 4DR-4, your priority is to recover her. Thaymor will fall, regardless, but 4DR-4 must be recovered, at all costs.”

“Yeah, yeah. Bring back your favourite toy, got it,” said Catra flippantly. “Look, I’m getting messages on another channel, I’ll have to get back to you.”

“Don’t forget, CTR-4, a machine exists to serve-” Weaver’s voice dissolved in a buzz of static as Catra toggled over to the company-wide network.

“All units, move out! Thaymor’s not going to level itself.”

***

“Uh, Ca - Commander, we’re getting some worrying stuff on the long-distance.”

Catra bit back a curse and zeroed the comm to KYL-7’s channel. “It’s a small village, Kyle. They probably don’t even have weapons. What’s so scary about it?”

“They’re retreating, Commander.”

That was impossible. The Horde tanks had been using every concealment strategy known to science: they blended in well, they ran almost silently, and they had done most of the trip under cover of darkness. The only way they could know the Horde was almost upon them was…

“...if someone told them,” Catra muttered aloud.

“Commander?”

“They’ve been warned. Go loud, fire for effect. I’ll move up and take point.”

It might have just been a coincidence, that they’d get this warning immediately after Adora vanished. It might have been.

But Catra knew, somehow, that it wasn’t.

***

Catra cranked up the gain on the visuals to zoom in on the figure walking out of the village toward her. This time, she actually did curse. No helmet, and her armour was shedding paint, and - was that a flower? Really? - but it was definitely Adora, and she was definitely Not Pleased for some reason.

Catra brought the tank to a halt and popped the hatch.

“Hey, Adora!” she called, smirking. “Rough night?” Sure, she had to get Adora back to the Fright Zone, but there was plenty of time to rib her about this first.

“You need to call off the attack.”

Well, that just made no sense. “Why?”

“There’s no fortress,” said Adora, pointing behind her. “That’s a civilian settlement. It’s not even a big civilian settlement.”

“And that would change our orders...why?” said Catra, bluntly. “They say we attack, we attack. There’s no room for sudden identity crises. Now come on, get in. Weaver nearly had a system failure when you didn’t show up by dawn.” She chuckled. “Honestly, I wish you’d been that rebellious back when we were training; a few more malfunctions would probably do Weaver some good.”

Adora looked down. “I can’t let this happen, Catra.”

“What do you mean, you can’t ‘let it happen’?” spat Catra. “A machine exists to serve the Horde. You know it, I know it, even Kyle knows it, and Kyle barely knows anything. You don’t get to just decide not to.”

Adora’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re just going to do it? We’re supposed to be bringing order to the world, not destruction!”

"This is order. Now come on, get in." Catra's voice was a low, menacing hiss.

"No." There was a faint sound of metal against metal as Adora's fists clenched. "I'm not going to be a part of this. I can't let it happen."

Catra pinched the bridge of her nose and said, “Are you really this gullible? You’re throwing away everything for people who captured you. You’re abandoning the Horde.” Her voice shook, just a little. “You’re abandoning me.”

“You could come with me,” said Adora, and held out her hand. “There’s so much more out there than the Horde, so much more than being just a machine-”

Before Catra even knew what was happening, her shock prod was in hand, and Adora was lying in the dirt. From personal experience, Catra knew she’d be down for about twenty minutes, which should be more than enough time to grab some cable and solve matters.

“Sorry, Adora, but you did ask for it,” said Catra, turning back to the tank. “This is going to be uncomfortable for a while, and then Weaver will...I don’t know, debug you or something. Point is, it’s all going to be fine, this is just going to be a little glitch that we can all put behind us-”

There was a flash of purple light from behind her, and Catra turned on her heel to find nothing but scattered fragments of paint. Adora was gone.

***

Glimmer propped Adora up against the wall and pressed the sword into her hand. The building was on fire, but it would still provide at least a little bit of cover against the Horde tanks. “Okay, that was...bad. We can still salvage this, right? Right?” The blade slipped out of Adora’s grip, so Glimmer pressed it back in and held the fingers closed. “Can you hear me?”

Adora’s throat made a tiny electronic coughing sound. “Barely. Shock prod. Won’t be moving for a while.”

“Can you bring your, um, sword mode online?” hissed Glimmer. “It was able to break that cable, so…”

“I’ll...try…” Adora’s jaw was starting to move, but Glimmer was still having to hold her fingers together. “Execute...Grayskull!”

***

The tank to Catra’s left visibly jolted, and a web of lightning spread across its surface. Catra quickly scanned the area, and immediately identified the likely source: human, male, dark skin, armed with some kind of archaic ranged weapon. Presumably, the arrows were electrified; that would be inconvenient, but it’d be salvageable. She tracked her turret around, zeroing in on the target…

Her tank rocked, like it had been hit with something heavy, and the shot went wide. Cursing, she spun her scanner around, and her jaw dropped.

The tank on her right had been cut smoothly in half. The edge of the metal was almost perfectly straight.

After a moment, she found her voice. “All units, hostiles on the right!”

***

Glimmer popped out of a teleport in the middle of the town and asked, “Are you all right, Bow?”

“Running out of arrows. You?”

“Running out of magic.” She grimaced. “I should probably have given her the sword back in those ruins, huh?”

“Probably, yeah.” His eyes darted from the enemy to the space above her shoulder. “I notice you don’t have it now.”

“Better late than never?”

White light flared, and a Horde tank veered sideways, its turret hanging drunkenly to one side.

“Well,” said Bow, “hopefully running out of power won’t be too much of a problem.”

***

Catra was having trouble processing how quickly this had gone downhill. Only a few minutes ago, it had been almost insultingly easy: Thaymor had been undefended, Adora had been immobile at her feet, and everything was looking up. Now…

Well, she was down half an armoured company, for one thing. Seven tanks in various states of ruin. Her own was battered, and the turret weapon was too damaged to focus a shot; she’d tried, and it had come out more like a searchlight than a cannon blast. Multiple skiffs either crashed or cut clean in half.

As Catra watched, a light blazed on the battlefield, and a glowing figure - a robot of some kind, from its movements - strode into view. One of the remaining tanks fired a shot, and Catra couldn’t believe her optics: a slash from the glowing robot’s wrist-mounted blade swatted the tank’s blast right back at it, punching a significant hole in its turret. The tank barely had an opportunity to stabilise before the blinding figure strode up to it, slashed precisely through its grav systems, scooped it up, and threw it - threw it - at another tank.

Catra hadn’t entirely paid attention to the briefings, but she was pretty sure she’d remember if any of them had mentioned this was a risk. Also, there would probably have been more tanks if they’d known how quickly they’d run out.

She muttered the worst word she knew and flicked on the comm again. “All units, fall back! We don’t have the numbers to win this.”

***

After a couple of minutes without the sound of a cannon firing, Glimmer nudged Bow. “I think they’re retreating. Let’s head down, see if Adora’s-”

She stuck her head around the corner and let out a squeak of surprise as she came face-to-face with the radiant figure of She-Ra. After a moment, she managed to say, “Do...you know who we are?”

There was a pregnant pause, and then the warrior smiled. “Glimmer.” The light dissipated, and Adora stood before them. Her armour, now almost entirely stripped bare of paint, was dyed reddish-gold by the morning light, and she was leaning heavily on her sword. She wasn’t breathing, but Glimmer could easily tell that she would have been panting if she had. “I’m still...me, in that form. Just...stronger.”

Glimmer looked at the ground. “Adora, for what it’s worth...I’m sorry. I should have trusted you back in the ruins, given you the sword. If I had…”

“If you had,” said Adora, “then I would have had it on me when Catra hit me with the shock prod. She could well have taken it before you could pull me out, and we’d be surrounded by Horde tanks.” She paused, as something occurred to her. “I turned against them. We’re not supposed to be able to do that. What am I going to do-”

A shadow fell over them.

“Get away from my daughter, Horde scum,” snarled Queen Angella, her cultured accent entirely at odds with the viciousness of her tone. She descended like a comet, fists clenched. “Glimmer, stand back.”

Glimmer drew herself up to her full height. “She’s not Horde, and she’s not scum.” She locked eyes with her mother and snapped, “Her name is Adora, and I will thank you to use it.”

Even Adora could tell that the queen was taken aback by this. “What do you mean, ‘she’s not Horde’? Scratching the paint off her armour isn’t hiding anything, Glimmer! I can recognise a Horde machine when I see it!”

Glimmer took a deep breath. “‘Those who give of themselves to shield others are the pride of Brightmoon’. That’s the Brightmoon oath, isn’t it?” Angella opened her mouth, but Glimmer ploughed on. “That ‘Horde machine’ saved lives by warning us that a Horde attack was coming. She gave up everything she knew and picked a fight with a tank company to protect us.”

“And won,” said Bow.

“That too.” Glimmer raised a hand and pointed at Adora. “She’s known us only as enemies for her entire life, and she risked her life to protect us. She’s earned some respect!”

There was a momentary pause, and then Adora’s vision started to go grey. She sank to her knees, the sword toppling from her grip.

The voices of the others seemed to be coming from far away.

“Glimmer, we will talk about this-”

“SAVE IT! We need to get her to Brightmoon-”

Darkness rose.

***

Adora drifted in an endless black void, the darkness pressing in on her from all sides. Voices whispered to her: Catra’s was the loudest, but she could hear Weaver, Lonnie, even Kyle. All saying the same thing.

A machine exists to serve the Horde.

It was what she’d been taught every day for as long as she’d been online. The entire structure of the Horde was built on that assumption of loyalty, that acceptance of hierarchy: Hordak at the top, then Weaver, then the human technicians, then Force Captains and other officers, then the Patrollers at the bottom. There had never been a defector.

A machine exists to serve the Horde .

A small voice inside her whispered, they lied to you about the Horde’s purpose. About the armbands. About Thaymor. What else did they lie about?

“Can you hear me? Adora?”

The darkness cleared, and Adora realised that she was lying on a repair bench in a room she didn’t recognise. Nor, she found, were her arms and legs responding, and the only person she could detect was the queen. This could be problematic. She blinked; it seemed to be the main function she currently had.

“The weapon you were holding when you collapsed is called the Sword of Protection,” said the queen, her voice level. “It’s a legendary First One artefact, supposedly the weapon of a hero known as She-Ra.” Adora assumed she’d made some sort of facial expression, because the queen smiled. “Yes, Glimmer told me about you turning into She-Ra. It was said she would return to restore balance to the world...and it seems that she chose a Horde robot as her vessel.”

Adora blinked again, and the queen looked concerned. “Did I...ah, yes. I apologise.” She shifted a control, and feeling returned to Adora’s limbs. “Some of your systems were shorting out; Reccula had to paralyse you to make sure the repairs went well. How are you feeling?”

“Fully charged,” said Adora, studying her hand to make sure her fingers were still operating properly. “If you’ll excuse me, um, your majesty, you seem…”

“Calmer?” Angella’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I still don’t like you or trust you. The Horde has done nothing but cause harm. Everyone in Brightmoon has suffered by their hands - including me. I would like nothing more than to smelt you down for spare parts.”

“Then why did you repair me?”

“Because you saved my daughter’s life.” Angella suddenly looked very tired. “I don’t like you, or trust you...but Glimmer is right. ‘Those who give of themselves to shield others are the pride of Brightmoon’. I have to give you a chance.”

Adora became suddenly, horribly aware that she was expected to say something here. “Thank you, your Majesty-”

“Don’t thank me yet,” said Angella bluntly. “I’m not offering you a favour; I’m setting you a challenge. Protect my daughter. Prove you’re worthy to bear your sword. Earn my trust.” She picked up the Sword and offered the hilt to Adora. “Do you swear to serve the Rebellion, Adora of the Fright Zone?”

“I swear,” breathed Adora, reaching out to take the hilt.

“Then rise.” Angella let go of the sword. “You’ll report to Glimmer; she’ll help you look the part of a Rebellion soldier. Do not let me down.”

“Uh…I have one question, your majesty.”

“Out with it,” snapped Angella.

“What does ‘daughter’ mean?”

***

“She really said she was giving you a chance?” said Glimmer.

Adora nodded. “She told me my objective was to protect you and serve the Rebellion...and that if anything did happen to you, she’d rip open the world to make sure I paid for it.”

Bow thought for a moment. “She probably would.” He grinned. “Still, a promising start! Welcome to the Best Friends Squad!”

“Nobody’s ever going to call us that,” muttered Glimmer.

Bow paid no attention. “Tomorrow,” he said, climbing up onto the table to pose dramatically, “the Best Friends Squad is going to change the world!”

“So long as we do it from here.” Glimmer gestured to the door. “I’m still grounded.”

“Next week, the Best Friends Squad is going to change the world!”

Adora sat back and thought. Friends. Honestly, it did seem to fit.

Two days ago, she’d known what was happening. She had a clear role, a task to accomplish, a reason for it. She’d had Catra, Lonnie, Rogelio (as far as she could tell, he wasn’t much of a talker) and Kyle as friends. Now, she was off the map. She’d joined a faction that viewed her as an object of fear, been given a task she barely understood, made some friends that she still barely knew, and stumbled on a First One mystery she didn’t know the first thing about solving.

It was terrifying.

It was exhilarating.

Idly, she wondered what was happening to Catra.

***

“You failed,” hissed Weaver, shadows pouring from her armour. “Your mission was to recover 4DR-4, and instead you return without 4DR-4 and with your forces in tatters. Not an auspicious beginning, CTR-4.”

Catra shrugged. She’d always believed that the best defence was a good offence, and she had plenty of offence ready to go. “The mission was a failure because the intel was wrong. Nobody mentioned the Rebellion had access to that kind of power. One unit - one unit - tore through the company.”

Weaver’s eyes narrowed behind her mask. “Describe the unit.”

“Glowing white. Right hand was a blade of some description. It could shoot energy, and it was stronger than any human-scale model I’ve ever seen.” Catra shrugged. “I didn’t get a good look at it; the carnage got in the way.”

“You are impertinent, CTR-4, but at least you are not entirely useless.” Weaver pressed some controls on the desk. “I’ll want to speak to any remaining Patrollers who were closer to the unit than you were. Perhaps they can provide better intel.”

Catra couldn’t help but roll her eyes. The only difference between this and every other lecture she’d had from Weaver was that Adora wasn’t here to get all the praise, so Weaver wasn’t even bothering to provide any. She couldn’t even remember the last time Weaver had actually praised a job she’d done.

Wait.

It wasn’t a memory. It was more like the ghost of a memory. A debriefing without Adora. Weaver actually saying something positive. To her. But when? This was the longest she’d been away from Adora in years of training. When could it have been...

“Is there more you require, CTR-4?” said Weaver, in a voice like ice.

“Um. No. I’ll just…”

Catra fled.

It was just Adora being gone. The sudden change was messing with her head. That was it.

That had to be it...

Chapter Text

“Eternia!”

The triangular door slid out of the way, and Glimmer suppressed a shiver. The last time they’d been here, they’d gotten into serious trouble, and it had been her own stupid paranoid fault.

Well, she wasn’t making that mistake again. Adora had the sword, both she and Adora had a full charge, Bow had as many arrows as he could carry, and Brightmoon knew exactly where they were.

Adora lifted up the oversized helmet. To provide some measure of cover, Glimmer had constructed a variation on the Brightmoon guards’ uniforms to hang over Adora’s armour. It was entirely too large, but at the very least it covered up all of the raised plates shaped like Horde insignia. At some point they were going to need to do something about those.

She put a hand on Adora’s shoulder. She would have given it a comforting squeeze, but the shoulder armour meant Adora probably wouldn’t have noticed. “Are you ready for this?”

“I think so.” Adora hefted the sword and concentrated for a moment. “Execute: Grayskull!”

***

“Administrator detected. State your query.”

Bow punched the air as Adora - She-Ra - stepped forward. “Query: All data on She-Ra.”

“Database corrupted,” said the voice, in a pleasantly neutral tone that Glimmer could only parse as subtle mockery. “State alternative query.”

“Query: database repair.”

“Database corrupted. State alternative query.”

The past week had been something of a masterclass for Glimmer in robot emotion. So far, she’d learned that while Adora was pretty expressive in broad terms, particularly when she was trying not to be, she didn’t get the little tells a human might, so she and Bow had found themselves actually teaching her a few to help her blend in. The synthetic muscle twitching in Adora’s jaw right now had taken the trio most of a day to work out. Time well spent, apparently.

“Query: database location.” There was a momentary pause, and a door hissed open. Adora gave a victorious smirk; that one apparently came as standard. “There, we’re making progress.”

Bow coughed. “Do you actually know how to fix a corrupted First One database?”

***

“It turns out,” said Adora, back in her normal form, “that no, I do not know how to fix a corrupted First One database.” Something made a grinding noise behind her. “At all.”

Glimmer waved a hand at the intricate script carved into the walls around them and said, “Nothing helpful on the walls?”

“Nothing,” Adora replied, shrugging. “I did find a map of the complex, at least. There’s some storage deeper into the complex; we might be able to find some salvageable technology there.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” This was from Bow. “If all the stuff out here is useless, what are the odds that anything deeper in is going to be useful? I say we cut our losses, find a First One specialist, and try again some other time.”

Glimmer realised that both of them were looking at her. Time to be decisive and leaderly. “We press on. I’d rather not return empty-handed.”

***

Adora put a hand to the door. “There should be a control around here somewhere…”

The floor moved.

***

“Glimmer?”

The Princess of Brightmoon rubbed her head and sat up. Summoning up the eloquence inculcated in her by years of tutoring, she managed a groan of pain. “What happened?”

“The floor gave way,” said Bow from the darkness around them. “I don’t know where Adora is; I don’t think she fell down the same hole as us.”

Glimmer snapped her fingers, and a shimmering ball of pink light popped into existence just above her hand. “We should probably go looking, then. I’m not leaving her alone down here.”

“Me neither,” said Bow, squinting into the darkness. “I think there’s an open door over there.”

The open door led to a short corridor, at the end of which…

“Adora!” Glimmer shouted. “Adora, over here!”

Adora didn’t respond, so Glimmer raced over. “Adora, are you all right-”

Her hand passed through Adora’s shoulder as if there was nothing there. As the light grew, she saw that her friend was wearing Horde colours again...and the room was beginning to look strange. Instead of First One architecture and technology, the room was a sickly green, covered in sheets of crudely worked metal.

“The Fright Zone.” Bow’s voice was hushed. “This must be a hologram.”

Glimmer rubbed her chin and said, “One of her memories, perhaps...”

More figures were beginning to form in the room. Glimmer vaguely recognised one as the Horde tank pilot who’d stunned Adora back at Thaymor. The others...she took a moment to study the others. One was a powerfully built android carrying her helmet under her arm; her synthetic hair had been styled into dreadlocks. Another was small and appeared worried, his eyes wide and panicky underneath his helmet. As for the third, well, the third was scary; a towering, reptilian mass of metal. Unlike the other robots present, no effort had been spent on making this one appear even slightly organic.

“We should probably move along,” said Bow, and Glimmer flinched. “It’d be an invasion of her privacy to read through her diary; watching her memories is probably at least an order of magnitude worse.”

Reluctantly, Glimmer murmured, “Yeah, you’re right.” She turned from the holograms and headed back toward the door-

-which wasn’t there. A wall of Fright Zone metal loomed in her way, and when she pressed a hand against it, it felt solid.

“This could be a problem.”

***

Meanwhile, in another room, Adora studied a knot of wires with a burning intensity. She was humming softly under her breath. Slowly, patiently, she raised her sword and prodded it.

Nothing happened.

She bit back a curse word; one that she’d learned from Catra. She’d never exactly been a technical genius, but it would have been nice to have something work.

She looked up, and a door slid open. Okay. That was progress. Hopefully there would be some kind of turn soon, and she could get back to Bow and Glimmer.

***

“Can’t you teleport past?” said Bow, rapping his knuckles on the wall. “I mean, you got us out of here before.”

“Correction: I nearly got us killed getting out of here before.” Sparks flew as Glimmer punched the wall, to no effect. “I can’t go somewhere else in here, because I can’t tell where the edges are, and I really don’t want to find myself embedded in a wall somewhere. I can probably take us out of the building entirely, but I don’t know if we can get back in, and I don’t want to leave Adora behind.”

“Which leaves us stuck invading our friend’s privacy,” said Bow bluntly.

“We’ll do something really nice for her when we get out of here.” Glimmer pointed to one side. “Come on. Let’s see if there’s an opening on one of the other walls.”

Behind them, the play continued.

***

“Catra?”

Catra stopped humming and fixed Lonnie with a look of outright malevolence. “Go away, Lonnie.”

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you need to stop making that noise. Rogelio’s trying to get Kyle up to speed on his training, and you’re distracting them.”

A hand fell on Lonnie’s shoulder, and Adora said from behind her, “Hey, Lonnie, let me have a word with her.”

This earned a shrug. “Sure, whatever.” Lonnie’s voice was like ice. “I was just leaving anyway.”

As Lonnie stomped off, Adora reached out to touch Catra’s shoulder, only for Catra to shift away.

“Come on, Catra. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

Catra stared fixedly ahead at nothing, her lips drawn back in a sneer. “They all hate me.”

“I don’t think she hates you,” said Adora, in an entirely mistimed attempt to be reasonable. “Lonnie’s just-”

“No, you’re right.” Catra’s fangs glinted in the light. “It’s not hatred, it’s envy. The freak gets to train with Weaver, while Lonnie has to sweat it out teaching Kyle to operate basic equipment.“

“You hate Weaver.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t get anything out of it.”

“Come on, Catra.” Adora held out a hand, and after a moment, Catra took it. “Let’s find somewhere you don’t have to worry about Lonnie or Weaver. Maybe up on the roof, I know you like the view. And then you can teach me that tune.”

Glimmer watched as the two figures dissolved into motes of light. A catch in her voice, she managed, “They’re just...kids.”

There was a crash, and she spun around to find that Bow had fallen in a heap; he’d been leaning against a wall that did not, technically speaking, exist. As he picked himself up, he asked, “What were you expecting? We know they don’t pop into existence fully formed and ready to kill.”

“I know, but this…” Sparks flew from Glimmer’s hand as she closed her fist. “These are children. They could be anything...and the Horde makes them into monsters.”

“Come on.” Bow tugged on Glimmer’s non-energised arm. “I think I heard a door opening. Let’s get out of here.”

***

Adora stepped out of the corridor and came to a sudden halt. This didn’t make any sense. She should be coming to another power junction, not…

Not standing beneath the open sky.

Bat-wing banners flapped in the wind, and the ground shook to the rhythmic footsteps of masked, skeletal robots, their exoskeletons painted an uncomfortably familiar grey-green. Something deep in Adora’s core recoiled at the sight. These weren’t just faceless killing machines; these were her ancestors. She had more in common with these engines of war than she did with Bow or Glimmer.

Her sword passed through one of the robots like it simply wasn’t there, and Adora blinked in surprise. She hadn’t even realised she had begun the attack until it had failed. Fear, rage and disgust roiled within her, and she actually felt her nerve break.

She fled past a cragged shape formed from purple-black crystal, so desperate to escape that it would be some time before she realised what it was.

***

Bow tapped on the holographic wall and scowled. “Looks like we’re stuck in here again,” he said, shaking his head. “This place has to have some other purpose than just throwing Adora’s memories at us.”

“I don’t think this is throwing Adora’s memories at us, exactly.” Glimmer’s voice was slow, thoughtful, like she was chewing on the implications of something. “For one thing...I don’t think she’d remember being built.”

Bow turned on the spot, and was greeted by the sight of a tall, armoured figure, wrist deep in the mechanical guts of a Horde robot. The synthetic skin and hair had been applied to her face, so yes, that was definitely Adora - but from the looks of it, most of the systems that she’d actually need to run were yet to be added.

The armoured figure looked straight at Bow, and while he knew it couldn’t see him, his skin crawled at the sight of those eyes. They were blank, pitiless, the least human thing in a room containing one - no, actually, containing two Horde robots; behind the figure was another robot, its eyes lifeless and staring.

Bow realised that he was standing in front of a viewscreen, which had just come online. He stepped aside before he realised how little that would actually do.

“Weaver.” The voice coming from the screen was deep, layered with a mechanical resonance. The face was shadowed, but Bow could make out two glowing red eyes: one organically curved, the other a harsh, unyielding diamond. “Your experiment is a failure.”

“On the contrary, Lord Hordak,” said the armoured figure, her voice a mocking contralto. “The experiment succeeded: the First One technology integrated successfully. The problem was the original programming. There was simply too much of it, and it interacted…” She chuckled, a sound completely without humour. “...Unpredictably...with the other systems.” She reached into the chest of the robot that wasn’t Adora and drew out a power core. Bow flinched at the sight; the core appeared to be a layer of Horde tech crudely stapled to a First One design, and did not look even the slightest bit safe. “Fortunately, I believe we can integrate the technology more effectively. The Whispering Woods will no longer protect our enemies.”

There was a long pause, and then a harsh grinding wheeze issued from the screen. Bow realised, with some shock, that it was a sigh. “Very well, Weaver. One more attempt. But if this fails, you will face the consequences.”

“Understood, my lord.” The screen dimmed, and as Weaver placed the power core inside Adora’s chest, the holograms began to fade.

***

Adora ran through the holograms, barely able to process what was going on. Everywhere, a new horror: armies on the march, pollution pouring from factories, settlements ablaze, war and death and mayhem and carnage, a First One obelisk or ruin looming over each fresh atrocity.

She emerged into a darkened space and collapsed, her legs somehow no longer able to hold her up. The whirlwind raging inside her demanded some kind of release, any kind, and her fist struck the ground - again - again.

“Shhh,” came a voice from behind her, one she didn’t recognise. “It’s all right, dearie. Just let it out.”

Shaking with emotion, Adora forced herself to her feet.

The source of the voice was, to all appearances, an old woman, her skin a dull pink, leaning on a broom like it was a traveller’s staff. White butterflies floated around her, blending in with her uncontrollable white hair.

Adora simply stood there, waiting for something to make sense. It felt like every output from her brain was buffering at once.

“Don’t worry, Mara,” said the apparition, and patted her shoulder tenderly. “Greed becomes cruelty, cruelty destruction. It has happened before; it will happen again.”

Adora managed a few bewildered noises.

“You should probably keep going, dearie.” The apparition winked behind its enormous goggles. “You’ve nearly reached your friend. Or did you find him a little while ago?” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Nearly reached, it must be.” She began to walk off, fading into the darkness.

Adora found her voice again. “Wait! How did you get in here?”

“Razz walked, dearie. Same as you.” 

She disappeared around a corner, and Adora raced after her, stumbling as her legs struggled to adjust...but the old woman had vanished.

***

Glimmer looked away as the Horde robot sank to her knees, mismatched eyes wide with pain and fear.

Bow drew her into a hug. “It’s OK, Glimmer. It’s just a hologram.”

“No.” Glimmer’s voice was bleak. “It really happened. This is how it went.”

“I know. But we can’t do anything about it now.” His jaw clenched. “Someday, we’ll break open the Fright Zone and this won’t happen again. But for now…”

A sad smile spread across Glimmer’s face, and she said, “Yeah, I know. For now, we just need to focus on getting out of here.”

The holographic figure of Weaver loomed out of the doorway. “I have told you before, CTR-4, your clumsy attempts at sabotage will not be tolerated.”

“She didn’t do anything-” came a familiar voice from out of the darkness.

“Silence, 4DR-4.” Weaver’s voice was a venomous hiss. “Your willingness to protect others is admirable,” she said, in a voice like she was reading it off cue cards, “but CTR-4 knew how important this exercise was...and still failed to attend.” The mask shifted from side to side, and after a moment, Glimmer realised Weaver was shaking her head. “Lord Hordak grows weary of her inefficiency-”

CTR-4 collapsed, and after a split second, Weaver doubled over, her hands stretched out like talons.

“Begone!” snarled Weaver, and after a moment’s horrified pause, the young Adora scooped up her friend and fled.

***

Adora stepped through the next doorway and found herself at the top of Brightmoon. The sky was dyed red by the dawn, and she could see for miles. Far, far below, she could recognise Thaymor. It was intact, so presumably this was another hologram.

She sensed movement behind her, and turned to see Queen Angella standing at the railing, her eyes seemingly fixed on the horizon. A guard had just emerged from the staircase.

“Your majesty, the Princess is awake. What should we tell her?”

Angella was silent for a long time, and it was only the movement of fabric, blowing in the morning wind, that told Adora the recording hadn’t simply frozen. Then the Queen spoke, and Adora flinched. During her few interactions with Angella, the Queen of Brightmoon had maintained rigid control over her emotions. Indeed, Bow had remarked on the irony that Angella, a being of immortal flesh and blood, could seem more robotic than an actual robot. But this Angella...her voice was raw and ragged, pain dripping from every syllable.

“I’ll come down. She should hear this from me.” She dabbed at her face with a piece of fabric, and Adora realised the queen was wiping away tears. “I knew this day would come, I just...hoped it would not come so soon.” A deep breath, and Angella’s mask was back on: compassionate, but stern. “All right. Let’s head down.”

The hologram faded from view, leaving Adora staring. She knew something huge had just happened - the weight in her chest was testament to that - but she also knew she had absolutely no chance of understanding what, at least not yet.

As the illusory horizon faded, it revealed a shape in the corner of the room, stock-still and lifeless. Dim light gleamed off its flanks, and Adora’s eyes traced its outline. That head, those lines - it put her in mind of the majestic creatures she had seen in Thaymor. “Horses”, Bow had called them. She reached out and laid a hand on its nose, which was made of some strange metal, so pale it was almost white.

Two lights burst into life on its face, and Adora jolted back as the shape began to move. The dust of centuries poured off its withers, and a golden aura began to suffuse its outline. Wings of shimmering white metal rose on either side of its body, and a mane and tail of glittering cables flicked as it tested its joints. Then its eyes locked onto Adora’s, and the ancient machine spoke.

“Oh, hi!”

A stammered greeting escaped Adora’s lips as the mechanical horse stretched.

“Name’s Swift Wind,” it continued in an almost conversational tone. “Heroic deeds done, great battles won, dramatic entrances a speciality. You must be She-Ra.” Somehow, its - his - brow furrowed. “I’m sure I remember you differently, but...ah, I’ll figure it out.” Swift Wind struck a dramatic pose. “Shall we go and do something impressive? It’s been, y’know, a while since I last did a heroism and I wouldn’t want to get out of practice.”

Adora thought for a moment. “Do you know how to get through the complex? Some of my friends came in here with me, and we got separated.”

“Like the back of my, uh, hoof, Lady She-Ra!” Some part of Adora began to wonder if the horse had a volume control somewhere. “Let us recover your noble companions!”

***

The door hissed open, and Bow and Glimmer’s jaws dropped in unison. Adora was there, standing in front of some kind of gleaming mechanical horse.

Bow was the first to move, Glimmer only a second behind. Within moments, Adora was cocooned in possibly the world’s biggest hug.

“Guys.” Adora’s voice cracked. “Guys, please. I don’t...I don’t know how you can bring yourself to do this. I’m Horde. I was built to hurt people. I saw the war. The destruction.” Her tone was bleak, almost hollow. “I don’t…I...”

“Don’t be stupid, Adora,” said Glimmer. “You’re not Horde. Just because they built you doesn’t mean they own you.” She tightened her embrace, possibly a mistake since Adora’s chassis was still pretty tough. “We saw you fight off a tank company to defend a small town, remember. You’re our friend. That’s all we need to know.”

Somehow, Bow nudged her without breaking the hug.

“Oh. Right.” Glimmer’s eyes flicked downward. “We do owe you an apology, though. This place...some of the holograms it showed us were...well, we think they might have been your memories.” Adora registered a droplet of water on her armour; after a second, she realised it was a tear. “We only saw a couple, but we saw...enough.” More tears. “We saw them building you. You and your…” Glimmer waved a hand. “Your friend, the one who stunned you at Thaymor, growing up.” Her voice was hard as she added, “The Horde is going to pay for how it raises its people. Including its robots.”

Adora’s brow wrinkled; another reflex they’d had to teach her. “Wait. If you were getting my memories...then what was I getting? I saw the Horde on the march, the top of Brightmoon…” Her eyes widened. “And a lot of First One ruins. Runestones are First One artefacts, right?”

“Huh. So that would imply this place is recording...everything near a First One artefact, including runestones. That’s…” Bow thought for a moment. “That’s actually really scary.”

“If it only records near First One technology, how was it getting my past?” said Adora. “The Fright Zone doesn’t hold much First One technology…”

“Oh, right.” Bow took a deep breath. “Glimmer mentioned we saw you under construction? Well…”

***

Reccula, Brightmoon’s chief roboticist, was a small, fussy person in a bulky grey robe, with a shock of dark red hair. They - Glimmer had specifically cautioned Adora about that - looked at Adora over half-moon spectacles and said, “Yes, your power core is a First One design. Didn’t you know?”

Adora shook her head.

“Ah. Nothing says ‘the Horde’ like incomplete information. Well.” Reccula adjusted their coat and continued, “It’s a strong power supply, although when it’s drained, it can take a while to spin up again. Still, it does spin up again, while standard Dryl or Horde tech essentially runs on batteries. It’s probably the only reason your, um, trick with the sword, the one Glimmer and Bow talked about, works at all.”

Adora thought for a moment. “Is there any way to make sure it isn’t transmitting any information? I have some...suspicions...that First One technology isn’t entirely secure.”

A thoughtful expression crossed Reccula’s face, and they smiled. “Theoretically, but I’m not an expert. You might want to schedule a trip to Dryl sometime soon - Princess Entrapta is a genius at this stuff, and if anyone can figure it out, she can.”

There was a flash of purple, and Glimmer materialised. “Sorry, Reccula, but we’re going to need to cut this short. Thanks for your time!” She turned to Adora. “We’re going to need to get going quickly - we just got word that the Horde is attacking the Spire of the Winds. It’s the only remaining member of the Princess Alliance after Brightmoon, and your horse is probably the fastest way for us to get there.”

“So we’re going on a mission?”

“Yeah.” Mischief glittered in the Princess of Brightmoon’s eyes. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Adora, a grim smile plastered across her face. “Yes, I’m ready.”

Chapter Text

Metal hit metal as Netossa landed on the Horde tank. Her knee twinged for a second, and she grunted, more out of irritation than pain. An airy flick of her hand wrapped three of the Horde troops in a net; another two were snared by her next toss.

Burning hot light filled the air as drones responded to the intrusion, and Netossa dived behind the tank, a smirk dancing on her face as the drones’ fire bored into its hull. The Horde was so quick to assume superior numbers were always an advantage, and so slow to learn their lesson when they weren’t.

She kicked off the tank, landing with a combat roll that put her behind a conveniently placed wall on the outskirts of the Spire. The sound of panic behind her was music to her ears.

The discharge of weapons echoed, and Netossa spun around to see a squad of Horde soldiers advancing on her, their boots crunching in the sand. These five wouldn’t, themselves, be a problem, but she only had so much power, and she couldn’t be bothered wasting it on them.

Instead, she drew her own weapon - a triple-bladed throwing knife - and hurled it at the enemy. Sparks flew as the spinning blade tore into the first Horde soldier, carving through armour and circuitry with equal glee. As the others flinched, surprised by the sudden carnage, Netossa leaped at them. She plucked the blade out of the air - it knew its owner - and slashed it across another’s leg; the soldier collapsed as their knee gave way.

The wall exploded, and the air filled with fire as the drones continued their advance.

“That’ll teach me to get overconfident,” muttered Netossa, firing a ribbon of energy from her wrist. It hooked around one of the sleek, silvery gargoyles that adorned the Spire, and began to retract, whipping her out of the line of fire. Another surge of power, and two of the Horde drones were down, crushed in the merciless grip of the nets.

Shots rang out, and Netossa flinched, before she realised they weren’t aiming at her. They were aiming high-

The gargoyle dissolved into a spray of metallic dust, and Netossa’s stomach dropped, moments before the rest of her. She managed to dig the razor star into the wall, slowing - but not stopping - her descent, and landed with rather less grace than she’d hoped.

She looked up to see a Horde stun prod pointed directly at her face.

“You are now under arrest-”

Netossa burst out laughing, and the soldier stepped backwards, a reflex that probably wasn’t going to save them. “Under arrest? You really thought I came out here alone?”

A single, frozen moment passed, and a raging whirlwind fell out of the sky. The winds hit like a hammer, hurling the Horde forces into disarray. Metal cracked as drones slammed into each other, and soldiers scattered and fled rather than face the unchained sky.

The figure at the heart of the storm spoke in a voice like thunder.

“Step away from my wife.”

***

Glimmer reached up to disconnect her cape as Swift Wind plunged into the tempest. She hated to lose it, but this was not a good time for a cape, no matter how cool and dramatic it looked in the wind; the storm was simply too intense.

“So much for Plan A,” said Bow. His voice was raised, they had a comm net up, and even so, the wind snatched at his words. “Strafing the Horde isn’t going to work when I can’t aim!”

Adora tapped Swift Wind on the haunch, her ill-fitting Brightmoon guard uniform clearly hindering her movements. “We need to go lower! Get under the whirlwind!”

The steed’s wings shifted, and he entered into a meteoric dive, the metal of his back vibrating even more intensely than usual. The wind became even more intense, and Glimmer began to worry about losing her grip…

And then they were through the wind, and a Horde patrol was spread out before them, the turret on their tank frantically trying to aim at the Rebellion’s descending blade.

It didn’t help them.

***

“It’s nothing serious, my love, I can walk fine.” Netossa’s ankle, always an expert at undercutting her, released a little spray of sparks out to one side. She fixed it with an expression of mock disgust. “You stay out of this.”

“You know that you’re supposed to be more careful with your cybernetics, darling,” said Spinnerella, adjusting her arms so she could carry Netossa more comfortably. “We don’t know when we’ll be getting replacements, after all, and they can be so difficult to repair.” A note of amusement crept into her voice as she added, “Besides, you can always just ask for a flight; you don’t need to get hurt first.”

“I’m not hurt.” More sparks; Netossa began to wonder if the ankle was doing it deliberately. “This is basically just clothing damage. Not too different from that time in the Kingdom of Snows, right?”

“I’m still not convinced that we needed to be that close to each other throughout the whole trip to keep warm enough.” A grin flashed across Spinnerella’s features. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Spinnerella landed on the platform, and Netossa gingerly stepped down to the metal surface. Yes, her right ankle was definitely not going to support her weight. She was going to have to be a bit careful…

There was a whooshing sound behind her, and she spun on her intact left ankle, energy charging-

Bow waved awkwardly from the back of the mechanical horse that was floating in midair.

This was going to be interesting to explain to the guards.

***

“Now that we’ve gotten in out of the wind,” said Bow, hanging his weapon on a hook in the cloakroom, “Adora, allow me to introduce Spinnerella, she controls air, and Netossa, who, uh…”

“Darling, you remember Bow, right? The young man who fights with...I want to say a slingshot?” fired back Netossa, her tone artificially light and friendly. She was leaning against the wall, clearly favouring one side.

Bow looked very unhappy for two seconds, and then laughed sheepishly. “I deserved that, didn’t I?”

“You forgot that Netossa tosses nets,” Glimmer told him, “and it’s not even the first time you’ve done that. You probably deserved worse.”

“Yeah, I’m really sorry.” He smiled awkwardly. “After last time, I owe you a lune, don’t I?” He pulled a silver coin out of his pocket and gently lobbed it to Netossa, who plucked it out of the air.

***

As they proceeded into the Spire, Adora pulled Glimmer aside. “Are you sure these are the real Netossa and Spinnerella?”

Glimmer didn’t even need to speak. Her expression of utter confusion said it all.

Adora’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “In the Horde, they told us to look for inconsistencies - any error could reveal a spy. Both of them are wearing uniforms, except for one thing. The necklaces. ‘Spinnerella’ looks like she’s wearing ‘Netossa’s’, and vice versa.” 

Oh, that. Glimmer sighed in relief and told Adora, “No, that’s the real them. I’ve met them before. They just like to wear each other’s necklaces because they’re an item.” Now it was Adora’s turn to look perplexed. “They’re married.” Still nothing. “They’re in a relationship.”

“Ah, like Rogelio and Kyle,” said Adora, in a tone like the lune just dropped.

“I don’t know who those are, but let’s go with yes.”

“Hey Glimmer!” called Netossa from somewhere up ahead. “You coming?”

Glimmer took a deep breath. “Be right there! Adora just took a wrong turn, that’s all!” She grabbed Adora’s wrist, and energy flickered as she teleported.

***

Spinnerella touched some controls, and the table hummed to life. Tiles on the surface shifted colour until a map of Etheria took shape. She reached out and tapped a specific tile, and it zoomed in until the table showed a hologram of the Spire of the Winds, surrounded by grey-green shapes marked with Horde insignia.

“This siege has been going on for about a week,” said Netossa, rolling around the table. Rather than continue limping, she’d disconnected her prostheses and opted for a wheelchair instead. “It’s been pretty predictable so far: the Horde commander calls up, tells us to surrender, we don’t, she sends a few squads and tanks, my beloved wife and I thrash them until they run away, and then she blankets the castle in a hurricane overnight so they can’t really do much. Then we do it again the next day. But we saw some transports coming in, full of big old containers, and we’re not sure what’s in there.”

Bow looked up. “Adora, you’re our expert on Horde tech. Any ideas?”

Adora studied the map intently, and asked, “Have all the transports been arriving in one location, or multiple?”
Spinnerella and Netossa looked at each other. “Multiple,” said Spinnerella, and tiny spikes of wind stabbed at the map, marking three points. “Whatever they’re working on, it’s going to surround us.”

Adora rubbed her chin. The points were more or less equally distant, and the three of them surrounded the Spire. “The Spire of the Winds is a valuable strategic location, given its proximity to Sea Gate. W- they probably aren’t building artillery, and in any case it’d take a lot of work to storm-safe them.” She looked at Spinnerella and said, “Whatever it is, it’s going to need all three to work - if the Horde could get away with one, they’d only use one, and throw everything into defending it. Pick one, take it down.”

A pink light flared as Glimmer indicated one of the three targets. “If we attack this one in the morning, we’ll be coming out of the sunrise. That should add some confusion, might give us an edge.

Spinnerella nodded. “It could work. Okay, we’ll kick off in the morning - we need to rest anyway.” She stood up. “Adora, could I have a private word with you? Just get to know you a little better before the battle?”

Glimmer gave a subtle ‘go on’ motion, so Adora said, “All right.”

Netossa nodded. “Can I borrow you for a sec, Glimmer?” Without waiting for a yes, she turned the wheelchair to point her at Bow. “You’re good with tech, right? Would you mind doing some quick repair work on my legs?” Mischief glittered in her eyes. “I’ll give you a shiny silver lune for it.”

Glimmer stifled a laugh.

***

“So,” said Spinnerella conversationally, “how does a Horde robot end up escorting the Princess of Brightmoon on a mission like this?”

Adora froze.

Spinnerella patted her gently on the shoulder. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to attack you or anything. But I can hear your joints when they move, the sensors picked you up as a robot, and Glimmer said you were an expert on the Horde. It adds up.”

Adora’s shoulders slumped. “I was built and trained by the Horde to test some kind of First One tech integration, and Glimmer and Bow captured me and showed me what the Horde actually did. I won’t go back.”

After a moment, Spinnerella nodded slowly and said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know how to talk about it,” Adora muttered. “I can tell that Brightmoon is better, but…”

“But you still miss it,” finished Spinnerella.

“Some of it.” Adora wasn’t even sure why she was talking about this, but it felt good. “I miss Rogelio and Kyle trying to hide from the sensors for some alone time. I miss sparring with Lonnie; I miss just...spending time with Catra.” She sighed. “I used to know what I was, and what I was supposed to be doing. Now I’m just…”

“Lost.”

“Not exactly. I know that I’m supposed to save Etheria. I know that I want to stop the Horde.” Adora’s fists twitched, and she continued,  “I just don’t know how to do either of those.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” said Spinnerella warmly. “If this thing’s going to be won, it’s going to be people like you, Bow and Glimmer who win it.”

***

“So.” Glimmer fried in Netossa’s stare for a moment. “Your new friend. Talk.”

“Uh, what do you want to-”

“Glimmer, I’ve known you since your naming ceremony. It’s been just you and Bow for years. Now, out of nowhere, there’s a third member of the squad, and she whirs when she walks.” She arched an eyebrow at Glimmer. “Tell the truth: you went and robbed a Horde robot factory, right?”

“Not quite,” Glimmer said with a smile. “Technically, she came to us.”

“And Angella is on board with this because…”

“Because Adora picked a fight with a Horde tank company and won.”

Laughing, Netossa said, “I like her already.” Her expression turned serious. “And are you two-”

Glimmer held up her hands. “Just friends. I’ve known her two weeks, Netossa. Stop pushing.”

“All right, all right. Just...I was about your age when I met Spinny, so…”

“I don’t need more people treating me like a younger version of them,” snapped Glimmer. After a moment, she breathed out, the air taking the anger with it. “Sorry. It’s just…”

“Dealing with Angella, I know. She could be a bit overbearing back in the day, too.” A grin flickered across Netossa’s face. “Shall we go and see if Bow’s finished with my feet yet? There’s only so much sitting I can take.”

***

“So...is everything going okay down here?” said Bow, sticking his head into the stables. The Spire was an old building; a lot of its more outdated rooms were still present, even if they’d been repurposed...such as, as in this case, as robot horse storage.

There was a low, thrumming noise, and Swift Wind said, “Yeah, everything’s fine. I don’t think I’ve had apples in...a thousand years, give or take!” Energy lanced out, and another apple disintegrated.

“Can you actually taste them when you’re absorbing them like that?” asked Bow, his eyes wide.

“Absolutely. Don’t ask me how, though.”

***

It was shortly before dawn, and the Best Friends Squad was gearing up for war. Glimmer had pulled out her energy amplifier, Bow had restrung his weapon and checked his quiver. Behind them, Netossa finished double-checking her right prosthesis and reconnected it. It locked into place with an echoing click, like a gun being cocked.

“The Horde commander should be in touch soon,” said Spinnerella. She was standing at the door, leaning on the handle of a sizeable flail. “She usually contacts us at dawn to invite us to surrender. She seems quite nice - you know, for the enemy.”

“We’ll be sure to invite her over for dinner when this is all over,” added Netossa, an edge of sarcasm in her voice. “One must remain on good terms with one’s enemies, after all.”

“Don’t worry,” said Adora. “We won’t make a move until we get your message. We’ll start the attack, then you can reinforce us when you see an opening.”

***

Spinnerella put on her most polite smile, thumbed the button that would send Glimmer and her friends on their way, and turned on the viewscreen. “Force Captain Scorpia! I trust today finds you well?”

“Can’t complain, Princess. How are you?” Curse it, but Spinnerella couldn’t help but like the tall, white-haired woman with the claws. She seemed friendly, which made a nice change from the last Horde commander to be sent packing from the Spire of the Winds. “Couldn’t help noticing that you had some visitors yesterday. Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“They’re at breakfast,” Spinnerella lied smoothly. “You need a healthy start to fight all day, after all.”

“Don’t I know it. I skipped breakfast once in basic training, and I was useless by mid-morning.” Scorpia chuckled warmly. “Anyway, down to business. Would you be interested in surrendering today? We’ve got some new equipment in, fresh from the lab. I wouldn’t bet on you folks holding out past today, tomorrow at the latest. It’ll really be easier on everyone if you just tapped out now and saved some time.” She gestured behind her with a claw; a dome that hadn’t been there a couple of days ago was clearly visible.

“Thank you, Scorpia, but I think we’ll be all right. May I extend a counter-offer? Withdraw now, and you might get to keep your machines.”

“Ha!” The Force Captain’s smile was almost worryingly genuine. “It’s been fun, really, but we need to fire up the machine. I’ll see you by nightfall tomorrow!”

The screen went black.

“She could at least have the decency to make it sound like a threat,” said Netossa drily. “Shall we get going? They’ve probably reached the enemy lines by now.”

“Of course, darling-”

They both felt the change. It was, for a moment, very hard to breathe, and the air began to sit oppressively on them - not humid, exactly, but the same sense of weight as a hot, humid day.

“The air’s...locked. I can’t move it.” Spinnerella went pale. “I can’t use my powers.”

***

Swift Wind used a word that Adora definitely hadn’t taught him. “Okay, guys, new plan. Instead of me swooping out of the air into the heart of their lines and bringing us down hard right next to the machine, how about I, uh, bring us down really hard into a random section of their lines and we fight the rest of the way on foot?” His rate of descent increased sharply. “Because whatever that machine is, it’s messing with the air, and that means I can’t fly.”

The sword was in Adora’s hand in moments.

“Execute: Gra-”

Swift Wind hit the ground, and the Sword of Protection bounced out of Adora’s grip and disappeared into the rapidly growing swarm of Horde Patrollers.

Adora muttered some of Catra’s favourite swears and leaped from the tangle onto the closest soldier. “New plan!” she shouted, delivering a vicious jab to the Patroller’s chassis. “Any target, any weapon! Make a path!” She threw her target aside and scooped up the fallen trooper’s stun prod. “I’ll take point!”

Glimmer gasped as a thought occurred to her. “If Swift Wind can’t fly…”

“Neither can Spinnerella,” finished Bow. “They’re not going to be able to help us.”

“I don’t think they’d be able to join us anyway.” Glimmer pointed to one side. “The Horde are storming the castle on the other two fronts.”

Bow nocked another arrow. “This was probably not the best idea we’ve ever had,” he said, ruefully.

“What, this?” Glimmer blasted a Horde soldier off their feet. “You think these losers can stand up to the Best Friends Squad?”

***

Spinnerella’s flail scythed into the Horde squad, hurling two Patrollers from their feet. The castle’s guards added the weight of their fire to the engagement, driving the Horde squad back. The infantry weren’t posing much of a problem, but she could see the enemy armour was drawing close, and her flail wasn’t going to do much to a tank.

Light blazed, and one of the advancing tanks slammed into the ground with a sound like tearing metal. As Spinnerella’s eyes adjusted, she could see a glowing white net wrapped around the vehicle, digging inexorably into its hull.

Anger and worry mingled in Spinnerella’s voice as she said, “Netossa, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be defending the other facing?”

“Relax.” Netossa struck a confident pose. “I’ve set up a ton of nets with proximity triggers. It’ll take them an hour to get through the first few corridors, and by then we’ll already have won!”

“I really hope you’re right,” sighed Spinnerella, and brought the flail down on another Horde trooper.

***

Adora drove her stun prod into another Patroller. Patrollers didn’t have the skill or flexibility to keep up with anyone with her training, but there were a lot of them, and it was hard to force her way through the press of bodies. The squat, grey dome of the Horde machine loomed above the bodies, its vibration detectable even through the loosely packed sand.

She saw a glint of bright metal ahead and lunged, shouldering aside grey-armoured figures to reveal a gap...around the Horde commander, a burly scorpion-folk woman with a Force Captain’s pin. Huh. Usually the Horde wouldn’t give an organic a field command. She must be either very good at this, very bad at remote command, or both, so Adora would need to be on her toes.

Two Patrollers jumped her, dragging her to the sandy ground. She was suddenly, uncomfortably aware that she’d lost her helmet somewhere in the scrum.

“Real nice sword, this.” The woman held it up to the light, as if admiring the sparkle. “Bet they’ll be really interested in it back at HQ.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Adora. “Hold on, aren’t you one of Weaver’s-”

Adora summoned up her deepest reserves of power.

“That’s mine!”

She could feel her mobility systems burning out as she ripped free of the Patrollers’ grip in a shower of armour plates, not all of them from her enemies. Making the most of the momentary surprise, she threw her prod at the woman’s face, then plucked the sword from midair as she dropped it in shock.

“Execute: Grayskull!”

Before the blinding light of her transformation had died down, she swung the blade in an overhand arc, flinging a blast of radiant energy at the dome. Patrollers threw themselves out of its path as it hurtled towards its target, fusing the sand into glass with its passage.

For a split second, the light of the dome exploding outshone the dawn.

***

The Patroller’s downward swipe bounced off the haft of Spinnerella’s flail. She grunted, more from the impact than any serious pain. They had been pushed back into the entrance hall, and it looked like they were going to be pushed back further. The walls were shaking under the impact of tank fire, and while Netossa was doing a lot of damage, Spinnerella could tell her wife was running out of power.

“If this is...well, it,” said Spinnerella, smashing another Patroller to the ground, “I want you to know...I wouldn’t change a thing-”

“Don’t say that!” Netossa hurled another net and snatched her blade out of the air. “It’s not the end. Not as long as we’re both fighting. You think these guys can-”

The air shifted, and Netossa’s heart sang as her wife’s face lit up. With a single graceful motion, Spinnerella shaped the air into a miniature tornado and sent it spinning out through the door, throwing the Horde formation into chaos.

Netossa grinned evilly and said, “I guess that means they did it. You go back up Glimmer and her friends; I’ll handle the mopping up.”

Spinnerella nodded, and leaped into the air, the windstorm cradling her in its heart.

“You know,” said Netossa conversationally to nobody in particular, “I think I may be the luckiest woman alive.” She cracked her knuckles. “All right. Let’s see how many of you I can beat up before she gets back.”

***

Spinnerella hit the Horde’s forces like the sky itself was her flail. The Horde banners lashed in the wind, as if they were straining to escape. It was only moments before the sand, whipped up by the tempest, cast the battlefield into a strange, orange half-night.

Adora, the most luminous thing in the tempest, watched as Scorpia fled. The white-haired woman was broadcasting in the clear, abandoning the encrypted Horde network entirely to make sure her message was as widely heard as possible.

She was sounding the retreat.

***

“You okay, Bow?”

Bow looked up from his glass of water. “Yeah, I’m fine, Glimmer. I just…I don’t feel like I was contributing today. I did a few repairs, I fired a few arrows...and Adora, Netossa and Spinnerella saved the day. I don’t like feeling like I’m dead weight, but Netossa can crush tanks and Spinnerella hits people with hurricanes. How can I keep up with that?”

Patting him on the back, Glimmer said, “Don’t worry, Bow. So today was a bit of a slow day - doesn’t mean tomorrow will be. Besides, it’s not like everything we do is going to be giant battles against Horde armies. You’re one of the kindest, smartest, hardest-working people I’ve ever met, and unlike princess powers, you’re not going to run out of those because you didn’t recharge. You’ve got this.”

“Thanks, Glimmer. I needed that.”

***

“And then she caught the sword, and said something, and it was like she suddenly got really bright? And then the suppressor exploded, and everything...kind of went downhill from there.”

Weaver bowed her head in a slow, calculated nod. “You did well to bring us this information, Force Captain. Dismissed.”

Scorpia fled, barely avoiding the guard standing by the door. It wasn’t an unusual response among Horde officers ordered to report to Weaver. Truth be told, she seemed to like it that way.

Weaver glared at the guard and said, “Take off that mask, CTR-4. You never were good at disguise.”

Catra tossed the Patroller helmet aside and glared back at Weaver, her eyes little more than slits. “You, know there’s one thing I don’t get about this whole mess.”

“It is not my job to enlighten you, CTR-4. If you deserve to know the answer, you’ll work it out yourself.”

Ignoring her, Catra said, “Adora betraying us, that I get. Having a magic sword that turns her into a super-soldier, I don’t get it, but I can work with it. The thing that confuses me is this.” A mirthless smile spread across her features. “I was watching you through that entire debriefing. I’d expect, even from you, some trace of surprise at hearing that your golden child had gotten superpowers and joined the rebels. But you? You didn’t even blink.” She planted her hands on the desk and leaned over. “You knew it was her all along, didn’t you?”

The temperature of the room dropped sharply as Weaver stood. “This doesn’t concern you,” she said, menace oozing from her voice like poison from a sting. “I’m assigning you to Force Captain Scorpia’s command. Your objective is to locate and capture 4DR-4. At all costs. Make sure her sword is captured as well.”

Catra executed the sloppiest possible salute and headed out.

Chapter Text

Adora moved her arm experimentally. It had been spray-painted in Brightmoon purple, but she hadn’t been authorised to wear the winged heart crest yet. “That does feel a lot better. Thank you, Reccula.”

Smiling, the engineer said, “Most of your tech is standard Horde, and I know how to work with that. Your power core and your processor - heart and brain - are the only parts I’m not going to be able to help with.” Their face contorted into a grimace. “Naturally, those are the most important parts.”

Adora snapped her fingers. “That reminds me, you mentioned a Princess...Retracta?...last time we talked?” 

“Entrapta. Nobody’s seen her outside Dryl since she was a little girl - it’d be at least fifteen years now - but I get engineering journals, and she publishes in them all the time. It wouldn’t surprise me if she knows things about First One tech even the First Ones didn’t.”

“All right,” said Adora. “I’ll see if I can get a chance to head there. I’ll let her know you’re a fan.”

***

Gravel crunched underfoot as the Best Friends Squad walked through the pass. Swift Wind had opted to stay behind; the trip to and from the Spire of the Winds had drained his reserves quite a bit, so they’d left him to recover.

“I’m surprised the Queen agreed so quickly,” said Bow. “Last trip, it took a ten-minute argument. She just signed off on Dryl?”

Glimmer thought for a moment. “I think she’s worried about the prospect that First One technology is recording us. If the Horde got access to that…”

“I mean, I’m worried about that, too.” Bow forced a smile. “Still, it’s progress, right? Now she’s sending you on missions intentionally, rather than you just going on them while she’s not looking.”

“That happened once!”

“That was how we met Adora,” Bow pointed out.

“Okay, twice.”

The earth moved.

***

“Elementals,” Adora said, and wondered where the word had come from.

She didn’t have the chance to wonder for long, though, because the First One robots – the elementals – were apparently in the mood for a fight. A metallic claw lashed out, and Adora threw herself to the ground to avoid damage.

“Execute: Grayskull!”

She brought up her sword to block the next attack, the claw gliding along it with a curiously musical sound. She launched a blast from the weapon-

That was a mistake.

She slid to a stop at Bow’s feet, her armour scorched, a smell of burning metal and paint hanging in the air. Her friend fired an arrow into another robot, then reached down to help her to her feet. “Are they all going to explode like that, do you think?”

“Probably not.” She gestured to her sword with her free hand. “I think my blasts have a minimum range. I fire them too close…”

“…and they go boom,” finished Bow, reaching for his quiver. “Hang on, I think I have exactly the thing in here.”

The next arrow tore through the air with a snarl, a faint hiss escaping its sides as it zeroed in on its target. It punched through one of the elemental’s eyes, and it toppled over, its lights going out.

“Nice one, Bow!” said Glimmer, and lightly punched him on the shoulder. Adora had learned this was a gesture of friendship, and also that it was best she didn’t; she could put a lot more force behind it than Glimmer or Bow, and if she wasn’t concentrating, she did. Hang on, there was something she’d forgotten…

“Wait. There was more than one of them.”

The ground under their feet began to tear, and Adora reacted instantly. “Glimmer! Get Bow to a safe distance. I’m going in!”

A flicker in her peripheral vision told her that Glimmer had pulled Bow out of the line of fire. That suited Adora perfectly.

Blade outstretched, she plunged into the crevasse opening beneath her feet, ready to kill.

***

It took both Bow and Glimmer to pull Adora out of the hole in the ground. She’d shifted back to her regular mode, and unlike her Horde colours on the first night, the Brightmoon paint wasn’t peeling off in layers – although it was looking a bit scuffed after the fight. She was favouring one side, and there was an ugly-looking crack in her right gauntlet, hints of red visible through the gap.

“That doesn’t look so good, Adora,” said Bow. “Are you OK?”

“Fine.” Adora’s voice was as cold and hard as an icicle. After a moment, she shook her head. “Sorry. Something doesn’t feel right, and it’s got me on edge. Let’s get going; the sooner we talk to Entrapta, the sooner we can leave.”

***

Adora’s footsteps landed like hammers as they passed through the Iron Gate and set eyes on Dryl for the first time. Red light blazed from its tower, the beam sweeping across the landscape. Glimmer suppressed a shudder; when Adora was caught in the searchlight, the blood-red aura made her look like some demon loosed from a nightmare.

Bow’s wrist computer chimed, and he flicked it open. “Distress signal. We should’ve picked it up before now, so it’s probably being jammed.”

“Which also means we won’t be able to call for help,” said Glimmer.

Bow grimaced. “You’re not wrong.”

Adora glared at the fortress door, her expression thunderous. She reached for her sword…

“Come on,” said Bow. “There’s got to be a better option than smashing the place open-”

A shriek of terror sounded from off to the east, accompanied by the distant sound of tearing metal. Bow started sprinting; after a second, so did Adora.

***

Glimmer materialised in midair and fired several shots into the First One robot on her way down, sending specks of light flying but not doing too much damage. Arrows scattered off its chassis as Bow added his weight of fire to the fray. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to have noticed; the insectoid machine lashed out with a bladed limb, its quarry – three humans in what appeared to be some kind of service uniform – narrowly dodging the strike.

One of the robot’s targets – male-presenting, with sizeable ears, tripped. As he struggled to pick himself up, another limb descended-

Sparks flew as it slid off the Sword of Protection, and Glimmer looked away to protect her vision as her friend transformed into She-Ra. More sparks followed, flying from the robot as Adora tore into it, a wordless, almost animal snarl issuing from her throat. Glimmer took an involuntary backward step.

The First One machine toppled over, and Adora stood over the wreckage, her back hunched, her free hand clenched into a fist. She turned around, and for a moment all Glimmer could see in her eyes was rage – a white-hot, unreasoning fury, with no hint of thought or memory behind it. Then the tension bled from Adora’s body, and the armour faded back to Brightmoon’s colours.

Something was definitely wrong.

***

Glimmer set down the bottle. “So let me get this straight.”

(“It’d be the only straight thing here,” muttered the drinks waiter, prompting the baker to blush and the busgirl to dissolve into a giggle fit.)

Glimmer raised an eyebrow, as coolly as she could manage, and continued as if no-one had said anything. “The princess, who you haven’t seen in several years, pays you generously to stay here and bottle your own soft drinks, prepare tiny snacks, and load them into a robot to be taken into the castle, which is, how did you put it…a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”

The baker, her cheeks still rosy, nodded and said, “It’s not exactly my dream job, but it’s a living. And hey, there are…other perks.”

Behind her, the busgirl clapped a hand over the drinks waiter’s mouth. Glimmer rolled her eyes; this really wasn’t the time for low comedy. “And then, yesterday, robots started bursting out of the ground, and you think they came from the mine the princess’s robots have in the mountain.” All three nodded simultaneously. “Okay. Great. We’ll see what we can do.”

Down the table, Bow nudged Adora, who was staring at a cupcake like she had sworn vengeance on its house. “It’s a cupcake, Adora. If you need to hurt it that badly, just eat it.”

Her jaw twitched, and she struggled with her words for a moment. “Thanks for trying,” she said, her voice tense, “but I don’t have much control over this.” She studied her hand, and her fingers moved involuntarily, before she slammed it down, open-palmed on the table. It left a dent. “I’ve never been this angry before, and I can’t tell why!”

“You seemed okay earlier,” said Bow, his brow furrowed, “and then…the First One robots! Your temper definitely got worse after we fought them. Could it be some kind of infection, or – or a virus, or something?”

“I guess…”

There was a loud rumbling noise from outside, and Bow said something uncharitable under his breath. “Adora, you stay here. If these fights are worsening the infection, the last thing you need is more exposure.”

***

This one was a new design: it retained the rounded, pseudo-organic structure of the First One machines they’d fought before, but also had bright, crystalline ridges jutting out of its back. As Glimmer materialised, attack charging, it released a harsh, metallic chitter, and the ridges visibly changed colour – their pinkish-white bleaching, turning opalescent. Glimmer flinched involuntarily; it reminded her of nothing so much as the Moonstone.

The machine made a grinding noise and blasted out a spray of light. Glimmer shrieked with pain as one of the beams clipped her, leaving a discoloured patch on her armour. The enemy raised a talon, holding the razor-sharp tip above Glimmer’s head, and she tried to teleport away, to fight back…but her powers weren’t working. The Moonstone’s energy didn’t rise at her command; she could barely find it at all. It was like she’d run out of power already.

The crystals rippled, turning blue, and Adora charged through the door and drove her sword into the robot’s head with all the force she could muster. It made a noise like a computer fan dying and slumped into a heap, the crystals dulling to a concrete grey.

***

“I’m not staying behind-”

Bow steepled his fingers in the manner of an extremely patient youth counsellor and said, “Glimmer, all your reflexes are built around having your powers. I don’t know what’s in the castle, but I’m not dragging you back to the castle on a stretcher because you instinctively tried to teleport and couldn’t. Besides-” His voice softened. “Someone needs to look after these three. They’re not fighters, and I don’t think we want to tell Entrapta that we hung her employees out to dry.”

“Why can’t Adora-”

They turned to look at Adora, who had just used the Sword of Protection to kill a fly. After a moment, Glimmer heaved a resigned sigh. “All right. I’ll make sure nothing bad happens at this end.”

“I know you will, Glimmer.”

***

Bow forced a chuckle. “I’m carving arrows with arrows. I don’t know if that’s irony or just amusingly appropriate.”

“Still not working, Bow,” growled Adora.

“Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

Adora slammed a fist into the wall. “Don’t be sorry, fix it!” A moment passed. “Why am I demanding that you fix it?!” She left another dent. “That’s not your job!”

They turned a corner into a large chamber, and Bow’s blood ran cold. The floor was a shattered mess of tunnel exits, and multiple robots writhed in the centre. As if drawn by some invisible signal, they all turned to stare at the two warriors.

“Execute: Grayskull!”

Bow turned in shock, and met Adora’s eyes. One was already a terrifying red; the other was deepening into crimson as he watched. “Adora-”

For a split second, her eyes were the clear, luminous blue they normally were. “Bow. Run.” Then the fire rose again, and the castle echoed to a bestial snarl as she hurled herself into the fray, her armour’s glow shifting from its normal white to a deep, bloody red as Bow watched.

Bow fled. He wasn’t even leaving a trail; there was no time. He just had to get away. A left, a right, another left…

Something skittered off his foot, and he bent to pick up…huh. A recording device.

***

 “What are you doing?”

Glimmer looked up from the pile of bits and said, “I can’t use my powers, and those include most of my weapons, so I’m…improvising.”

The baker looked over her raw materials, her expression sceptical. “You’re improvising from broom handles and kitchen appliances?”

“I once saw Bow put together a full quiver of trick arrows using one part from a Horde tank. I’m not the engineer he is, but-” She tightened the string and began working on a knot. “But I can still tie a sharp thing to a long stick.”

“I don’t know how your friend with the bow has the nerve to go charging about,” said the baker. “It’s all right for you; you’re a princess. You have powers. We’re just ordinary people. I’d love to have that kind of bravery; I go to pieces when there’s danger.”

“I doubt that,” Glimmer replied, pointing to a door. “That’s the cleaning cupboard there, right? Well, half of that stuff can be really nasty, I’ve heard. Knives cut, oil and flour burn. It’s not danger that’s the problem; it’s danger you’re not used to.”

The baker’s expression turned thoughtful, and she pushed an errant lock of green hair out of the way. “I’d never thought of it that way…”

Glimmer patted her on the back. “I’ve learned not to underestimate ‘ordinary people’. I’m pretty sure Bow could take me most days.” She paused, and added, “You don’t have to tell him I said that, though. Point is, if you really want to fight? You don’t need powers or fancy rocks. You just need to learn a few tricks. I’m not an expert myself, but I can help you get by.”

The baker grinned evilly and opened a drawer. “We keep the really big knives in here.”

Glimmer matched her expression, and said, “Welcome to the Rebellion.”

***

“Day 67. 68? No, definitely 67. I have lost contact with the excavation camp. No telemetry from any of them. And I really liked some of those designs, too.”

Bow switched off the recorder and tried to get his bearings.

After a few turns, he found himself at a T-junction. He thought for a moment, and then turned left-

A red-eyed shape loomed out of the darkness.

Right. Right was good.

Another red-eyed shape loomed out of the darkness.

Oh boy.

***

Adora ran through the maze, her world a nightmare of red thunder. Everything in her path died. Moments of lucidity cut through the blood-coloured mist: cages shattering, robots slain. At one point, she realised she was clawing her way out of a pit trap, carving hand-holds with her sword, in pursuit of something else to slay…and then the rage was back.

In her fugue, she began to see things that shouldn’t be there. Couldn’t be there. She destroyed what looked like a Horde tank, glimpsing it for moments after its death as a First One robot before it was put out of her mind, replaced by a new target. The faces of Hordak and Weaver loomed out of the darkness, and she struck at them, never finding her mark, but never tiring, either.

And then she was there. Dark skin, white and gold armour, glowing blue eyes. The rage pressed at the edges of her mind, but for a moment she was lucid, if not stable – like standing in the eye of a storm.

“Who are you?”

The woman turned on her heel and fled.

The storm crashed in.

***

Bow lunged, the arrow held like a knife; there simply wasn’t time to nock it. If he could land the attack…

A metallic tendril ripped the arrow from his grip and lifted it to the apparition’s face, blank except for those empty red eyes. It studied the missile with unreadable eyes.

“Ooh, this is good workmanship. Really well-machined, good balance.” The shape sounded exactly like the recorded voice from earlier.

There was movement in the dark, and the blank face disappeared, replaced with a much more humanlike one: as Bow’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he made out olive skin, a manic grin, and magenta eyes…but as he focused, he could see the tell-tale hints of circuitry that, say, Adora’s eyes had but Glimmer’s didn’t.

The newcomer turned to the red-eyed figure from the left corridor and said, “Blue, you didn’t mention visitors!”

The other figure’s shrug was extremely expressive, especially since after its arms moved, large chunks of its…hair?...moved to echo it. “I didn’t know!” Its voice was exactly the same as the first speaker’s.

Bow nodded sagely, struggling to keep the bewilderment off his face. “Okay. So...what’s actually happening here? Who are you?”

A tangle of mechanical tendrils locked around Bow’s hand. After a few seconds, it began to vibrate, and he realised this was a handshake, as filtered through Entrapta’s hair. “Entrapta, Princess of Dryl! Always a pleasure to meet someone else in the makers’ community!” She paused for a second. “You did make this arrow, right? It’s really good work!”

“Uh…yeah, that’s one of mine. Thank you. And this is…”

“Entrapta, Princess of Dryl,” said the one in the mask.

All Bow could manage was the word, “What.”

“It’s not that complicated,” said the first one to speak.

“I uploaded to this body...or was it that body...ages ago,” said the other one.

“Then I needed some assistance, so I built another body…”

“...and copied myself over to the other one!” finished the other one, triumph ringing in her voice.

“I make sure to sync up regularly. Keeps me a me, rather than an us.”

Okay. He had some foundations here. He was not going crazy. The world might have been going crazy, but that was the world’s problem, not his. “So…why the First One robots? What’s going on here?”

The two Entraptas looked at each other and chorused, “Beats me!”

“Isn’t it fascinating?” said the one who’d been called Blue. Now that she was out in the light, he could see a scrap of blue fabric tied around one arm…which, logically, meant that the other one, who had a similarly placed scrap of red fabric, would be Red.

A thought occurred. “Hang on, if you managed to upload yourself to a robot body…that could revolutionise medicine.”

“Maybe someday! Just needs a bit of work first. Take the stabiliser cores…” Bow didn’t understand half of what came next – Reccula would probably be fascinated, but Reccula wasn’t here – but from general terms, Entrapta’s journey from meat to machinery had involved a bunch of things that were either virtually impossible to manufacture in bulk, wore out within a few decades and couldn’t be replaced, or were otherwise really inconvenient.

“…and you need to be able to tweak the stimulus synthesiser on the fly,” finished Red, grinning, “otherwise you’d probably go mad!”

Bow wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he opted to strike out for another topic. “A friend of mine – a robot – may have caught some kind of rage virus off one of the First One robots. You haven’t been affected by it?”

Blue’s right hand convulsed. She looked at it blankly. “Well, a bit. I don’t process stuff the same way a normal robot does, though! Makes me pretty resistant to stuff like that.”

***

The knife whistled through the air and hit the First One robot in the eye. A fine spiderweb of cracks spread over the glass, as the knife fell to the ground-

The baker thrust a home-made spear into the damaged eye, and the machine collapsed. Lights in its sides flickered and died.

Glimmer gave a thumbs-up and said, “Good one, guys! Pity about the building…”

The roof fell in with a loud crash, and a tense, razor-edged hush fell over the group. Then the busgirl said, “You know, I’m getting a bit fed up with sitting around here waiting to be attacked anyway. Let’s try something more interesting.”

***

“Aww, they broke it!”

One of the Entraptas – Red, it was Red – scooped up the heap of shattered parts and studied it. “All this little guy did was move food around! They didn’t have to break him!”

Blue raised her mask and said, “Wait, we’re near the main lab.”

There was a clatter as Red dropped the robot. “Right!” Her tendrils tapped at a console on the wall, and there was a scraping noise as a door opened…

…to reveal the biggest First One robot Bow had ever seen, sitting in the centre of a ruined room like a spider at the heart of a web. It made a furious grinding sound

Red shut the door, and Blue rounded on her. “That one looked so interesting!”

“Interesting and deadly,” said Bow bluntly. “Red, you did the right thing-”

“Actually, Blue raises a good point,” said Red, turning her attention back to the panel.

The ground made a noise like machinery grinding, and the claws of First One robots began punching through the metal floor. The lights flickered, and Bow nocked another arrow. “RUN!”

***

Four figures crept through the darkness of the mine, weapons in hand.

“I would have expected more robots,” said Glimmer, under her breath. “I guess they’re all attacking the castle?”

“Princess!” This was the drinks waiter, a bottle in each hand – now with a rather nastier payload than soft drink. “You’re going to want to see this.”

It looked almost like a shrine carved from metal and stone. At its heart was a First One design, large and powerful, a red device set into its forehead. Glimmer felt slightly sick to look at it: radiating from the device were thick, almost organic tendrils.

“Okay, yeah, that one needs to die.” Glimmer readied her spear. “Good luck, everyone!”

***

Adora staggered around the corner, blade outstretched, and saw –

-Catra being menaced by Weaver-

-a mysterious figure looming over Bow.

She charged, scything her blade at the enemy.

***

Blue’s arm was flung from her body in a spray of sparks, and Adora burst into the corridor, her armour the deep red of a fading coal fire.

This could be a problem.

Bow hurled himself between Adora and the Entraptas, staring her down as if daring her to attack. She staggered back at the sight, the red glow dimming, then beginning to recover. Good. She could still recognise him – for the moment, anyway.

The ground bucked underfoot, and everything lined up.

“Red! Open the door, then let’s get out of here!”

The door slid open, and Bow found himself scooped up in a tangle of mechanical tendrils and dragged through a vent.

Adora, denied her target, headed straight for the next thing to kill.

***

The First One machine unleashed an almost organic screech of pain as its head caught fire. The drinks waiter didn’t even bother lighting the next rag; he just lobbed the second bottle, recently filled with cooking oil, to land within the blaze.

Chunks of metal and stone, some quite large, were thrown wildly by the machine’s thrashing limbs, but Glimmer kept her cool and threw…

The spear bounced off its eye, leaving a crack but clearly not penetrating-

Three more spears landed in quick succession – the busgirl, the drinks waiter, and the baker, whose shot finally punched through the First One glass and plunged into what passed for the machine’s brain.

The terrifying red device clattered to the ground, and Glimmer looked around. “Let’s find the biggest, heaviest thing here and smash whatever this is. I don’t know if it’s behind the problems here, but I don’t want to find out the hard way if it is.”

***

“It’s nothing, really,” said Blue, pointing to her replacement arm. “I managed to work some tools into it, anyway, so really, you did me a favour!”

“I still feel really bad about it, Entrapta.” Adora’s eyes were fixed on the ground. She’d snapped back to lucidity in the guts of the giant First One robot, her sword running black with oil and other substances, at the moment Glimmer and her allies had smashed the artefact. “I cut your arm off! You’re allowed to be angry!”

“Yeah, but I’m not.” Blue smiled at her. “I came out of it with some new designs, and no lasting harm was done!” Behind them, one of the towers folded in on itself with a sound like tearing metal. “By you, at least. And I’m sure I can fix that.” Her eyes widened. “Actually, if you’d like some modifications done, I have some ideas-”

“Uh…thanks but no thanks. I don’t need anything tweaked, just yet. Actually, we wanted to talk to you about something we’ve learned about First One technology…”

Chapter Text

The ship arrived at the Brightmoon docks in the dead of night, its paintwork criss-crossed with the distinctive burns of Horde energy weapons. Salt and smoke mingled in the air.

Once moored, the few aboard – too, too few – emerged into the darkness. Most were huddled under hoods and cloaks, some holding on to each other for stability or leaning heavily on their neighbours.

The guards bowed to the leader, and turned to escort the group to Brightmoon proper.

***

“Glimmer?”

Bleary-eyed, Glimmer stared down from her bed at the figure of Adora, standing on the floor. The room was lit only by the faint blue glow of Adora’s eyes. “Adora, it’s the middle of the night. Is there a reason you’re up?”

The glowing eyes flickered down, and after a moment, Glimmer recognised embarrassment. “I don’t really sleep, and I only dream when I’m charging. The guards seem to prefer it when I don’t move about too much, so when I’m charged, I don’t really have anything to do…”

“So, what, you usually just…sit there? In the dark?” Glimmer pinched the bridge of her nose. “We have got to get you a hobby, girl. Ever considered painting or drawing?”

“Uh…I’ll think about it?” Adora shook her head. “We’re getting off-topic. I was looking out the window, and I saw movement at the docks – the guards escorting a group of people toward the city.”

Glimmer was, suddenly, very awake. “Those docks are barely used. If we’re getting people showing up there at this hour, something bad must have happened.” Light flared, and now her voice issued from her closet. “I can’t show up to greet them in my nightdress! There is etiquette to consider! My mom would throw a fit!” She emerged, clad in one of the more straightforward royal garments: short purple-pink dress, pale blue cape. “Come on. We should be there.”

***

They materialised in a passageway just off the entrance hall, stepping around the corner to find that Angella – as unchanging as ever, looking exactly like she would at noon – was already preparing to greet the newcomers. She hastily gestured to Glimmer, and Glimmer just as hastily took up position beside her, every inch the dutiful child. Adora, suppressing panic, mimicked the stance of a guard and hoped nobody would question it.

The doors opened, and the newcomers moved in. Their leader, a golden trident strapped to her back, threw back her hood to reveal dark skin, blue-green hair – and eyes as cold and hard as agate.

Queen Angella bowed her head, a gesture Glimmer quickly mimicked. “Princess Mermista. Welcome to Brightmoon. I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“We’ll need food,” said Mermista, her voice eerily without emotion, “and housing.”

“And you shall have it.” Angella’s face was pained. “Brightmoon stands open to the people of Salineas, for as long as they need it.”

***

“You.”

Bow looked up from his breakfast, hurriedly swallowing a mouthful of bread. One of the Salineans – no, wait, that was the Princess herself – was glaring at him. “Um…your highness? How can I help-”

“I’m told you and the princess are close.” Mermista’s voice was flat, hard, and as cold as the ocean deeps. “Get her. Now.”

“Can I just-” Her eyes narrowed, and Bow gave up. “I’ll see what I can do.”

As he fled, Mermista tore one end from his bread and began to eat, her expression unchanging.

***

Glimmer pursed her lips and studied the map display. “So, if Salineas has fallen, that gives us two possibilities: either the Sea Gate is still intact, and the Horde found a way past, or the Horde destroyed it.”

“Sea Gate?” said Adora, her expression confused.

Gesturing to the map, Glimmer explained, “It’s an old First One structure that created a nearly impenetrable barrier over the mouth of the bay. It’s probably the only reason Salineas lasted as long as it did.”

Adora’s eyes narrowed. “Probably destroyed. The First Ones are little more than a myth to most of the Horde; Weaver’s their only expert I know about. If there was anything salvageable, it’s going to her stockpile.” She tapped the Fright Zone on the map, applying a red marker to the screen. “As for how, the Horde trains us to carry out the mission at all costs; if there was any way to bring it down, whoever was assigned it would use whatever it took…regardless of time, sacrifice or collateral damage.”

The door burst open, and Bow staggered through, breathing heavily. “Mermista…” He held up a hand, took a few deep breaths, and continued, “Mermista was looking for you. She seemed pretty intense about it, too.”

Glimmer and Adora exchanged worried looks, and then Glimmer said, “Lead on.”

***

Meanwhile, in the Fright Zone vehicle bay, Catra faced possibly the greatest challenge of her career. Coldly, carefully, she weighed the odds, calculating the danger of both her options, studying the grim, metallic shape of the Horde patrol boat…

A claw fell on her shoulder, and a voice boomed, “A beautiful ship, isn’t she? I call her the C’yra.” Scorpia pulled her in, raising a claw to the horizon. “Won’t it be great to get out of the Fright Zone, see new places?”

Catra had, until quite recently, thought she’d known how Horde officers operated: bullying, intimidation and cruelty. Sure, she and Adora had been given talks about, for example, the honourable temperament of Force Captain Callix, but she’d more or less concluded by now that stories were all they were. And Catra was fine with that, as far as it went. You knew where you stood with bullying, intimidation and cruelty.

Force Captain Scorpia’s buddy-buddy nonsense was new, and thus disconcerting. So far Catra had been hugged four times, given sixteen doses of unsolicited, generally useless advice, forced to listen to three interminable anecdotes about interesting missions where you apparently Had To Be There…and the only reason she’d escaped a hair-braiding session was a conveniently timed alarm drill. She had no idea what Scorpia was trying to pull – lulling her into a false sense of security, maybe? – but she was not enjoying it.

Now, Scorpia was, for reasons known only to herself, trying to sell Catra on Adventure on the Open Sea, and Catra was beginning to wonder whether the punishment for disobeying the order to accompany Scorpia, namely pain, was going to be worse than the punishment for obeying the order to accompany Scorpia, namely going on a sea voyage accompanied by yet more Bonding Exercises.

“Yep, the C’yra has been with me through thick and thin. Ever been sailing before?”

“No…” escaped Catra’s lips before she could stop herself.

Scorpia’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, it’s gonna be so exciting for you! Braving the elements, ploughing the ocean wave. I envy you, kid. I wish I could go back to my first time aboard, the deck rocking underfoot, only our skills and Horde engineering between us and the briny depths…”

Catra caught a glimpse of her reflection in a viewscreen; she hadn’t even realised she could turn green. “Hey, uh, Force Captain, could you please not talk about exactly that?”

Scorpia’s big, friendly forehead crumpled. “Aren’t you guys waterproof?”

“So I get to claw through deep water until my power runs out.” Catra rolled her eyes. “That’s so much better than shorting out on contact.”

“It’ll be fine!” Scorpia clapped Catra on the back with a clang. “It’s not like we’re expecting much trouble in Salineas anyway. Force Captain Leech runs a tight ship.”

A grimace spread across Catra’s features. “That really wasn’t a good pun.”

“Pun? What p-” Scorpia’s eyes widened, and then she chuckled. “Ohhhh. Tight ship. I have to remember that one.”

Catra made a noise like steam escaping. This was going to be a long trip.

***

It was half an hour later, and Adora, Glimmer, Bow, Mermista, Swift Wind, and Angella had gathered in the map room. The map itself was zoomed in on Salineas, which had been hastily modified to fit the aftermath of the Horde conquest: the Sea Gate was removed, and green blocks marked with bat-wing symbols sat, brooding, in the castle and the harbour.

Mermista’s eyes narrowed; it was the most expression anyone had seen from her since the Salinean refugees had arrived. “The Horde has the Pearl. I want to go and get it, and I want your help.”

“Glimmer, don’t you even think about-”

Glimmer slammed her fist into the edge of the map table, and Angella’s voice trailed off. “The Horde already has one runestone, mom. That’s one too many. We have to recover the Pearl, and I can help.”

Angella studied her daughter for what felt like several minutes, and then smiled wryly. “And if I forbid you, I assume you’ll just sneak out. Again.”

“I only did that twice, Mom.”

“Very well. But I want this to be a stealth mission.” Angella raised a warning finger. “At the first sign of violence, you withdraw. No running battles through the streets of Salineas.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Mom,” Glimmer said, in a tone of such disarming honesty that Angella immediately knew she was lying.

“I guess this means I’ll have to stay behind,” said Swift Wind. “My glorious, radiant presence would set off every alarm in the Horde camp. Out of envy, if nothing else.”

Mermista tapped the map. “We’ll take a ship. I have a captain I know I can trust.”

***

A monster sat at the heart of the Salineas throne room.

Gleaming like gunmetal, tendrils writhed under a dull green cloak, their tips like something out of a nightmare: probes, grinders, pincers, blades, saws, all disconcertingly organic in appearance and dripping with oil. Catra could tell that Scorpia was suppressing a shudder, and as the hood turned to them – red lights flaring underneath – she sympathised.

Scorpia drew herself up with a visible effort of will and saluted. “Force Captain Leech. Thank you for receiving us-”

“I have little time for pleasantries, Force Captain Scorpia.” Leech’s voice was deep and oily, with a raspy, metallic undertone. “Weaver’s transmission has already been complied with. The salvage from the Sea Gate has been loaded onto one of the transports; as soon as it is fully loaded with…” Leech’s limbs seethed momentarily as he thought. “…new Horde citizens, it will depart.”

“Thank you, but Weaver sent us to claim something else.” Scorpia gestured vaguely. “She has reason to believe that the rebels did not have time to recover the Pearl before their flight.”

The red light dimmed as Leech settled back into the Salinean throne. A grinder extremity that looked uncomfortably like the mouth of a mechanical lamprey began to whir softly, and Leech said, “Interesting.”

***

The Dragon’s Daughter III drifted into the hidden cove, manoeuvring clumsily, as if its bow was far heavier than it should be. The laser-burned paint had been left intact, the better to pass the ship off as a derelict if spotted…but the lack of Horde patrol boats on the way in had rendered this unnecessary.

The captain, a boisterous fellow named Sea Hawk, was sulking in his cabin. The moment he’d attempted to offer his expertise, Mermista had carved him apart with a look, forbidden him from ramming anything, and effectively commandeered the ship. Bow couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for the guy; he’d been trying so hard to bring people’s spirits up, and Mermista had cut the legs out from under him in moments.

The cove was small and sheltered, little more than a dent in the side of the land, but the path was small, and the Horde may not even have noticed it. It would not have admitted an army…but the team could scurry up it in moments, slipping through the deserted streets, leaving nothing but footprints in their wake. Mermista led them to their next objective: a vantage point atop a deserted building.

From here, they could see the Horde patrols moving around the palace, bat-wing banners hanging from the walls…

…and a transport ship, almost full of Salinean captives.

***

“The Pearl’s going to be tough to get to,” said Mermista. “Looks like the Horde have set up in the palace. The Pearl’s hidden in the depths; they won’t have the codes to get down, but they’ll eventually bust their way in. Getting it out could take ages.”

“The prisoner transport is almost fully loaded,” Bow pointed out. “It could leave any minute, and by the time we recover the Pearl, it’ll be halfway to the Fright Zone. There are at least a hundred people on it, and it looks like we’re their only hope.”

“And if we save them, the Horde will raise the alarm.” Adora’s voice was bleak. “The palace will be hard enough to breach as it is; with the guards alerted, it’ll be impossible. We can’t fight an entire army.”

"So we need to pick our target..." This was from Mermista.

Adora forced a coughing sound and said, “I vote that we go after the Pearl.”

Glimmer rounded on Adora, her expression shocked. “Adora-”

“We came here to recover the Pearl. You said it: the Horde already has one runestone, and that’s already too many. Our mission is-”

“-less important than the people on that transport,” spat Glimmer. “The rebellion is about defending people, not rocks. I say the Pearl can fend for itself.”

“I’m with Glimmer.” Bow scratched at the floor with the tip of an arrow. “We can’t let the Horde take those people. Mermista?”

An unexpected wave thundered against the wall below them, and Mermista snarled, “We need the Pearl…but we’ll have to get it some other way. I will not leave my people in the hands of the Horde.”

Adora thought for a few seconds, and then turned to Bow. “All right. A plan. Do we have one?”

“You know, I think I do.” Bow scratched a few more lines. “First, we’re going to need some paint…”

***

By general agreement, Adora was the first to be deposited on the transport. She’d been hastily repainted to sell the deception, and had left patches of colour on Glimmer’s armour when she was dropped off. Her sword had been left with Glimmer; she needed to get a guard to leave so everyone else could come aboard reasonably safely, instead of having to very carefully be dropped off. Presenting herself as additional support would probably be a

This guard was wearing officer cadet markings, so obviously she was a shift coordinator. She had a clear, familiar accent, even through the vocal filtering of a Horde visor, as she demanded, “Gonna need your authorisation code.”

“Five echo niner.”

“Acknowledged.” She checked a few options on her wrist unit. “Command really needs to refresh its passcodes more often. Keepin’ the same one for a month ain’t doing security any favours.”

“I hear you,” Adora said with a nod. “They really need to start asking us for advice before they set policy.”

“You ain’t wrong. Anyway, welcome aboard. Shouldn’t be too much need for you, but you never know.” As Adora started to move, she cocked her head thoughtfully. “Wait, I know that voice…” Her hand lashed out like a striking snake, and Adora’s visor dropped to the ground. “Adora. You’re under arrest.”

“Hi, Lonnie. How’ve you been?” She thumbed the activation stud of the stun prod and brought it up, but her former friend had anticipated this move, and their weapons clashed in a spray of sparks as an alarm began to blare.

As the prods bounced off each other in parry after parry, it would have been obvious to a casual observer that the two were almost perfectly matched.

“How’ve I been?” A grim smile was faintly visible through Lonnie’s visor as she lunged at Adora. “All the better for seein’ you, Adora.”

“You can’t beat me, Lonnie. Every fight we’ve had has been either my win or a draw.”

“Yeah, but I don’t need to. My backup’ll be here in moments.” Lonnie pressed her attack, pushing Adora closer to the edge. “Then Weaver can take you apart and see what broke.”

“Funny you should mention backup.” Adora pointed, and Lonnie resisted the urge to look…

She felt an impact in the small of her back, and then her legs stopped moving, followed almost immediately by her arms. Frozen in mid-movement, she toppled into the water, the adhesive keeping her afloat, if immobile.

Adora nodded to Bow, who was nocking another glue arrow. “Thanks. Wasn’t expecting to meet any of my old squad out here.”

Glimmer opened the bundle of cloth, and the hilt of the Sword gleamed in the moonlight. “Are you sure you want this?” she said, an edge of anger in her voice. “It’d be a shame to mess up your new paint job.” Bow glared at her, and she controlled herself with a visible effort. “Let’s get this hijacking over and done with.”

***

As the prisoner transport surged out of the harbour, the Horde ships began coming to life.

Catra, twitching with agitation, paced on the bow of the C’yra, strapping on and plugging in her energised claws. Finally, some action.

As the C’yra pulled ahead, light blazed on the stern of the escaping transport, and a vicious grin slashed across Catra’s face. Of course she’d be here. Of course.

Now to kick her best friend’s butt and haul her back to Weaver in a cage. Maybe that would get her some answers. Why she left. What Weaver was up to. Catra wasn’t picky.

***

A chain grapnel from the lead Horde ship slammed into the back of the transport – Glimmer had dubbed it the Liberator – and Adora stumbled at the impact. Recovering quickly, she readied her sword to cut the chain -

“Hey, Adora.”

Adora’s jaw dropped as Catra raced up the chain, her claws singing as they scythed through the air. Catra had always had good balance, but getting that kind of speed on a taut chain was impressive, even for her.

Adora barely brought the sword up in time to block Catra’s first strike.

“Nice outfit, Adora!” Catra’s grin was mocking as she launched another slash. “Did you abandon me just for the paint job, or what?”

“This ship’s going to Brightmoon, Catra,” said Adora, her voice level. “The Horde isn’t getting these people.”

“Oh, Adora. I don’t care about this ship. Or the prisoners.” Catra lunged, forcing Adora to dive out of the way. “I’m here for you. Weaver was really mad that she lost her favourite toy, and I can’t wait to see her reaction when I bring you back. Now come on. You can follow me willingly, prove you still have some loyalty…or I can beat you and haul you back on a length of chain. No third options.”

“Or you could come with me,” said Adora, opening her free hand. “Get out from under Weaver’s thumb, join the Rebellion-”

The grin remained in place, but the eyes above it began to burn with rage. “I’m not you, Adora. I’m not giving up on everything I knew in an evening. You’re coming with me.”

Before Adora could respond, there was a loud crash from behind the Liberator, and one of the Horde ships behind the C’yra lurched violently, turning away from the pursuit to reveal that its engine compartment was belching black smoke. The Dragon’s Daughter emerged from behind it, its bow dented, scarred, but surprisingly intact.

Of course. Mermista wouldn’t have told Sea Hawk not to ram anyone if ramming wasn’t on his usual list of strategies.

The noise of the Dragon’s Daughter’s engine got louder, and the ship began accelerating, its bow pointed right at another Horde vessel. The target ship tried to turn away, but too little, too late – metal tore as the Dragon’s Daughter carved a deep scar into the Horde ship’s side, right at the waterline.

Horde guns pummelled the Dragon’s Daughter, and the bridge flickered as Glimmer moved in. Once the ship was angled correctly, it flickered again…

Glimmer and Sea Hawk were safely aboard the Liberator when the burning Dragon’s Daughter hit the largest Horde vessel amidships, bulkheads crumpling beneath its weight, leaving the warship dead in the water.

***

Catra’s smirk was gone, replaced by a blood-curdling look of pure rage. She was getting more aggressive, and her defence was failing – but Adora couldn’t bring herself to exploit the holes. This was Catra. They’d been friends since they came online. There had to be some way to get through to her…

“Hey! Horde lady!”

Catra looked up, and then staggered backwards, electricity crackling across her armour as one of Bow’s shock arrows caught her full in the chest. She had just enough time to glare at Bow before she fell overboard.

As her friend – former friend – she didn’t know – as Catra toppled over the side, Adora moved like lightning. Snatching a glue arrow from Bow’s quiver, she hurled it at Catra, the glue forming an impromptu life preserver around Catra’s upper torso.

Mermista emerged from below decks, her eyebrow already raised. “Bow seems to be winning all your fights for you today. Perhaps you should give him the sword and see if he lights up.”

Bobbing in the sea, Catra could do nothing but watch, helpless, as Adora severed the grapnel’s chain, and the transport disappeared into the distance.

***

“Easy, easy…There we go.” Scorpia wrenched the last chunk of glue off Catra and threw it aside. Catra stood, testing the elbow that had now been freed up, before delivering a brutal, full-force punch to the top of the workbench. It left a dent.

“I was so close,” spat Catra. “I could have finally gotten some answers!” She dented the workbench again.

Scorpia held up her claws in a pacifying gesture. “Whoa, whoa. Look. Okay, so today was…not the best day, but there’s always tomorrow, right? You listen to me, rookie – I think you’re going places. You could be a great officer someday.”

Catra’s eyes narrowed as she mulled this over. Rank, security clearance, hopefully some answers…but she would have to spend more time with Scorpia.

On the other hand, that looked like it was going to happen anyway. So she might as well get what she could from it. And hey, her self-appointed mentor had come in handy a couple of times there.

***

Adora looked up from the piece of paper she was working on. “Glimmer! Hey. How did Angella take it?”

“I don’t think she was happy that we had a full-on naval battle, but she was willing to accept that a hundred lives outweighed the Pearl.” A smile hovered on Glimmer’s face for a moment. “I probably owe Mermista a favour; when Mom started to get upset, she threw a few barbs, and Mom’s not good at dealing with that.” She went serious. “That’s not why I’m here, though. I came to apologise.”

Adora’s brow wrinkled. “For what? You were right; we needed to save those people. I made the wrong call.”

“But I shouldn’t have gotten that mad at you for it.” Glimmer lowered her eyes, and continued, “Sometimes, it feels like you’ve been here for ages, so it’s easy to forget that you’re not…”

“Not human?” said Adora drily.

“Not used to being a rebel. We gave you a new paint job, your own room and a couple of pep talks, and we – no, and I expected that to just overwrite years of training in under a month. No wonder you voted for the Pearl; that’s how you’ve always been taught to prioritise. I should have respected that you’re trying to learn our values, rather than getting upset that you didn’t master them immediately. I’m sorry.”

“No harm done, Glimmer.” Adora gently pulled her friend into a hug, keeping it as loose as possible to make sure Glimmer didn’t get pressed too hard into the metal of Adora’s chassis. “You’re going to keep telling me when I mess these things up, I hope?”

“Oh, absolutely; wild horses couldn’t stop me.” An impish look danced over Glimmer’s features. “I’m just going to start from ‘hey, that’s wrong’ rather than ‘you’re a monster’ next time. I know your heart’s in the right place.”

“I don’t technically have a-”

“As Princess of Brightmoon, I hereby decree that you do have a heart and it is in the right place. I’ll have Bow make you a certificate as soon as I can have a word with him.”

Adora’s comms crackled to life, and Bow’s voice spoke directly into her ear: “Adora, could you find Glimmer and Mermista and bring them down to the docks, please? There’s something you guys are going to want to see.”

Purple sparkles shimmered and faded, and Adora’s half-finished sketch of the view from her window was left on the bedside table, forgotten.

***

Both of Entrapta’s bodies were already there. Red was studying the cargo, her mask lowered, while Blue was grinning like a lunatic and tapping on the controls of a portable computer. She looked up and waved to the newcomers. “This is incredible! At least half the Sea Gate is here! I’m amazed they even got it to fit. This is one of the biggest First One caches I’ve ever seen, and it’s in really good shape, considering!”

“Be careful with it,” said Mermista. “I don’t want to come down here and find you’ve turned my kingdom’s most precious relic into a frying pan.”

The two Entraptas stared at each other. “It’d be a big frying pan,” offered Red, in the tones of someone who knows what they just heard was a joke but isn’t sure which part they’re supposed to be laughing at.

“I’m still gonna have to say no.”

Chuckling, Glimmer said, "Gotta say, it's good to hear you being abrasive again, Mermista. It was weird having you not be sarcastic."

Mermista made a disgusted sigh and turned away, but Glimmer saw the hint of a smile on her face as she did.

“Can we bring the Gate online with the parts here?” said Adora. “There’s a natural bottleneck outside the harbour; if we can get the gate up and running before the Horde can get a full outpost up in Salineas, we could have an advantage.”

The Entraptas paused for another silent consultation. Then Blue said, “Probably, but we don’t have most of the superstructure. We’d need those parts, or some kind of substitute – tough, flexible, self-repairing and good at carrying magical energy.”

“A tree, perhaps?” This was from Bow. “I’m not an expert, but I do recall Glimmer’s aunt Castaspella once told me that plants were natural magical conduits.”

Both Red and Blue adopted an identical thinking pose, hand on chin. Then Red offered, “That might work…but we’d need a tree grown in the right shape, and don’t they take months to grow?”

“Years, usually,” said Glimmer. “But Plumeria was part of the First Alliance, and the Heart-Blossom gives plant magic. If we can get Princess Perfuma on our side, we could probably get those trees in place by this time next week…”

Chapter Text

Bow went low, sweeping his leg around, and the Patroller hit the ground with a clatter of metal and a crunch of dry grass. A glue arrow neutralised the soldier, at least for now; Bow didn’t even have to fire it – he just flicked it out of his quiver and dropped it onto his target.

To his left was a crashing sound and a jet of sparks. Glimmer, who was wearing a diplomatic dress rather than armour, had teleported another soldier into the air and just dropped them. To his right, Adora smashed a third to the ground with the flat of the Sword of Protection.

“Well,” said Glimmer conversationally, “at least we know the Horde is here.” She turned to Adora. “Do you think you could start…glowing? She-Ra’s apparently a figure of some renown in Plumeria.”

“Yeah, they’ve got a lot of legends about She-Ra.” This was from Bow. “I did a little checking in the Brightmoon library. All the books that mention She-Ra are either Plumerian, or they cite people from Plumeria.”

“So what’s Plumeria like?” Adora asked, readying the sword. “Execute: Grayskull!”

Bow wondered, for a moment, when Adora transforming into a figure out of legend had become just…normal, and then answered, “It’s a pretty traditionalist country: they’ve never really embraced modern technology. Great gardeners and botanists, though; I’ve heard about how beautiful the countryside is, and it’s definitely living up to its reputation.”

Adora looked thoughtful. “If they’re not very tech-y, is that why you asked Swift Wind to stay behind?”

“Yeah.” Bow shrugged. “Let’s get them used to one thing at a time, OK?”

***

Plumeria proper was a far cry from any capital Adora had seen before. Brightmoon was gleaming, high-tech and elegant; the Fright Zone was a grimy industrial nightmare; Salineas was a masterwork of semi-organic curves; Plumeria was…a campsite. There were a lot of homespun clothes and organic fabrics, the closest thing to a defensive wall was a wooden fence, and tents of rough material were organised into approximate neighbourhoods.

It was like stepping through some kind of time portal.

Glimmer had grabbed a random Plumerian – a tall, olive-skinned man – when they’d arrived and asked for an audience with Perfuma for the Legendary Hero She-Ra, and the man had raced off to find her. Bow was sniffing some of the few flowers that were still growing.

Both Glimmer and Bow seemed comfortable, and Adora just…wasn’t. Nature, fine. She was okay with nature. But it felt…off, somehow, not seeing anything modern. Salineas and Brightmoon had, to her mind, a good balance – integrating the environment with technology. The Fright Zone was, in retrospect, way too mechanical and hostile. This somehow went too far in the other direction for her.

Granted, part of that might have been how out-of-place she felt. While the Rebellion didn’t generally use robots, there were enough people with cybernetics that she blended in, just a bit: she was obviously different from a person with a cybernetic limb, but those cybernetics were at least kind of like her. The few Plumerians she saw with potentially debilitating injuries were using woodwork prostheses – beautiful, certainly, but way less reliable than her own parts, or Netossa’s boots.

She realised that between her radiant aura, her obviously mechanical joints, and her obviously foreign status, she’d attracted quite a crowd. She blushed, just a little bit; she knew it was silly – she’d been trained to lead forces in combat, and she’d showed up here to be big and impressive and dramatic – but there were just a few too many eyes on her for her comfort.

The crowds parted, and a blonde woman with tanned skin stepped through the gap, pink dress flowing like water. Perfuma’s eyes widened as she took in Adora, armour glowing, sword in hand…and then they narrowed again, her expression hardening while Adora watched.

“This is not the real She-Ra,” she said, in the tones of a judge handing down a sentence.

Glimmer and Bow both spoke at once, and after a few hasty hand gestures, Glimmer took the lead. “What do you mean, not the real She-Ra?” Her voice was controlled, but Bow could sense the anger underneath. “She’s the realest She-Ra we’ve got!”

“She-Ra was not a robot.” Perfuma didn’t sound angry, or even really sad. “It’s wonderful that our greatest hero inspired such a beautiful machine, but she is not the real thing. If you paint a flower, you do not have a flower; you have a recreation. So it is with your friend. I’m sure she’s a wonderful person, and both you and she are welcome to rest here, and eat what we can spare…but she is not the hero of our legends.”

“Perfuma-”

“It’s OK, Glimmer. Perfuma’s made her choice,” said Adora, the tension in her voice belying her words. She pointed to the forest. “We’ll have a quick rest, and then we’ll head out. We can at least do something about the Horde while we’re here.”

***

“I can’t believe she said that to you,” spat Glimmer. Absent the need for diplomacy, the princess of Brightmoon was visibly seething. “How would she know if the legendary She-Ra was a robot or not anyway? If the legends are true, it’s been a thousand years! She could have been anything!”

“Glimmer! Glimmer.” Adora held up her hands in a gesture of reconciliation. “We’re here to be diplomatic, remember? It’s not worth it.”

“Why aren’t you angry about this? She just said she doesn’t believe you’re-”

“I’m not thrilled about it, but she can believe whatever she wants, as long as she helps us fix-” Adora made a face like she’d just bitten into a lemon. “We forgot to ask her to help with the Sea Gate.”

“We are the worst diplomats ever,” Glimmer moaned, burying her face in her hands.

There was a rustle in the bushes, and Bow emerged. “Well, the good news is, I found the Horde. The bad news is, I don’t think we can take this one by ourselves.” He pointed over the hill. “I count at least three tank companies and a small army. Might be pushing it, even for the Best Friends Squad.”

Glimmer lunged forward, seizing his and Adora’s hands. “Time to go.”

***

“You’re sure they’re coming here?” asked Perfuma.

“Positive, your highness.” Bow shrugged. “You don’t take multiple companies of tanks to look at the flowers.”

Perfuma bowed her head, and said, “Could we withdraw – disappear into the forest?”

Adora thought for a moment. “You probably could, actually. The Horde is probably here for the Heart-Blossom. I can’t promise that they’ll stop advancing when they have it, but that’s their primary objective – and the Horde is all about the primary objective. If you fade into the forest, you’ll probably be okay – for a while. But there’s only so much forest, and the Horde aren’t just going to stop; they’ll probably fortify around the tree, set up a permanent base. Then they’ll start pressuring you again.” She looked around. “We’ll stay and cover your retreat, but we can’t take out three companies of tanks. We’ll have to fall back ourselves before too long, so get out as quickly as you can.”

“Very well.” Perfuma’s face was stony. “The universe will restore balance, eventually…but

***

“For what it’s worth,” said Glimmer, “you’re doing better at the people-first thing.” She blinded a Horde trooper with a flare of light, then smashed them off their feet with a swing from a tree branch she’d picked up.

Adora’s reply was drowned out by the sound of metal cutting metal as she drove her sword through the side of a tank.

This was going to be the good part: only the Horde vanguard was able to engage, Bow had a good firing position, and Glimmer was still running on a mostly full charge. The bad part…well, the bad part was going to be very bad indeed. The settlement was still evacuating, so they had to hold the line…but it was going to be hard, especially since the second company of tanks was on its way before they’d finished with the first.

Glimmer shrieked in pain as a stun prod slammed into her shoulder. She’d twisted away from the worst of it, so she was still standing…but her right arm hung limply from her shoulder, and she struggled to get her cudgel into position to block before Adora delivered a devastating backhand to her attacker.

“Should’ve…brought…my armour,” Glimmer managed, fighting for breath.

Light blazed as Adora fired off another blast, and a Horde tank shuddered under the impact. “Wouldn’t have helped. Here.” She scooped a stun prod off the ground and handed it to Glimmer. “Easier to use one-handed.”

“I don’t think it’ll help much.” Glimmer took it anyway; at least it was light.

A tank’s cannon fired, and Adora staggered back with a grunt. Below the elbow, her left arm was a shattered ruin, sparks cascading from the holes.

As Adora’s vision flickered back to full colour, her comms buzzed. “Adora? It’s Bow. I’m running out of arrows, and neither of you look to be in good shape. It might be time to withdraw – wait, hang on, something’s happening-”

The tank that had wounded Adora suddenly skewed wildly off-kilter, its hull kicking up dirt as it dug through the ground. As the two princesses watched, vines coiled upward from the ground, wrapping around the vehicle. Any weakness of an individual vine was more than made up for by the sheer number of them, and the tank began to crumple. A chorus of yells rose from behind them, and the advancing Horde troops quickly formed up as a tide of Plumerians with heavy clubs descended upon them.

Suddenly, Perfuma was there, her hand on Adora’s damaged shoulder. “Here, let me help.” More vines erupted from the ground, forming a cocoon around the broken limb, and when they withdrew, the hand was wrapped in a thick layer of wood, forming what almost looked like a shield.

Glimmer had her breath back by now. “Weren’t you going to disappear into the woods, let the universe handle it?”

“We had a bit of a talk about that on the way out. We’ve decided the universe will restore itself to balance…through us.” Perfuma clenched a fist, and more vines held down a Horde tank; she swept that hand down, and a tree burst from the ground, driving itself through the metal hull. “And besides…I can tell you felt insulted earlier, and you are not comfortable here…but you still fought to aid us, even though we would not. Let us repay that debt.”

***

The battle was getting bogged down. The Plumerians were beginning to tire, and quite a few were wounded. Both Bow and Glimmer had withdrawn, their supplies exhausted, with Bow providing tactical advice and Glimmer trying to call in support from Brightmoon. Even Adora’s energy was beginning to flag, and her armour’s glow was shining from below a layer of dirt and soot.

At the latest bulletin from Bow, a grim smile dawned on Adora’s face. There it was. A way to end this here and now.

She stepped out of the battle lines, sword raised, battered wooden shield ready, and cranked up the volume. “Force Captain Callix! I challenge you!”

A metal hand the size of a ham shoved a couple of Patrollers to one side, and Callix unfolded out of the Horde lines. The Force Captain’s hulking, only barely humanoid shape had none of the pretence of humanity that Adora’s did; Callix had never been designed to coexist with a human technician or overseer. A few parts had synthetic muscles on display, gleaming dully in the afternoon light; the rest were wrapped in steel plates, and the Horde’s insignia was stamped in full view on his chest.

Callix’s voice was loud and deep. “And why should I accept your challenge, 4DR-4? Oh, yes, Weaver made it very clear that we should be on the lookout for you. Why should I accept your challenge now, instead of simply crushing you and taking the Heart-Blossom?”

Adora gestured to the wrecked vehicles. “You’ve already lost two companies of tanks, Callix. Nearly thirty vehicles destroyed. You can keep attacking, and you might win…but you might not. You should have learned not to underestimate the Rebellion by now. And if you survived…you’d still be crawling back to the Fright Zone having spent everything, all your vehicles, all your forces, to claim the win. The Horde may not care about Patroller lives, but they expect better from a Force Captain than climbing over a heap of scrap metal to the goal; it’s not efficient.” She paused for effect. “Besides, I know your reputation. You haven’t had a chance to really throw down in a while, have you?”

“Hah!” boomed Callix, hefting a very large axe onto his shoulder. “You, I like! State your terms, 4DR-4.”

“The battle pauses for the fight, and victory comes from incapacitation or when it’s obvious one party has won. If I win, you take your remaining forces and go. If you win…you may take me back to the Fright Zone. Weaver will doubtless be pleased to have her favourite toy back in her clutches.”

“One change.” Callix held up a finger. “You may use the sword, of course – but you may not use that shiny form. I’ve read the reports. This is a contest of strength and skill, not whatever it is makes your glowing routine work.”

Adora thought for a second. Callix was definitely stronger…but this was about Plumeria, first and foremost. “Agreed.”

Glimmer’s voice cut in on Adora’s earpiece. “Adora, what are you doing?”

“Wrapping this up before anyone else gets hurt.”

“Are you counting yourself as ‘anybody’ for this, Adora? Because you should be! When we said the rebellion was about people, that was including you-”

Adora cut the channel.

***

Chips of wood flew as Adora used the shield to bat Callix’s axe aside. The weapon’s reach and Callix’s strength were making this much more difficult than most of her previous fights. The giant Force Captain hit like a thunderbolt, and while he had sustained some damage from Adora’s counterattacks, they weren’t slowing him down, while Adora was exhausted from the battle. One blow had even cracked open her helmet and damaged her face; the metal beneath was only a little dented, but Adora liked her face, so that was going to need fixing at some point.

“You talk a good game, 4DR-4, but you didn’t think of something.” Callix’s huge, metallic face contorted into a grin as he brought the axe around again. “I’ve fought dozens of robots with that training. I know the style inside and out. There’s nothing like experience-”

There it was – an opening.

Adora went low, sweeping her leg around. She didn’t have the raw strength to get Callix’s leg out from under him, like Bow had done to that Patroller earlier (Callix was huge), but it imbalanced him enough for her to bring the sword around in a desperate half-slice, half-stab. Sparks flew as the blade carved a path through the knee, and oil spurted from the severed hydraulics, before the leg gave way under Callix’s formidable weight, and he collapsed to the ground, the axe falling from his fingers as he fell to his hands and knees.

Adora pressed the tip of her sword to the back of his neck. “Yield, Callix. And remember, next time…I haven’t just learned from the Horde.”

A noise like metal being pummelled came from Callix. After a moment, Adora realised the giant was chuckling. “A good fight! Best I’ve had in years. Very well, 4DR-4. You win. Plumeria is yours…for now.” His voice took on a warning tone. “But next time…I’ll know not to underestimate you.”

As Adora moved out of her duelling mode and the world outside the fight snapped back into focus, she realised the Plumerians were chanting.

“SHE-RA! SHE-RA! SHE-RA! SHE-RA!”

***

“I couldn’t help but notice,” said Glimmer, her tone a battleground between exhaustion and mischief, “that when Adora won that fight, you guys were calling her ‘She-Ra’. Does this mean you’ve changed your mind on that one?”

They had walked what felt like quite a bit of the way to Brightmoon before Perfuma replied; mind you, after today, fifty feet was an ordeal to all of them. “Let’s say that I’m willing to accept that the spirit of She-Ra can incarnate in anyone, and it has chosen you.”

“More specifically, it’s chosen Adora over everyone else, for a thousand years.”

Adora sighed; there was a slight buzz of static in the sound. “Glimmer, stop badgering her. This trip is going to be long enough without you two fighting.”

“This is for your benefit, Adora! Just think: someone else might doubt you in the next place we go. I’m hoping to get something we can use if that happens. Perhaps a signed certificate saying ‘This Is Definitely The Real She-Ra, Signed Perfuma’?” Glimmer stumbled. “Perfuma, did you do that?”

“Perhaps it’s simply the universe bringing balance.”

“Guys. Really.” When she raised it, Adora’s voice gained a harsh, grinding undertone, a legacy of something Callix had knocked loose, and both Perfuma and Glimmer immediately stopped talking. “Can we sort this out at Brightmoon? I’m getting tired of the spiteful little insults.”

There was a momentary pause, and then Glimmer hung her head. “I’m sorry, Perfuma,” she said. “I still think you’re wrong, but I shouldn’t keep needling you about it.”

“That’s all right. Truth be told…these battles are surprisingly fun. Both the verbal ones, and the other ones.”

Groaning, Bow said, “I think we’ve created a monster.”