Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

[Sunday, 10:45 P.M.]

Silence and a few controlled breaths.

The apartment room is enveloped by silence as even the drop of sweat from the forehead and the blades of the fan are unheard. The breaths are the only thing deafening enough throughout the room. This continued for a few moments until the breathing paused. Catra inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly as she scanned her area for a bottle of water. She found it beside her stool and grabbed it, finishing it in one gulp. As she finished, she threw it towards the direction where the trash can was supposed to be, then sighing as a sign of exhaustion. Her breathing continued as she closed her eyes and breathed gently this time.

In her mind, she remembered the dream that she always has, or rather the figure that was there. She saw an elegant woman playing the piano, hearing a calming and soothing melody of Chopin’s “Nocturne Op. 9, No. 2” that seems like a sound she’s desperate to hear. She approached the woman in a bright concert hall with nobody around. It’s as if she had known this woman for some time already, like someone she has always known. In her mind, she slowly approached this woman and her melody as she longs for the peace that is being offered by her dreams. She is looking for that blonde woman that will give her peace in the madness she’s surrounded with; the eye of the storm, or the major note in a minor chord. As soon as Catra was near enough to the woman, the woman stopped playing and turned around to smile.

“How are you doing, Catra?”

As soon as she heard this in her mind, she got back to her senses and opened her eyes. This isn’t the first time that she remembered that dream, so she just simply sighed as she was awake from her brief dream, and every time she remembered it, she felt much heavier than before. She wants to stay there. She wants to be engulfed in the sound of the piano. She wants to feel the peace it brings, but she knows that can’t be.

She is a band drummer after all. It’s not a rock band she’s in, nor is she in a punk band of any sorts. She is a drummer for a brass band; the beat and the tempo of the controlled chaos among the trumpets and tubas. The only piano she hears is the unorthodox symphony between minor and major chords. The only thing she hears is her fast heartbeat inside her every after concert they have. They have one hell of a band director after all: always at the fast lane.

It has always been her dream. She always dreamt of becoming like one of the jazz pros that she aspires to be. There’s something comforting for her in the controlled chaos that she found herself in. She lived her life finding her tempo and making it better. She made beats out of pencils, pens, sticks, fingers---she even made beats out of her own inner voice. This is her fascination, and who can blame her? She’s been alone her whole life not knowing the whereabouts of her parents, not being adopted, and not being able to interact with her fellow orphans.

Even so, that didn’t stop her from having a fascination towards the sound of the drums when she heard a jazz song that her caretaker liked. “Whiplash” is something that is glued to her mind and she wants to be able to play that, so when she got the chance to move out of the orphanage, she went to live in the city of Bright Moon to be in a school for music.

It wasn’t as easy as she expected, though. Before she could pursue her dream for drums, she had to work for multiple stores as a part timer. She was 18 when she got the chance to move out, but it took her an entire year to earn enough for the entire tuition fee for her first year. When she enrolled, everyone at her age was already a year ahead of her.

After she thought about her situation, she let out one more sigh but this time in disappointment, then she continued her controlled breathing.

“Who are you and why are you tangled with my dreams,” Catra thought to herself, just to get rid of at least a portion of the weight she experiences. She continued breathing until, finally, she inhaled deeply once more and exhaled in relief. She looked at the time to keep track.

“10:50 P.M. Huh. That’s still early.”

She looked for her drumsticks and found them lying by the bucket of ice near her stool. She reached out to them and grabbed them each by hand. After a few long breaths with her eyes closed, she finally got in her zone of focus. She quickly opened her eyes and raised her arms.

“Okay. Let’s do these five more times.”

[Sunday, 10:45 P.M.]

The school hallways are quiet and peaceful. The tranquil sounds of the insects are filling up the air with buzzes and chirps. Everywhere one turns, they are greeted with swept floors and clean walls. Everywhere one turns, only an aura of peace is there. People from the outside would like this school and imagine an organized and healthy life---an ideal life. Provided dorms, complete equipment, maintained corridors---these are only few of what people can mention about wanting to be part of this school: Mystacor Academy of Music. Everything in this school seems so perfect, although one student would disagree with such passion.

The only corners where there is more than insect sounds and breeze around this time are the ones near the piano rooms. Six out of seven days in a week, one is sure to be occupied. It is always filled with a melody in minor key, almost as if it’s always a sad sonata being played at this time of the day. It’s like a ballad overflowing with sorrow, longing for peace even amongst the peaceful sound being heard across the room. Of course, it’s not actually sad for the most parts. It’s just that the room is just being used for practicing such songs.

Adora, unlike most of her peers, doesn’t have the luxury of having an instrument of her own. Orphaned at a young age, she was adopted when was five years old by a musician named Mara after seeing her play the piano at the orphanage. She was taught how to play the piano for the rest of her childhood, and since then, pianos are a huge part of her life. She played at every recital she could participate in and she took pride in every one of them. In Mara’s custody, she found a sense of tranquility in her life.

This all changed when an explosion happened in Mara’s home one unfortunate evening. This killed Mara; this killed her passion; this killed her inside. She had a tantrum towards Mara and stormed out the house in anger, making her safe from the explosion. It all happened in one motion, and Adora is playing away to forget. For Adora, after that incident, playing the piano has become her alcohol to forget, but the Mystacor Academy of Music doesn’t make it any better.

The seemingly perfect school for everyone else is a nightmare of a school for Adora. Strict programs, harsh lectures, hectic schedules---these are few of Adora’s complaints for her stay in this school, but what choice does she have? It’s the nearest music school in town and the scholarship program is extremely beneficial for her especially the provided dormitory, so even if she has a lot of grievances, she still wants to pursue something so dear to her in any way she can, but now, after 2 years of being in this school, that passion is slowly drifting of away from her. It’s confusing; it’s annoying; it’s chaotic , and she can’t understand why.

This train of thought led her to play a wrong note, and the sound caught her off guard.

“Ah shit. I messed up.”

Silence filled the room. Adora is sighing in disappointment. She has to perfect this piece before the recital a few days from now. She has to perfect this for the sake of her requirement. Her mentor is pretty harsh on her about it, and it’s driving Adora insane. Of course, who wouldn’t be insane after playing and mastering Chopin’s “A Winter Wind”?

“I really NEED to master this piece,” she thought to herself.

However, no matter how hard she tries, she can’t seem to fully focus on her practice. After all, with so much chaos that she has on her mind right now, she can’t calm it down. She’s just so “messed up” in her terms and that’s the peak of her capability to actually comprehend what she is with such a mental burden.

She tried to calm herself down at the very least as she did her breathing exercises to gain composure. She kept breathing for a moment and only had one thought in her mind.

“Why can’t I seem to hear some of the notes?”

She continued breathing for a while and looked at the clock above the room and checked the time.

“10:50 P.M. Ugh. It looks like I’ll be here for a while.”

She fixed her posture and moved the piano bench a bit forward. She fixed the music sheets in front of her and took four breaths with eyes closed.

“I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.”

She raised arms and positioned them above the piano. She opened her eyes and looked straight towards the music sheets.

“I can do this.”

[Monday, 3:00 A.M.]

Catra is lying down on the apartment floor beside her drum set with her hands bleeding. Bleeding enough to have her entire hands to be drenched in the crimson color of perseverance after trying more than 50 times. She was breathing harder than before as she stared at the ceiling. She is breathing to at least ease the pain that she is experiencing after putting her hand in the bucket of ice to stop the bleeding from five hours of continuous practice.

“Faster.”

Catra said as she let out another heavy breath.

“I need to be faster.”

Adora, on the other hand, is also lying down on the piano room’s floor. Her head is one step closer to exploding. She feels her head beating like a heartbeat out of exhaustion. Not to mention that her physique is becoming paler by the hours, but even after the continuous practice, as she breathed heavily, she only said a few words repeatedly.

“Calmer. I think I need to be calmer.”

In some sense of unconscious fate, both of them got up in order to prepare for resting.

Catra turned off the fan of her practice room, and Adora closed the piano. Catra wrapped bandage tape on her hands, Adora wore her slip-ons. By some coincidence dictated by the universe that they are unconsciously intertwined with, both of them got their stuff, closed the lights, left the room, and thought of the same thing.

“I’ll master this and maybe, just maybe, feel satisfied.”

Is this what it means to be meant for each other? Fate between two strangers who may have met eons ago from a different lifetime? Soulmates bounded by a contract of similarities they can’t see? Destiny of unfortunate souls with unknown differences?

Are they simply coincidences happening and passing by?

Who knows? Some would say they may end up together or not, some hope that they might fight one another or not, but one thing is for sure: whatever universal string there may be that connects all people, they are both after the same thing: a sense of satisfaction only found beyond their horizons. Like frogs in a field, reaching for the blue sky above them, they long for the hope that things can be better than they are, whatever they mean by that.

[Monday, 7:00 A.M.]

It was 7:00 A.M. in the morning when Catra’s alarm rung. At this point, Catra is near unbothered by the amount of sleep that she has been getting, mainly because she can still get some sleep while she is in school. It’s an unhealthy way of living but what more can you expect on someone living alone with school and part time jobs in the sidelines. Even a household in Sims™ can’t handle it without feeling exhaustion all the time, but in terms of being a Sims™ character, Catra has a constant red diamond above her head. Always tired, always uncomfortable. Sometimes hungry and sleepless, but in a good sense (at least), she is always energized when it comes to drums. That one of the perks when you are a literal-cat-person: you have some reserved energy for stuff you really have to do (or want to do).

However, whether she likes it or not, her cat ears are something else as well. Even in such a deep slumber, she can distinguish the noise that she hears in real life and in her dreams. Her ears can pick up the sound of the alarm easily. Because of this, her body is already predisposed to hearing the alarm in her sleep so that she won’t get all grumpy when she wakes up (she’s still grumpy, though; not just super grumpy).

She woke up frowning, got up groaning and turned off her alarm. She dragged herself walking towards the shower to wash herself after an entire night of practicing, forcing her to replace the bandage she put on literally four hours ago and prepared her stuff for school and for her later part time jobs. She packed her music sheets, notebooks, drumsticks, and uniforms, including a black shirt (a “uniform” for her nightly jazz band performance at the nearby bar) into her red backpack. She tied her long messy hair into a ponytail, put on her color correcting glasses (she doesn’t want anyone gazing at her for her heterochromatic eyes), and wore a dark pair of jeans, a maroon hoodie with a black tank underneath, and gloves to fully cover her bandage.

“Hmm. Maybe I should’ve drenched my arms in ice first.”

She doesn’t want a lot of people seeing the output of her toil, or rather she is not yet prepared for such conversation with other people. She just wants to pace on her own without some potential interference from her peers. The only evaluation she really does consider at the moment is from her band director, Hordak, although even his evaluations are slowly getting to her nerves. After all, the first semester of her first year passed and she is taking an awful amount of stress already.

Her entire semesterly break, she focused on one thing and one thing only: the double time swing, an extremely fast and accurate triplet beat at 180 beats per minute.

A double time swing is described as a 3/4 beat pattern at twice the speed of a normal given tempo. To easily describe it, imagine hearing three beats per second. That’s the “swing” in 60 beats per minute. Now, to do it in double time means going for 120 beats per minute, which means hearing six beats per second. What Catra is doing is going twice as fast than the regular tempo which is 90 bpm, meaning she is doing a swing at 180 bpm. To put it simply, it’s like hearing nine beats per second.

She’s been practicing really hard for the past weeks on being on-the-beat and precise on such a fast and somehow off-beat rhythm, and even after a few weeks of semesterly break, she’s still unsure of her output. She’s still struggling to be consistent with the tempo she is holding on to. She’s still on the way to let Hordak evaluate her technique. After all, it’s just the start of the second semester of her first year.

“Eh. I can still improve throughout this year,” she said to herself bitterly as she felt the pain in her hands, finishing her final check up on her room before leaving it for the day.

“I just hope Hordak isn’t gonna be all pissed about it. After all, he asked me to practice on paradiddles and I…somehow practiced them…I think,” she thought to herself

She turned around from her apartment door, closed it, and proceeded to travel to Mystacor Academy of Music. The travel time from her apartment to the academy is just around 15 minutes, but it’s worth taking note that she is living outside the academy’s jurisdiction. Her scholarship grant didn’t include a dormitory as she was owning a room in the city for over a year already, but it did land her a full scholarship in being a drummer in the band (drummers in music schools are pretty rare these days as most of the band students are inclined to playing windpipes).

She walked down the stairs and exited the building and had her eyes directly at the visible sight of the academy’s main building. While she was doing so, she felt an unpleasant rumble from her stomach.

“Hmm. I’ll get breakfast along the way.”

[Monday, 7:00 A.M.]

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, by the academy’s dormitories at 7:00 A.M., someone else’s alarm went off. Adora is still mentally exhausted from practice last night (or a while ago). She doesn’t have the mental capabilities to actually wake up from her alarm. Though this doesn’t mean nobody was brought to life by it.

“ADORA, WAKE UP,” a figure said as a pillow is thrown towards Adora’s direction. One must take note that even though Adora is pretty much a sack of dead weight when she’s in slumber, the slightest physical contact she experiences messes with her mental images.

For example, there was a time where Adora dreamed of sailing on a vast and empty sea. In her mind, it is rather peaceful and quiet. She can’t hear anything else beside the seagulls hovering over her and the waves crashing on her boat. It’s like a scene from Claude Monet’s collection of sunsets by the sea. However, in that same morning, an earthquake happened that caused the wall clock to fall onto her. In the dream, this caused Adora’s boat to simply flip over, throwing her to the depths of the sea as she drowned as quickly as a weight ball weighing a ton.

This time, Adora was walking in a park. Pretty normal, one would say. She’s just enjoying her view of Bright Moon’s Eco Park (which is ironically placed in the middle of the city). She hears birds chirping and sees butterflies flapping. “Huh. This park is really nice to be honest. Maybe I should visi-.” Her train of thought was interrupted as the pillow landed on her head. In her dream, she simply tumbled to the side, heads first towards the ground like a mop falling to the floor but faster.

“Ah. Figured.”

Adora woke up and gasped loudly as she was shocked about what happened. It’s as if she almost had a heart attack.

“OH MY GOD,” she exclaimed with her eyes covered by her hands.

“Gosh. Your alarm is annoying as ever, Adora.”

It took Adora some seconds before realizing what had actually happened. She realized that she has one more pillow than usual by her sense of touch; the alarm is ringing by her sense of hearing; she smells like shit by her sense of smell; her saliva tastes funny by her sense of taste, and her eyes are seeing the insides of her eyelids by her sense of sight.

Basically, she realized she just woke up in such an unpleasant feeling. She then opened her eyes to the best of her abilities (resulting in a squint) and focused on the voice she’s hearing.

“It’s 7:00 A.M. Time for you to wake up for your routine.” (There isn’t actually a routine but waking is counted for them as a routine.)

Even if she’s squinting, she’s trying really hard to focus to gain her composure. After a while she made sense of a figure of a girl that has a vibrant pink hair with purple streaks, sporting a haircut similar to a bob cut, wearing white pajamas. She then recognized that it’s her roommate.

“Oh, Glimmer,” Adora said weakly. She chuckled nervously at the blurry sight of Glimmer and awkwardly followed up her words. “You’re awake.”

“No shit.”

This is pretty much a normal thing already considering that Glimmer did all of those in one single motion. She woke up, turned away from where Adora was, grabbed the pillow by its end, rose up with her body at a 90-degree angle while throwing the pillow at the same time. One can say that Glimmer has mastered the art of quick throw when it comes to random objects. She’s pretty much a ninja at this point in Adora’s mind.

Adora didn’t move for a moment. She closed her eyes again to stabilize her mental state. She’s still one flick away from drifting back to Bright Moon’s Eco Park. Adora tried to communicate, though, but it only resulted in groans (she’s really trying to think properly). Meanwhile, Glimmer, being annoyed with the alarm, stood up, got Adora’s phone, and turned off her alarm.

“Can’t you put the alarm an hour further?” Glimmer protested in a manner that can only be described as “husky but not husky.” Her throat hurts from suddenly waking up from Adora’s awful alarm which is just Adora repeatedly shouting at herself to wake up.

Glimmer turned around, lay down at her bed, and continued sleeping. Meanwhile, Adora is still trying to talk to Glimmer with her mumbles. Once she was finally able to open her eyes fully, her mind started making sense. Seeing Glimmer asleep again and not hearing her alarm and because it’s already a normal thing for them, she realized what happened almost immediately.

“Shit. It’s 7 already?”

She lunged forward to stand up, stretched and yawned, and came to her senses.

“Oh yeah. Today’s the start of the second semester. Guess it’s not a whole day of practice.”

She slid her way towards the bathroom and proceeded to wash herself. As she turned on her shower, she suddenly felt dizzy (this is caused when the body isn’t exactly finished setting up which results in the body having the same feeling of suddenly waking up as well) from the built-up exhaustion that she had from practice a while ago. She experienced a sharp ringing from her ears, almost sounding like a speaker when you lowered its volume from 100 to 0. She thought she was going deaf, but her ears went back to normal. She was slightly startled by what happened as it wasn’t the first time it happened. Actually, it’s something that keeps happening to her when she is playing the piano.

It’s always an instance; a split second, or even a blink. It’s just fast but she is always thrown towards a void where everything suddenly feels heavy; where she can’t hear anything but a pitch that’s unheard. It’s just for a split second, but for Adora it always feels like eternity. It feels like a dream being underwater. Even her “alcohol” has its limits in easing her pain.

Now that she is experiencing water from the shower, it makes sense why it startled her. For normal people, it’s just clumsiness from being exhausted and suddenly showering, but for Adora, it’s like a nightmare being augmented to her reality. Immediately, she tried to forget what had just happened, groaned and continued washing herself.

Afterwards she prepared herself to leave for campus. She wore jeans and a t-shirt, topping it with a hoodie that has the acronym “MAM'' on it (the hallways are inexplicably cold for the most parts where people resort to referring it to “magic”), and slip-ons to finish it off. She then tied her blonde hair into a front bun continuing into a ponytail, grabbed her music sheets and books which are placed on top of the drawer next to her bed and put it in her laptop sling bag. She got a sticky note and a marker and wrote a reminder for Glimmer in the case she wakes up.

“ CLASSES START AT 9! DON’T SLACK OFF AGAIN I DON’T HAVE TIME DEALING WITH IT. ”

She put it on top of Glimmer’s phone just to make sure and went off.

Adora walked down the dormitory halls and pondered on whether she’ll continue her practice or focus on other stuff.

“I mean classes won’t start until 9 A.M. I guess I still have time to do stuff.”

It took her a while to think what she would do first, and in the process, her stomach grumbled.

“Oh, right. Breakfast.”

[8:30 A.M.]

Catra is already lying down on the ground, exhausted and almost asleep. She just finished setting up the band room for their morning routine before everyone else comes in, and she put extra effort into organizing everything from the stools to the music racks (or music stands) and cleaning the room. Of course, that was 45 minutes ago because the real reason why she was exhausted is because of her morning practice.

The reason Catra is so early today and also the rest of the school days is because she volunteered herself into being in charge of setting up the band room every morning. This might seem like an act of initiative, but Catra just really wants to fill in the gap where she isn’t playing the drums. She wants to keep improving, and she is finding every way possible to do so.

Of course, this doesn’t mean it’s the perfect idea. She hasn’t recovered yet from her bleeding hands. At least the gloves helped to lessen the impact of the drumsticks.

The band room is filled with the noise of the air conditioning unit and the heavy breaths of Catra. Her tail is as still as a rope left of its own devices on the ground, but her fur has risen like a tall meadow of grass. She is shivering from the coldness and the pain she is experiencing right now (she decided to take off her hoodie so she wouldn’t be slowed by the weight of it). She is tired to say the least, and as she is lying down, she finally drifted into slumber.

Once again, Catra is experiencing her dream of that blonde woman. She now finds herself in a grass field where the woman is playing her piano under a sycamore tree, playing the melody of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1.” Catra opened her eyes to see she was lying down on the field and went to look towards the direction of the piano. She stood up and walked her way towards the piano. The sky is unbelievably gradient of a faint blue and a vivid orange, almost as if she is experiencing sundown and sunrise at the same time; an equinox of dusk and dawn. As she was walking towards the sycamore tree, she suddenly went into an involuntary halt, rendering her feet immobile. Even her cat instincts can’t get her out of this one as she feels stiff and startled by the sight beneath her: water. The field of grass is transformed into a still sea where the blonde woman and her piano are slowly drowning. Catra tried to fight it back, but all she feels are tremors and intense heartbeats that she can’t quite comprehend what was happening. Suddenly, she was dragged up into the sky by an invisible force. She struggled to take a look at the woman and noticed that the woman was saying something. She struggled more to focus on her mouth and realized what she was saying.

“Save me.”

The band room door clicked and this was enough to wake Catra up as it was the same time she was struggling in her dreams. Catra ricocheted from the floor and rose up hissing with her tail stiffening up. She looked directly at the door and saw…the second earliest person in the band.

“Oh. It’s just you, Scorpia,” Catra said as she loosened up her tension.

“‘Sup, Wild Cat,” Scorpia greeted her with a smile. “Early as usual?”

“Obviously.”

Scorpia, an optimist in a music school; Catra’s first friend in the academy. She is part of the band’s saxophone line, but most notably, she is assigned as a soloist already in her first year. Some say that she is a child prodigy by heart, but she’s just that talented especially considering that it was only this year when she started taking a passionate interest about music (also she has big claws that, in theory, should be a hindrance for sax players since the amount of precision required, but it wasn’t a problem for her).

Though she isn’t from a line of musicians, she is from a line of talented people in fields they chose to be. Her mother is a businesswoman while her father is a political figure, both exemplary at their respective fields, so it’s no surprise when their child’s preferred skill is something she can overcome easily.

As soon as Catra realized that people would start coming in, she grabbed her hoodie and quickly put it on. Before Catra can fully cover her upper body, Scorpia noticed the bandages around her arms, and pointed it out.

“You’re still trying to do that double time swing?” Scorpia asked with concern as she opened her instrument case.

“Scorpia, we’re not supposed to casually talk about it on campus, especially in this room. I don’t want anyone else pointing out how ridiculous this is.”

“I mean you’re a first-year drummer trying a fourth-year technique. People will find that weird especially your fellow drummers,” Scorpia said as she continued assembling her instrument.

“Which is exactly why I don’t want anybody else hearing about it. I’m glad that you understand, Scorpia, but can we still keep it a secret between us?”

“And Hordak?” Scorpia said as she finished assembling her saxophone.

“…Yeah.” Catra opened her backpack and grabbed her drumsticks. “And Hordak.”

Scorpia chuckled on how she said that.

“Hey! I didn’t mean it like that! It’s disgusting.”

“I know, Wild Cat.” Scorpia teasingly said.

She sighed as closed her bag, grabbed it and put it in their assigned item rack. They have designated racks for their objects so that it wouldn’t hinder their assigned space. Catra sighed as she placed her things and looked at the wall clock above the door.

“8:50. I guess it’s time for another semester.”

[8:30 A.M.]

“Ah, fuck.”

Adora whisperingly shouted in the library as she checked her schedule on her laptop for the semester.

“9 A.M. classes with Ms. Weaver? Give me a fucking break.”

This is also one of Adora’s major complaints about this academy: Ms. Weaver. Not the faculty in general; just that one specific teacher.

It’s not that Adora can pinpoint what is exactly wrong with Ms. Weaver, but something about her aura is ticking Adora off. In her two years of music school, even if Ms. Weaver’s strictness is from a place of constant desire for her students to learn, Adora doesn’t feel good (at least her guts doesn’t feel good) about conversing with Ms. Weaver. That’s why, in some sense of fight or flight response, she just chose to “hate” Ms. Weaver.

“First, she gives me an assignment over the break, and now this? Come on,” Adora protested under her breath.

Adora isn’t the only one having an assignment throughout the weekend because everybody else does anyway, but she despised the idea more than anyone can. It’s the closest thing she can point out to a comparison to a penitentiary school, which she hates.

Despite all that, she can’t do anything else. The schedule is already written, and all she has to do is to survive. All she can do is groan in disappointment in the library after confirming her teacher for “Music Theory II”. As she was groaning, a person tapped her shoulders from the back to greet her in her…morning routine?

“I’m guessing you’re disappointed about the 9 A.M. class.”

Adora slowly turned around as she put away her hands from semi-scratching her nose bridge. She immediately recognized the voice: a baritone-ranged voice with a friendly tone that she would know even from a farther distance. This, at the very least, helped Adora loosen up as she turned to see her friend: Bow.

“Yeah…obviously.”

“Oh, I guessed that right,” Bow said with a surprised face. “Come on, now. You wouldn’t want to sulk for an entire semester again now, wouldn’t you?”

Bow, the optimist in their group, her male best friend, and Glimmer’s potential boyfriend (at least in Adora’s eyes after a year being with them). He’s on a similar track with Glimmer and Adora on being Bachelors of Art in Orchestral Stringed Instruments. The only difference with him is that he is majoring in studies on stringed instruments, and his forte is pretty much inclined on smaller stringed instruments especially the violin. Meanwhile, Adora and Glimmer are focused on piano and music composition (this is why Adora ships Glimmer and Bow because of their potential in duets). He is the top violinist among his peers, and it’s thanks to the fact that his family is inclined to the arts, for his dads are interested in visual arts and literature and he had his eyes on the art of music by his own accord. He is what they call a “child prodigy” in his respective course.

“Of course, I wouldn’t sulk for the entire semester,” Adora said as she slid a little forward on her chair. “Just for the most part.”

Bow pulled a chair and sat across Adora. He quickly put his bag on the table and let it be. He crossed his arms and placed it on the table as he leaned closer towards Adora, looking eager yet concerned.

“So…did Glimmer wake up already?”

“Probably. It’s either she’s here now or she’ll be just in time for the first class.”

“Who should be here now?”

Adora knew that voice was Glimmer’s, but she’s startled at the fact that the latter is early this time (for the last two semesters Glimmer is just winging it for the first day). As Glimmer placed her right hand on Adora’s left shoulder, she recoiled forward as she turned around with a surprised expression.

“Wow! That’s early.”

“Am I not allowed to be early,” Glimmer said as she sported a gloomy look on Adora (she still hasn’t forgiven Adora for the morning alarm).

At this point, Bow fixed his posture and greeted Glimmer.

“Yo, Glimmer.”

“Hey, Bow.”

As they exchanged their closed-mouth grins, Glimmer went around and sat beside Bow and started talking about her schedule with him (Adora could’ve told Bow their schedule differences considering they’re in the same class and track but she is giving Bow the opportunity to talk with Glimmer more). Adora is delighted by the sight of her friends, prompting her to start relaxing for a bit.

In her relaxation, Adora spaced out for a moment, rendering her ears to be pseudo-deaf for a moment as she drifted into daydreaming. Remembering her practice last night, she felt heavy once more. Her mind is thrown back to the silent depths that messes her sense of focus. It’s not too long before Adora realizes what is happening. Her mind panics as she tries to swim out of the void where she’s in. Interestingly, though, she finally heard something in her mental silence, but it wasn’t something that she was expecting. A sound is heard similar to a footstep, a heartbeat, a knock, a smack: a beat. As a music student she instantly recognized the specificity of the sound. She heard a faint snare of a drum beneath her. She tried to follow the sound as it only got weaker and weaker until the sound disappeared.

In all the times that Adora is in this void, this is the first time she gasped for breath. She felt her lungs run dry as she tried to let out a gasp out of desperation. At the same time, Glimmer is already behind her along with Bow and she grabs Adora’s shoulder. This caused Adora to be dragged out of her void and back to reality. Adora, in a slightly shocked state, quickly turned around to Glimmer.

“Come on, Adora. You wouldn’t want to be late for Ms. Weaver’s class, right?” Glimmer said as she turned back to start walking with Bow.

Adora, still in a state of shock and confusion, sighed, stood up, and packed her things up to go to her first class of the semester. As she carried her backpack, she got her phone out of her pockets, opened it and checked the time.

“8:50 A.M. Alright. Here goes nothing.”

[9:15 A.M.]

“…what the fuck?”

This was the first thought Catra had after seeing the person who entered the band room. It surely wasn’t a tall pale and almost skinny guy with a chin like Thanos that comes in 5 minutes later than the schedule, but it also wasn’t someone that she knew already, but base from her whispering bandmates (thanks to her sharp hearing), she got at least an idea of who they’re dealing with.

“Isn’t that Ms. Weaver?” “Yeah, I heard she’s not much liked by the students on this campus.” “I heard she’s strict to an extreme degree.”

After hearing a lot more from her peers, only one thing came into Catra’s mind:

“I have an extremely bad feeling about this one.”

For the past years, the Horde Band has been handled by the academy’s founder, Hordak. In that same time frame, all across Etheria, The Horde Band is awarded as the second-best big band on the planet. This year, Hordak had a crazy idea. Seeing the potential talent that this year’s freshmen has, Hordak wanted to boost their improvement at a fast and controlled rate

“Hordak told me all of you have great potential, and that you’re all quick to learn.”

Weaver scanned the room for a brief moment to get a good look of the members. After a while, she nodded on her own, and with a snap of her fingers, she provided everyone with a copy of a music sheet of Benny Goodman’s “Sing, Sing, Sing.” This left everyone in shock as this is just the first day of their second semester and they are already greeted with such bullshit (also they are shocked to see someone use magic so casually at 9 in the morning which left them in the impression that she is someone they shouldn’t be messing up to).

“I’ll give you all 15 minutes to absorb it. Prove your worth to me.”

This is not the system that they learned from Hordak. Usually, a session consists of three parts: general lecture, specialized lecture, and mastery session. In the three hours that they have in a regular day, an hour is allotted for the general lectures which includes the general stuff on music like music history and theory, then an hour and a half is allotted for specialized lecture where the students are given technique modules based on their respective instruments and it’s the time for supervised self-learning, and lastly, the rest of the period, depending on whether the general lecture ended early or late, is reserved for technique mastery. After knowing that, every week consists of two lectures and a synthesis, meaning the first two days are reserved for a topic, the next two days are reserved for another topic, and the last two days are reserved for culminating and understanding these topics incorporated in a song. In the two-day frame time for a topic, the first day is usually the “regular day” and the next day is a whole period for supervised technique mastery.

However, this is not Ms. Weaver’s style of teaching in a jazz band.

After a few years that the Horde Band had been established, Hordak heard of a teacher in the faculty that implemented an unorthodox and strict style of making improvements among the students. He heard of someone that can drastically improve an entire unit with an unyielding personality---going for high risk and even higher reward. Once Hordak knew who it was, he immediately started thinking on how he could get Ms. Weaver in being a part of the band…until Weaver herself voluntarily asked to be an assistant band director.

“I know that your band is lacking something, and I can help them be better,” said Ms. Weaver in the past.

What Hordak saw is completely something different than what he expected. An unforgiving, ruthless, and strict director where she let the students play “Caravan.” Not Buddy Rich’s originally slow version. No, not that. She made the senior band members experience hell in her first day as part of her “assessment” by letting them play John Wasson’s take on “Caravan” from that drumming movie with that newspaper guy in Spider-Man starring Toby Maguire. She is strict on the note and the timing the trumpets are playing, she is harsh on the soloist, harsh towards the trombones and the saxophones, but most notably she is ruthless towards the bassist, pianist, and drummer. She swore the hell out of those three because they couldn’t start the song properly if they can’t keep up with the song. Eventually, they tried to do it by group and played their parts, but even that didn’t work. They couldn’t keep up and eventually, they gave up. In that year, they fortunately placed a mediocre second by playing a soulless version of Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood” (apparently, all of the schools were in the same spot because Caravan was featured in a movie and became such a hot topic for most band enthusiasts and directors that they forced students to practice that piece which eventually led them to picking their comfort picks).

Hordak didn’t exactly like the way Weaver taught the students, but he has a few reservations about the “mean-spirited” way: he realized how useful it actually is in the future. He got the essence of what Ms. Weaver was doing. She was pushing them to their potential edge in hopes that they would fill that metaphorical edge with more land (like putting a bridge in front of a cliff so that one can continue walking from that cliff). Hordak realized that this is something that can be used for the students to be developed throughout the years, because deep inside Hordak, he knows systemic lectures and mastery isn’t enough to make exemplary students. One can’t make diamond merely with fire; it must undergo an immense amount of pressure. Ms. Weaver wasn’t there to create bread that requires a gentle process, and Hordak recognizes that, so Hordak, no matter how long it took, waited for the best freshmen lineup he could find.

Which leads us to their predicament right now: the first day of the second semester.

Catra is focused on absorbing the notes written in her musical sheet while she breathed in a controlled manner. She analyzed the tempo given and the tempo of the notes and realized that they are playing fast notes on a moderate tempo.

“I can do this. It’s relatively slower and easier than what I’m aiming for,” she thought to herself until she heard from her bandmates their complaints. It gave her chills.

“Why are the first eight measures empty?” “When’s our cue? What’s our timing?” “Same here. It seems that it will take a while for us to actually start playing.”

Whether she likes it or not, she immediately felt an intense amount of pressure because she was about to casually say her thoughts about it being slower and easier. She is the first instrument to play for the first 8 measures on a pace that she’s playing in front of her bandmates for the first time. At that exact moment of realization, Ms. Weaver cleared her throat and called their attention.

“5 more minutes.”

This prompted Catra to panic inside (it was also obvious as well for her fur is completely raised but everyone is too focused on their notes) and talk to herself in her mind.

“Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.” She repeated this for the next minute and briefly closed her eyes, took a deep breath and focused on her music sheet.

“I can do this. I just have to…,” she thought as she started experiencing a tunnel vision towards the musical sheet. It didn’t take long for her to realize that they’re playing an old-school swing because of the beat. It’s definitely different from the basic drum patterns she learned under Hordak’s supervision, but it’s something she knows (due to her fixation about drums and its history) and can manage with. Suddenly, out of nowhere.

“Drummer?”

This startled Catra as she recoiled back to look at the one speaking. It’s Ms. Weaver.

“…Yes?”

“Don’t mess up.” Ms. Weaver didn’t mean it as a threat, but for anyone in the room right now, no matter what instrument they play, it will definitely feel like a threat, even the extremely passionate and focused Catra.

But Catra wasn’t fazed by that. She knows she won’t mess up.

After a few moments, Ms. Weaver clapped her hands as a signal that time was up. They are about to be evaluated by her. They don’t know why yet, but they definitely will.

“Time’s up. Get in position.”

Everyone in the band room, from the trumpets to the only clarinet player (which is the soloist for this piece, bless their soul) grabbed their instruments and fixed their posture. They windpipe instrumentalists raised their arms positioned where their mouthpieces are in front of their mouths. Catra fixed her initial posture, placed her drumsticks on a tom and the hi-hat, and placed her right foot on the bass pedal. She closed her eyes for a moment to release one breath. She opened her eyes at where Ms. Weaver is supposed to be. Ms. Weaver raised her hands in a conducting manner and scanned their faces once more. After concluding that they are ready, Ms. Weaver gestured her arms to start counting moderately (at 105 bpm to be exact).

“One-and-two-and-one-and-two-and…”

In one final moment, Catra’s mind focused on getting the piece and shouted to herself one thing:

“Let’s go!”

[9:15 A.M.]

“…WHAT THE FUCK?”

It took Adora a while to have this proper reaction to what just happened and how they immediately ended up in the piano room instead of the lecture hall.

It all started a while ago when Bow, Glimmer, and her arrived at the lecture hall at exactly nine o’ clock when they realized something was clearly off. In their two years of being students of this academy, they know one certainty about Ms. Weaver: she is never late, not even by a second. Ms. Weaver is always willing to wait for the students even if it means being earlier than them. When they entered the room, it was clearly empty. Not a single one of their peers are there.

“There’s…nobody here?” Bow asked in confusion as there is always at least two or three people sleeping in the back row.

“…I guess?” Glimmer replied in a questioning manner for she isn’t quite used to feeling earlier than literally everyone else in the class.

Adora didn’t say anything because she is thinking very hard on the reason why Ms. Weaver isn’t the first thing that they see as they enter the room. She is thinking of multiple conclusions with no concrete follow-through points, leaving her all the more confused and annoyed.

“What is she up to this time?” Adora said as she scowled at the idea of Ms. Weaver being a step close to a diabolical headmistress.

“Let’s just wait for this room to fill up,” Bow suggested.

The two agreed to the idea, so they all sat down in front so that they could greet any of their peers who will presumably come late. They sat down and waited for ten minutes for somebody to enter, predisposed to having that “hey-how-ya-doin-after-last-semester-glad-you’re-still-here” aura in their greetings. They waited for ten minutes, and finally, somebody approached the door, panting from running, and it was someone…they weren’t really expecting.

The three of them immediately looked at the figure, and they were even more confused because of all the faculty members that could show up to them, this one was someone that caught them off-guard. They immediately recognized the figure and questioned the identity.

“Mr. Hordak?”

The figure in question looked at them and quickly responded while panting for breath.

“Well, you’re-,” (pant) “-half right.”

The figure finally caught his breath, stood perpendicularly and looked at them.

“I’m his brother, Wrong-dak.”

Ah, yes: the twin brother. If Ms. Weaver is infamous for her harsh demeanor, then Hordak’s brother, Wrong-dak, is the complete opposite of that. Everybody loves Wrong-dak in the academy because of how laid-back he can be and how efficient he can teach at the same time. The only thing people find weird about him is that in the school of music, he doesn’t deal with “mono-music” (or at least that’s what he calls music played live by actual instruments) but he deals with music accompanied and produced by synthetic sounds and technologies: Modern Music (not to be confused with Contemporary Music that is handled by Glimmer’s Aunt, Castaspella, which focuses on modern music as an art form based on historical and cultural bearings, not on structure and composition). In terms of how he teaches, he is a patient and understanding one. Sure, he knows that students improve all the time, but in contrast to Ms. Weaver making diamonds, he treats students as loaves of bread, gradually improving overtime. Even when the students aren’t able to bring him outputs on the criteria he set, he still believes that it’s still part of their growth. He is definitely different from his brother, but he is still lovable even by the most angsty student.

“I figured this will happen. I have three missing students in my list,” Wrong-dak shared with them.

“List?” Adora reflexively asked without thinking much why Wrong-dak has a list.

“Oh, right. Before that, may you all follow me?” Wrong-dak suggested as he turned around and started walking with his hands behind.

Confused and bewildered, the three of them looked at each other not knowing what’s happening. They all shrugged and eventually started following Wrong-dak. As they were walking along the hallways, Bow tried to ask Wrong-dak about what’s going on.

“Wrong-dak, sir---”

“Wrong-dak’s just fine.”

“Wrong-dak…sir, where are we going exactly?”

“The piano room.”

“Okay…why are we going there?”

“It’s best to explain along with your peers. I’m yet to introduce myself properly to all of you.”

“Huh. So that’s where they went,” Adora thought to herself as she gave up thinking up conclusions about why Ms. Weaver didn’t show up.

“I have a weird feeling about this one.”

The four of them finally arrive at the piano room, and the three of them are greeted by murmuring sounds that abruptly fade out as Wrong-dak enters the room. All of the other students were standing near the piano and the three of them walked and positioned themselves near them. Glimmer grabbed the attention of one of her classmates by tugging their bag.

“Yo. What is happening here?”

“I dunno. We’re in the dark as you are, guys.”

Suddenly, Wrong-dak clapped thrice in order to get their attention.

“Hello, Orchestral Music Class A. As you may know, I’ve emailed all of you on such short notice about the change of venue for today’s class. I am Wrong-dak from the Modern Music Department, and today I will be your teacher.”

This caught everyone off-guard. Their matriculation clearly says their teacher for Music Theory II is Ms. Weaver, so why is it that Wrong-dak said that he will be their teacher. Adora couldn't shake off this feeling of confusion and immediately asked him about it.

“Excuse me, Wrong-dak. What’s going on? Where’s Ms. Weaver?” Adora asked with a suspecting face.

“Oh, right. I think I should mention that first.”

That was 30 minutes ago already. Wrong-dak explained to the best of his capacities the switch situation that they had with Ms. Weaver, and everyone was dumbfounded including Adora.

The annual Etherian Brass Band Meet is held every fourth month of the universities’ second semester, and the academy’s band has four months left to prepare; Hordak’s solution to that is switching to Modern Music so that Wrong-dak would handle Ms. Weaver’s Orchestral Stringed Music classes (Hordak isn’t exactly good with dealing with the hardcore fundamentals and theories on instrumental music which prompted him to take his brother’s place instead), and Ms. Weaver would have the entire time frame to prepare the students of Orchestral Brass Music through intense training. Hordak is set to win against the band of his older brother: The Prime-Time Swing Devils. After years of being second best behind his older brother, Hordak waited patiently for the right line-up to appear. He waited for all those years and settled for second place every time, but now, he didn’t want to wait any longer, for he has experienced first-hand a band full of potential beyond expectations. Because of that, he had put so much faith in Ms. Weaver’s almost-barbaric way of teaching just so he can finally have a moment in history where everyone will call The Horde Band as the best across the entire planet. This also means that the three of them would have to adjust to the student demographic they are assigned to.

However, Hordak’s confidence with Ms. Weaver isn’t exactly as high compared to Wrong-dak teaching Orchestral Music. It is something that is way beyond his forte, but Wrong-dak didn’t mind at all. He was willing to learn the craft for the reason that he could still teach students (what a pure soul he is), and that’s why 15 minutes later after his introduction to Adora’s class, after they helped him catch up with all the things they’ve already discussed, he had a request.

“Uhm…before we actually get official about this: can any of you play a sample piece for me? I’m really unfamiliar with the…’essence’ of the sound in live instruments.”

It’s already 30 minutes already, but their confusion doesn’t seem to end. Most of them, at least, because Adora hasn’t been paying attention after hearing Wrong-dak’s reason for the switch-up between the teachers. After hearing the explanation, a thought started circulating in Adora’s mind:

“WHAT BULLSHIT IS THIS?”

Adora is pissed. She is extremely pissed off. Why? Because she also has a recital coming up two months from now, and she is far from making progress. Throughout the semesterly break, she can’t complete the compositions assigned to her without experiencing “the void.” Whatever she does, she can’t seem to control it. At any part of the song, she always has that tendency that will mess her up, and she doesn’t know what to do about it. Now, instead of getting help from a certified professional who specializes in her track (she still needs the objective viewpoint of her performances that are useful even if she doesn’t like Ms. Weaver), she’s going to be supervised under a Modern Music teacher.

It felt like something abandoned her; betrayed her.

Glimmer noticed Adora scowling, and snapped her out of it by waving her hand in front of Adora.

“Adora. Are you listening?”

Adora flinched and looked at Glimmer.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Wrong-dak is asking for a sample play from us.”

“Why?” Adora asked with an annoyed face.

“He said he is quote-unquote, ‘unfamiliar with the essence of instruments’ or something like that.”

This is enough to cause Adora to mentally snap once more. She now learned that not only is she dealing with a teacher that doesn’t know anything about the class’ specialization; she is also dealing with a teacher that doesn’t have the grounded passion for orchestral instruments and music.

“Great. Just fucking great.”

Adora’s face turned into a frown out of annoyance. Because of such, her sight began to form an intense vignette that she is almost experiencing tunnel vision. Her emotions were close to being out of control, but she is spiraling down already. Her mind began to lose all sense of rationality that she unconsciously raised her hands to volunteer for the sample.

“I’ll do it.” Adora said in an unusual alto voice. This didn’t bother Wrong-dak as he entertained Adora’s volunteerism.

“Ohhh. Commendable,” Wrong-dak said with a genuine grin. “What instrument will you be using?”

Adora is boiling, but she wasn’t aware that she’s moving at this point. It’s like a spirit of somebody else is there to maneuver her, but her mind created her own trap of burning despise. Her body slowly approached the piano as her mind spoke.

“Piano.”

“Ohhh. Interesting,” Wrong-dak said as he did a soft clap in joy. “Similar to the keyboard.”

Adora is burning inside. Her movements are completely out of her control as her body semi-stomped towards the piano. Her mind, the remaining consciousness she has, though deprived of all rationality, is having an outburst.

“You can do this, Adora. It’s fucking easy. You’ve been doing this shit your entire life”

Her body moved the piano bench and sat down.

“I fucking will not mess this up.”

Her body adjusted the bench forward and raised the fallboard.

“It’s just like breathing: it’s fucking natural to you.”

In one final, raging, yet unnaturally graceful motion, her body raised her hands, preparing to play.

“Fuck it.”

[1:00 P.M.]

Silence, or at least that’s what it feels like. Catra hears nothing else but her fast heartbeat and her heavy breathing, and for her at that moment, they are the most deafening sounds. She was near the point of breaking, the point beyond exhaustion; she nearing fatigue. Her vision is extremely blurry from the combination of the facial sweat that was left unwiped and the mental strain that was left unchecked. Not only that, her eyes, although open, are slowly fading to black as if it’s slowly shutting down. Actually, her entire system is shutting down. They say cats have nine lives, but she felt like she had exhausted more than nine of them.

She is breathing heavily along with her bandmates (most of which already passed out the first instance they fully stopped). The room, even though the air conditioning unit is set at 15 degrees Celsius, is overflowing with an intense amount of heat. Everything around her feels so melted, so…non-existent. Her numbing body helped her experience such, and who can blame her?

For the past four hours, they played nonstop. They played a total of five pieces repeatedly: “Sing, Sing, Sing” by Benny Goodman, “Tank!” by Seatbelts, “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck, “Hooked On Swing” by Larry Elgart & His Manhattan Swing Orchestra, and “Still Alive (Cover)” by The 8-Bit Big Band (seems like Ms. Weaver is sometimes into pop culture in the styles of orchestra). After they finished all five of them, Ms. Weaver let them repeat the entire set with the interval between songs becoming lesser each time they repeat.

Their experiences of fatigue are different. For the pianist and bassist, their fingers started swelling and the mental strain felt like an acute migraine which made them skip notes. For the windpipes, their lungs are drying out and their blows gradually become worse for the amount of saliva they produce just to keep their mouth from getting dry which makes them play wrong notes. For Catra, however, it went beyond her capacity that her body didn’t have time to settle on a consistency in her pacing because of the differences in the tempo in each song, which made her switch from dragging and rushing, and nothing is working out for her body.

It didn’t help either that she was recovering from last night’s practice. Every time they play the next piece, her injury becomes progressively worse. Now, although she may not feel it, her hands are twitching furiously; as furious like a rat affected with rabies. Her hands look like they want to separate themselves.

It’s like her body is being destroyed inside out and outside in, but all she wanted to do after the period is to scream. Everyone in the room does, and it’s all because of Ms. Weaver’s way of handling them, but for different reasons.

Throughout their attempts to play the pieces, they only heard one word from Ms. Weaver repeatedly:

“Horrendous.”

For every mistake, whether it’s a wrong note, a skipped note, a rush, a drag, or an unsolicited breath, Ms. Weaver will simply say that word with such disdain and disgust in her tone. She doesn’t change the tone or the pitch; she’s saying it exactly the way she said it the first time, and that’s enough to make everyone in the band room insane.

Everyone wanted to scream to release their frustration towards Ms. Weaver…except Catra. Catra didn’t care about what Ms. Weaver was doing to them; she cared about what she was doing throughout. She wanted to scream because she’s disappointed in herself.

In Catra’s vision, every time Ms. Weaver says this, her surroundings keep getting darker and darker until all she sees is her music rack, the drum set, and darkness. She felt like she was trapped inside a prison of extreme degradation. Her body feels heavier every time and she’s close to pseudo-deafness, but it wasn't because of the horrendous treatment Ms. Weaver is giving them. Her mental response is extremely different.

Catra is one that, when left unchecked, hyper-fixates. Every time Ms. Weaver scolds them, she only says one thing in her mind that is directed towards Ms. Weaver: “Shut up.” It’s not because Ms. Weaver’s insults made her feel bad, but she was losing focus every time, and her response to deal with that is by tuning everything out. Unfortunately, she went towards an extreme degree. After playing for an awful amount of time, her mind was already imprinted with the prints of the music sheets. Her mind can see the staves, the notes, the rests, the measures in a perfect replica. Her mind can perfectly play the songs with no hassle to a point where her mind and body are in conflict on whether the body is slow or the mind is just fast. Either way, the extreme focus that she had almost made her stop blinking, unbothered and unfazed by whatever is happening. That’s why after everything, when her mind is put into halt and back into reality, she was burning everywhere.

“I will leave now. I will see you all tomorrow.” Ms. Weaver said as she turned as she walked towards the door then halted. She snapped her fingers again which erased their music sheets and replaced it with another song.

“Learn that,” She said as opened the door, and walked out in one smooth motion.

Everyone was too tired to bother at this point. Those who passed out are barely given air by those around them who are also tired. Some of them are crying, both with and without tears. Catra is still lying down, trying to control her breaths. After a few moments, the coldness of the AC unit started filling the room, prompting everyone to start releasing major tension inside them. Scorpia stood up and walked towards Catra, checking up on her with an extremely hoarse voice and loud pants as she kneeled down.

“Wild Cat-,” pants “-are you okay there?”

Catra wasn’t able to answer vocally; she instead gave a weak nod while slowly gaining control of her breath. Scorpia, still concerned because of Catra’s injury, continued her statement.

“I mean, of course-” pant “-not okay, but what I meant is---”

She was immediately stopped when she felt Catra’s hands touch her thighs with a thumbs up. Scorpia immediately understood what she wanted at this point, or rather, she remembered their discussion in the morning. She nodded and stood up and went off.

After a while, everyone else has tried their best to recover, and slowly, all of them are going out of the room, including Scorpia. Catra, however, is still lying down to recover from her injury because it got worse. When everybody else left the room 30 minutes later after Ms. Weaver dismissed them, it took 15 more minutes for Catra to finally lift her upper body without feeling near fatigued. She stayed in a sitting position for a while so that she could be in her senses, and afterwards she finally stood up to go to her things. As she got her stuff, she fixed herself. She took off her hoodie and tank top to wipe her sweat all over her body (thankfully there weren't any security cameras around), removed her glasses and cleaned them with her tank, got the black shirt out of her backpack and wore it, and fixed her ponytail.

“I guess I’ll be bringing an extra shirt for the next few days.”

Before going out, she remembered that Ms. Weaver left them a piece they should know for tomorrow; she went to her music rack and checked the piece assigned.

“Overture. Justin Hurwitz.”

Catra is appalled by the piece. She wasn’t prepared for this yet. For her, anything from the movie “Whiplash,” though her inspirations, is risky. It’s something she can’t space out to like she usually does with other songs (or like a while ago). In an unconscious fear, she felt a sharp pain on her injured hands, resulting in her to start trembling. Realizing the implication that she must be able to master her techniques immediately and push her body towards an unknown limit for the entire week, she sensed impending doom for her.

“Fuck.”

[1:30 P.M.]

Adora is walking on a field of flowers. She glides through the valley as the sky is filled with the gradient of a purple beam clashing with an orange ray. The field filled with cyclamens and hyacinths that smelled like a fresh breeze from the first time one’s face touched the coolness of the air. She witnesses as a universe unfolds in front of her. She was gazing at the stars falling from the heavens, granting everyone’s wish, and for her, everything felt perfect. It wasn’t long before she broke her composure as she heard a drum beat behind her. As soon as she glanced back, everything changed. Chaos ensued. The sky turned into a dark and sinister shade of crimson red clashing with the void of black everywhere. The field of flowers are now burning; fumes and smokes rising up, accompanied by the crackling and crying sound of the flames. Adora, scared of the scenario, began to run as far as she could. She kept running and running until she heard the beat of the drums once more. She followed it endlessly until she gradually felt the beat getting stronger and stronger inside her to the point that she stopped. She went down on her knees, grabbed her chest and screamed loudly as the world around her was crumbling. Nothing was making sense, and she’s bewildered and scared of that. She doesn’t know what to do and how to face it. Finally, she closed her eyes, and held her heart, which was beating furiously, as strongly as she could until she let out one final scream.

Everything went silent.

Adora opened her eyes to see the world she’s in right now. She’s in the real world. She felt that she’s in the real world.

“Thank goodness.”

Bow noticed her and talked to get her attention.

“Oh, you’re finally awake.”

Adora, lying down, scanned the room to figure out where she was. She recognized some of the objects around her: a cabinet, a divider, a drawer with her bag on it, a skeletal model---

“A skeletal model?”

She looked around some more and before she could fully get a grasp of her location, Glimmer filled in for her.

“You’re in the infirmary if you’re wondering.”

“Why am I here?” Adora asked with such confusion.

Before Glimmer and Bow could say anything else, Wrong-dak appeared.

“Oh, you’re finally awake.”

“Yep. Seems like it.”

“How are you feeling, dear?”

“Dear? What the fuck?”

“I feel like I woke up from a migraine, but I think I’m fine right now.”

“Thank you for your volunteerism, Adora.”

“You know me?”

“Of course! Ms. Weaver told me about your upcoming competition. She said that one of her students will be playing ‘Winter Wind’ or something like that. She let me listen to it before classes, and I pretty much knew the sound.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I must say: that was some flawless playing!”

“Oh, that was not really---,” Adora said before she was cut off by Wrong-dak’s enthusiasm.

“Your peers are dumbfounded by the perfection of your performance! They couldn't believe what they were seeing. It’s a sound I’m never familiar with, but it was enough to pique my interest at an astronomical level!”

“Bow, Glimmer, is that true?”

“Yeah! We didn’t know you could actually play like that.”

“It was like you’re a completely different person.”

“A different person, huh?”

“With that said, I may also add that you still have to improve that, don’t you? I mean, after playing three consecutive songs according to your class, you immediately passed out.”

“Passed out? What the fuck?”

That explains it.

The slightest physical contact should be enough to wake Adora up at any time she is sleeping, but she wasn’t sleeping in that scenario. At least, her mind wasn’t. Her thought process is still running but it’s as if it was separated from her body, similar to a coma. Adora was dreaming, but she wasn’t sleeping: she was literally unconscious beyond her state of mind, similar to a coma.

“…Yes?”

“Perfect, then I shall immediately educate myself about this kind of music. I will be your coach until the day of your competition.”

“Will he really be much of a help for me?” Adora thought with an unenthusiastic smile on her face.

“If you may excuse me students, I believe I must go. I still have some inquiries to answer in the faculty lounge,” Wrong-dak said as he walked past Bow and Glimmer with his hands behind. Bow and Glimmer gave him a look as he went out, and after Wrong-dak left their line of sight, they turned back to Adora. Before they could say anything, Adora already had a question for them about something she would like to confirm.

“I really passed out?”

Bow and Glimmer looked at each other with concerned faces and looked at Adora. Glimmer held her hands.

“It was something…we’ve never seen before,” Glimmer said as Adora realized that Glimmer’s face is also mixed with anxiety.

“What…do you mean?” Adora asked as her eyes widened in anticipation and fear. She looked directly at Bow to gain some insight.

“Glimmer can explain it better,” Bow said, prompting Adora to look back at Glimmer, only to see Glimmer looking away.

“Glimmer?”

“Your sound, Adora.”

This shocked Adora because she even hasn’t processed the compliments given by Wrong-dak, and now her best friend sounds like there’s something much worse about it.      

“Is it actually bad?” Adora asked, almost whispering in disappointment.

“What? Oh. No, no, no. It wasn’t,” Glimmer replied, caught off-guard.

“Then what about it?”

Glimmer sighed as she collected her thoughts to explain to Adora.

“I mean, it’s perfect actually, but…we’ve been together for almost two years, right? During those two years, I have been closely observing you in a lot of aspects. From your rituals, your habits, your mannerisms, and your idiosyncrasies---”

“Sounds like you are a huge fan of me,” Adora interrupted with a grin mixed with concern.

“My point is that I know you a lot, and I know how you play. You even told me about your preferences in playing, right?” Glimmer said as her voice started shaking.

“Yeah. I like Baroque and Classical.”

“And you scowled at Ms. Weaver when you were asked to study Chopin because he’s part of the Romantic Period, right?”

“Yeah, but what does this have to do with---,” but before Adora could finish, she felt Glimmer’s hands holding tighter at the same time Glimmer aggressively leaned a bit forward.

“YOU PLAYED FIVE SONGS FROM THAT PERIOD, ADORA! FIVE CONTINUOUS SONGS! AND YOU PLAYED THEM PERFECTLY! THAT WASN’T YOU!” Glimmer shouted as she began to tear up in fear.

“I’m scared, Adora. Something wrong is happening to you.”

“Hey, hey, come now,” Adora said as she hugged Glimmer.

“Whatever I’m experiencing, I’m pretty sure I can understand it. It’s not like it’ll kill me or something.”

Glimmer is right. It wasn’t Adora’s style and preference for piano music. Adora is pretty much bordered on musical notations and patterns provided by Classical and Baroque Composers that offer no complications on technique and melodies (to be honest Baroque music is just Classical but for richer people at that time with no easily distinguishable features other than the number of people they can fit to play in the orchestra, the number of instruments and the number of musical styles one can play and compose). Glimmer didn’t want to cry about it, but she can’t just erase the sight she saw that terrified her.

For some reason, everyone in the room saw the same thing. When Adora started playing the piece assigned to her by Ms. Weaver, she suddenly seemed…bigger. It’s like the feeling of seeing something else, like seeing a dark energy around someone that one despises. Her unnatural yet graceful movements made her seem like she actually transformed into someone “bigger” (the definition of bigger varies among everyone else where some would say a tremendous glow behind her made it seem like she was bigger and some would say that they’ve had inferiority complex that put Adora on a pedestal making it seem like she is bigger). Glimmer saw Adora grow as well, but in a different and worrisome manner.

Glimmer saw Adora get bigger by seeing a beam of light surrounding her as if there’s a spotlight, but Glimmer noticed the light slowly fading away as she starts glowing red lights that felt like an unspeakable amount of rage crawling out of her, where it seemed like Adora’s veins are glowing in red as well. In Glimmer’s eyes, in whatever magic there may be, she saw Adora consume herself in a dangerous manner, as if she is slowly…fading away.

Glimmer let out a single tear drop and a sniff. This caused Adora to even hug tighter with Bow joining to hug them both.

Adora isn’t exactly sure of what exactly Glimmer is feeling right now, but she feels that she has to do something about it.

““It will be fine. I will figure this out, okay?” Adora said in a reassuring voice as she pulled Glimmer to get a good look on her.

“You will?” Glimmer asked as she sniffed again.

“I will,” Adora said with a closed-grin.

Glimmer, even though she’s still anxious, felt relaxed with Adora’s words and hugged her.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Adora said in a chill manner, “what songs did I play?”

Glimmer couldn’t help but chuckle at the request.

“Dummy. I’ll tell you over lunch.”

“Lunch?”

“Oh, right. We haven’t eaten yet ‘cause we’re looking out for you,” Bow said while his stomach rumbled in a queue.

“Aww.”

Glimmer stood up and got her things; same goes for Bow.

“Come on, Adora, it’s already 1:30 in the afternoon.”

“We only have 30 minutes left for lunch.”

“Okay, okay,” Adora said, chuckling.

She got up and grabbed her things in the drawer beside her bed. As she was reaching for her stuff, she noticed her hands twitch as if it’s passed on to her.

“Huh. Weird.”

She picked her bag up and walked towards them.

“Let’s go.”

[Wednesday, 10:45 P.M.]

Catra is already lying prone on her bed as she constantly groans in dismay. Her body dropped the first instance she saw her bed back in the apartment, making her body extremely stiff after the three days of extensive training with Ms. Weaver. Her hands have already adapted to the amount of pain she’s experiencing, but that doesn’t make it any better for her injuries. She feels a significant decrease in the pain she feels, but her body is still catching up on healing her wounds from the ripped tissues and splinters provided by her drumsticks. She’s already used two different drumsticks as her previous one (that’s provided by the academy) immediately wore out by the first two days of non-stop, non-curated and non-specialized practices. She felt her cat's life had decreased to a negative.

“Hngggg,” she said as she tried to complain to herself.

She’s not fatigued or anything. She’s not near that after being used to the situation. She can’t feel the silence either, for she can clearly hear the whirling of the blades of the fans, the buzzing of her phone, and the ticking of the digital clock (she treats her clock as a metronome at constant 60 bpm). She’s just…tired for a very simple reason.

Other than the fact that they have a competition four months from now, they are not a professional band where they can only bother being in a band. It started to actually sink in that the school semester is now starting after being given written homework in her “Instrument Anatomy and Maintenance” subject, handled by Ms. Huntara. One homework was enough to overwhelm her.

Luckily for her, Melog, her burgundy-colored “Norwegian Forest Cat with an adorably big mane for its size” (at least that’s what she calls it to have a normal response to others when she is asked about it because it is actually an alien being in a form of a cat), was there to comfort her as she thought about it. It went up to her bed and started licking her face as it gurgled. It also rubbed its face against Catra as a sign of affection for her. They do say that pets have an ability to sense its companion’s emotions, and, being an alien being, Melog can easily detect the significant increase in stress that she experiences.

Melog purred as if it’s talking to Catra.

“Not now, Melog,” Catra protested after groaning at Melog’s remarks (being a cat-person, she can pretty much understand everything Melog is saying).

Melog did what seems to be a pouting expression as it demanded food.

“Hngggg. Later. Don’t worry,” Catra replied, still in a lying prone position.

Other than the fact that an assignment overwhelmed her entire system, she’s really tired of the piece that they are playing for two days straight. They played Justin Hurwitz’ “Overture” for two days straight already and it’s getting on her nerves. She and her bandmates really thought that they’d be doing that five songs bullshit once more; instead, they’re greeted with something that none of them really liked: the same song being played for the entire period without breaks (kind of like a mental torture where they just let a person hear the same thing over and over again).

Thankfully, their suffering was shortened by an hour today when Ms. Weaver approved of their progress with the song (they basically perfected it already within a short period of time), but Catra, by whatever command the universe has given, received a different ending.

[A while ago]

“Good,” Ms. Weaver said around 12 noon.

This is something else. For the past few days that they’ve been playing, they are met with an endless barrage of Ms. Weaver’s horrendous remarks against them. But as soon as day two entered and they kept playing the same song, they drastically improved. They immediately stepped up their game which made Ms. Weaver complain less until the point when they played the song again a while ago around 12 noon, Ms. Weaver didn’t say anything. They’ve finally done it. They were able to meet the pace that the song is demanding from them. They’ve been able to overcome such an adversary for the difficulty it gave. Everyone was cheering for their achievement and was immediately halted by Ms. Weaver.

“Because of that we’re now changing the song for the next two days.”

Ms. Weaver once again snapped her fingers that immediately changed the music sheet that’s on their music rack.

“Learn that.”

Everyone immediately looked at the music sheet and saw… “The Incredibles.” Everyone was astonished with the piece not because of the difficulty or anything related to its musicality and composition. They were astonished because it’s the first time they are playing something from the Disney franchise. They were surprised with the piece that they couldn’t help but rejoice.

“You’ll be accompanied by a guitarist from the Modern Music track for the next two days,” Ms. Weaver added.

At this point, remembering that they are already dismissed by Ms. Weaver, they started leaving the room with smiles on their faces for a lot of reasons. While they were going out, Ms. Weaver scanned the room, looking for something, and she laid her eyes unto the band’s drummer: Catra.

Catra’s sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and hands on her chest, seemingly laid-back, relaxed, and unbothered by what Ms. Weaver said that everyone, even Scorpia didn’t mind her anymore, while in reality, she’s put herself into an immediate state of rest as part of her cat functions to efficiently reserve energy for her other concerns later. She’s mentally aware, though, of what’s happening around her and she takes it as good news when everyone in the band cheered. This left a quick grin on her face before reverting back to her sleeping face.

Ms. Weaver approached her with her hands behind as she prepared her inquiry while she waited for all students to get out of the room.

“Since when did you learn how to play like that?”

Catra heard her and opened one of her eyes to get a look of Ms. Weaver, only to close it again.

“Why would you want to know?”

“Don’t try to fool me, Catra. I know you aren’t an ordinary first-year student,” Ms. Weaver said, which caused Catra’s ears to twitch in Ms. Weaver’s direction.

“I’ve been in this academy for so long. Never have I seen such a drummer.”

“What’s your problem with that?”

“You are overdoing it, Catra,” Ms. Weaver said which resulted in Catra having a scowling expression.

“There’s a fine line between perseverance and obsession to this craft. I’ve seen so many drummers try and persevere, on becoming an efficient drummer: fast, accurate, and skilled. However, all of them failed because their perseverance wouldn’t catch up to the amount of pain they will be making. You, on the other hand, have crossed that border. You have transformed your passion into an obsession, and it’s obvious from your gloves,” Ms. Weaver added which made Catra open her eyes.

“You keep hurting yourself in vain that can compromise your performances, and it’s obvious that you do. There are many times that your bandmates lose their focus because of a beat that’s early or late. A lot of it are technically your fault,” Ms. Weaver continued which made Catra scowl even more.

“On another note, though, I must say that you’ve put up a commendable performance for the past three days, but don’t let your performance today get over your head, understood? You still have a long way to go,” Ms. Weaver finally said before turning around to walk towards the door.

“However, it seems like the entire ‘Whiplash’ songs list is as easy as counting for you already. I’ll take note of that,” Shadow Weaver said as she left the room.

“Motherfucker! Is she going to try to kill me? And what’s her deal with a little perseverance?” Catra thought as she paid attention to Ms. Weaver’s remarks.

[Now]

Remembering it all just made Catra groan even more into frustration, and the buzzing of her phone for the constant alarm she put as a reminder for her to do the homework given to them by Ms. Huntara didn’t help. Melog simply sat beside Catra and slept.

“I think I’m just gonna rest for tonight.”

[Wednesday, 10:45 P.M.]

It was an almost quiet evening back at the dormitories. Outside, it’s really quiet because nobody is bothering to step outside and feel the tension of being murdered in one’s campus. It’s almost as if it’s like a quiet set of apartments occupied by mindless and tired teenagers whose go to treatment for boredom is either overworking or sleeping. Inside, everything is making a sound, but none of them is something worth hearing. Everyone in the dormitories is already doing something at the start of the semester. Everyone except some delinquents and procrastinators, where they consider “doing nothing” as doing something (to be fair, it’s technically right because practicing the choice of not doing something is equivalent to doing something that involves ignoring the possible things to be done), and of course, the daydreamers who are lost within their worlds of whether they should do something or not because they are too busy making sense of the cloud of thoughts hovering over them; one of them is Adora.

Adora has been staring at the ceiling for two hours already with an immense amount of mental exhaustion. It’s as if she feels her body lying down on her bed, but her head is somewhere beneath that, farther and lower than the floor could be, like she is lying down on a vertical position. She deals with this as she hears the breeze coming out of their AC units, and the clacking of Glimmer’s laptop as she frantically writes her reminders for the semester and her homework for Ms. Juliet’s Universal History of Music II class (apparently they are assigned to write a write-up on why is it important to discuss music that exists beyond the solar system they are in which is, to be honest, amazing to think about in the first place). She’s been thinking for the past two hours with such a lost expression. The amount of confusion about what happened on Monday has caught up to Adora as she found herself lying down in a supine position, thinking about what happened a while ago.

[A while ago]

“I’m sorry, Wrong-dak, sir. I just don’t know how to do it again.”

Adora is sitting down on one of the chairs in the room as she expressed her distress about not being able to play like she did.

“It’s okay, really. I don’t understand it either.”

At least she was glad that Wrong-dak is extremely clueless to the craft.

“If it were Ms. Weaver who evaluated me, I would have been kicked out of the program immediately,” she thought to herself with such gladness and fear.

“It’s like…it only happens every once in a while. I don’t know,” Adora said with such a troubled face.

“Ohhh. Like a special skill, or something?”

“Holy shit. Am I really dealing with this?”

“Uhm...I…guess?”

“Hmmm.  Interesting,” Wrong-dak said with a straight face.

“Well, I don’t know much about this music and its musicians, but I will try to understand it further. For the meantime, you rest up for a bit. I will check up on your peers,” Wrong-dak said as he stood straight and turned around.

Nobody seemed to be saying anything, but she felt like she was being watched by everyone in the room and it’s making her uneasy. The difference between Wrong-dak and her peers was the reason why she was being observed. Wrong-dak was just confused to why she couldn’t play like way she did last Monday (in Wrong-dak’s mind, it goes something like “if the performance is successful the first time why did it suddenly stopped after the next few tries” as if he treats Adora as some kind of machine that can be perfected by steps with only difference that he witnessed Adora in the “final step” of his analogy), but for everyone else, trained to notice details in their classmates’ styles, they were confused to why she couldn’t properly finish what she plays.

For them, it’s not really that Adora can’t play like she did, but they started to notice that when playing songs, she always got inexplicably lost mid-way. This Either she slows down, presses harder, plays faster, or stops abruptly. It’s explainable when she does it multiple times throughout the song while recovering from that instance. It means that she's making mistakes, which is absolutely normal, but they noticed her consistently keeping the new pace she always ended up with when it happened. If Adora started playing slower or faster, she would keep playing off-tempo; if she started playing louder or softer, the rest of the composition, even on parts with varying volumes, would be played louder or softer. Adora can feel them looking at her, and she knows why, as Glimmer and Bow told her about it. She can’t deny it, however, because it’s true. The entire semesterly break for practicing the set Ms. Weaver gave her is always interrupted by the sudden silence which tilts her off.

Because of that, for the rest of the period, she just sat down thinking, while watching Bow and Glimmer practice their duet on Joe Hisashi’s “The Merry-Go Round of Life” from Howl’s Moving Castle.

[Now]

“Argh!” Adora shouted in frustration the first instance she felt her mental state go back to normal (somehow).

“Bloody Hell, Adora!” Glimmer shouted in frustration the first instance she heard Adora speak after five hours.

“I just don’t get it, Glimmer!” Adora exclaimed, growling with the fact that she can’t understand what she’s dealing with.

“I know how I’m messing up, but it doesn’t help to know why I keep messing it up.”

“Yeah. I’m just as lost as you, Adora. I mean how do you even play Beethoven’s 3rd Movement of “Moonlight Sonata” with such perfection and then downgrading afterwards?” Glimmer said, focused on her laptop screen; typing.

“I don’t know, Glimmer. Ugh! I don’t know where my thoughts are going at this point,” Adora complained as Glimmer gave half of her attention.

“Aren’t you supposed to be like…I don’t know, gone at this time of the day?” Glimmer asked, still not looking away from her laptop’s monitor.

“I know, I know. I’m just…argh!” Adora wailed (at this point Adora is too tired to even think about trying to think about anything related to her performance and this is the best way she can do it).

“Can you stop doing that already?” Glimmer said as she finally reached her limit and looked away from the laptop to look at Adora.

“I’m troubled, okay? I need something to slow me down---”

“I listen to Ghibli music most of the time to focus. It helps me get in a mood,” Glimmer said coldly.

“---which isn’t piano-related. Glimmer!”

“You’re trying to ruin my flow here, Adora! I’m writing that paper for Ms. Juliet’s history class and making sense of the schedules provided, and I can’t finish it when you scream like that,” Glimmer eagerly protested.

It’s true. Adora is very vocal about her complaints and the most notable thing that she does is when tries to scream and finish it halfway. She cuts her scream so unconsciously perfect that people outside would go insane pinpointing the reason why they heard a scream stop midway. It’s not a gasp that’s short enough, nor is it a groan that’s long enough. It’s a fine gray area between those, plus she makes it similar to a scream. Because of such complexity in Adora’s scream/squeal, Glimmer is in a lot of ways annoyed.

“At least you have a flow. Argh!” There she goes again.

“Ugh…” Glimmer, though she started focusing on her laptop again, did a face palm and slid it down on her face. She’s tired and all.

“Then listen to songs that are not piano-related!”

“Like what?”

“Are you shitting me right now?” Glimmer thought with such perplexed expression

“I don’t know! Search literally anything but piano on Spotify or something.”

Silence ensued. Glimmer continued her work, trying to immerse herself once more to the flow that she’s been going on about, but it didn’t take seconds before Adora could break the silence. Adora, for a full minute, went silent, and after that, she spoke.

“Oh yeah. That seems to be possible.”

For the past two years that Glimmer and Adora were roommates, she still has no explanation of how far Adora can go to be stupid. Whether it is a conscious thing where she really doesn’t know how is happening around her and she cannot respond it properly, or unconscious thing where she thinks she knows how to respond to what is happening around her but really doesn’t, Glimmer is constantly being challenged to deal with Adora’s unparalleled lack of…smartness (intellect is just too much because she still has her music intellect and academic intellect). Adora, even if she has her mental state back to normal, has clearly lost her mind, and so did Glimmer (especially Glimmer).

“Somebody, help this girl,” Glimmer thought as her soul flew away.

[Friday, 1:30 P.M.]

As lunchtime rolled around, Catra, along with her bandmates, was already pretty much done eating two hours ago, right after Ms. Weaver dismissed them for a perfect performance. Catra is a little bit disappointed with the performance, however, because she didn’t get to perform with her drums. Instead, she was assigned by Ms. Weaver to play the bass, and it’s not the double bass but rather an electric bass. The first instance Catra raised her hands to let Ms. Weaver know that she can play the electric bass, she was immediately given one to play with. Ms. Weaver hadn't thought of the idea that the sound between a double bass (which is what they have) and an electric bass (which is what the piece needs) is completely different, and she realized this after three takes on Thursday. The drums were handled by their back-up drummer, Rogelio, a lizard-man.

It’s not that Catra doesn’t enjoy playing the bass. She loves the bass with almost the same amount of love for drumming because of the similar sounds she can produce with the said instrument. It’s just that she didn’t get the chance to practice a fast and changing drum pattern with the selection they were playing (also she thought that it would be really nice to play drums for a song from a movie made by a well-known franchise). Still, she did an amazing job with the bass in which their band bassist, Lonnie, was thankful for because she got to rest from Ms. Weaver's relentless pursuit of improvement.

Now, Catra is just chilling and resting with Scorpia in the study hall, waiting for the next subject. She isn’t exactly interacting properly with Scorpia, but she doesn’t want to silently wait around anywhere aimlessly, so she hangs out with Scorpia instead. In the past hour that they are together, Scorpia was talking about her section’s efforts in the last few days that were practicing under Ms. Weaver’s supervision, about her efforts on Ms. Netossa’s class on General Academics, and about her invitation to a house party tomorrow. She wasn’t really paying much attention to what Scorpia was telling her in detail. Her mind is busy resting after the practice, and the best thing she can do to keep up is to accompany Scorpia.

“Catra?” Scorpia asked as she clicked her pincers in front of Catra to make a sudden sound.

This startled Catra as she almost jumped out of her seat and fell over.

“Ahhh!”

“Sorry for that. Did you hear what I say,” Scorpia asked.

Catra vaguely remembers anything to what Scorpia has been saying, but she heard the words “Ms. Weaver,” “Saturday,” “Ms. Netossa”, “Practice,” and “House Party.”

“Ms. Weaver? Saturday? Ms. Netossa? Practice? House Party?” Catra said with a guilty and unsure face.

“Hmm. Yeah that’s pretty much the gist of it,” Scorpia replied without considering that Catra isn’t really listening.

“What’s the party all about,” Catra asked with such curiosity.

“Saturday. After classes around the school’s dormitories. The Modern Music students will be hosting.”

“Isn’t that…a tad bit too much,” Catra brought up as an excuse for her.

“I mean I don’t do well with other people, so I think it’s not a good idea-,” Catra continued, but she was cut off by Scorpia.

“And you plan on tiring yourself out throughout the entire night on Saturday?”

“Ye-yes. Yes,” Catra replied, stuttering.

“Come on, Catra! Let’s at least relax. I mean we deserve it after a week of Ms. Weaver’s merciless training,” Scorpia said as she punched Catra’s shoulders.

“Ouch. Those pincers really hurt.”

“I mean she is at least merciful in giving us breaks,” Catra said.

“Only if we have a perfect performance.”

“…Yeah.”

“Catra,” Scorpia called her attention as she grabbed Catra’s shoulders.

“Whoa. These pincers are strong, too.”

“It’s nice to know that I’m your friend; I appreciate that a lot, but I worry that you might end up like one of those people that would…you know,” Scorpia said with an extremely worried face.

“What do you mean?”

“You know,” Scorpia insisted and pointed towards somewhere with her head.

“Weaver,” Scorpia said, implying that Ms. Weaver is a loner who’s obsessed with the idea of music and constant improvement in the craft, which is terrifyingly accurate.

This startled Catra as she almost jumped out of her seat and fell over. Again.

“Oh fuck no. I will not allow myself to be that,” Catra protested.

“Then you have to start somewhere if you wanna do something about it.”

“Ugh,” Catra groaned as she got her bag, put it in front of her, and planted her face in one go (she can just slam her head on the table but her glasses are expensive enough already).

“Am I really doing this,” Catra asked with her face still on her bag where Scorpia replied with a hum and nod of approval.

“It’s just…awkward if you consider my age and my year.”

“That’s fine. It’s not something people ask every day. They just want to have some fun with other people,” Scorpia said in a reassuring manner.

Catra couldn’t do anything but groan because she knows Catra is right: she has to start somewhere. In slight frustration, she opened her bag and started looking for her phone.

“I’ll…consider it,” Catra replied as she continued scrambling through her bag.

“Cool, Wild Cat,” Scorpia said with a grin.

At this point, Catra felt weird going through her bag when she noticed something missing in her bag. After a moment of thinking, she looked inside the bag and noticed that her music sheet for the weekend was missing. She thought that she might have left her music sheet in the band studio (she always does when they are dismissed early in practice, even under Hordak’s supervision).

“Ah shit. When’s our next class,” Catra asked Scorpia with such concern.

“2:00 P.M. Why?”

Catra immediately closed her bag and carried it. She stood and started walking fast towards the exit.

“My Music Sheet!”

At that instance, Catra is gone from Scorpia’s line of sight. Dazed and confused, Scorpia only said one thing that is supposed to be directed towards Catra.

“…I have her music sheets? What?”

Catra is already hurrying towards the band studio, which is at the building for Contemporary Music, which is across the main building, both of which are like five blocks away from the library which is a dedicated building. She is running through the campus to get to the band studio in time for the next subject. She has 20 minutes left before she has her first record of tardiness of the year (she is always late for other subjects in reality but she doesn’t want to start it this early in the semester). She passed through the dormitories, the research center, the gymnasium, and eventually she reached the main building and towards the back door of the building to enter the campus’ central community garden to reach the building for Contemporary Music. As she entered the building at such a cat-speed, she had 15 minutes left before Ms. Netossa’s General Academics II. She scrambled towards the band studio (thankfully it’s just around the first floor). As she entered the studio she checked her spot where the music rack is supposed to be, and she didn’t find anything. She checked the item rack behind the ensemble’s spot and didn’t find anything. Then, it hit her.

“Ah fuck. It’s with Scorpia,” she said with such disappointment.

She groaned loudly in the studio that went from an “AHHHHHHH” to an “OHHHHHHHH” and luckily no one was around to hear that. She slammed her forehead on the wall while still groaning. She eventually stopped and breathed heavily to calm herself down. She checked her phone for the time.

“1:55 P.M. Well, at least I’m fast.”

Catra’s next class is on the second floor of the Main Building. She hastened her walking pace as she exited the studio and the building for Contemporary Music. She walked with heavy footsteps that look like they can be heard from the library as she murmurs unintelligible dialogues with herself out of frustration. She walked up the stairs from the campus’ central garden, and as she was about to enter the Main Hall, she got bumped, resulting in her to drop. It might seem like a normal Friday for a student who thought they forgot something and a series of mishaps happen along the way, and that happened later on, but this is where it all started, and it is a bit weird from Catra’s perspective.

As Catra was bumped, she suddenly felt her heart stop, causing her to suddenly fall in a tilted manner. It’s as if she had tripped over something, and it didn’t help that she didn’t feel her breath at all. In that manner, Catra blacked out for a quarter of a second before hitting the ground, but for her, it lasted for a whole minute. She saw her world turn into black as she felt like falling from the sky. More accurately, she felt like she was being dragged down towards what seems like the bottom of an ocean. This caused Catra to experience something she’s never experienced before: the point beyond stress; a breaking point.

Catra has always felt the need to control her breathing, but she doesn’t exactly experience something grave in her life. She has so much discipline to her emotions that the worst thing she has experienced with her feelings is the stress from not hitting a beat right; and this is something new to her. A feeling of an endless stream of despair, deadlocked and unable to move; nowhere to go, but it wasn’t coming from her. It’s as if she’s feeling what somebody else is feeling right now, and she feels like it’s an enigma of confused and hidden feelings, waiting to be revealed. She witnesses her world go black as she hears echoes of unfamiliar voices, none of which she can pick up anything she can understand. For the quarter of a second, Catra experienced all of this, before she realized that she was actually falling.

She didn’t have time to react properly, but she was able to put out her hands just slightly forward, causing her to save herself by an inch from falling down headfirst. By the time she was back to her senses, her palms started sweating profusely. She turned around to look at the person who bumped her. She can’t pinpoint the identity of the person because they were wearing a white hoodie with streaks of gold with the hood worn. She started feeling her heartbeat and her breath, but she is still dazed and confused. She started controlling her breaths as she continued staring at the person who bumped her until they were out of sight.

Afterwards, before she could stand up and go to her class, Catra only had one thought:

“What. The. Fuck?”

Everyone is connected in one way or another. Some are connected through connections from friends and acquaintances, some are connected through blood relations, and some are connected through everyday interaction. These are the common connections that we always experience. A connection from social, cultural, and political endeavors as what we experience every day, but what if we are connected in something we can’t see? What if we are all bound to a string on our own, one that hopes to be connected? If we can tangle the connections we have with people we interact with, we try our best to make sense of that string. If we can be tangled by something that we don’t know and can’t see, where do we start looking to make sense of everything that starts making zero sense from a messy and chaotic invisible knot?

This is the first instance where Catra fell behind.

[Saturday, 8:45 PM]

*beep*

That’s the last item of her shift. She put the scanned cheese pack into the paper bag before giving the receipt.

“That’ll be 12.99 Etherian bucks,” Catra stated to the customer.

The lizard-kin gave their debit card as their payment, and Catra took it with the least amount of enthusiasm she’s ever had in this work. She swiped the card, checked the validity, got the receipt, and gave both of them to the customer.

“Thank you for your patronage,” Catra said in a dull manner as the customer nodded at her before departing from the store.

Catra stretched as she checked the store’s clock to see if her shift is near to its end, and surely enough it is. She only has 15 minutes left of working time before being able to call it a day. The shift is exceptionally fast because people usually come around this convenience store on Sundays to buy their weekly or monthly groceries. It’s rare to see people coming in to buy single items or a few. With this in mind, Catra simply dozed off on the cashier counter. This seems like a normal evening for Catra working as a store clerk for the convenience store just at the ground floor of her apartment, but it’s not like the previous nights she was working here. Eventually, her boss noticed the lack of enthusiasm from Catra. Catra isn’t usually like this as far as her boss can remember. After letting her rest for a while, her boss approached her for an inquiry.

“Is everything alright,” her boss said, sounding like an old man in tenor vocal range.

Catra got up and turned around to look at her boss, who is a male hybrid of a brown-furred koala and owl with ears donning a color scheme similar to a pansexual flag for wings, only to be met with a face of concern.

“I’m fine. Why?” Catra replied with the same amount of enthusiasm as she had a while ago.

“Not much, at least. You’ve been down for the entire shift,” her boss said.

“That’s unlike you,” her boss added, and he’s right.

For the past year that Catra has been working on this convenience store as a regular, she is always beaming with an energy of neutral optimism. She doesn’t interact much with the customers, but she makes an effort to sound at least enthusiastic to others. She’s timid to say the least, but she’s not boring. She has a vibe that people can be comfortable with, which is perfect for a clerk in a convenience near apartment communities (she is also acquainted with the elder people from the building who always try to start a conversation with her because of her energy), and this constant from Catra ever since she started working here. Well, until now that is.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, old man,” Catra said, forcing a grin.

“Hey, I’m not old!”

Catra simply chuckled at the reply, and at the same time, the mini clock by the counter started beeping, indicating the end of her shift.

“That’s my shift. Time to go.”

Catra immediately got up and went to the back room to remove her apron and cap and immediately grabbed her backpack, leaving the back room and walking to the front door.

Normally, Catra would have changed into her black t-shirt “uniform” to perform at the nearby bar, but even before she’s about to ask for a day off from her nightly jazz band, their trumpeter had a problem with their equipment that they had to cancel for the night, something that’s unusual to happen when it comes to equipment failures. Instead of going to the next two blocks to the bar, Catra’s supposed plan for the night is going back to her apartment immediately and calling it a day.

“Hope you have a good evening for the rest of the night, dearie,” her boss said to her.

“I will, old man,” Catra replied with a smirk as she left the convenience store and went up to her apartment.

Catra’s trip to her room is extremely unique. She is not much of a people person, so she basically developed an anxiety for elevators and public stairs most of the time except for hospitals and schools. Because of this, instead of going to the main door to go up, she goes to the alleyway beside her apartment to use the fire exit to go up. The only time she goes to the main lobby is when she is about to pay her rent. She uses a specific rock that is used to bring down the ladder to gain access to the staircases, and every time she throws it to the lock that keeps the ladder in its horizontal state, it always unlocks, bringing the ladder down, while catching the rock flawlessly (cat accuracy things). Once she gets up from the ladders, she brings them back up, and throws the rock to the spot where she always gets it. She proceeded to go up towards the fourth floor of the apartment, and entered through the window. Once she got there, she immediately walked towards her room which is at the end of the hallway.

As Catra entered the room, she took her shoes off as she was walking, threw her bag on the floor, took off her glasses, went to her bedroom, put the glasses on the drawer beside her bed, and dropped towards her bed in one slumping motion (Catra was slow enough to do all of this that the ghost on her room was able to retell that in full detail). Melog walked into her room to ease her in, and fell asleep immediately beside her. Catra

“Today is a weird day,” Catra said to herself with Melog purring in an inquiring manner, and that is true to an extent.

[Saturday, 8:45 A.M.]

It is remarkable that the species of Catra has some unbelievable traits which includes the amazing capacity of their ears to pick up sound no matter how minor it is. However, at this instance at 8:45 in the morning, Catra is still asleep. She didn’t forget to put her alarm on because it should be automatically set that she wakes up every day at 7 A.M. She didn’t forget to have the phone’s system volume up because that’s just how she left it. There wasn’t a problem with Catra’s surroundings; the problem is with Catra. Physical features and mental features cooperate with one another in a body, but nevertheless, they’re still separate entities, and her mental state is hindering her to process anything, or at least she would if her thought process wasn’t acting weird.

She doesn’t know why, but she began to feel heavy yesterday, and she can’t pinpoint exactly when it started. All she knew was that yesterday was a train wreck. She keeps losing balance, she feels heavier, she feels like she has a migraine all of a sudden, and most importantly, she feels like she’s deaf. This is easily explainable when it's constant, but these things happen as if they are special events or something. They happen and then Catra’s back to normal. These are the instances when her mental state can’t keep up with her physical state, which resulted her mental state to be anxious all of a sudden, prompting her to activate her feral nature of sudden retaliation to anything that would feel like a threat to her (which explains her mood), hindering her to properly function as her half-human part, and the events of the day aren’t helping as well. She was always called by Ms. Huntara in her class, the band was too focused for anyone to talk to each other, a fight broke out in front of the convenience store, and nobody was in the bar to listen to her nightly jazz band’s performance (it’s a miracle actually the nobody showed up in the bar on a Friday). All of these things aren’t adding up to what Catra is expecting from an ordinary Friday, but then again, all Scorpia can say to Catra about her day was “it is what it is” which is very unlikely of Scorpia.

All of these things overwhelmed Catra’s mental response to things that, at this very moment, she’s still asleep (or at least her mind is). Luckily for her, her class starts at 9 o'clock in the morning, and Melog was there to wake her up from her deep slumber. He tried to wake her up by means of telepathic transmission of emotions that can be done when Melog reads the emotions being felt by someone and transmitting it back as a wake-up call to let the person realize what those emotions bear in consequences (or just simply repeating the emotion to startle someone), but that didn’t work to say the least because Catra is already set with a mindset that school consequences are inconsequential because tardiness is soon to be inevitable for her which won’t change her diligence in her works (basically she doesn’t care). When that didn’t work, Melog picked up a pillow and slammed it into Catra. This is enough for Catra to actually wake up because anything that may seem life threatening puts her into an instant alert mode with a small delay in thought process. Melog simply looked at her as she hissed and prepared her claws, and after a while, Catra realized that she just woke up.

It took her a while to realize that something was off as she woke up, and this is how it went: She got up and started preparing herself for 10 minutes like she usually does. She eventually finished earlier by a minute because she didn’t have to replace her bandages because she didn’t overexert herself yesterday after everything out-of-place that happened. At this point, she has finished tidying herself up, and all that’s left is to prepare her stuff for the day. A Saturday class doesn’t usually require the students much, so she only fumbled through her stuff to get her phone and some bandage rolls. At this moment, she immediately realized what’s wrong

She opened her phone and checked the time.

[8:55 A.M.]

“Motherfucker.”

In an instance, she ran through her drawer to get a red jacket with a maroon upper half and jeans, wore them along with her black sneakers in quick and panicking motions. She got her two things and put them in a bag, and ran out of her apartment door saying her farewell to Melog that can be heard all across the apartment building. She ran towards the hallway’s window and got on the fire exit, jumping down through every stair she would encounter, landing perfectly on every stair landing. As she reached the last platform of the fire exit stairs, she jumped from the fire exit towards the alleyway, which is 10 feet in height (it’s just one of those perks of being a cat-hybrid). Once she landed, she went to the main sidewalks and sprinted towards the direction of her school (she has to compress a 15-minute walk into a 5-minute run knowing that Ms. Weaver is always on time) causing all her leg muscles to temporarily enhance . She narrowly avoided every being she came across with, dashed through pedestrian lanes, jumped over cars, and slid under movers carrying a cabinet. There was even a moment where she ran through an alleyway as a shortcut, vaulting over the alley’s gate and flipping over the debris in it. Eventually, she reached the academy’s gates and bolted towards the main building, jumping over the stairs in front and the behind the main building in two single jumps, hastened towards the academy’s park, and finally she reached the building for Contemporary Music, ready for the consequences Ms. Weaver had prepared for them every time somebody is late. She reached the studio, almost fatigued and completely breathless, only to see the weirdest thing that happened on a morning session with the band: emptiness.

It’s not completely empty per se because Scorpia is in the band room, cleaning up the room as if everyone has already left. This left Catra dumbfounded while she tried to catch her breath. In her heavy breathing, Scorpia greeted the exhausted hybrid.

“Good morning, Wild Cat,” Scorpia greeted with such enthusiasm.

Catra is still catching her breath as she puts her hands by the door frame, but she’s already given up the conversation with Scorpia, making no attempt to respond to her. This didn’t stop Scorpia from following up the conversation, though.

“I see that you’re early for school today.”

“Early? What the fuck?” Catra thought as she gained a semblance of mental and physical stability, leaving her with a confused face, and so did Scorpia who tilted her head in confusion.

“Hmm? You don’t know?” Scorpia asked with concern.

Catra raised her free hands in front of her, signaling Scorpia that she is still trying to catch her breath fully before she can talk. After a while, Catra breathed deep and stood upright. She looked at Scorpia grumpily as she felt the burning sensation of her heartbeat.

“I don’t know what?”

“…Ms. Weaver mailed us all today?” Scorpia said while raising her hands as she shrugged.

“She told us that practice for today will be unsupervised so it’s on our own volition if we practice or not, and apparently, everyone chose not to---well, except for you, I guess,” Scorpia added as she scratched her nape with her pincers at the end of her statement.

“I’m just here to check on the equipment because my parents want me to leave the house in the morning on a school day.”

Catra didn’t mind Scorpia’s last statement, but as soon as she heard that Ms. Weaver mailed them, she got her phone from her bag immediately to check her email, and true enough, Ms. Weaver did actually send them an email. This is the content of the e-mail:

“[6:00 A.M.]

Horde Members,

No session today. Practice on your own volition. That’s all.

Sincerely,

Ms. Weaver”

Catra ended up having to stare at the email for as long as she can remember, feeling pissed about herself that she missed this thing so easily. It’s one thing to wake up late, but it’s another to not notice a simple email that could’ve changed the start of the course of her day (she’s also pissed about the fact that Ms. Weaver had the time to wake up at six in the morning to tell them to not go to school instead of doing it the night before).

“Catra?” Scorpia asked as she clicked her pincers in front of Catra, startling Catra as she recoiled back from looking at her phone.

“Fuck!”

“Sorry about that. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m just-” Catra stopped as she pinched her nose bridge in dismay of the situation. Catra didn’t talk for a moment trying to process things, but eventually, she changed the course of the discussion.

“No practice today, right?”

“Yep. No practice today,” Scorpia said with enthusiasm.

Catra simply nodded, and slowly turned away from Scorpia and slowly tried to exit the room.

“Are you going later, Wild Cat?”

This put Catra in a halt as she was immediately caught off-guard of an occasion she probably forgot at the moment. She simply stopped by the door, and slightly turned her head to look back at Scorpia.

“The party, remember? It will be hosted by the Modern Music students?”

“Oh right. Right. Probably. Thanks for reminding me,” Catra said as she quickly got out of the room.

She paced around the hallways as she searched for the restroom to regain her composure because even after catching breath, Catra is finding it hard to breathe along with her rapidly beating heart. It is an event similar to a mental attack, but Catra is feeling something more dangerous. She can feel her entire body being shredded down to pieces, feeling lighter and lighter the more that she walks. She can feel herself burning after pushing herself towards a limit that she’s not supposed to go to. It’s as if she’s being hurt all over her body, but at the same time it doesn’t. The only thing keeping her from breaking is her ability to enhance her muscles. For the most parts, cat-hybrids are simply humans with cat features and functions, like most hybrids, but there is a small chance that a cat-hybrid will end up having the ability to fully transform oneself in to a human-sized cat by transforming and enhancing all the muscles, and for some mutation, Catra can only access a portion of that ability by being able to selectively enhance the muscles she wants to (this explains the fact that she is able to practice the drums for more than what an average being can), but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its consequences. Once a cat-hybrid uses that ability to its full extent, her muscles basically becomes significantly weak, leaving everything into a state of deflation which uses up a lot of energy as well, which can result to the body eating its muscles away just to get back into its normal form, and Catra almost reached that.

She eventually reached the restroom and proceeded to splash herself with the water from the sink repeatedly. She eventually splashed enough already to properly dispose herself mentally, and proceeded to sit on the restroom’s floor (the restroom in the building for Contemporary Music is rarely used as the specialized rooms already have their own restrooms to prevent students from going out of the class mid-session to take a urinary or fecal break). She took off her jacket and relaxed her muscles, and eventually started to control her breaths. At this point, all Catra can hear is silence.

Silence and a few controlled breaths.

This scene is all too familiar for Catra already. Every time she pushes herself, she shuts down consciously and subconsciously enters into her automatic body functions. Her body kept breathing, repairing the cells in her body at an extremely abnormal rate, as her mind drifted into sleeping. Catra can’t hear anything other than her breath and heartbeats, but this time, there wasn’t any dream. She always saw a blonde woman in her dreams, but this time, there wasn’t anything like that. She only heard the sound of her breath, heartbeat, and this time, blood. She can hear her blood flowing through her body as if it’s directing her into a direction full of unknown and undiscovered places. She heard the continuous flow of the sound, accompanied by the beat of her heart. She only heard everything inside her being the loudest ones in the room, even if it was her dreams only. After a while, she felt at ease and relaxed as she started to consciously feel her breath coming back to her. She finally opened her eyes to see herself still sitting on the restroom floor.

“ That’s a close one, ” she said to herself.

She eventually stood up, got her sling bag, and wore her jacket. She walked towards the sink to splash herself again with water. At the moment she was doing this, her mind was empty, and that hit her. Her mind was empty after that encounter, and that is highly unusual for her. She always remembered the dream or vision she had because she treats it as her “failsafe memory” in case she pushes herself too far again. What astonished her is the fact that this is the first time in a long while that she didn’t see the blonde lady in white playing the piano under a sycamore tree.

“That’s weird. I don’t remember my dream,” Catra thought to herself before going out of the restroom.

 [Now]

The rest of the day didn’t help either for it was a series of unfortunate and unprecedented events from all directions. She tripped multiple times, dozed off at unusual places (she slept mid-way walking towards her afternoon classes with Ms. Spinerella on Universal Music History I), and shifted from feeling heavy and light. It can probably be because of the fact that she forgot to eat for the day until Scorpia pointed it out to her after their last class. The only thing that helped her get by for the day was when her boss let her eat any food of her liking from the department store that’s on him. Nevertheless, she doesn’t feel like herself for the entire day (also, another fight broke out in front of the convenience store), and it’s leaving her exhausted faster than before, which brings us to this occasion of Catra lying prone again on her apartment bed with Melog beside her.

She’s already in her underwear with her phone being covered by her entire face out of exhaustion, ready to call it a day. The overwhelming weight of the day is catching up to her, and she is ready to drift off to her dreams already to recharge. Of course, the universe isn’t done with her yet as she felt her phone vibrate on her face along with a notification sound. Without bothering to get up, she got her phone from her face and opened it through muscle memory. She slowly opened her eyes and saw that the message was from her phone’s default messaging app. It took her a while to read what the message was about and from whom.

[9:00 P.M.]

lobster: catra, where are u??

Catra immediately got up out of guilt for almost forgetting Scorpia’s invitation to the party. It’s not her fault that she’s experiencing all these kinds of predicaments. The universe just kept shitting on her all of sudden without notice, and it’s draining her so much. Nevertheless, she gave the invitation a consideration because she honestly didn’t care at this point.

[9:01 P.M.]

catwoman: oh right haha woops

catwoman: i immediately dozed off after work

catwoman: but i’ll be there

lobster: okii wild cat but if ur tired then izzokay :))))

Catra closed her phone and lied down in a supine position in contemplation. She almost dozed off for a bit, but Melog kept pushing her to get up. He kept rubbing his head to Catra, trying to get her out of her bed until Catra was annoyed.

“Alright! Jeez. I’m going,” Catra said to Melog with Melog only replying with a purr as she got up, annoying Catra even more.

“If the universe is gonna throw random shit at me, might as well receive them in a party,” she thought to herself with an intense amount of anticipation towards disappointment.

Catra got up to prepare for her departure. She wore a red-ish hoodie with dark sleeves and jeans with rolled-up sleeves, donning an aesthetic of urban sunset with black slip-ons to finish it off. She grabbed her school I.D. and her phone, gave Melog his food for the night, and proceeded to go out.

Catra wished she just stayed for the night because a party with the Modern Music department was not something she was expecting. Catra had her fair share of concepts about a college party, and she expects it to be similar to the parties that she sees in the movies where a rich kid hosts a party and people get drunk and play beer pong until everyone gets wasted under the roaring sounds of house party music ranging from modern trap remixes to pop music by mainstream artists. She was right on the mark of expectations. However, she wasn’t expecting multiple hosts and parties in one place. There’s a different party at all parts of the dormitories, and it was wild to say the least. Catra was expecting a wild party, but not this wild.

She wandered through the strobe-lights-filled hallways filled with social anxiety, trying to find Scorpia in all the mess of the mixed smells of sweets from the different species and the stains of alcohol and carbonated drinks reeking all over the walls of the dormitories. It’s amazing to think about that fact that the school’s administration is allowing this kind of events to take place in the academy, but then again, their facilities and dormitories are isolated in-campus, so nobody is actually being bothered by anything done by the students (also, Wrong-dak assumed full responsibility for the students’ misdemeanors and violations which is surprisingly going well for him and his students). Still, it’s no denying that some things are a bit out of control because as Catra walked through the hallways of the songwriters and producers on the first floor of the dormitory, she encountered the wildest students of the department: technical. These students know no boundaries when it comes to what they want to do. It is a mix of sound designers, engineers, folly artists, mixers, editors, and equipment managers. They play around everything modern music has to offer in terms of studio equipment and live equipment. They are, in slang terms, “nuts.” On one hand, they are playing ping pong with vinyl records. On the other hand, they record the noise of the crowds and mix them on the spot and produce them on the spot, only to play them on the spot (that’s too much on the spot for people who can’t stay in one spot). Second floor was a fiesta, and Catra was already on alert as she trekked the dangerous halls of the dormitories. Catra felt her head being light already as the smell is stronger than before, mostly because it also involved the burning sensation of the equipment being used at the same time under an octopus-wire connection of the outputs. Basically, it felt like hell, and Catra is close to passing out. Luckily, someone saved her by pushing her towards the end of the hallway. This caught Catra off-guard, but she doesn’t have much to do so she just let it be. She simply closed her eyes and prayed to whatever universal force there is that this would not be the death of her. After a while, Catra stopped moving involuntarily and slowly, she opened her eyes again, turning around to see who was pushing her.

“Are you Scorpia’s friend,” the figure immediately closed their distance with the face popping out immediately in front of Catra as she turned, startling Catra, causing her to recoil back and fall down on the floor.

Before Catra was a girl sporting a gray robotic mask with red eyes, accompanied by extremely huge and long pigtails with a lilac color, and a white and purple sweater for the top and brownish cargo shorts and combat boots for the bottom. Catra didn’t pay much attention to her overall appearance because she was too busy being frightened by the mask of the girl in question. The girl figured out that Catra was terrified, prompting her to lift her mask with her pigtails, revealing a smile. The fact that she moved her pigtails at will frightened Catra even more, leaving the girl dead on air with no response. Eventually, the girl waved her hair in front of Catra, and to no avail, she clapped her pairs of vinyl records behind her with her hair in front of Catra’s face.

“Ahh!”

“Sorry. As I was saying: are you Scorpia’s friend?”

“Oh, uhm. Yes. I’m her friend.”

“That’s NICE,” the girl said as she leaned towards Catra’s face once more, prompting Catra to recoil once more.

“You can find her on the next floor. That’s where the other students are. You can find her there,” the girl said, pointing towards the stairs behind Catra.

“Oh, thanks for that,” Catra said as she stood up.

“Don’t mention it.”

“By the way, how do you know Scorpia?”

“She helps me in my music productions! I ask for her sax expertise to experiment on sounds, and she’s very okay about it,” the girl said with a joyous smile.

“Oh, okay. Thanks again,” Catra said as she turned around to walk up the stairs, but in one simple movement, she turned back again.

“By the way, what’s your name?”

“Ah, right! I’m Entrapta. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice meeting you, too, Entrapta. I’m Catra.”

It would be true to say that a party in this department is one crazy lump put together under drinks and music because as Catra reaches the next floor, it’s like any other normal college party. It went from crazy to crazier, and then back to normality, and this made Catra ease up a little bit. She trudged her way on the hallway in hopes to find Scorpia, and the scene is similar to the one in the first floor, but it’s less rowdy and stinky. It’s just enough to make someone anxious because of the amount of people there, but not enough to knock someone out because of the smell. Speaking of anxiety…

“Fuck this shit. How many people should I pass through before I can see Scorpia,” Catra thought to herself as she squeezed between the people in the hall.

Unbeknownst to Catra, Scorpia already left with some of the people she met at the party as they were interested in becoming friends with the prodigy in question. Scorpia is not one who’ll leave her friends behind without proper notice, so Scorpia made sure to text Catra to let her know where she is and what she’s doing. Unbeknownst to Scorpia, Catra didn’t mind charging her phone for the day, so as soon as Catra received the message, her phone died, coincidentally leaving a delivered sign on Scorpia’s phone at the last moment. In other words, Scorpia left and she has her peace of mind. Catra, on the other hand, is still squeezing her way through the halls until she reaches the big hall at the end which has the same space as the lobby on the first floor. It’s a hall reserved for music tests so it’s design like a modern concert hall, and it’s almost full of people (“almost” because a little bit of space is reserved for brawls, which we’ll see in a bit), and Catra is stressing out, still.

There are two things that keeps Catra sane at this point: the fact that eventually she’ll find Scorpia, and the fact that, in the event that Scorpia is nowhere to be found in the first round she’ll be scanning the dormitories, she’ll be able to get out as quickly as possible through the balcony at the end of the room. Either way, she just wants something to get her out of there immediately. Nobody knows why (me included) Catra would take so long to think of almost essential things like checking the phone to see if there is a message, or using the phone in order to give a message. Apparently, she has a lot of faith in whatever nice thing the universe has in store for her. Well, the universe does have something in store for her, but it will not be something that she’s expecting, because of all the times the universe would present itself, it would be here, and the first step is for Catra to look at her phone.

Catra reached for her phone in her hoodie’s front pocket and as soon as she got it, she immediately bumped into a beast-hybrid drunk enough to pick a fight with anyone. Of course, Catra’s attention was on her phone, so by the time she bumped into the hybrid, she only said one thing:

“MOTHERFUCKER, ARE YOU SERIOUS?!” Catra shouted, catching everyone’s attention, especially the beast-hybrid. As fast as her instincts could go, she immediately realized what went wrong.

“HEY,” said the beast-hybrid with a burp to follow.

“ARE YA TRYIGN TO PIKC A FTIGH WTIH ME?”

Catra nervously turned around to see the angry person, simply smiling at her.

“…No?”

The beast-hybrid jumped to pin Catra, but she was fast enough to dodge. Immediately, because of Catra’s accumulated fight or flight urge, she ran as fast as she could around the hall. Unfortunately, the beast hybrid has friends.

“GET HER!”

Now, I’m not an expert when it comes to brawls, but the phrase “get her” shouldn’t start an entire fight between other people with no connection to the aforementioned dispute, but here we are, witnessing a brawl between students for fun as the background song shifted from Bruno Mars’ “That’s What I Like” to Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode.” The DJ knew exactly what they were doing.

Now that there is discourse all around, Catra is trying to out maneuver the thugs after her. She narrowly avoided every punch being thrown and every flying object there was. Her movements adapted from moving like a person to moving like a cat and then changing it back and forth to minimize damage. She tried to quickly find a way out as she got lost in the brawl, but she also has to focus as well on pinpointing where are those who plan to beat her up, and she has to focus on not getting beaten up as collateral, so as a result, Catra’s attention is being divided. These are all according to the universe’s plan because as she was trying to get away, she bumped into someone who is trying to get into the fun.

BUMP

Catra tripped over a person, causing her to accidentally tackle the person and roll her over. Catra was dazed for a moment but she immediately shook her head and gained her composure. At the same time, the other person stood at the exact same time. This shouldn’t be a problem at all in a brawl, but for some reason, when Catra stood up to look at the person in order to ask if they were okay, she got a good look at that person, and suddenly, everything got slow.

In front of her was a bruised girl with blonde hair styled into a ponytail, donning a pink-ish, red-ish jacket with white sleeves, who was holding an astonished expression as she looked at Catra. She has blood coming out from the end of her lips, but Catra didn’t mind. Both of them were holding their hands up in a form of defense with their body language looking like apologizing for being bumped into. The blue eyes caught Catra in the moment, leaving her with one thought:

“Oh my fucking---she’s so fucking hot!”

Not long after, Catra snapped back at reality and looked behind the girl in front of her, looking if she’s still being chased, and unfortunately, she still is. The girl in front of her also looked back to see what’s happening, only for her to pick up what’s going on in a flash.

“You’re running from them?”

Catra looked surprised by this question because she is being asked by a stranger about her predicament in the middle of a brawl. She looked surprised, and then confused, switching her glance from the girl to the group running after her and back. Eventually, she nodded, and without warning, the girl grabbed her hand and pulled her along and started running. Catra, now in total panic and also running, shouted at her.

“WAIT, WHO ARE YOU? WHERE ARE WE GOING?!”

The girl simply glanced back at her with a grin.

“You’ll see!”

Catra looked ahead and realized where this is going: plan b – “, in the event that Scorpia is nowhere to be found in the first round she’ll be scanning the dormitories, she’ll be able to get out as quickly as possible through the balcony at the end of the room.”

“OH NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO---,” Catra thought to herself as they continued to run towards the balcony.

“When I say ‘jump,’ we jump at the same time!” The girl said to her.

“---NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO---,” Catra thought to herself in such panic, only to be snapped back when the girl called her attention by shouting.

“ARE YOU READY?”

Catra snapped back to reality and realized that they were on the balcony already, and as soon as that happened, she realized that they were about to jump. Fortunately, there’s a signal established that anyone could get even without paying attention.

“JUMP!”

As soon as it's said, both of them jumped up, escaping from the party. Things are going well for Catra at this point until the adrenaline slowed her vision, being able to observe her surroundings. She was able to look at the moon shining brightly above them, being mesmerized by its gaze, but the thing that’s noteworthy is the fact that Catra was more mesmerized by the person holding her wrist now. The blonde hair with a smile full of spirit screaming at the top of her lungs made Catra’s heart go light as she felt nice seeing that person. Of course, the universe isn’t done shitting with her as she looked down and saw a big dumpster awaiting them. Catra, who is already smelly at this point, suddenly felt heavy.

“Fuck.”

[10:00 P.M.]

Catra and her new-founded company got out from the dumpster and got some distance from the dorm in hopes of being hidden from the beast-hybrid and their friends. They hid behind the Modern Music Equipment Warehouse, and they settled there. Catra was catching her breath as she sat down, leaning against the wall. She felt her heart beat go fast from the exhaustion of running and jumping from the third floor of the dorm to a 10-meter height drop. Catra closed her eyes to catch her breath but soon opened them in the first instance that she felt her hands trembling. All of a sudden, Catra started breathing heavily as she tried to go back to her subconscious and purposefully drown herself in thoughts. Fortunately, the girl was still there to snap her back to reality as she clapped her hands in front of Catra.

“Ahhh!”

“Sorry. Are you okay?”

Catra looked up to her and simply blushed by the sudden concern.

“Yeah,” Catra said in a shaky voice.

“Are you sure,” the girl asked as she crouched and drew her face closer to Catra’s.

“Y-yeah. Thanks for saving me back there. I…really appreciate that,” Catra tried to loosen up a bit in order to keep up the conversation.

“No problem. Brawls like that are nothing new.”

“Oh, right. Are you a senior?”

“Sophomore.”

“Oh, okay.”

“What about you?”

“Freshman.”

“Ah, so you’re younger than me?”

“I don’t know. How old are you?”

“18?”

“Same.”

“Ohhh. You’re late.”

Catra simply chuckled at the response, but after a while, she found herself looking at the girl’s blue eyes once more, mesmerized and in awe. She felt her heart beat faster, but it feels much lighter than before. Suddenly, Catra forgot what she was supposed to do to relax herself because it seemed like this was enough to make her feel assured. It’s as if she wanted to feel this after a long a while. She was dropping her guard, completely defenseless and relaxed in front of the girl in question. She noticed that the girl seems to be staring and gazing at her as well, and that fact is enough to ease her up. She can’t explain why she’s suddenly feeling like that, but in that brief moment, Catra felt like she was in the best place she could be right at that moment and whatever rationality there may be won’t matter. Her hands suddenly stopped trembling, and Catra, after a long couple of days, finally got her peace of mind, blissful and satisfied.

“I’m Catra, by the way. What’s your-uhhh-what’s your name?”

“Adora.”

“Oh, uhhhm,” Catra scratched her nape in awkwardness as she replied.

“Hey, Adora…?”

Catra doesn’t realize this but at the moment she laid her eyes on Adora, their worlds recalibrated, picking up lost time left behind, pulling them towards one another. Everything stopped as if it was trying to reset everything, figuring out how to keep them both at the same pace at the same time. That’s why Catra ran despite her general distrust of people, that’s why she jumped at the same time, that’s why they both stood up and looked at each other. Catra finally caught up after a day of being left behind. This is the power of their synchronicity, and everything is just getting started.

Status: IN SYNC

Chapter Text

ADDITIONAL CONTEXT: THE WORLD OF ETHERIA I: Diversity

The world of Etheria is a uniquely diverse place where multiple species of lifeforms coexist beyond the degree of survival on different biomes. From quadrupedal domestic beasts to bipedal social citizens, the world is rich in life and environment; not short of races either. The world is inhabited by humans, half-humans, lizard-kins, scorpionis, cat-hybrids, robots, alien clones, beast-humans, sea elves, giant spiders, horned beasts, harpies, horses, and a whole lot more. What makes it unique of a biodiversity is the presence of magical energy all around them. Centuries of magical energy transformed and evolved into something that can be packed in a Ziploc bag (imagine electricity in terms of being a battery but magic), and it is best seen in the likes of the ones governing the biomes.

Although the political structure for most of the biomes or “kingdoms” in their ancient terms is in monarchy because of the existence of a “princess” species which are humans possessing innate and hyper-specific magical abilities used to run and protect their kingdoms (not to be confused with sorcerers which harness magical energy to their bodies because of the lack of innate power), the political structure is not limited to being govern by a king and queen only as the world has transformed into implementing so-called “modern” ideals which includes a centralized unit of power that is tasked to properly enforce the laws written by the nominally referred “legislatives” approved by the royalties helped by numerous advisors.

In short, tradition and modernity mixed well for this world, and that’s just one of the most interesting parts one can learn about Modern Etheria.

Catra & Melog Arguments 1: Songs

Speakers: *playing “Rush” by Seatbelts*

Melog: *meows*

Catra: What?

Melog: *meows*

Catra: You want me to play other songs?

Melog: *meows*

Catra: Alright.

Speakers: *starts playing “Moanin’” by Art Blakey*

Melog: *growls*

Catra: What?

Melog: *meows*

Catra: Ohhh…you meant modern songs…

Melog: *nods*

Catra: [silence] I’m…not much familiar of your music taste.

Melog: *growls and telepathically chooses a song*

Speakers: *starts playing “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd*

Catra: Oh, I see. Wait Imma pick a song. *types “trending songs 2020” in search bar*

Speakers: *starts playing “Break My Heart” by Dua Lipa*

Melog: *growls and telepathically controls the phone again*

Speakers: *starts playing “Indigo” by NIKI*

Catra: *groans* What do you mean that sucks. It’s close to your taste, right?

Speakers: *starts playing “Intentions” by Justin Bieber ft. Quavo*

Melog: *growls again*

Speakers: *starts playing “Provider” by Frank Ocean*

Catra: *growls back*

Speakers: *starts playing “Supalonely” by BENEE*

Melog: *Growls*

Speakers: *starts playing “SUGAR” by BROCKHAMPTON*

Catra: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

Speakers: *starts playing “Say So” by Doja Cat*

Melog: *GROWLS*

Speakers: *starts playing “Choker” by Lucky*

Catra: ARGH!

Speakers: *starts playing “Tadow” by Masego + FKJ*

Melog:

Catra:

Melog:

Catra: Alright let’s settle with this.

Melog: *nods*

BFS Things: 6 TIMES 3 (based from a meme)

Adora: Tsk.

Bow: What’s the problem?

Adora: Math Problem.

Bow: Oh, I can help you. Let me see. *gets paper* Alright. Uhm…here’s an easy one: what’s 6 times 3?

Adora: *shrugs*

Bow: 6 times 3?

Adora: I don’t know

Bow: 6 TIMES 3!

Adora: I DON’T---

Bow: 6 TIMES 3!

Adora: I LEGIT DON’T KNOW!

Bow: 6, 3!

Adora: I DON’T KNOW! WHAT IS IT?

Bow: WHAT IS IT---[silence]----get Glimmer.

Adora: What?

Bow: GLIMMER!

Glimmer: What’s the problem?

Bow: Homework.

Glimmer: *gets paper* What’s 6 times 3?

Adora: I don’t know.

Glimmer: 6 TIMES 3!

Adora: I DON’T KNOW!

Glimmer: What’s 6 plus 6?

Adora: Oh, 12.

Glimmer: NOW ADD 6!

Adora: I DON’T KNOW! WHAT IS IT?

Glimmer: WHAT IS---[silence]---get our math teacher.

Adora: Who?

Glimmer: MR. MICAH!

Mr. Micah: *kicking down the door* BOOM! WHAT?

Glimmer: Homework.

Mr. Micah: *gets paper* I TOLD YOU THIS! WHAT’S 6 TIMES 3?

Adora: I DON’T KNOW

Mr. Micah: LOOK, IF ANGELLA HAS 6 TIMES 3 BOTTLES OF THIS SOAP, HOW MUCH THIS SOAP WOULD SHE HAVE?

Adora: HOW MUCH?

Mr. Micah: HOW MUCH---[silence]. *looks at his wife*

Ms. Angella: *minding her own soap business*

Mr. Micah: *looks at soaps* 1, 2, 3, 4…