Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Aboard the Protector

Adora, female, human, Horde defector, newly minted She-Ra

Glimmer, female, half-human, half-Lunavian, rebel leader, princess of Brightmoon

Bow, male, human, trans, rebel operative, tech specialist

Double Trouble, nonbinary, Metamaran, agent of chaos

Entrapta, female, cyborg, presumed human, ship’s navigator

Mermista, female, Salinean, princess of Salineas, former hostage, reluctant rebel

Perfuma, female, Plumerian, princess of Plumeria, former hostage, rebel, biobay operator

Emily, female-coded, AI, ship’s computer

Swift Wind, male-coded, AI, heavily modified and self-aware fighter craft

Unknown name, male, human, escaped maximum security prisoner

Catra, female, unknown species, Horde defector

Scorpia, female, Scorpioni, Horde defector

The Horde

Horde Prime, male, Prime, dictatorial ruler of the Horde

Hordak, male, Prime, unknown agenda

Shadow Weaver, female, cyborg, unknown species, Horde commodore

Octavia, female, Salinean, Horde officer

Lonnie, female, human, Horde soldier

Kyle, male, human, Horde soldier

Rogelio, male, Reptilian, Horde soldier

Polypus, male, Salinean, Horde soldier and spy

The Rebellion

Queen Angella, female, Lunavian, queen of Brightmoon, rebel leader

Sweet Bee, female, Anthophian, rebel cell leader

Crita, female, unknown species, rebel cell leader

Optikk, male, cyborg, unknown species, Crita’s second in command

Vizar, male, cyborg, unknown species, police officer turned rebel

Tuskada, female, unknown species, police officer turned rebel

The Criminal Underworld

Scurvy, male, human, smuggler and bounty hunter

Dragstor, male, cyborg human, smuggler and bounty hunter

Karatti, male, unknown species, crime lord

Hoove, male, unknown species, Karatti’s second in command

Sschisz, male, Karnoxian, crime lord

Tung Lashor, male, Karnoxian, enforcer and bounty hunter

Vultak, male, Lunavian, pirate

Grizzlor, male, unknown species, Horde renegade

Other

Light Hope, female-coded, AI, First One guidance program

THE STORY SO FAR

(I would prefer you read Starways, Season 1: Fight or Flight Response before reading this, because stuff in it that won’t fit in this summary is going to be important. This is just to make sure you’re up to date on the overall plot.)

When the prison ship Constrictor is taken over by the handful of prisoners on board (Glimmer, Bow, Entrapta, Mermista, and Perfuma, with assistance from Double Trouble), Adora’s fighter squadron (her, Catra, Lonnie, Rogelio and Kyle) is the only one in position to pursue the escaping transport. When the other members of the squadron are forced, one by one, to break off, Adora is forced to destroy a derelict ship to prevent the transport from being destroyed. Her fighter is wrecked in the encounter.

Adora awakens from a vision sent by Light Hope as a prisoner on the Constrictor. Glimmer and Mermista dragoon her into a mission, which ends up inspiring her to doubt the Horde’s benevolence. As a result, when Double Trouble sells them out, Adora ends up infiltrating the ship and helping them escape. Reluctantly, she leaves Catra behind, rather than risk getting her friend killed in a probably-doomed escape.

They reach the planet Tobis, and Adora, Glimmer and Bow set off to steal some clothes so that the crew would have civilian disguises. When they stumble on a smuggling operation for First One technology with ties to the Horde, and the whole thing dissolves into chaos, Double Trouble helps them out of a jam and is reluctantly accepted back into the group. The Constrictor is renamed the Protector, and Catra is assigned to bring Adora in.

In the trade bazaar on Velavel, Adora encounters a mysterious woman named Razz, before stumbling into an attempt by Glimmer and the local rebels to take out a kidnapper who is selling children to the Horde. Catra’s squadron, now under the command of Scorpia, is reinforced with the addition of Polypus and issued with prototype two-person heavy fighters. Double Trouble arranges for the crew to smuggle a cargo of illicit textbooks to Apocyn; Light Hope encourages Adora to go there too.

Catra and Adora meet again on the neutral planet Cenzos. While Adora flees from Catra, Bow and Double Trouble infiltrate the Horde garrison and end up revealing to the world that the garrison commander, Grizzlor, is conspiring with a local military leader to carry out a coup d’état, neatly derailing the plan.

In the Gedav system, they meet with Crita’s rebel cells. Crita, driven by the loss of her family to the Horde when she was a child, attempts to steal the Protector and use it in a plan that would seriously inconvenience the Horde but incur massive civilian casualties. Mermista, using the Protector’s maintenance tunnels and the support of Entrapta, manages to defeat Crita and force her to confront the scale of destruction her actions would have.

Having deposited Crita’s cell on Terzos, Catra’s squad shows up again. Catra and Adora find themselves struggling through the long-abandoned old sewers of the Terzos capital; when they find an exit, Bow is able to help Adora escape, and they flee the planet in a two-person fighter stolen from Catra’s squad. By fleeing through a mysterious portal, they are able to reach Apocyn ahead of schedule.

On Apocyn, Perfuma bonds to the runestone known as the Heart-Blossom. When the ship is attacked by the Horde garrison, she uses her newfound powers to drive them away.

They next travel to Karnox, where they accept work from a local crime lord, Sschisz, who wants them to steal data from a Horde-run research lab. When they discover that the data is medical research on a treatment for a severe disease, and neither the Horde nor their employer are likely to use it for the common good, they pull off a double-cross; after being paid for the data, they activate a relay that broadcasts it on public channels, making it worthless. Sschisz sends his henchman, Tung Lashor, after them.

During a firefight on the heavily polluted world of Ribnoss, Glimmer is wounded saving civilians. While they are in hiding afterwards, Adora discovers that Glimmer’s wings were severed by the Horde. Their escape is aided first by two local law officers, Vizar and Tuskada, who choose to rebel against the Horde rather than continue in their service, and later by Swift Wind, a self-aware fighter constructed by Entrapta using First One artefacts and the fighter craft Adora and Bow stole on Terzos.

During an altercation around the First One ruins on Morlax, Polypus manages to capture Glimmer, who is transported to the prison complex BST-ILN, although Kyle is captured and replaced with Double Trouble.

The Protector flees to the cursed system of Maragraf, inches ahead of Horde fighters; while it is repaired, Adora and Bow travel into the First One complex there. In its depths, Adora is harried by unpleasant childhood memories but manages to recover a powerful artefact: the Sword of Protection. In prison, Glimmer meets her cellmate – who erases his own memories with magic, insisting that if he remembers anything, “she” will pluck it from his mind. Shadow Weaver performs a ritual using one of Glimmer’s feathers and a strange crystal.

The heroes hatch a desperate plan to free Glimmer from BST-ILN: they’ll disguise the Protector as a larger ship, and then using forged portal clearance, they’ll infiltrate the system, stage a reactor malfunction, and thereby sneak a small team aboard – Adora, Bow, and Crita, who wants to make amends for her sins. Meanwhile, Double Trouble dragoons Catra into a raid on Shadow Weaver’s office in order to learn why Adora is so important that an entire carrier was repurposed to look for her. The raid is interrupted by Polypus, who is both spying on the squad for Shadow Weaver and on Shadow Weaver for her patron, the enigmatic Hordak; during a fight that devastates Shadow Weaver’s office, Catra manages to take Polypus down, breaking his nose. Glimmer manages to inspire her cellmate to launch an escape bid, using his magic to open the cell.

Adora manages to unlock the Sword of Protection’s power, transforming into the armour-clad, eight-foot warrior known as She-Ra. She fights Catra’s remaining squad, including Catra herself, and swiftly defeats them.

Shadow Weaver attempts to hold Glimmer hostage in order to force Adora to surrender. Adora tricks her, and they make their escape. Double Trouble ensures they have access to an escape route, and they make a daring escape from BST-ILN.

After they return Crita to Terzos, Glimmer has a dream in which she is visited by a presence claiming to be her mentor, in the same way that Light Hope is Adora’s. This presence introduces itself as Light Spinner.

They are surprised by a Horde-built hypershuttle, asking for permission to dock. After it docks, Catra and Scorpia step off the ramp, and Catra requests amnesty…

Chapter Text

Now

Catra muttered a dire imprecation under her breath as the guard paused in their patrol, almost underneath her. The mask pulled over her mouth muffled the swear word; that wasn’t what it was for – its actual job was to make sure her breath didn’t fog in the paradoxically cold night air of the desert – but, under the circumstances, it was very welcome.

Her claws began to scrape against the metal supports of the walkway she was hanging from, and she frantically pressed them deeper into the metal; if anything she did alerted the guards, well, tonight was going to get a lot more exciting in ways that didn’t really appeal to her. Sure, she had a stun prod in a hip sheath, and Adora’s pistol, but that was as far as it went.

After a few too many moments, the guard adjusted their armour. It took Catra a few seconds to realise what was happening, and then the distinctive scent of urine hit Catra’s nostrils. Gross. Also, against regulations. But mainly gross.

Finally, finally, Gross Guard readjusted their armour and resumed their patrol. As the trudging footsteps disappeared around a corner, Catra breathed out. Moving as quickly as she dared, she swung around to holding onto one support with both hands, before flipping up onto the walkway.

The door slid open, and she stepped into the Horde complex. It felt like coming home.

Before

Catra stepped through the door into the ruins of Shadow Weaver’s office. As her eyes flicked over the mayhem, she forced an expression of consternation onto her face; if it didn’t look like she was surprised to see the devastation she had played a key role in wreaking, she was screwed.

“Commodore?” she called out, carefully moderating her voice to sound shocked. “What happened here?”

“Catra.”

The voice came from behind her, and she spun around to see Shadow Weaver. The commodore’s clothes were in disarray, and there were cables trailing from her wrist. Distantly, Catra wished she had footage of the fight that had cost the Commodore her hand; hopefully, it would have been something to see.

Shadows flickered around the area as the commodore stepped between Catra and the exit. Catra’s eyes shifted down to the containment cell; from the looks of it, her erstwhile ally had let her down, and Double Trouble had just dumped the unconscious Polypus in a heap in the cell and called it good. You couldn’t get the help these days.

Tongues of shadow flickered around the room as Shadow Weaver loomed over her like a vengeful demon. “You failed me once again, Catra. I delivered you the perfect bait, gave you every opportunity to prove your worth…and you failed. You failed to contain the prisoner; you failed to capture the attackers; you failed to realise that one member of your squad was compromised-”

“What?” Catra, of course, knew perfectly well that Kyle had been an infiltrator, but how did Shadow Weaver know? “Compromised?”

“We located a life pod near the portal gate. When recovered, it held Kyle, who insisted that he had been a prisoner aboard the Constrictor for all the time he was here at BST-ILN. Curious that you didn’t realise this…”

So the shapeshifter hadn’t been lying about Kyle, at least. “Are you sure that was the real Kyle in the life pod?”

“Quite sure, Catra. DNA testing very rarely lies.” Glowing eyes narrowed behind Shadow Weaver’s impassive mask. “Which means that you allowed a spy aboard, failed to apprehend any of the targets, and lost a valuable asset. I must conclude that you are either disastrously incompetent or actively engaged in sabotage, and either way, you are no longer of use to me.”

Something deep inside Catra’s core cracked, and rage came boiling out. To hell with it. She might be about to die, but she wasn’t about to die on the defensive.

Loading up her opening salvo, she snapped, “So your hand just fell off by itself, I guess? Or were you also expecting to run into regular Adora and not eight-foot super-Adora?”

Shadow Weaver seemed a little taken aback at the aggression. “How dare you-”

“I dare because you haven’t left me anything to lose!” Catra’s tail lashed like a whip, and her eyes burned with rage and, despite her best efforts, at least a bit of fear. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to, Commodore, but now that it’s coming crashing down around your ears, you don’t get to blame it on me!” Her eyes narrowed. “And I’ll just bet you knew something like this could happen! You don’t reassign a carrier to chase a lowly Squadron Leader – but if she can magically turn into a giant super-soldier? You knew what we were up against, and you withheld critical information!” She shook her head. “This isn’t my failure; it’s yours.”

“That is enough, Catra! You are out of line!”

“Does it matter? You’re going to kill me anyway-”

She felt a crushing pressure on every inch of her body at once. Her lungs desperately grabbed for air, but none was available.

“You’re right,” said Shadow Weaver, her voice a venomous hiss. “I had such high hopes for you, once…but I realise now, this was always how it was going to end.”

Catra’s head began to swim, and her vision started to blur and darken, leaving Shadow Weaver as a vague reddish-purple shape. Hey, asphyxiation. Good to see you again. Honestly, at this point, why not? Everyone kept leaving her behind, she might as well leave them behind for once, and it’d mean she never had to worry about Adora’s shit again-

There was a loud clunk sound, and the pressure on Catra’s body eased. As she gasped for air, her vision started to clear, and the vague red shape cohered back into a humanoid form – but not Shadow Weaver’s.

Scorpia raced forward, stumbling as she tripped over the unconscious commodore. “Oh my gosh, are you – are you all right? Can you breathe? Do you need anything?”

Catra hated how pained and raspy her voice was as she choked out, “What the hell did you do?”

“I was just heading past on my way to report, and the door was open, and I…I saw you were in trouble, and just…” Her eyes bugged out, presumably as the last minute or so snapped into sharp relief in her brain. “I just hit Shadow Weaver on the head.”

“Yeah,” Catra managed, fighting down a surge of nausea. “Yeah, you did. Which means now we’re both screwed.”

“Really hard, too. Right on the head.”

“Scorpia.” Catra’s voice was still audibly suffering the after-effects of Shadow Weaver’s pressure, but it was becoming stronger. “I need you to focus, okay?”

“I was like ‘Wham’ and down she went.”

“Scorpia!” Okay, that was probably too far; Catra’s battered throat protested at how it was being treated. Scorpia blinked stupidly at her. “Stop talking about it and let’s get out of here!”

“I could have used my sting, it would have worked, but-”

Catra’s low, frustrated groan didn’t disturb her throat at all.

She grabbed at the gadget that Shadow Weaver had dropped. It looked like some kind of portal gate activator, and if they were going to get out of BST-ILN before anything went bad, the portal gate network was going to be necessary.

Now

The corridor was like every other Horde-designed corridor Catra had ever seen. Something about the familiarity was comforting and threatening at once; there were threats here, but she knew what they were, which made them at least a little bit manageable.

Moving slowly and carefully, she ducked into an alcove to review. If she knew anything about Horde base layouts, the sensor control room was probably in this building – probably up at least one floor to discourage attempting to do exactly what she was trying to do.

As she stalked towards the access ladder for the next floor, the hiss of a door sliding open caused the fur on her back to stand on end. She jolted backwards as a human junior officer stepped out, fiddling with a handheld datascreen.

He looked up and blinked at her, a few straggly blonde hairs falling over his face. “Huh. Don’t think I’ve seen you around before.”

“Just posted,” said Catra, trying to find some way to quickly scan the area without looking suspicious or paranoid. “Is there a restroom around here?”

“It’s just over – wait a sec.” The officer’s datascreen buzzed, and a big, important-looking red light flashed. “High priority. You’d better hold on…” The screen changed. “Two deserters, huh? A scorpioni and…” Comprehension dawned as he got to the second deserter’s picture. “Hang on-”

But the stun prod was already in Catra’s hands, and the junior officer obligingly passed out after the first strike.

Then

The skinny, blue-haired scorpioni collapsed at Catra’s feet, and she grunted in frustration. No time to come up with clever ways of hiding her; time for the tried-and-tested, likely soon to become tried-and-repeatedly-failed, method of just shoving the unconscious form into a chair and trying to make it look like the victim was either hard at work or had fallen asleep on the job.

This was the third officer she’d had to knock out because Scorpia had opened her mouth at the wrong moment. If she never heard the phrase “I hit Shadow Weaver on the head” again in her life, it would still be too soon.

Moving as quickly as she dared, she scuttled down the ramp, half-guiding, half-dragging Scorpia behind her as they made for the hypershuttle that had literally just docked, the answer to Catra’s most desperate hopes.

As the inner door layer slid open, Catra smashed her stun prod into the pilot’s orange-skinned face, then caught their collapsing form and flipped it as far away from the shuttle as possible. She dragged Scorpia into the passenger’s seat and fired it up, the engines coming to life just as the door slid closed again.

Jinking desperately as the remaining defences came to life, she fiddled with the device she’d stolen from Shadow Weaver with her spare hand. After a few frantic button presses, a flat mechanical voice said, “Nominate destination.”

“Fumeros!”

“Location accepted. Portal transit authorised.”

Catra shoved it to one side and seized the controls with her other hand. This was it: escape or obliteration. Freedom or death.

When they got to Fumeros, she’d need to figure out where Adora and her new friends had escaped to. Her stomach seethed at the prospect, but she forced it down. Maybe she could parlay this into a triumphant return to the Horde, or at least get something out of it in the long run. But right now she needed time to come up with a plan-

“I hit Shadow Weaver really hard,” said Scorpia, evidently still trying to process it, and Catra suppressed yet another groan as her train of thought derailed. She focused back onto getting out alive; she could worry about the future in the future.

As the shuttle disappeared through the portal gate, she thought for a few moments. Adora had definitely had contacts on Terzos…

Now

The officer quietly bundled into a janitorial supply closet, Catra continued onward to the ladder. The lack of an alarm told her that she’d gotten lucky, and the hasty attack hadn’t drawn any unwanted attention. She leaped up it, moving with considerable speed, and made for the control room.

It was surprisingly easy under the circumstances, really.

As she entered the shutdown commands, she pressed a hand to the activation stud for her comms. The headset had been hastily rebuilt for her; they tended to be built for a human-style head arrangement, with those really low and small ears. “Sparkles? It’s…” She made a face. “Hairball. Sensors should be down. Also, I hate this codename.”

“Noted.” Even over the low-fidelity comms they were using, the better to avoid detection as a suspicious broadcast, she could hear the amusement in Glimmer’s voice. “Exfiltrate when you get the chance; team two is up next.”

“I’m not sure how to take it that ‘team one’ is just me.”

“You’d rather I have made you lug around a drone or had Mermista hanging off your tail the whole way? Consider yourself lucky that I’m willing to trust you enough to let you do this alone, without a minder.”

“Good point,” admitted Catra grudgingly.

Then

“So you found us by playing a hunch?” demanded Glimmer, radiating scepticism. The captain’s office on the ship had been neglected for a while, but Glimmer had apparently decided to polish it up a little. Catra could still make out hints of dust around the place.

“I didn’t have a chance to pull your tracker data, Sparkles! I was a bit busy fleeing for my life!”

“Assuming I believe you – wait, tracker?”

Catra suppressed a smile; at least that had worked. “We planted a tracker drone on you back on Cenzos. I can probably help you find it…”

Glimmer eyed her suspiciously and said, “What do you want, Catra? From what Adora tells me, you’ve been pretty definite about not joining us every time we’ve run into each other.”

Catra’s nostrils flared. “I already told you! I assume you rebels figure out your leadership positions with a knife fight or something, but in the Horde, if you’re implicated in assault on a superior officer, you’re probably dead. So if I stay, I’m screwed and so is Scorpia. And I don’t know how you do it, but you’re really good at getting away from the Horde. I don’t like you, you don’t like me, but I need a place I can hide out…and you need all the help you can get.”

Glimmer examined her; Catra felt. Finally, she nodded. “Consider yourself on probation.”

“You can’t just-” Catra’s brain caught up with her ears. “We can stay?”

“For the moment.” Glimmer rose from her chair, eyes flashing like amethysts. “I want you to understand one thing, though. You, personally, are on very thin ice. If Adora hadn’t taken your part, we’d be having this conversation through a cell door. She thinks, even though you’ve pulled some shit, that we might be able to trust you. I think that if you prove we can’t trust you, I will make sure that you regret it.”

She paused, and added, “And finally…never say ‘you rebels’ again.” Her smile was maybe a little warmer now – call it a winter’s day instead of full-on arctic. “You’re a rebel now, too. I want you to remember that.”

Now

Adora checked and double-checked the flightpath as Swift Wind hovered in place. Entrapta had mapped out the sensor cones, and hopefully Catra would disable them soon, so she could begin the strike.

Catra. Now that was going to take some getting used to. And that felt weird, because it shouldn’t. It should have felt right. Adora and her best friend, back together, united against the world instead of divided. But now…now the scar over her eye itched, just a little bit, when she thought about it.

“Adora?”

She snapped out of it. “Swift Wind?”

“Your heart rate was going weird places and you seemed distracted. Are you okay?”

“Uh…just preoccupied,” Adora lied. “Do we have a signal?”

“Not yet.” The AI’s voice thrummed with barely suppressed excitement. “Are you sure we have to wait? I can take the Horde’s fighters, I know I can! I have to spend so much time cooped up in that hangar bay; I never get to cut loose!”

“I’m sorry I’ve been kind of occupied lately,” said Adora. “I’ll try and take you out for more patrols in the future, okay?”

Swift Wind digested this. Finally, he said, “All right – oh hey, the signal! It finally came!”

“That’s good.” Adora looked at the display screens before her; one of them had a blinking target: the main door of a Horde outpost – nothing as severe as BST-ILN, but still a priority at the moment. “Let’s do this!”

Then

A few moments after Adora’s knock, the door slid open, and Perfuma looked out at her. “Adora?”

“Uh. May I come in? I need to talk to you about something.”

“Of course.” The Plumerian stepped aside, ushering Adora into her room. Adora’s “What did you want to talk about?”

“This,” said Adora, and placed the sword on the table. Its hastily assembled sheath, a mess of scrap fabric, contrasted sharply with the gleaming gold and crystal of the hilt.

Perfuma’s eyes flicked over to the sculpture in the corner, with its golden-white hair. She’d been guarding the ship for most of the incident at BST-ILN, but she’d seen Adora’s gleaming white armour during the final escape.

Adora bowed her head. “I know that She-Ra is…important to you, and I…” She ran out of words. “Uh. I don’t know, I just thought I should talk to you about it.”

Perfuma was silent for a few moments as she laid a hand on the sword. Then she said, “This power…how have you used it, so far?”

Adora thought for a moment and said, “I knocked out a lot of Horde soldiers to rescue Glimmer.”

“And what will you use it for next, do you think?” That could have sounded accusatory, but any harshness was drained from the words by Perfuma’s gentle voice and smile.

Adora didn’t say anything. Then she said, “I don’t know. But…”

“But I do.” There was a surprising amount of strength “I know who you are, Adora. I think you were…chosen for this for a reason. I know that you have a good heart.” Perfuma’s dark eyes, sap-tinted and sincere, locked onto Adora’s. “You need only to wield She-Ra’s power in service to that heart, and you will never do evil.”

“But what if I get it wrong?” demanded Adora. “With everything the Horde taught me, how can I use this safely-”

“I told you. Listen to your soul, Adora. It won’t steer you wrong.” She smiled. “I think you will wield her power to protect us, and to protect innocents. The Horde steeped you in negative energy…but it didn’t corrupt you.”

Adora took a deep breath and rose. “All right. And…thank you.”

Now

As the roar of Swift Wind’s engines died away, Bow lifted his head from their hiding place behind the dune. As planned, Adora had taken out the transmitter, the auto-turrets, and the gate; the outpost was wide open.

After a few seconds of panicked shouting and anger, a handful of fighters – even in the dark, he could tell they were older models – began to lift out of the outpost in pursuit of Adora and Swift Wind.

“We gonna, like, do this?” said Mermista, lifting her trident. The customised suit Bow and Entrapta had put together under her supervision was just visible at her wrists, poking out of the heavy robes the group were wearing; with the aridity of the desert, ensuring she had a healthy amount of humidity had been a priority.

“Give it a few seconds, then head in. Hopefully they’ll be eager to get the support.” He turned to Scorpia, whose awkwardness was palpable even through the robes; she looked less like a desert nomad and more like she was hiding under the covers. “You sure you’re going to be okay? We’re going to try not to seriously hurt anyone.”

“Who, me?” Scorpia’s eyes darted from side to side. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Need to show I’m on board, right?” She chuckled nervously and added, “You…mean it about not hurting anyone?”

“How did you make it to Force-” managed Mermista, before Bow nudged her with an elbow.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re not murderers, Scorpia. We’re just going to go in, get what we need, and get out. No deaths.”

Then

“Hey, Bow!” said Entrapta, her latest drone scuttling to a halt in the cargo bay. “Anything interesting in the hypershuttle?”

“Not inside it, but there’s something in the cargo chamber…” Bow grabbed a handle, twisted it through ninety degrees, and pulled. There was a hiss as the compartment’s door slid open, and metal glinted in the docking bay light.

Bow took a deep breath. “It’s a stasis chamber.” He scanned the docking bay for potential help that wouldn’t take as long as getting into one of the exosuits-

“Hey!”

Their newest, largest recruit looked up from the large crate she was carrying. “Huh? Me?”

“Scorpia, isn’t it? Could you come over here and give me a h – uh, some help with this, please?”

“Oh, uh, sure!” The crate thunked against the deck as Scorpia ditched it; Bow hoped it didn’t contain anything fragile. “You know, we never did check what was in the cargo bay.”

“Stasis chamber. It’s too heavy for me to get out; could you give it a pull?”

“Right!” She pressed a claw against each side of the stasis chamber and tugged; after a few moments, it began to inexorably move, its weight – easily a few hundred pounds, based on its size – no match for Scorpia’s raw power. While the Horde’s insistence that scorpioni were supposed to be warriors was the exact kind of biology-is-destiny nonsense that made the Horde such a problem, it wasn’t hard to tell how they’d come to that conclusion.

Before long, the chamber – its shape putting Bow uncomfortably in mind of a coffin – was out, and as he checked the readouts, Bow said, “Thanks. It’d take three of me to move this thing, so I’m glad you’re on our side now!”

“Aww, thanks!” Out of the corner of Bow’s eye, he could make out a little bit of a blush. “So any idea what’s in it?”

“There’s no name or anything, but it’s definitely occupied.” He studied the readouts. “One inhabitant, weighing about…100 pounds? That’s pretty light. No identifying details.”

The drone whirred faintly, and Entrapta said, “Could be a small humanoid – achondroplasia, maybe, or just a child. Or it could be a lighter species, like an Anthophian. Is there a viewing window?”

“Not from the looks of it.”

Scorpia looked closely at the controls. “Should we turn it off, see who’s in it?”

“I don’t think that’d be a good idea. If they’re in here for medical reasons…” Bow let that trail off. “I’d prefer to have an actual doctor on hand when we open this up; maybe we can find one when we make planetfall.”

Scorpia visibly perked up at that. “Oh, uh, we’re making planetfall soon? Where?”

“Arkos. It’s a relatively arid planet, lots of scrubland. We should be able to find a small settlement, do some odd jobs for supplies.”

Now

“I’m picking up fighters on our tail,” Swift Wind said, his voice less surprised and more excited. “Taking control of the rear turret.”

Adora thought for a moment, her hands almost instinctively shifting the controls to evade a volley of shots. A twinge of pain came from her knee, which was still recovering from the fight at BST-ILN, but she ignored it. “Swift Wind, I want you to shoot to disable, not to kill. At least some of the people pursuing us don’t know better.”

“Adjusting aim!” A momentary spray of blasts flashed behind the fighter, and one of the fighters began to descend towards the Arkosian sand, a wing torn away by the shot. More shots followed, and the pursuers scattered, another two plummeting toward the ground. Fortunately, the Horde outpost was pretty isolated, so it was unlikely that the falling aircraft would cause civilian casualties.

“Three fighters down…two pilots bailed out.” The AI’s voice was uncharacteristically sombre as he added, “I don’t think the third could have survived the crash.”

Adora bowed her head for a moment, then realised they were getting a bit far and spun the controls, bringing the fighter around in a wide arc.

“What’s the plan?” asked Swift Wind. “We’ve already opened an entrance for the ground team; what do you want from me?”

“We’re going to keep the pressure off them. No major damage, but we kick the walls around, make a lot of noise.”

Hopefully, she added mentally, that’ll make sure we don’t kill anyone else.

Then

“Adora? Are you okay?”

Reality popped back up around Adora, and she shook her head. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“You’ve been holding those two pieces together for fifteen minutes,” Glimmer told her. “I think it’s bonded by now.”

Adora put down the piece of broken pottery, a jagged golden thunderbolt tracing out the crack where it had stuck together. “I’m just…” She shook her head. “I’ve tried to talk to Catra, and she just avoids me. She used to be my best friend, and now…”

Glimmer’s hand hovered above Adora’s shoulder for a few moments; at Adora’s slight nod, she rested it there, her gentle touch cutting through Adora’s stress like a blade. “Give her some time. She’s out of her element, and I don’t get the impression that she’s used to that. If she wants to reconnect, she’ll do it in her own time.”

“And what if she never does?” said Adora. “We were inseparable as kids. We promised we’d always have each other’s backs. Now…”

“If she never does, that’s her loss,” said Glimmer.

“I know, it’s just…” Adora sighed. “We’ve only been separated for a couple of months, and already it feels like years. I just…wish I could reach out to her. Get back something of what we had. You know?”

“Why, Adora, we’ve only been dating a few days and already I have to worry about you cheating on me,” said Glimmer, and Adora couldn’t hold back the flinch as old memories, already stirred up by Catra’s return, began to roil.

I know you like her better than me, whispered Catra’s voice in her mind. Her stomach heaved.

“I gotta go,” she managed, and bolted, leaving the crockery in pieces on the desk.

Now

Catra’s ears flicked as she caught a familiar voice.

“We came here to help, I swear!” Bow was insisting. “You can’t just-”

Catra jumped from the walkway.

The sand on the metal plating scratched the pads on her feet as she landed behind the guards. Barely pausing to regain her balance, she slammed a stun prod into the back of one’s helmet, before dropping to kick the other’s legs out from under them. A thrust into the neck from the prod dealt with the second.

“That wasn’t the plan,” said Bow reproachfully, and Catra shot him a glare. “But we should probably get moving. The transmitter isn’t going to take itself out.”

They got moving. With the outpost in disarray, they were able to blend into the shadows; the few guards who noticed the stealth insertion team in the middle of the shouting and panicking and the sound of Swift Wind punching holes in the outer wall were relatively easy to knock out.

“Transmitter building should be, uh…this way,” Scorpia said, pointing with a claw. “All these outposts use similar layouts.”

“Yeah, we’ve, like, already noticed the Horde isn’t big on individuality?” Mermista’s voice was like barbed wire.

Bow shot her a glare. “At least it’s making our job easier,” he said, in the manner of a parent encouraging a child to say thank-you.

“Yeah, I guess,” Mermista said grudgingly.

Shrouded by the confusion, they moved into the transmitter building. As they reached the first basement level, Bow pulled out a small box, containing the disruption charges Entrapta had whipped up for them. “Okay, we put these on the main power conduits, and they’ll burn out the system. They’ll have to replace the whole thing; this far out from reliable resupply, it could take a while.”

They set to work, Scorpia guarding the entrance while the rest of them turned their attention to the conduits. As the second-last one locked into place, Bow raised a finger to his ear. “Entrapta? What’s…Oh. Okay.” He turned to the team and said, “Entrapta thinks she’s figured out how to block out the signal when it goes down. The doctor should be able to cope with the signal after we go.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Scorpia. “Man, it’s a pity we couldn’t just tell the Horde it was triggering that kind of reaction, maybe they’d try and figure out a way around it.”

Bow and Mermista looked at each other, and then Mermista said, “Yeah, I don’t think they’d care.”

“But surely they’d-”

There was a crash from above, and a muffled voice called, “They went in here, I’m sure of it!”

The crash of trampling feet began to echo, and Bow reached for his quiver.

Then

“Catra!”

Catra slowly, reluctantly turned to look at Adora, and snapped, “Yeah? What do you want?”

Adora flinched backwards. “I just think we…we should talk.”

“So talk,” Catra said brusquely.

“I…” Adora threw up her arms. “I want to-”

“You want to just pretend the last few months didn’t happen!” Catra jabbed a claw-tipped finger into Adora’s collarbone. “You want to just paper over everything, and that’s not gonna happen!”

“What do you want me to say, Catra? That I missed you? That I-”

“I don’t want you to say anything! I just want you to get off my case!”

“Catra-”

“I don’t want to hear it from you, Adora! You ditched me!”

“And you kidnapped my friend!”

“Let me make it clear, Adora,” she snarled, her nose almost touching Adora’s as they bared their teeth at each other. “I. Am not. Here. For you. I am not here to be with you, I am not here to talk to you, I am not here to spend time in your shadow. I am here because it is the best way to keep my skin intact. I am going to trust that you’re not going to desert me again, and you’re going to trust that I’m not going to throw you off a cliff or something, and we’re gonna associate as little as possible outside that. If you’re thinking that I’m going to be going oh, Adora, thank you for saving me, here’s a hug like your half-breed friend, get it out of your head now-”

After a few seconds, Adora straightened up.

“Well, that seems to be it, darling,” she said, her voice shifting, and Catra scowled again as that now all-too-familiar black-green aura flared.

“Double Trouble. I should’ve smelled you.”

“Yes, you should have,” said Double Trouble, oil dripping from their voice, “but I appreciate that you were distracted. I should be careful about that if I were you, darling; you never know when it’ll get you into trouble.”

“So what was this about? Just messing with me?”

“If only, darling. Consider this a test run – a chance to try out your arguments before the real thing.” They grinned, giving Catra the feeling of a bear trap. “Oh, and just a warning…Don’t call the captain half-breed. That’s…well, it may influence people, but on this ship, it won’t make you any friends.”

With a wink, Double Trouble was gone.

Now

Dust billowed in the air as Swift Wind came in for a landing. Not too far behind, a recently disabled Horde fighter sat in a crater of cracked glass; thankfully, the pilot had bailed out, and was descending to the desert sand not far away.

Adora leaped out of the cockpit, flinching as she landed; her knee definitely wasn’t ready for that kind of treatment. The chunky gold wristband Entrapta had given her gleamed in the light of the planet’s moon, tinting the gold red and glittering off the pieces of First One crystal set into it.

No time to worry; there was only action.

She pulled the Sword out from behind the seat and told Swift Wind, “Make sure the escape shuttle arrives safely; there are still a couple of fighters out there.”

“I’m on it! Uh, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to help our friends.” Adora lifted the sword to the sky and called, “For the honour of Grayskull!”

The night lit up.

Then

“Thank you for coming, everyone!”

There was a clanking sound, and Entrapta stepped through the door into the mess hall. In person.

It was the first time in at least two months that Adora had actually seen their navigator’s body, instead of a drone serving as her proxy. Entrapta was clad in purple and white techno-armour, her face concealed behind a metal mask with an expressionless red eyeslit; the independently mobile mecha-tendrils and computer jacks that made up her hair bunched up, forming what Adora could only parse as additional arms. One of them was holding a short metal rod in the manner of an instructor giving a presentation.

Both Scorpia and Catra seemed a little confused by this, and then Scorpia seemed to remember a briefing or wanted poster. The big scorpioni bent down a little to whisper something to Catra, whose expression went from bewilderment to suspicion.

Entrapta took up a position at the head of the table and said, “I wanted to just update you on some really interesting things I’ve found out!” Lights on Entrapta’s armour shifted into a new pattern for a moment, and a hologram appeared, showing a DNA signature: a graph of coloured lines, predominantly gold. The metal rod flicked through the air, pointing out graphs of interest. “So, I’ve been researching some stone shards with a weird sensor pattern that Adora and Bow recovered from Maragraf. It’s really interesting, actually, it turns out the system name was based on corrupting a translation from Venhlan, the First One language, it should really be either Mara’s Grave or Mara’s Grief-”

Mermista coughed theatrically, and the red light from Entrapta’s mask blinked. “Oh. Right. The shards. So, it turns out that the reason they had a weird pattern is that they’re not stone, not really. They’re a kind of magically crystallised organic matter; I’m calling it biostone. It’s stable enough that it could last thousands of years without significant decay!”

“So, like actual stone does?” said Catra.

“No, because actual stone doesn’t have a readable DNA signature! I think the First Ones must have used it as a more stable form of stasis, one that doesn’t need an external power supply.” The lights changed, and then so did the hologram; the DNA signature was joined by a half-dozen others. “I compared it to samples I gathered from around the ship: my own, the one I got from Adora, hairs gathered from Bow and Catra, some of Mermista’s scales and a feather from Glimmer. You would expect that there wouldn’t be any matches, and there weren’t…at least not total matches.”

The lights and the hologram changed again. Now it was comparing one of the graphs. There were plenty of differences, but some patterns were definitely identical.

Entrapta took a deep breath. “This,” she said, “is Adora’s signature. And it has all the hallmarks of deliberate modification.”

“Shadow Weaver,” said Bow. “Adora, that memory I saw, of her giving you an injection…that must have been the treatment.”

Adora burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” snapped Catra.

Adora managed to get herself under control enough to say, “I don’t know! But the irony is amazing, isn’t it? She made me into something she herself said shouldn’t exist!”

“This is serious, Adora!” said Bow. “Look, genetic treatments are pretty common in the Free Territories; I had a round of it myself to get my testosterone production up. But you’re not supposed to just slap on a bunch of genes from another species, especially not to a child who can’t give consent!” A thought obviously occurred to him. “Is this why First One technology responds to her?”

“I believe so, yes!” Entrapta gestured with the pointer again. “This would imply that the sample from Maragraf is First One DNA!”

Bow’s eyes bugged out as something popped into his memory. “Wait. Is it possible that Adora’s new sword could cause things to…petrify? In the recordings on Maragraf, we saw what I think was someone cutting off their hand, and that’s about where we found the shards and the sword…”

“I don’t think it’s likely.” Entrapta almost sounded disappointed that she wouldn’t get to see it happen. “You’d need to be standing in a nexus point on Mystacor Prime or something to get enough magic to do this, and that would have the wrong signature anyway.” She visibly perked up. “But, just in case, I can probably whip something up to shield you from it – temporarily, at least.”

Scorpia raised a claw. Her sleeveless black jacket left her arms mostly bare; more than a few of the eyes present had flicked over her muscles since she’d picked out her gear. “So…uh, these First Ones…”

“I’m guessing they made the ruins you guys keep hiding out in?” threw in Catra.

“Yes! But there’s more to it than that.” Entrapta took a deep breath, and began the explanation.

Now

As Adora swatted a soldier out of the way with the flat of her sword, the Horde commander – a trimly muscular human woman with dark hair, her dishevelled uniform and irritated expression proof enough that she’d been rousted out of bed in the chaos – lunged for Catra. distracted by her own opponent, Catra spun to face the new enemy, too late, just a second too late-

“I don’t know what you are,” the commander told Adora, “but if you take one more step, your friend here is dead.” A knife appeared in her hand, a hair’s breadth from Catra’s throat; it was too large and too jagged to be regulation-issue.

The light played over Catra’s fangs in much the same way that it played over that knife. “She,” she hissed, “is not my friend.”

“Easy, now,” Adora said, planting the sword in the ground – or, more accurately, the metal floor. She raised her hands to show they were empty. “The transmitter is already down; hurting her isn’t going to do you any good.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” said the commander. “The security alerts came in; looks like your fuzzy friend here is wanted. If I turn her in, I might finally get a position

“Okay. Look.” Adora’s armour began to fade away, piece by piece; the light remained, however. “I’m wanted by the Horde as well; you can take me in. Just don’t hurt her-”

Catra’s head lashed back and to one side, catching the commander unawares. As she flinched backwards, Catra sank her teeth into the commander’s wrist, then wrenched herself out of the woman’s grip. Her claws flashed through the air, and the commander stumbled backwards into the wall.

One punch, backed by all of Catra’s strength, was all it took to knock her out.

Adora pulled her sword back out of the ground and said, “Nice moves-”

“Shut up.” Catra’s lips curled into a sneer. “Don’t think for a minute that playing the hero is going to fix anything.”

Then

“Well, the doctor was a bust,” said Bow bluntly, as the newly expanded crew gathered around the mess tables. “Apparently she’s been having some sort of allergic reaction for a few weeks now.”

Double Trouble shuddered, and their eyes narrowed. “So it’s not just me, then,” they said weakly, twitching slightly. “That’s such a relief, darlings. I should hate to think I was alone in my abject misery.”

“A few weeks?” Scorpia rubbed her chin, chitin scraping against chitin where her claw met her cheek plates. “You know, I heard about a test run for a new transmitter design going up on Arkos, it’d have come online a few weeks back. I guess that could cause it, if she’s susceptible to the signals?”

“I guess it could.” Bow thought for a moment and said, “If we take out the transmitter, that should mean we can find out what’s going on with this stasis chamber now, before it explodes in our faces.”

“Stasis chambers almost never explode,” said Entrapta’s drone, before adding, “Oh, wait, the figure of speech, right. Sorry.”

Now

Bow knocked on the door, trying to ignore the one topic of conversation the town had today. So far, he’d heard them talking about nothing else, not even the weather – although he supposed it was summer in the desert, so the weather was probably pretty predictable.

I swear, my cousin was out that night, and he had binoculars. It was the She-Ra! She’s come back!

You’re off your head. Why would a myth be on Arkos?

But just imagine if it is? The Horde-

Don’t talk about it!

There was a scraping sound as the cover on the peephole was pushed aside, and a brown eye glared out at him, the faintest hint of white scars visible underneath. “Oh, it’s you,” said the doctor, with the air of someone interrupted in the middle of a good book. “Suppose this means you knew I’d be feeling better?”

“We, uh, figured out that it was probably the transmitter the Horde built out in the desert. And by, uh, coincidence, something happened to it last night.”

“That’d do it, all right.” The door swung open, and the doctor stepped out. She was a little shorter than Bow, with a rounded build that put him in mind of Glimmer, light brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a bun. Under her left eye was a strange scar, clearly deliberately inflicted – the lines were too straight and regular to be a random injury. It took the form of nested diamond shapes, one long and horizontal, the other square, contained within the other’s core, divided by a single vertical line-

After a moment, Bow realised the design was trying to evoke an eye.

“Suppose you need some doctoring done?” she said, and Bow nodded. “All right then, let’s get going. Don’t have appointments right now.”

The buzz of conversation about She-Ra followed them as they made their way through the sandy-brown buildings and headed for the ship, which was parked some way out of town. The ramp slid open, and Bow ushered the doctor in as the rest of the crew began to appear – even Glimmer’s cellmate, whose mask peeked through a door for a few seconds. He’d been avoiding the crew, mostly – but if that made him more comfortable, that was his business

On seeing Double Trouble, the doctor visibly relaxed a bit, although she was still clearly on guard. Black-green light flickered, and she stepped forward – now obviously of the same species as Double Trouble, but with the same general build she’d had when she’d appeared human. The white lines of the eye diamond on her cheek stood out vividly against her dark green skin, and her electric blue hair remained in its bun.

“You don’t see many Metamarans in these parts, darling,” observed Double Trouble.

“Not supposed to see any of us all,” grunted the doctor, and Double Trouble nodded as if conceding the point. “Where’s the patient?”

“We’ve found a stasis chamber,” said Bow. “The occupant is alive, but it doesn’t have any other medical readouts or data ports, so we can’t tell what shape they’re in.”

“Emergency care, then.” The doctor gave a curt nod. “Got most of the tools; lead the way.”

The way was led, and they gathered around the chamber in the medical bay. The doctor made a disgusted noise as she looked at the equipment; to be fair, the Horde weren’t exactly going to waste their best medical gear on a prison transport.

“All right,” she said brusquely. “Get ready to disengage the stasis field. They’ll probably be disoriented when they come out.”

Bow nodded, then leaned in to take a closer look at the controls. He didn’t have a lot of familiarity with these things, but luckily this one was labelled pretty clearly. His fingers danced over the panel, shifting power systems and dialling down the stasis field intensity, until the little indicator by the biggest button had turned green, indicating that it was safe – or at least within Horde standards of safety – to press it.

Bow couldn’t help but feel the immediate results were a little anticlimactic. After all that fiddling, the large button, the mystery, it shouldn’t have just beeped a couple of times. There should have been…steam venting, or something. A little bit of bombast.

“I know, darling,” muttered Double Trouble; either Bow had said that out loud, or the shapeshifter was showing off their people-reading. “The Horde has no sense of drama.”

The top cracked open, and a light blazed out of the top. Okay, that was more like it. Catra, who was standing opposite Bow, leaned over for a peek-

A few confused seconds later, things had changed quite a bit. Catra was flat on her backside on the ground, the earliest beginnings of a black eye starting to take root. Behind her, trying out some sort of wrestling hold, was a small figure – human, or at least a very humanlike species, wearing a blue coat, eyes glaring out through the gap between its blue-black hair and Catra’s shoulder.

“Or they might not be,” said the doctor, her surly air slipping slightly.

“All right, Horde scum,” growled the small figure, and Bow’s eyes widened as he heard the voice; the newcomer couldn’t be much past twelve, if Bow’s estimate was right. “You’re going to take me back to Geluregnus, if you value your lives.”

“Easy there,” said Bow, holding his hands up to show that he was unarmed; distantly, he hoped that gesture translated and her culture didn’t parse that as an invitation to wrestle or something. “We’re not Horde.”

“This one’s dressed like she’s Horde.”

“That’s because she’s only just defected.” He could tell from the suspicious eyes glaring over Catra’s shoulder that this wasn’t working. “Look, if she hadn’t had to make a quick getaway, you wouldn’t be here talking to us – you’d probably be in storage on BST-ILN!”

“Hey, yeah!” said Catra, her voice a little muffled. “You owe me, kid!”

“Don’t – call – me – kid!”

“Look, junior,” Catra told her, “I’m a lot bigger and stronger than you, and Scorpia over there is a lot bigger and stronger than both of us and has my back. So if you don’t let me go, I’ll-”

There was a creaking, cracking sound, and Catra’s arms and legs were suddenly encased in cartoonish chunks of solid ice.

“-sit here peacefully and patiently,” finished Catra, as though this was how she’d planned to finish that sentence all along.

After a few moments, Bow’s brain caught up with events. Keeping his hands raised, he said, “Have you…always been able to do that?”

“What’s it to you?” said the newcomer pugnaciously.

Bow cleared his throat. “It’s just that…did you…get them in some First One ruins?”

The newcomer stepped backwards, releasing Catra’s neck. “How did you know that?”

“Because Perfuma can do similar things with plants, and she got that ability from the First Ones.” Bow stepped forward. “I promise, we’re not going to hurt you – and we have a common enemy. If we fight each other, we’re only going to make it easier for the Horde to catch us.”

After a few moments, the newcomer nodded. “Okay, fine. So who do I talk to about getting back to Geluregnus?”

“Uh.” Bow rubbed his chin and said, “Well, we’re headed for Brightmoon as it is; we can probably arrange something for you when we get there?”

The newcomer evaluated this. “Okay. I’ll tag along…for a while.” Her eyes glittered like icicles as she looked at Bow. “I don’t trust any of you, though.”

“Good. Good. So, uh, what should we call you?”

She drew herself up to her full height, which would probably have been more impressive if she hadn’t been twelve. “I am Frosta, First of Her Name, Princess of Geluregnus.”

“Great,” said Catra sarcastically. “Now can someone get this shit off my arms and legs? I’m starting to lose feeling in my fingers.”

Then

There was a knock at the door, and Adora lifted her head from her preparations. “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” said Glimmer’s voice from the other side. “Can I come in?”

Adora steeled herself. “All right.”

The door slid open, and Glimmer stepped through, her eyes shimmering. “I just…Adora, I have to apologise.”

“For what?”

“What I said earlier…I meant it as a joke, I promise. I’m sorry. I don’t know why, and you don’t have to explain, but obviously it hurt you, and I swear, I didn’t intend to.”

“It’s okay, Glimmer. I shouldn’t have run away. I’m sorry-”

“No, you can’t do that! Your sorry is wrong and mine is right!” Glimmer sounded almost offended. “No more jokes about jealousy, I promise.”

“I know you didn’t mean anything, Glim. It’s just…” Adora breathed out and continued, “Bad memories. You know?”

“You don’t have to explain it, Adora. It doesn’t matter why it hurt you; it just matters that it did.” There was a beeping sound. “Sounds like you need to get going. Take care, Adora.”

“I will. And, Glimmer…thank you.”

Now

Adora’s knee twinged again as she stepped into Glimmer’s room. Glimmer had invited her to finish the kintsugi they’d abandoned, and that was…honestly, very appealing right now.

She shifted back a little bit when she saw Glimmer standing there, smiling, holding a large shape wrapped in plastic sheeting.

“Adora! So glad you could make it.” Glimmer’s eyes twinkled, and she said, “I had Entrapta whip this up for you.” The plastic fell away, to reveal…

…a blunt metal recreation of the sword of She-Ra.

“I thought that once your knee was better, we could do some sword training,” said the captain. “I was trained as a kid by some of Brightmoon’s best fencers; maybe we can figure out some new tricks with this slab of yours.”

“And the chance to see me sweating more often didn’t enter into it?” said Adora, winking.

“You stop that,” said Glimmer, but without conviction. “So what do you think?”

“I’d love to.” Adora looked at the desk. “But right now, I just want to finish putting that stuff back together. You know?”

“Of course.” Glimmer favoured her with a warm smile. “I’ve already got out the pieces we were working on last time.”

Then

“Shadow Weaver.”

The voice was as cold and menacing as a deep-sea predator, and Shadow Weaver rose from behind her desk with unseemly haste. A new hand, its gleaming white contrasting sharply with the dull metallic green-grey of the rest of her prostheses, adorned her left wrist.

“Lord Hordak-”

“Be silent.” Hordak didn’t even raise his voice, but Shadow Weaver’s protests died in her throat anyway. “I said that you would have one final chance to regain control over the experiment. You have failed. Indeed, you seem to have failed to a greater extent than I had considered possible: not only has the subject escaped, it has unlocked some new power from the First Ones. Your bait has fled, and as if that was not enough, so have a promising Force Captain and Squadron Leader – taking with them a unique subject that I had earmarked for further research. Your failures are becoming quite costly, Shadow Weaver; perhaps it is time for some…new blood on this hunt.”

“Your ‘new blood’ cannot hope to surpass my ability to gather intelligence on our prey-”

“It is precisely intelligence that seems to be lacking,” rumbled Hordak, every syllable a threat. “Very well then, Shadow Weaver; you will remain on the hunt. But…” Hordak made the word sound like a weapon discharging. “You will no longer have sole command. You will be given an advisory role only; the ship’s captain will be put in charge of the hunt.”

“Captain Sibor cannot hope to catch them, my Lord.”

“Captain Sibor has been reassigned.” Hordak’s smile was so devoid of humour, mirth or life that it actually made the room colder. His thumb brushed a control on one of his wristbands. “You are correct to note that he is unequal to such a task, so he has been given a role more suited to his talents. On the bright side, I believe you are already familiar with his replacement…”

The door slid open, and a tall figure stepped through. The Salinean was powerfully built, her muscular blue-green arms gleaming in the harsh light of Shadow Weaver’s office. Her left eye was golden and slitted, while her right, glaring out of three lines of scar tissue, glowed a dull red – its pupil, cast in the shape of the Horde bat-wing symbol, picked out in sickly green. Her dark green hair, styled in as slicked-back a fashion as possible, was perhaps a little longer than regulations strictly permitted, but not significantly so.

Shadow Weaver’s own eyes narrowed. It had been some time, but she recognised the soldier: Catra’s old nemesis from basic training. She and Hordak had obviously reached the same conclusion about Catra’s likely destination.

“Captain Octavia will have command over this mission now,” said Hordak, as if discussing the weather. “You will advise her, but you will not countermand her orders. And Captain Octavia…”

“Yes, boss?” said the Salinean, grinning viciously.

“You have been issued with a full battalion of the Prime’s most advanced combat robots.” Hordak’s smile was utterly without mercy. “Do try not to waste them.”

“I won’t let you down, boss.”

Now

“So that,” finished Octavia, “is why I’ve called you here today.”

The assembled scum looked at each other. They were a mismatched bunch – a tall Karnoxian in a black jacket, a pale, reedy-voiced cyborg whose mechanical limbs looked like they’d been pulled off and then put back on again inexpertly, a tanned, shaven-headed human whose back was covered in far too many swords for her to ever use, a scorpioni with one curiously enormous claw, a two-headed blue humanoid, and their apparent leader, a tall, powerfully built woman with purple skin and white hair, her immaculate abdominal muscles on full display.

After a few moments, the two-headed man rose. “We’re out,” said the left head, at the exact moment the right head said, “We’re in.”

Octavia’s left eyebrow flashed upwards. “Did you want to take a minute or two to figure it out?”

“Uh…yeah, thanks,” they said in unison, and disappeared into a corner.

“Okay.” Octavia turned to the rest of them and said, “So while Two-Bad and Two-Bad get themselves together, who else is in?”

“I am,” said the woman with the swords, her voice eerily without emotion. “I am eager to test my sword against such formidable warriors.”

“Any specific sword, or are you just going to pull one out at random?” The woman didn’t react, and Octavia issued a mental shrug; they couldn’t all be winners. “Okay, so Blade, check. See the duty squad leader at the desk outside for your ID pass; it’ll give you travel authorization within Horde space, and some protection from prosecution. Since most of you have outstanding warrants on you for…work-related issues, that should help keep you occupied. Don’t start too much shit unless you have to, though.”

“I’m in too,” said the reedy-voiced cyborg. “I got some bad blood to settle with them.”

“As does Tung Lashor!” snarled the Karnoxian.

“Business and pleasure, then,” said Octavia. “I like it. Tung-Lashor, Dragstor, your ID passes are ready as well.”

At this point, the two-headed man came back. “We have reached a conclusion,” said the left head, and the right added, “We are out.”

“Oh.” Octavia shrugged. “Well, in that case…”

The click-hum of a shot rang out.

“…I’m pronouncing sentence on you for your past crimes against the Horde,” said Octavia, as Two-Bad collapsed. “The sentence is death.”

“You know, I had been considering saying no,” said the scorpioni, his huge left pincer shivering slightly, “but you make a compelling argument and I think I’m going to join in, actually.”

“Nice to know we have a fast learner.” Octavia holstered the pistol again. “Okay, Clawful. You’re in, and it’s good to know you’re not as stupid as you look. And you, Huntara?”

The powerfully built woman was quiet for a few moments. Then, she said, “Very well. I’ll bring back your prisoners, Octavia. But-” She rose to her full, considerable height. “But the reward had better be excellent, you hear me?”

“Trust me, it is,” said Octavia, smirking. “This little chase is being bankrolled directly by one of the higher-ups. My budget can absolutely cover your reward.”

“Doubled.”

Octavia’s remaining eye bulged. “And why should we double them?”

“Because I don’t like you, and I don’t like the Horde.” Huntara’s voice was as chill as death. “If you want the best, you have to be willing to pay for the best.”

After a few moments, Octavia nodded and said, “All right then. Doubled.”

Huntara was visibly taken aback; presumably she’d been expecting a no, or possibly a click-hum. “Ah. Uh. All right. I’ll pick up my ID pass at the door.”

“You do that.”

As custodial drones emerged from the walls to dispose of the former Two-Bad, who had been on a variety of Horde hit lists since they’d derailed that train on Venrath in order to take out one of the passengers, Octavia rose and headed for her new office. Time to get things in order-

“I need to speak with you, captain.”

Octavia studied the newcomer: a deep-sea Salinean, with glossy black eyes glaring out from either side of a nose that had clearly been broken not that long ago.

“And who are you?”

The man with the broken nose saluted. “Polypus, Horde Internal Affairs. Assigned to this mission by Hordak himself.”

“You and me both, Polypus.” Octavia studied the agent: he looked in fighting shape, although still battered and bruised from some fight, and there was a strong hint of anger in his stance; even as he fought to remain at parade rest, his fists were clenched, and his back hunched. “You look like you’ve been through hell.”

“There were two of them, captain – a rebel spy and that traitorous cat.” His forced parade rest cracked as the anger surged. “I won’t let them get the best of me next time.”

“You shouldn’t have let them get the best of you this time.”

Polypus’s expression cracked into a scowl. “It won’t happen again, captain.”

“See that it doesn’t. That said…you’re not the only one who wants a shot at Catra.” Octavia’s hand came up, driven by subconscious rather than conscious choice, to touch her prosthetic eye. “We’re gonna get them, Polypus – the traitors, the rebels, the spies, their entire damn ship. Walk with me.”

Chapter Text

Adora.

Adora’s brain took a few moments to process this, and then it popped up a sign. “Light Hope,” she said softly – no sense waking the others. “You’re recovering?”

I am recharged.

“Good. Good. That’s…good.” Adora coughed. “So what’s going on?”

Query too vague.

“What I mean is,” said Adora, frantically translating to Overly Formal Computer in her head, “what do you need me for?”

You have done well, Adora. You have found the Sword of Protection, and located the bearer of the Fractal Flake.

“The bearer of the – Frosta?”

I think that is the correct designation, yes.

“So that’s…two out of five?”

Three out of six. You are a part of the pattern too, Adora. Light Hope’s voice became more businesslike. However, your inexperience with the Sword may hinder future progress.

“Glimmer is going to start teaching me to fight better with a sword-”

The Sword has many functions beyond simply a weapon. You must master its additional functions to accomplish your task. Adora could hear Light Hope pursing her lips somehow. Under ideal conditions, I would seek to initiate a course of intensive training lasting some months…but we are operating under far from ideal conditions, and the system must be restabilised with some urgency.

“So what’s the plan?” Adora said, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

I will provide what education I can as you proceed. I trust the Sword is close to hand?

Adora reached over the side of her bed and picked up the makeshift sheath. “Right here.”

Very well. Now, the Sword of Protection possesses metamorphic properties. Mastering its ability to transform will provide you with considerable tactical advantage.

“Metamorphic…You mean it can turn into other things?”

Yes. Now, concentrate on the weapon…

“Glimmer.”

Glimmer stepped through the arched door into the dark, candle-lit throne room of Brightmoon. Light Spinner was standing beside the throne, in the position where Glimmer had often seen General Juliet – swallowed in shadow.

“Light Spinner,” she said, her tone measured. “Can I help you with something?”

“It is time for your training to begin, child,” said the veiled figure. “You have much potential; now is the time to bring it out.”

“Potential for what?” Glimmer didn’t bother to hide her suspicion. “I don’t have a Runestone or a magic sword. What do I have?”

“Magic,” said the phantom simply. “You have a lot of mystical power within you, child – it is untapped, and untrained, but its strength is considerable.” A curious note entered into her voice as Light Spinner added, “This kind of power...often runs in families. Is there some ancestor who was gifted in these arts, perhaps?”

“M…my dad.” Glimmer forced down her emotions and added, “He was from Mystacor. The Horde killed him.”

“Alas.” Light Spinner’s expression, from what Glimmer could read of it behind the veil, was sympathetic but stoic. To be fair, it was probably an AI like Light Hope, and wouldn’t really understand those emotions. Hell, Glimmer wasn’t sure she understood those emotions, and they were hers. “My intent is to teach you magic, child – bring to you the power that is your birthright. Power to help your friends and drive back the Horde.”

“And this will help with…the Heart of Etheria?”

“The Heart is…the priority of others,” Light Spinner said. “It is important, but here are other considerations – the Horde, for one. The Heart will accomplish little if the galaxy is still in chaos, and so we turn to people with great potential to change it. People like you.” She stepped out into the candlelight. “Now, let us begin. This is a simple, yet effective, combat spell – a blast of pure force. Crude, but surprisingly destructive in the right circumstances.”

Light-years away, Shadow Weaver studied the focus for her spell. The blue gemstone’s light was undimmed by the cosmic gulf between it and Glimmer; the nature of sympathetic magic was such that it would remain entangled until something happened to the gem, the host, or the spell itself.

She had played dangerous games before, of course – one did not reach the lofty heights she had without betting large on a few awkward hands – but this was going to be one of the most dangerous. Her imprints were good at tearing into a weakened mind; the loneliness and desperation of a cell often did the trick, especially with the careful allocation of a more experienced cellmate, already broken from their ordeal. The princess was as stubborn as stone, just like her father – and in her stronghold aboard the Constrictor, surrounded by her allies, mere force was not going to work. This was going to take a more subtle hand. At that thought, her eyes fell on her renewed prosthesis, a constant reminder of the recent debacle, and she scowled under her mask.

Octavia was going to be a problem. Shadow Weaver’s position was tenuous, it would always be tenuous – it was only Hordak’s belief that her skills could be useful that prevented her role from being filled with yet another Prime. As it stood, victory and defeat were both equally inconvenient: any success would be credited to Octavia, any setback blamed on her.

Still, if Shadow Weaver was trapped in this situation, at least there were so many possible victories, if she played her cards right. Destroy the Constrictor, or seize it…or even take Brightmoon in its entirety, give the Free Territories to the Horde – or control their eventual queen.

She just needed to be patient, make herself indispensable. The First One AI the imprint had managed to learn about while gradually digging into the princess’s memories had given her the hook for her line – a perfect mask for her machinations.

Teaching the princess spellcraft was certainly a dangerous gambit. The so-called Scourge of the Starways had never demonstrated magical gifts before, and doubtless there would be questions. There might even be punishments: the logical tutor for her was the very cellmate Shadow Weaver had assigned her, and so her new skill could, indirectly, be blamed on Shadow Weaver, even by those who knew nothing of her imprints. As it stood, however, it was the only logical option: if it served her purposes for the princess to fail, she needed to fail in such a way that only Shadow Weaver could claim the victory.

And Octavia had little experience dealing with Shadow Weaver’s specialty…

Adora bluntly shoved the Sword back into its makeshift sheath and groaned. Two hours of hard concentration had produced zero (0) sword transformations and one (1) brewing headache.

It would be more efficient to keep going-

“I can’t, Light Hope. It’s not working.”

The Sword safely stowed away in a locker, she rose and headed out the door-

A crude metal mask stared at her, eyes dull behind it, and she flinched.

Glimmer’s former cellmate – Mermista had started calling him “Mask”, and that seemed to work well enough – gave Adora what she thought was most likely a curious look. He had traded out his Horde prison uniform for purple, with a long hooded cape – similar to Glimmer’s. “Heard voices,” he said, his tone implying the question mark that wasn’t there.

“That was Light Hope. She’s my…mentor, I guess.”

“Good. Was afraid it was Her.” The capital letter was clearly audible.

“Don’t worry. Light Hope is a friend, she’s helping us.”

“Good. Just be careful; She is cunning.” Again, the capital letter. Adora wondered idly how you did that.

“All right. Uh. Thank you?”

But Mask was already gone.

The Protector broke through the perpetual clouds to see Bognis spread out before them.

Bognis had been trending towards urbanisation well before the Horde had arrived, and the Horde had chosen to emphasise that. The land below them was dotted with constellation-cities, sprawling patches of lights.

Glimmer wore a scowl, however. The Princess of Brightmoon was sitting in the captain’s chair, glaring out the windscreen.

“Uh.” Scorpia tapped her claws together awkwardly, and managed, “So, uh, what’s wrong?”

Glimmer stared holes right through her and said, “That.”

“Uh. The screen? Because I think it’s kind of pretty-”

“Not when you get to the ground,” Glimmer said in a steely voice. “I know what Bognis is like. Pollution, repression, cruelty.” Her fist slammed down onto the arm of the captain’s chair. “That’s always how it looks. The Horde just shows up and starts taking. No thought for the future or the people who are being hurt, just control and exploitation. ‘Will this planet still be habitable in fifty years? Who gives a shit about sustainability, we want this now!’”

A few moments passed, and then Glimmer – she didn’t relax, exactly, but she at least seemed notably less furious. “Sorry. That was…sorry.”

“You, uh. You really don’t like the Horde, huh?”

“No, Scorpia. I don’t.” Glimmer was looking out the window, but Scorpia could tell it wasn’t the approaching urban sprawl she was seeing. “It’s taken so much from me, and from everyone else on this ship – and we’re the ones who got off easy. It to be stopped, somehow.”

“I’m, uh,” said Scorpia, and fled.

“So why are we stopping here?” demanded Frosta, her eyes narrowed. “Shouldn’t we be heading for the Free Territories?”

“Oh wow, we never thought of that,” Mermista deadpanned. “Someone tell Glimmer we’re going about this all wrong.”

“I don’t have to put up with this disrespect. I am the Princess of Geluregnus-”

Mermista drew herself up to her full height, her usual resigned detachment disappearing – now she radiated the chill of the deep ocean, the danger of an unexpected storm. “You aren’t the only one here with connections, Frosta, First of Her Name. This ship is captained by the Princess of Brightmoon, the biobay operator is heir to the throne of Plumeria Prime, and my father is the First Speaker of the Salinean Territories.” She smiled, but it was a smile without any warmth in it. “You don’t get to just stand on status here.”

“I…I didn’t know-”

“Of course you didn’t, kiddo. You didn’t ask.” Mermista leaned over so that she wasn’t just taller than Frosta but actively leaning over her. “As it happens, we’re stopping here – and we’re gonna keep stopping at planet after planet along the way – because people need help and we need supplies. Busting the captain out of maximum security wasn’t cheap. So we’re gonna do whatever odd jobs it takes to make sure we don’t just grind to a halt in the middle of nowhere. Clear?”

Frosta scowled at her and left as quickly as her dignity allowed.

“That was a bit harsh,” said Bow from behind her. “She’s just a kid.”

Mermista shrugged. “Perfuma’s the diplomat, and sometimes that’s gonna work, and sometimes you need the direct approach. Kiddo was getting on my nerves with her Empress High and Mighty routine.” She looked at him speculatively. “Of course, if you tell Perfuma I said her approach works sometimes, I’m gonna make sure you pay for it.”

Glimmer was right about the pollution, at least.

Scorpia nudged her mask with a claw, trying to shift it to be slightly less uncomfortable under her chemical-resistant poncho. Out of the many, many environment warnings they’d received from planetary traffic control, the rain and air had been given particular emphasis, and while Scorpia wasn’t entirely sold on the claim that it was the Horde’s doing, it was still, you know, a thing.

The city was dark and rainy, most of the illumination coming from neon signs that were turned up just a little too bright – or the green illumination from prefabricated Horde buildings, built to a larger scale than normal but still instantly recognisable. The light played over the ponchos and masks of the motley group that had been selected for the mission.

“Are you sure he should be with us?” said Adora, over comms. Scorpia was in front of the group, but she could pretty easily guess who Adora was talking about – it had to be Mask. The prisoner had assembled himself a purple outfit out of spare bits of clothing from the pile – much like Scorpia herself had. Her Horde uniform had been banished, replaced with a black jacket over a purple top; Catra had gone with a long white coat, which she was probably wearing on the ship. (She’d taken one look at the environment warnings and refused to go, which Scorpia honestly felt was quite fair.)

“He said he wanted to help,” said Glimmer.

“But he’s-”

“He,” said Glimmer in a tone that brooked no disagreement, “is a member of this crew, and if he wants to help us, he should be allowed to.”

After a few moments, Adora said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just…I’m worried, all right? He’s…not well.”

“I know.” Glimmer’s voice was soft, now. “But he kept it together in that prison for stars know how long. If helping us helps him somehow, I want him to at least have that chance.”

“Uh, guys? You do know you’re on the group channel, right?” cut in Bow from the ship, and an awkward silence descended.

A few minutes later, said silence was broken by Glimmer. “This way – quick, into the alley.”

“Yep,” said Scorpia sagaciously. “This is definitely an alley, all right. Looks alley-like. Uh. Why are we in an alley?”

“Do you have to?” asked Adora peevishly. Then she bowed her head. “Sorry. I’ve had a headache since we entered atmosphere. You didn’t deserve that.”

“We’re here in the alley,” said Glimmer patiently, “because the sign right next to it had some rebel codes worked into it. There’s someone here who needs our help.”

Scorpia had no idea what codes Glimmer had possibly seen, it had just looked like any other sign to her, but oh well. Rebel codes had always been the job of the intelligence service, it tended to be given to humans and Salineans – scorpioni like her were supposed to be more focused on pure military work – so naturally they hadn’t deemed her need-to-know.

The doors down the alleyway each had a different symbol drawn on them – diamonds, triangles, rhombi. Glimmer led them to a door marked with an inverted triangle, two lines from base to apex splitting it into three smaller triangles, and knocked.

A camera above the door descended on a tendril, its segmented, coiling shape putting Scorpia in mind of a snake, and studied them. After a few moments, it spoke, a faint accent barely audible over the speaker’s distortion.

“What do you want?” it demanded.

“We’re here to help,” Glimmer told it. “That’s your sign, right?” She opened out her hood a little, displayed the ruff of feathers at her neck.

The camera tilted, as if evaluating this evidence, and then the door slid open, juddering slightly as it moved – a clear sign that it needed some maintenance work done. The main room inside was small, its confines dingily lit with a flickering radiance from the ceiling; the walls were hung with fabrics, their bright patterns faded by time.

The room’s sole resident was a pale-skinned human woman, her red hair shot through with bands of grey, clad mostly in a dull pink. Her blue eyes flicked from one of her visitors to the next, and finally she nodded. “Well, you definitely look like rebels.”

“Thank you,” said Adora and Scorpia simultaneously.

“That wasn’t a compliment.” The woman wasn’t smoking, but for a few seconds she looked like she really, really wished she was. “Still, you did show up, and you knew the signs. All right. Name’s Runa.” She raised her voice a little and said, “Thauma, come out here.”

A door at the back of the room slid open, and a tiny face poked out.

The face’s large black eyes and the faintest hint of gills on the neck spoke of Salinean heritage, but her skin was much closer to orange than the typical Salinean blue or green. As the child stepped out, Scorpia could make out gauzy wings on her back – the kind an Anthophian might have, although smaller, even for that age.

Part of Scorpia protested. Like any child of the Horde, she’d been taught that you weren’t supposed to cross species. This child, who couldn’t have been older than eight or nine, was a living affront to the Horde’s beliefs about how the universe should work.

On the other hand, this child was also a child – and a frightened one at that.

Runa’s expression softened, and she said, “This is Thauma. She’s my daughter.”

“You, uh, you don’t look much alike-” said Scorpia, and the woman glared at her.

“She. Is. My. Daughter.”

Scorpia’s mouth snapped shut, and Glimmer stepped between her and Runa – almost like the tiny Lunavian was trying to shelter the giant scorpioni.

“Sorry about her,” said Glimmer. “She’s new.”

“Tell her to be more careful if she wants to get old.” Runa rose from her seat. “Thauma, these nice people are going to help us out of here.”

“Her birth parents?” asked Glimmer softly.

The silence said everything that needed to be said.

“Point is,” Runa said, “we need to get off-planet. And soon.”

Glimmer nodded. “If there’s a safe system, we’ll head there immediately. It’s not easy, being mixed-species in Horde space.”

“That ain’t the half of it.” Runa concentrated, and a faint pink light began to emanate from behind the wall hangings – shimmering in intricate patterns. “Not many left who walk my path; I might be the last. Thauma’s a strong one – and she wants to learn. But the Horde…”

Magic.

The Horde maintained that magic was a dangerous thing, and trying to control it was taking your life in your hands. The knowledge of how to use it had to be suppressed – for the common good, of course. Thauma, by the Horde’s reckoning, was midway between a rabid hunting skitlet and an unlicensed combat rifle.

“We can escort you back to our ship,” said Glimmer. “It’s not too far-”

“I need to make some preparations,” Runa told her. “There’s a cell on Simia Orichalcae, a couple systems over, but I’ll need to arrange for a code – and you folks will probably need to load up for a scrap. Meet me under the big red sign in two hours.”

Mask stepped forward. Scorpia started; despite the man’s size and build, he could be so quiet she almost forgot he was there.

“We will protect her,” he said, a level of determination in his voice that Scorpia hadn’t heard before.

Bow pursed his lips. “Are you sure you don’t want me? I could get my stuff-”

“Keep your weapons ready, but don’t join in unless I tell you to,” Glimmer said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. “If everything goes to shit, come and save us.” Her voice softened. “We’ll be fine, Bow. Adora’s got She-Ra for emergencies, I’ve picked up some new tricks, we’ll have two mages with us – and Scorpia is huge. You’re our trump card.”

“Okay, okay. But you take care of yourself, you hear me? Be careful!”

“Of course I’ll be careful,” lied Glimmer, and Bow sighed internally. Glimmer was going to keep being Glimmer, apparently. “Okay, gotta get going. Look after the ship!”

And then she was gone.

The hour of the appointment came, and the troupe trooped out to the big red sign – a giant propaganda billboard. It was a little further away from their ship, but it was an obvious marker and presumably more convenient for some reason.

The tension between subtlety and superior firepower had been obvious. Adora had her sword, strapped to her back, and Glimmer’s cape utterly failed to conceal a carbine, but Mask just had a walking stick he’d picked up from somewhere, and they hadn’t had anything for Scorpia.

“You sure you want to be here?” Adora asked her softly, and Scorpia’s eyes bugged out for a moment. “I know you haven’t been…with us long. It can be hard, fighting former allies for the first time.”

“Was it for you?”

Adora thought for a moment. “Not in the heat of it. It really hit after the adrenaline wore off, though.” She patted Scorpia on the arm. “Anyway, point is, if you wanna sit this one out, I don’t think anyone will complain.”

“N…no, I want to stay.”

Adora gave her an odd look, at least as far as Scorpia could tell behind the mask, but she nodded. “All right.”

A siren split the night, and Adora and Glimmer reacted immediately. Metal glinted in the billboard’s red light as their weapons leaped into their hands. Scorpia found herself stepping forward, too, even if she wasn’t sure what she would do.

Thauma burst around the corner, her little legs carrying her as fast as they could. Behind her were a group of Horde troops, armed with stun prods – a capture patrol, not a kill one.

Part of Scorpia told her not to do anything. This was a rabid hunting skitlet combined with an unlicensed combat rifle. Every ounce of her Horde training told her to stop, to let the soldiers bring the threat under control.

But Thauma didn’t look like a rabid animal or a black-market gun. Thauma didn’t look like a threat.

Thauma looked like a child.

Scorpia blinked as she realised time had passed without her actively processing it. She was breathing a little heavily, and her muscles protested a little bit, like she hadn’t warmed up properly before doing her exercises. A half-dozen Horde soldiers were scattered around the area, their armour dented or scorched. Some of the marks looked familiar, like they’d been caused by…

By the impact of her own claws.

“It’s okay,” Glimmer was telling Thauma. The half-Lunavian girl was kneeling so she could look the child in the eye. “Just take a breath, and tell us when you feel ready, okay?”

“It’s…it’s Mama Runa.” Thauma’s voice was high, and more than a little squeaky. She gulped down a dose of the air, and her tiny frame trembled as she coughed. “The Horde got her! She told me to run as they took her to a groundcar-”

“It’s okay, Thauma. It’s okay. We’ll go save her.” She looked around at the motley group. “Mask, Scorpia, you two look after Thauma, okay? Get her back to the ship – but don’t go directly, they’ve probably set up some roadblocks. Adora, you’re with me. We’re going hunting.”

“Won’t they have taken her to a skimmer?” asked Scorpia. “They could be miles away-”

“No skimmers here; local magnetic field won’t allow for it.” She pointed. “Take Thauma and go!”

“Catra?”

Catra scowled and paused the holoserial. Some dumb thing about a sword of destiny and people who vaguely resembled her but clearly were not the same species. She wasn’t even sure why she’d watched like ten episodes of it already, although part of it was probably that her pulse rate spiked every time the blonde one showed up. “What?” she snapped.

“Do you…have a minute?” said Bow.

No. Piss off. “Fine.”

Bow paused for a moment, looking at the paused holo-display, and said, “Enjoying the show?”

“I guess? I’m getting real tired of this ‘mixed signals’ bullshit, though. Why doesn’t she just pick one of those idiots and get it over with?”

“Yeah, some shows are really bad at writing romance. Forced love triangles, or two characters will be slapped together at the last minute with no buildup, or they’ll totally destroy a relationship and then fix it in under ten minutes.” Bow shook his head. “I didn’t come here to talk about holoserials, though.”

“Ah. The Horde thing. Look, I’ll tell you what I told Sparkles – I’ve got a crosshair on my ass, same as you guys. You don’t have to worry about me-”

“It’s not that, either.” Bow took a deep breath. “Before you joined us, before…BST-ILN, Adora and I were in a First One ruin on Maragraf.” Catra hadn’t thought she’d been that obvious in her flinching, but Bow looked at her sympathetically and added, “I’m sorry, I’m making you uncomfortable. I can-”

“Just say it and go.” There was an edge of a snarl to Catra’s voice.

Bow nodded slowly. “This First One ruin showed me some of Adora’s memories. Not much, but…some of them involving you.” He took a deep breath. “And how Shadow Weaver treated you-”

Catra moved like lightning.

“Who have you told?” Now there wasn’t just an edge of a snarl in her voice; there was nothing but snarl. “Out with it!”

“No-one!” He sounded too startled to lie. “I wouldn’t-”

Reluctantly, Catra let go, and Bow straightened up, rubbing the wrist Catra had been holding behind his back.

“So what do you want from me?” Catra demanded. “You know some of my secrets; I assume you’re here to blackmail me.”

“I would never do that,” Bow protested, and Catra flinched slightly as she heard the sincerity in his voice. “I just wanted to let you know that…I didn’t choose to invade your privacy like that, but I did, and I’m sorry. And…you didn’t deserve to be treated like I saw you being treated. Nobody does-”

“Get out.”

“I-”

“I SAID GET OUT!”

Bow fled.

As they dashed through the raised pathways and streets, Adora in the lead, Glimmer flicked through her comm channels. “Bow, Entrapta, I need the city layout and anything you can get from the local Horde channels. We’re looking for a law enforcement groundcar, with a prisoner on board, near our current location.”

“Just a second…Got one!” Entrapta sounded like she was fishing for a specific flavour of candy in a bag, rather than tracking down a key mission objective. “There’s an enforcer vehicle not far off, and the route it looks like it’s got locked in is a big loop along a main road! Go northwest – you should be able to head them off.”

A couple of hundred meters northwest, Glimmer paused. “You go on ahead, Adora – you’re a faster runner than me. Try and at least get a marker on the groundcar, or something – I’m gonna try some other way of giving chase.

Adora nodded and increased speed. She’d learned to respect Glimmer’s strength and courage a great deal since she’d defected, but she wasn’t a particularly fast runner – probably due to her height. She severed a chain, left hanging across some sort of loading bay entrance as a “keep out” sign, and fired up her comms.

“Entrapta, how far off are they?”
“A minute or two. What are you planning to do?”

I have no idea.

“I’m gonna get creative, I guess?”

Wait.

Light Hope had been talking about the Sword changing shape. She concentrated on the weapon…

The weapon remained resolutely Sword-shaped. It continued this for thirty seconds, no matter how she concentrated.

With a groan of frustration, Adora carved the edge through the other end of the chain, leaving it sitting on the ground, and snapped, “Work, damn you! Work!”

The Sword blazed with light.

Adora realised, the moment her eyes had adjusted, that she was now holding some sort of board. It still had the vague shape of the Sword, with the same First One patterns in it, but the bottom was split with a line of blue lights – and, despite the local magnetic field’s impact on skimmers, it floated off the ground. More blue lights flickered to life at the back.

“They’re nearly at your position!” Entrapta told her, over the comms.

Adora grabbed the length of chain, wrapping a few turns around her wrist. This was probably going to be very uncomfortable, but it was worth a shot.

As the groundcar raced past her, six wheels running along the road, Horde insignia proudly, or perhaps smugly, displayed on the hood, she lashed out with the chain, and was rewarded as it coiled around the rear bumper. There was a tug on her arm, and then a jet of blue fire shot from the back of the Board of Protection.

Suddenly, Mask froze.

Scorpia walked into his back. In her defence, she didn’t mean to, but there was just so much going on. They were surrounded by people, a tightly-packed crowd of them – it was shielding yet suffocating, like being trapped in a kettle.

“Roadblock,” Mask said, his voice quiet but intense. “We need to go another way.”

Scorpia could see it up ahead: a crackling deployable barrier, guarded by half a dozen, uh, guards. “This way, maybe?”

Blue light shimmered around Mask’s hand, and he said, “Not that way. Another roadblock. Closing the noose.”

“Could you, uh, perhaps come up with a less ominous way to put it?”

There was a rattling sound from beneath them, and Scorpia said, “Uh, Thauma? Is there something under here?”

Thauma didn’t say anything. Scorpia could make out the repeating hiss of her breath mask – the distinctive pattern of rapid breathing.

“Thauma.” Mask bent down and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get you out of here. The others will save Runa. But we need to know what’s down there, okay? It might give us a way out. We just need you to be brave. For your mother.”

Thauma nodded and took a deep breath. “Monorail,” she said, a faint tremble in her voice. “It goes underground near here.”

“There would have to be a station near the spaceport,” said Scorpia. “You’d want that stuff to be close together so visitors can get there easily.” She looked at Mask. “Can you magic us a way down?”

“Don’t need to.” Mask nodded into a nearby alley. “At the end there – maintenance hatch. Probably disused. Maybe locked.”

Scorpia’s muscles tensed as she realised she could do something about that.

“Hey, Bow!” said Entrapta, who had apparently stepped out of her cocoon to stretch her legs or something.

Bow took a relieved breath. At least someone was happy to see him – especially after how long Entrapta had spent in her dome. “Hey, Entrapta. How’s it going?”

“I’m getting some weird telemetry from Adora’s wrist unit.” She didn’t sound worried by this; in fact, she sounded like that weird telemetry was a holofilm she’d gotten to see before it was properly released.

One of many differences between the two of them was that Bow was worried by that. “It couldn’t be early-onset petrification, could it?”

“Nope! No magic in this particular stuff at all. I think it’s just her biology reacting to the local conditions.”

“Could it be dangerous?”

“No! Well, probably not.” Entrapta rubbed a hand against her chin, the mecha-tendrils of her hair echoing the gesture in midair. “I imagine there’s something that could react weirdly with her First One traits that you or me could just shrug off, but this is just some unusual brain activity. Could be the magnetic field? That’s the main distinction here that wasn’t on some of the other heavily polluted planets we’ve been to.” She produced a recording device from nowhere. “Note to self: try putting Adora in a few different magnetic fields. If the First Ones had magnetoception that’d be really interesting!”

“And she…knows that you’re getting this kind of information about her?”

“Yeah, I told her I was gonna take some readings while she was using it.” He could tell Entrapta was smiling. “Gotta keep an eye on it to make sure it’s working!” Her voice softened a little bit, moving from outright glee to something more conciliatory. “Besides, the more we know about her powers, the better – oh, hey, that’s neat.”

“What?” For a few moments, Bow felt like he was craning his neck to see one of his brothers’ comic books over his shoulder. “What’s neat?”

“Getting some really cool stuff from the wristband! Gonna have to ask after this to find out what she’s doing.”

Bow knew where this was going. He liked to think he was a pretty smart guy – he made all his own arrows, after all – but even he had a hard time keeping up with Entrapta when she was doing a deep dive into some data. “I might just see myself out, and let you get your findings together?”

“You can stay if you want, but sure! See you!” Entrapta waved at him and leaped for one of the computers, her mecha-tendrils filling in graphs as it went.

For a few sick moments, Adora was actually glad about the local pollution, because it meant she didn’t have large insects hitting her face at motorway speeds. The other groundcars seemed to be trying to give her a wide berth; either they didn’t want to risk killing her, or they were cautious of what such an obviously irrational person might do.

The groundcar began to turn, swinging Adora out towards a wall of concrete-grey dividers. Her wrist protested at the grasp of the chain, and Adora realised that if she didn’t act, she was going to hit something.

Thinking quickly, Adora swung the board up. The blue lights along the bottom glinted on the dividers, and she let out a breath she didn’t even realise she’d been holding. She shifted a foot, just to adjust her position, and in a pulse of blue light, the board shot away from the barrier – must have been some control she didn’t know was there.

Her trajectory brought her down in…

Oncoming traffic.

Piss.

She kicked downwards with her back foot, bringing up the board’s nose. In moments, she was riding it over the groundcars, bouncing from the rear of one to the hood of the next, pulling the chain in ever closer to her quarry. Another pulse from the board kicked her from the approaching vehicles to the same lane as the prisoner groundcar.

Another siren split the night, and out of her peripheral vision, she realised the street was beginning to fill up with Horde vehicles. A shot lanced past her, carving a substantial divot out of the road ahead. Worse, they seemed to be trying to get in close, stop her from reaching her quarry…

She twisted the board again, running its levitation power, however it worked, along the side of a Horde groundcar-

Blue light flared from the Board of Protection, and she shot away from the vehicle, which suddenly had a lot less metal along its side than it used to. A groundcar door, to all appearances intact, clattered to a halt in the street.

The next landing brought her down on top of a groundcar, which was clearly mashing the accelerator. The blue light flared again, and the board dropped back to road level – two halves of a groundcar forming a makeshift obstruction in the lane, startled Horde troopers trying to extract themselves from the wreckage.

There were several more cars, though, and some of them were starting to shoot. That cutting blast was a clear and present threat to them, so obviously they’d given up on taking her prisoner or finding out what she wanted and had gone for immediacy.

A very loud, heavily synthesised alert sound, like a low-fidelity foghorn, and a giant vehicle – some sort of freight truck, she had to guess – surged out of the night and smashed into the rear corner of one of the Horde groundcars, sending it spinning off the road.

“I assume all these broken Horde vehicles are your doing?” said Glimmer over comms, and Adora’s heart lifted.

“Well, not that last one,” Adora told her, and the Board of Protection surged forward, as if her lightening mood was actually making her weigh less somehow. “All the others, yeah, probably.”

“Well, stop it. You’ll give them an inferiority complex.” Glimmer’s smile was audible in her voice, and Adora felt the corners of her own mouth shift upwards, as if it was contagious somehow. “Come on, let’s wrap this up – Scorpia and Mask are probably nearly back to the ship by now.”

Adora nodded, and concentrated. The Board put on another burst of speed, hurling her towards her quarry.

“For the honour of Grayskull!”

The night was split by a flare of light, like a newborn sun.

It was a maintenance hatch, and it had been locked. It was technically still locked now, although the actual lock was no longer part of the pavement.

The underground monorail was a string of blocky carriages, some linked by an articulated sheath, some left alone. Presumably there was a reason for that – passenger compartments versus cargo, perhaps – but Scorpia hadn’t been trained for that sort of thing. Through the gaps, she could make out a station, lit by harsh neon and a fluorescent glow. The Horde was clearly more worried about people getting in than people getting out; the monorail had stopped, even though there was no crowd to meet it.

Naturally, they were on the other side of it.

“Come on!” Mask picked up Thauma, sheltering the child’s body with his own, and bundled them into the gap between two of the carriages. “It’s the only way!”

This was absurd. Even with magic, this was absurd. She couldn’t be seriously thinking about climbing onto the outside of a monorail to protect a fugitive from the Horde.

Thauma looked at her, wide eyes staring over her breath mask, and suddenly absurdity didn’t seem to matter much.

She hopped into the gap between the carriages, and blue light shimmered around them as it set off.

“Well, that was a new one,” said Runa. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen a fist go clean through the side of a groundcar before.”

Adora grunted and leaned out the passenger side window of the truck, bringing Glimmer’s carbine up to fire. She hated the imprecision of firing blindly out of a window, but at this stage the street was nothing but Horde vehicles; at least she wouldn’t be hitting any civilian vehicles. The Sword, which had shifted back to its normal form as she’d transformed, was back in its sheath.

There was a loud thud, and she pulled back in to see that a Horde soldier had managed to get onto the driver’s side door somehow. A stun prod battered against the window, cracking it, and Adora cursed as she brought up the carbine, knowing that it wouldn’t be any use-

Glimmer took one hand off the controls and swung it in a circular motion, a blue line following the movement. A pattern – shaky, barely holding together, but still a pattern – formed within the ring, and a jagged pulse of scintillating blue energy shot from its heart, smashing the window out and sending the soldier flying.

“You need to work on your technique,” said Runa. “Mystacor sent you out way too early, girl.”

“I’ve only just started learning, give me a break,” Glimmer shot back. She drew another circle, its pattern similarly wonky, and hurled a blast out through the now-vacant window.

“I didn’t know you’d started learning magic.” Adora fired another shot into a groundcar’s right-side front wheel, sending it spinning off to one side.

“A girl’s gotta have some secrets-”

“Flirt later!” snapped Runa. “Roadblock!”

Adora spun around and released a volley of shots. The forcefield barrier they’d set up ahead glowed red, then overloaded, the “pop” of the field collapsing echoed by the blast of its power supply overloading. Horde troops dived out of the way as the truck thundered through, and Glimmer blasted that synthesised horn triumphantly as they surged onwards.

It wasn’t long before the monorail burst out of the subway tunnels into the poisoned air of the urban night. Traces of cold wind whipped around the sides, adding an edge to the air, but the worst of it was cut off by the reassuring bulk of the carriage that sheltered them.

Mask’s eyes glowed blue for a moment, and he said, “Company.”

“That’s a lot of soldiers-”

“Not that kind.” He nodded upwards. “They’re coming over the carriage roofs. Gravity clamps.”

“Oh boy,” said Scorpia, with feeling.

A head poked over the lip of the carriage, followed by the barrel of a weapon-

A bolt of blue energy blazed upwards, and the Horde soldier disappeared from view. If their clamps were still working, the soldier would be kind of flapping in the wind, unconscious; if not…

Well, no time to think about that. They probably weren’t the only soldier on the carriages.

Mask concentrated for a moment, and blue rings surrounded the trio’s feet. “Up! We’ll stand a better chance if we move. Might be a hatch somewhere.”

Without speaking, Scorpia scooped up Thauma and started climbing. Her powerful claws dug into the metal of the carriage as she launched up to the roof. She tested her weight on the surface; Mask’s spell was working a lot like a gravity clamp.

Much like the Horde soldiers crawling over the top of the carriages were using. The wind hit her like a hammer, and the chill was a lot stronger now that they were out in the open, but at least they weren’t sandwiched into a narrow gap where anything could go wrong.

One of them pointed at her; the roaring, freezing wind drowned out the demand, but given Horde SOP, it was probably a, “You there!” or a “Stand down!”

Mask fired another magic blast, and the battle was on.

The mess hall, strangely, wasn’t deserted when Bow stepped in, fresh from helping Perfuma in the biobay – for some reason, she always seemed to need something heavy moved when he, Adora or Scorpia was around. A small face eyed him balefully from between blue-black hair, carefully styled by its owner, and a tray of ration glop.

“Oh, Frosta!” She glared at him. “Sorry. I mean, your highness. It’s been…a little tricky to keep up with all the new faces.”

She squinted at him, then relaxed, apparently willing to accept the belated show of respect. “Okay. Is there anything…” She raised a spoon and tipped the glop into the tray; it even managed to fall unappealingly, like even gravity was reluctant to deal with it. “Edible, to eat around here?”

“The ration stuff is all we have, sorry. It’s been a while since we last had paying work, and nothing else lasts as long – probably because mould doesn’t want to grow on it. We do what we can with flavourings and so on, and it is nutritious, at least.” Bow sighed heavily. “What I wouldn’t give for a plate of my dads’ meatloaf, nice and warm from the oven, on some mashed mesofruit-”

Frosta tore past him.

“We need a plan,” said Adora. “We can’t just drive this thing around the city until the power core runs out.”

Glimmer thought for a moment. “This thing could make a really effective roadblock, if we had some way to get out of it at the right time.”

“I can do that.”

They looked at Runa, who sketched out a circle in the air – the light was a neon pink colour, this time, and the patterns inside resembled nothing so much as a circuit diagram, but it was definitely magic.

“Momentum-absorbing spell,” she explained. “Came in handy a couple of times back when I was learning. We should be able to leap clear if necessary.”

Glimmer nodded. “Let’s do it.”

She threw the truck into a skid, its wheels screaming as they were pushed at right angles to how they were supposed to go. Adora kicked the door open as it approached, and they prepared to jump…

Neon pink light shimmered around them. It felt like being caught in some kind of net, but it didn’t feel like her bones breaking, which meant that presumably the spell had worked and they weren’t about to die.

As they sank to the ground, Glimmer pointed dramatically and said, “Now let’s get to the spaceport!”

They bolted.

Scorpia ducked under the soldiers’ return fire, sheltering Thauma as best she could. These few were only the first; there would be more coming later.

“Thauma,” she said, as loudly as she dared. “Hold onto my back, okay? This could get rough.”

Thauma nodded mutely and climbed onto Scorpia’s back. Scorpia brought her tail up, taking care to keep the stinger pointed away; its job was to hold onto Thauma, not actually do battle.

The job of doing battle, therefore, fell to her claws. Moving with the grace of a trained fighter, she hurled herself into the fray.

The first soldier went flying as Scorpia struck, gravity clamps shorting out under the impact of the hit. At this speed, they probably would not survive the landing. Scorpia knew she would feel bad about that later, but right now all that mattered was making sure Thauma was safe. She did try to be a bit more careful with the next soldier, though; she ripped him clean out of his boots, sure, the clamps proving to be stronger than the joints holding his armour together – but then she hurled him down into the gap between the carriages. He was out of the fray, but he wasn’t dead.

A blue blast shot past her head, pushing a third off the train, and Scorpia nodded to Mask.

“Opening hatches!” Mask was having to shout to be heard over the roar of the wind. “More troops are coming!”

Scorpia dropped into a fighting stance and lunged forward, to where she could see a head poking out of one such hatch. Holding her claws together, she delivered a high-power over-the-head chop, hurling the soldier at the top of the ladder into their friends and leaving them as a disorganised sprawl on the floor of the carriage.

“Scorpia!”

She spun around to see a piece of metal, approaching at great speed and waist height. Some kind of crossbar, presumably part of the city infrastructure. Sometime she really needed to look up what all this stuff did.

Moving like lightning, she scooped up Mask and threw him over her shoulder, the powerfully built man still barely slowing her down. Nearly here…nearly here…

Her claw brushed the metal as she hurdled it, sheer momentum overcoming the wind resistance and hurling her over the crossbar. Her knees complained as she landed on the other side, but Mask’s spell held, and her feet found purchase on the roof.

The soldiers behind them didn’t have Scorpia’s reflexes. It was like swinging a scythe through free-standing toys. Some of them were left hanging from the metal; others were thrown away, disappearing into the city below.

“Spaceport’s over there! Jump!”

Scorpia jumped.

She didn’t even think about it. For all that he was, in Horde terms, playing with chunks of subcritical uranium, Mask seemed to know what he was doing – and for some reason, she was sure he wouldn’t do anything to deliberately endanger Thauma unless not doing it was more dangerous.

Sure enough, in midair, a net of blue lines surrounded them, flaring with light as the momentum of their jump bled off.

“Nets,” he said vaguely. “Remember something about nets…” He shook his head. “Don’t have time. Need to get to the spaceport.”

“Frosta?”

The quiet shape shifted slightly in the darkness. “Go away,” said Frosta, her voice ragged.

“If you want to be left alone, I’ll go. But I don’t think you do.”

There was a long pause, and then Frosta managed, “I can’t be seen like this-”

“Frosta, if you’re homesick, it’s okay. Nobody is going to think less of you for it; everyone here misses home sometime.” He smiled softly. “Even Mermista, although I think she’d rather eat live coals than admit it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Try me.”

She seemed taken aback by that. “I…need to represent Geluregnus. I need to be strong.”

“Frosta, I’ve been summoned to the Princess of Brightmoon’s office because she was trying to put together a plan to ask a girl out. Not that long ago, I was moving a sack of fertiliser for the Princess of Plumeria Prime.” Bow shook his head gently. “This isn’t a diplomatic mission or a formal event; you don’t need to be on edge for the whole trip. This ship could be your home for quite a while, and you might be happier if you treat it that way.”

The spaceport’s back entrance was dark, dingy and covered in grime. No matter how high-tech the environment, there had to be an area where all the dirty work was actually done, and this, apparently, was it.

Adora held up a hand as she heard a noise from around the stack of crates they were using as cover. She reached up, her golden bracelet glinting in the dull light, and drew the Sword. A deep breath, and she stepped around the corner, ready to strike-

Moments before the flat of the blade would have struck, she remembered that Scorpia was on their side now.

“Sorry,” she said, and returned the blade to its sheath.

Thauma stepped out of Mask’s shadow, and Adora’s heart twinged, just a little bit, as the little girl raced to her mother’s welcoming, protective arms.

“It’s okay,” said Glimmer softly, resting her hand on Adora’s arm. “We’ll figure out where you came from. Somehow.”

“Thanks.” Adora lifted her head. “We should still get a move on, though – the sooner we get back to the Protector, the better.”

“I think it’s this way!” said Glimmer, pointing down a corridor. “Come on!”

The common area was a little busier now. Thauma was poking at a tray of food; Perfuma had managed to brew up something approximating tea, and Runa was inhaling the steam.

Frosta, meanwhile, was sitting alone on one of the back tables, brooding over another so-called meal.

Sitting down beside her, Bow gestured with his thumb and said, “I think Thauma could use some company.”

“She’s got company, right? Mask and Scorpia are-”

“Nowhere near her age.” Bow took a deep breath and added, “Sometimes a ruler needs to handle the big, wide-reaching stuff…and sometimes they need to just look after one person.”

Frosta thought about this for a few moments, and then rose, heading over to where Thauma was sitting.

Adora.

Adora steadied herself with some effort. “Yes, Light Hope?”

Your ability with the Sword has…shown surprising improvement, said the AI grudgingly. It may be that your...unusual methods are more effective than I had calculated.

“Thank you.” A thought occurred to Adora. “So apart from a board, what other forms can it take?”

It has many forms of considerable utility. However…it appears that your more instinctive approach may be better suited to bring them out than my preferred educational technique. You should…continue to use the Sword.

“Uh…Bow was worried that the Sword could induce some kind of petrification? Is that a problem?”

My databanks contain plentiful information on the protocol you are curious about. I cannot find any link to the Sword…but my databanks are also incomplete. I cannot provide information on that topic.

“Perhaps we’ll bring more online as we go.”

You must hurry.

“Why?”

I will not…accessing appropriate idiom…sugar-coat it. The situation is not good, and all models indicate it will deteriorate further. We need the Heart online – the sooner, the better.

“And how do you plan to bring that online? Do you know where we can find another Runestone?”

I do not. However…there was a sizeable First One locator beacon network with its hub in the facility on Simia Orichalcae.

“Huh. We're going to Simia Orichalcae.”

That is fortunate. If you reactivate the beacon network, I should be able to locate a facility with access to either the Pearl or the Black Garnet. The Moonstone remains…elusive.

“Your technique needs work, child,” oozed Light Spinner, as Glimmer fired a blast across the dream-room. Sparks of blue light danced on the far wall.

“I’m getting there,” said Glimmer testily. She fired another blast; it was no more controlled.

“So much of spellcraft is muscle memory, princess. It will take time…” Light Spinner seemed to realise something. “Of course, there is a way I could assist. With some…limited access to your physical form, I could help you cast. That way, your muscles will be used to the correct forms.”

“It sounds dangerous.”

“You have nothing to fear from me, child. It would only be a hand – and for a few seconds.”

Glimmer pursed her lips. “I’ll…think about it.”

“That is all I ask.”

“I’ll let you know when we finish with Simia Orichalcae, all right?”

Light-years away, Shadow Weaver smiled to herself. She had a foot in the door, at last. So much of this kind of mental magic was about permission, and now she was almost certainly going to get it.

Of course, moving from there to any significant amount of control could take months, and she needed some results to wave at Octavia now. She thumbed the controls to her office comms. “Captain Octavia? My…intel suggests that they are making for Simia Orichalcae. It might be wise to alter course.”

“I’ll send a message ahead to the hunters. Looks like…Dragstor is the closest, he should be able to intercept them there.”

Should at least be entertaining to watch, Shadow Weaver didn’t say, because why would she, but she was definitely thinking it. Dragstor had not impressed her based on her research. If anything, Simia Orichalcae’s freezing ambient temperatures would be more dangerous than the inept criminal.

Now that was a thought. Perhaps she could use the icy world of Simia Orichalcae itself as a tool in some way…

Chapter Text

“That’s good,” said Runa grudgingly, as the cup bounced off Glimmer’s spell and clattered across the table.  The circle hanging in the air was a flickering magenta, its light glinting off the mess hall’s burnished metal.  “You’re gonna need more practice, obviously, but the fundamentals are good.”

“Thank you for teaching me this.”  Glimmer flicked a finger in the air, and a slim contrail of magic followed it.  “We get shot at a lot; the protection should come in handy.”

“You and your girlfriend should get a new line of work.”

“This line of work is how you and Thauma got off Bognis,” pointed out Glimmer.

“Touché.”  Runa nodded, as if to concede the point.  “Still…look after yourself, kid. Running around the galaxy starting fires only goes so far; eventually you need to put some out.”

“We’re coming in for a landing on Simia Orichalcae.”  Entrapta’s voice always sounded a little rough over the ship comms; the mechanical buzz of the system didn’t combine well with the already nasal edge to her voice.  “The channels Runa gave us worked fine; there’s a secret landing bay in a cave not too far from where her contacts live.”

“All right.”  Glimmer rose to her feet.  “Did you find enough warm clothes in our stockpile? We got most of it on Tobis Tertius; it should be okay for a cold world like Simia Orichalcae-”

“We’ll be fine.  You kids need to look after yourselves.”

Snow flew into the air as Thauma’s makeshift toboggan swerved around a corner of Frosta’s equally makeshift course, before sliding to a halt at the finish line.  Thauma bounced up from the chunk of metal that had been hastily repurposed as a toboggan and raced for Frosta, who greeted her with a high-five.

“You’re really getting the hang of steering!” Frosta told Thauma, beaming from ear to ear. “Now we’re gonna try some snowmen.”  She pursed her lips.  “We need to get some vegetables, though. Gotta make their faces from something.”

Scorpia, who had been doing her best impression of a responsible adult while Frosta had been teaching Snow Days 101, stepped away from the wall. “I think there are some in the biobay? I’ll go ask Perfuma, maybe you can have some of them.”

“Could you? Thanks!”  Frosta concentrated, and a claw shape formed around her hand – an icy reflection of Scorpia’s own pincers.  “Gimme two!”

The chitinous claw thumped against the ice one with a cracking sound, and Scorpia headed for the lift.  In a few years, Frosta would be able to recognise the thoughtful look on the big scorpioni’s face.

Frosta looked at Thauma.  “Wanna go for one more ride while she’s out?”

“Sure!”

They scooped up the toboggan, lifting it over their heads with difficulty, and raced for the beginning of the track.

“You can’t keep dodging missions,” Glimmer told Double Trouble, in the tones of a parent telling their child that yes, it was their turn to take out the trash.  “You haven’t done shit since BST-ILN.”

“I don’t think you can hold Arkos against me, darling; the entire problem there was keeping me from getting involved.  Bognis’s pollution would have done so much damage to my lungs.  And now we’re on a frozen hellhole; really, darling, you’d think we were all endothermic-”

“You did fine on Tobis Tertius, and that was just as much a frozen hellhole.”

Double Trouble narrowed their eyes at her.  “Oh, well remembered, your highness.  Yes, all right, all right, I’ll bless this insignificant planet with my presence.  I assume you’ve found somewhere sufficiently interesting to make this mission enjoyable, instead of burdensome?”

“It’s a valuable target, at least.”  A confident grin spread over Glimmer’s face.  “We’ve got two objectives.  Adora’s got something to do in the First One ruins a few miles away; she’s taking a small team for that.  You, me, and a few others…well, it turns out that Simia Ferrae, the next planet along, is naturally rich in randrite oil, and the conditions here make it a good location to build a refinery.  It’s hugely polluting, of course, but since when did the Horde care about that?”

“You’re proposing that we do something to take out the refinery,” said Double Trouble, studying her carefully.

Glimmer shrugged.  “The Horde uses a lot of randrite oil. Suddenly losing a big refinery for it could seriously hamper their operations in this sector.”  There was a wicked edge to her grin as she added, “Besides, back on Ribnoss you wanted to blow up something big.  This refinery is possibly the only high-value Horde installation on the planet.”

“I suppose I did, didn’t I?”  The shapeshifter sighed theatrically.  “Very well, your Highness, I’m on board.”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem; you’ve been on board since breaking me out of jail.”  Double Trouble shot her a look, and Glimmer shrugged.  “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

“Everyone on this ship thinks they’re a comedian,” grumbled the shapeshifter.

“Bye, Frosta.”  Thauma gave the tiny princess a hug.  “Thanks for playing with me.”

“Any time,” Frosta replied.  “Now you go make plenty of snowmen while you’re here, okay?”

“Of course!”  Thauma released Frosta and headed over to Runa, who had gathered up what belongings they’d managed to scrounge.

“Cute kids,” Catra said from somewhere behind her.

“Remember back when we were their age, trying to grab scraps of time to be kids between training?” said Adora wistfully, trying to ignore the faint itch in the scar over her eye as she turned.

“Yeah.  What happened to those days, again?”  Catra smiled, but it was a smile with knives in it.  “Oh, right, you started chasing your high scores and you didn’t have time for me.  I don’t even know why I was surprised when you ditched me to go play the hero.”

But Shadow Weaver hurt you whenever I fell short, Adora didn’t say, because Entrapta’s nasal voice suddenly rang out over the comms.

“So, just so everyone knows, I’ve been catching up on the local news broadcasts, and we could have a problem.”

Adora took a deep breath and asked, “What kind of problem, Entrapta?”

“Well, it turns out that there’s a bit more we have to worry about planetside.  We’ve got the Horde, obviously, but apparently there are also a whole bunch of raiders around the place, mostly surviving on plundering civilian settlements.  There aren’t enough of them to threaten the major cities, but we’re out in the middle of nowhere, so…”

“Got it.  Thanks, Entrapta.”

“Any time!  If they show up, could you try and get me one of their skimmers?  I wanna see if they’ve come up with anything interesting while trying to keep them running.”

“Should be easy,” said Catra sarcastically.  “Just ask nicely.”

After a few moments, Entrapta said, “That was sarcasm, right?”

“Y…yeah,” Catra replied, visibly wrong-footed.

“Great!  I’m…still working on figuring that out.”

Catra’s breath hissed between her teeth.  “You should go and talk to Scorpia, she sucks at sarcasm too.”

“Ooh!  Maybe we can both figure it out together!  That could be fun-”

Adora cleared her throat loudly and said, “We’re kind of getting off-topic?”

“Oh, right!  Anyway, keep an eye out for people in skimmers with guns on them.”  Entrapta thought for a moment.  “I think that’s good advice for life in general, really.”

“You want to tag along on this part, Entrapta?  I’m headed for another First One ruin, so…”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely!”  There was a clattering, skittering noise, and one of the omnipresent drones erupted from the wall, coming to a halt at Adora’s feet.  “Who else is coming with us?”

Adora turned to Catra and said, “Are you-”

“Sparkles already asked.”

“Oh.  Okay.  Uh…good luck.”

“I don’t need luck, Adora.  You should know that by now.”

Dragstor surveyed the view before him and scowled.  This was exactly not what he wanted out of life.  The mounting points for his prostheses were acting up in the cold, he didn’t have any backup or allies, and there was a noticeable lack of sunny beaches, attractive people in skimpy outfits, or large glasses with umbrellas in them and contents that could crinkle paint.  In fact, so far, over the course of his career as a smuggler and bounty hunter, he’d spent a total of zero weeks relaxing in paradise and at least three getting new limbs bolted on.

He was beginning to suspect that Scurvy had played a little fast and loose with the truth during his recruitment.

Still, at least it paid better than teaching.

He called up a holographic map and plotted out the information that he had. The suspicious ship signal had been here.  The most likely target for a rebel vessel was here.  Therefore…He suppressed the part of his brain that was saying “therefore you should sell your ship and settle down somewhere warm” and began plotting out a course.  It went through several mountain areas flagged as “Severe Risk” by the local security forces, but that was a problem for Future Dragstor.

“Not that I’m, you know, complaining,” said Adora, as the small group headed out into the frozen forest, “but why are you tagging along?  You’re, what, twelve?”

“Do you wanna make something of it?” snapped Frosta, and Adora shifted backwards.

“No, I just…would have thought you’d have stayed on the ship.”

“Actually,” cut in Entrapta, “Frosta’s coming along because I did some checking and the First One ruins haven’t been studied much because most of the facility is trapped in the ice.  Frosta’s abilities let her control ice, so we can get to the ruins with minimal damage!”

“So you’re not just trying to find out if the ruins respond to her somehow?” Adora said, a teasing note creeping into her voice.

“Well…I wasn’t ten minutes ago-”

“That was a joke, Entrapta.”

“Oooohhh.”  Entrapta paused for a second.  “Maybe you should stop coming up with jokes that sound like things that I might actually want to do?  Monitoring how the ruins respond to Frosta sounds like it could be really interesting!”

Adora shook her head.

The mood in the little mountain bolthole overlooking the refinery was getting a little tense.

“Get your elbow out of my spine.”

“If your highness didn’t want such close contact, your highness should have chosen a bigger hole!  What’s the matter, darling – your ex-Horde girl toy not satisfying you?”

“Don’t you dare say things like that about Adora!”

“Oh, you get rattled that easily about her, Sparkles?” Catra said, amusement and malice warring in her voice; malice was winning.  “No wonder she likes you better-”

“Guys.”  Bow knew he had to act quickly; Double Trouble was dicing with death here, and Catra wasn’t far off.  “GUYS!”

They shut up, at least for a moment.

“Can we at least save being catty until after the mission?”  He took a deep, steadying breath.  “We have a goal, we have a team.  Let’s set the Horde refinery on fire, instead of just trying to scorch each other.”

“I’m not sure if ‘catty’ was a good choice of words with Catra here, darling,” oozed Double Trouble, and Bow shot them a look.  Catra, meanwhile, simply looked confused.

The problem with problems for Future Dragstor was that by the time they arrived Future Dragstor had become Present Dragstor.

Present Dragstor was praying under his breath as he tore through the tight passageways, two scrapyard-ready skimmers on his tail.  Energy bolts shot past him, leaving melted streaks in the snow and a faint scent of ozone in the air.

He swung around a corner, wheels kicking up a spray of snow as they frantically pulled him forward, and slammed at full tilt into the side of another skimmer, which had clearly flown around and parked in front of him.

“Ow,” he managed, before darkness claimed him.

Adora grimaced as she looked across the First One ruins.  The crystal spire’s base had clearly become less horizontal at some point in the past thousand years or so; it was jutting out at an alarming angle, looking for all the world like the horn of some vast ocean-going leviathan, punching through the ice in pursuit of surface-dwelling prey.

She turned to Entrapta’s drone, which had been riding on her shoulder like a pirate’s pet avian in one of those holofilms Bow loved so much.  “Do you think you’d be able to find an entrance?”

“I put my best sensors on this drone!”  The drone leaped to the ground, legs clacking against the ice.  Mechanisms made a hissing, grinding sound as the top and bottom halves of its spherical body split apart, and a disc of sensors and manipulators began to jut out of the gap.  “The most likely location for a door is probably over…here!”  The drone extended a limb with a spiky thing on it and scratched a mark into the ice.

“Thanks, Entrapta.  Frosta, could you…”  She waved a hand awkwardly.

Frosta’s face glared out from under the synthetic fur fringe of her hood, her expression a very small picture of determination.  She raised her arms, her forearms forming an X shape in front of her torso, then swung them outwards.

The ice began to split, making one of the loudest noises Adora had heard in years.  Adora stumbled, trying to hold her balance through the equivalent of a small earthquake; even Entrapta’s drone clung tight to the ice and dug in its claws.

A sharp shock and a snarl of, “Wake up, asshole,” welcomed Dragstor back to the land of the living.  The sensation on his wrists told him they were bound; his legs 

He blinked open his remaining organic eye; his cybernetic eye wasn’t responding-

As reality cohered around him, Dragstor realised it wasn’t responding because of the woman in front of him.

Her thick coat was covered in scrapped-together chunks of armour and dangling weapons; a pair of tattered ice-white epaulets, glinting in the wan sunlight, presumably served as a rank marking.  She had four arms – two long, powerful ones dangling from where a human’s shoulders would be, tipped with clumsy-looking three-fingered hands, and two smaller, chest-mounted limbs with long, dextrous fingers; his eye prosthesis was in one of the latter.  Most of her body was covered by the coat, but her face was visible – four green, slitted eyes glared out of a coat of matted grey fur.

She was flanked by three others – if not identical triplets, then at least extremely similar.  They were tall and wiry, roughly humanoid, with purple skin and digitigrade legs, and were wearing similar coats to their leader; the armour plates looked cleaner, and there were fewer weapons and no epaulets.  Some rogue part of Dragstor’s brain dimly wished that this had been reversed; fewer epaulets and no weapons sounded much more convivial.  Each also had a patch on one shoulder: one was a bright red, one a rich oceanic blue, and one a vibrant yellow.  The one with the yellow patch was holding what looked like a low-intensity shock prod.

“So, offworlder,” began the leader, a growl in her voice, “what brings you to Ivendra’s turf?”

“Uh.”  Dragstor was aware this wasn’t a particularly helpful response, but his brain wasn’t letting him come up with a better one.  Seemingly because it was easier than assembling words into sentences, his eyes started skimming the area: they were on the deck of quite a large military skimmer, a row of gun turrets to either side.  A central spine of sensor masts ran down it, cages hanging from a length of chain connecting them – apparently these guys took hostages.

“Would you like me to weigh in?” asked the one with the yellow patch, and the faintest hint of a scowl became visible under the leader’s fur.  “I’m sure I can encourage him to be more loquacious.”

“That won’t be necessary, Arhex; I’m sure that I can ensure our new…guest is nicely compliant.  I ask you again, offworlder, why are you here?  Bear in mind that Ivendra does not ask three times.”

Dragstor finally managed to find his grasp on the language.  “Uh.  Profit.  Profit brings me here…Captain?”

“Admiral,” snapped Ivendra.

“Right!  Sorry.  As an idiot offworlder I wasn’t sure about your rank markings.”  Playing into that disdain she had seemed to be working; her expression relaxed from hostility to a sort of supercilious contempt that Dragstor was, frankly, used to.  “My name is Dragstor; I’m a bounty hunter.”

It took mere moments for the triplets to form a protective wall in front of Ivendra, weapons drawn.  The one with the blue patch, who was standing at Ivendra’s left shoulder, said, “We should continue this in cover, Admiral.  Aboard the Desperado, perhaps.”

“I’m not here for you!” Dragstor blurted out, and the weapons relaxed – although they were still unholstered.  “I was after some rebels the Horde wants.  They’re going to be at some old ruin in the area-”

“The Silent Spire,” said the one with the red patch.  “Has to be it.  Nothing else around here that could be considered a ruin.”

“Must be it, yeah.”  Dragstor coughed.  “I’m sure that if you let me go, and maybe helped me bring them in, I could cut you in on the reward…”

Four green, slitted eyes glittered with an icy, calculating sheen as Ivendra’s gaze bored into him.  Finally, she said, “How much is this reward?”

Dragstor told her.

Two of the triplets gave identical low whistles; the one with the yellow patch – Arhex, the leader had said – counted on a couple of fingers, and then their eyes bugged out.  Even Ivendra looked taken aback.

“That’s the kind of money that could make a man make some very stupid decisions, right enough,” said the one with the red patch.  “Admiral, what’s your call?”

Ivendra sat there for what felt like at least a year, her eyes carving openings in Dragstor and taking samples of what was inside.  Finally, she snapped her fingers and turned to face one of the triplets.  “Aburhi!  Arhim!  Arhex! Cut him free!”

The triplets looked at each other for a moment, and then the one with the red patch leaned forward and drew a knife, which was swiftly pulled through Dragstor’s bonds.

“Thank you,” he said, picking himself up. “Aburhi, Arhim and Arhex, was it?”

The one with the blue patch gave him a calculating look.  Finally, they said, “I’m Aburhi, he’s Arhim, and ve’s Arhex.”

“Don’t tell him that, sis, then we’ll have to kill him,” said Arhex, but ve sounded like ve was joking.

Dragstor nodded, filing this away.  He’d probably screw up which one was which a couple of times, but at least he had a skeleton to hang stuff on now.  Couldn’t be as hard as dealing with Neap and King, the twin Salineans who’d been Scurvy’s quartermasters; at least these three had those colour patches.

As the triplets guided him into the skimmer’s guts, he heard Ivendra giving orders to make for the Silent Spire.

“You’re sure it was raiders?” asked the Horde officer.  “It couldn’t have been something else?”

“Our transport was blown off the path by a skimmer covered in scrap metal plates,” said Double Trouble, in the voice of the Horde officer they’d masqueraded as on Tobis Tertius.  “I’d like to know what else it could be.  We probably only survived because they didn’t bother following the smoke.”

Actually, in the real world, what had happened was that they’d used one of Bow’s arrows to disrupt the systems of a Horde patrol skimmer, then stolen the armour from the soldiers within and reprogrammed the vehicle to autopilot its way to a random settlement and then refuse to move.  But the lie was keeping them safe.

“I’ll double the patrols,” said the officer.  “Get more bodies on the walls, too.  You lot get inside and warm up; you can take your places on the fortifications later.”

“So there are gonna be more troops around,” said Catra snidely, as the officer headed off.  “That sounds really helpful.”

“Yes, darling, but they’ll be looking out, away from us.”  Double Trouble’s current face couldn’t manage their razor-sharp grin, but it was sort of implied by their tone of voice.  “People aren’t good at dealing with multiple threats.  You give them one on the outside to look out for, you can be the one inside and nobody will notice.”

The door slid open, and Adora reached into her pack.  Bow had insisted that she take one of his grapnel arrows with a ludicrous amount of rope, just in case.  She reached out for the ice, thought better of it, and held it to the doorframe instead; the ice had been through a lot lately, and if it couldn’t hold their combined weight, things could end badly.  The gravity clamps engaged with a hum, and the rope started to unspool, dangling into the crystalline confines of the ruin.

“I’ll go first, in case there’s danger,” she said.  “Frosta, Entrapta, you follow me down.”  Without waiting for a reply, she pulled on the gloves Bow had issued both her and Frosta with, grabbed the rope, and began to slide into the darkness.

The floor was canted alarmingly, and the First One habit of building large chambers was going to be a problem.  She took a deep breath and called, “Light Hope?  Can you access anything here?”

Almost, said the voice in Adora’s head.  There is a console at the tip of the spire that should bring the systems fully online.

Adora muttered something extremely rude under her breath.  “Frosta?  We need to get up to the point.”

“Of course we do,” said Frosta, her voice imbued with the weariness of someone much older.  “Still think I should have stayed on the ship?”

“All right, all right, we need you for this,” Adora said, raising her hands in a gesture of surrender.

“And don’t you forget it.”

Blue-tinted light blazed as Frosta channelled the power of the Fractal Flake.

Dragstor was starting to feel a little more at home as the triplets escorted him to a bunk.  Sure, the planet was too cold; sure, it was a skimmer instead of a spaceship; sure, Ivendra had refused to give his eye back.  But he was surrounded by the kind of people he usually worked with, and that made all the difference.

“So,” he opened, “how’d you get into the business?”

The one with the red patch – Arhim, right – glared at him and said, “‘The business?’” in a tone like he had found a dead rodent in his cup.

“Yeah, you know.”  Dragstor shrugged.  “You’re a raider, unless I miss my guess; I’m usually a smuggler.  You know.  The business.”

“There was a time we were soldiers,” grumbled Arhex from vis position by the door, and Aburhi shot ver a look.  Dragstor got the sense that this was probably a fresh chapter in an old argument, probably one that, sticking with the book metaphor, was doubtless in its third volume by now.

“Ignore them,” said Arhim sternly.  “They’re going to be fighting over this until we die, the way this is going.”  His expression relaxed, just a little.  “Come on, I’ll show you where the mess hall is.”

The last security guard collapsed in a heap, and Glimmer flapped a hand about, wincing slightly.

“You don’t need to hit them that hard,” said Catra.  “It’s a stun prod, not an iron bar.  The impact isn’t what’s doing it.”

“Yeah, but I like to be thorough.”

With a roll of his eyes, Bow pried open the circuit box and looked over the wires inside.  “I’m not that familiar with Horde refineries…”

“Why not?” said Catra sourly.

“Because they’re one of the few things we haven’t blown up yet, darling,” Double Trouble told her.

“But,” continued Bow, aware that he was starting to sound just a little bit nettled, “I’m pretty sure that with a little bit of work…”  He began pulling wires out of connections and slotting them into new ones, moving as quickly as possible so the system wouldn’t be too obviously disrupted.  “I can prompt it to dump extra power into the heating coils while cutting power to the restrictors, redistributors and fire suppressors.  Basically, it’ll dump a lot of randrite oil in its most volatile state into a heating chamber that is going to be too hot to hold it safely within half an hour.  And, as a bonus, the chamber is reasonably isolated, so it’ll trash the system in ways that will take ages to repair but not really endanger any lives unless someone is in exactly the wrong place.”

“Is that a bonus?”  Everyone turned to look at Catra.  “What?”

“These guys could have been your co-workers a few weeks ago,” pointed out Bow.

“Yeah, but I didn’t like most of my co-workers.”

At the top of the spire was a control room, leaning over at a remarkably sharp angle.

“Isn’t it amazing?” said Entrapta.  Her drone was clinging to the wall – specifically, the one that was originally intended to be a floor.  “Most other structures wouldn’t be built to handle this kind of tension – especially not for a thousand years!  The First Ones built to last!”

Frosta eyed their jarringly canted surroundings sceptically and said, “So what are we actually doing here?”

Adora’s initial response was a grunt as she pulled herself up onto the next chunk of ice.  The central control panel was oriented as unhelpfully as possible, and getting around to it was taking some effort.  “There’s this big…cosmic alignment thing, called the Heart of Etheria.  It…does magic to make things better.”  She fried for a moment in Frosta’s stare.  “As in, fewer cosmic storms and solar flares.”

“Oh.”  Frosta seemed to have accepted this as she added, “And this is tied to…what I can do?  The ice stuff?”

“Yeah.  There are several runestones on the grid; as it is, we have two out of five up and running – yours, and Perfuma’s.”

“If you want to get technical,” added Entrapta, who always did, “the system has a lot of minor runestones built into it as power sources, but the major elemental cores – the Heart-Blossom, Fractal Flake, Pearl, Moonstone and Black Garnet – are required to bring the whole thing fully online.  At that moment, the power flowing through it would be incredible!”

Adora finally reached the important side of the console.  There was a slot that seemed almost tailor-made for her sword, so she drew the weapon and plunged it into the slot.

The structure flared to life, circuits shimmering like rivers of trapped stars within the crystalline walls.  Idly, Adora noticed that ice wasn’t a great comparison, for all that she’d made it in her head a lot of times in past; the crystals Frosta had been making had a blue tint, while the First One walls were almost colourless.

Then a shape appeared, standing right next to the console Adora was using.

It started out as a loose outline – the pale ghost from Maragraf – but quickly cohered into a clearer image: a dark-skinned woman with a long, braided brown ponytail, clad in a blue and white jumpsuit that somehow read immediately to Adora as some kind of military uniform.

“-of Etheria is nearly online,” she said.  “We’ve installed the Pearl and Garnet cores, and the network is powering up.  The grid should be online as soon as we finish the objective on Brightmoon.”  She paused for a moment.  “I must admit, there is…discontent in the squad.  Some of the installation sites may not have been well-chosen.  Hope, when I get back to the ship, I may need to draft a message to the commander.  Mara out.”  She reached out for the Sword, and Adora instinctively reached out to stop her –

The ghost’s hand passed right through Adora’s, seized the hilt of the Sword, and pulled.  A ghost echo of the Sword followed her hand for a second, and then the ghost shattered into motes of dimming light.

There was a momentary pause as the figure faded, and then Frosta said, “Well, that was nonsense.”

Adora’s brow furrowed.  “No, it made sense.  They must have been building-”

“No, I mean it was nonsense.  I’ve heard most of the major galactic languages and that wasn’t like any of them.”  She gave Adora a strange look.  “Are you saying you understood that?”

“Yeah?  It seemed pretty straightforward?”

Entrapta’s drone actually jumped for joy.  “You must have some kind of Venhlan translator!  Hmm.  You probably couldn’t encode a language into DNA, so it might be the sword?”

“That is correct.”

Frosta almost levitated with shock as the enormous figure of Light Hope popped into existence behind them, fractured code writhing within the synthesised scar on her avatar.  She was standing on the actual floor of the room, meaning that she wasn’t so much looming over them as looming past them at a jarring angle.

“The Sword of Protection is equipped with an automated translator.”  Somehow, Light Hope looked a little embarrassed.  “It had originally seemed a needless addition to its function, but without a trained First One officer to wield it, it appears to be more useful than the assessment had indicated.”

“Trained First One…Is that who she was?”  Adora gestured to where the woman had stood.  “A First One officer?”

“Correct.  To be specific, she was your…predecessor, as She-Ra.”  It may have been Adora’s imagination, but she thought a wistful note crept into the AI’s voice as she said, “Her name was Mara.”

“Mara…”  Adora’s thoughts were cut off as a skittering sound echoed through the room.  “What was that?”
Light Hope tilted her head, like she was listening to a sound Adora couldn’t hear.  “Apologies.  Reactivating the system appears to have reengaged the security systems.  I am not able to deactivate them.”

“Of course.”  Adora reached out and took the hilt of the Sword.  “Did you find what we needed?”

“Data retrieval confirmed.  Your next objective is the Pearl, located in…”  Adora could almost hear the wheels turning in Light Hope’s head.  “Nelumbos.”

“I’ll let Glimmer know soon.”  Adora pulled the Sword out, and the shape of Light Hope died – although some lights continued to glitter in the crystal, and the sound of mechanical legs did not fade.

“I’m not saying you don’t have a patrol,” said the guard patiently.  “I’m just saying that with raider activity increasing, I need to make sure everyone is cleared and assigned to vitally important missions.  Commander ordered it earlier today, you must’ve missed it.”

Hoist by our own petard, Bow thought-

There was an explosion from behind them, and a plume of green fire was reflected in the guard’s armour and visor.  “What the shit-”

The stun prod crashed down on his head.

Glimmer nodded approvingly.  “You were right about hitting them, Catra.  That stung a lot less.”

“See?  Maybe I should be running the ship, not you.”  Catra’s expression turned calculating.  “Maybe…”

Double Trouble coughed theatrically and gestured to the vehicle.

“We should probably take the long way around,” said Glimmer.  “We don’t want them to follow us back to the Protector.”

A massive spike of ice shot out of the ground, pinning the buglike First One machine against the wall.  As it scratched at its prison, fragments of freshly shaved ice falling like snow, Adora drove the Sword of Protection through its head.  The glowing lights in its eyes died, and Adora withdrew the weapon, readying it as she turned to face the rest of the swarm.

“Don’t you have a super thing you can do?” demanded Frosta,

“Bow suggested that I should take care with it, not use it too often in case it’s dangerous.”

“Do you always do what Bow says?”

“Yeah, usually!  Him or Glimmer!”

Frosta gave an irritated grunt and summoned a giant spike.

As she hurled it through the air, the second wave of robots began to fire.  A stray shot hit Entrapta’s drone, reducing it to scrap metal.

Adora bit back a curse and held her sword aloft.

“FOR THE HONOUR OF GRAYSKULL!”

As she dived towards Frosta, trying to put her now-armoured frame between the child and the machines, her sword blazed with light and turned into a shield.

“Now that’s more like it,” said Frosta, and conjured another spike.

“Exit’s not far.  We should probably head for it; I don’t think these things would be able to get up your stairs.”

“Could you put it down over here, Scorpia?” asked Perfuma, and the big woman nodded and lowered the sack of fertiliser.

“Whew!  You, uh, you sure need a lot of this stuff, huh?”

“The biobay needs to supply oxygen to the entire ship, which means it needs a lot of plants.”

Well, Perfuma would know – and, well, Scorpia was no expert, but this sure did look like a lot of plants.  Unlike the limited-life algae the Horde used to provide oxygen to its ships, which had been specifically engineered to sit in a tank and live for a few months, the biobay put her in mind of jungle survival training.  The tray of bright, sunny flowers did add some colour to it, at least.

“Say, Perfuma, I’ve been kind of meaning to ask you something.”  For some reason, she thought Perfuma looked really hopeful for a second.  “Why did you become a rebel?  I get why some of the others did, but this is – well, it’s what Horde Plumerians do.”

Perfuma was silent for a few moments.  Then, she said, “Back on Plumeria Prime, I had a friend named Habranthus.”

“Uh.  Congratulations?”

“He was never comfortable in the gardens.  It wasn’t what he wanted to do, and it wasn’t what he was gifted at.  He wanted to build.  He would get his daily light sitting in the sun, reading engineering journals.”

“What happened to him?”

“He became an engineer at the Dryl shipyards.  I got a message from him a few days before the Horde took me hostage.  He’s living his dreams, and he and his Anthophian boyfriend are talking about marriage.”  She sighed.  “The Horde wouldn’t let him be with the one he loves, or pursue his life’s work.  It doesn’t see people as people; just as tools.”

“Oh.  Huh.  That makes sense, I guess.”

“Tell me something, Scorpia.  If you hadn’t been chosen to fight…what would you do?”

“Huh?”  Scorpia couldn’t help but blink as she processed this.  Then, she said, “Every scorpioni is a fighter in the Horde.”

“I know.”  Perfuma rested a hand on Scorpia’s claw.  “But if you hadn’t been raised in the Horde…what would you have wanted to do?”

“I…don’t know.”

The Plumerian smiled gently.  “I think you may want to put some thought into it.  After all, you’re free now.  You don’t have to be just ‘a scorpioni’.  You can be Scorpia, instead.”

The barrel of the gun that met Adora at the top of the crevasse really was very intimidatingly large.  It was mounted on what looked vaguely like a large military skimmer, closer to a warship than a smaller vehicle, one covered in improvised armour made from scrap metal; Adora didn’t get a good look at many of the details, though – the gun was monopolising her attention.

“Attention, fugitive,” came a reedy, curiously familiar voice, distorted by some kind of loudspeaker.  “Surrender at once.”

Piss.

Adora’s hand moved for the Sword, but the sound of Frosta muttering words she probably wasn’t supposed to know stilled her motion.  If she tried to pick a fight now, Frosta could very easily get caught in the crossfire.

She gritted her teeth and raised her hands.  “All right.  We surrender.”

“Adora!”

“I’m not going to put you at risk, Frosta.  There are too many of them to fight.”

Dragstor was mentally counting his share of the bounty – it was significantly less than he would have liked – when the distinct sounds of a hushed argument broke into his reverie.  He’d spent enough time around the triplets over the past few hours that he was starting to be able to tell them apart from their voices.

“Look, I just don’t like this,” said the first speaker, who he was pretty sure was Arhex.  Ve sounded unusually vehement about this; vis usual humour was gone.  “The plundering was bad enough, but now we’re selling kids to the Horde?”

“We need money,” hissed Aburhi.  “If some offworlder kid gets it in the neck, look, I feel bad for her, but we enlisted in the first place so we wouldn’t starve; I’m not gonna go hungry again because you suddenly got cold feet.”  She chuckled.  “Heh.  Cold feet.”

“I’m kinda with Arhex on this one,” cut in Arhim.  “Doesn’t feel good selling out to the Horde now.  There’s gotta be some kind of line we won’t cross.”

“The thing I don’t want to cross is the Admiral!” snapped Aburhi, eyes blazing.  “You know what she does when people screw her!  I don’t want to lose you two like that!”

“So, what, we’re just going to spend the rest of our lives killing people for chump change?”

“Yes!”  Aburhi steadied herself with a visible effort.  “Yes, that’s what we’re going to do.  We’re going to sit down, shut up and deal with the situation we’ve got, because that’s how we stay alive!”

Dragstor gave his best attempt at a polite cough.  “Uh, what does the Admiral do to people who screw her?”

After a few moments of awkward silence, Arhex said, “She throws them into the water to freeze and drown simultaneously.”

I have got to start hanging around people who don’t do that, Dragstor thought to himself.

“You know,” said Catra sardonically, as the cages swung to and fro in the ice-cold wind, “you guys really aren’t living up to your end of the bargain when it comes to not getting captured.”

“Shut up, Catra,” groaned Glimmer.

“Look, all I’m saying is that I signed up because you guys were good at not getting caught, and now we’re getting caught.”

“Maybe,” Glimmer said acidly, “we were good at not getting caught, and this is on you.”

Catra’s eyes flashed as she snarled, “How could this be my fault?”

“Well, I don’t know, Catra.  You seem pretty convinced it’s my fault, I’m just trying to open you up to new possibilities-”

Bow buried his face in his hands.

“Guys, could you not?” said Adora, from one of the other cages.  “It’s not exactly helping us get out of here.”

“I think you should let them get on with it, darling.”  Double Trouble displayed their fangs in a reptilian grin.  “I find it best to let this stuff play out, rather than let it fester.”  The shapeshifter’s cage was wrapped in some sort of wire mesh; apparently, Double Trouble wasn’t the first Metamaran their captors had seen.

The bickering was drowned out by a mechanical grinding noise, and Bow swung around – at least as well as his restraints would allow – to see a long, metallic boom, apparently repurposed from a municipal tree trimmer or something of that ilk, reaching up towards his dangling cell.

Apparently, someone had decided that his cage was needed closer to the ground.

“You don’t look happy with this,” observed Bow, as the three aliens fiddled with the boom controls.  “You guys were planetary military once, right?  Can’t be easy working for the people who took over your home.”

“Soldiering was just a job,” the one with the blue patch growled.  “Now we have a new one.  It happens.”

“Was it really just a job to you?” said the one with the yellow patch.  “It didn’t seem that way when the Horde-”

“Trounced us and killed a bunch of our friends.”

“At which point we gave up and opted to just let the people who killed them do whatever they wanted-”

“Hey!”  This was from the one with the red patch.  “Not in front of the prisoner.”

“You sure?” said Bow.  “It seems that dealing with these fights is just what I do now, so you might as well keep going.  Clear the air.”

The one with the yellow patch looked at him.  “You doing okay, dude?”

Red-patch smacked yellow-patch gently over the head in a what-kind-of-question-was-that kind of way.

The scene was like something out of an adventure holofilm: the prisoners were in cages, dangling from the chain.  One of them – Bow, according to the files Dragstor had been given – was being suspended from the prow, jutting out over roiling, ice-cold water.

“I have conferred with the Horde,” said the admiral to the prisoners, a vicious grin visible through her fur.  “There’s a lot of money on the princess, the hairball and the blonde, but the rest of you, I’m willing to give a choice.  You can be impressed into Ivendra’s mighty fleet, or you can perish.”  The ice-cold liquid below them seethed as her eyes locked onto Bow.  “You first, archer: what’s it going to be?”

“I’ll never join you,” Bow told her, his voice steady.  “I’m not proud of everything I’ve done, but I won’t prey on innocents.”

Ivendra rolled her four eyes.  “Spare me the pomposity, prisoner.  Very well, then.  Into the drink you go-”

“No.”

Ivendra looked like she was on the verge of some sort of cardiac incident as she spun around to see Arhex levelling a pistol at her.  “What is the meaning of this, Arhex?  You dare defy Ivendra?”

“Someone has to.”  The pistol remained rock-steady in vis hand.  “We fought to protect our people, once – but now, what are we?  Just another roving gang of thugs.  How are we better than the Horde?”

“How dare you!” spat Ivendra.  “Aburhi, prove your loyalty to Ivendra!  Kill this traitor!”

Aburhi’s own pistol leaped into her hand, and she pointed it at Arhex.  “Put it down, Arhex.  This doesn’t need to end this way.”

“Yes, it does.”  Arhex’s voice was as unchanging as stone; there was barely a hint of emotion.  “We used to believe in something, sister.  Sure, we joined up for the money – but we stayed because when the Horde attacked, it was the best way to fight them.  You can’t tell me you’re happy blowing up people’s houses to steal from the ruins.”

“It’s what life is, Arhex.  We don’t get to choose what happens to us.”

“No.  But we do get to choose how we respond.”

Aburhi sighed.  “So naïve, sibling.  You always were soft.”

Then, before anyone could react, she pivoted on the spot and shot Ivendra in the head.

“Her stupid Admiral nonsense was getting on my nerves anyway,” said Aburhi, as the grey-furred corpse toppled to the deck, blood staining the metal plates.

“I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting that,” said Bow, rubbing his wrists.  After a few moments, feeling started to return to his fingers.

“Truth be told, neither was I.”  Aburhi shrugged.  “I’m still not sure why I did it.”

“It was that or shoot your sibling.”

 “Spoken like an only child,” said Aburhi with a smile.

“I have twelve brothers, actually.”

“There must be one or two of them you’d be willing to shoot.”  Aburhi looked over the water, a pensive expression on her face.  “I’m a little worried.  We haven’t exactly earned the friendship of the rebellion.”

“If you prove you’ve changed and want to start making up for the harm you’ve done, some of them may forgive you.  Just remember that they get to set the timeline for that, not you.”  A smile played over Bow’s features.  “Besides, think about it.  Which is going to draw more attention, both from potential allies and the Horde: rebels getting up to subdued mischief in the cities, or swashbuckling pirates preying on Horde shipping?  Sometimes all you need is a romantic image.”

“You’re suggesting that we serve as a distraction.”

“I imagine having their randrite oil shipments stolen and sold on the black market would prove very distracting to the Horde.”

Aburhi nodded.  “That does make a lot of sense.  Listen, I know you turned down Ivendra, but…would you stay?  Help us?”

“I can’t, I’m sorry.”  Bow gestured into the sky.  “I’ve already been away from home for too long.  Listen to…Arhax?”

“Arhex.”

“Sorry.  Ve seemed to have at least the basics down.”

“Naïvete is contagious, I guess.”  Aburhi chuckled, then offered a hand; after a few moments, Bow shook it.  “All right then, archer,” the pirate said.  “Good luck on your travels.”

“And on yours…Admiral.”

“Now that title is going into the drink with Ivendra.”  There was a splash from below; the self-appointed admiral’s burial at sea was apparently not going to be that formal an occasion.

“So what are you going to do now?” said Arhex, as Dragstor plugged his prosthetic eye back in.

The motors in Dragstor’s prostheses whined as he shrugged.  “I mean, I’m not getting my paycheque from the Horde, but I wasn’t going to be getting much of it if I did.  I could go back to smuggling, but the pay’s not much better and my boss is an asshole anyway.  I don’t know.”

“You could stay.”  Arhex’s cheeks were beginning to look a little bit magenta; after a few moments, Dragstor realised ve was blushing.  “I think you’d do quite well here.”

Dragstor thought about this.  The pay wasn’t going to be great, but it wasn’t anyway.  It’d be risky, but that was his job already.  And, hey, it might be nice to have someone actually like him for once.

He nodded.  “It’s worth a try.  Although…”

“Yes?”

“Is there a planet nearby with some nice, sunny beaches?”

“Nelumbos, you say?” said Glimmer, examining the Protector’s star map.  “It’s not too far off.  Entrapta, could you plot a course, please?”

“Just a second…The aetheric flows are really swift at the moment, so we can probably get there in two jumps.  We’d need to take on fuel partway along, though; that’d probably be on Coriala – no, Montaletto, that’s better.”

Adora smiled.  “Could the flows be so fast because of the Heart?”

“Maybe!” said Entrapta cheerfully.  “I’d need a lot more data to be certain.”

Glimmer nodded and said, “All right, lay in the course.  Hopefully there’s some way we can make some cash in Montaletto.  Adora, could you come with me, please?”

“What’s this about?”

“Remember I was going to start teaching you some swordplay when you were recovered?  You’re walking fine.  Time to start training.  Entrapta, could you-”  There was a clang, and a couple of drones scurried out of the tubework, carrying a bundle of fabric.  “Thank you.  It’s for you, Adora.”

Adora picked up the bundle and removed the fabric.  Inside was a near-perfect replica, both in weight and in dimensions, of the Sword at her back.

“It’s too blunt to do more damage than just from the impact, so it’s going to be perfect for training.”  Glimmer’s eyes twinkled.  “Shall we get started?”

Chapter Text

Glimmer’s hand closed on Adora’s, and the curves of their bodies brushed together.

“Okay,” said Glimmer, and Adora’s heart skipped a beat.  “Just take a deep breath, and…”

“And?”

“And lean back, like this.”

“This?”

“No, like this.”  Glimmer nodded.  “Okay, now…Thrust.”

Adora’s training sword plunged into the training dummy’s “heart”, and Glimmer nodded again.  “That’s good.  Remember, it’s not just a club; it has an edge for a reason.  Show me a few more strikes, and then we can start working on guards-”

The shipboard comms came to life with a discordant buzz of static, and then the distinctive voice of Double Trouble said, “Darlings, could you meet me in the galley?  I have a plan, but it’s going to require some preparation.”

Adora and Glimmer wore identical expressions of irritation as they gathered in the galley.  Most of the others were there, as well – and they, too, looked irritable.

“So!” began Double Trouble, teeth glinting in the Horde ship’s too-sterile light.  “I had Entrapta dig up some resources for me on Montaletto, and I maaaay have hit the jackpot when it comes to jobs.  Tell me, darlings…how would you like to make some money and get a win for the rebellion?”

Mermista raised a hand.  “Are we kidnapping the Horde governor and, like, selling them into slavery?”

“How would you like to make some money and get two wins for the rebellion?”

“No slave trading,” said Bow sternly.

“Fine.”  Mermista rolled her eyes.  “I guess they’re probably not worth much anyway.”

“Do you people rehearse these bits ahead of time or what?” said Catra sourly.

“If only they did, darling.  That might make my plan easier.”  For a few moments, Double Trouble looked almost demonic.  “Montaletto is in…let’s call it a transitional state.  It’s Horde-controlled, but the local nobles haven’t quite turned in their fancy outfits for Horde uniforms yet.  Currently, power is held by a fellow named Count Marzo, who is really a despot after my own heart, darlings.”

Black-green energy pulsed as Double Trouble took on what Adora assumed to be Marzo’s form – a human dressed mostly in red, with a black waistcoat hung with fine silver chains.  His greying black hair was adorned with an elegant silver tiara; his moustache and beard looked intricately maintained.

At Adora’s side, Glimmer detectably stiffened.  Adora reached out and gave her arm a gentle squeeze; as Glimmer relaxed, at least a little, Catra glared daggers at them for some reason.

Double Trouble buffed their fingers on the waistcoat and studied them.  “He insisted that he was simply reluctantly taking power to minimise harm and styling himself the Lord Protector; however, he’s a collaborationist to the core, with only a little more autonomy than any other random puppet ruler.  He betrayed his family to take over; he betrayed the people who taught him magic because they posed a threat to him.”

Scorpia’s eyes widened.  “The Horde is working with a sorcerer?”

“The Horde is about power, Scorpia,” Glimmer said, perhaps more irritably than Scorpia really deserved.  “It only claims to believe anything because it’s a convenient way to manipulate people.”

“What I like about him, though, darlings,” said Double Trouble, shifting back into their true form, “is that he considers himself a man of culture – a patron of the arts.  A fan of opera, music, sculpture…and theatre.”  That predatory grin gleamed in the light again.  “Tell me, darlings…how would you like to put on a play?”

“You think we could be actors?” said Adora.

“Well, not you, darling.  You have many sterling qualities, but…ironically enough, given your admittedly excellent taste in women, you’re simply too much of a straight-shooter to excel in this role.  These two, on the other hand…”

Double Trouble’s hand panned across the assembled rebels, nominating two of them in particular.

Glimmer and Catra.

“You want us to what?” said Glimmer and Catra simultaneously.

“I want you to be the stars you were born to be, darlings!  To knock the Horde dead on the stage, and not just on the battlefield!”

A few sentences ran into each other, and then Glimmer gestured as if to say that Catra should go first.

“Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, DT, but I kind of have a very high price on my head?  I don’t think getting up on stage in front of a huge audience is going to be a good idea.”

Double Trouble transformed again, this time shifting to wear an antiquated metal helmet and armour, and said, “Simplicity itself, darling.  We’ll make sure that you spend plenty of time hooded or wearing a helmet; it’s a pity to hide that heterochromia, but I suppose some sacrifices must be made.  You’ll need to emote extra hard to sell the part, of course, but I feel confident that’s within your skillset.”

“And what about me?” demanded Glimmer.  “I’m mixed-species!  One look at me and the Horde is going to shit bricks.”

“Actually, your Highness, this is an excellent chance for you to let your hair down – or your feathers, anyway.  Montaletto has a lot of arvensi – they look pretty similar to you, we should be able to pass you off as one.  Relax, darlings.  I’ve covered all the bases.  If you weren’t such compelling fits for the roles, I could fill one if necessary…but as it stands, I can monopolise the secondary roles and save us a lot of inconvenience.”

“I’m sure, like, drama club is compelling,” interjected Mermista, “but what was this about making money and screwing the Horde?  I don’t think we’re gonna put on a Quassa play that shakes anyone’s convictions.”

“Of course not, darling – especially since Quassa is so one-note.”  Adora had no idea what that meant, but she figured she’d find out later.  “No, we’ll be staging Tepratta’s masterpiece, The Tragical History of Argenta and Noktarakna – with Catra, of course, as Argenta, and her Highness as Noktarakna.”

“Not the point!”  Mermista made a sound like a groan and a sigh breaking Horde regulations together.  “Point A is we put on a play, point C is we ruin the Horde’s day and get away with a sack of cash.  What’s point B?”

“Simplicity itself, darling.  While Team Drama is striking them dead, another team breaks into Marzo’s chamber and robs him blind.  He doubtless has a ton of valuables – I mean, just look at his dress sense, darlings, each of his waistcoats probably costs enough to run this ship for a week – and a man who insists that everyone simply must call him the Lord Protector is going to be profoundly embarrassed if he can’t even protect his own wardrobe.”

Mermista had visibly perked up, even if she was trying not to show it.  “Could we, like, plant a bomb or something?  He’d probably be even less useful to the Horde if he was dead.”

“An excellent suggestion, darling-”

“No bombs either,” said Bow.

“You have too many scruples, darling.  The universe isn’t going to miss Marzo-”

Bow shook his head.  “I’m not worried about the universe missing him, I’m worried about our bomb missing him.  I don’t care what happens to Marzo, but there’s too much risk of it killing a servant.”

Glimmer’s expression turned calculating, and she said, “Don’t count a bomb out yet.”  Bow looked scandalised.  “Not for that, Bow.  We can do a lot without risking any lives.  If we make it look like a botched assassination attempt, rather than a smash-and-grab, they’ll look for the wrong people.  We might be able to get out while they’re still chasing people with motives to kill him; from the sound of it, there’s quite a queue.”

“That might put the rebels already on Montaletto at risk, though,” pointed out Perfuma.

“It’s only in the early stages of occupation; that’s usually the time when rebels have the most friends.”  Glimmer gave a decisive nod.  “Okay.  We’ll plant a small bomb in the wardrobe, make it look like we mis-set the timer.  Go for something with a lot of shockwave; we want to make a mess.”

“I can rig one up so it’ll make a lot of noise and have its lights flash a lot when it’s about to detonate,” said Entrapta, over the comms.  “That should scare people out, so they’re not going to be endangered by the blast.”

“Sounds good,” said Glimmer decisively.  “Let’s do it.”

As the rebels split up, Adora raced after Glimmer.  “Glim!  Wait up!”

“Adora!”  The smile that spread over Glimmer’s face felt like a jolt of energy through Adora’s system – but in, like, a good way.  “What’s up?”

“I, uh…”  Adora steeled herself.  “You seemed really upset when Double Trouble turned into Count Marzo.  Are you okay?”  A thought occurred.  “Did Marzo hurt you somehow?  Because if he did-”

“It’s not that.”  The smile had faded; Glimmer looked almost haunted.  “There was…I never really knew my father, but my mother made sure I never forgot his face.  Hang on, let me see…”  She traced out a magic circle in the air, and a picture took shape in the air – one showing three people.  One of them, a wide-eyed baby with ridiculously cute-looking grey fuzz around its neck, was obviously a very young Glimmer.  One of them was a Lunavian, presumably Glimmer’s mother; she looked a lot more like an owl than her daughter, and the feathery ruff around her neck was sleeker.  And the third was a human with tan skin, dark eyes and hair, and a carefully trimmed moustache and beard.  He didn’t look identical to Marzo – his skin was darker, his moustache was different, and he had a very different hairstyle – but the two could have been cousins, at least.

Glimmer nodded.  “When DT shifted, it was like seeing an evil version of my dad.  Imagine seeing an evil – what am I saying, the evil version of your mom was your mom.”

“I mean, meeting a good version of Shadow Weaver would be pretty jarring.  She’d loom over you, eyes burning behind her mask, and give you candy or something.”  Adora forced lightness into her tone; she didn’t want to think too much about growing up with Shadow Weaver.

Glimmer made the snorting sound of someone trying hard not to laugh.  “Who told you about the Night of Nine Shadows?”

Adora’s smile became a little less forced.  Something about Glimmer’s laugh…

“Okay,” said Catra sharply, as they gathered in the docking bay.  Double Trouble had divided them into two groups: the criminals and the actors.  “What’s this play about, anyway?”

Double Trouble spread their hands wide.  They were grinning ear to ear, a sight that Glimmer still found a little unnerving; it was like encountering a friendly shark.  “The story goes that long, long ago, there were two great warriors fighting under the banner of a despot, the so-called Beast-King.  One, Argenta, turned their back on the evil king and became a great champion of good, while Noktarakna remained an agent of tyranny.  They fought, but their hearts yearned for each other.”

“So what happened?”  Catra was trying to play it cool, but her tail was giving a lot away.

“Well,” cut in Entrapta, “according to the historical record, Noktarakna realised that the Beast-King was plotting her death and betrayed him to the other side.  It took her ages to be accepted as a firm ally, but eventually she and Argenta got together.”

Double Trouble looked a little bit peevish, and their own tail lashed like a whip for a second.  “The historical record doesn’t matter here, darling.  This is theatre; it’s about heightened emotion and drama, not dry fact.  And yes, there are adaptations of this story that end like that, but they’re far from the only ends to that story.  In some, Noktarakna ends up giving her life to save Argenta.  Sometimes, the Beast-King dies and leaves only them as the leaders, forced to continue fighting.  There’s even one where Noktarakna decides to change sides, gets forgiven in under a minute and then never has to deal with any of the consequences of her actions – but that one’s boring and weightless and any self-respecting dramatist only uses that one as a punching bag.”

“What happens in this version?” asked Glimmer.  “Tepratta isn’t really a household name in Brightmoon.”

“Yet, darling.  Yet.”  Double Trouble breathed in.  “In Tepratta’s version, the Beast-King forges a weapon that could shatter the world, with Noktarakna’s aid.  Argenta fights her way in to attempt to destroy it, but Noktarakna defeats her.  When the Beast-King orders Argenta’s death, Noktarakna turns on him, and together, they defeat him!  They head deeper into the fortress on a suicide mission to deactivate the weapon, and it’s assumed that all are slain as it wipes the Beast-King’s citadel off the map – but, in the final scene, a hooded, cloaked woman appears, and it’s left delightfully ambiguous in the script whether it’s Argenta or Noktarakna.”

“Some theatres actually have the actresses flip a coin every night to determine which of them will deliver the lines,” added Bow.  Glimmer gave him an odd look, and he shrugged.  “My dad Lance loves Tepratta.  I’ve seen Argenta and Noktarakna like three times.”

“That’s not a bad idea, darling.  I’ll have to remember that one.”  Double Trouble gestured to the criminals, consisting of Adora, Scorpia, Mask and Mermista.  “Your task, darlings, will be to flip Count Marzo’s chamber over and give it a good shake.  Mermista, darling, I’m going to be looking to you to do the appraisals; I suspect that most of your teammates will use a rubric built around ‘big and shiny’.”

“That’s, like, how value is calculated in Salineas, though,” said Mermista drily.

Double Trouble shot her a dirty look and turned to the actors.  “As for the rest of you, darlings, I am going to make you stars.”  They gestured to the group.  “Glimmer, as mentioned, is going to be Noktarakna, with Catra as Argenta.  I’m hoping that you two can channel your-” and here they winked at their audience “-obviously sizzling sexual tension into your performance-”

The howls of protest from Glimmer and Catra drowned out the rest of whatever Double Trouble had left to say.

Catra drew herself up to her full height, armour gleaming in the lights of the docking bay.  “As we have fought for lo, these many years, a thousand chances have I given thee.  But this is worse than I had ever feared; this latest sin hath sealed thy destiny.”

Glimmer scowled back and said, in a voice that sent a shiver down Adora’s spine, “And, once again, of destiny thou prate; thy folly and thy weakness dog thee still.  ‘Tis power that determines my own fate, and destiny means naught compared to will.”

The costume they’d put together for Noktarakna, Adora had to admit, had her a little bit flustered.  It was black, it was web-like, it hugged the curves of Glimmer’s body, and it had apparently been designed to conceal the fact that she wasn’t arvensi, but absolutely nothing else.  It was perhaps just as well that instead of watching the performance, Adora would be robbing a guy.

Glimmer continued, “Predestination’s worth, at most, a laugh; submission is your flaw I most despise.  If ‘tis not meet to seek out thine own path, in darkness, thou should join me-”

“Cease these lies!”  Somehow, Catra managed to make it sound natural.  “You offer me a chalice poison-stain’d, I know the venom well – ‘tis in thine kiss.  A sip would set death’s fire through my veins, my soul be forfeit for a moment’s bliss.  I will not sit and let your fiendish plot afflict the world with misery and strife…and by my oath, and honour’s iron knot…”  She brandished her sword and finished, “…although my heart it breaks, I’ll take thine life.”

“And then, dessert,” said Mermista from the hastily constructed seating, and through her helmet, Catra shot the Salinean a dirty look.  “What?”

“It is, perhaps, not the best thing for rehearsal for you to keep heckling, darling,” said Double Trouble.  “Were there no snack foods available for you to throw?”

“Think of it as, like, important training for coping with interruptions.  A full theatre isn’t gonna be silent, even if they like the play.”

The Metamaran’s eyes narrowed as they evaluated this.  Finally, they said, “Oh, very well.  But not too often, all right?”  Turning to the stage, they added, “As for you two, darlings, not bad, not bad at all.  Noktarakna needs to be juuuust a bit vampier, but we can fine-tune it once you’ve got your lines down.”

“En garde!” said Glimmer, and their blades smacked together.

Slowly, patiently, they circled around.  Adora kept her sword up, moving to counter Glimmer’s first blow: a spinning flourish of a cut, showy but deadly.  She parried, then followed up with a low sweep that Glimmer sidestepped.

Adora sidestepped Glimmer’s next thrust and spun around, practice sword carving through the air in a decent recreation of Glimmer’s flourish.  As Glimmer tried to evade, Adora hooked a foot around Glimmer’s ankle and pulled, flipping the princess to the ground.

She tapped the practice sword against Glimmer’s throat, then offered her a hand.

“Nice moves!”  Glimmer took Adora’s hand, and Adora pulled her to her feet.  “You got me, fair and square.  That means…”  The Princess of Brightmoon grinned.  “…that I get to ramp it up next time.”

“Can’t wait.”  Adora wiped the sweat off her forehead.  “I’m glad we could get a session in one last time before the job.”

“Yeah,” said Glimmer, making a face.  “I’ve never seen them so invested in a scam before.  Like having a classmate who’s a real overachiever.  Did you have one of those?”

“I, uh, think that was me, actually.”

Glimmer chuckled.  “That tracks.”

“But I wanna do something in the play!” whined the voice over the comms.  “I could be the greatest heroic actor of the age, I just know it!”

Double Trouble rolled their eyes.  “Unfortunately, darling, they don’t make most theatres large enough for a fighter to fit comfortably onstage.  Issues with access, you know.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Fair or not, darling, it is what it is.”

“Isn’t the whole point of this rebellion to make ‘what is’ not that anymore?  I mean, I haven’t been online that long, but I thought-”

Entrapta’s voice cut in and said, “I could make you a robot body, Swift Wind!  You could control it remotely, it’d let you take part in more missions, and you could act in these kind of plays and the like-”

Double Trouble made a noise of extreme frustration.

“…but,” continued Entrapta, as though she hadn’t noticed, “it would take a while to get it built and test it properly, and I’d need to run so many tests on the communications line to make sure it worked properly.  I’ll try and have it up and running by next time!”

“I guess that’s okay,” said Swift Wind reluctantly.

“Next time, then,” said Double Trouble, eyes narrowed.  “I’ll try and find something appropriately overplayed for you.”  They coughed and added, “Entrapta, darling, has our little scheme been proceeding well?”

“Yep!  Anyone checking up on us is going to be told that we’re a reasonably well-regarded troupe that’s making its way around.  We’ve even managed to repurpose a couple of fake IDs we picked up here and there.”

“Oh, splendid, darling.  I would so hate to have to put on this performance in court; the acoustics are usually awful.”  A thought occurred to the shapeshifter.  “How’s the other project going, incidentally?”

“Oh, really well – couple of false starts, but that’s okay.”

“Excellent.  So we should have a suitably flashy ‘weapon’ for the Beast-King to set off?”

“Yep!”  Entrapta thought for a moment.  “We’ve got four, actually, but a couple of them might be overkill unless the crowd has really bad eyesight.”  She paused again.  “And one of them has a non-zero chance of burning down the theatre.”

“Maybe save those for another job, darling.  We want to put on the best performance they’ve seen in their humdrum lives – not the last.”

“We would be honoured to put on a show for Count Marzo,” said Double Trouble.  They were wearing the face of a red-haired man with a moustache.  “The support of such a famous patron of the arts could be a real triumph for our troupe!”

“Just make sure you put on a good show, outsider.”  The man on the screen was wearing a uniform that was clearly inspired by the Horde armour, with a cape and a different helmet design – something drawing from an ancient knight, apparently just for the style of it.  “Count Marzo doesn’t appreciate his time being wasted.”

“We’ll give him a performance for the ages, darling, don’t worry.”

“All right.”  The helmeted man punched some commands into his console.  “I’ll try and get you cleared for one of Count Marzo’s reserved landing pads.  Much better access to the Royal Theatre.  Should be a few days.”

“We’ll use them well, command.”

“See that you do.  Montaletto out.”

As the channel died, Double Trouble breathed out and resumed their true form.  “There we go.  We’re in.”

“If ‘tis thine choice to thusly now depart, then go, and pride thyself on being free.  But know this, seal it deep within thy heart – thy path must surely lead away from mlaaarg.”

Adora had not, at that stage, seen someone tread in a puddle of water while wearing socks made from natural fabrics, so she had nothing to compare Glimmer’s expression to.

“Your highness, what the hell was that?” demanded Double Trouble, vibrating slightly.

“I haven’t acted in a play since grade school!” Glimmer shot back.  “Excuse me if I occasionally mess up!”

“Oh, very well, darlings.  Take five.”  The Metamaran shook their head.  “We need to get this stuff right on the night, or we could all be in serious trouble.”

As Glimmer drained a bottle of water in one gulp, Adora walked up to her and said, “I know things are coming along pretty well, but…good luck.”

“You’re not supposed to say that, Adora.  Old Brightmoon superstition.”  Glimmer’s eyes twinkled as she continued, “You’re supposed to say, ‘Break a leg.’”

“But I don’t want you to break a-” Adora said, nearly in tears.

“Adora!”  Glimmer held a single finger to Adora’s lips.  “It’s just a figure of speech!  I don’t know why we use it either, it’s just the done thing.”

Adora began to breathe slightly easier.  “Okay.  Okay.  Sorry.”

“It’s all right, Adora.  It’s all right.”

Glimmer pulled Adora close, and for a few brief moments, the rest of the world seemed far away-

“Can we get on with the rehearsal?” snapped Catra, and Adora couldn’t help but scowl as the moment was lost.

“Yeah, we probably should.”  Glimmer gave Adora one last squeeze.  “Okay, Act 1, Scene 3, from the top!”

“So I figured out some names for the groups,” said Mermista.  “Everyone on the stage is gonna be Team Break a Leg.  We’re gonna be Team Break and Enter.”

“Be creative on your own time, darling.”  Double Trouble had been getting increasingly waspish over the past few days.  “We’ll need you four on the shuttle soon; it’s only a few minutes until they have a clear sensor read.”

“They’re right,” said Adora decisively.  “Everyone – uh, Team Break and Enter, get on board.  It’s going to be a tight fit, so take care.”  As the others piled on board, she turned to the others.  “Break a leg out there, Glimmer.”

“Break an enter out there,” said Glimmer with a wink.

Stifling a chuckle, Adora turned to the other representative of Team Break a Leg.  “And you too, Catra – break a leg.”

“Break a leg, Adora,” said Catra, in a way that didn’t sound like a figure of speech at all.

Nodding awkwardly, Adora boarded the rather packed shuttle and managed to slot herself into the pilot’s seat.  Cramming four people, including the titanic frame of Scorpia, into the tiny shuttle was an ordeal, especially with Mask slotted off to one side; everyone was giving him just a little bit of extra space.

The theatre was extravagant, to say the least – the stage was surrounded by baroque ornamentation, picked out in gold leaf.  The largest, most ornate section, looming over the audience like a bird of prey, was clearly the royal box.

“Hey.”  One of the guards, in her knockoff Horde armour, turned to look at Glimmer as she pointed up.  “Why is the royal box so fortified?”

“Oh, that’s right.  You only just got here.”  The guard shook her head.  “Someone smuggled a gun onstage and tried to shoot Count Marzo.”

“That’s a shame,” said Glimmer.  That it didn’t work, she added in her head, but there was no way she was going to say it out loud.

“Yeah, missed him by inches.  Anyway, you’re gonna have plenty of security!  No need to worry about rebels while you perform.”

“I’m sure we’ll be perfectly safe with brave soldiers like you watching over us,” said Glimmer, in a tone that was just flirtatious enough to be plausibly deniable.

It was only her familiarity with Double Trouble that told her that the shapeshifter was suppressing a laugh.

The spire stood over the city like a knife driven into a pirate’s treasure map in one of Bow’s holofilms, its elaborate architecture failing to conceal the defence batteries built into its upper reaches.

Mermista gestured to it and said, “We can’t go too high, ‘cause there are turrets, but we can’t go too low, ‘cause that’s where the security patrols look like they concentrate.”  She shrugged, at least as much as was possible with four people pressed into a shuttle not designed for that.  “We need some way to, like, get in above the checkpoints at the base, but without going high enough to draw suspicion.”

Adora thought for a moment.  “It looks like there’s a skimmer hangar part of the way up.  We hijack a Horde vehicle, make our way in like that.  Fake a maintenance issue, perhaps.”

“That sounds like it…could work, I guess.”  Mermista gave a peremptory nod.  “Let’s do it.”

“Taking us in,” said Adora, and veered toward the civilian spaceport.

“About time.  It’s kinda cramped in here.”

“Sorry!” said Scorpia.

Mermista looked a little bit awkward at that.  “Not your fault, Horde girl.  We just really gotta get a bigger shuttle.”

Bow strode onto the stage, dressed in a long white robe and looking slightly uncomfortable.  He’d been nominated to be both the chorus and the Beast-King.  He cleared his throat and began.

“The Beast-King’s armies throng, their weapons drawn, as heroes noble vie to end the threat.  A champion is sought, a leader born, and such a soul indeed exists – and yet, the darkness now must soon eclipse the light, for bold Argenta’s cause is not our own.  In service to the Beast-King she doth fight; within his citadel, she makes her home.  But destiny is destiny, and so, our hero’s fate cannot be long denied.  Argenta soon will leave the world she knows, and so begins the tale of how she died.”

“Well delivered, darling,” whispered Double Trouble as he headed backstage.  “Send Catra and her Highness out; we need to get on with this.”

Adora cleared her throat and said, pitching her voice down to match the Horde officer she’d knocked unconscious, “Uh, Control, this is patrol 413; false alarm, just some kids setting off fireworks.”  Actually, they’d been setting off the fireworks – a couple of Entrapta’s rejected designs for the play – but no sense burdening Control with inconvenient facts.  “Engines are playing up, though – looks like they’ll hold together until we get back to the hangar, but not much longer.”

“Understood, patrol 413.  Come back in for a replacement skimmer and get back out on patrol.”

“Acknowledged, Control.”  Adora killed the channel.  “Well, we’re in.  Everyone ready for when we arrive?”

“Uh…yeah.”  Scorpia managed to look awkward even through the Horde helmet she was wearing; luckily, one of the soldiers they’d knocked unconscious had been enormous.

“We’ll be avoiding killing if we can, don’t worry.”  Adora gave a tight smile under her own armour.  “I don’t like it any more than you do, remember?”

“Uh, when did we agree to this?”  Mermista honestly sounded a little offended as she added, “Look, I know you guys have, like, a beefy ex-horde lesbian support group, but some of us aren’t, you know, invested in the whole no-killing thing?”

“You didn’t kill anyone when Crita took over the ship,” said Adora.

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t have hesitated if I had to.”  There was a legitimate edge entering into Mermista’s voice, over and above her usual snark.  “I’ve got people I wanna get back to, Adora.  I’m not gonna let them down because you got squeamish.”

“Obviously the mission comes first, Mermista!”  Adora controlled herself with visible effort.  “I don’t want to kill people the Horde enslaved…but I’m not going to risk our lives for it.”

Mermista held her gaze for a few seconds, and then she nodded.  “All right.  I’m gonna, like, hold you to that, though.”

“I’d expect you to.” She turned to Mask.  “You’ve been quiet.”

“Usually quiet.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that.”

Mask nodded.  He wasn’t wearing a Horde uniform; there hadn’t been one to fit him in the patrol they’d ambushed.  He’d built an illusion around himself instead, and it was honestly a little more convincing than Scorpia’s armour.  “Also didn’t want to weigh in.  Needed to be sorted out between you.  Not my business.”

“Kind of is your business, dude,” threw in Mermista.  “You’re on the ship too.”

“Not the way you are.”

“Uh, we’re nearly there?”  Scorpia pointed a claw at the approaching spire.  “We should probably, uh…”

Adora nodded.  “Right.  Everyone, let me and Scorpia do the talking; we know the language.”

Double Trouble smirked as the duelling scene began.  This was usually a show-stopper, and rehearsals had gone well.

“…although my heart it breaks, I’ll take thine life,” hissed Catra, and then the practice blades came out.  She was using Glimmer’s own sword, while Glimmer had the dummy Sword of Protection.

The stage-fighting was fairly good, given the deadline it had been assembled to and the abbreviated instructions in the script; Tepratta tended to limit stage directions to “they fight.”  As it was, most productions went for the kind of elaborate play-fighting that ended with one of them flashily disarmed, as this indeed did.

“My life, you claim, and yet ‘tis not my blade, that lieth on the ground discarded here.”  Double Trouble had to admit that Glimmer had put a lot of effort into increasing the vamp quotient of her portrayal.  “To slay you now, I should not thus evade – not now you are the Beast-King’s only fear.  ‘Tis not the play that matters, but the game; I’ll take the point, and chase you down but yet.  I’ll let you live, to dally thus again; I’ll leave you now, with nought but your regrets.”

“Why spare me, Noktarakna?  So remote the chance I could survive if now you struck.  Just do it now; thy blade is at my throat!  Thou bested me, by skill – not just by luck.”

“Why, dear Argenta, should I cast that stone, my victory would never be complete.”  Glimmer put on her flirtiest smirk.  “My goal is not your head upon my throne; I do not seek your death, but your defeat.”

With that, she spun and made for stage left in a strut that looked like she’d been practicing it for Adora.

The weapon glinted in the light of the security screen.

“You can’t, like, shoot us all,” said Mermista.  “It’ll be easier if you just surrender.”

“No surrender,” barked the soldier, her voice a rough contralto.  “Even if you kill me, the Horde survives.”

In the privacy of her own head, Adora yelled at her hands to move.  The soldier was within easy sword range.  She could take the chance and strike.

But would the soldier survive it?

Just do it! she ordered herself.  You need to save your friends!

There was a frozen moment of absolute stillness, and then a halo of blue energy surrounded the Horde soldier, flickering slightly.

“I’m gonna…”  The Horde soldier sounded strange – like she’d suddenly gone three days without sleep, or had drained an entire bottle from Double Trouble’s not-so-secret still.  “I’m gonna kick your asses…just gonna…have a nap first.”

She was asleep before she hit the ground.

Adora looked at Mask, who shrugged.  “Saved time.”

“Right.”  Adora scanned the room.  “Time to pull the plug on security.”

She felt Mermista’s eyes digging into her back as she grabbed the giant cable leading to the main security console and ripped it free.

On stage, Perfuma and Catra were playing out the sequence where Argenta realises she’s caught feelings for Noktarakna.  It was generally not the heart of the play – that generally went to Noktarakna turning on the Beast-King for Argenta’s sake – but it was solid setup.

“Double Trouble.  We’ve got a problem.”

“I know, darling,” replied the shapeshifter, without even looking at Glimmer.  “Perfuma isn’t suited for this role, but I had to do what I could with what I had.”

“This is important, DT.  I did a quick check for magic.”  Glimmer took a deep breath.  “I got a flare of energy from the audience.  Multiple spells running at once.”

“Probably Marzo’s protective spells-”

“That’s just it: these weren’t abjurations.  Some of them are definitely divination magic, and I don’t know much about the discipline, but I think the rest were illusion spells”

The coin dropped, and Double Trouble said, “You think that’s a fake Marzo.”

“I think he’s using an illusion to watch the play without putting himself in danger, yeah.”

“Which would mean he’s probably still…in…his…chambers…”  Double Trouble sounded like they had just discovered something unpleasant living in their boot, after putting it on.

“Where our friends are going,” added Glimmer, who had an expression to match the shapeshifter’s tone.

Double Trouble pinched the bridge of their nose.

Mermista pushed open the door and waved the scanner through it.  “Sensors are dead.  Awesome.”

Marzo’s chambers were spacious, a far cry from the repurposed prison cells on the Protector.  Adora felt a little uncomfortable at the sight of the luxurious surroundings: tapestries and artworks adorning the walls, golden patterns and inlaid gemstones in the doors, valuable-looking pottery on plinths.  It was like Marzo had wandered into an art gallery and simply said I’ll take it.

Adora reached into her pack and extracted a couple of storage bags.  Some part of her half-expected a currency symbol on the side.  “Okay, Mermista, let’s get started-”

“I see I have some unexpected guests.”

Scorpia froze, Mermista took a backward step and Adora’s hand headed for her blade.  Only Mask seemed tranquil.

Dark purple energy shimmered into a spell pattern, and Count Marzo stepped out of thin air in the middle of the group, his expression thunderous.

At that moment, Adora’s comms buzzed, and Glimmer yelled into her ear, “Marzo’s only pretending to be in the theatre!  Get out!”

Would’ve liked to be warned thirty seconds ago, thought Adora as she drew her sword.

“Okay, your highness.  Okay.  We can salvage this.”  Double Trouble nictitated at Glimmer, and they added, “How many of Team Break and Enter do we need, really-”

Glimmer shot Double Trouble a look that could have reduced them to a shadow burned into the backstage boards, and the shapeshifter’s mouth snapped shut.  Then the princess’s fist lashed out, hitting part of the scenery with an echoing thump.  “If I could just get there somehow, I could help them!”

“How would you do that, darling?  Teleport?”

Bow stuck his head around a chunk of scenery, the Beast-King’s vaguely dragon-like helmet wobbling slightly, and hissed, “What’s going on?”

“Marzo’s fake, so her girlfriend’s in trouble.”  Glimmer shot Double Trouble another look, and they shrugged.  “I’m not wrong, darling.”

“You’re not helping either.”

“Okay!”  Bow held up his hands.  “Is there anything we can do from here?  I know there’s protective glass in front of the royal box, so we can’t exactly try to assassinate Marzo – and we wouldn’t be able to get out of here in time if we did.”

Glimmer thought for a moment.  “His spells…I can probably disrupt them if I try.  I don’t know how to weave these spells, but I don’t have to – I just need to screw with them, set up some resonances that will throw off Marzo’s game.”

“Can you do it in under a minute, darling?  You’re needed on stage.  It’s the big love scene, where Noktarakna realises the error of her ways and fights to defend Argenta.  We can’t very well call it off.”

Bow said, “You do it.”

“What-”

“Can you do magic, Double Trouble?”

“No?”

“Wrong.”  Bow pointed out to the stage.  “That’s your magic.  Misdirection.  Deceit.  Theatre.  You know the part – both parts, even, since you’ll also be acting as Glimmer.  Go out there and make people think Glimmer is acting her heart out.”

After a few seconds, Double Trouble’s bared teeth gleamed like a razorblade.  “Oh, well done, Bow, darling.  Why didn’t I think of that one?”  The light shifted, and a second Glimmer stood in front of the first, outfit just as skimpy, the vicious grin the only clue that this wasn’t the original.  “Thank the stars all my other parts are already out of the narrative.”

“Break a leg, Double Trouble.  And Glimmer…break a spell.”

“Aye-aye, Captain Bow,” said Glimmer, and pink and purple light began to shimmer around her hands.

Double-Trouble-as-Glimmer bounded onto the stage with the air of someone taking steps three at a time, suppressing a grin.  This was going to be amazing.

Catra eyed them suspiciously from under her hood, then sniffed.  At a tone midway between a whisper and a snarl, she demanded, “I know it’s you, DT, what are you doing out here?  Where’s Sparkles?”

“Needed to take care of something backstage, darling.  Just think of me as an understudy.”  They raised Glimmer’s voice to start with the actual scene and recited, “I know thou scent, Argenta; come thou now to brave the Citadel and face me yet?  Thou canst not beat me; I will bring thee down-”

“Thy petty crusade, thou must now forget!” snapped Catra, pulling her acting back on and drawing herself up to her full height.  “The Beast-King’s flame eternally will burn; his folly leave the world I love afire.  I’d hoped that now, at long last, thou wouldst learn, put this aside and spare the world entire.”

“Oft thou dost speak of duty, always thine; as though my bleak submission should be mete.”  One of Double Trouble’s old friends in the business had always hated that line specifically; the grammar was awful.  “But thou should know, the duty now is mine; a duty that doth call for thine defeat!  If ‘tis the truth that fire heeds his call, and his infernal weapon doth breach Hell, then thine defeat would surely save us all, for desperation drives this brimstone smell.”

“’Tis not my deeds that drives the Beast-King’s greed; ‘tis not my choice that drives him, but his own.  Lay down your arms; I’ll fight thee if I need – ‘tis time thou reaped as thou hast surely sown.”

Their prop blades clashed in a fight Double Trouble had spent long enough helping to choreograph that they could probably have done both sides at once with a little effort.  Now, if Bow remembered his cues, which he probably had, he’d be sneaking into the scenery, the better to rise dramatically into view when Argenta was defeated.

The blades flashed, parries and thrusts bouncing off each other, and eventually Double Trouble flicked the weapon out of Catra’s hand and held the blade to her throat.  “And so, again, the victory is mine; thou must remain the prey, and I the hound.  Now face the fate that ever must be thine; now thou must face the Beast-King-”

“Strike her down.”  Bow was putting as much bass into his voice as possible; he wasn’t showing up on tectonic sensors or anything, but he made a solid enough Beast-King.

Double Trouble backpedalled as best they could.  “’Tis you that she has troubled since her turn, and thus to end her life should fall on you.  I’ve bested her; ‘tis now her place to burn-”

“Thine ears are working, Noktarakna, true?  My order I have given, and again: strike truly with thine blade and end her life.  She stole from us her soul that day, and then she brought us nought but trouble, nought but strife.”

“If I should slay her now, with mine own blade, wilt thou, then, douse the weapon thou hast built?  Thou will not need the fire thou hath made-”

“Art thou afflicted, now, by creeping guilt?  Her actions set the fuse and forced my hand, but even now, her allies vex me still.  I’ll end them all, though it may cost the world – then nought will e’er defy my sacred will.”

Catra looked directly into Double Trouble’s eyes.  The armour she was wearing was, admittedly, a less than perfect element of this scene, but the exigencies of the situation called for it.

Double Trouble waited the exact right length of time for maximum drama, then spun to point their blade directly at the Beast-King.  “For so long I have stood there at your side, and led thy armies limitless of night.  I will not burn to sate hubristic pride, nor feed mad dreams of godhood and of might.  Take up thy sword, Argenta, for at last, we fight as one, as fate long since decreed!  A greater threat we face; forget the past, for now it is this unity we need.”

And so ensued another fight scene, this one finely calibrated so that when Catra and Double Trouble thrust their blades into the bulky armour that allowed Bow’s trim form to pass for a towering supervillain, it was believable that they’d be leaning on each other for support.  Double Trouble had exceeded themselves with this one, if they did say so themself; the two were so entangled with each other that they were almost wearing the same costume.  Someone in the cheap seats lifted the back of his hand to his head and fainted theatrically.

“When I first turned from darkness to the light, thou said that thou would strive to bring me pain,” panted Catra, overplaying her exhaustion just a little but oh well.  “Indeed, it followed thou as we didst fight, although thy actions didst bely thy claim.  Thou had no need to spare me, take my part; my life, thou could have taken, times a score.  Didst thou know I would offer thou my heart, and through our friendship, hungered soft for more?”

“Thou ne’er believed me when I spoke those words; thou knew me better than I knew myself.  I bested you so oft it seemed absurd, yet never brought myself to harm thy health.”  Double Trouble had actually heard theories about that line being originally ad-libbed, which would   explain a lot.  “My mercy, though, was left for thee alone; my joy, the pain of thine new dearest friends.  Thou must depart, and leave me to atone, or hell’s sick fire surely be thine end.  My path has led me through a mire black; my soul be stained by malice and by night.  I’ll douse the flame, but thou must now go back; my deeds are dark, but let this one be bright.”

“My duty doth compel me now to stand,” shot back Catra, “as grateful that I am that thee defects.  And though thine heart be open as mine hand…thy final wish I sadly must reject.  My destiny has brought me to this day, and to this battleground atop the rift; the Beast-King’s mechanism must we slay – your company, deceptive fate’s last gift.”

Behind the scenes, Glimmer completed her last spell circle, and sent a charge of magical energy bouncing between them.  In theory, and admittedly Glimmer didn’t know much magical theory, this should do a real number on the delicate web of enchantments and intentions linking Marzo to his simulacrum.

“Here goes nothing,” she said, and discharged the magic toward the royal box.

Marzo brought up his hands, and the room filled with a volley of magical darts.  Adora’s instincts came online instantly, and she hurled herself at Mermista, tackling the Salinean out of the way of the bolts.

Behind her, Scorpia attempted to interpose herself between Mask and the attack, only for blue light to shine, and the darts froze in midair, trapped in a spider’s web spun from magic instead of silk.

Mask made another gesture, and the darts exploded into motes of light.  “Won’t hurt them,” Mask said, another spell weaving itself into existence around his hands.  “Won’t let you.”

“You get no say in the matter!” spat Marzo, and a blast of dark, purple-tinted light shot out of his hands, spreading into individual rays.  Mask turned them aside with a gesture; the ornate vase they hit exploded in a hail of shrapnel.

A beam of concentrated blue force cut through the air as Mask went on the offensive; Marzo caught it and hurled it aside.  Mermista grunted in pain and smacked into the wall, plucked out of the air in the middle of her jump by the blast.

Then Marzo, his expression like a thundercloud, formed a new symbol.  Somehow, Adora knew this one was a different, and worse, kind of magic – the runes almost seemed to writhe before her eyes.

Then, before she could react, Marzo’s magic erupted around him, shrouding him in a flailing mess of tentacles.

“Dark magic!”  Mask sounded both angry and horrified.  “Careful!”

Adora’s blade gleamed as it cut through the air, keeping the seething mass of limbs away from the battered Mermista.  Mask, she noticed, was also fighting defensively, protecting Scorpia from the eldritch display with shimmering barriers of force.

She couldn’t keep this up forever.  The dark magic closed in, and her still-limited swordplay wouldn’t keep it away from them forever-

The roiling mass of dark tendrils suddenly froze, and a pained grunt escaped from Marzo’s lips.

“Adora!” shouted Mask as he leaped forward.  “Go!”  More blue light blazed, and the tendrils closest to Adora were cut short, as if a blade of pure magical energy had just trimmed them away, leaving an almost cartoonishly blunt end.

Adora’s mind was racing as she scooped up her sword and moved in.  She didn’t want to kill Horde soldiers, because they didn’t know better.  They’d been raised with the same beliefs she was, taught the same excuses she’d been told.  They hadn’t chosen this.

But Marzo had.  He wasn’t a Horde soldier, raised in an environment of constant, stifling propaganda; he was a collaborator, someone who’d betrayed his own not for moral reasons, but for power.

Did that mean he deserved to die?  Honestly, Adora didn’t know.  But he was hurting her friends, and it didn’t look like anything else was going to make him stop.

The dark power surged, and the tendrils lashed out again, resprouting.  She sidestepped, carving the edge of the Sword through the attack, and then lunged forward, flourishing the blade in the flashy but devastating flourish Glimmer had shown her.

Marzo stared at her, an expression of incredulity plastered over his face.  He looked down at the Sword protruding from his ribcage, tottered backwards a few steps –

He didn’t even get a chance to fall before the dark magic he’d been channelling turned inward.  His entire frame writhed with power for a few moments, and then, in the supernova of an inverted, dead-black star, he disappeared.

The Sword clattered to the ground, and Adora bent to pick it up.

Mermista pulled herself to her feet.  “Okay.  Now I believe you.”  She reached into her pack and withdrew Entrapta’s bomb.  “Guards will probably be here soon; just, like, grab shit and bag it while I arm this thing.”

As the flare of green light died away, Perfuma shuffled onstage, hastily draped in mourning clothes.  She placed a flower – they’d forgotten to include one, so she’d just made one herself – at a prop grave, which wobbled slightly.

“Alas, my friend, wouldst that I had you here, to celebrate the peace that you have won.  The Beast-King slain, his armies taught to fear…so rest, at least, your task at long last done.  I would that you had come back to us all, to see the world at peace and not at war…but destiny is cruel, as is her call, that drew you out with force of cosmic law.  I’ll live for thee, at least, and bear your truth; I’ll speak your countless praises all aloud.  I’ll serve your cause, and bring them hope, in sooth; I’ll build a world of which you would be proud.”

Double Trouble slid out from behind the grave, wearing a black hood.  Glimmer or Catra, which would mean more…

“Hold now, dear stranger,” began the shapeshifter, in a perfect imitation of Catra’s voice – if they did say so themself.  “I would speak to you, and bring you wisdom I had long denied.  A cause with value may be great, ‘tis true; but hear my words, and dare ye not defy.  The lies we tell ourselves will forge a cage, so speak the truth, and know that ye speak fair; the truth will free thee, yea, and free thine heart – ‘tis nought that’s sacred but the bonds we share.”

Grinning under the thick hood, Double Trouble turned and moved offstage.  Perfect.

Up in the royal box, one of the guards said, “Count Marzo?  Are you – Count?”  She waved a hand in front of the Count’s eyes, then tried to shake him – but her hand went right through the Count’s shoulder.  “What the shit?”

“Time to go, darlings,” said Double Trouble, starting to accelerate.

The newscaster, a dark-skinned human with a shock of red hair, shuffled their papers and said, “Count Marzo, Lord-Protector of Montaletto, vanished without trace tonight during a performance of Tepratta’s The Tragical History of Argenta and Noktarakna by a theatre company from offworld.  According to eyewitnesses, he was experiencing the play from the royal box, as is tradition, but it turned out that he either disappeared during the play, leaving only some kind of illusion – or was never there in the first place.  Strangely, his personal quarters were also bombed that night, apparently by a group of rebels who didn’t realise he wouldn’t be home.  We attempted to reach out to the theatre company that witnessed this momentous event, but they appeared to have made their exit – perhaps afraid that someone might blame them for Marzo’s disappearance.”

“Are we sure they didn’t just kidnap him?” said the co-anchor, a blue-feathered arvensi woman.  “That would be my first guess.”

“Not in the time they had available, Mira.  I wouldn’t want to try and carry someone as dangerous as Count Marzo out of a theatre, especially since I’d have to drill through the protective glass on the royal box!”  The human shuffled their papers again.  “Besides, Marzo has been seen since.”

“What?”

“Or should I say…Marzo’s ghost?”  The arvensi’s eyes bored holes in the human, and they clarified, “He’s been seen reappearing in the seat he was in that night, like he’s haunting the place.  Theatre management will not confirm or deny it, but it has to be said: there’s a certain cachet in being haunted by a previous patron of your theatre!”

Double Trouble flicked the power switch to the display screen and beamed to the assembled crew.  “Excellent, darlings.  This went amazingly.  Marzo’s out of the picture, so the Horde has to find a new minion; we got a decently large sack of his personal effects, which should fetch us good money on the black market; and we got to start a new theatre legend, which always brightens my day.”

“You say that like you’ve done it before,” observed Mermista.

“Only once, darling, and in my defence, I was younger then.”

“The ghost is probably my fault,” Glimmer said.  “I was trying to interfere with his magic by just dumping randomly aligned magical energy into it.  It might have severed the connection that would make his death shut down the illusion, or given it enough power to survive on its own.”

“Or maybe it’s really his ghost,” put in Bow.

“I mean, that would also kinda rock, not gonna lie.”

“Mermista!” said Scorpia, looking shocked.

“What? It would kinda rock.”

Double Trouble shifted their focus to Team Break and Enter.  “I’ve reached out to my contacts about the loot; we should be able to fence most of it, get at least enough to keep us flying for a while.  Pity you couldn’t recover the shuttle.”

“Had to be done,” Mermista told them.  “We had a tricky enough time fitting the four of us in; we weren’t gonna get a sack of loot to fit as well.  The one we stole on the way out is, like, way better.”

“That’s honestly fair, darling.  Still, a Horde shuttle could have come in handy…but oh well, sometimes sacrifices must be made.”

“Could just steal another one,” offered Mask.

Double Trouble grinned again.  “You keep up like that and I may even start to like you, darling.”

“I’m just glad you all got back safely,” said Glimmer.  “You looked after them well, right, Adora?”  She gave Adora a squeeze on the arm, and Catra’s expression went just a little bit wooden.

“Uh.”  Adora’s eyes darted to the ground before she said, “I didn’t do much, really.  I just hit him with the sharp end after you and Mask had already done most of the work.”

“You ‘hit him with the sharp end?’  Come on, Adora.  I’ve trained you better than that.”  Glimmer eyed her cynically, although her expression warmed as she thought.  “Maybe we should go do some more training.  We’re kind of finished here, after all; not much we can do until we reach Nelumbo.”

“Uh…yeah, okay, let’s go spar.”

Catra’s eyes bored holes in Adora’s back as she and Glimmer headed for Glimmer’s cabin.

Glimmer casually flipped the sword out of Adora’s hand, and it clattered to the ground.

“Oops,” said Adora.

Glimmer gave her a look, then sheathed her own blade.  “You’re not tired enough that you’d just instantly lose all your skill, Adora.  What’s wrong?”

“I killed Marzo.”

“Good.  He was a piece of shit anyway-”

“You don’t understand!”

Glimmer bowed her head and said, “You’re right.  I’m sorry.  Please, continue.”

“I’ve never killed anyone deliberately before.  People have died, but…I tried to avoid it.  And Shadow Weaver…well, she survived.  I’ve never just cut someone down before.”

“All that I hit him with the sharp bit stuff was bravado, then?”

Now it was Adora’s turn to bow her head.  “I didn’t want to worry anyone, but…I don’t feel great.”

“Good.”  Adora gave Glimmer a confused look, and the princess clarified, “If you’d killed someone with a sword for the first time, even a jackass like Marzo, and were raring to do it again, I’d be worried.  I’ve killed, too – but I’ve never killed just for the sake of killing, and I don’t think you have either.”

Adora shook her head and said, “All I could think was that if he got to keep using his magic, the others could have been hurt.”

“’Dora.  Come here.”  Adora surrendered to the hug, feeling Glimmer’s arms – soft, tender, but with an inner core of muscle – wrap around her body.  “The universe kind of sucks, Adora.  We’re trying to make the best of it, to help who we can, hold back the Horde – and, sometimes, we’re going to need to kill for that.  But never just for the sake of killing, and always so that someone else’s life is spared.”

“Thanks, Glimmer.  I feel a bit better.”

“Any time.”  Glimmer didn’t let go.  After a few moments, she added, “I think we should maybe take a break from sword training, though.”

“Just a day or two.”

“Yeah.  Yeah.”

Catra felt her heartrate spike as she knocked on the door.

It’s okay, she told herself.  You’re a hardened Horde warrior.  You can handle a little bit of misdirection.

After a few moments, Double Trouble’s chartreuse eyes peeked through the crack between the door and its recess.  “Oh, hello, darling.  Did you need something?”

“I gotta talk to you.”

“Come on in, then.”  The door slid open, and Catra moved in.

A tremor ran through her guts, and she steadied herself.  The plan was solid.  If she got a dull ache in her gut every time Adora and Sparkles touched, then logically Adora would get the same kind of shitty feeling, right?

She overruled the part of her that pointed out that she wasn’t using logic at all and said, “DT, I…I don’t know how to say this.  The Horde…it didn’t teach us much about…”  She waved her hands in what she thought was a very effective display of helplessness.  “About people.”

“I think it taught you a lot about people, just…very specific stuff, darling.”  They grinned at her.  “I assume this is something outside of the curriculum, though.”

“I want…I kinda wanna be with you.”  She swallowed; it wasn’t entirely pantomime.  “Like Adora is with Sparkles.”

Double Trouble studied her, their expression unreadable.  Then, they said, “I assume this is a bid to make Adora jealous, darling.”

“Wh-what?  No, of course not-”

“Don’t lie to me, darling.  I’m better at it than you.”  A smirk crawled onto Double Trouble’s face.  “You’re writhing, deep down, with the knowledge that Adora could have chosen you, and didn’t, it’s written on your face every time you see her.  You wanted her to fit neatly into a box where she’d be the central thing of your life, and then she refused to stay in it.  So, now, you want to rub it in her face what could have been, maybe get her to question her choices…and that,” they finished with a grin, “suits me fine.”

The shift was jarring, to say the least.  “Huh?”

“I’m on board, darling – although, if we’re going to sell it, we may need a pet name.  Do you have any problem with ‘kitten’?”

“What?  But you said-”

“Everything I said was true, kitten.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not on board.”  Razor-sharp teeth gleamed.  “It gets too chummy around here anyway.  Now, a few points: did you want just dating, pet names and PDA, or,” and here the grin took on a decidedly lascivious edge, “did you want the full package?”

“Full package?”

This time, the look was almost pitying.  “Oh, darling.  You see, when two or more people want to have specific needs fulfilled…”

By the end of the explanation, Catra could feel an extensive blush as she processed discomfort, embarrassment, and – hard though it was to admit it – a certain measure of some other feelings she was going to need to unpack later.  A lot later.

“Uh…let’s go with just the first one, for now.”

“Certainly, kitten.”  They winked, and Catra blushed just a little bit harder.  “Of course, if you’d ever like to escalate, you only have to ask…”

Chapter Text

For a few moments, Mermista could have believed she was coming home.

Nelumbos wasn’t her home, obviously.  Salineas Prime was much further away, and much prettier.  That wasn’t posturing, either; a jagged patchwork scar of grey-green metal stretched across much of the northern hemisphere, a string of Horde floating bases – floating cities, even – stretching from the polar ice cap to somewhere past the equator.  As the deep blue bauble grew closer, more grey-green pockmarks began to resolve – a scattering of shrapnel wounds on the planet’s mostly-liquid skin.

She didn’t even know why the Horde was there. Nelumbos wasn’t a manufacturing powerhouse, an agricultural centre or any other economic or logistical aid, and if they wanted an ocean for some reason, well, oceans were pretty easy to come by.  They didn’t even have an assigned use for the lotii.

But, of course, the Horde didn’t conquer because it had a use for the things it conquered.  The Horde had conquered Nelumbos because having something it didn’t control wasn’t acceptable.

“Mermista?”

After a few seconds, the sound got through to her, and her eyes refocused away from the planet.  The first thing she saw was her own reflection in the porthole’s surface, amber eyes darkened by space; the tendrils that descended from her scalp were obviously seething, and the bioluminescent bubbles along them were flickering red.

“I, like, don’t wanna talk about it, Scorpia.”

“Okay!  Okay.  I don’t, you know, want to pry or anything.”  Scorpia tapped her claws together awkwardly.  “But, uh, you just seemed really agitated, and-”

“I don’t.  Want to talk.  About it.”

She heard Scorpia’s heavy footsteps disappear, and returned to thinking about planets: one ahead of her, one behind.

“You’re in a bad mood,” observed Glimmer, who was now behind her in a much more literal sense, and Mermista’s mood sank another rung.

“You, like, got a problem, Glitter?”

“No, but I think you do.”  Glimmer moved closer; she made sure to leave a decent space, apparently sensing Mermista’s current mood.  “Homesick?”

“No.”  Mermista felt Glimmer’s eyes digging into her, and her scowl intensified.  “Okay.  Maybe a little.”

“We’ll get you home, don’t worry.”

“Will you?  ‘Cause so far, we’ve done, like, a lot of showing up on random planets and raising hell.  Double Trouble’s running a pool on how long it’ll take; the smart money is on at least 18 months.”

“We’re getting closer, don’t worry.  And if Adora can get this First One grid online…”

“Do you really trust your girlfriend’s, like, spirit guide?”

“I trust Adora.”

Mermista’s eyes narrowed.  “That wasn’t what I asked.”

“I don’t know the answer to what you asked, Mermista.  But…so far Light Hope hasn’t done anything but help us.”

“I don’t trust help I didn’t ask for, Glimmer.  I wanna know what she’s really after.”

The streets around the docking port were full of Nelumbo’s native lotii, their petal-like manes rippling as they moved.  They resembled nothing so much as large, humanoid amphibians in plant-themed coats.

“You know, they’re not actually plant-based, like the Plumerians?” threw in Entrapta’s drone, from its position on Adora’s shoulder.  “It’s symbiosis!  The petals are an entirely separate organism that grows on them and provides important nutrients in exchange for a safe environment!”

“It’s basically mould,” said Mermista, earning a few glares from nearby lotii.

“It’s not actually that much like mould; it’s more like a moss!”

“Is that really gonna help?” said Catra, in tones like barbed wire.

A voice Adora didn’t recognise rang out of a nearby building – a tavern, from the looks of it, something catering to visiting spacers.  “And then,” it was saying, “I kicked over the table and, in a bold and swashbuckling fashion-”

Mermista buried her face in her hands and said, “We should go the other way.”

“Why?”  Adora’s hand hovered over the hilt of her sword.  “Is it an enemy?  An assassin?”

“Worse.  It’s…”

A figure was ejected from the tavern: a light-skinned, moustachioed human in a soot-stained blue jacket.  He skidded to a halt in the street.

“…my ex-boyfriend,” finished Mermista glumly.

The latest officer was beginning to get on Octavia’s nerves, so she dismissed him with a wave and sighed heavily.  It had been decades since a Horde ship had last been becalmed in jumpspace, and so, naturally, with the inevitability of a sunrise, it had been hers.

“Talk to me, Polypus,” she said into her headpiece comms.  “There’s gotta be something we can do.”

“I am afraid not, Captain.  We’re marooned for the foreseeable future.”

“Foreseeable…Has Shadow Weaver managed anything interesting?  She’s just as screwed as we are if we can’t get out.”

“Unfortunately not, Captain.  Nor can we get a message out.”

“Great.”  Octavia rubbed her eye.  “Schedule another round of shipboard drills.  Morale’s going to be enough of a problem as it is.  And have everyone with any kind of scientific training rounded up.”

“I assume I should prioritise jump dynamics?” asked the intelligence officer coolly.  The crew had come to understand that he was something of an unofficial second-in-command by this point; it made him so much more useful.

“I didn’t think you’d need it spelled out for you.”

“I didn’t.”

The man in the soot-stained jacket rose to his feet, patting himself down.  Somehow, despite the street they were on being on a floating metal platform, thousands of miles from anything that could be considered land, he had still managed to get dirty.

“Well, I don’t wish to patronise such an establishment anyway!”  He drew himself up, turned around –

Adora had seen people be hit on the head before.  She’d been trained to fight with stun prods, she’d been in quite a few fights – especially since defecting – and she’d witnessed a few unexpected discipline incidents.

She’d never seen someone react like they’d been hit on the head just from seeing something.

“My Lady-”

She’d also never seen Mermista move that fast.

“Listen up, jackass,” the Salinean snarled into the human’s ear.  “I am here incognito.  That means none of this my Lady crap.  Got it?”

The human made an affirmative sort of muffled grunt.

“Good.  I’m going to, like, take the hand away now?  If you try anything stupid I’m throwing you into the ocean.”

The hand was, as promised, removed, and the human adopted an almost cartoonishly conspiratorial expression.  He wasn’t so much trying not to look suspicious as trying to look like someone trying not to look suspicious…thereby making him, by a wide margin, the most suspicious-looking person there.

“Ah, and these must be your allies!” he said effusively.  “Any friend of Mer – uh, hers, is a friend of mine!”
“No they’re not-”

“Sea Hawk, at your service!” he continued, either not noticing that Mermista had said anything or opting to ignore it.  “Swashbuckler, raconteur, and adventurer!”  Through some miracle, he managed to look even more suspicious.  “I had hoped simply to deliver valuable intel to my contacts, but this may be even better!  You see, the Horde shipping on this world has been suspicious, of late…”

“Why is he telling us this?” hissed Catra, from two inches away from Mermista’s ear.  “Is he some kind of Horde plant?”

“No, he’s just an idiot,” Mermista replied, shrugging.

“I’m doomed,” said Kyle, staring at the summons on his comms.

“Could be a good chance for a promotion, Kyle,” Lonnie told him.  “You’re getting noticed.”

“I don’t wanna be noticed, Lonnie!  Whenever I get noticed, bad things happen!”  Rogelio muttered something, and Kyle rounded on him.  “They do too, Rogelio!  Last time I got noticed, I got knocked out, impersonated, and they raked me over the coals for several hours so they could be sure I hadn’t spilled any intel!  Adora and Catra got noticed, and both of them had to defect!”  He calmed down.  “Besides, I’m not gonna be much help.  I got a little bit of oceanography training, and that was only because I went to the wrong room and was too afraid to say anything.”

“Maybe they want an oceanographer – yeah, yeah, I know, probably not.”  Lonnie shrugged.  “Look, just…go there, keep your head down and try not to get in trouble.”

“So who is he?” asked Perfuma brightly, gesturing to the door that Sea Hawk was on the other side of, and Mermista shot a look across the mess hall table that could have melted the metal of the tabletop.

“Just my ex,” said the Salinean brusquely.  “We, like, dated a few times.  We even tried one of those human Tunnel of Love things and he managed to set it on fire, so it didn’t, like, work out.”

“Oh, wow.  Uh.”  Scorpia scratched the back of her head.  “Is, uh, is having relationships outside your species really that common outside the Horde?  ‘Cause I notice he’s a human, and you’re Salinean, and Glimmer’s a half – uh…”

Perfuma said, a subtle smile on her face, “It isn’t the most common thing, Scorpia, but only a few people really object.”  Her bare shoulders shifted in a shrug.  “Love is worth celebrating; I only wish the Horde understood that-”

The comms system crackled as it came online.

“Sea Hawk’s intel checked out,” Entrapta said, in a surprisingly businesslike tone, as the systems around the table began to project some graphs and maps that were presumably illustrating her points.  “I’ve been prying into Horde records, and while I haven’t managed to get into the real secret stuff, I’ve managed to put together a picture.  Shipments of metal, weapon techs, AI circuits…but nothing that could be used to build a jump engine, and not much in the way of anti-gravity.”

“Could it be a warship?”  Everyone turned to look at Scorpia.  “Sorry!  Sorry.  I just heard from some old contacts – you know, before we, uh, came here – that they were working on improved local pacification strategies.  The one for aquatic planets was called Project Riptide.”

“So they’re building a really big ship?” asked Glimmer.

Entrapta weighed this up and said, “That would fit with the data.”

“You sure it isn’t just a lot of smaller ones?” threw in Catra.

“Not with this kind of material investment!”  Entrapta sounded more confident now that it was in her area of expertise.  “You don’t really need an AI on a small vessel, and if they were installing governing AI’s on multiple standard vessels, I’d expect way more cores and way fewer nodes.  I don’t want to get too deep into it-”

“Yes, you do,” said Mermista.

“Yeah, I do.”  Seemingly taking this as permission, Entrapta continued, “Broadly, you need a core per vessel and a bunch of nodes for key systems so the AI can hook into them without needing to stick them all in the same place.  These shipments look like they’re building one really big AI core, the kind of thing you’d mount on a cruiser in the Horde fleet-”

Mermista coughed and said, “Someone really should’ve, like, come up with terms for starships that weren’t also used on the ocean,”

“It would be less confusing, wouldn’t it?” said Catra.

“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that they definitely want one big AI, so I think they’re building a suitably big ship to mount it on!  There are also a lot of weapon and ammo shipments going there – I mean a lot.”

“Could be a cruise liner,” said Mermista drily.

Catra snorted.  “Yeah, the Horde is well known for the quality of its vacations.”

“You’re, like, enjoying yours so far, right?”  Mermista made an expansive gesture.  “Just think, you’ve had travel, adventure, entertainment and whatever meeting Sea Hawk is.”

“More entertainment.”

That actually managed to win a small smile from the Salinean.  “Nice one.”

“Okay!”  Glimmer held up a hand.  “They’re building a big ship.  This seems like the ideal kind of thing to take out.  Adora, you said there were also First One ruins here?”

“Yeah.  Light Hope said Mermista would be needed for it.”

“Probably, yeah,” said Entrapta.  “They’re underwater.”

In her most decisive voice, Glimmer said, “So, we blow up the ship, and Mermista and Adora make their way to the First One ruins-”

“Uh, bad news on that one.”  Entrapta gave an apologetic cough.  “They’re also directly under a Horde military outpost.  A big one, too; we probably wouldn’t be able to do much about it by ourselves.”

“What if we weren’t by ourselves?”

Adora knew that voice.  That was Catra’s plotting voice.

“Sea Hawk presumably has some allies,” began Catra.  “Otherwise, he’d be dead.”

Mermista scoffed.  “I wouldn’t bet on it.  He’s lucky.”

“Anyway, allies.  Could they help?”

“Not unless he has a lot of them.”  Entrapta’s voice was now just constantly accompanied by the faint sounds of keys tapping and outputs being outputted.  “It’d take a small fleet to take out the outpost.”

“Would the Riptide ship be equal to a fleet?” asked Adora.

“Uh…based on the kind of resources being used to build it, yeah, probably?”  Entrapta paused for a moment, and then said, a lot more positively, “Yes.  The Riptide ship is gonna be covered in guns, they’ve imported enough AI tech that it could half sail itself – it could take on a decently sized fleet, no problem!”

Catra’s eyes narrowed – as did her pupils.  “Where are you going with this, Adora?”

“We have two problems.  We have a giant ship that we can’t let the Horde have, and we have a target that the giant ship could take out.  We also probably have enough people to run the giant ship.”

“You want to steal it,” said Glimmer.

“We stole the Protector, didn’t we?  And we have more people now – Scorpia, Mask…Catra…”

Glimmer nodded.  “Well, I’m in.  You’re right; we have a pretty solid record of stealing enemy ships.  Bow?”

Bow thought for a moment and said,  “Every brain cell I have is yelling at me to say no.  But that isn’t going to stop you, so I guess I’m in.  Mermista?”

“This plan is bad,” said Mermista bluntly.  “But, like, so have all the others, and those worked.  I guess I can help out.”  She turned to the next candidate.  “Catgirl?”

Catra’s eye twitched, and she grated out, “It’s Catra.”

“Whatever.  You in?”

“I don’t seem to have much of a choice, now do I?  You clowns are going to get me killed either way; I’d rather know when it’s going to go to hell than have it just sort of happen.”  She thought for a moment.  “I am not swimming, though.  Which other idiots are in?”

And so it proceeded: Entrapta joined out of scientific curiosity, Perfuma to help her friends, Double Trouble because it sounded fun, Scorpia because everyone else was doing it.  Even Mask, who hadn’t offered any actual insights, gave a nod.

A cocky smirk split Glimmer’s face.  “Okay.  Looks like we’re gonna do this thing.”  She turned to the door and shouted, “Sea Hawk!”

The door slid open, and the moustachioed man stepped in.

“We’re going to steal the thing the Horde has been working on,” Glimmer told him.  “It’s going to be a very dangerous mission, but…you know Nelumbos the best of any of us.  We could use your help.”

“Your plan is audacious, if reckless in the extreme,” said Sea Hawk gravely.

“Oh.  Well-”

“I had feared I would have to commandeer it myself, but I will gladly accept your offer of aid!”

There was a loud clunking sound as Mermista slammed her face into the table.

The Horde had cast a wide net; the room was crammed with dozens of people of a seemingly random selection of ranks.  At the front, with the air of a seminar lecturer, stood –

Kyle had never understood how Polypus had shot from “fighter pilot” to “unofficial second-in-command”.  There was plenty of speculation among the lower ranks, some of it more than a little crude.

The Salinean coughed.  For all his icy control, he seemed out of place; Kyle could relate.  “As you are probably aware, the Fright Zone has been becalmed for an alarming amount of time.  Your task here is to develop a solution.”

“Oh, sure,” said the man next to Kyle – a tall man with a salt-and-pepper beard, whose uniform marked him as a platoon commander.  “We’ll just solve a problem nobody’s had in years, and which nobody has ever solved before.”

“Well, you’re gonna be more useful than me,” said the woman opposite him; her slitted eyes, tail and claws reminded Kyle of Catra, although her fur was a much richer golden brown covered in dark spots, she didn’t have Catra’s heterochromia, and she was decked out like a gunnery officer.  “I looked after the life support algae on a scout frigate for six months as a punishment detail and apparently that makes me a phycologist.  I didn’t even know it was called phycology until now.”

“I’m a demo tech, lady,” said the platoon commander.  “I do chemistry in the same way the artillery does physics.  I’m dead weight here.”

In a small voice, Kyle said, “I don’t think a little bit of oceanography is going to help much either.”  He smiled, just a little; it was…liberating, somehow, that these higher-ranked people were just as lost here as he was.  “Unless we figure out how to make jumpspace work like an ocean or something.”

That earned a laugh from the platoon commander.  “That’s the spirit, kid.  I’ll just build a giant breaching charge and blast a hole through the wall of jumpspace.”

“Wouldn’t work,” said the cat officer.  “Timers don’t work when they get off the ship.  I’d have to shoot it.”

“That’s your only problem with the plan?”  The platoon commander stilled his laughter.  “I would’ve thought that space not working like that might be an issue.”

“No, no,” managed Kyle, his voice almost drowned out by his own laughter.  “We’ll use the blast as propulsion!”

“That sounds dangerous,” threw in the cat officer.

“We’ll just surf our way out!” snickered the platoon commander.

Kyle didn’t notice the man’s expression shift.

On the next table, a couple of junior officers started a fistfight over whether they could open all the hangar bays and use all the fighters’ engines to push them further.

The Horde-built transport submarine was cramped, noisy, and damp.  Since it wasn’t built for long trips, there wasn’t really much in the way of living quarters; apart from Double Trouble (who, not being a fighter, had chosen to get them the sub and then disappear into the crowd to find some distracting chaos to cause), the crew was split between the control area and the cargo bay.

“I should just have said no,” groused Catra, who had apparently decided that cramming herself into a crevice just above one of the main consoles was the best way of minimising her contact with water.

“Yeah, but, like, you were our best chance to get in,” Mermista told her, as she fiddled with the controls.  “So obviously you had to come with.”

“Yeah, I could throw a Horde goon overboard.  So could anyone.  And what about him?”  Catra jerked a clawed thumb at Sea Hawk, who was posing with one foot on the command chair.  Despite the cramped confines of the sub, everyone was giving him as much space as possible; even Entrapta’s current drone wasn’t paying attention.

“I think he’s just here to annoy me.”

“Isn’t that what he’s always there for?”

“Cut that out,” Mermista told her.  “You’ll…start, like, treading on my lines soon.”

Catra’s eyes narrowed as she noticed the pause, but before she could say anything, the comm system came online.

“Attention, Sub 413.  You’re not on our schedule.  Please report.”

Catra’s eyes met Mermista’s, and then Mermista grabbed the audio pickup.  “Must be, like, a computer glitch?  Got a fresh cargo of weapons and security systems, replace some of the, like, defective ones.”

“I’ll need to double-check.”  As the Horde trooper on the other end of the line started tapping keys, Entrapta’s drone waved a pincer-tipped limb in the air in the closest it could manage to a thumbs-up.  “Ah, yeah, got you.  We’ll send a loader transport to meet you in docking bay 94.”

“94, gotcha.”  Mermista killed the channel.  “Got ‘em.”

“An interesting proposal,” said Polypus coolly, as the platoon commander handed over the files.  “You seek to build a powerful explosive, jettison it to space, and detonate it.”

“I ran it past a couple of the jump dynamics specialists.  They say the theory’s surprisingly sound: the blast could set up a ripple and disrupt the barrier holding us here, while pushing .”

“I will have it checked over.”  Polypus took the data drive and pocketed it.  “You may be in for a commendation at some point if this works.”

“Service to the Horde is its own reward, sir.”

Polypus gave a curt nod and rose from the chair.

The hijacked loader transport – a lumpy, low-ceiling skimmer, hovering only a few feet off the ground – tore through the Horde shipyard like it was being driven by a maniac.

“Hang on, everyone!” said Glimmer, as she swung the vehicle around a corner in a way it had very definitely not been designed to do.  “We should be getting near the ship!”

Ahead of them, a large set of doors began to grind shut, red light glinting off the dull metal as an alarm started up.

Catra’s eyes were on the verge of climbing out of her face and running away.  “We’re not gonna make it!”

Adora concentrated on the blade for a few moments, and a blast of golden-white light blasted one of the doors off their track, sending the metal spinning through the air.

Catra’s expression flattened.  “…okay, never mind.”

Horde soldiers and dockworkers hurled themselves out of the way as the loader scorched through the now-open door and was confronted with the Ship.

It deserved the capital letter.  It was enormous.  Some ocean-going ships were large enough to launch fighters; this could have launched the Protector.  It wasn’t quite a mobile island, but it could have been a close-run thing.

Mermista made a dismissive noise.  “I’m sure it’s, like, really scary for the rubes, but it’s not gonna be much use to them.”

“You, uh, sure about that?” asked Scorpia.

“Face it, Scorp.  It can’t exactly, like, sneak around, and for this much metal they could’ve built an entire fleet that couldn’t all be blown up at once.”

“Do you mind?” snapped Glimmer, cranking up the velocity.

The loader shot over the ramp, scattering dockside equipment, and landed on the deck of the ship.

“You want to what?” said Octavia.

“There was a seed of a good idea in one of the rejected submissions,” Polypus said.  Octavia glanced at him, but his face was impassive, the legacy of intel training to sand off his tells. “I’ve had it looked over by the specialists, and they agree that this could potentially be a viable way to deal with the situation.”

“We’re gonna blow it up.”  A grin carved itself onto Octavia’s face.  “Well, hurting things is what we’re good at; let’s go see what happens when we bomb spacetime.”

Entrapta’s drone was nowhere to be seen as the battle on the deck began in earnest.  Horde soldiers were boiling out of the ship like ants from a disturbed nest, backed up by more forces boarding across the ramps like their hijacked loader had done.

As Mermista slammed her trident into a Horde combat drone, Catra’s hand shot out.  “Adora!  Get your armour-plated ass over there and cut off their reinforcements!”

Adora tensed for a moment inside the protective white-golden shell of She-Ra – Mermista knew her well enough by now to see it even through the armour, and she knew damn well Glimmer would have spotted it too – before raising the Sword in salute and heading for the ramps.

Catra wasn’t done yet, though.  She gestured to others in the group, sending them to other locations – Mask and Glimmer were also on the deck, and as they went,

Shaking her head, Mermista returned her attention to the troops on the ship.  There were surprisingly many of them for a ship that hadn’t even been launched yet.

The crackle of energy sounded from one of the turrets lining the deck, and two Horde soldiers were hurled over the railing.  Sea Hawk emerged, the blue light of his energy blade playing over his features.  He flashed her his usual bold grin-

The deck bucked under her feet as the ship started to move, and Entrapta’s voice filled her ear.

“AI cross-linking is complete!  I’ve interfaced with the un-imprinted core, and we’ve got control!  We are underway!”

Before Mermista could reply, one of the scattered Horde soldiers rose from the deck and charged at her.  She sidestepped, and the soldier shot past her –

Right into Sea Hawk, sending them both over the railing.

Behind her, there was a crashing sound; Mermista would later learn that Adora had picked up a drone by the leg and hurled it through a squad of soldiers, preventing them from boarding as Entrapta got the ship moving.  It sounded like it was miles away, though; Mermista had other things on her mind.

Sea Hawk had managed to catch a handhold on the edge of the ship, she saw, as she looked over the rail.  With an eye-roll, she dangled her trident in front of him; she was definitely, 100% over him, but that wasn’t a great reason to let him die, tempting though it might have been after that one specific date.  (Then again, at this point, they might as well recruit him; a man who could cause an out-of-control fire on a planet mostly covered with water sounded like an ideal member of the crew.)

Bracing herself against the railing, she pulled Sea Hawk back onto the deck.

With reinforcements cut off and the ship making its move, the Horde forces – such as were left, anyway – seemed to be trying a new strategy.  Doors were slamming shut as they began to barricade themselves in rooms.

This time it was Glimmer’s voice that rang out with a strategy.  “Bow, you’re the best shot we have; I want you on fire control.  There are probably a lot of ships headed our way.  Adora, those ones bunkered up in the command area could be a problem; could you take care of the door?”

It didn’t sound like she would be needed for a little while.  Well, that was okay.  Nobody could blame her for just sitting down and having a breather.

That it was near Sea Hawk was just a coincidence.

The Fright Zone was listing badly when it drifted out of jumpspace, and the battered plating surrounding its main port side engine crackled and fizzed as the energies within burst free.

“Well,” said Octavia simply, straightening her uniform.  “That could have gone better.”

“Uh, captain?”  The comms officer, a skinny Salinean with mother-of-pearl plates scattered across their skin, fiddled with their controls.  “I’m getting reports of a big engagement on the surface – some sort of ship hijacking.  Should we intervene?”

“The Fright Zone won’t get there in time, not with the engine damage we’ve sustained.”  Octavia rose to her full height, her cybernetic eye gleaming menacingly in the emergency lights, and commanded, “Scramble the fighter squadrons.  We may not be able to bring our guns to bear, but we can send support.”  She bared her teeth.  “And send for Polypus.  I need to have a talk with him.”

On the crew decks, the combat alarms started to wail.

“Uh, Adora?” said Entrapta, over the ship comms.

“Little busy, Entrapta!”  Adora drove her fist, now covered in the gleaming white-and-gold armour of She-Ra, through the reinforced door and tore it open.

“It’s really important, Adora!”

“In a second!”  She blocked the first shot with the blade, picked up the soldier firing it, and threw her bodily into two of her comrades.  The last one standing took a swing with a stun prod; it didn’t do him much good.  “Okay, I’m clear.  What is it?”

“New Horde signatures.  It’s the Fright Zone.”

“Piss.”

“No, the Fright Zone – oh, yeah.  Glimmer’s thing.”  After a few moments, Entrapta spoke again, a new note of urgency in her voice.  “More signatures.  I think they’re fighters.”

“Why would they be launching fighters when they could – Entrapta, can you get a more detailed scan of the ship?”

“Not directly, ‘cause they’re too far away, but I’m getting what I can from Horde networks – oh, yeah!  Looks like they burned out one of their engines somehow.”

Adora weighed up this information for a few seconds, then said, “So the fighters are probably their only way of engaging us.  Their guns won’t be accurate enough to hit even a ship this big at that kind of range; the Fright Zone isn’t built for precision ground targeting.”

“Put me in, coach,” cut in a new voice.

After a moment, Adora said, “Swift Wind?”

“I can outfly any of them; just say the word, Adora!  This is what I was built to do!”

Adora considered this.  “Wait until they’re starting to attack the Riptide.  Hit them from behind; target engines, use hit-and-fade tactics.  If you try and take them on alone, they’ll just swarm you.”

“Got it!”

Adora considered her options.  Most of the Horde troops on board had been subdued by either the onboard systems or her own efforts, but the turrets weren’t managing to hold off all of the approaching Horde ships – they were going to need to repel boarders.

Well, that was definitely something she could do.

She shouldered the blade and headed for the next objective.

Glimmer swung the guns around and punched through another Horde patrol craft.

“I’m surprised we’re not seeing more skimmers,” she mentioned,

“I’ve got Horde eyes in the ship’s security net!” said Entrapta.  “They’re not sophisticated, but there are a lot of them; I don’t think I can clean them all out.”

“Is there anything you can do?” barked Glimmer, swinging the auto-turret to pick off another incoming fighter.  “Scramble them, maybe?”

“No, this system is too robust for that.  I can’t suborn them without collapsing the AI core entirely, and that would leave us dead in the water.”  Then, from Entrapta’s end of the channel, Glimmer thought she heard a snap of fingers.  “But I can unscramble them!”

“…What?”

“This system has some really up-to-the-minute Horde encryption codes in it.  I’ve already set it so Emily can download them; they might come in handy someday.  Problem is, I can’t change the settings to be inaccessible without writing an entirely new code and getting the system to accept it, which could take hours!  But I can set it to default to unencrypted, and since the Horde eyes are using the Horde default programming as their doorway, it would affect them too, at least until they figure out how to use genuinely intrusive snoopers instead of just messing with the data dump settings.”

Glimmer’s lips pursed as she fired another salvo.  “So, when you say ‘default to unencrypted,’ you mean it’d be broadcasting in the clear?”

“Exactly!  Right now, the problem is that they, basically, have control over our security network.  I can change it so nobody has control over it.  We could see everything they can.”

“As could everyone with a receiver screen on this hemisphere.”  Glimmer’s cocky smirk flashed back onto her face.  “Well, let’s give them a show.  Do it.”

As Double Trouble slipped through the streets under a stolen face, their mind began to whir.  On the one hand, they were well out of it, weren’t they?  They’d already done their part, and it was setting up the others.  True, there wasn’t a whole lot of glory in that…but Double Trouble had never been a glory hound.  Far more entertaining to play to a smaller audience.

This part of town was covered in Horde display screens, normally used for relaying propaganda, and also news reports that were just propaganda in a different hat.  Now, they were showing something else, and everyone was gathered around to see it – mostly lotii, with their symbiotic manes, but .

Adora – in her “overgrown super-soldier” form – hurling Horde soldiers overboard like they were little more than toys.  As they watched, a Horde fighter, trailing smoke, plummeted into the water; another, clearly heavily modified and painted with a white star insignia, did a snap-roll in salute as it shot past – obviously, that one was Swift Wind.

Double Trouble paused to take in the mood of the crowd.

“That’s She-Ra – my cousin Launia is a religious type.  I recognise the illustrations!”

“Those are just stories, Delnak!”

“Looks pretty solid for a story for me, Flast!  Man, she’s tearing through them.  You kinda feel bad for them, right, Nire?”

“Nope.  Far as I’m concerned, every one of them can jump into the sea and drown.”

Catra wasn’t going to like this…but opportunities like this didn’t come along every day, and Double Trouble would be damned if they didn’t take advantage of it.

Time to start the ignition.

They put on the aura of a fire-and-brimstone preacher like it was a favourite sweater, and boomed, “A legend has come back to help fight the Horde!  Are we really going to just sit on the sidelines and let her fight without us?”

“NO!”

The roar of the crowd was like a physical blow, and Double Trouble disguised their smirk as a cocky smile.

“Let’s give ‘em hell.”

“Polypus,” said Octavia, in a voice as calm and dangerous as a predator-infested lake, “would it interest you to know that your little strategy is why we’re stuck in orbit while our fighters get mauled down below?”

“It would indeed interest me, Captain.  I shall, of course, look into the source of the failure.”  His eyes narrowed.  “It may be that the specialists have been suborned.”

“Oh, well done, Polypus!”  Octavia favoured him with a razor-edged grin.  “You deflected that so quickly I almost don’t have the heart to actually punish you-”

“Captain!”
Octavia dragged a hand down her face and turned to the hapless messenger.  “Report.”

“We’re getting reports of violence on the surface, Captain.  Rioting in the settlements, a few assassinations.  They don’t have enough forces to retain control and eliminate the hijacked warship, and as it stands, Captain, you’re in overall command.  What are your orders?”

“Eliminate the warship,” said Octavia immediately.  “Our mission is to deal with the Constrictor and its hijackers.  We can always retake Nelumbos later.”

The Riptide was smoking from a dozen impact sites and a dozen more blast burns as it drew close to its primary target.  The Horde’s larger ships – nowhere near as large as the Riptide, but more numerous – were beginning to

“There are too many of them!”  Bow’s voice had a slight edge of panic to it, but he was controlling it well.  “We’re not going to be able to take on the fortress and the fleet simultaneously.”

Glimmer’s expression was like a thundercloud, but all she said was, “Piss.”

“If I might make a suggestion?”

At Sea Hawk’s words, Mermista buried her face in her hands and said, “No.”

“Let’s not rule anything out, Mermista,” said Glimmer.  She turned to Sea Hawk.  “Your thoughts?”

“The Horde fortification is mounted on a floating platform: sturdy, yes, but far from indestructible.  Our guns could wear it down, certainly…but we have a much larger projectile than any torpedo, at our disposal!”

“He wants to crash the ship into the fortress,” Mermista translated wearily.

Glimmer’s face fell.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, genius,” threw in Catra, “but we’re on the ship.”

There was a buzz over the comms, and then Entrapta said, “We could use the onboard sub transports!  I’ve been having some of the drones load unconscious Horde soldiers into them for a while, for easy disposal.”  Glimmer heard a distant splash – not over the comms, but out in the world.  “Some of them went past unconscious,” added Entrapta sheepishly.

“I mean, if we can get off the ship safely, Sea Hawk’s plan might not be the worst idea,” said Bow.  “All it would need to do would be to take out enough systems and enough of the structure that it couldn’t maintain buoyancy.  It’s… crazy enough that it just might work.”

“How long have you wanted to say that?”  Catra sounded amused, at least.

“About ten years?”

Kyle sat there, a wall of blue on every side, and waited.

It felt peaceful here, somehow.  Granted, that may have been the oxygen deprivation – he hadn’t been issued with much in the way of survival gear, and being shot down hadn’t helped – but it was nice.  He hadn’t felt this free since…

Well, ironically enough, since he had been in prison.  Sure, he’d been shut up in a confined space, but the Salinean lady had seemed nice, or at least nicer than most of the people he knew, and he’d been able to draw, something the Horde hadn’t really given him much of a chance to do since he was a kid – and nobody had mocked him about it.

A powerful, scaled hand closed around his arm, and he felt himself being drawn back to the surface.  The first shock of air hitting his lungs felt like a baptism.

He felt reborn.

Then Lonnie punched him in the arm, and the moment passed, but somehow, he knew something about it would stay with him for a while.

The Horde base was well-warned about the stolen, approaching ship.  Heavy weapons opened up, targeting the guns on the Riptide.  Soldiers prepared to sally forth in boarding crafts.  The actual reason the base was here, a large communications relay used to link up the various Horde bases, retracted into an armoured dome; the grid would be down for a while, if all went to plan.

The problem was that the garrison of the fortress had gone into this engagement expecting a straightforward fight, and, as the Riptide not only didn’t slow down but actively sped up, they realised – too late, too, too late – that this was not the plan.

The enormous prow of the Riptide plunged through the fortress’s hull like a stake through a vampire’s heart.  It was almost torn apart by the impact, but it didn’t matter; it had opened the way, and weight and momentum did the rest.  Metal tore, systems failed and circuits were sundered in a volley of sparks.

Under the dying fortress, small submarines – the last thing taken from the Riptide – scurried off in countless directions.  Some had Horde soldiers and locked autopilots, aimed at drawing off the distractions; others lurked and sunk, hoping to wait out the swarm.

One headed for a weed-choked shape in the depths.

The First One ruin was already flooded.  Adora, locked in communion with her spirit AI or whatever it was, had managed to open the main door, but Mermista had to go in alone.

She couldn’t really grumble clearly to herself while immersed, so she settled for thinking some really dirty thoughts about how she hadn’t technically agreed to this bit at any point.

The ruin was leaning over – not too severely, but enough that it would have been a tourist attraction on the surface.  It didn’t really matter, though; it wasn’t like Mermista was using the floor.

Moving in the slow-motion way you had to when doing this underwater, she pried open a door with her trident and was greeted by a crystalline shape, its nacreous bulk gleaming in the light from her forehead-mounted torch.

This looked like the objective.

She reached out and touched it.

Double Trouble’s hastily donned face was streaked with sweat and blood as they fired up their comms.

“Darlings, I know you have a mission, but I may have gone…a little off the beaten path here, and things are getting out of hand.”

“What did you do?” said Glimmer, in the tone of someone removing an adhesive bandage in one swift motion rather than Double Trouble’s preferred gradual creep.

“Well, I may have tried to incite just a little bit of a riot – a distraction, you understand, just something to redirect some of the opposition – and it turns out I’m way better at that than I’d thought.  Don’t worry, though, I won’t charge you extra.”  Even to Double Trouble, that sounded like they were trying to project a sense of calm and control they didn’t feel.

“You started a civil war and didn’t invite us?”

“I wouldn’t call this whole mess civil, your Highness.  And I’m inviting you now, aren’t I?”

“Why can’t we just leave them to it?”  That sounded like Catra.  “Not our planet, not our business.”

“Oh yeah, your true colours,” shot back Glimmer.  “I’d almost forgotten they were black and red.”

“What’s that supposed to mean-”

“Respectfully, your Highness, Catra does have a point.”  Double Trouble cleared their throat theatrically.  “There are a lot of lotii on this planet, and most of them probably have reason to dislike the Horde.  Surely we can just let them get on with it?”

“I’m not abandoning these people to fight and die without our help,” said Bow firmly.  “They deserve the best chance at freedom they can get.”

“Well said, Bow.”  Glimmer was in full command mode, something Double Trouble suspected she’d learned from her mother.  “I don’t know if this is the ideal time, but it’s the time we’ve got.  Let’s help these people.”

Scorpia, surprisingly, was next. “I mean, we’re rebels now, right?  We might as well, you know, help the rebellion.”

“I’m on my way,” said Adora.  “Mermista, you’re going to have to find your own way back to the surface.”

There was no reply.

Mermista found herself in what felt like the heart of a giant aquamarine, the gem-like surfaces cut with a pattern that resembled circuitry.  First One tech, obviously.

As the circuit lines started to glow, she realised that there was another figure in there with her: a shadowy, but clearly human, form.

“Who are you?”

The figure’s blade snapped out, lit with a blue light that somehow failed to illuminate its face.  Indeed, it was almost like the darkness shrouding it was a solid object; the light on her head didn’t pick out any details either.

It thrust, and Mermista parried, batting the energy blade aside with her trident.  That very familiar energy blade –

The figure took another swing, and Mermista caught the blade between two of her trident’s prongs.  Twisting it, she sent the sword flying, then swung the prongs directly into the shadowy figure’s face.

Moments before it hit, the darkness vanished, revealing the face of Sea Hawk.

Her trident stopped dead in midair.

“Why not strike, Mermista?” said Sea Hawk.

“I ought to,” she said.  “You’re, like, not even the real Sea Hawk.”

“Would you hold back if I was?”

Mermista failed to hold back a flinch.

“Of course I starsdamned would,” she said.  “He’s still alive, isn’t he?”

“Yet you keep picking this fight.  You keep challenging him, jabbing at him.  Why, if you don’t actually want it?”

“Because he’s stupid-”

“Liar!”

“He doesn’t understand-”

“Liar!”

“Because I’m afraid!”

The fake Sea Hawk didn’t say anything for a few moments.  Then, it said, “Afraid of what?”

“I, like, dunno,” Mermista managed, in what even Scorpia would have recognised as hastily trying to put her armour back on midfight.

“You know very well what you’re afraid of, Mermista.”  Not that she needed more confirmation, but this was yet more proof that this Sea Hawk was a fraud; the real one probably wouldn’t have been this subtle.  Or insightful.  Or quiet.  “It’s vulnerability, isn’t it?”

“If you already know, why ask me?” she snapped.

“I know it, Mermista.  I wasn’t sure you did.”  She’d only seen the impostor’s gentle smile on the real Sea Hawk’s face once before.  “You push him away because you’re afraid that having him around will lower your shields, don’t you? 

“I didn’t come here for, like, a therapy session.”

“No.  You came here for the Pearl.”  The fake Sea Hawk flashed her a bold grin.  “And you know what a pearl is, don’t you?  It’s something beautiful, kept hidden inside a resilient shell.”

“It’s also, like, the corpse of a worm wrapped in shiny stuff.  Don’t overthink it.”

“Touché,” the vision conceded.  “Permit me my moment of poetry.”

“As long as it’s not his poetry-”

“You’re doing it again.”

“It’s, like, what I’m good at,” she parried.

“But does it make you happy?”

She didn’t have an answer to that.

“Keeping your walls up makes you feel safe, I know,” continued the knockoff.  “But does it make you feel happy?  Loved?”

“This is a test.”

“Yes.”  Sea Faux offered a half-mocking salute.  “Do you think you’re going to pass?”

Nelumbos reminded Adora of nothing so much as a warzone when her sub resurfaced.

The Horde garrison was well-armed and well-equipped, but there were a lot of lotii – and with the Horde comm network held together with baling twine after the Riptide had hit its linchpin, they were having trouble coordinating.

“For the honour of Grayskull!”

The formalities taken care of, Adora moved like lightning.  She didn’t even waste the edge of her sword on the first squad of Horde soldiers she encountered, trying to hold a presumably strategically important junction; she shifted it into a shield to block their weapon fire, then used the shield like a battering ram, crashing into their midst.

As the remaining conscious ones scattered, she continued the advance.  As she moved, red cape billowing in the salt-scented wind, battered groups of rebellious lotii rallied, as if they were fighting under her banner.

A brown-and-white blur slashed through the Horde squad she was approaching, resolving into Catra as she drove a stun prod into the sergeant’s gut.  Her one-time best friend looked up at the sound, and beheld Adora at the head of a small army, armed with a ragtag mixture of stolen Horde weapons.

Her eyes narrowed, and she vanished into the warzone.

Suddenly, Glimmer’s voice was in her ear.  “Adora, we’ve got trouble.  The Horde ships from the Riptide fight are starting to turn up; looks like this area is target number one.”

“I’m on my way-”

“Adora, those are full-scale warships.  I don’t think even She-Ra can stand up to that kind of bombardment.”

“I have to, Glimmer.  If anyone can protect these people, She-Ra can.”

Frosta smashed a Horde soldier to the fake metal ground and grinned.   This was fun.

“Hey!  Flower girl!” she said to her companion, and was rewarded with an irritable little tic on Perfuma’s face.  “This place has a breathable atmosphere, so it must have some plants, right?”

“I’m trying!”  Perfuma forced down the anger with visible effort, and explained, much more calmly, “Worlds like this usually rely on algae, rather than plants.”

“Still green, isn’t it?  Shouldn’t you be able to control it?”

“Diamonds resemble ice, Frosta.  Can you control those?”

“I guess I didn’t think of it like that,” admitted Frosta, before slamming an ice hammer with a head the size of a beer barrel into a Horde soldier’s face.

Another soldier lunged out of a blind alley, stun prod raised.  Frosta turned to face them, knowing as she did that she wasn’t going to have a chance-

Perfuma’s fist lashed out, and the soldier staggered backwards.  Their helmet visor had cracked, just a little bit, and they seemed a little dizzy as Perfuma grabbed them by the face and smashed them into a wall so hard it left a dent.

“Wow,” breathed Frosta.  “And to think everyone talks about you guys being pacifists.”

“Many of us are,” Perfuma said simply.  “But please never think that just because people don’t fight, that means they can’t.”

Adora stared down the gun barrel, forcibly suppressing the little bit of fear she felt.  The giant cannon on the front of the ship was big.

In the lightheaded way of people who think they are just about to die, Adora noted the little badge on the ship: Repressor.  Well, it fit.  She readied the sword, just in case she needed to parry the blast; it probably wouldn’t work, but it was the best chance to save the people standing behind her, the people who had followed their heroine – She-Ra – into battle.

As the barrel filled with a deathly glow, she braced herself…

Then the glow died.

For a few mad seconds, she thought the Repressor was shrinking.  The gun seemed to be lowering, its silhouette taking up less of her vision.  Then she realised that was the wrong word.

It wasn’t shrinking.  It was sinking.

After a few seconds, it had already lost about half its hull to the whirlpool that had formed at its metaphorical feet, and a few seconds later, it was gone.

Another ship’s guns started to track over, but before it could fire, the water actually did the opposite and threw it high into the air; it returned to the water with a bone-crunching impact that reminded Adora that if you hit it fast enough, water is almost like steel.  Well, that ruled out a natural explanation.  It was just barely within the realms of possibility that the enormous whirlpool could have been an incredibly lucky coincidence; hurling warships for height like the world’s weirdest new sport was very much not on the usual agenda.

As if to confirm, the water bulged up around a third ship, forming a giant fist.

With a cry of, “I’ll take it from here!” Frosta transformed the fist into ice with a gesture, then started shifting it with her own power to add pressure.  The warship’s hull buckled and groaned as the inexorable force of the frozen fist crushed it like an egg.

The ocean surface split open, and on a pillar of water, Mermista ascended.  Behind her, its wing-like fins spread like a phoenix, was a manta ray made entirely of water.

The closest lotii to Adora visibly boggled.  “It’s, uh, Sea-Ra!  And Freeze-R-”

“No,” said Frosta, in a voice like steel.

Seeing three warships killed in under a minute was obviously more than even Horde discipline could take.  The remaining ships began to scatter, turning as quickly as their positions would allow.  Some, apparently trying desperately to curry favour with the locals, turned their guns on their erstwhile allies.

Mermista stepped onto the land, such as it was, and the manta ray dissipated.

“You found the Runestone?” asked Adora – rather unnecessarily, she realised a few seconds later, but the weapon’s glow was still rather preying on her mind.

“No, I could always do this, I just, like, didn’t want to,” Mermista shot back.

“Polypus, if you don’t give me some good news, I’m going to have you flayed,” said Octavia, and drained the mug she was holding.  “Slowly, too.”

Polypus eyed the mug suspiciously.  “What are you drinking?”

“Rank hath its privileges, spy-hard.  Captains get this stuff.  It’s called khaf, and I’m going to have some more of it.”

The second mugful followed the first, and Octavia fired off an irate expression.  “Question stands, though.  What’ve you got that’ll justify keeping your skin?”

“The hijacked warship has been destroyed, captain; although Nelumbos is likely lost, at least given the tenor of the withdrawal, at least they will be limited in the salvage they can gain.”

“Not good enough.  Kiss goodbye to your epidermis.”

“On the bright side, captain, the officer responsible for the damage to our engine, which likely played a significant role, has been duly punished.  He attempted to lay the blame on a lowly fighter pilot, but I have my doubts that the man was even present; besides, I know him from my time undercover, and I doubt he added anything worthwhile.  We need to establish that officers still take responsibility for their failures; no passing the buck down the chain of command.”

“I mean, of course not.  That’s your job”  A third payload of khaf was deployed into Octavia’s system, and she glared at Polypus.  “So what’s the plan now, secret agent?  Stop vibrating at me and fix this mess.”

“I have already given orders to withdraw carefully and prepare for the next objective, captain.”  He endured a glare from Octavia that could reignite a dying sun.  “Captain, we were caught in an unprecedented phenomenon, endured internal sabotage through incompetence, and still took part in a broadly successful military exercise, even if the planet proved impossible to hold in the face of a mass popular rebellion and a similarly unprecedented level of off-planet support.  There is no shame in calling for aid.”

Octavia groaned.  “I know, I know.  I just need to get a win for once, you know?  This is my first command.”

“Those who get too reckless on their first commands rarely receive a second.”

“Stop being logical, Backstab.  Figure out what we’re going to do now.”

Polypus took a deep breath and said, “We are going to fix our engine and requisition more fighters.  We still have bounty hunters in play; those will harass the Constrictor while we prepare for their final defeat.  We will have them; we just need to be patient.  Stalk our prey until the perfect time to strike – and slay them utterly, when the moment comes.”

“I hate it when you’re right about boring things.”

The unofficial rebel leader, a lotii whose pink mane contrasted with their sapphire-blue skin in rather appealing ways, was assured Adora that with the Horde fleet in pieces (Mermista had smiled rather smugly at that) and the scattered outposts no longer able to effectively coordinate, they could keep Nelumbos free until such time as the Horde sent a larger force – and, with the Horde engaged on multiple fronts and facing increasing pressure internally, they likely didn’t have the forces spare to take Nelumbos.

Mermista slipped out of the room, hastily pulling on a coat.  The whole Sea-Ra thing had been fun, but the attention could be a little wearying.

Besides, she had someone to find.

Sea Hawk had just completed what, if she was any judge, was his fifth retelling of the entire battle.  By this point, if she knew his storytelling – and at this point, she definitely did – he had probably managed to reach the point where everyone concerned was pulling the wings off Horde fighters like they were very pesky insects.

No sense wasting time on a preamble.

“Hey,” she said.  “Got a moment, Mr Big Hero Guy?”

“Of course, my Lady-”

“Don’t call me that.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, and then Mermista said, “You know, we’ve, like, got some extra rooms on the Protector.  If you wanted to, you know, tag along…”

“Alas, Mermista!  While I would gladly discard everything to race to your side…I fear that my presence would cause you more difficulties.  You see, I have…a few favours I must complete for a nearby criminal mastermind, and should I abandon those duties, I would simply add another enemy to the too-many you already possess!  I must acquire the funds to provide recompense, or else he would simply add another party hunting you to an already too-long list.”

Mermista knew where this was going.  “You destroyed a ship, didn’t you?”
“I most certainly did not destroy a ship,” said Sea Hawk indignantly.  “In fact, I destroyed four.”

“Now that would’ve been something to see.”

“It was indeed a spectacular occasion!”  Sea Hawk looked slightly shamefaced.  “And, unfortunately, quite an expensive one.”

“All right.”  Mermista’s hands were in her pockets.  She wasn’t sure why.  “Uh.  When we both get back to Salineas…I’ll make sure that you’re allowed in.  I think we gotta, like, talk and junk like that.”

“You did amazingly out there, babe!” said Glimmer, and kissed Adora on one blushing cheek.

Reactions were as varied as you would expect, honestly.  Catra, forcing down her immediate instinct to tense up and possibly vomit, quickly scanned the group.  Scorpia – traitor – appeared to find this cute, as did the Plumeri – Perfuma and Bow.  Mermista and Frosta appeared more irritated, Mask was unreadable, and Double Trouble just did their slow smile that could have meant anything and so communicated nothing.

Double Trouble looked at Catra, and somehow, in just a glint of their eye and a raise of their eyebrow, managed to communicate now’s our chance.

Right.  There was no point being in this bullshit relationship unless she and the shapeshifter made it overt, was there?

She slipped over to Double Trouble and said, forcing lightness into her voice, “So did you, babe.”

“Oh, you flatter me, kitten.”  Those chartreuse eyes glinted self-indulgently.  “And I do so love to be flattered, especially by you.”

Scorpia’s face visibly fell.  “So, uh.  You two are-”

“Oh, it’s early days yet, darling, but…it just feels right.  You know?”  Catra almost had to admire the shapeshifter’s gift for deception.  They didn’t give anything away.

Disappointingly, however, Adora didn’t catch fire and declare war on the spot.  Instead, she mostly just seemed nonplussed, and managed to blurt out some banal lines about hoping they’d be happy together.

That wasn’t great.  She made a mental note to discuss it with Double Trouble later; they might have to ramp up the public displays of affection or something.

“You summoned me, Captain?” oozed Commodore Shadow Weaver, her voice like the ink in a poisoned pen.

“I’m going to be straight with you, Shadow Weaver.”  Octavia drew herself up to her full height.  “We lost today, and we lost big.  I’ve been trying to do this alone, and it’s not working.  I know I could just order you to be more helpful, since I’m the one Hordak put in charge…but I don’t think that’s going to do the job.  I don’t just want your aid; I want an alliance.”

“And why should I help you, Captain?  Surely, it can only work to my benefit if you fail.”

“Because you want something,” said Octavia simply.  “I don’t know what.  I don’t care what.  Make me an offer.  But today the Horde lost an entire planet because of the ship we’re chasing.  I expect Hordak already has someone in mind to replace me if this happens again.  Get me a win, Shadow Weaver, and I’ll make sure you get whatever you want.”

The glowing eyes behind Shadow Weaver’s mask gave Octavia a feeling like she was being dissected.  Then the Commodore nodded.  “I will…come up with a suitable list of requests before long, Captain Octavia.”  She was almost out of the door when she stopped and turned to look over her shoulder.  “I had thought you too proud to admit your inadequacy.  Thank you for proving me wrong.”

The door slid shut behind the Commodore.

Chapter Text

Sentinos was warm – a lot warmer than most of the worlds they’d previously visited.  The only habitable world in a binary system, it was closer to the stars than most such planets, so the regions that would most often be cold tended to be temperate, and a lot of the dessicated belt at the equator was almost uninhabitable except by the native agamara.  A low water level meant that there was a lot of land for such a small planet, too – and most of it was fairly dry.

Catra hated it.

It wasn’t that Catra hated warmth.  Warmth was great.  More than once, as a kit, she’d fallen asleep on some particularly comfortable piece of equipment that happened to get warm.  But this felt like being slowly baked in the universe’s biggest oven.

Scorpia, in her second greatest act of betrayal since they’d joined the ship (the first was failing to be as grouchy about Adora’s little fling as she was), seemed entirely pleased by the situation, though.  Apparently, it was good for her carapace.

Sparkles had read rebel sign in some graffiti and led their little group to a house – a surprisingly humble adobe construction, with a moisture reclamation rig out the back and a prominent dome.  A slot in the door had slid open, and Glimmer had had a hushed conversation with whoever was inside – one hushed enough that even Catra’s keen hearing couldn’t pick anything out.

A single, easily audible, “HA!” burst from the house, and the slot closed.  Glimmer, with an expression like a meteor impact, had stomped back to them, the effect rather blunted by the quiet sand.

“He said,” Glimmer managed, voice dripping with outrage, “that he had met the Princess Glimmer personally, and knew I was just an impostor.”

Catra burst out laughing.

Huntara nudged her hat upward and studied the woman in front of her.  The bar lights gleamed off her tanned skin, particularly the shaved dome of her head.  She was wearing a practical black ensemble that left her arms and legs uncovered. 

She knew this person.  They hadn’t really run into each other socially, or competed for a target, so this was only the second time they’d actually met – and the first time had been on a Horde ship.

That had been a risk, but she’d had a contact take care of some files before she’d made her move, so she’d been cautiously optimistic – and hey, here she was still breathing, so obviously something had worked.

“Blade.”  It didn’t do to pick fights, but it also didn’t do to get too friendly, especially with someone like Blade.

“Huntara,” said Blade, her voice totally without emotion – way beyond the studied neutrality of bounty hunter etiquette.  If Blade’s life had gone differently, she could have had a good career in serial killer holoprograms.

“I assume you’re not here for a social call.”

That was a safe bet.  Bounty hunting was the kind of career where you tended not to have close friends – either in the profession or out of it.  Moving around in pursuit of targets tended to limit your regular social life, and every other hunter was, in theory, an impediment to your own career, so that tended not to encourage close bonds.  A few managed to run with small crews, but Huntara tended not to bother; she had a navigator, who took his cut and didn’t really bother her, and the rest of the universe wasn’t all that critical except when it was relevant to a mission.

Blade’s expression didn’t change.  “I wish to propose an alliance.”

“And I wish to be paid a billion lunes for each rep.  Doesn’t mean we get what we want.”

“Let us consider the facts.”  Blade began counting on her fingers.  “You are an exceptionally skilled tracker and combatant, and command commensurate prices, but you neglect your infrastructure.  You do not have access to reliable intelligence networks and default to a form of information-gathering that we may refer to as right hook cryptanalysis.”

“I’m gonna need that one in layman’s terms,” grunted Huntara, and took a drink.

“You obtain information by beating it out of people,” offered Blade.

“Hey, sometimes I pay.  And punching works.”

“But slowly and unreliably.  You lack the support structure to even reliably identify the correct person to punch.”

Huntara’s eyes narrowed as she said, “Opening the negotiation by calling me stupid isn’t winning you any points here, Blade.”

“I did not call you stupid.  I merely identified the flaws in your methodology.”  Blade coughed.  “My argument is simple enough, however.  In return for transport, assistance, and one-quarter of the total reward you negotiated for, I will provide you with temporary access to my information network.  I already have a lead on this ‘She-Ra’ that leads our prey.”

“Really, now?  And where’s she headed?”

“Surely you do not expect me to disclose that information prior to setting foot on your ship.”

Huntara shrugged and said, “Can’t blame a girl for trying.  Okay, Blade.  Let’s try it your way.  I accept your proposal; let’s try this as a team.  I’d offer you a drink, but I don’t think you indulge, do you?”

“I would not accept your offered drink in any case, Huntara.  You are doubtless aware that many in our profession would consider poison a viable strategy to get ahead?”

“Fair, I guess.”  Huntara finished her drink.  “Okay.  Let’s head for my ship and get ready.  You know which one it is?”

“You are quite renowned in this industry, Huntara.  It is why I selected you for this venture instead of, say, Dragstor.  Your ship no doubt remains the Insolence.”

The ship was, indeed, the Insolence: a long, broad-winged courier ship, which Huntara had bought commercially and then had refitted with high-speed engines, armour plating and weapons – some concealed, some not.

Blade had a case that, according to scans, held clothes and weapons.  Knowing Blade’s reputation, the clothes were probably copies of Blade’s normal outfit, and the weapons were, at least on the monitor, a variety of sharp edges – mostly swords of various types.  Well, that tracked.  Bounty hunters tended not to be too creative when it came to naming; Blade didn’t earn her nickname as some ironic gag in the “calling a blue-haired man Blondie” sense, which bounty hunters tended not to do much in any case.

“So,” said Huntara idly.  “Here’s your room, sorry it’s a holding cell, don’t have much space, door’s not locked.  Meals are ex-Horde ration bars until we get paid.  Hope you have something to occupy your time; I’m not much for socialising.”

“Socialising is inefficient.”  Blade’s voice remained icy and level.  “We are business partners, not friends.”

“And as long as we all remember that, we’ll get along fine.”  Huntara leaned against the wall.  “Well, you have what you wanted; now, you hold up your end of the bargain.  Where are we headed?”

“Sentinos.  My sources have reported the presence of the ‘She-Ra’ we are pursuing.”

The largest settlement on Sentinos, Dukhan City, was a far cry from the neon-drenched spires of Bognis or the polluted hellscape of Ribnoss.  It was just a larger version of a regular settlement, with a few multi-storey buildings – not the kind of towering skyline that Catra instinctively thought of as “city”.

She, Sparkles, Double Trouble, Bow and Perfuma had spread out around the city, trying to find this fake “Princess Glimmer” and find out what was going on.  Catra might just have to shake her hand if they did meet; Sparkles had been almost levitating with rage, and Catra kind of respected anyone who could cause that.

She scanned the street, thankful for the anonymity of the white, hooded robe she was wearing, noting potential threats and suspects.  There were Horde guards moving through the scattered citizens, mostly scorpioni and reptilians; it was easy to tell the green off-planet Horde reptilians from the native agamara, whose brown-scaled bodies were covered in thorny spines.  The omnipresent robes made it hard to tell who was who – anyone who wasn’t Horde or an agamara was shrouded in fabric.

Hang on.

Catra didn’t have much in the world, especially now that any hope of gaining rank or position in the Horde was effectively dead.  What she did have, at least until further time spent aboard the former Constrictor caused her brain to rot, was a keen sense for anything suspicious.

And the two people ducking into a doorway looked very suspicious, especially since one of them had very round shoulders that could, potentially, be a Lunavian’s wings.

She made a mental note of the doorway and settled in to watch.

“And how is the outside world going?” asked Rhod, teeth bared in a grin that would have been a nightmarish field of razors to anyone who didn’t know him.  The tall agamara had been keeping an eye on the screens, making sure that they didn’t run into any kind of Horde-related problems that could be picked up on the cameras they’d hidden around the place.

“Still sucks,” Frigg told him bluntly.  The Lunavian’s earrings glinted under her hood, which was drawn further forward than usual to conceal her nose – which was a waste of effort, in Ember’s opinion, since it wasn’t like the beak-like surface could even get sunburned.  “The Horde’s getting closer.”

“They’ll never catch us,” said Ember, a cocky grin barely visible under her own hood.

“I really hope you’re right, Ember,” said the fourth member of their little group.  Artemis threw back her hood, revealing a pair of catlike ears sticking out of her white hair.  “I’m getting tired of being cooped up in here all the time.  I wanna get out, breathe some fresh air.”

“I gotta stretch my legs too, dawgs,” said Rhod, rising from the chair.  They’d managed to track down one specifically made for agamara, which was to say that it was made for resilience first and comfort second; there was a single cushion, which was mostly intact because it was directly under the mercifully spike-free butt.  “If, ah, you guys could spot me, I’ll go out and make sure nothing goes wrong.”

At Ember and Frigg’s nods, Artemis smiled and moved to raise her hood –

“Don’t forget,” said Ember, and jerked her head towards a battered old cabinet in the corner.  Her own hood fell back, revealing golden eyes and red hair.

Artemis’s face scrunched up in frustration.  “Right, thanks.”  The top drawer slid open with a faint scratching sound as the white-haired magicat extracted some medication.  “You took yours?”

“Hell yeah.”  Ember made a face.  “Wish we didn’t have to worry, sometimes.”

“I mean, I hate running out more than I hate taking them.”

“Guess I can’t argue with that, kid.  Now go on, get those neurotransmitters.”

Once Artemis and Rhod had made their way out into the street, Artemis shrouded in a hood, Frigg said, “Still got it bad for her, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“Look, Em.”  Frigg laid a hand on her partner in crime’s shoulder.  “This was your plan.  Give the rubes a She-Ra to idolise, make a profit.  The hell do you think you’re doing catching feelings now?”

“You think I don’t know that?”  Ember made a face.  “A planet of possible Faux-Ras and we had to run into the one candidate that makes me feel bad about doing it.”

The next day, Catra witnessed her first miracle.

Three hooded figures had made their way out of the door; the agamara she’d noticed was presumably staying behind as mission control.  She had tailed them to a church on the outskirts of town, where the Horde probably wouldn’t go – and she thought she could see an aerial drone following them, probably courtesy of the agamara.

As an ersatz shooting star had appeared above them, one Catra could tell was a broad-winged light courier ship, she had overheard one of them – the Lunavian – introduce herself as “Captain Glimmer, Scourge of the Starways,” a title that was so ridiculous in the context of Sparkles that Catra almost found it funny-

“And this,” continued the ersatz Sparkles, “is She-Ra.”

One of the others threw back their hood.

It wasn’t a terrible choice of helmet, Catra had to admit.  It didn’t look much like the real thing, but then, it wasn’t as if the Horde exactly publicised that image.  It did look familiar…oh, right, it was a guard helmet from Montaletto, hastily repainted in white and gold.  Somehow, she suspected that it wasn’t issued to them officially.

As the congregation, led by their priestess, began to turn over their wallets, she brought her comms online and said, “So I found out what they’re doing.  They’ve got a fake She-Ra and they’re using her to scam money out of people.”

“So disappointing.”

“I didn’t think you were the self-righteous type, Dee.”  The abbreviation just slipped out – but hey, they were supposed to be selling this relationship, weren’t they?

“Who’s being moral, kitten?”  Double Trouble actually sounded amused at the thought.  “I’m just upset I didn’t think of it first.”

“It’s not like Adora would have gone along with it.”

There was a brief pause, and then Double Trouble said, “Kitten, what do you think I do again?”

Catra could have kicked herself.  A tightening sensation surrounded one of her wrists; it felt like a shackle.

Concentrate, Catra!  If you continue to disappoint, there will be…consequences.

“Damn it,” she muttered, shaking her wrist, as if that memory of Shadow Weaver was a bug that had landed there or something.  It looked like the prey were moving on.

“I don’t like this,” grumbled Artemis as she stuffed the She-Ra helmet into a sack.

“It’s for a greater good,” Ember told her.  “Look, the Rebellion needs money, and those guys don’t need it.”

“They didn’t look that rich,” Artemis said suspiciously.

“They look richer than us,” muttered Frigg, before Ember elbowed her in the ribs.

“C’mon, Art.  We did a good thing today.”  For us.

Artemis stiffened, all of a sudden.

The navigation pod on the Insolence split open, and Kronis stepped out into the light, the cables that linked him to the system disconnecting from ports on his back as he moved.

Huntara favoured her navigator with a nod.  She didn’t know how Kronis had ended up with this many prostheses, and she hadn’t asked; honestly, as long as he did his job, kept his razor-edged yap shut about the things she needed him to keep his yap shut about, and didn’t demand more of a cut, everything would be just fine as far as she was concerned.

Kronis had never been one of those navigators who was content to just lurk on the ship, wired up to the computer.  (Admittedly, the Insolence couldn’t fit a great AI, so she couldn’t exactly blame him for wanting to get out more.)  She didn’t tend to call on his help much on jobs, and she didn’t ask what he did.  For all she knew he went to shady bars and bet his money on whatever kind of animal they raced in the local culture.

There wasn’t much meat left on Kronis’s wiry frame, not after whatever had led him to this.  Part of his face – and not even the major parts; his fingers, for whatever reason; and she’d had one or two glimpses of patches of skin lower on his chest.   The rest of him was dark, dented metal: chest reinforcement with the intersecting plates of a cockroach, arms that moved with the aid of hissing pistons, glowing red eye lenses, and as for that lower jaw…

Somewhere in Huntara’s kit, she had a trap designed to catch large predators – a crude assemblage of springs and steel.  It was not a humane trap.  Kronis’s lower jaw put her in mind of that kind of trap.

“Huntara,” said the navigator.  No matter how long she’d known him, Huntara always expected his voice to sound like screaming gears or a deep, echoing drone – not the relatively soft voice he actually possessed.

“You got us here nearly a day ahead of time,” grunted Huntara.  “I figure that’s worth an extra few percent of the take when we bring in the quarry.”

It was possibly the hardest thing in the world to read Kronis’s expression when so much of his face couldn’t form them.  Still, Huntara thought she caught the hints that she’d come to recognise as a smile.

“Very generous,” he muttered.

Catra turned her comms back on and said, “Looks like the knockoffs might be in for a rough night.”

“Horde patrol?” said Glimmer, wearily.

“Two.  I think someone tipped them off.”

Them.  Not that long ago it’d been us.

Catra forced down that train of thought and refocused her attention on the scene unfolding before her.  The Horde squads obviously didn’t think much of their opposition; they were approaching in the open, relying on intimidation, rather than gearing up for an ambush.  A couple were armed with slightly heavier weapons than would be standard for a street patrol.

The fake She-Ra was the first to notice them – and, as her head whipped around, Catra followed her gaze and noticed a civilian was also on the scene, standing behind them.  Just some dumb kid, in an ideal position to get hit by stray fire, probably following Catra’s quarry.

The fake She-Ra shifted backwards, and Catra could tell she was trying to move between the Horde soldiers and the kid.  They’d definitely picked a good choice for an Adora knockoff.

The patrols began to close in, tightening the noose.  The scammers could either accept arrest and likely death, or try to run, leading them into the other squads that, in standard tac doctrine, would be coming up from behind them, probably taking care not to be noticed so they could spring the trap-

As the fake She-Ra dived back to scoop up the kid, one of the hooded ones – Catra caught a glimpse of red hair and golden eyes under the hood – stepped forward, raising a hand.

A sheet of flame filled the street, and the Horde troops – clearly as taken aback by this development as Catra was – immediately moved from an offensive posture to diving for cover or flinching back.  This confusion would only last for a few moments, Catra knew, and the third hooded figure, the Lunavian, flung a fistful of knives at the Horde and ducked into a side path, closely followed by the fake She-Ra and the kid she’d just rescued.

Then there was a loud clang noise, and Catra refocused her attention on the Horde troops as one of them finished bouncing and came to a halt in a dented heap.  As Catra watched, a second one was lifted off the ground, then hurled bodily into a third, moving like he’d been fired out of a cannon.

The fourth member of the little gang, the agamara, was suddenly in view, at least of Catra; the troops probably couldn’t see where he was.  A gleam of metal and crystal on his left arm gave Catra some idea about how this was working, and that was only reinforced as he gestured with that arm and hurled another Horde soldier into a wall.

As the troops broke and fled, Catra reopened the channel.

“Hey, Adora?  Kick your imaginary friend out of bed and ask her about magic fire powers.  I have some questions about this.”

“About starsdamn time,” said Ember, as the newly-created glass in the street glinted in the moonlight.  “You couldn’t have warned us?”

“They jammed my channel, dawg!”  Rhod held up his hands.  His left was wrapped in a chunky gauntlet of steel and salvaged crystal, which Ember instantly recognised as his magnet cannon.  (It had a technical name but “magnet cannon” usually worked well enough.)  “I knew they were coming, I just couldn’t tell you!”

“Well, thanks for the save anyway, dude.”  She patted him on the arm, carefully angling it to avoid some of the larger spikes.  “Do you think they have our hideout?”

“Nah, probably not.  Maybe a bit more careful as we head back, though, dawg?”

“We probably should, yeah.”  She turned to Artemis.  “You okay, Art?”

“Yeah, I’m all right.”  She kneeled down and put a hand on the child’s shoulder.  “You go back home, okay, kid?  There could be more on the way.”

“Sure thing, She-Ra!” said the kid, and fled.

“You, there,” said Huntara, and all the kids around the one she’d pointed at scattered.  “You were talking about the She-Ra, right?”

“Who’s askin’?” demanded the kid.

“Me.  If you’re smart, you won’t make me do it more than once.”

“I’m gonna be smarter.  You’re not gonna need to ask at all.”  The kid was being way too cocky for someone talking to a woman of Huntara’s build.  “I’m not telling you squat about She-Ra.”

Blade moved forward, only to slam into Huntara’s suddenly outstretched arm.

“Well, kid, at least you were honest.”  Huntara’s hand dipped into a pocket, and she flipped a coin to the child – a single Brightmoon lune, the standard currency of the Free Territories.  “If you want more, I’m willing to buy your information.”

“She-Ra saved my life, lady.  I like her a lot better than you.”  The kid looked shifty for a second.  “Thanks for the cash.”

As they disappeared around a corner, Blade said, in a voice like steel, “You should have allowed me to operate.  I would have gained the information we require, without the expense.”

“Some of us were kids once, Blade.  When they know we’ll pay, someone will come to us.  Much more reliable, and less bloody, than torturing it out of people.”

“It would not have been torture.”  Blade underscored the words with a theatrical sniff.  “The child would have told us everything before I even needed to break the skin-”

“No.”

“Light Hope?” sent Adora, into the mindspace that she’d come to think of as Light Hope’s mental training room.

Lights shifted and shone, and Light Hope took shape.  Adora.  What do you require?

“I need to know something.  You said there were five Runestones, and we’ve brought three online: the Pearl, the Fractal Flake and the Heart-Blossom.  Right?”

That is correct.

“Are either of the others online?  We’ve found someone who has very Runestone-like fire powers.”

Light Hope analysed that for a few moments, before saying, Neither the Black Garnet nor the Moonstone exhibit fire abilities.  However…

“However?”

There were other First One projects that experimented with Runestone technology.  It is possible that some of them are still functioning.  I will gather what information I can.

“Thanks-”

The buzz of a comm signal intruded on the conversation, and the mindspace was replaced by the wall of her room on the ship.  She sighed and said, “Yes?”

“We’ve got company, darling.”  Double Trouble’s voice was all business.

“The Horde?”

“Not directly; Entrapta thinks the Fright Zone is going to be out of commission for at least another few weeks, while they repair and resupply.  No, our problem is local.  I saw a couple of people around that I know by reputation.”

“And these people would be…”

“A couple of bounty hunters, darling – big names, too, not like Dragact or whatever his name was.”

“Dragstor?”

“Do I sound like I care, darling?”  She could almost see Double Trouble shaking their head at that.  “We’re getting off-topic.  Look out for a shaven-headed woman with a collection of swords or a huge, beefy purple woman with white hair.  I’m surprised to see them working together, honestly; Huntara is one of those people who likes to dress their antics up in codes and morals, and Blade would feed skitlets into a wood chipper if it made her enough money.”

“I hate her already.”

“I find it refreshingly honest, darling.  Huntara can do whatever she likes to salve her conscience, but she’s still the enemy; at least Blade never pretends to morality.”

Adora couldn’t help but ask, “Since when have you cared about honesty or morality?”

“I think they’re both wonderful traits for people who aren’t me to have, Ad – uh, darling.”

There was a small courtyard where Ember liked to come to…well, not brood.  She was absolutely against calling it brooding. Snotty teenagers brooded.  Ember was here to take stock of her life.  In a brood-ish fashion.

It had a tree in the centre, part of a pre-Horde effort at ensuring some measure of greenery was available to ordinary citizens.  It was looking somewhat wilted, because there wasn’t much water to go around, but it was still here, at least.

“Hey!”

This again.  She must have run into fifty of these clowns since the scam started going.  Ember forced a smile onto her face as she turned and said, “Pilgrim, I can’t help you talk to She-Ra about your-”

“Damn right you can’t,” said the stranger, her purple eyes narrowed under her hood.  “You’re a fraud, whoever you are.”

Damn.  “I’m sorry?”

The stranger’s answer was to punch Ember in the face.

The Hearthstone’s power seethed for a moment, wanting to be released, hungering to destroy, but Ember forced it down; she wasn’t going to start a, heh, firefight right now.  Fists only, for the moment.  She batted aside another punch and lunged, managing a glancing blow before the stranger hurled herself forward in a tackle.

Horde soldiers began boiling into the courtyard, at least two squads’ worth, and Ember and her opponent looked at each other.  Then, the newcomer shrugged; something about the gesture, the way her shoulders moved under her robe, reminded Ember of Frigg.

Ember gave her a nod in return and hurled a fireball at the approaching Horde troops, while a carbine seemingly materialised in the stranger’s hands.

“Why didn’t you just shoot me?”  Ember put as much volume into it as possible, to be heard over the chaos.

“Did you want me to shoot you?  I can still change my mind about it!”

“You’re avoiding the question!”

The noise died down as the remaining Horde soldiers fled.  The tree was slightly singed now, but it wasn’t actually on fire.  Ember felt weirdly pleased about that.

“I wanted to know what you were playing at, what kind of person you were.”  Those eyes cut through Ember like amethyst knives.  “I’m still not sure.  But at least you’re not the sort of person who went for the kill first.  That’s something, I guess.”

As the stranger vanished into the distance, Ember scowled.  She needed to do some thinking, and if she did it here, the next wave would pose a problem.

The priestess dangled from a very large fist as the sword tickled her nose.

“All we are asking,” said Blade, in a very bad approximation of a pleasant tone, “is whether you are the one who saw the She-Ra.  That information may save lives.”

“Yours, for one,” threw in Huntara.

The priestess looked daggers at her, but daggers were noticeably shorter than swords.  After a few seconds, she grated, “Yes, that was me.”

“Excellent.”  Blade didn’t lower her namesake.  “Tell us everything.”

As the information-stripped priest slumped to the ground, dispatched into unconsciousness with a nerve strike Blade knew, Huntara bashed the coordinates into the unit on her wrist.

“Your theory about information making its way to us does not appear to be accurate,” observed Blade.

“Shut up.”

“Oh hey, you’re back!” said Artemis cheerfully.  “I’m gonna head out for a bit, then; I was starting to feel really cooped up in here.  And don’t worry; I’ve already had my pills.  Go take yours, OK, Em?”

Without saying a word, Ember scanned the others, paying particular attention to their eyes.  Frigg’s were cold, saying, without words, we have a good thing going here, don’t screw it up.  Rhod’s…

Rhod’s said do what you need to do, dawg, I’ll have your back whatever.

She turned to the front door as Artemis reached out and said, “Kiddo – Artemis.  Wait.”

She was insane.  This was the worst idea she’d ever had.

Yet it was also the only thing she could do.  The only thing her stupid, treacherous heart would let her do.

“I need to tell you something – right now.  I hope you won’t hate me…but I’ll understand if you do.”

“I don’t think I could hate you, Ember-”

“Let me tell you first before you say things like that, okay?”  She took a deep breath.  This was going to suck.

Bow’s quarry sat in the tree, obviously stewing.

Their surveillance of the little hideout had turned up the interesting detail of one of them storming away, obviously furious about something.  It didn’t sit great with him, trying to see if he could get anything out of that breach, but at the same time, they needed to look into it at least a bit.

“You, uh, you were with those people who were going around talking about She-Ra, right?”  That seemed a safe opener.  Gave her plenty of opportunities to just say no if she didn’t want to get involved.

“I was,” grated the magicat.  “All I starsdamn wanted to do was help people!  But what’s the point?  People just take advantage of you!  They act like they’re all nice and fun and helpful, get you to trust them, and then it turns out you were just getting screwed over from the word go!”

The hooded figure was silent.  Then, he said, “I, uh, know a couple of things about the real She-Ra.”

“Yeah, right.  I’m not gonna fall for-”

“I’m not trying to sell you something!  Even if you don’t think it’s true, you can at least listen to the end, right?”

“I guess.”

“Do you know what She-Ra is – who She-Ra is, deep down?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t.”

“Under the armour, and the lights, and the sword, and the destiny, and all of that…She-Ra is just someone who wants to help people.  And the thing about wanting to help people is that it has a power, all its own.  The Horde isn’t afraid of the Rebellion because of She-Ra; the Horde is afraid of the Rebellion because it knows that as soon as people no longer fear it, it no longer has any power.”

“Huh.  I guess I never thought of it like that.”

As the magicat headed off, Bow nodded to himself.  It was good to know that at least one of the people involved in the scam had meant well – even if it hadn’t ended up working out for them-

Then, cutting through his train of thought like an orbital shot, there was an explosion, a way off.

Over where most of the others would be headed.

Bow started to run.

Fifty feet away, so did Artemis.

The bridge sagged alarmingly, sandstone chunks falling from the holes in both support pillars on this side, and Adora began to recite the worst words she knew as she raced into position.  She cut off the string of profanities to open an opportunity to say, “For the honour of Grayskull!”

The metal of her armour began to groan as she braced herself, straining to hold up the entire weight of the bridge without support.  It wasn’t going to last.  She-Ra was strong, but not that strong; it was like trying to hold up the Riptide, while that had still been a thing.

The pressure reduced, just a bit, and she looked to the other pillar to see a solid, squat pillar of ice.  Frosta’s tiny face was locked in an expression of pure bloody-minded refusal to admit defeat – it reminded Adora of ones she’d seen on Glimmer, a few times – as she fought to keep the pillar strong in the noonday heat.

“Adora!”  Glimmer’s voice was in her ear.  “I’m moving as fast as I can, and so is Mask – what’s going on?”

“Someone blew the bridge!”

“Blade.”  This voice was Double Trouble’s, and they sounded surprisingly grim.  “It’s exactly her kind of move.  Be on the lookout, darlings; she’ll probably be there soon.”

Blade reeled.

Huntara’s punch hadn’t been an idle tap on the arm from an irritated friend.  It had brought all of Huntara’s weight to bear in a single brutal haymaker, and Huntara had a lot of weight to bring to bear, virtually all of it muscle.

After a few seconds, Blade shook off enough of the impact to speak.

“You are wasting time, Huntara.  Our prey is being flushed from cover.”

“Cover?”  Huntara picked up Blade by the collar and slammed her into a wall.  Their little observation post shook from the impact; the structure was held up mostly by twine, from the feel of it.  “Those are citizens, you-” She bit back the worst words she knew.

The swordswoman’s icy reserve was obviously melting now, and the rage within was emerging.  It was like an entirely different person was emerging from cryo.  “And to think that you are the one they all respect.  You are nothing but a coward, Huntara-”

Huntara’s fist lashed out, and Blade suddenly lost interest in proceedings.

“Maybe,” muttered Huntara, “but I’m a coward who has her own ship.”

Ember kicked a Horde guard’s legs out from under them and looked up at the chaos.  As she’d hoped, her number one friend for attracting chaos was in the area.

“Rhod, use your magnet cannon!”

“But she’s holding up the bridge, dawg-”

“Not on her, dummy!”  Ember gestured around.  “Get some metal in there as a support!”

“Ooooh. Gotcha!”

Metal railings and scraps of damaged girder began to fly up, forming a metal skeleton, rising up into the space that was now being vacated by the swiftly-melting pillar of ice.

Then Ember concentrated, raising her hand.

The flame that hit the metal was so hot it was almost white.  As the metal glowed cherry-red, Ember yelled, “Use the ice now, junior!”

Frosta nodded, and, in a hiss of steam, the metal cooled, now welded into one mass.  It wasn’t pretty, but at least it was holding some of the weight.

“Now the other one!  She-Ra – get out of there, we got this!”

Adora stepped out as a second metal pillar started to rise.  The hasty repair job wouldn’t hold it forever, but it would at least buy time for people to get off the bridge.

As the crowd raced around her, she realised that someone, at least, was standing still, and turned to see a set of eyes, trained on her like a sniper’s scope.

Artemis’s eyes.

“You helped them.”  Artemis’s voice was low, but somehow it cut through the hubbub.  “You saved them.”

Ember pulled out her best dismissive hand gesture.  Somehow, it didn’t seem to be as flippant as it was supposed to be.  “Eh, I was in the neighbourhood-”

“Why do you do this?”  Ember started back at the sudden anger in Artemis’s voice.  “Every time, it’s like this!  You open up, then you try to run away!  You confessed to me, when you didn’t have to, but now you’re back to lying!”  Tears were running down her face.  “I want to care about you, but you can’t seem to be honest!  Ember…was anything real?”

Ember looked her dead in the eyes and said, “Artemis, this is the only real thing I’ve felt in my entire life.”

Their lips met, and everything else stopped mattering.

“You sure you won’t come with us?” asked Glimmer.  “I mean, there’s plenty of room on the ship, and the Rebellion could use your…”  She made a face.  “Firepower.”

“Nah, we should probably stay here.”  Ember eyed the street and continued, “We’ve got a lot to make up for, and we should really start here.  You guys have fun, though.”

Glimmer’s eyes scanned Ember’s expression.  “Not just to the people here, I suspect?”

“I mean, obviously to the people here…”  Ember’s cheeks coloured as Glimmer looked right through her.  “Artemis is one of the people here, it’s technically right!”

“She looked like she already forgave you?”  Glimmer gave a little smile.  “I mean, the kiss was kind of a hint.”

“She might have…but that doesn’t mean I have.”  Ember’s eyes darted to the ground and she continued, “I lied to her, manipulated her, used her good heart to make money.  Sure, I feel bad about it, but just because she’s willing to look past it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.  I want to be a better person for her; no-one’s ever made me feel like that before, and I don’t want to screw it up like I’ve screwed up everything else.”

“I know that feeling.”  Glimmer patted Ember gently on the arm.  “You’ll do fine.”

“Going somewhere, dawg?”

Frigg froze in the middle of stuffing currency into a sack.  After a few seconds, she said, “Ember’s out of the game, Artemis knows, and I know that in this kind of choice you’d go with Ember.  I might as well take my cut and go.”  Rhod’s eye fell on the sack, and after a few moments, she added, “Okay, and maybe a little bit of Ember’s too.  Consider it a penalty for ruining a good thing.”

“I dunno, Frigg.  It looks like we’re gonna be joining the rebellion properly, and, uh, I kinda wanna try doing the right thing for a bit?”  Rhod shrugged his surprisingly powerful shoulders.  “Might be nice, you know?  Be able to look my mirror in the eye, kind of thing?”

There was a painful pause, and then Frigg dropped the sack.  “Okay, fine.  When did you get so good at guilt-tripping?  Shouldn’t even work on me.”

“I knew you weren’t as hard as you acted, dawg!”

“Yeah, not a great choice of words there, lizard boy.”  Frigg shook her head.  “Where’s that hot Lunavian Ember was talking to?  I figure if she’s not going to make a move, I might have a chance-”

“Already headed off-planet, dawg, and I think she was also spoken for; that, ah, human girl who did the She-Ra thing was pretty close to her.”  Rhod pulled back the sleeve of his robe, to reveal a sleeker, shinier gauntlet than previously.  “They did have a robot work on my cannon, though!  The charge lasts way longer now.”

“I lose out on my cut of the loot and you guys got all the cool stuff.  This whole ‘rebellion’ thing better at least be good for picking up girls, or I’m quitting.”

“Where is Blade?” asked Kronis, in a voice like metal being sharpened.

Huntara shrugged, a gesture that had gotten her some very entertaining evenings given how far across her shoulders were.  “She ruined the mission.  Blew an important bridge, risked a lot of citizens’ lives.  Horde really shouldn’t encourage that sort of thing, and when our quarry stopped it from falling, that made sure we’d only be able to carry them off in the teeth of a popular revolt.”

“We both know it doesn’t care.”

“I don’t give a shit, Kro.  I do.”

“I know.”  Huntara could see her navigator’s rictus grin in her mind’s eye.  “I’ll plot some courses for their most likely destinations.  If we’re going to have to wait for payoff, at least I’m getting a cut of a bigger number.”

“It’s been too long since we last did this,” said Adora, pressing two pieces of broken pottery together.  “Too much training.”

“I know.”  Glimmer reached for the brush.  “I’m sorry that holding up that bridge put so much weight on you, but I am glad that it let us do some of this again.”

“Yeah.”  Adora slotted her last piece into the disassembled cup, locking in the spiderweb of golden lines, and said, “There we go.”

“Nice!”  Glimmer put down her own pieces.  “I can’t look at these any more.  They’re just not fitting.”

“It’s getting late, anyway.  I should be getting back to my own cabin…”  She reached for the hastily assembled cane she’d been issued with; one of her knees had had some objections to trying to hold up an entire bridge, even with Frosta’s help, and Bow – the closest thing they had to a medic – had put her on it.

“Uh…Adora?”  She could see Glimmer’s furious blush.  “I, uh…I was wondering if you might be interested in…spending the night here?”

Adora immediately felt her face go up ten degrees, and Glimmer’s eyes widened.

“Not, uh.  Not like that.  Unless you want to!  I just…”  Glimmer took a deep breath.  “I know you’ve been adjusting to sleeping without a squad, but…I’ve been feeling a bit lonely, lately.  Homesick, I guess.  I’d just…I’d like to know what it’s like to fall asleep, holding you.”  She gave Adora a crooked smile.  “It’s okay if you don’t want to.  Just wanted to say.”

It took Adora a few seconds before she could speak, and even then, she chose not to.  She just smiled at Glimmer and reached over with the cane to hit the “seal” button on the door.

Adora.

Adora’s eyes fluttered open.  Mindful that Glimmer was draped over her like a backpack, she tried to think at Light Hope, rather than say anything out loud; Glimmer deserved her sleep.

What do you want, Hope?

I have the information you requested.  Hope seemed a little embarrassed, somehow.  The Hearthstone was part of another project, which is indirectly connected to the Heart of Etheria via the overall grid.  I am unable to directly draw power from it.

Darn, sent back Adora.

I may be able to filter some spillover to our needs by interacting with the grid as a whole, but it will not be enough to obviate the need for any Runestones.  Your mission will continue.

Thanks, Hope.

…You are welcome.

The presence in her mind vanished, and Adora drifted back to sleep.

Chapter Text

“So those are the high-scoring arrangements, darlings,” finished Double Trouble.  “Two stars and any four planets for a binary system.  Matched star and flagship and any four ships for a fleet.  If you can’t get either of those, try for a set of same-colour or same-number planets, or a star and any five planets for a unitary system.  Craters are dead draws, unless you can get all six – it almost never happens – in which case everyone’s cards go back to the deck and new hands are dealt.  And that’s how you play celestos. Sound straightforward?”

Catra shrugged.  “No, but I can probably figure it out.”

Entrapta paused, her head cocked like she was listening to music no-one else could hear.  “I’ve made a note of it!  Deal me in!”

“Actually,” Mermista said, “I’m, like, gonna deal for this, because I don’t trust this shifty bastard further than I can throw them.”

“I’m quite light, darling.  You could probably throw me pretty far.”

“Not the point…and I’m just a little worried that might be a sex thing for you now,” Mermista shot back; Double Trouble’s only response was a grin.  The Salinean favoured the other players with a small smile, though; Glimmer looked a little suspicious, and Bow’s own smile grew slightly.  “Gotta admit, though, it’s been, like, weeks since we last did this, and I gotta win back some of the money I got cheated out of last time.”

“Showing you your own tells isn’t cheating, darling, and in any case, we’re not playing live-fire today.”  The Metamaran’s slender shoulders moved in a shrug.  “I wanted to go ahead anyway, make sure our new players had skin in the game, but according to her Highness-” here, they nodded to Glimmer, “-we need to save it for vitally important supplies and it Would Be Wrong for me to collect it all and demand to be made captain in exchange for us being able to refuel…or so I’ve been told.”

“You wouldn’t want this job anyway, DT,” Glimmer told them.  

After a few rounds – Double Trouble was winning, as usual, but Catra had managed to claw a little bit of a lead over the others – Bow said, “Aren’t we near the Noctebus system?”

“Hmm…yes, we would be, wouldn’t we, darling?”  This was addressed to Entrapta, who nodded.  “And there is a lot of money in Noctebus…” continued Double Trouble, in the manner of one consulting the menu at a fancy restaurant.

Catra’s eyes narrowed.  “Assume, for the moment, that I haven’t heard much about any system that isn’t a combat zone.”

“Oh, Noctebus is still a combat zone, darling; just not one with guns.”  Double Trouble’s grin widened somehow.  “It has one of the biggest, richest casinos in the fringes, backed by one of the nastier crime syndicates.  The Web have their fingers in a lot of pies, and a lot of money goes through the casino…which makes it, I must admit, darlings, an extremely tempting target.”

“Do we really want another set of crime bosses upset at us?” pointed out Bow.

“It’s not as if the last one has really posed us much of a problem, has he, darling?  Does anyone here even remember his name?”

Glimmer rubbed her chin and said, “Scheiss, wasn’t it?”

“Sschisz, actually.  And I don’t think any of us have seen Tung Lashor since then, so his vow to kill us seems…overstated, to say the least.”

The visor had a sickly yellow glow, a tint closer to jaundice than gold.  Its wearer leaned back, steepling his long, multi-jointed fingers, and the vertical rows of twitching fangs that made up his mouth shook in what Tung Lashor realised was a sigh.

“And you think your prey will be coming here…why?” demanded Araneus, his voice a high-pitched rasp.

“They screwed Sschisz, didn’t they?” said Tung Lashor bullishly.  “They screwed him, I can’t rule out them trying to screw you-”

For such long, seemingly delicate things, Araneus’s fingers had a crushing strength to them as they closed on Tung Lashor’s throat.  “Sschisz,” said Araneus, deceptively quietly, “is a sad little lizard with delusions of grandeur, a bottom-feeder to the core.  He thrives on Karnox because nobody cares enough to take it from him.  If he could not control his contractors, that is his business-”

“B…BST-ILN,” managed Tung Lashor.

“What?”

Tung Lashor gurgled for a few seconds in reply, and then Araneus reluctantly released his grip.  “The…the Horde wants them…because they cracked open BST-ILN,” said the Karnoxian, fighting for breath.  “Sure, the Web’s tough, but they’re already wanted by the Horde; what’s one more enemy after you hit the toughest prison in the galaxy and got out unscathed?  And the biggest, richest casino in the galaxy is…I mean, I’d be thinkin’ about how to knock it over if I had the manpower.”  After a few extremely tense seconds, he added, “Which I don’t.”

Araneus evaluated this.  Finally, he nodded.  “You may operate on Noctebus, under sufferance, but.”  He held up one terrifyingly long finger.  “If you interfere in the orderly operation of our perfectly legitimate business, you will face appropriate penalties.”

“Huh?  I don’t know what that means-”

“Then let me be less abstruse, Tung Lashor,” said Araneus, and removed his visor.  Oh, too many eyes glared into Tung Lashor’s.  “Screw up and I will devour you.”

Glimmer began to think she should keep a closer eye on the ship when she walked into the Planning Room.

This had not been here for the job at Montaletto.

It was a good room.  It had a lot of stuff that looked useful for planning future crimes: a large array of screens and holoprojectors, an actual tactical map table similar to the kind of thing you’d find in the war room at Brightmoon Castle or the command centre of a flagship, an old-fashioned whiteboard for some reason, and so on.

But it had also been added sometime in the last few weeks, without anyone actually telling her, and now she was beginning to wonder what other facilities this ship now had that nobody had told her existed.

“Hi Glimmer!”

Glimmer jolted backwards as an inverted Entrapta suddenly appeared in front of her, dangling from the ceiling by her mass of cybernetic hair.  “Uh.  Hi, Entrapta.  Did you…”  She gestured around.

“Yeah!  We weren’t using this space for anything, and with the amount of crime we do it kind of made sense to have a full-scale crime planning room, so I made one!  Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, pretty cool.  Uh, Entrapta…I’m really glad that you built this, it looks really useful, but could you just…tell me before you do stuff like this, just let me…sign off on it, okay?”

“Okay, but…if I know something would be useful, why wait?”

“Uh…”  Inspiration struck.  “What if someone thinks of something useful you could add?  Like, if you were building a gym, you’d want to ask Adora or Scorpia about it, since they exercise the most?”

“Oh.  Oh yeah, that’s a good point!  Okay, I’ll get that kind of input for anything else I do.  Is there anything this room could use, do you think?”

“Uh.  Uh.  No, this is…great…say, did you add any other-”

But Entrapta had already ducked back up to the ceiling, and Double Trouble was taking the stage.  Everyone else was arriving, too – Adora, still walking with a crutch after Sentinos; Frosta, who glowered from a chair; Perfuma, who was seated behind Scorpia and seemed to be entirely fine with that even though she could barely see the screen.  Even Mask was there, although he was waiting by the door, obviously ill at ease.

“Well, darlings,” began Double Trouble, grinning in the manner of some kind of dangerous deep-sea predator, “who wants to cost a crime syndicate a great deal of money?”

Mermista raised a hand and said, “I assume we, like, get to keep it?”

“Oh, of course, darling, of course.  While giving the Web’s accountants a few weeks of sleepless nights would certainly be rewarding in and of itself, we are, it has to be said, experiencing a few cash flow problems.  Besides, darling, I can hardly win all of your money at cards if none of us have any.”  If Mermista’s eyes could kill Double Trouble would have been drifting ash.  “All right, all right, darling, it was just a joke.  Now, our number one target is the charmingly named Blue Widow.  It’s one of the largest casinos in the galaxy, and it launders so much money that the chips taste like soap.”

Now Scorpia’s claw was in the air.  “Uh, sorry if this is a dumb question, but, uh…what does that mean?”

“It means, darling,” said Double Trouble evenly, “that the Web uses it to make it look like the money it gets from, for example, gun-running ended up in their pockets legitimately.  It’s almost perfect for it, honestly; if a visitor comes from off-planet, uses a fake name and ID to make it hard to trace, loses a lot of money playing an obviously crooked game of celestos or pumps it into a machine, how is anyone going to know that they were a middle-man dropping off the proceeds of drug sales?  Even the catering is in on it; buy a bottle of wine, fake a couple of log entries and tell the taxman you sold it at a huge markup, and that way you can even toast your brilliance with it as the money you supposedly earned by selling it is suddenly above suspicion.”  They shook their head.  “I should really start running a school for this stuff, darlings; so many of you just blundered into this career, and none of you really know the tricks of the trade.”

“So what do you actually want to do?”  This was from Catra.  “I assume we’re not gonna just grab guests outside the door, turn them upside-down and shake.”

“Such beautiful word pictures you paint, kitten,” purred the shapeshifter.  “No, the actual objective in this case would be the vault.  After all, the money has to be kept somewhere until it can be shipped off-planet.  We probably won’t be able to empty it out – although knowing you lot, darlings, we may end up just running away with the vault dangling from the Protector on a length of string.”  Both Scorpia and Entrapta raised a hand, or a claw in Scorpia’s case.  “I know that string wouldn’t be up to the task, I was joking.”

“Actually,” said Entrapta, “you could do it with enough string, we just don’t have enough.  That’s not what I want to talk about, though.  I’ve heard about the Blue Widow’s security systems. They’re some of the best.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem for you, should it, darling?  I mean, you did take on the security system for the Horde’s most fearsome prison and win.”

Entrapta shook her head slowly.  “Horde security isn’t actually very good.  The systems are usually pretty cheap and badly made; they want everyone to be too afraid to try anything.  The Blue Widow is going to be waaay tougher, it’s going to be really interesting!”  She paused for a second, and then added, “And also probably impossible, we might all die.”

“How do you mean?” asked Glimmer suspiciously.

“Well, security systems cycle at a set rate, okay?  And if they cycle too quickly for me to handle, we’ll be in trouble.  Horde systems are pretty slow.”  Entrapta took a deep breath, and continued, “The Blue Widow is record-setting.  Latency alone is gonna be a problem – drone to Emily, Emily to me, then back, that’s going to slow me down a lot.”

“Could you do it if you were on-site?” asked Adora.

There was a very long pause before Entrapta said, “…Probably.”  She looked down at her feet, her mask unfolding around her face-

Bow patted her gently on the shoulder and said, “If you don’t want to do it, we’re not going to force you.  We’ll try some other way.  They have to get it out of there to take it off-planet, after all.”

Entrapta took a deep breath, the sound rasping through her mask, and then said, “No, I should do it.  Besides,” and now she was starting to sound a bit more cheerful, “we can use some of the money to upgrade Emily!  I’ve done a lot already, but I need a bunch of chips that are really tricky to make, and it’d be much easier if I could buy them.”

Double Trouble’s eyes were calculating as they started to draw up the map.

“I wish I could go with you,” said Adora.  “What’s the use of all this destined heroine stuff if I can’t protect the people I…care about?”

Glimmer squeezed her hand and said, “You are protecting us, Starlight.  You’re the best pilot we’ve got, and you can do it without needing to walk around on that knee.  Just let it heal, help us in Swift Wind if everything goes to shit.”

“I know, I just want to be there-”Adora’s eyes widened as she realised something.  “Did you just call me Starlight?”

Glimmer blushed.  “I was thinking about how Double Trouble and Catra have started calling each other pet names, and…I realised that I had one that was kind of right for you.  I hope it’s okay?”
“I love it,” said Adora, sounding a little choked up.  She pulled Glimmer close, into a hug.  “Look out for yourself down there, okay…Moonlight?”

“I’ll be fine.  We’re going to have a lot of people there, and you watching our backs, ready to fly in with Swift Wind if everything goes wrong.”  Glimmer then fell silent, just soaking up the hug.

The staff at the Blue Widow watched the group sweep through the door.

A green-skinned alien of a type they didn’t recognise led the group, wearing high-heeled shoes with an extremely dapper suit.  The green one was backed up by a woman wearing a purple suit she obviously was not used to, her violet hair drawn back into two enormous ponytails, a magicat in a red dress, and a Salinean woman in a blue and green dress with a sari.  They didn’t notice anything anomalous on the scans, so they waved the newcomers through; they looked like they had turned up with big money.  And if the lady in purple’s ponytails looked a little synthetic, well, it wasn’t against the law for people to wear wigs in high society.

It was against the law to have some of the gadgets the group was carrying that the guards hadn’t noticed, or to be carrying money that had mostly been acquired by waylaying a prospective gambler on the way, which is why Entrapta was having to work so hard to ensure the guards didn’t notice anything.

As they passed through a gate, Double Trouble shuddered.

“You okay, Dee?” muttered Catra.

“It’s nothing, kitten.  Just the security systems – a few places can block Metamaran shapeshifting.”

Catra’s eyes lit up.  “You knew it already, didn’t you?  That’s why you’re not in disguise.”

“Well done, kitten.”  They gestured with a single talon.  “Could you have a look around, though?  Entrapta should have the technical security under control, but she can’t hack someone’s eyes…”

“This wig itches,” muttered Entrapta, as the uncharacteristically un-motley trio surveyed the main floor of games on offer.

“I wouldn’t think you’d notice that, darling.  Most of your scalp is metal and ports.”

“That’s the problem.  I’m not getting the signals I’m used to.”  She thought for a moment.  “Like phantom limb pain.”

“Try to ignore it until the other team has got the vault.”  Double Trouble’s expression was pleasant, but the smile didn’t reach their eyes, which were as cold and calculating as an ice abacus.  “Let’s try celestos first, I think.  I’ll try and keep their attention so you can ride the controls.”  They thought for a moment and added, “I don’t suppose you’re any good at counting cards?  It’s not as much use in celestos as in other games, but if you could-”

“I’m sorry, but no.  Too many variables, too many things moving.”

“Oh well.  I’ll have to do what I can with bluffing.”

From the security room, Tung Lashor pointed at a green shape.  “That one.  I recognise that one!  They’re here.”

Araneus made a chittering sound as he thought.  “We’ll take it slow.  No sense spooking the herd, after all – the reward is all well and good, but we could lose a lot more.”

“They’ll get away,” hissed the Karnoxian, eyes a little bit wild.  “You gotta pin them down-”

“Do I have to repeat myself, Tung Lashor?  If you interfere, you die.  We need to deal with them in some way that doesn’t cause a panic…”  Araneus turned to an underling.  “Reinforce the guards downstairs.  We have to assume that the ones we can see have support.  And use the direct net; the global one may be compromised.”

The hulking scorpioni next to Entrapta was using a pair of prosthetic add-ons, to allow him to hold his cards more easily: a pair of more humanlike arms, attached under his claws. This allowed him to more effectively throw his cards down as Double Trouble revealed a binary system, and kept the chair safe as he rose and stormed off, leaving the empty space where his money had previously been.

“Such a temper, darlings,” said Double Trouble coolly, reaching out to collect their winnings-

Cards hit the table with a snap as the needle-toothed, black-eyed Salinean sitting opposite revealed another binary system.  Split.  Half the pot each.

“That,” muttered the Metamaran, “was less profitable than I hoped.”

Fresh cards were dealt, and Entrapta fought to keep her expression steady.  Make your face a mask…just until you can get back to your real one.

Her foot started to vibrate against the floor, until Double Trouble shot her a look and she stilled it.

Even with a set of four red planets, a decently high-scoring hand, this was both stressful and inconvenient, not to mention distracting.

At the end of the hand – the Salinean had folded on a pair of green planets, and the two humans in suits further along had only had three blue planets between them – Entrapta scooped up her chips and fled.

The back of the casino had no flashing lights, no strong colours, no sense of style and impact.  The rear entrance was a dirty grey, with the door locked by an ID card scanner; Glimmer held a card over it and was rewarded with a ding as Entrapta’s hold on the security system overruled its natural inclination to reject anyone who tried to get in using an expired Mystacorean library card.  At least the hastily copied uniforms would let them move about relatively unhindered.

“I would’ve expected better security than just a scanner,” said Scorpia as their little group hurried in: Glimmer herself as team leader, backed up by Scorpia, Bow and Perfuma. Scorpia was wearing a backpack that Glimmer, for all her combat training and hard work, had nearly herniated something important trying to move; Scorpia barely seemed to notice its weight.  In a perfect metaphor for the casino as a whole, the back rooms were entirely functional, with little in the way of decoration: locker rooms, laundries (Glimmer considered a joke about money laundering, then dropped it; only Bow would probably find it funny), security posts, server rooms and so on-

A door swung open, and the bottom dropped out of Glimmer’s stomach as she recognised the figure behind it.  Tung Lashor.  Sschisz’s head thug from that debacle on Karnox.  And while he wasn’t looking right at them, he would be in moments-

Let me, said Light Spinner’s voice in Glimmer’s head, and her hand moved by itself – tracing out a spell circle.  A few words popped into her head, and she allowed them to flow down her mind and out of her tongue.

Tung Lashor looked right at them, and Glimmer’s heart rate shot up-

Then the hulking serpent-man shook his head, like he was shaking off a stray thought, and ambled off in the other direction, without a hint that he’d recognised any of them.

A perception filter, Light Spinner told her.  Once you master it, child, only the strongest-willed and most perceptive will be able to see you with it up…and a dull creature like Tung Lashor fits neither category.

Out of the corner of her eye, Entrapta caught a flash of blue and green while she sipped her drink and worked over the security.  Getting the bar to serve a simple soda instead of some elaborate alcoholic concoction had been almost as stressful as the celestos game.

“Uh,” said Mermista eloquently.  “Is now, like, okay?”

Entrapta thought for a moment.  She could run the security control on automatic for a moment, that was okay; it’d alert her if anything unexpected happened.  “Sure, what is it?”

“I know we, uh.  A lot of us haven’t…really been as friendly as we should’ve.  Treated you like…well, like part of the ship, not the crew.”  Mermista coughed.  “And I just…I dunno, I wanted to say I was sorry.”

Entrapta nodded slowly, then held up a hand as she tweaked some security settings and turned two subroutines against each other.  “It’s…okay.”  There was a clattering sound; she raised her head and said, “Was that someone rolling dice?”

As the light on the camera flickered to purple, Glimmer nodded.  “Okay.  Let’s move.”

The motley team scurried into the higher-security area.  Bow readied his preferred weapon – a smaller version than the usual one, to make it easier to sneak with – and dropped a guard with a stun arrow.

Just as Perfuma was checking the fallen guard’s vitals, another one stepped out of the door right next to them. After a frozen second of violence, the newcomer reached for a weapon-

There was a red-tinted blur, and the guard collapsed into a heap.

“Are you okay?” said Scorpia, turning aside from the guard she’d just taken down and bending down to help Perfuma up.  Her tail had punched clean through armour.

Up until that moment, Bow hadn’t realised how vividly Plumerians could blush.

Double Trouble, clutching a slightly larger pool of loot than they had originally held, stepped onto the lower floor.  The celestos tables, where the big money traded hands, were up above; down here were games like centiles – ones that kept the money coming in but didn’t have the drama, the winner-take-all bets or the deception.  You couldn’t bluff a randomiser.

“Ah, darling!” they said, at the sight of Entrapta.  “I wondered where you’d got to.”  Their voice dropped to a low hiss.  “What are you doing here?  We were planning to keep them distracted by cleaning up at the celestos tables.”

“I know, but this is working better!  Celestos is – hold on.”  She closed her eyes and concentrated, and a shiver ran up Double Trouble’s back – probably a security scan Entrapta was spoofing, from her expression.  “Where was I?”

“You were explaining why you got bored with the plan,” said Double Trouble, in a voice like a blade.

“I didn’t get bored with it, this is just more efficient.  Celestos is…it’s exhausting.  You have to keep an eye on everyone, figure out what they’re feeling, and I can’t do it for long for that many other players.  But centiles?”  She smiled.  “This isn’t psychology.  It’s just math, and I’m good at math.”

“Just be careful, darling; the house always wins, because the house always cheats.”

“Oh, I’ve already done an analysis.  These dice roll statistically about 9% lower than they really should – consistently, over a long time, based on the logs I’ve managed to dig out of the security system.  So I’m betting with that in mind!  Look, I’ve already made about 20% more than you were at celestos in the same time, because the games are so much faster.”

Double Trouble’s expression turned calculating.  “20%, you say…all right, then.  Keep your eye on the prize – both prizes, even.”

Entrapta turned back to the table, her head full of numbers and programs.

Heavy vault doors are a statement in a very specific language.  Don’t even bother, they say.  Get a real job.  Instead of words, this message is conveyed through design details such as passcode panels, motion sensors, other forms of security gadgetry and, if nothing else, being thicker than a starship hull and very heavy.

Bow reached into Scorpia’s pack and started pulling out the contents.  “Now, be very careful with these,” he told Glimmer and Perfuma as he pushed the items into the waiting hands.  “The thing about shaped charges like this is that they need to be in exactly the right place.  Scorpia, you be ready to move the door when we go.”

The five-second countdown for the many, many bombs felt more like five hours as the timers counted down.  Then the inner ring of surges went off, blanking all the security features – followed by the blinding magnesium flare of the outer ring.

Scorpia grabbed the handle and pulled.  Even she was having some trouble with it, but after a few seconds, the door gave and she stumbled backwards, holding a disc of freshly cut metal, the sides still glowing a cheery red.

More money than any of them had ever seen was visible through the gap.

A clawed finger tapped on Double Trouble’s shoulders, and they slipped away from the table.

“Security’s gone up a level,” said Catra bluntly.  “I’m seeing a lot of people ‘mingling’ who aren’t used to it.  Even Adora would fit in better.  Has Her Nerdiness mentioned anything?”

“No.  Must be a secondary security net that we don’t have access to.  We should prepare to…hang on.”

A purple-skinned, pointy-eared man in a cravat Double Trouble wasn’t sure whether to pity or envy had oiled his way up to Entrapta.  He was in the middle of reading off mental cue cards about Entrapta’s hairstyle when Double Trouble grabbed him by the shoulder, claws digging through the man’s cheap suit, and growled, “Let the lady concentrate on the game, darling,” before bluntly extricating him from Entrapta’s personal space.

Shortly after tall, cheap and purple had vanished, the dice fell on exactly 100, losing Entrapta a small stake, and as the bets on the next roll began to come in, Entrapta turned to Double Trouble and said, “Thanks for dealing with that guy!  I don’t know what he was after.”

“He was trying to seduce you, darling.”

“Oh.”  Entrapta blinked a couple of times and added, “Why?”

“Because you were winning.”  The Metamaran’s expression turned serious.  “Has there been any unusual security activity?”

“None on the networks I have access to.”

“Well, take your winnings and let’s see if we can access any others.  The prey is spooked; if there’s nothing in the general network, they must have something else-”

A shot rang out.

The alarm started to shriek, and Glimmer started to swear, starting at her typical, “Piss,” and moving up.  Perfuma and Scorpia began to blush simultaneously.

“I don’t think that’s us!” said Bow, dropping more currency than anyone in his family had ever actually held before.  “If the safe alarm was going to go off despite the EMP, it would have done so before we started stuffing our bags!  Something must have gone wrong on the floor…”

Glimmer cut off her tirade with visible effort.  “Then we should go and help them!  Our navigator is up there – and Mermista!”

“And Catra,” added in Scorpia, “and…Double Trouble.”

Bow couldn’t help but notice that she sounded a lot less friendly on the last name.

“I left them out on purpose,” said Glimmer impishly, and fried in Scorpia’s stare for a moment.  “I’m not gonna leave either of them behind, Scorpia!  Stars’ sake, it was just a joke!”

As they raced for the way up, shouldering bewildered staff out of the way, Light Spinner started to talk again.

What will you do, I wonder, when none of your options are good?  At some point, you may have to leave someone behind for the rest to live…

Glimmer mentally pushed Light Spinner aside and raced on.  Right now, she needed to concentrate on the current issue.

Tung Lashor swatted aside some idiot in a cravat and levelled his gun at the targets.

“Double Trouble,” he hissed, in a voice like death.  “Sschisz sends his regards.”

Double Trouble pushed their companion – some human in purple with fake-looking hair – behind them.  It didn’t accomplish that much, not with Double Trouble’s wasp-like build, but it meant that Tung Lashor would shoot them first.  That was something.

“Hold on now, darling.  Let’s not do anything rash-”  Double Trouble got a good look down Tung Lashor’s gun barrel.  “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could-”

“Nope.”  Tung Lashor favoured Double Trouble with a venomous grin; the Metamaran seemed much less happy to be on the receiving end.  “You screw the boss, you go down.”

Before Double Trouble could say anything else, Tung Lashor pulled the trigger, maybe taking it slow just to savour the shot.

 There was a brown and red blur as the gun discharged.

The moment Tung Lashor’s eyes cleared from the weapon’s discharge, they realised something was wrong.  Lying at Double Trouble’s feet was a magicat with a large, nasty-looking weapon burn on her left shoulder, presumably where the shot had hit.  Double Trouble appeared unscathed, although their expression was like a thundercloud –

Double Trouble’s foot lashed out in a sweeping, lightning-fast kick, smashing the gun from Tung Lashor’s hand with strength he hadn’t expected from such a skinny frame. The burly Karnoxian bit back a curse and blocked the next strike with the arm, before jabbing at Double Trouble’s face; they ducked aside, and Tung Lashor dived for the gun – but Double Trouble had reacted as quickly as they could, and was on Tung Lashor before he had a chance to level it again.

Tung Lashor kicked Double Trouble off, levelling the gun again-

Every drink in the area suddenly came to life – everything from pure water to fine alcohols shot out of its glass into the air, then headed towards Tung Lashor like a volley of seeker missiles.  Before Tung Lashor could fire, they started to hit, and these weren’t mild splashes; at the speeds these were going, they hit like rocks.

A Salinean girl standing on a nearby table gestured to some newcomers – a four-strong group that Tung Lashor recognised from some wanted posters.  “One down.  Grab her and run.”  The water surged from the ground for a second wave as she gestured, and the motley group sprinted for the exit – the scorpioni scooping up the wounded magicat as they passed.

Tung Lashor could hear security moving in.  This little stunt had probably made Araneus so mad he ate his visor, and that meant that if Tung Lashor couldn’t deal with the targets, he was probably going to become one.

He snatched up his fallen gun and gave chase, sprinting through the casino doors onto an evening street.  His quarry were running, mostly unarmed.  He began to squeeze the trigger again-

The street was suddenly bathed in a light so bright Tung Lashor could taste it.  After a few seconds, his vision cleared enough to identify its source as…

…some kind of fighter craft, hovering in the air.  It looked Horde-built, at least originally.

“Get away from my friends,” boomed a female voice from a loudspeaker on the bottom.

Ah.

So: immediate, searing death in a fighter’s crosshairs ahead of him.  A presumably very angry Araneus behind him.  Being fed to one of the local predators on Karnox if he went back empty-handed.

Tung Lashor’s conscious mind came back from its tactical calculations to discover that his body had taken matters into its own hands, or in this case feet.  While his thoughts had been whirring to calculate whether to run or find some way to fight, his body had picked the highest velocity it could muster and shot down a side alley, away from his prey but also away from the blazing actinic fury the fighter could have greeted him with.

A shot blasted past his shoulder – the rage of a furious casino guard, judging by a quick glimpse over the other shoulder.

Now was probably not a good time to stop running.

“Is she okay?”

Double Trouble looked up from their position outside the sickbay as Entrapta stepped out of the lift. The Metamaran was in theory sitting in a chair, although ‘perching’ might have been a better descriptor.  Past acquaintances had described this kind of sitting as putting them in mind of a scavenger waiting for a lost, dehydrated prey animal to finally die.

Double Trouble took a deep breath and said, keeping their voice low to avoid waking Adora, who had fallen asleep somehow in the third chair. “Well, magicats don’t keep any key organs in their shoulders.  Bow thinks she’s probably going to be fine.”  They stretched out a bit.  “How did you like your first field operation?”

“Well, it was very…interesting…I hated it.”  She lifted her head and looked at Double Trouble, red-tinted eyes weary.  “I really don’t know how you do it.  How do you have the energy to lie so often?”

“I learned to, darling.”  Double Trouble’s voice had rather more emotion than they’d been trying for.  “You can get used to anything if it’s a matter of survival-”

The door opened, and Bow stepped out, peeling off his improvised scrubs.  “She’s awake,” he told the two sets of faces.  “Don’t put her through too much; she needs to rest.”

He was gently waking up Adora as Double Trouble and Entrapta stepped into the room.

Catra’s shoulder was already looking better as she raised her head to look blearily at the two of them.  “Oh…hey, Dee.”  She refocused on Entrapta.  “Why are you here?  Didn’t get hit for you.”

“Yeah, but you got hit protecting Double Trouble, and Double Trouble was protecting me, so the line of effect is actually pretty clear.  Besides, you’re one of the crew, and that means we gotta look out for each other, right?”

“I…guess,” said Catra, a note of suspicion in her voice that Entrapta probably wouldn’t catch, but Double Trouble definitely did.

About 95% of Tung Lashor dangled from a mildly acidic web.

“Oh, Tung Lashor,” said Araneus.  “Your betrayal was bad enough, but now you insist on bleeding on my floor.”

“Wasn’t my idea,” managed Tung Lashor, delivering the words as best he could without most of his teeth.

“And yet if you had simply stuck to the plan this would not be necessary.”  There was a chittering sound from his mouth, and Tung Lashor realised Araneus was licking his lips.  “Do try not to tense your muscles much, Tung Lashor; it toughens the meat terribly.”

“You don’t want to eat me,” said Tung Lashor, inventing at the fastest speed his brain could manage.

“I think I do, Tung Lashor.  I’ve had you brought in here for it, and everything.”  Those awful jaws opened wider.  “I don’t see any reason to fear Sschisz if you’re the best he can do-”

Tung Lashor wrenched a foot free and kicked Araneus in the visor.  There was a cracking sound and Araneus staggered backwards, clawing at the device that had just become an obstruction to him.

Ripping the rest of his limbs free from the web wasn’t easy and certainly didn’t leave him with all of his scales, but Tung Lashor gritted where his teeth would have been – you know, if they weren’t several streets away, lying in the gutter – and persevered.  A punch to the face of one guard, a wince-inducing groin strike to the other, and Tung Lashor fled.

He just needed to get off-planet.  A long way off-planet.  Maybe change his name.

Double Trouble and Entrapta had headed off to their other duties when Adora, still looking somewhat muggy, stepped into the sickbay.

“Hey, Adora,” said Catra.  She carefully kept a whole lot of different emotions off her face.  “Thought this was your job.”

“It should’ve been,” muttered Adora darkly.

Catra considered her options here and said, “Well, I’m told we might not have gotten out without your fighter, so…thanks for that.”  Saying that felt like pulling teeth.

Adora was silent for a few moments and said, “So.  You and Double Trouble, huh?”

“That a problem?”  Say yes.  For stars’ sake. SAY YES.

“I just think you should be careful.  I know Double Trouble is charming, and they’re fun to hang out with…but don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that means they’re trustworthy.  I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Catra’s expression soured, despite her best efforts to keep it flat.  “I’m feeling pretty tired, Adora.  I wanna get some sleep.”

The blonde nodded gently.  “Okay.”

Adora switched off the sickbay lights as she left.

Double Trouble stepped into the planning room to see a few of the others gathered around the map table: Adora, Glimmer, Scorpia, and a suspicious-looking Frosta.

Entrapta, at its head, looked up and beamed.  “Hi!  I hoped you’d swing by!”

“What are you working on, darling?  A bank heist?  Some kind of raid on a Horde outpost?”

“An Arcanos campaign!” said Entrapta happily.

Double Trouble did a double-take.  “The role-playing game?”

“Yeah!  It’s got a really interesting fantasy world, we’ve been making characters.”

Double Trouble leaned over and took a look.  Adora had gone for the tried and tested “herself, but slightly altered” approach; her character appeared to be a muscular man with a sword and a pageboy cut.  Glimmer had gone for a woman in some kind of fancy uniform.  Scorpia had what looked like a spellcaster in a feathery robe, and Frosta had opted for some kind of short, magical-looking goblin thing.

“May I ask what brought this on, darling?” asked Double Trouble sardonically.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to play, but, uh…I’ve never had enough friends to have a proper group before.  Now…now I do.”

Double Trouble’s face was unreadable.  “Hmm.  Well, I don’t see why I couldn’t…after all, as an actor, I could use the experience.  All right, then, darlings.  Let’s roll.  I’m thinking…hmm…I might try someone a little more conventional than myself.  A frontline fighter…some kind of man at arms, maybe…”

Chapter Text

Remainder of Season 2

The Runestone hunt continues, with Scorpia coming into contact with the Black Garnet – but her attitude where she just kinda hopes it’ll all work out doesn’t impress the system, which wants her to be willing to stand up for her beliefs, and she’s left with only the barest connection. If I didn’t do it before, this bit would also have had Perfuma telling Scorpia “I’ll be here if you get tired of waiting”.

Adora apologises to Catra for not telling her before leaving. This doesn’t actually help, because that’s not the thing Catra is being an asshole about.

Shadow Weaver uses her connection to Glimmer to possess her and offer Catra a deal: total forgiveness and the position as her favourite that Catra had always coveted, in exchange for the location of the ship. She demands a similar amnesty for Scorpia as well, which Shadow Weaver accepts. The chapter ends before we get an answer, but the season ends with Glimmer and Adora, on a scouting flight aboard Adora’s fighter above a Horde-occupied planet, watching in horror as Horde ships take the Protector apart…

Season 3

A significant chunk of this would have consisted of Adora and Glimmer tracking down their friends on the planet below. Bow’s found a local rebel cell and has to choose between staying to help them and rejoining his friends, that kind of thing. They also obtain the petrified form of Mara, which Entrapta intends to study; they’ll give her a proper burial in Brightmoon, or at least that’s the plan.

Catra discovers that being Shadow Weaver’s favourite actually fuckin’ sucks because SW is constantly threatening Scorpia and the old squad to get her to do things. She seethes that Adora didn’t have to put up with this, not yet realising that she did.

At one point, Perfuma is captured. Scorpia has one of those crisis of conscience scenes where she punches a mirror and decides to rescue Perfuma, finally committing to something and unlocking the power of the Black Garnet. As a shadowy form of lightning and rage, she releases Perfuma – but chooses to stay behind and work against the Horde from within, recruiting Lonnie at the end of the chapter. They and the rest of the old squad are reassigned to a different ship, leaving Catra with nobody; this eventually prompts her to give up on the Horde, leave Shadow Weaver on a deserted asteroid or something and flee.

Double Trouble is one of the last to be located – not just because of the obvious, but also because they’d actually gotten attached to Catra and her betrayal not only hurt them deeply, but also reminded them of the reason they kept an emotional distance in the first place. They do end up back with the crew, though.

Throughout all of this, we’re getting a more detailed picture of Hordak and Horde Prime’s situation. Hordak is frustrated with Horde Prime’s need for constant expansionism, constantly noting that they’re spread too thin and barely control their claimed territory (as shown by the fact that our heroes have been making them look like chumps for two seasons by this point, tbh), and is worried that there might be a greater threat than the resistance in the form of the disappeared First One empire, but Horde Prime is always champing at the bit for more and doesn’t want to take time to cement control over the empire he already has and dismisses Hordak’s concerns as paranoia. (These ideas were developed before S5 came out and even if I liked S5’s ideas about Horde Prime, which I kinda don’t, I would still be sticking with them as a general thing because they work a lot better for this story.)

Once reunited, our heroes find a Horde cargo ship under construction and decide to install Emily, whose AI core Entrapta managed to preserve. Emily is willing to set aside her pacifism and accept weapon installations because she’s upset about failing to protect her crew; Adora proposes that they should set it up so the weapons can be easily removed again when they’re no longer needed.

The Horde manages to gain access to the Brightmoon gate. The Protector gets in shortly before the fleet, and most of the main cast are hastily sent back to their home systems. Shadow Weaver’s spirit makes a last bid for anything by possessing Glimmer, but through a ritual, Adora is able to go in and kick seven bells out of her abusive foster mother, breaking her connection to Glimmer. This is also where the kintsugi metaphor would have paid off, Adora’s spirit form would have the damage done to her by Shadow Weaver represented by cracks that would fill up with gold at the climax of the confrontation. (The mystery mage gets a similar ritual when Angella realises who he is, revealing him to be Micah as everyone and their aunt had already figured out.)

Glimmer locates the Brightmoon runestone, but something goes wrong and she’s teleported off into the galaxy somewhere.

In the battle, multiple Horde ships break ranks, fire on their supposed allies, and form up with Brightmoon’s fleet – Scorpia’s rebellion has been surprisingly successful and seized control of those ships! It’s not enough to turn the tide by itself, but the arrival of allies led by Perfuma, Mermista et al does, and eventually Adora boards the flagship and faces Horde Prime! Unfortunately, Glimmer connecting with the runestone has caused the First One empire to reappear out of Despondos and its superweapon to start charging, causing Adora to start petrifying in mid-fight; she breaks the Sword, but this leaves her vulnerable, and Horde Prime picks her up in the old Vader neck lift…

…at which point Hordak stabs him in the back with the broken edge of the Sword.

Hordak makes clear to his dying emperor that he isn’t siding with the rebellion. No, he’s acting in accordance with his orders to protect and secure the Horde’s empire…and Horde Prime’s actions had left it stretched dangerously thin even before this fight tore a significant chunk out of the fleet. He offers Adora an alliance: he’ll work with them to deal with the First One threat, and then return to the Horde and seize power once other clone claimants have finished fighting over it. This, he believes, will preserve life overall: the cosmic threat with the doomsday weapon will be finished, and the Horde can stabilise and secure control over its territory rather than continuing to press Brightmoon. Adora isn’t 100% happy about the second part, but right now the First Ones are the real problem, so she reluctantly accepts. (Those of you familiar with Farscape can probably see the parallel here.)

When she returns to the Protector, though, she’s greeted by a surprise: breaking the Sword has also undone Mara’s petrification!

Season 4

(This one has the least clearly worked out overall plan, and it will show.)

Between Mara’s statements and early scans, it’s concluded that the area is locked down too tightly to send a fleet – but a single ship might be able to slip through. The Protector already having a lot of experience in that area, the choice is obvious. A few Brightmoon agents are assigned in the form of the Star Siblings. In a private moment, Angella also begs Adora to keep an ear out for any news of Glimmer.

Meanwhile, Huntara – who is still tracking our heroes, because the price on their heads hasn’t been withdrawn – picks up two allies: a renegade Horde officer and a mysterious woman in armour. These are, obviously, Glimmer and Catra, and the fragile alliance eventually breaks down in a knock-down, drag-out brawl (in the rain, naturally), with Catra yelling about how Glimmer has ruined her life and Glimmer beating Catra’s ass for how she’s treated Adora. This does actually kind of push Catra into wanting to make at least something right, and they’re allies from here.

Aboard the ship, we get an Entrapta/Hordak relationship (I tend to treat them as close friends rather than romantic partners but they’d still be close), Mara opens up about her doomed relationship with Light Hope, Bow and Jewelstar hit it off, etc.

Eventually, they do reunite with the ship, but Catra is obviously not all that popular with anyone – especially Adora, who is justifiably furious with her. This hangs in the air for a while, until Catra seemingly sacrifices herself to save Adora and Glimmer from some First One robots, which makes Adora feel bad about not trusting her – although Glimmer tries to comfort her over it, because she shouldn’t feel required to forgive Catra’s treatment of her. (Gosh can you tell why I thought S5 wasted the show’s potential.)

Somewhere in here, there’s a chapter that’s just a side story focusing on the Horde trio, who have settled down on an out-of-the-way planet – but have also come into possession of a baby that the local raiders want for…some reason, I never did get around to figuring that out. Lonnie, who doesn’t actually want to be a parent, is briefly tempted by the offer of “hand it over and we won’t kill you”, but ends up choosing to protect them because while she doesn’t care about the kid, Kyle and Rogelio do, and she cares about them.

Eventually, the main cast arrive at the First One throneworld, where there aren’t any actual First Ones – the planet is run by First One computer systems. One of them is Light Hope, but the dominant power is a war computer named Keldor. The First Ones do exist, but only in stasis – Keldor intends to revive them once he’s rebuilt their empire, because they kept interfering in his warplans. He’s also using First One tech to control a physical form as a sort of evil She-Ra – which is Catra, who it turns out was suitable because Reasons (look, I said I hadn’t worked it out in full).

While Adora and Mara hold off Catra, using their familiarity with the powers of the She-Ra form to persist despite Catra being obviously more powerful, and the others fend off Keldor’s robot armies, Entrapta manages to unlock some of Light Hope’s memories of her time with Mara, and she turns on Keldor. The She-Ra powers are turned loose and become a temporary boost in power to anyone fighting the good fight, Keldor is seemingly destroyed and the First Ones are set to gradually be revived.

The ship returns to Brightmoon. Light Hope is given a robot body and can spend time with Mara, some of them settle down in Brightmoon, others set off to the next adventure, happily ever after for everyone except arguably Hordak, who seizes control of the Horde and starts doing some very tricky calculations about how much of the empire he can actually preserve now that the post-Prime internecine squabbles have done even more damage than he predicted.