Chapter Text
Adora stepped off Darla, walking across the grey dirt of a planet that Horde Prime had once annihilated. She closed her eyes, listening with something other than her ears, using powers she barely understood. Unfortunately, all those who could have taught her anything about the magic she controlled all, sadly, died a millennium ago. She concentrated, listening to what she now knew as an extremely faint pulsing of magic. There. She opened her eyes and caught her breath—even the seemingly simple act of listening to a planet’s magical field took a lot out of her. Luckily, she seemed to be getting better at it. The first few times, she almost fainted from the sheer effort of it, only saved from cracking her skull on some annoyingly inconvenient rocks by Catra’s quick reflexes.
Catra. Even after the months they’d spent together, she still couldn’t believe that she was in a relationship with the love of her life… that, and she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t noticed it sooner. I mean, looking back it was so painfully obvious ! Love may be blind, but even a blind beggar would notice the romantic tension between them a mile away. Adora stood up, dusted She-Ra’s gleaming armor clean, and reached out to Catra, taking her hand. Together, tailed closely by Bow and Glimmer—the two of them making eyes at each other so mushily even Adora had to roll her eyes—the Best Friend Squad made its way over to the spot where Adora had sensed the magical pole would be, about a quarter mile from the ship. Taking a deep breath, Adora raised her sword and plunged it into the exact center of the magical field, which seemed to follow the same basic rules as a magnetic field… but without Entrapta, they really didn’t have any idea on how to test that.
Focusing her innate magic as She-Ra, Adora pushed magic into the planet’s core, just as she had done at Salineas with the sea gate, only on a much grander scale. Luckily, she didn’t need to fully charge the planet; that would probably take too much power for even She-Ra, and the only major source of magic, the Heart, had been released into Etheria. But, due to some fundamental quirk of the universe, a proportionally small spark of magic was enough to kickstart a reaction of sorts, building upon itself in a chain reaction that would eventually bring some balance to this world, restoring nature to the devastated wasteland. They would have to stay for a week or so, they learned the hard way that this operation didn’t have a 100% success rate, but after that the planet would be ready for life to return. The universe was healing, even if it took a single planet at a time.
Exhausted, Adora dropped the transformation, flopping down onto the dusty ground, followed shortly by Catra.
Glimmer smiled, bending down to pat Adora on the shoulder. “Great work! Why don’t you two rest, and Bow and I will go get some dinner ready! When you’re ready to come, well, the ship isn’t far!” Without giving anyone a chance to get a word in, she had already grabbed Bow’s hand and teleported back to Darla, her purple earring flashing as she drew upon its connection to the Moonstone.
Catra smirked. “Well, Sparkles seemed in a hurry. Does she think I don’t know that all the food we have is that just-add-water-and-boil stuff?”
Adora grinned back, Glimmer’s awkward rush to get alone with Bow all too easy to read, even for her. “Maybe we could get going now and surprise them by being early. You know, as payback for all of her… interruptions.”
Catra made a face, memories of Glimmer teleporting directly into their room while the two of them were kissing still fresh. “Maybe. But then again, you should rest. It looks like this takes a lot out of you. Wouldn’t want the ‘Savior of the Galaxy’ to fall asleep in her protein slaw… again.”
Adora shuddered. “Ugh, don’t remind me. That stuff sticks to hair so well, we could make a fortune selling it as styling gel.”
“Hey, at least you only had to get it out of your hair. Remember that time when Darla’s artificial gravity shorted out? I had to spend hours in the shower, getting that goop out of my fur. Wasn’t exactly fun.”
Adora grinned. “You missed the best part of that, actually. While you were flipping out, trying to get away from the blob of floating slaw, Bow was trying his hardest to get to the maintenance panel to fix it, but he didn’t know how to move in zero g, so he kept banging his head on walls. I’ve never even heard half of those curses; he must’ve picked them up from Seahawk.”
“Wait, really? Sweet puppy dog Bow… swearing? I can’t believe I missed that!”
“Yeah, I thought Glimmer was going to have a stroke, she laughed so hard, but also looked mortified. It was beautiful.”
The two of them lay back, watching the stars twinkle. Even after months of living out of Despondos, and another six weeks travelling through the cosmos, the stars fascinated them. Adora liked to find constellations that looked like First One’s words, pointing them out to Catra. Thanks to their constant flight, the stars changed position much faster than they would to an observer stuck on Etheria, letting the sky look fresh and exciting every passing day.
After a few minutes of stargazing, Adora had regained enough energy to function properly, so the two of them walked back, hand in hand.
After a week, the planet showed the tell-tale signs of life that they’d all came to recognize: the soil changed from black to brown, the water became clearer, but most tellingly, small green shoots of grass and other plants dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see. Thanks to the magic, in a mere few years, entire forests would grow almost to maturity, animals of all kinds would live there—they still weren’t sure where they came from,—and the air would be clean and pure. With the planet healing, the Best Friend Squad launched, preparing to head to the next planet on the list Entrapta sent them, a list sure to “contain one of the most optimal routes to all inhabitable planets that Prime has destroyed.”
“All right, Bow, what's up next?” Adora stood at the helm, ready to give Darla the coordinates.
“Uh, Eternia. Sector 3, coordinates 34.598 and 11.426.”
“Got it, thanks. Darla, chart a course for… wait. Eternia?!?”