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Linda Lori was a genius, truly a genius. Unparalleled in her field of robotics and mechanical engineering. Etheria was a medieval world, lacking innovators of science, scientists were a rarity. People like Linda were waved off, they can only thrive in their own separate niche and fringe pockets. The Makers Guild was a pocket as such. It was the only scientific organisation on the planet. It made them outsiders, yet it made them a spectacle, something to look at, to examine, like an animal at the zoo.
The Makers Guild was an assembly of Etheria’s greatest scientific minds, there weren’t many, but those that were there were masters of the laws of the universe. Linda was a part of The Guild’s Board, each member of the board was in charge of a different function; Linda was in charge of finance for the organisation. And as she returned home she was in a quite a good mood. Her colleagues had thrown her a surprise party, which she already knew about, for which she was very thankful. Little did she know her mood would shift drastically.
Lori locked the front door behind her, she wobbled into her beautiful kitchen (she might’ve been slightly drunk). She then closed the door to her kitchen behind her, and she threw her handbag off onto the kitchen table. She fell onto a dining chair. She pulled out her data-pad, and began typing on the touch screen. She was sending messages to a fellow colleague:
Airon: Congratulations on seven long years with The Guild. Toast to many prosperous years to come! Hope you enjoyed your party, too bad Sharon-loose-lips had to blabber it all out.
Linda: I appreciate it, Air. That and the booze. HA.
Airon: By the way, have you taken care of... our problem?
Linda: Don’t worry, Air. Pigtails is long gone. You just enjoy your vacation. It’s all on lockdown. I’ve already wrote and released a statement that The Guild has ‘distance ourselves from the Princess of Dryl’ that ‘we were not aware of her unethical projects and that she brings shame upon this establishment’.
Airon: You always were a poet.
So the funding’s cut, right?
Linda: Cut. Money’s back in our pockets.
And we threw out all her garbage, thank the Queen.
That woman wasn’t normal. Gave me the creeps.
SHE BROUGHT THE WALLS TO LIFE! THEY BREATHED!
What a psycho.
Airon: Good riddance.
Then Linda hear something inside her own house, she looked up, she gasped in shock and panic.
It was Entrapta.
“Hi, Lin.” She said with a smile, on most days it was a genuine one, she always seemed like she was happy to be alive, but today and now the smile felt cheeky. Less of a smile, more of a grin. The presence of the mad-scientist almost made Lori jump out of her chair. The short purple woman wasn’t there, in front of her, just a second ago. Was she? Linda would have definitely seen her even while slightly drunk, right? Lori knew Entrapta had a history of slithering about unseen, sneaking around and scaring people. Plenty of HR complaints.
Lin stumbled over her own words, “En-Entrapta, where- what- what are you doing in my house!?” Half anger, half fear. You’d fell a strange mix of emotions too if someone had broken into your house.
The other woman just looked around the dining room and the kitchen which were linked together, “Nice place by the way. Real fancy.” Entrapta lifted herself up from the chair and wondered around the room, she walked over to a shelf placed off to the side, on top of which was a golden trophy, out proudly on display – it was a miniature statue of Lin. At the base of the trophy, it was etched: ‘To Linda Lori, one of our brightest minds, The Makers Guide is honoured to have you. This award is gifted for the creation of the replicating nano-bot matrix, and bringing our better tomorrow one step closer.’ Entrapta picked the award up and she was seething. “Real tacky.”
“How did you get inside my house?!”
“Oh please, your security system is amateurs’ work.” Entrapta casually insulted her, and her skills. Linda grabbed her keys, and planned on making a run for it to the front door, and get as far away as possible from the mad woman. But Entrapta warned against it, “I wouldn’t, Lin. The house is surrounded. Your best option is just to sit back down, and have a nice talk with your old pal.” She spoke with her regular high-pitched, nasally voice like always, but something about her betrayed it as... unhinged.
Lori sat back down. She scowled at Entrapta, she grimaced, “What is this all about, Entrapta? Why are you here?! What do you think you’ll gain from this?”
“That’s a lot of questions, Lin. You seem stressed, worried- Why? You’ve done nothing wrong, well, as far as the world knows. So, why are you stressed?” Entrapta asked.
“Because there’s a crazy person in my home.”
“So many questions, here’s one of mine: Do you believe your innocent? Huh?” Lin remained silent, still angry, “Do you think you deserve this trophy, this award? Hmm? Do you?”
Lin looked like hellfire was fuming under her pale skin, her eyes looked like they were about to shot lasers out of them. She inhaled and exhaled. “Yes.” That response was what made Entrapta fuming. She slammed her gloved hands onto the table, rocking it. “Ah, so that’s why you’re here.” Lin got it.
“You will make it public knowledge that the self-duplicating nano-bots are MY creations!” Entrapta was angry, truly angry. Because you see, Entrapta and Lin were lab-partners, they didn’t work on the same projects, they simply shared a laboratory together. Entrapta was one of The Guild’s best, most talented members.
All her life Entrapta was an outsider, alone, the world into which she was born alienated her – her home was alien to her. Her interest- no, her love for the sciences drove her away from everyone she ever met. People of a magic world often saw technology as lesser. As something you didn’t know what to make heads or tails of. The people of Etheria had no interest in examining the laws of the universe, not if they could just break them. And so she remained alone, with no one to share her passion with.
Until The Makers Guild. She submitted a request to enter the organisation, and they accepted her. And for the first time in her life. People with parallel ambitions, and equivalent curiosity. She served for a good few years with The Guild – she created machines that were unimaginable to regular minds – and she was given no limits and no judgement, she had free reign to create anything; from the bizarre to the impossible. And it was never a problem, until it was.
With her normal day to day routine at the lab she met a fellow scientist named Lin, who was in the middle of developing a way to digitise currency, to store it and safeguard it out of reach and made it easy to carry large amounts of money with you at all times. Entrapta was uninterested in such an idea, but she was kind to Lin. Every day she would say her hellos to Lin and throughout the day they exchanged pleasantries, and though Entrapta never took much interest in her projects, Lin took great interest in Entrapta’s work. Entrapta was ecstatic about that, so excited she could share her theories and bounce techno-babel off of other similarly minded individuals. Entrapta thought that she had finally made a friend.
She was wrong.
“This, all of this, it’s laughable, Entrapta. You think you can strongarm me into giving you credit?! You broke into my house! I’m assuming, I’m reading in between the lines here, that you’re threatening me, are you insinuating that you’ll hurt me?!” Lin unloaded on Entrapta, in truth she had no cards left to play. But Lin had heard the rumours, which had spread across the lands, the rumours that Entrapta The Princess of The Queendom of Dryl had joined The Etherian Horde. A mad genius, one of the smartest, recruited by an evil army of darkness rolling through the continent, planting their flags wherever they went. If those claims were true Lin was in trouble. She was quite frightened. But she put on a brave face, “This. Is. Pathetic. All of this is foolish. Really, Entrapta? How childish of you.”
That was it, it broke her. That word: childish. That was what broke the camel’s back. That was what brought forth her rage, her wrath, her fury. She had heard that word many times throughout her life, many times it was used to berate her. Her whole life was littered with instances when that word resurfaced to describe her, whether it was meant as an insult or not, it always stinged. Entrapta didn’t have many memories of her parents, but those that she did have were riddled with interactions where the following happened:
Baby Entrapta would get curious about something – She’d do something, anything – Her parents would find her, ignored her arguments and explanations, ignored how smart and clever their child was – The parents berated their bright daughter – The ‘childish’ word came out – It hurt, every time – Baby Entrapta teared up – Baby Entrapta got grounded for talking back – The pattern repeated, over and over again, the word was a constant, it repeated.
But it didn’t stop at her parents, the word followed her all her life, through the years. She was no longer a child, even in her twenties the word found her, her so called friends at The Guild found her annoying and irritating at times. Entrapta’s curiosity and wonder and awe of the scientific and the unknown wasn’t appreciated. Entrapta’s hyperactive and energetic nature was looked down upon. She was judged for it. Hated for it.
You see Entrapta had autism, either hyper-focused or incredibly distracted, socially awkward and incredibly friendly and talkative. Entrapta was a gifted mind, but she had no one to help her discover who she was and how she worked, she was alone. And she often chose to be alone, because she found opening up would alienate her. Even now in her thirties the word burned her.
Entrapta could never be herself... until Hordak.
But before Hordak there was Lin, before the real there was the fake, the lie, the play pretend.
Lin was nice, nicer than most, and curious just like Entrapta herself. She asked Entrapta about her projects and experiments and theories. And Entrapta openly talked about them. Entrapta loved that there was someone who she could talk to, discuss with, someone on her level who understood what she was saying and contributed to the conversation and not just nodded along. Finally, she met someone who thought like her. Finally, she made a friend.
Lin always brought coffee for Entrapta every day from the cafeteria, and they’d just talk. But there was something off, Entrapta should have seen there was something off. Lin never asked her how her day was, she never complemented Entrapta, only her work. She understood the techno-babel and engaged with it, but she didn't empathise with Entrapta as a person, didn't understand her hardships, didn't really listen to her troubles. Lin didn't want to spend time with Entrapta because she liked her or because she felt like a kindred spirit. But because Lin saw her as a useful tool.
Entrapta soon realised that, but not soon enough, not before it was too late. One day Entrapta just woke up and before breakfast her life was in shambles. Her funding was frozen. The locks to her lab at The Makers Guild headquarters were changed. And most insultingly, they transferred all her experiments over to other scientists. And all mentions of Entrapta, her name, was erased.
When Entrapta found Lin and began to breakdown in front of her, telling her that they took everything from her, Lin just laughed. Laughed at her. She mocked her. Lin knew about the lab, it was her who did it. It took a moment for Entrapta to understand what was happening. Her friend was laughing at her, berating her. Telling her that it was all an act. Calling her a freak.
That was when Entrapta had picked up a letter opener and was about to plunge it into Lin's skull. Security dragged her away, kicking and screaming. “I'm going to kill you!” She vowed.
Lin snapped Entrapta out of her thoughts, “You think threatening me, getting credit for your experiments, is going to somehow repair your public image, make people forget that you're a psycho freak!? You're with The Horde! No great scientific achievement can fix that. Look, Entrapta, just- just let me go, and I promise I won't tell anyone about this, this is pointless, this won't do anything for you. Please, Entrapta, think logically about this, just let me leave.”
Entrapta wasn't even looking at her. She had her head down, she was staring at her gloved hands fidgeting with the golden award on the table. The mad scientist looked as if she was still deep in thought, daydreaming. She wasn't. She was never this quiet, it was so unnatural for her, it was... scary.
“Entrapta?”
“You can go.” Entrapta replied simply.
Lin was actually shocked by the response, but before she could begin to question it she got up and walked off to the kitchen door. She placed a hand on the nob and attempted to turn it to open the wooden door. But it didn't open, it was locked, somehow. Lin jostled the nob in irritation. “What the-" Lynn couldn't finish her sentence before a huge metal armoured hand blasted through the door and grabbed her head. And pulled her in as she screamed at the top of her lungs. To most people the screams would have sounded horrifying, but to Entrapta it sounded like vindication.
Entrapta and Hordak would set off that night to burn down The Makers Guild headquarters and cement Entrapta’s revenge. They both later on would consider it their first date. And they would go on many more. And Hordak promised to aid her in her journey, whether it was revenge or moving forwards with new experiments and creations, whichever form that took he would be there. All he desired was to be around her, with her. He didn't understand it at the time, but the warlord was falling in love with the purple scientist. And she was with him. He understood her, did not judge her, liked her. He was her friend.