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Another round of blaster-fire pinged off the ship as She-Ra ascended the boarding ramp, sword flashing as she carved runes through the air, shielding both ship and crew from any further onslaught. As soon as the door clicked shut, she commanded Darla to follow evacuation procedures and the ship complied, swiftly transporting them back into space. Once they were out of range of their attackers, She-Ra flickered, then shrunk back to her regular form. Adora flopped tiredly into the captain’s chair and groaned, then turned to join the remainder of the crew in glaring at her girlfriend.
Catra huffed. “I don’t see why the emperor had to make such a big deal out of things. It wasn’t like we intentionally allowed our child to kill off their stupid sacred bird.”
Entrapta blinked, then said, “You bought a highly effective predator on impulse and allowed it to be around a potential food source without any way to restrain it from following its innate urges.”
“A highly effective predator…” Glimmer turned to stare at Entrapta, incredulously. “He is literally just a cat.”
The scientist nodded. “Cats are amazing ambush predators and are known to decimate the population of native fauna. How do you think they’ve managed to become so populous on every planet we’ve visited so far?”
Catra grumbled and Glimmer’s face shifted back into a scowl. “What did you just say?”
“I said, Melog said Jorts told it he just wanted to talk with the bird. How could we possibly have known that he was lying?”
The ship remained silent for a moment, save the hum of the engines, then exploded into chaos as the entire crew began to talk over each other. After the din had died down, Catra made eye contact with Bow, who was looking at her with large eyes, and an expression of wonderment. She sighed.
“Wait, so you can speak with cats? That’s so—”
“Don’t.”
“Catra, this is the cutest thing I've ever heard!”
Catra growled, then went over to the instigator of this entire fiasco and scooped him up off the floor to hold. “Have we not established that Melog is capable of communicating with literally any living creature?”
Adora blinked at her. “Um…No?”
“Seriously? We met it on a planet where it had been the only lifeform for hundreds of years and one of the first things it did was mimic Entrapta’s voice to lie to us so we'd get lost.”
Glimmer rounded on Catra and shoved an accusatory finger in the woman’s face, eliciting a hiss which was echoed by the tabby in her arms. “And at no point in this trip did you think this was maybe critical information to share in order to, I don’t know, help us to communicate on literally any of the planets we’ve visited?”
Catra shrugged. “Melog’s shy.”
“Ugh…” Glimmer snatched the cat out of the other woman’s arms and stomped to Adora, plunking it down onto her lap. She grabbed Catra's wrist and tugged her towards the doorway. “Well, regardless, now we need to figure out some way to make amends to the empower of Aviantua before word travels to any other planets and we become space fugitives, or something.
Catra allowed herself to be guided out of the room by Glimmer, but couldn’t help but smirk. “Space fugitives, huh? Has kind of a nice ring to it…”