Chapter Text
“The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.”
― G.K. Chesterton
“People have hurt you, haven't they?”
The metal floor beneath Catra felt cold in spite of the raging forge nearby. There was a deep, pervasive chill in her body that may have been responsible for that. She gazed up at the ceiling, watching the nearby flames cast flickering shadows on the dark steel ceiling.
Nearby, Hordak lay unmoving, partially pinned under a massive pile of debris and bent metal. Catra had beaten him in combat just minutes before, but any uplifting sense of victory eluded her. That was a recurring problem for her as of late. No matter how many battles she won, no matter how much territory she claimed, nothing filled the emptiness in her chest.
“They didn't believe you. Didn't trust you.”
Double Trouble's words continued to echo in her mind, the painful stings carried on familiar voices thanks to their shapeshifting powers. Catra had begun to see them as a real ally. Maybe even a friend, though she'd never use that word, even to herself. They left her too, though, like everyone else.
Lonnie, Kyle, Rogelio, all fellow soldiers, all once-loyal comrades, now gone. Pushed away, quite deliberately, by Catra herself.
Before them, Scorpia. That was Catra's fault too, though she'd developed such a detestation for her own actions even as she continued to perform them that she wasn't really sure what she was truly to blame for anymore. Did she really push Scorpia away, or was it the Horde? Maybe her kind heart and soft soul just couldn't handle the necessities of war. Maybe her status as a princess, as unrecognized as it was, proved just too strong of an influence, pulling her to her fellow royals on the other side of battle. Even as Catra considered these possibilities, these excuses, she simply felt too weak to truly try to deflect the blame.
Shadow Weaver before her. Catra wasn't sure how to feel about her. A guardian, a monster, a teacher, a puppeteer? Any affection or familiarity was tainted by resentment, any hatred tempered by sentiment and history. Whatever Catra felt about Shadow Weaver, it was clear to her how Shadow Weaver felt about her. Catra was nothing in her eyes when compared to Adora. She'd abandoned her to the whims of Hordak and fled to Adora's side.
Adora.
“Didn't need you. Left you.”
She was the first. She left, and that was the start of Catra's rise and fall. Or, looking back, maybe she'd been falling this entire time. Maybe this was the final moment before she hit the ground. Thoughts of Adora sent an ache down her spine, directionless and suffocating. It brought about a desperate urge to be somewhere, to chase down some unknown goal, but it also placed a weight upon her, pressing her to the floor far more efficiently than the wreckage piled atop Hordak's prone form. It was like drowning deep beneath the sea. A frantic desire to escape, to save oneself, but with the irrefutable knowledge that that is impossible.
“It’s you. You drive them away, Wildcat.”
With no recognizable course of action to pursue, and moreover no energy left within her to do so, Catra just sat there, back pressed against a chunk of fallen stone. She tried a few times to say something, to herself or to Hordak, who now seemed to be half-awake, but each time her mouth simply fell open soundlessly, hung there a few moments, and then closed again.
Exhausted and drained, she felt herself approaching unconsciousness herself when a jarringly loud noise shocked her awake. It was the sound of squealing metal and rushing wheels. She opened her half-lidded eyes to see an inexplicable sight before her.
A long, black, compartmented vehicle sat before her, with eerie green lights gleaming out of every window. It was like the monorails that connected a few key areas of the Fright Zone, but the overall design was much different. The oddest thing about its sudden appearance is that there had definitely not been a track there before. The openings in the walls allowing it access to the room were also brand new. Catra had lived in the Fright Zone her whole life, and while admittedly she’d never made a habit of visiting this area, she knew for a fact that there had never at any point been any tracks or transports passing through that sector.
As she puzzled over the train’s sudden appearance, the door in front of her slid open, and a sign lit up above the doorway declaring the destination was simply ‘home.’ Had Catra ever really had a home? The idea seemed more like a feeling than a location in her mind. She wanted to say yes, but she’d never lived anywhere but the Fright Zone, and that had never been anyone’s home.
Feelings of regret, confusion, and nostalgia formed an unusual cocktail in her head as she slowly rose and approached the train’s waiting doorway, almost by instinct. An indistinct memory, like a phantom sensation of touch, brushed the edges of her thoughts. A hand around hers, a warmth beside her.
It all fell away as a sudden surge of light erupted from the darkness within the train, and Catra was gone.
“And scene.”
Adora sat in the now dark and eerily quiet Crystal Castle, the broken pieces of her sword scattered on the ground in front of her. The explosion she’d caused by breaking it was still ringing in her ears. The lights were gone, and so, it seemed, was Light Hope.
The idea that Light Hope might be gone for good evoked a complex medley of emotions in Adora. Sadness, regret, relief, guilt. At the end, Adora had thought Light Hope, the version she knew, was gone, overridden by the First One’s programming. In those final moments, though, her Light Hope, Mara’s Light Hope, seemed to return, if only for a second. Adora didn’t know to what degree Light Hope really felt, how human she had become, but regardless, there was no sense of victory in her defeat. Just a hollow silence where she’d been.
The broken shards of the sword stung her heart as harshly as if they’d pierced it. There was no ambiguity or uncertainty in that feeling. The sword had been the source of her power, the key to her destiny. She-Ra was her. Or, rather, she was She-Ra. Somehow those statements held different meanings in her mind.
At some point, she staggered to her feet, collected the shattered blade pieces in her arms, and began the trek out of the castle. The structure had always been something of a labyrinth, and maneuvering through it in the dark wasn’t a task Adora really felt up for. In spite of that, she continued forward through the pitch black halls, operating on muscle memory alone. It didn’t even really feel like it was her legs that were propelling her forward. She was on autopilot.
The Crystal Castle had, for as long as Adora had known it, been a marvel of First Ones Technology, a stunning maze of confounding design that could generate not only Light Hope's hologram, but everything from simulated giant spiders to recreations of her own memories. Somewhere among the now darkened depths of the structure, Adora had relived a number of painfully nostalgic memories with Catra.
Catra.
The memory felt like it was a lifetime ago. That it was from another version of Adora altogether. The two of them wandering the halls looking for a way out, only to find themselves in one memory after the next. At the time, Adora was still a very recent addition to the rebellion. She'd spent her entire childhood, almost her entire teens, in service of the Horde, only to suddenly be thrown into a life of magic swords and immense responsibility and a feeling of belonging like she'd never really known and a sense of morality that she'd never understood she'd lacked before. She'd felt completely uprooted from everything she'd ever known, but she also felt certain it was the right path.
Catra was the one hitch in that belief. She'd stayed behind. She'd been the one constant in Adora's life and leaving her, even for the best of intentions, had felt like sacrificing a part of herself. Like she'd been so bound to something that pulling away tore off a piece of her and left it there to wither and rot.
For a long time she'd hoped the separation was temporary. Though she refused to acknowledge it consciously, seriously, maybe some part of her still did. And in the maze of illusions and reminiscence, she'd really begun to believe it might happen. Things with Catra were becoming easier, falling into the old comfortable routines she'd once known. There were gentle teases and unrestrained laughs and carefree touches and uninhibited grins.
But then it all fell apart. And perhaps it had never stopped. Maybe it was still collapsing, still breaking apart bit by bit into smaller and smaller pieces, too minuscule and too sharp to ever hope of reconstructing, of even collecting again. Maybe the bond they'd shared would never stop splintering, no matter how irreparable it became. Why else would the thought of Catra still sting so badly?
Scared to continue this line of thought, Adora tried to turn her attention to anything else. She thought back to the recording she'd seen of Mara meeting with Light Hope in the castle. Mara had trained in this same structure so long ago. The technology contained within had lasted for so long until Adora arrived. Now it was broken too. Would the lights ever return? Was this immense computer, all of this First Ones heritage, her heritage, nothing more than an empty tomb now, housing nothing but shadows and a regretful fleeing girl?
Adora tightened her hold on the sword shards in her arms and wondered if breaking things might be all she was good at.
As she continued her departure, she struggled to think of other things. How had the aborted firing of the Heart of Etheria affected her fellow princess? She wasn't really a princess anymore, actually, now that she thought about it. Had the princesses managed to hold back the Horde? Was all this moot, with the whole planet now uprooted and thrown into a new universe? Had Mara's sacrifice ultimately meant nothing in the face of her own failure? What was Adora even good for now? She'd fight, even without the sword. She wouldn't give up. Her friends needed her. Or they needed who she'd been. Could she still help them in the way they needed her to?
Light entered her vision. It was the exit. She raced forward, dropping the sword pieces upon the floor near the doorway in her rush, and as she stepped outside, the cool air provided refreshment that she didn't really feel she deserved.
Glimmering stars, the first she’d ever seen, hung high in the sky above a fleet of sleek, black starships.
The Horde’s reinforcements had arrived.
Catra woke up feeling cushions against her back. For a fleeting few moments, she wondered if maybe everything that had just happened was a dream. Maybe, just this once, fortune was smiling on her, and the whole fiasco with the Heart of Etheria and the failed attack on Bright Moon had never happened. Maybe she could even wake up to find Adora in the bunk with her, and they’d spend a day doing the usual Horde obligations before sneaking away to watch the sunset and contemplate the days when they would rule the world together.
A pair of annoying voices put that fantasy to rest, however.
“Welcome aboard, new passenger!”
Catra begrudgingly opened her eyes to see a small screen displaying an equally small spherical robot.
“I’m your conductor, One-One.” The second ‘One’ was spoken in a distinctly more morose voice than everything else the bot had just said. “Once you wipe those groggy little peepers, you’ll probably have a lot of questions, like ‘Where am I? Why am I here? Are snacks provided?'”
Catra rolled her eyes, wondering momentarily if the robot was a creation of Entrapta’s, before realizing with a pang of guilt that that wouldn’t be possible with the princess in question left for dead on Beast Island. As the little bot continued its prerecorded message, Catra glanced around to examine her environment.
The cushion she’d felt was a padded seat within a strange egg-shaped pod of some kind. It was high tech, but the overall aesthetic was more sleek and white than the usual clunky, gray and green machines in the Fright Zone or the patchwork look of Entrapta’s usual machines.
Any ponderings over her transport were immediately pushed aside when Catra saw the environment around her. The whole landscape was made of enormous scoops of ice cream and other confectioneries. Similarly oversized toppings like sprinkles, graham cracker crumbs, and crushed pecans dotted the landscape like foliage. There were roads paved with giant pieces of wafer and a nearby river of a dark brown liquid. Treats like candy and soda weren’t exactly a staple food in the Fright Zone, though she’d long known how to get some contraband, so while Catra had picked up some frame of reference for ice cream and some of the other features around her, she couldn’t identify the liquid comprising the river, which was root beer.
“...this is a train where you sort out your problems.”
That statement shook Catra out of her confusion long enough to refocus her attention on the still playing video.
“How about that number of your hand, huh? Pretty cool and green.” Catra looked down to see that there was indeed a glowing number printed on her right hand. In its more sullen voice, One-One added, “Every passenger has one.”
- It was a pretty big number.
“The numbers are made by the train based on your life, in order to help you have the most personalized experience we can offer. If you want to go home, get your number to zero, and boof , away you go.”
Based on her life? Well, if that meant the bad parts of her life, as Catra assumed it did based on the context, then she was a little surprised it wasn’t higher. Just the things she’d gone through over the past few months seemed worthy of a six digit number at least. That said, she wasn’t really sure what she was actually expected to do to make the number go down. She pondered over that for a few moments, One-One’s two voices again fading into the background, before the pressing matter of the ice cream land around her again came to the forefront of her mind.
A few beings began to approach, understandably curious about the new arrival and her odd form of transport. They appeared to be sapient bars of ice and ice cream, with some of them being flavored popsicles and others being ice cream bars coating in a thin skin of chocolate. Their faces were formed by cracks in the chocolate and indentions in the ice, and they had large, rounded popsicle sticks as both arms and legs.
Catra leaped up to respond to the encroaching dessert people, but the ice cream ground proved both colder and more slippery than she anticipated, and she immediately slipped and fell onto her back, ice cream clinging to her hair and clothing.
“Are you okay?” a bright blue popsicle man exclaimed in concern, increasing his stride alongside a few others.
Catra quickly pulled herself off the slick ground and bared her claws in defense. “Stay back! What is this place?”
The approaching treats skidded to a halt in response to the aggressive action.
“No need for that,” said a chocolate bar man with a mature voice and a candy coating that appeared to be emulating a thick beard. “This is our home, Parlor. I’m the governor of this land, Tiger Tail. What’s your name, traveller?”
The man’s gentle demeanor did little to calm Catra. “Is this Etheria?”
Tiger Tail shared a confused glance with his compatriots and responded, “I’ve never heard of that country, I’m afraid. If you’d like, we’re about to have a banquet. You could calm your nerves, and we could see if we can help you work out what to do.”
Confused and uncertain of what to do, Catra simply turned tail and ran in the direction opposite the strange edible people. The crowd’s protests fell on deaf ears as Catra raced on all fours away from them and tried to wrap her head around her unexpected relocation.
The portal had played fast and loose with time and space. That particular experience wasn’t a pleasant thing to reminisce on for Catra, but it seemed a more likely explanation than most. Hordak had even mentioned that Horde Prime would likely open one to pull Etheria out of the empty pocket dimension of Despondos where it was hidden.
The portal’s adverse effects on reality were due to it being opened within Despondos, however, and any portal made from the wider universe by Horde Prime wouldn’t have that issue, right? Not to mention the collapsing portal reality still largely resembled the world Catra was used to, just a little mixed up. Sapient frozen desserts were far from “a little mixed up.”
Some part of Catra wanted to write it all off as a dream, but everything definitely felt real. Freezing cold ice cream was proving to be a poor choice of terrain to be running in with mostly bare feet.
It could perhaps be the result of holograms or some kind of simulation. Catra had reexperienced a few very convincing holographic memories during a previous exploration of the Crystal Castle. The last thing she could recall, however, was being in the Fright Zone. The appearance of the inexplicable train finally resurfaced in her mind, but she only had a moment or two to think about that before she suddenly lost all momentum and was thrown forward onto her back.
Her sprint had been cut short when her left hand collided with a sticky glob of chocolate sauce forming a puddle on the ground. With effort, Catra removed her hand from the pool, her hand now encased in a viscous glove of chocolate.
She shook her arm vigorously, a large portion of the goop flying off to cling to the ground around her. Idly wiping the remaining chocolate off her hand and onto a nearby block of waffle cone, she continued to lay supine on the chilly soil, finding it difficult to build up the energy to pick herself up and continue her mad dash to nowhere in particular.
“Uh, ma’am? Are you okay?”
The speaker was another popsicle person, this one with a light brown coloring. Judging based on their high voice and their smaller than average stature, this one appeared to be a kid.
Catra groaned and placed her hand on her face in exasperation. She wasn’t exactly good with kids. She realized only after doing this that there was still some chocolate on her hand, and now some of it clung to her face. Shaking her head wildly to throw off the stain, she reluctantly responded to the ice cream boy.
“No, walking, talking ice cream boy, I’m pretty far from okay,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose and then breaking her irritated expression to open her eyes and check that her hand and nose were still clean. “Today has been really, exceptionally not good, and now I’m talking to giant desserts. Honestly, I’d prefer to be back in the Fright Zone, which is sad on several levels.”
The kid leaned down to make eye contact with Catra unobscured by her hand. “The Fright Zone? Is that where you’re from?”
“Yeah. It’s a far cry from this sugary sweet nightmare. It’s not really a ‘home sweet home,’ but it’s familiar, and I’d prefer being in awful there than awful here.”
He sat on the ground by Catra and looked up at the sky contemplatively. “Well, sometimes we get fleshy visitors like you. Never seen one with a tail, though.” Catra wrapped her tail around herself defensively, and the kid’s cheek frosted over in what appeared to be the popsicle person equivalent of blushing. “Sorry! It’s a great tail! I mean, it’s you know, fine. It’s a fine, normal tail.” Catra’s glare intensified to the point the boy worried he might melt from it. “I just, er, yeah the people. They come through with numbers on their hands like yours and they leave through the red door.”
Catra’s ears perked up. “Red door? There’s a way out of here?”
“Yeah, that’s where they usually leave through. I can show you the way. We’ve got to get there by boat, though.”
“You people have boats?” Catra asked skeptically.
The boy pointed a popsicle stick arm to a nearby dock on the root beer river. Sitting there were a few odd aquatic vessels. They seemed to serve the same function as a boat, but they were comprised of large, cherry-topped ice cream scoops piled atop even larger bananas.
Catra rolled her eyes as the annoying cuteness of it all, but minutes later the pair was traveling down the river in one of the floating banana splits. Catra sat in the front, passing the time by nibbling on a cherry larger than her head, while the popsicle boy steered from the back with a rudder that appeared to be at least partially made from a giant cinnamon stick.
“My name’s Butter Brickle, by the by!” the kid said after the silence between them began to approach becoming uncomfortable.
“I didn’t ask,” Catra called back dismissively. After a few more quiet seconds, she added, “...I’m Catra.”
“That’s a nice name,” Butter Brickle said meekly, earning no response from Catra.
The boat sailed down the river in silence again for a few more minutes. Once she lost interest in the cherry she’d been snacking on, Catra tossed the remainder onto the riverbank.
Butter Brickle chimed up again. “So you’re from some place called the Fright Zone? It doesn’t sound like a very nice place. No offense!”
“None taken. The place sucked. Just a cold, steel scab on the land.”
“So, the Fright Zone’s just a town or something?” asked Butter Brickle inquisitively.
“Something like that,” Catra said, dipping her hand into the root beer waters beneath her. “Just one of many points of interest in the magical world of Etheria ,” she added sardonically.
“Huh. Well, what’s Etheria like then? It sounds pretty.”
Catra rolled her eyes. Taking an experimental lick of the root beer dripping from her hand, she said, “It’s not. It’s all just annoying princesses and annoying soldiers and annoying, stupid talking horses.”
“Do you not have any friends there?”
Catra seemed to freeze at the question. After a few moments, she responded, “No. No one cares about me there.” And then, softer, “No one ever did.”
Butter Brickle opened and closed his mouth a few times, struggling to think of a good response to that. He settled on “Well, we could be friends.”
Catra stared down at her own rippling reflection in the river. “You don’t even know me.”
Butter Brickle’s cheeks frosted over again. “I know that. I just don’t really have many friends myself, but the travelers that come through from time to time always seem to like me. I’ve made friends with a couple, but they never come back once they leave.”
Catra looked back at him. “Why would you want to go through that again? Why would you want to be my friend knowing I’m never coming back?”
“It’s really the only way I tend to make friends at all. It’s better than never having any."
“Why don’t the other popsicle people like you?” asked Catra. “They seem like they’d make friends with just about anyone, the saccharine little ice cream headaches.”
“They actually kind of hate me. Most of them.” Butter Brickle looked straight ahead toward their destination, suddenly refusing to make eye contact. “They have good reason to, honestly.
“Some time ago, these kids showed up. Fleshy kids. Travelers. They pillaged one of our towns. They destroyed homes. They attacked people. They… ate people.”
A shiver ran through Butter Brickle. The boat exited the river and entered a lake, with the red door they’d been seeking on a small island in the center. Catra didn’t notice.
“That was my town,” he continued. “My parents tried to distract the invaders so that I could run away, but I was too scared. I hid in my room, and when the travelers knocked the house down, I was pinned under the debris. They never saw me. Eventually, I managed to get myself out. I was the only survivor.
“Now a lot of people hate me for living when they lost their friends, their families. I can’t really blame them, I guess. Now the only people who will be my friends are other travelers. I think they hate me for that too.”
“They didn’t seem to mind me, and I’m a traveler, apparently,” said Catra.
Butter Brickle finally met her gaze again, suddenly looking jarringly serious for his cutesy appearance. “They know they have to make travelers feel at home. At ease. They can’t win a straight fight against people like you.”
The boat landed on the island’s shore, but Catra didn’t notice, realizing after several moments that she’d become frozen in place. After collecting herself, she climbed out of the boat and approached the door. Butter Brickle climbed out as well in order to push the boat back into the root beer lake.
“Hey.”
Butter Brickle turned to see a big cherry flying toward him. He managed to hastily catch it, nearly clumsily dropping it before getting a good grip.
“Don’t take anyone’s crap, Butter Brickle,” said Catra. “You’re better than that. We’re better than that. No one should get to put us down, so don’t believe what they say. You’re alive, and they’re just going to have to deal with that.”
“Thank you!” He glanced down at the cherry and back up at Catra. “So, does this mean we’re friends?”
A look of uncertainty crossed Catra’s face before she turned it to one of determination. She put on a smile and gave a quick nod, then turned to the door. The opening mechanism on it was odd but intuitive, and Catra departed the land of Parlor without another word.
What she found on the other side was unexpected, to say the least. She was on a big train, similar to the one she’d seen in the Fright Zone but much larger and more industrial. The whole land of Parlor was apparently contained within a single train car. Walking to the edge of the platform to get a better look, Catra saw an apparently endlessly long stretch of train cars both ahead of her and behind. The whole massive vehicle charged relentlessly down a barren desert landscape that looked completely foreign to Catra.
“...Huh.”
“Bow!”
“Stay there! I’m coming!”
Bow fired a zipline arrow toward Glimmer’s location. She was alone in the Black Garnet chamber with Hordak, and he was quickly recovering from the first arrow Bow had fired his way.
A pillar of green light enveloped Glimmer and Hordak, the eerie glow rising skyward like a reversed waterfall. Pieces of the stone floor began to break off of the floor and rise, and then Hordak and Glimmer were likewise ripped from gravity.
“No!” Bow called out, speeding down the zipline with his bow.
The beam of light flashed white for a moment, and then dissipated, taking with it both of its passengers.
In the last moments, Bow sprinted forward in a vain rescue attempt, and he was left to simply stagger to a halt in front of the crater where the floor beneath the pair had been.
He collapsed to his knees under both the weight of what had just happened and of all he’d endured over the past day. This was really his first moment of respite since boarding Mara’s old ship and flying off to Beast Island in direct defiance of Glimmer’s commands. She was suddenly gone and Bow hadn’t even gotten to speak with her. She hadn’t gotten to reunite with her father after his long exile on the island.
Things with Glimmer had been rough for a long time now, and in that moment, all Bow wanted to do was make things right with Glimmer. Save her from the clutches of her captors and hold her close and ensure she was happy and secure and his friend again. All the anger that he’d felt for her lately washed away in that moment, leaving just worry and dread and an assured feeling of love that he hoped he could one day restore in her.
He stared up at the dark, austere spaceships sailing slowly across the sky, seeming to mock him with their apparent indifference to the world below. Glimmer was in one of those ships, presumably, but Bow had no idea which. Even if he did, what would he do? How could he even reach one?
He raised his bow and fired an arrow toward the fleet. There was no point to doing so, and Bow knew this. They would arc back toward the ground long before they could make it to one of the ships, and even if they could, they’d have no effect. Like throwing pebbles at Horde transports, which was a rather on the nose comparison, Bow recognized.
He was just angry, desperate, dumbfounded on what to do. There seemed no right course of action to follow. Glimmer had been taken and there seemed to be nothing in Bow’s power to counteract this at all. This situation was so much bigger than a boy with a bow and arrow could fix.
So he just shot an arrow as if it would send a ship crashing. As if one of the sleek shapes would plummet right out of the sky like a downed bird, and his best friend would stumble out of the wreckage, shaken but safe. Just to vent the frustration boiling inside him.
Then he fired another. And another. And another.
Four arrows flew towards the heavens and then back into the Fright Zone. One had contained a small explosive in the tip and another was a specially constructed sonic arrow, but he was just grabbing and firing at random. Bow neither knew nor cared where they’d land. This place had always been a dead zone of sorts. An unsightly scar of metal and fire in an otherwise beautiful landscape. Bow didn’t know what had stood there before the Fright Zone was constructed either, but anything would have been better, and now whatever it had been was gone, forever, like so much else.
He grabbed a fifth arrow from his quiver, but the heated feelings that had led to his inelegant attempt at emotional catharsis seemed to be ebbing. He brought the arrow down hard against the ground, breaking it in two. The burning sensation in his chest rose to his face, and tears rushed forth from his eyes, drawing clear, wet tracks down his cheeks.
He cried for several minutes. It was all very unrefined, even embarrassing. His voice hitched, and sobs left his throat in desperate, strained gasps. His nose ran. His whole body shook as he bawled, his tears leaving small twin stains on the ground.
He shouldn’t be crying. Intellectually, he knew that. Crying was solving nothing. He needed to stand up and get to work on saving Glimmer. He needed to rise from the floor and find Adora and concoct some way to get to Glimmer, and he needed to get her home and back to her father and her friends and himself.
He knew that. Every conscious part of his brain was screaming at him to stop wasting time and take action. But instead, he just kept crying.
Eventually, after a few minutes passed, the tears began to subside and the sobs began to fade. He stumbled from his place on the floor, on his hands and knees, and over to the Black Garnet.
Once he had finished and caught his breath, he placed a hand on the runestone and lifted himself up onto his feet. Wiping the lingering wetness from his face, he shook off the hopelessness and took his first step out of the Fright Zone.
Confusion was still the main feeling Catra was processing when she noticed the number on her hand was shifting. Glowing numbers on hands was really weird. Glowing numbers on hands that could change were just wrong. Catra felt that you could ask anyone and they’d agree with that.
3154. It had decreased by thirteen. Catra was a little curious why it went down by that amount in particular, but moreso she was now determined to make it go down the rest of the way. The weird little bot-ball with the mood swings had said that she could leave when it got to zero, and now she knew what it took to do that.
Getting through a train car made it go down. Catra could do that, easily, as many cars as it took. She just really, really hoped it wouldn’t always go down by such a small amount. Advancing along the walkway bridging Parlor’s car with the next, Catra looked around at the desert landscape around her.
It reminded her a little of the Crimson Waste, though somehow even more desolate. There were no noticeable hills or canyons or rock formations anywhere, just barren, flat land spiderwebbed with shallow cracks.
Catra had once considered claiming a leadership role in the Crimson Waste. She could safely say she had no such aspirations for this strange region.
The red door leading into the next car was entirely identical to the one she had just exited through. Really hoping that there wasn’t another ice cream land on the other side, she spun the opening mechanism and entered.
The interior of the car was, in fact, not made of soft serve. Instead, it was a massive, winding complex of climbing frames and slides and rope bridges and all manner of playground equipment. Catra didn’t really have a frame of reference for structures like these being used for childish enjoyment, but she did have some experience from Horde training. Back then, she’d avoided the exercise when she could and sped through it when she couldn’t. This car would be easy.
She sprinted forward, opting to run atop a long row of monkey bars instead of passing underneath as intended. Across a rope bridge, down a sliding pole, and along a long line of still rings, she ran through it all at breakneck pace.
Next was an area lined with several parallel rows of seesaws. Catra leapt across them like stepping stones, moving so quickly that by the time they shifted under her weight, she was already two ahead.
She noted as she ran that a few of the seesaws were occupied by young animal people. Not in the same way as her, these kids, and they all seemed to be kids, were creatures like dogs and bears and birds, their bodies humanoid but their features still distinctly animalistic. They had paws for hands or wings for arms, floppy ears and long snouts and thick fur or feathers. They all also wore very basic clothing like shirts and shorts and sundresses and caps. Their presence painted a picture of a completely ordinary playground, just a tad larger with fuzzy kids and no adults in sight.
They noticed Catra, unsurprisingly based on her reckless mad dash through their playground, and they tried to call out to her or wave to get her attention, but she refused to slow down or acknowledge their presence.
She needed to get off of the train. She refused to be trapped in this weird land with logic-defying worlds in identical, endless train cars. She had to get back home.
That word again. Home. Did she really have one? She’d lived in the Fright Zone all her life, but as she’d told Butter Brickle, that place didn’t really elicit any warm and fuzzy feelings of belonging. It was a place to return to after hard-fought missions and a place to rest until the next one. It was a place of familiarity, a constant in a world of confounding magic and infuriating princesses. Almost every happy memory she had was from there, but so were almost all of the worst.
She’d sought to claim it, in some sense. In leading the charge to conquer Etheria, to win the war for the Horde, she’d been hoping to claim the throne, steal it right out from under Hordak. That didn’t work out very well for anyone.
As she contemplated all of this, she reached an enormous dome-shaped jungle gym. It was easily the size of a small hill. She sighed at the effort it would require, but began climbing.
Would the Fright Zone even be there when she returned? From the footage Double Trouble had shown her, it seemed the Horde was losing at the end. The final charge to victory had become the final breath of Hordak’s futile attempt at proving himself. Catra knew, even as she so often tried to deny it, that you can’t prove yourself to people like Horde Prime, like Hordak himself. They already know what you are, and no amount of effort will change your core. It’s why Shadow Weaver left. Why her old squadmates left. Why Adora left her.
They saw her, and they knew her.
Catra shook the thoughts from her head. She was going back, no matter what was waiting for her, because it was better than the insanity she was currently experiencing.
As she approached the peak of the hill of metal bars, she saw that the summit was a solid platform rather than the grid that made up the rest of the dome. Spiraling down from the platform were five twisting, tubular slides heading off in different directions. Seeing the slides as an excellent way to make a lot of progress quickly, she hastened her climb and reached the top in less than a minute.
It was there that she saw a young cat girl pacing anxiously in front of one of the slides. Like the other animal children, she wasn’t exactly like Catra. She had a distinctly feline face, with whiskers and a snout. Was it called a snout? Catra, rather ironically, wasn’t sure. The girl was covered head to toe with calico fur, and she wore a pair of denim overalls with a skirt-like bottom over a shirt patterned with thick orange and yellow stripes.
Suddenly feeling somewhat understandably sentimental, Catra approached the young girl. Besides, she was standing right in front of the entrance to the slide she intended to pass through, so it was practical to get her to either go down or get out of the way.
Catra knelt down to look the kitten in the eyes. “Hey there. What’s your name?”
The girl met Catra’s gaze bashfully. “Marmalade.”
Some part of Catra wanted to roll her eyes at that name, but she resisted the urge. “Why are you up here pacing when you could be going down the slide?” There was an undeniably maternal edge creeping into her voice and she hated it.
“Well, all my friends went down already, but I’m scared. It’s a really big slide.” Embarrassed, her eyes shifted to look at the ground and she squeezed tight handfuls of her overalls.
Catra placed a hand on Marmalade’s shoulder. “I know a secret, okay? How to get over your fears and do things you don’t think you can.”
“What is it?”
“First you close your eyes,” began Catra, and Marmalade did just that.
“Then you take a deep breath.” Marmalade obeyed, taking a comically large breath.
“And then…” Catra continued, tightening her grip on Marmalade’s shoulder. “You do it.”
With one quick movement, she shoved the young girl into the slide. Marmalade’s shocked scream grew steadily quieter as she slid further and further away. After taking just a moment to smile with satisfaction, Catra leapt in after her.
The slide’s wild, winding design twisted so severely in different directions that it had to be defying basic laws of physics. There were corkscrews and a repeated series of ups and downs, and Catra was certain she was upside-down for at least fifteen seconds at one point.
The whole experience was exhilarating, and oddly freeing. For Catra, it wasn’t exercise or Horde training, it was just a moment of unrestrained enjoyment, thrown to and fro without a care. After what felt like a dreadfully short amount of time, she emerged at the other end of the slide in an area filled with merry-go-rounds.
She realized that at some point she’d started laughing. It took her a few moments to calm down enough to properly observe her surroundings.
The merry-go-rounds were all painted in vibrant colors and patterns, three to each and with no repeating paint jobs that she could see. Off to the right was a sand box large enough that it could easily qualify as a beach if not for the lack of an adjacent ocean. To the left was a forest of tetherball poles. Directly ahead was one last jungle gym, this one such a tangled mass of colorful metal bars that she wasn’t sure that she could get through them. Barely visible through the spaces between however, was the red door leading out of the car.
All of these observations meant little, however, in the face of what was right in front of her.
Marmalade was lying on the ground, sobbing, and clutching her shoulder. There were visible scrapes on that shoulder as well as on her right knee. One of the straps on her overalls had torn and was hanging limply in two pieces.
The worst part, though, were the deep claw marks she saw on both of Marmalade’s upper arms. They appeared to be from clutching her arms tightly as she went down the slide. Catra knew that pain. The scars beneath her clothes seemed to itch, but Catra kept her hands at her sides, balled into fists.
A young dog boy was knelt beside her, hovering his hands over his shoulders like he was afraid she would break on contact. He was a Shiba Inu, though Catra didn’t know that, and he wore a slightly too large red hoodie. While Marmalade was too busy crying to notice her, the dog boy spotted her immediately and glared daggers at her.
“Hey!”
The speaker was the other kid present, a raccoon boy who appeared to be just slightly older than the other two, just on the verge of being a teenager. He wore a knit cap and what appeared to be a black crop top, which seemed like a rather odd fashion choice. After another glance at Marmalade, Catra realized that the black strip of fabric that the dog was using to gingerly bandage her knee was likely ripped from that shirt.
“What’s your problem?” the raccoon demanded.
“Mochi, p-please…” Marmalade managed to gasp out between sobs.
“No!” said Mochi, approaching Catra with a furious expression on his face. “Who goes around hurting little kids? What is wrong with you?”
The dog boy began to stand but Mochi demanded he too stay out of it. The dog, apparently named Rascal, relented and sat back down, worry apparent in his expression.
“I just pushed her down a slide!” said Catra. “It’s not my fault she was too scared to do it herself. If I hadn’t done it, she’d still be up there. Did you not want her around or something?”
Mochi shoved Catra, a furious but ineffective gesture. “That is so far from the problem! You hurt her! Like, actually shoved her and hurt her! She was scared to slide down and now she’s even more scared of you!”
“I helped her!” retorted Catra, her voice rising in intensity. “I don’t have to defend myself to little brats like you. You don’t learn by whining and standing in place. You do things! You take action. This is what she needed, and it’s not my fault she was too weak.”
“Y-you seemed n-nice,” Marmalade stammered out, tears still streaming down her face. “You could’ve just t-t-talked to me. Y-you could’ve j-just left me alone. Why’d you do it?”
It felt like ice water was poured on the hot anger in Catra’s chest. She ran toward the exit, shoving Mochi to the ground as she sped past. Mochi punched the ground in anger, several times. Marmalade tried to stand but stumbled back to the ground. Rascal rushed to Mochi’s side, giving him a worried hug and examining his bloodied knuckles with panicked concern. Catra saw none of this.
She ran full speed to the cluster of multicolored metal poles and began to squeeze her way through as quickly as she could.
What was up with those kids? Did they not know how the world worked at all? You can’t just stand still. You can’t just sit scared or break down crying. You get to work. You do what scares you, or what hurts you, and you lick your wounds and you keep going. Catra knew that. Did these kids know nothing? Maybe they really didn’t have parents. Shadow Weaver was anything but a mom, but at least she taught Catra how to survive in the world.
As Catra forced her way through the bars, she realized the number on her hand was changing again. She hadn’t made it through the car yet, though. She paused to examine it and saw the number was 3162. It had gone back up! It was practically back where it started.
She hadn’t even left the car! Was there a time limit? How was this number personalized, and how was this fair at all? This number was just too big!
She let out an angry roar and tore through the impeding bars with her claws, ripping her way through to the other side. Once she was free from the web of steel, she ran straight to the exit and departed without even a glance back.
“Take him to be reconditioned.”
Horde Prime’s identical clones complied immediately with their progenitor’s orders and carried Hordak’s limp form out of the spacious throne room. That left Glimmer alone with Prime.
“But, I have been rude,” Horde Prime said, turning his attention to her.
The statement sounded just sincere enough to be infuriating. If Glimmer didn’t feel so terrified in that moment, she would probably have sent a harsh insult his way. As it was, however, she had no magic and no allies and this whole ship and everyone within was his. Was him .
“We have a guest. Royalty, if I’m not mistaken.”
There was a pleasant, charismatic charm to his voice. It was almost as if he hadn’t furiously scolded and assaulted Hordak not moments before.
He stepped forward and chivalrously leant down to offer her assistance. She reluctantly took his hand in hers and he lifted her gently to her feet.
“I apologize for my little brother,” he continued. “His actions are an embarrassment. I desire only peace and order.”
Glimmer allowed the faintest trace of hope to return. “Then, you’ll leave us alone?”
Horde Prime chuckled humorlessly. “Oh, no, child. I cannot let word spread of my brother’s botched conquest. For order to thrive, this whole mess must be wiped away.”
Glimmer tried to step backward in retreat, but Prime, undeterred, reached out to place a hand softly onto her cheek. “Beginning with you.”
Glimmer reacted impulsively, seeing little alternative. Her right hand shot forward, faint traces of lingering magic sparking from her fist. She’d hoped for a blast of magic, but so far from the runestone and drained by the near firing of the Heart of Etheria, she was cut off from her power supply.
Her pitiable attack collided with Horde Prime’s toned chest. It felt hard under her fist, like striking a wall. His reaction suited this comparison, as his expression betrayed no emotion. Her fruitless attempt at a magical blast instead amounted to a thoroughly unremarkable punch.
Despite the complete lack of a visible reaction on Prime’s face, his response was immediate and decisive. He grabbed her roughly by the arm and spun her forcibly in place, turning her to face the viewing screens behind his throne. His other hand wrapped around her throat, the metal claw worn on his index finger cutting a short, shallow line across her neck.
“Poor girl,” he cooed, still not a single trace of anger in his voice. “I know you’re surely a person of high stature on your lost little world, but you’re in my universe now. You’ll find I can be a rather excellent host, but I simply cannot allow such brazen acts of rebellion. It will not do.”
A thin trickle of blood slid down Glimmer’s neck from the cut Prime had made, and a soft stream of tears slid down her face, partially from fear and partially from the stinging pain. Horde Prime leaned forward to put his face next to hers, nearly resting his head upon her shoulder. The prehensile metal tendrils mimicking hair upon his head emerged again from their holders on his chest and writhed slowly around her head, the needlepoints on the end of each aimed threateningly at her face.
The screens behind his throne displayed an image of the planet of Etheria. In her peripheral vision, Glimmer saw him gesture toward it with a small nod.
“If you would humor me for a moment, Your Grace .” The mocking sincerity appeared again in his voice. “This hidden jewel of a planet has been giving off some rather unique readings. It’s unlike anything I have ever seen, and I have seen much. Could you explain what makes your world so unique?”
Glimmer defiantly shook her head, the close proximity of the needles around her requiring the gesture be barely perceptible. Prime clicked his tongue in disappointment.
“Are you sure there is nothing you can tell me?”
One of the needles maneuvered itself centimeters away from her left eye. Glimmer could feel sweat beading on her forehead. Unable to shift her head away, she shut her eyes tight. The needle edged closer and deftly sliced a shallow nick on her eyelid.
Despite everything in her screaming to remain silent, Glimmer spoke up. “It’s a weapon!”
The needles backed away and reinserted themselves into their slots on Prime’s chest. The hand around Glimmer’s throat remained in place, and she sighed in defeat.
“The Heart of Etheria,” she explained despite herself. “The whole planet is a giant First Ones weapon.” She heard a soft hum of recognition from Prime. “It’s extremely powerful. It almost broke the planet apart.”
Hoping to salvage some good from her weakness, she hastily added, “And you need me! And the other princesses on our world. It doesn’t work without us.”
Prime replied simply, “Well, you have certainly given me a lot to think about.”
He whisked her around by her arm like a twisted parody of a partner dance move and handed her off to a pair of Horde clones that had apparently entered the room during that tense interrogation. As they escorted her out of the room, Horde Prime took a seat on his throne and called out after her, still in that confident, unfazed voice.
“I hope the accommodations are to your liking, child. We will have much to discuss. You and your fellow royals will prove helpful in cultivating peace and order throughout the universe, I assure you.”
Once she was gone, he spun his throne around to once again face the image of Etheria.
“The First Ones. I can never seem to be rid of you, can I? Oh if you could know the power that you’ve so carelessly placed in my hands. Your misguided attempts at rebellion will now be the instrument with which I will fill this vast darkness with cleansing light.”
Catra made it through the next few cars as quickly as she possibly could, fearful of a potential, unknown time limit.
The next car contained a frog civilization living atop giant lily pads in a big swamp. They lived in huts and were in the middle of a potluck when Catra arrived, but she had no time for it. The exit door was on the other side of a long stretch of swamp water with no bridges or lily pads to cross. Catra had managed to convince a tall frog girl to give her a ride across the pond. Catra knew how to use people.
The following car contained a world of nothing but shrimp. It was a tasty detour, but she grew tired of it quickly.
The fifth car overall contained a desert town populated with cactus people. The whole experience reminded Catra far too much of her brief journey to the Crimson Waste. She really didn’t like being reminded of that. The cactus cowboys were also really touchy for such literally prickly people, so Catra left that car in a hurry as well. It would have been even faster, but she refused to ride a cactus horse.
The car after that contained a large, metropolitan city. The one noticeably odd feature was that nearly every inhabitant of the city was a life-sized, extremely realistic looking plastic model of a person. They were all of distinctly varied races, ages, and fashion styles, and they were all in distinct poses. It was a very impressive degree of attention to detail. The sole actual, living inhabitant was a little unsettling and clingy though, so Catra again found good reason to depart post haste.
Four more cars down and her number hadn’t changed at all. It didn’t go up, and it didn’t go down. Catra was on the verge of another angry scream. She’d gone through the cars very quickly, and she’d made a lot of progress, so why wasn’t her number changing? Her passage through Parlor had been rather leisurely, and yet her number had gone down. In contrast, she’d passed through the jungle gym car as fast as she could manage, yet it had increased.
She was pondering this as she entered the next car. Lucky number seven, hopefully. The interior was all molded from a dark brown substance, including the plant life, the rocks, and the ground. The ground in particular was made from a uniform grid of rectangular blocks.
Catra reached down as scratched off a small piece of the ground. She sniffed it and didn’t recognize it immediately. She gave it a hesitant lick and then gagged at the taste. It was dark chocolate. She hated chocolate in all forms, but dark chocolate in particular was revoltingly bitter.
Catra sighed at the stomach-turning scenery and began her trek for the door. As she passed a chocolate tree she broke off a limb and started idly snapping off tiny chunks as she walked, leaving a trail of crumbs for no reason beyond boredom. After a few minutes of walking, having completely broken apart the branch, she started looking around at the inedible environment.
She noticed that off in the distance, the color of the chocolate changed to a creamy white. She wasn’t particularly interested in the reasons for this, but she nonetheless had little opportunity to think about it, due to the arrival of a pair of rabbit people.
One was the same dark brown as the ground she stood on and the other was a rich pink color. They were more akin to Catra than the animal people of the jungle gym car. They mostly resembled humans, save for the long ears, the cottontails, and the whiskers. They were also dressed in identical suits and bowties, the material made of the same chocolate as their bodies, which was a little unsettling if Catra was being honest.
“Hello, visitor!” the dark chocolate bunny began. “Welcome to our land! I’m Carmen, and this is Valero.”
They both waited expectantly, and after a moment Catra replied with a mumbled “Catra.”
The pink bunny, Valero, clapped his hands excitedly. “It’s so nice to have a new visitor. We don’t have many meat visitors like you, and now we have two!” Both of the rabbits had a somewhat thick accent, though Catra didn’t have any way of identifying them as Spanish.
"Meat visitors" was a really discomforting way to phrase things, but that wasn’t the part that interested Catra. “Wait, so there’s another passenger here?”
“Passenger? You mean our other visitor?” said Valero. “Oh you just have to meet him. He’s our new hero. He brought peace to our land.”
Valero and Carmen began to walk and Catra followed after them. “Peace? So, what, was there a war or something?”
“Oh, we don’t like to talk about that. It was a bad time, but then our hero arrived, and everyone is at peace,” Carmen said, just as enthusiastically as before.
“Sounds like a real lionheart, this guy,” Catra said, a familiar face in her mind’s eye.
The walk to the village in the center of the land was spent listening to her guides extol the virtues of this heroic arrival. Upon entering the village, Catra came to realize the whole land within the car was divided into four equal sections, each a different color of chocolate: light brown, dark brown, white, and pink. At the very center of town, the four sections met at a perfect intersection of four corners.
The village itself was filled with booths selling food and souvenirs and dancing and singing rabbits and plentiful decorations, also made entirely of chocolate. Carmen explained it was a festival in celebration of peace and the unification of their land. Catra remained on high alert, remembering the true nature of the banquet offered to her by Tiger Tail.
“And this our hero!” announced Valero.
A young human man who’d been talking to a trio of bunny children broke away to greet Catra. He had a head of thick curly hair and a pink jacket that she immediately disliked because it brought Glimmer to mind. Upon meeting eyes with Catra, his expression immediately changed to one of amazement.
“Oh my gosh! Are you a catgirl?” he said excitedly.
Catra raised her hands up in defense. “Okay, that’s way too much energy.”
The boy blushed and placed a hand in his hair in embarrassment. “Sorry, you’re just like a kitten. It’s cute.”
Catra blushed as well. “Okay, again, way too much.”
The boy noticed the glowing number on Catra’s palm. “Oh! Are you a passenger too?”
He held up his hand, and a number shone on it as well. 1911.
He reached his arm out, offering a handshake. “Sorry about that. Hey there.”
Catra rolled her eyes but accepted the handshake. “Hey. Catra.”
A barely restrained chuckle made his amusement over her name apparent despite his best attempt. “I’m Steven Universe. Nice to meet you.”