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catracorner962 · 3 years

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Misremembered - A Glitra One Shot

Glimmer and Bow get an unconscious, unresponsive Catra back to the ship while She-Ra takes out the rest of the clones. Left to their own devices Glimmer tries to save the Horde Scum -- Or: My version of what happened between the shot of Catra lying on the floor of the ship and Catra with her head in Glimmer's lap at the end of Save the Cat.

“Over here, lay her down here.”

Bow gently lowered Catra to the floor, taking care to watch her head. Glimmer’s heart raced in her chest, pounding with adrenaline.

We need to get out of here!

Where was SheRa?

By the control center, Entrapta bustled about, fidgeting with wires and tech.

“There you go,” Bow whispered, Catra’s arm fell against her side, her eyes still closed. Glimmer inched over, examining the magicat for any sign of life.

“Bow! Bow I don’t think she’s breathing,” Glimmer’s voice cracked in panic, tearing off her gloves and putting a hand on Catra’s chest. The former Force Captain lay comatose on the cold floor of the ship, unresponsive to all around them.

“W...what?” Bow scooted closer hovering over the magicat with concern. His eyes, already brimmed with tears.

“I...was just carrying her...she was...she was..” Glimmer gently pressed two fingers to Catra’s neck, willing herself to feel a pulse. There had to be something, anything.

“She’s not breathing!” Glimmer yelled, more frantic then she meant to. She pounded Catra’s shoulders with balled fists.

“Catra! Catra wake up! Please! Adora’s coming,” the princess’s voice fell to an urgent whisper, leaning over the still magicat. “we’re getting out of here just hold on!”

Catra remained unmoved. Lips parted, though no breath came from them.

“Keep talking to her,” Bow instructed, he too removed his gloves, beginning to press down on the magicat’s chest, between her ribs at her sternum. Her body jerked with the movement but remained otherwise limp. Glimmer reached for Catra’s hand, squeezing tight.

“Catra, come on...you’re stronger than this!” She fought the urge to sob.

Prime, the ship, the clones, returning to her old cell, it was too much. And now this. Catra whom she hated, should hate, did hate. Catra had saved her, had given up what little autonomy she had left and now possibly her life. Why couldn’t the Force Captain just sell her out to Prime? Why was this so much worse?

Damnit Catra, I really hate you

“That’s not going to work, you have to…” Gimmer swallowed the lump in her throat. Her eyes flitted down to Catra’s face...her lips. So often twisted in a self righteous smirk, or pulled back to reveal fangs. Now though...they were just there. Neither inviting or denying. She inhaled deeply, thought Glimmer possessed no healing powers, wished she could save Catra the way Catra had saved her. Maybe not with claws and stubbornness but...with stubbornness and..benefit of the doubt? She wasn’t sure.

You hurt Adora, crushed whole kingdoms...killed my mother!

And yet...

… .I can’t just let her die...

“Glimmer?” Bow’s voice snapped her back to reality.

“Help me move her,” Glimmer tilted Catra’s head back further, careful to avoid the chip embedded in the back of her neck. Her tawny hair course and matted. Glimmer pulled her hand back, attempting to position Catra’s head correctly. Her fingers came away crusted with red. She examined the little flecks, wincing when the rusty clumps split into dribbling blood.

“You’re not dying Horde Scum. Not on my watch.”

Glimmer reached for her, one hand cupping the crown of Catra’s head and pinching her nose.

“Keep pressing, count to eighteen then pause, I’m going to try to give her air,” Glimmer instructed. Bow nodded, face tight with renewed determination. It helped to be in charge in times like this. It gave her something to focus on. Something other than the girl laying out before her. The Horde Scum who pulled a switch and broke reality. She channeled the fury, fury that she wanted desperately to save this Force Captain who had hurt so many people. The fear, that she wouldn’t be able to, the fear of Horde Prime, the rage, the strange sadness, all of it, into direction.

Would mom be proud of me?

“Alright Catra, don’t claw my eyes out,” Glimmer breathed, leaning over her. She almost wished she would. The princess beant close, hoping to feel a ghosting breath but nothing. The Horde Scum simply lay. Glimmer’s stomach fluttered as she leaned all the way down, closed her eyes, and sealed her lips over Catra’s; eliciting a strange heat below her stomach.

She’s...soft?

Catra was warm, but barely. Heat ebbing away. She smelled like acrid liquid and sweat, and blood enough to make Glimmer nearly gag. Still she continued. She breathed, once, twice, three times before breaking away.

“Anything?” Bow asked, forlorn?

Glimmer’s mind spun,

Why isn’t Adora coming?

Why haven’t we left?

What’s wrong with the ship, we should be taking off by now!

“No,” she breathed, trying to steal herself. “Let’s try again.”

This time she put her lips to Catra’s with a determined resolve. Forcing oxygen between them, with little luck.

“Catra,” Glimmer whispered between Bow’s repetitive compressions, “you are not dying on us. I am Queen of Brightmoon, I order you to stay alive.” Fingers still enticed in Catra’s shorn hair, Glimmer held her tight.

Catra please...

Glimmer tried once more, pushing air into Catra with all she could muster, expecting any short intake of breath, the flutter of eyes, nothing.

“Glimmer,” Bow whispered, “It’s not working.”

She straightened, relinquishing her hold on Catra’s hair, almost like resurfacing from underwater. Breaking away from the intimacy of being so close to her face. Dotted with freckles and almost serene. Gentle. One hand still holding Catra’s, Glimmer gingerly cupped her head and adjusted her knees, cushioning Catra’s vulnerable head in her lap.

“I never got the chance to thank you,” Glimmer whispered, eyes welling as she pulled a loose strand of hair away from Catra’s face and tucked it behind a velvet ear. “I know you were doing it for Adora but still...thank you.”

Blinding white light engulfed the ship. Glimmer instantly tightened her hold on Catra’s body pulling her close and leaning over her.

“She-Ra!”

She looked up, Bow was right. She-Ra strode forth, illuminated in shimmering gold.

She’s back!

Ice blue eyes fixated on the sky ahead, face drawn and unreadable.

“You hear that Horde Scum? She-Ra, Adora, she’s here. You’re gonna be okay.” Glimmer whispered, running her fingers over Catra’s face. Her head felt comfortably heavy in her lap, grounding the princess to reality.

“Darla, get us out of here,” She-Ra ordered.

Glimmer held Catra to her, hovering over her.

“You’re going to be okay,” she reassured herself more than the still girl before her. Catra remained unmoving as ever. A swelling sorrow rose in Glimmer’s gut. She leaned down once more towards the magicat, this time allowing her lips to kiss Catra’s forehead.

“And Darla, make it quick.”

Glimmer offered She-Ra a weak smile. It was the least she could do, slowly transferring Catra out of her embrace. Missing it instantly, but she wouldn’t think about that right now.

“C’mon Catra, you’re not done. Not yet.”

---

“Can I ask you something?”

Glimmer jumped, instantly teleporting and reappearing several feet away.

“Catra! Must you do that?”

“Do what princess? Scare you?”

Glimmer rolled her eyes, folding her arms and fixed the Horde Scum with a glare. The meeting that Catra had been required to attend and then promptly skipped, had just adjourned. Rebuilding plans, wiping out the last of Prime’s rouge clones, Glimmer had been spearheading it all, as was her duty and now Catra just crept up on her out of nowhere.

“What do you want, Horde Scum?” It was only half a joke.

Catra’s tail twitched in amusement.

“I want to ask you something.”

“You already said that,” Glimmer groaned, making her way around the large meeting table and cleaning up the various scrolls. She plucked one up, only to have it tear in the cement grip of Catra’s claws as she slammed her hands down.

“Something serious Sparkles.”

Glimmer made a disgusted noise, dropping and scroll in a fury.

“What?!”

“When you….after we were one the ship and we got away from Prime,” Catra instantly changed from bombastic to blushing, “when I was...out of it,” Glimmer’s face softened watching the magicate struggle for words, ears drooping. “Did you...did you...kiss me?”

That was unexpected.

Blue and golden eyes looked up at her in bewilderment, large and searching.

“I….”

Glimmer swallowed, shifting her weight looking anywhere but at Catra.

“No. I didn’t. I mean...Bow and I got you back to the ship while She-Ra fought off the rest of the clones but I didn’t...we just laid you down and tried to wake you up. But a kiss? You might be misremembering. If anyone kissed you that day, it was Adora.”

Catra nodded, though she looked unconvinced, blinking slowly at Glimmer in a gesture she’d come to understand as friendly and even affectionate.

“That’s too bad, Sparkles. It might’ve woken me up.” Catra turned to leave.

“It didn’t,” Glimmer answered before she could stop herself. The magicat paused, looking over her shoulder with a devilish grin. Heat rose in Glimmer’s cheeks, enough to match the pink flush of her magic.

“So I wasn’t misremembering?”

“No! You were! I didn’t!”

“Save it Sparkles,” Catra swaggered out of the meeting room with ease. “You already know I’d do the same for you.”

The End

#catra #glimmer #glitra #glimtra #glimmtra #spop #shera #she ra princess of power #sherafanfic #sherafanfiction #adora #bow #catra/glimmer #glimmer/catra #save the cat #My writing #spops5

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emperorsfoot · 4 years

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In which the Princess Alliance realizes maybe they probably should have sent out a memo about Horde Prime.

...

“What in the ever loving high holy heck does Adora think she’s doing now!?” Lonnie demanded of the open sky.

She, Kyle, and Rogelio were inspecting construction of the new supply storage bunkers when the sky suddenly and inexplicably cracked open with a light so bright it cut though the perpetual smog layer that blanketed the Fright Zone. Lonnie glared at it, the shape slightly distorted by the haze. But it looked like a cut across the sky. A cut like with a magic sword. So, of course, it had to be Adora and her new friends. After all, what else could it be?

“We do have a way of communicating with Brightmoon, right?” She asked of her companions. “That wasn’t destroyed when Catra and Hordak decided it was a fun idea to blow-up central command, right?”

Both human and reptilian only shrugged. They honestly had no idea. After the portal fiasco when all of the Horde’s upper leadership disappeared, the trio’s focus had been on damage control and reestablishing some kind of infrastructure. Lonnie –whom took over the vacant position as Leader of the Horde- was more concerned with maintaining supply lines that brought grain and rice into the Fright Zone, the things their ration bars were made from. Their food. The stuff they needed to survive. None of them really gave much thought to the equipment that would allow them to put in a call to their enemies.

“I, uh, I can check.” Kyle volunteered.

He rushed off to do exactly what he said he could do.

Rogelio growled something that Lonnie didn’t quite understand. But when the reptilian dashed off after Kyle, she assumed he said that he was going to make sure Kyle didn’t hurt himself in the –still destroyed- Sanctum.

Though neither man could see the action, Lonnie nodded. Kyle was well-meaning and always eager to help. But he was also clumsy and not very mindful. Rogelio would keep him from carelessly injuring himself. Which was good. One less injury meant fewer medical supplies that had to be used. And now that she found herself in command, Lonnie was all about cutting down on needless supply usage and waste.

She turned her attention back to the bunkers she was inspecting.

“Well, show me the new vacuum seals that are supposed to keep vermin out of the food stores.” She commanded the soldier that had been showing her and the other two around the newly constructed bunkers. “We can’t just drop everything we’re doing every time there’s a big light in the sky, or a rainbow knocks over a tank, or a Princess seduces your boss’ boss, or the central command blows up.” She reminded them. “We all still have jobs to do!”

Making their way through the Fright Zone, back to the central command building, Kyle was still getting used to people stopping and saluting him.

Just a few months ago, he, Rogelio, and Lonnie were all still just ‘cadets’. But, dang!, did a lot happen in those few months! Catra set off a portal in Hordak’s Sanctum, then disappeared along with Lord Hordak himself, there was a short disagreement between the remaining Force Captains and Lonnie about who should fill the newly vacated leadership position, and –somehow- Lonnie ended up on top. The Commander of the Horde. And as her best friends and teammates since forever, Kyle and Rogelio became her lieutenants.

Where Kyle used to have to be the one to stand to the side and salute if another soldier was walking in the opposite direction than him, now it was the other soldiers that would move out of his way. Flattening themselves against a wall, standing at attention, offering a well-practiced salute. Sometimes even going so far as to say ‘Morning, Lieutenant.’

This had been going on for months now and Kyle still wasn’t used to it. He didn’t know if he’d ever really get used to it. He spent so much of his life so far as metaphorical dirt. He was used to being walked on. He didn’t know if he could ever be the one doing the walking.

Rogelio took his hand and Kyle’s heart jumped for an entirely different reason.

But all the reptilian was doing was bringing to the other man’s attention that they passed the entrance to Hordak’s Sanctum. Kyle was so caught up in reflecting on his new elevation in the Horde, he hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going and passed their destination.

“Right. Sorry.” He demurred. He had to remind himself that he might be a Lieutenant working directly under the new leader of the Horde now, but he was still just the same old Kyle. Absentminded and probably useless. Lonnie only made him a Lieutenant because they were friends.

Inside the Sanctum was mostly bare.

After the initial explosion, the lab and surrounding chambers had been searched for bodies. But the actual clean-up of the Sanctum hadn’t happened until much later. Cleaning up Hordak’s mess wasn’t really a priority. But Lonnie was also practical and not in the habit of leaving usable resources to collect dust just to spite the guy they used to belong to. The Sanctum was cleared out and cleaned up. Anything that wasn’t bolted down got taken out, sorted and repurposed. Scrap metal was melted down, tech that still worked and served a function was repaired and placed back into circulation, tech that was beyond repair and unusable was taken apart and its pieces cannibalized for other machines. The floor was swept and the area was closed off.

Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio were the only three in the Fright Zone who knew the new passcodes to get in.

Anything that wasn’t bolted down was cleared out, but there were still a lot of things bolted down. Chief among them, the main monitor display and corresponding computer terminal. If anything had a feature that could get a call through to Brightmoon, it would be this computer array.

Kyle switched it on.

There was a loud humming sound as it booted up, and an uncomfortable scraping sound that implied the inner workers of the computer might not be in as good condition as the exterior would imply.

Kyle chanced a glance at Rogelio to see if the other man might somehow blame him if the device failed.

But reptilian only shrugged his shoulders. Who knew how well any of the crap in Hordak’s Sanctum ever worked in the first place? The guy never really let anyone else in here except his pet Princess, and look how that turned out.

Once the computer was finally booted up and the homescreen appeared –with a few lines going through it to indicate the screen was damaged- Kyle found the communications application easily enough. There was a short delay as the computer dialed Brightmoon. The tech the Rebellion used was not from the same origin as Horde tech and the two were not perfectly compatible. It took a moment for the devices to connect to one another.

The image of Bow appeared on the screen. The device they connected with must have been his Tracker Pad which scanned for incoming signals anyone. He was talking to someone off screen, his head turned so that Kyle and Rogelio only saw him in profile.

“…hang on, my Tracker Pad is picking something up.” He was saying. Then turned to actually look at the screen, and saw that it was just Kyle and Rogelio from the Horde. “Oh! It’s you guys. Now’s not really a good time. Can we put off any new declarations of war for a while?”

Rogelio growled something that nobody understood but Kyle got the distinct impression that the reptilian was commenting on the other man’s assumption that this was a war declaration.

“No-no, it’s nothing like that!” Kyle assured him. “Lonnie just wanted us to call and see what it was Adora was doing this time. Ya see, this bright light just appeared in the sky, and it looks kinda like a cut, like with a magic sword. And Adora’s the only one we know of with a magic sword so… you see where I’m going with this?”

Why did Kyle feel so awkward? Was it because had hadn’t been in a command position long and didn’t know how to talk to people and command respect? Or was it because he was unfit for a command position at all? At least when he was a grunt cadet, he knew his place and where he stood –with enemies as well as allies. Now, as a Lieutenant with responsibilities, he felt so out of place he wasn’t sure he even had a place anymore. He certainly had no idea how he was supposed to talk to the Rebellion’s Tech Master.

“Don’t worry about that.” Bow tried to assure them, sounding much more like he was trying to assure himself. “We’ve got it handled.”

His tone implied that they did not have it –whatever ‘it’ was- handled.

Bow ended the call.

Kyle and Rogelio looked at each other. Just as confused now as they were when the cut of light first appeared in the sky. Bow hadn’t actually given them an explanation as to what it was or what was really going on. That was all Lonnie wanted to know.

“Should we call them back and ask to speak to Adora this time?” He asked.

Rogelio only shrugged. He was also a little unsure as to what to do in his new leadership role.

…

Everyone in Brightmoon was in one stage or another of freaking out.

They all knew this was coming. They all knew Horde Prime was coming.

Entrapta had warned them. Catra had taunted them. Heck! Even Light Hope kinda alluded to this coming, no in so many words, but more in that cryptic and open to interpretation way she did. The fact of the matter was, no one should have been surprised.

Except that no one really believed it would happen this fast. This soon. It took Hordak years –decades, actually- to build a working portal. What reason did they have to assume that Horde Prime could get one working, open, and stable in just a few short months?

It was lucky that Entrapta already finished the weapons she promised. But she had only just finished the ones for Brightmoon. Salineas, Plumeria, and the Queendom of Snows were still unprotected. No to mention all the other territories and Queendoms on the planet.

Micah had met people from Fallen Star Mountain, the territory ruled by the Star Sisters and invited them to join the Alliance. They said that with Hordak defeated there wasn’t a reason to anymore. They were unprotected and unprepared. Sweet Bee and Peekablue sent their reply in the same message, one piece of paper bearing both their seals ��apparently, the two Queens were together at the time- it was written in Peekablue’s handwriting and simply said ‘the timing isn’t right yet’. Well, was the timing right now? Now that the other Horde from outer space had ripped open their sky and was poised to drop down on them at any moment!

Needless to say, things in Brightmoon were a little anxious.

Perfuma was the first to show up at the palace. Plumeria sharing a border with Brightmoon on the opposite side from the mountains of Dryl, her’s was the closest Queendom to Brightmoon. She appeared, flower crown askew, pink dress rumpled, without her teal green shrug over her shoulders. As if she’d left in a rush.

“Is it the Horde?” She demanded. “I mean, of course it’s the Horde. But, like, the other Horde. The bigger one. The one we’ve been trying to prepare for.” She took a deep breath, attempting to force herself to calm down. “I mean, we’ve been prepared for this, so everything will be okay. We have the She-Ra on our side. I’m sure everything will come to a harmonious conclusion. There’s no need to give into negative energy.”

She said this. But Perfuma was definitely giving off negative energy. The negative energy of fear, anxiety, and doubt. She was giving off negative energy in buckets.

Speaking of buckets, not long after Perfuma arrived, a giant wave crashed through the Brightmoon harbor, nearly capsizing Sea Hawk’s ship. He was already bailing buckets of the excess water off the deck when the wave receded, revealing Mermista. She was holding her trident, and look more impatient and annoyed than fearful and concerned.

“Ugh… the Geek Princess hasn’t even been by to build my weapons yet.” She groaned at no one in particular, brushing an errant lock of hair out of her face. “Can’t the evil space emperor wait, like, six more month before coming to try and kill us all. So stupid.” Then she noticed the Dragon’s Daughter Five listing in the bay. “Oh. Hey, Sea Hawk.”

Sea Hawk gave a non-committal grunt in reply. They hadn’t exactly spoken socially since their breakup was official. He honestly didn’t know how to talk to her anymore. Certainly, he couldn’t talk to her like he used to.

Frosta was the farthest away and the last to arrive.

Everyone was already in the War Room when the youngest member of the Princess Alliance arrived.

Micah was arguing with Shadow Weavers. Adora was shouting warnings over the table. Spinnerella was holding Nettossa’s hand to try and calm the other woman. Bow was fiddling with his Tracker Pad trying to see if the device could analyze the sky rift. Perfuma was trying to perform a calming chant. Memista was groaning at how chaotic this was. And Sea Hawk was ringing saltwater out of his socks. Glimmer had no control over her War Room, or the meeting.

Then Frosta barged in. Doors banging open with a sound loud enough to make everyone pause. Stopping their squabbles or shouts to look across the room at the child-Princess.

“Alright! So, what’s the plan for kicking these bat-faced jerks butts!?”

The room exploded back into noise and chaos again. Everyone talking at once. Giving opinions of things they were not informed enough to give opinions on.

Bow’s Tracker Pad beeped with an alert just as someone asked him a question. Thinking the device had found some information for him about the rift, he turned his attention to it. “…hang on, my Tracker Pad is picking something up.”

Those seated closes to him quieted down to also see what the Tracker Pad had found.

But all that appeared on the screen were the faces of two Horde soldiers. The Etherian Horde. A human, Kyle, and a reptilian, Rogelio. People they knew. Not the new Horde from outer space. There were not bat-faced monsters that looked like Hordak giving them a call.

“Oh! It’s you guys. Now’s not really a good time. Can we put off any new declarations of war for a while?” Bow asked, assuming that even under new leadership the Etherian Horde would want to continue the generations old feud.

Oh. Had no one read-in the new Horde leadership about what was coming? Did they honestly not know? Bow never even considered that! In a room full of chaos was not the time to debrief someone new. Especially not someone that Bow wasn’t sure which side they would choose. He didn’t want to be helping and clueing in a new enemy. While he did generally try to give people the benefit of the doubt and see the best in people, now was not the time to be the better man. Sometimes, the practical man had to be a bit rude.

“Don’t worry about that.” Bow tried to assure them, sounding much more like he was trying to assure himself. “We’ve got it handled.”

He ended the call.

“Who was that?” Asked Sea Hawk. He hung his still wet socks over the back of his seat and sat down next to Bow.

“That was… the Horde…” Bow answered truthfully. Then, when everyone looked horror stuck, he quickly rushed to explain. “I mean, our Horde. The Etherian Horde! The guys in the Fright Zone. Kyle, and Rogelio, I think are their names. Nobody ever told them what was going on, so they have no idea what’s coming. They saw the portal in the sky and freaked out.”

“Oh.” Said Glimmer.

There was a beat.

Then Perfuma suggested, “Should we… invite them to join us?” Even as she asked this, she did not seem very secure in the idea. “I mean, do you think they’d be willing to help? They live on Etheria too…”

“We have no reason to assume they won’t join Horde Prime the moment they learn of him.” Shadow Weaver informed the room. “Inviting them into the Alliance would be like inviting a wolf to your back.”

“I’m sure that was true when Hordak was in charge.” Micah argued. It was hard to tell if he was arguing for the Horde because he honestly and truly felt the Etherian Horde could be helpful, or just to take an opposing opinion from Shadow Weaver. “But Hordak has been removed from power and is under house arrest in Dryl. Command of the Etherian Horde is now in the hands of Etherians. As Princess Perfuma said, they live here too, why wouldn’t they want to defend the Home Ground?”

“Because they were raised by Hordak and Hordak does not teach altruism.” Shadow Weaver reminded everyone. Never mind the fact that Hordak didn’t raise any of the Fright Zone orphans, and that job was actually delegated to Shadow Weaver herself. A fact Adora could confirm for them all.

Adora might even have done so and called Shadow Weaver out on her misplacement of responsibility, had she not be lost in thought at that moment. Really considering the possibility of the Etherian Horde as allies. She grew up with them. She, better than anyone in the room, understood them. In a deeper and more intimate way than Shadow Weaver did.

“Lonnie’s in charge now.” She began, still considering and weighing outcomes as she spoke. “She’s very practical… If we can convince her that working with us is the better choice over siding with Horde Prime…”

She did not get to finish that thought, however, as Bow’s tracker pad beeped again with another message. This time, when he answered it, it wasn’t the nervous and unsure faces of Kyle and Rogelio. It was the exasperated and angry face of none other than Lonnie, Commander of the Horde, herself.

“Put. Adora. On. The. Line.” She commanded before any pleasantries could be exchanged.

Adora took the Tracker Pad from Bow. “Hey, Lonnie, we were just talking about-“

“What in the ever loving high holy heck are you doing this time!?” Lonnie cut the other woman off. “Haven’t you had enough of meddling with forces beyond mortal understanding and breaking the universe!? I am still trying to rebuild what Hordak and Catra ran into the ground and you’re cutting up the sky for fun! Now I have a panic to deal with on top of construction delays and lost supply shipments! I thought all you shimmering Princesses wanted was ‘peace’! Can’t I have a moment’s peace to work on my own territory!”

She paused for breath.

Adora looked back at the rest of the Princess Alliance to make sure they heard the Commander of the Etherian Horde’s rant. She wanted peace, and she wanted to repair the damage to the Fright Zone, the damage to ‘her Territory’. Lonnie might be ‘Commander of the Horde’, but she was thinking like a Princess.

“I’m sending Kyle over there to see what you’re all really up to!” Lonnie continued before anyone else could speak. “I’m sending Kyle because he is the least threatening person I know and hopefully that will keep you sparkleheads from shooting glitter at him on sight. Think of him as a sort of ‘emissary’. I don’t want to have to fight you guys again if I don’t have to! But, I swear, if you keep making things difficult for me, I will! So, let’s try and get along.”

She ended the call.

Adora passed the Tracker Pad back to Bow. “So… I guess that answers the question of which side she’ll be on if it comes to it.”

“How?” Frosta jumped up, standing on her seat to be better seen. “She said she didn’t wanna fight us because she’s still licking her wounds in the Fright Zone. We don’t know that the moment Prime shows up she won’t go running to him the moment she realizes he’s got bigger guns and more resources to share with her.”

“That’s assuming Horde Prime is the type to share.” Mermista countered. “There is another angle to this. Regardless of what Lonnie things of the bigger Horde, the bigger Horde might not think much of Lonnie and just sweep her away. They might get rid of her for us and then the question of what to do about the Etherian Horde becomes a non-issue.”

“That’s terrible!” Perfuma was horrified. “Sure, they’ve been our enemies for as long as I can remember. But they’re still people, and living things. All life is precious.”

“They’re still the ones who ruined Princess Prom!” Frosta shouted.

Everyone assumed she was trying to make a point about respecting truces, cease-fires, and safe spaces –all of which Princess Prom was supposed to be- and that if they couldn’t do that, what reason did they have to trust them in a truce now. But all it sounded like was that she was saying parties were just as important as leaving beings. For fear of derailing the conversation into an unnecessary ethical debate, everyone collectively agreed to ignore that comment.

“There’s no point debating this until the Horde’s emissary gets here.” Glimmer announced, taking control of the meeting. She was Queen, but most of the time she still felt like an inexperienced and frustrated rebel child.

“I know Kyle.” Adora added. “He won’t make trouble while he’s here.” A pause. “On purpose. He won’t make trouble on purpose.”

But ‘trouble’ did have a propensity to just happen around him. It wasn’t that Kyle was particularly clumsy, forgetful, or rude. No more than any other child soldier raised in the Horde. He just seemed… out of place no matter where he went. Almost like… almost like he wasn’t meant to be on Etheria. Of course, Etheria being trapped in an isolated shadow dimension, she couldn’t image where else he could belong. But then, she’d seen weirder things than just an out-of-place and accident-prone soldier.

The debate might have gone on longer, but a page entered the War Room, unannounced, and passed a letter to Glimmer. “Message from Fallen Star Mountain, my Queen.”

Taking the envelope, Glimmer ripped it open to read the contents. Then she sighed. “It’s from the Star Sisters. They also wanna know what the light in the sky is.”

No sooner had she read that, than another page came in with more messages from Elberon, Seaworthy, Erelandia… Heck! They even got a crumpled and dirty piece of paper from the Valley of the Lost in the Crimson Waste. Apparently, the whole planet saw the rift in the sky and wanted to know what the Princess Alliance was up to now…

Glimmer slumped in her seat, putting a hand to her head where she felt an on-coming stress headache. Who knew the worst part of Horde Prime’s attack would be the confusion before the storm?

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