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On Scorpia's Watch
From her vantage point atop the emerald walls of the Fright Zone, Scorpia looked out across vast, lifeless plains. The dreary hum of machinery and the biting odour of burning petroleum had faded for her after only a few minutes outside of the carefully-ventilated corridors, but every now and again her train of thought would be interrupted by the growl of some engine, or the thud of a piston. In the distance, the sun was setting, burning the sky in a deep orange blaze; on the horizon, the tiniest hint of a shadow stretched as far as the eye could see, the only evidence that any life at all existed outside of Hordak’s domain.
Guard duty friggin’ sucked.
Scorpia didn’t even have her cadets with her for company this time—Shadow Weaver had sent them to bolster the squadron that Adora was leading into Thaymor, and clearly she was using the opportunity to test the new captain’s leadership skills. Scorpia was fine with that, really. Adora had seemed nice enough: she was easily the most attentive of the group at Scorpia’s seminar for Force Captain Orientation. She’d treat the kids well.
It was dull without them, though. Guard duty was practically a formality at this point: the wasteland around the base, stretching almost as far as the eye could see, made attack or infiltration nigh on impossible. But Hordak wanted guards, so someone had to be on duty at all times. It gave everyone a break in their rotation, sure, but the loneliness was killing her.
The low roar of a skiff approaching snapped Scorpia to attention. Her eyesight wasn't the keenest, and it took a minute or two as the sound grew louder before she saw it—maybe two, three minutes away, a thin plume of smoke trailing in the air above it.
With hardly a moment's thought, she threw herself into a sprint. From where she was standing, a two minute run at top speed should get her to the main gates. With luck, she'd get there in time to catch her breath before the troops returned…
The gates opened just as Scorpia skidded to a halt beside them. Panting heavily, she locked eyes with the driver of the skiff—a fairly young cadet she didn't recognise, with a dark, fierce look in her eyes.
“Report,” she barked as best she could between heavy breaths.
“Catr– Force Captain Catra sent us ahead.” Behind her, two other cadets stepped off the skiff. They were young, too, around her group's age. “We've taken heavy casualties. We need to get the medbay warned, now.”
“Of course,” Scorpia replied, grimacing and pressing a claw against her side as subtly as she could. She was not out of shape. She just needed to get back into the training exercises, maybe ask if she could be transferred out of education and into the field for a few months…
“Are you going to call them?”
The cadet's drawl snapped her back to the moment. “Yes! Yes, uh, I'll do that.” She fumbled at her belt for her communicator, and prodded in the key code for the medbay. The communicator crackled to life, and she kept her focus squarely on it, trying to avoid the cadet’s burning gaze.
“Medbay here. Who’s calling?”
Oh thank goodness for Geoffrey. He might have a no-nonsense attitude, but he was efficient and he’d get the cadet to stop staring at her.
“Hi Geoffrey!” A pause. “Uh, Force Captain Scorpia here. We’ve got a squadron returning from battle, I’m told they have heavy injuries. Can we get something prepared for them?”
“How many wounded?”
“Um, honestly I’m not certain on that one, but I’ll get—”
“Fifteen so badly injured they can’t walk,” the cadet recited, snatching the communicator from her claw. “They’re being driven back in the tanks, now, and should be here within half an hour. Five are knocked out, but were breathing when we left. And a couple of cadets have lost a lot of blood, too, after being hit by shrapnel.”
Scorpia’s eyes widened at that. Shrapnel? The rebellion hadn’t put up any real fight in years, but the dangers of the Whispering Woods weren’t the kind of dangers that caused explosions. What on Etheria had happened out there?
Were her kids okay?
When the wounded arrived, Scorpia found herself at a loss for anything to do. Geoffrey had sent a small group of medics to the gates with emergency supplies, and thank goodness for that because at least three cadets looked as if they were about to drop dead on the spot. Stretchers ferried the injured to the medbay, a brief stream of white and grey amid the smoke and metal. The medical team were a well-oiled machine—and one she had no part in.
She couldn’t even find her kids, among all the confusion.
So she sat with the cadets she’d met earlier in a comfortable silence. They weren’t her squad, but they were still junior—a good two or three years younger than her, if she had to guess—and looked like they could do with someone to look out for them. If she was having a rough time, she could hardly imagine what they were going through.
The final tank trundled in through the gates, and Scorpia watched as a small figure bounded out of the top and landed on the dusty floor, glancing around warily, cat-like tail twitching in anticipation. Scorpia glanced at the small patch of green on the girl’s chest. She was a Force Captain? Scorpia had never seen her before, and Scorpia made it her business to know everyone.
“Who’s that?”
Lonnie looked up, bored, and followed the direction Scorpia nodded her head towards.
“That’s Catra. She was on our squad till she got promoted, like, yesterday. She’s an ass, but she’s good in a fight.”
“Huh.” Scorpia wasn’t sure why they were sending out such freshly-minted captains on key missions like this, but if Shadow Weaver was going to send Adora out to lead one perhaps this was a new thing? Speaking of… “Wasn’t this mission supposed to be run by Force Captain Adora?”
“She disappeared last night,” Lonnie said. “I heard her and Catra get up, and she said something about being back soon so I just went back to sleep. Next thing we know, Catra’s been promoted in her absence and we’re being carted off to Thaymor.”
“Huh,” Scorpia repeated. That would explain the multiple promotions from the same squad. “I’m gonna talk to her. See how she’s holding up, y’know?”
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Scorpia shook her head and smiled fondly as she walked away from the cadets. Lonnie seemed pretty level-headed, but was a bit too much like Geoffrey for her tastes. Scorpia reckoned that kid would’ve been an easy contender for Force Captain, if she hadn’t been in a squad with Adora—and, it seems, Catra.
Across the impromptu medbay that was the front courtyard of the base, Catra carved a path through the crowd as she marched towards the barracks. Even from a distance, she looked dazed, distracted. All Scorpia wanted to do was bundle her up in a big hug and to tell her that it’d be okay, that everyone suffered some losses in their military career.
She should probably debrief her first, though. That would be the sensible thing to do.
“Hey!” she called out, pushing her way gently past a couple of medics as she crossed the courtyard. Of course Catra would be walking down the far side from her. Why wouldn’t she? It was like the universe was trying to remind her how out of shape she was. With a grimace, she broke into a jog. “Hey, Catra, wait up!”
The other Force Captain kept marching forward, not even slowing down at the mention of her name—if anything, Scorpia could’ve sworn she’d sped up. Trying to keep her breathing steady, she picked up the pace herself. She’d barely crossed half the courtyard and Catra was almost to the door—
A pair of white-clad medics pressed into her path, a stretcher held between them. Skidding to a halt, she glanced involuntarily down at the cadet—not one of hers, but they all looked so young that she couldn’t help but feel responsible for them—and by the time she glanced back up, the last glimpse of Catra’s tail flicked inside the barracks.
Damn. She must not have seen her. Taking a few deep breaths, Scorpia turned back towards Lonnie. Perhaps she could get a sense of what had happened from the cadets, now that things had calmed down. Besides, she’d have time to find the new Force Captain tomorrow, if she checked in the orientation classes.
Scorpia was not jealous of Adora.
Carefully fixing a heat bomb to a pillar of ice, her tongue poking out through the corners of her lips in concentration as she turned the device just so, Scorpia tried not to hear the gentle thrum of music from the grand hall, and the chatter that came with it. Proms were stupid, anyway. They deserved to get blown up.
Bomb successfully planted, Scorpia allowed herself a moment to breathe, and smiled. She still had a while to go until the first dance, and she was almost half done on the heat bombs already! If she worked hard enough, she might even get time to join in for the dance before they had to detonate them. Catra couldn’t need to work that hard distracting Adora, could she?
She definitely didn’t need to dance with Adora. That had been a dumb joke, and Scorpia had chuckled along dutifully at the time, but now she was starting to regret not really pinning down Catra’s side of this operation as well as hers. Sure, Catra needed the ability to improvise to pull off her distraction as well as she could, but they could have at least set out some ground rules on what was okay. Catra was her plus one, after all.
Scorpia stomped over to the next pillar—this one around a corner, and she had to duck out of sight of a couple of guests for a moment as she rounded it—and pulled out the next bomb from her bag.
Stupid friggin’ dances. She didn’t even want to dance with Catra, anyway. Not here, anyway: she had two left feet, and didn’t want to make a fool of herself in public.
It was just… She never could get over how fixated Catra would get on Adora. They would be preparing for some mission, going over tactics in advance and making sure they had a plan and were ready for any eventuality, and though she never seemed completely focused Catra would at least be paying attention. But then someone would mention She-Ra, and Catra’s eyes would burn with a fire that almost scared Scorpia, and she would suddenly switch from idly listening to taking control of the meeting, laying out a plan for keeping Adora at bay.
Sometimes it felt like the only person Catra really saw as, well, a person was Adora.
And that was fine! Scorpia got that they had been close—she’d been close with her kids, after all, and she knew what it was like to put everything else on hold while she made sure those who meant the most to her were okay—but they were enemies now. It couldn’t be healthy to have that kind of relationship with someone you were meant to be fighting. And yeah, maybe it did hurt a bit that Catra cared more about the leader of the Princess Rebellion than she did about her own squad. Because squads were meant to stick together, not ditch their dates to go and dance with their enemy—
Oops. Scorpia prodded gently at the heat bomb, now stuck in a small crack in the pillar where she had pressed it in perhaps a little too forcefully. It didn’t seem to be broken, still steaming away gently, and it seemed fairly sturdy and in place, so Scorpia shrugged and moved on to the next pillar.
She was not jealous of Adora.
She was so jealous of Adora.
“Do they really need to be dancing that close?”
Her voice, drowned out by the loud music, was still laced with worry. Beside her, decked out as a guard watching over the ball, Lonnie shrugged.
Scorpia was tracking Catra through the crowd, craning her neck to keep an eye on her partner. Biting her lip, her eyes kept flicking back to Lonnie, surprised as always by the cadet’s ability to remain calm when plans were crumbling around them.
Catra passed Adora off to another princess, as the dance called for people to start switching partners, and Scorpia let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. It was an act. It was just an act, to keep Adora from spotting the real threat. And with the boy and the sword already theirs, it was working perfectly—but couldn’t they call it quits now? They had what they needed. Why wasn’t Catra giving the signal to detonate?
“The longer we keep this up, the more chance someone’s going to find those bombs,” Scorpia muttered. Beside her, Lonnie tensed. Finally, someone else recognised the problem.
“I’m sure Catra’s spotted us,” Kyle piped up. “She knows we’re ready. We’ve got to trust that she’s delaying for a reason. She must be keeping an eye for the best moment to strike, that’s all.”
“Or the best moment to flirt with Adora,” Lonnie grumbled. Scorpia whipped around to face the two of them, and Lonnie shrugged. “Oh come on,” she said, her voice heavy with frustration, “y’all know that’s the real reason she came up with a plan that involved her distracting Adora at a dance. I mean, look at her!”
Scorpia turned back to the crowd to see Catra fall into Adora’s arms, a smug grin on her face as she pulled Adora into a dip.
“This is completely unnecessary!” Scorpia wailed, quietly.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say since we started this mission,” Lonnie said. “Screw it. Kyle, with me. We might as well get the prisoner to the ship. Captain, you’ve got the detonation switch?”
Scorpia nodded, giving her claw a shake and feeling the box inside it rattle back and forth. She winced—her claws might make excellent hiding places for weapons, stolen goods, or a snack snuck into a briefing, but they had a few sensitive spots that made them quite uncomfortable to use.
Behind her, Lonnie led Kyle away, and her attention drifted completely to Catra. There was such an intensity in the way her partner looked at Adora, and the dip certainly wasn’t helping prove Lonnie wrong. Catra looked smug and confident, sure, but even from here Scorpia could pick up on her tension as she hoisted Adora back up. It wasn’t hard to spot.
It was exactly how being around Catra made her feel, after all.
“Is this really how you spend your day off?”
Scorpia looked up from the quiet forms of her old squad at that familiar voice, and for once her heart didn’t quicken. She supposed that was progress. But wasn’t progress supposed to feel good?
“Every other week,” she said. “They deserve the company, but I deserve some days off to myself, you know?”
Catra nodded. “You holding up okay?”
Scorpia paused. How could she be holding up well at all? She'd messed up, she knew she'd messed up, and she wanted more than anything to just take it all back. But she couldn't. And even if she could, she wasn't brave enough to try.
“Yeah,” she lied, eventually. “I mean, I’ve still got you, and ‘Trapta, and your squad. And Darryl woke up a couple of weeks back, so I guess I’ve got more hope than before.”
Quiet. Not silence—the hum of machines, the beeping of monitors, the soft hush of breaths. Tense. Itching to be filled.
“I’m sorry.”
“S’not your fault.” Catra raised an eyebrow. “Morally, I mean. Obviously they were your responsibility, but just ‘cos Thaymor was your first mission and all doesn’t mean you could’ve planned for… y’know. Her.”
Somewhere in the corner of the room, a nurse carefully stripped a bed of its old sheets, and laid out fresh ones. The rustle of fabric joined the quiet.
“I’m sorry—”
“I wanted to apol—”
Scorpia smiled as Catra cut herself off, too, but it didn’t feel warm. She nodded for Catra to take the lead. She didn’t think she had the courage to try again.
“I just… I wanted to apologise for the other day. It was pretty shitty of me to snap at you like that, when you were being so open with me.” Catra hoisted her feet up onto her chair, and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I should’ve let you down gently. Some friend I am.”
“It’s fine,” Scorpia said, although it really wasn’t. “I asked at a bad time, and it should’ve been obvious. And I ended up ruining games night.”
Catra chuckled a bit at that, and Scorpia found herself smiling, despite it all.
“What do you even see in me?”
Scorpia frowned. “What’s not to see in you?”
“Please,” Catra drawled. “I’m a mess. I only made it as far as I have because I gave Entrapta an opportunity to try something crazy. And now she’s off with Hordak working on who knows what kind of mad scientist bullshit, and I’m just a dumb failure with abandonment issues.”
“That’s not true!” Scorpia said, reaching out a claw to pull Catra close for a hug. For once, she didn’t resist, burying her face in Scorpia’s shoulder, hair brushing softly against her neck and chin. “You’re not dumb—you’re way smarter than every Force Captain I know. Whose idea was it to even get ‘Trapta on board? Who saw the potential she had? Anyone else would have taken her captive and thrown her in a cell, but you saw a talent that would help the Horde!”
“I still can’t beat Adora though,” Catra mumbled. “She’s kicking our asses out there.”
“We’re at a stalemate,” Scorpia said, patiently. “She’s just given the rebellion the boost they needed to start defending properly. It sucks, but it’s not like they’ve pushed us onto the defensive or anything.”
Catra snorted, a muffled sound that sounded to Scorpia half-hearted. “I guess. I still think we need to take her down soon, though.”
“Are you sure that you want to take her down?” It was a lot easier to joke about Catra’s obsession with Adora now she’d gotten her own feelings off her chest. It was a kind of moving on. Progress.
Catra pulled away, a sour look on her face. “Ugh, not you too. Lonnie won’t shut up about that dumb idea of hers, will she? I’ve not got a thing for Adora. I just…” Catra paused, swallowed, and took a breath. “I just miss my best friend. And every time I see her, it reminds me that I can’t ever have her back. That she left me.”
She sighed. Scorpia watched her with a curious expression as she stood up and stretched.
“I am sorry I snapped at you, though,” she added. “I thought games night would distract me from the whole ‘one year without Adora’ thing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her anyway. I do that a lot, and I think I end up treating you and Entrapta like… I dunno, like you’re not really there? It’s kinda fucked up. I’m gonna try not to.”
Scorpia smiled. There was something almost bittersweet about her confession bringing out Catra’s introspective side. “That sounds like a good idea to me.”
“Yeah,” Catra said. “Still, I’m sorry. If you wanna take a shift with someone else for a few weeks, y’know, for space, that’s fine…”
“No!” Scorpia said, perhaps a little too forcefully. “No. It– it’s fine, really. I, uh, I just want to keep to routine. It’ll be easier that way, for me.”
“Sure.” Catra’s voice was quiet, almost fading into the sounds of the medbay as she walked purposefully to the door. “Well, I guess I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Yeah.” Scorpia smiled as Catra hung on the doorframe for a moment. “I’ll see you then.”
Catra flashed her a flat smile as she turned the corner, and—not for the first time that week, and likely not for the last—Scorpia’s heart seemed like a vacuum in her chest. She turned her back on the door anyway, tried to push out the thoughts of Catra that never left, not really, and sat in watch over her old friends as her shaking breath slowly settled, until the medbay was quiet once more.
Guard duty friggin’ sucked.
Scorpia didn’t even have her cadets with her for company this time—Shadow Weaver had sent them to bolster the squadron that Adora was leading into Thaymor, and clearly she was using the opportunity to test the new captain’s leadership skills. Scorpia was fine with that, really. Adora had seemed nice enough: she was easily the most attentive of the group at Scorpia’s seminar for Force Captain Orientation. She’d treat the kids well.
It was dull without them, though. Guard duty was practically a formality at this point: the wasteland around the base, stretching almost as far as the eye could see, made attack or infiltration nigh on impossible. But Hordak wanted guards, so someone had to be on duty at all times. It gave everyone a break in their rotation, sure, but the loneliness was killing her.
The low roar of a skiff approaching snapped Scorpia to attention. Her eyesight wasn't the keenest, and it took a minute or two as the sound grew louder before she saw it—maybe two, three minutes away, a thin plume of smoke trailing in the air above it.
With hardly a moment's thought, she threw herself into a sprint. From where she was standing, a two minute run at top speed should get her to the main gates. With luck, she'd get there in time to catch her breath before the troops returned…
The gates opened just as Scorpia skidded to a halt beside them. Panting heavily, she locked eyes with the driver of the skiff—a fairly young cadet she didn't recognise, with a dark, fierce look in her eyes.
“Report,” she barked as best she could between heavy breaths.
“Catr– Force Captain Catra sent us ahead.” Behind her, two other cadets stepped off the skiff. They were young, too, around her group's age. “We've taken heavy casualties. We need to get the medbay warned, now.”
“Of course,” Scorpia replied, grimacing and pressing a claw against her side as subtly as she could. She was not out of shape. She just needed to get back into the training exercises, maybe ask if she could be transferred out of education and into the field for a few months…
“Are you going to call them?”
The cadet's drawl snapped her back to the moment. “Yes! Yes, uh, I'll do that.” She fumbled at her belt for her communicator, and prodded in the key code for the medbay. The communicator crackled to life, and she kept her focus squarely on it, trying to avoid the cadet’s burning gaze.
“Medbay here. Who’s calling?”
Oh thank goodness for Geoffrey. He might have a no-nonsense attitude, but he was efficient and he’d get the cadet to stop staring at her.
“Hi Geoffrey!” A pause. “Uh, Force Captain Scorpia here. We’ve got a squadron returning from battle, I’m told they have heavy injuries. Can we get something prepared for them?”
“How many wounded?”
“Um, honestly I’m not certain on that one, but I’ll get—”
“Fifteen so badly injured they can’t walk,” the cadet recited, snatching the communicator from her claw. “They’re being driven back in the tanks, now, and should be here within half an hour. Five are knocked out, but were breathing when we left. And a couple of cadets have lost a lot of blood, too, after being hit by shrapnel.”
Scorpia’s eyes widened at that. Shrapnel? The rebellion hadn’t put up any real fight in years, but the dangers of the Whispering Woods weren’t the kind of dangers that caused explosions. What on Etheria had happened out there?
Were her kids okay?
When the wounded arrived, Scorpia found herself at a loss for anything to do. Geoffrey had sent a small group of medics to the gates with emergency supplies, and thank goodness for that because at least three cadets looked as if they were about to drop dead on the spot. Stretchers ferried the injured to the medbay, a brief stream of white and grey amid the smoke and metal. The medical team were a well-oiled machine—and one she had no part in.
She couldn’t even find her kids, among all the confusion.
So she sat with the cadets she’d met earlier in a comfortable silence. They weren’t her squad, but they were still junior—a good two or three years younger than her, if she had to guess—and looked like they could do with someone to look out for them. If she was having a rough time, she could hardly imagine what they were going through.
The final tank trundled in through the gates, and Scorpia watched as a small figure bounded out of the top and landed on the dusty floor, glancing around warily, cat-like tail twitching in anticipation. Scorpia glanced at the small patch of green on the girl’s chest. She was a Force Captain? Scorpia had never seen her before, and Scorpia made it her business to know everyone.
“Who’s that?”
Lonnie looked up, bored, and followed the direction Scorpia nodded her head towards.
“That’s Catra. She was on our squad till she got promoted, like, yesterday. She’s an ass, but she’s good in a fight.”
“Huh.” Scorpia wasn’t sure why they were sending out such freshly-minted captains on key missions like this, but if Shadow Weaver was going to send Adora out to lead one perhaps this was a new thing? Speaking of… “Wasn’t this mission supposed to be run by Force Captain Adora?”
“She disappeared last night,” Lonnie said. “I heard her and Catra get up, and she said something about being back soon so I just went back to sleep. Next thing we know, Catra’s been promoted in her absence and we’re being carted off to Thaymor.”
“Huh,” Scorpia repeated. That would explain the multiple promotions from the same squad. “I’m gonna talk to her. See how she’s holding up, y’know?”
“Yeah, good luck with that.” Scorpia shook her head and smiled fondly as she walked away from the cadets. Lonnie seemed pretty level-headed, but was a bit too much like Geoffrey for her tastes. Scorpia reckoned that kid would’ve been an easy contender for Force Captain, if she hadn’t been in a squad with Adora—and, it seems, Catra.
Across the impromptu medbay that was the front courtyard of the base, Catra carved a path through the crowd as she marched towards the barracks. Even from a distance, she looked dazed, distracted. All Scorpia wanted to do was bundle her up in a big hug and to tell her that it’d be okay, that everyone suffered some losses in their military career.
She should probably debrief her first, though. That would be the sensible thing to do.
“Hey!” she called out, pushing her way gently past a couple of medics as she crossed the courtyard. Of course Catra would be walking down the far side from her. Why wouldn’t she? It was like the universe was trying to remind her how out of shape she was. With a grimace, she broke into a jog. “Hey, Catra, wait up!”
The other Force Captain kept marching forward, not even slowing down at the mention of her name—if anything, Scorpia could’ve sworn she’d sped up. Trying to keep her breathing steady, she picked up the pace herself. She’d barely crossed half the courtyard and Catra was almost to the door—
A pair of white-clad medics pressed into her path, a stretcher held between them. Skidding to a halt, she glanced involuntarily down at the cadet—not one of hers, but they all looked so young that she couldn’t help but feel responsible for them—and by the time she glanced back up, the last glimpse of Catra’s tail flicked inside the barracks.
Damn. She must not have seen her. Taking a few deep breaths, Scorpia turned back towards Lonnie. Perhaps she could get a sense of what had happened from the cadets, now that things had calmed down. Besides, she’d have time to find the new Force Captain tomorrow, if she checked in the orientation classes.
Scorpia was not jealous of Adora.
Carefully fixing a heat bomb to a pillar of ice, her tongue poking out through the corners of her lips in concentration as she turned the device just so, Scorpia tried not to hear the gentle thrum of music from the grand hall, and the chatter that came with it. Proms were stupid, anyway. They deserved to get blown up.
Bomb successfully planted, Scorpia allowed herself a moment to breathe, and smiled. She still had a while to go until the first dance, and she was almost half done on the heat bombs already! If she worked hard enough, she might even get time to join in for the dance before they had to detonate them. Catra couldn’t need to work that hard distracting Adora, could she?
She definitely didn’t need to dance with Adora. That had been a dumb joke, and Scorpia had chuckled along dutifully at the time, but now she was starting to regret not really pinning down Catra’s side of this operation as well as hers. Sure, Catra needed the ability to improvise to pull off her distraction as well as she could, but they could have at least set out some ground rules on what was okay. Catra was her plus one, after all.
Scorpia stomped over to the next pillar—this one around a corner, and she had to duck out of sight of a couple of guests for a moment as she rounded it—and pulled out the next bomb from her bag.
Stupid friggin’ dances. She didn’t even want to dance with Catra, anyway. Not here, anyway: she had two left feet, and didn’t want to make a fool of herself in public.
It was just… She never could get over how fixated Catra would get on Adora. They would be preparing for some mission, going over tactics in advance and making sure they had a plan and were ready for any eventuality, and though she never seemed completely focused Catra would at least be paying attention. But then someone would mention She-Ra, and Catra’s eyes would burn with a fire that almost scared Scorpia, and she would suddenly switch from idly listening to taking control of the meeting, laying out a plan for keeping Adora at bay.
Sometimes it felt like the only person Catra really saw as, well, a person was Adora.
And that was fine! Scorpia got that they had been close—she’d been close with her kids, after all, and she knew what it was like to put everything else on hold while she made sure those who meant the most to her were okay—but they were enemies now. It couldn’t be healthy to have that kind of relationship with someone you were meant to be fighting. And yeah, maybe it did hurt a bit that Catra cared more about the leader of the Princess Rebellion than she did about her own squad. Because squads were meant to stick together, not ditch their dates to go and dance with their enemy—
Oops. Scorpia prodded gently at the heat bomb, now stuck in a small crack in the pillar where she had pressed it in perhaps a little too forcefully. It didn’t seem to be broken, still steaming away gently, and it seemed fairly sturdy and in place, so Scorpia shrugged and moved on to the next pillar.
She was not jealous of Adora.
She was so jealous of Adora.
“Do they really need to be dancing that close?”
Her voice, drowned out by the loud music, was still laced with worry. Beside her, decked out as a guard watching over the ball, Lonnie shrugged.
Scorpia was tracking Catra through the crowd, craning her neck to keep an eye on her partner. Biting her lip, her eyes kept flicking back to Lonnie, surprised as always by the cadet’s ability to remain calm when plans were crumbling around them.
Catra passed Adora off to another princess, as the dance called for people to start switching partners, and Scorpia let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. It was an act. It was just an act, to keep Adora from spotting the real threat. And with the boy and the sword already theirs, it was working perfectly—but couldn’t they call it quits now? They had what they needed. Why wasn’t Catra giving the signal to detonate?
“The longer we keep this up, the more chance someone’s going to find those bombs,” Scorpia muttered. Beside her, Lonnie tensed. Finally, someone else recognised the problem.
“I’m sure Catra’s spotted us,” Kyle piped up. “She knows we’re ready. We’ve got to trust that she’s delaying for a reason. She must be keeping an eye for the best moment to strike, that’s all.”
“Or the best moment to flirt with Adora,” Lonnie grumbled. Scorpia whipped around to face the two of them, and Lonnie shrugged. “Oh come on,” she said, her voice heavy with frustration, “y’all know that’s the real reason she came up with a plan that involved her distracting Adora at a dance. I mean, look at her!”
Scorpia turned back to the crowd to see Catra fall into Adora’s arms, a smug grin on her face as she pulled Adora into a dip.
“This is completely unnecessary!” Scorpia wailed, quietly.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say since we started this mission,” Lonnie said. “Screw it. Kyle, with me. We might as well get the prisoner to the ship. Captain, you’ve got the detonation switch?”
Scorpia nodded, giving her claw a shake and feeling the box inside it rattle back and forth. She winced—her claws might make excellent hiding places for weapons, stolen goods, or a snack snuck into a briefing, but they had a few sensitive spots that made them quite uncomfortable to use.
Behind her, Lonnie led Kyle away, and her attention drifted completely to Catra. There was such an intensity in the way her partner looked at Adora, and the dip certainly wasn’t helping prove Lonnie wrong. Catra looked smug and confident, sure, but even from here Scorpia could pick up on her tension as she hoisted Adora back up. It wasn’t hard to spot.
It was exactly how being around Catra made her feel, after all.
“Is this really how you spend your day off?”
Scorpia looked up from the quiet forms of her old squad at that familiar voice, and for once her heart didn’t quicken. She supposed that was progress. But wasn’t progress supposed to feel good?
“Every other week,” she said. “They deserve the company, but I deserve some days off to myself, you know?”
Catra nodded. “You holding up okay?”
Scorpia paused. How could she be holding up well at all? She'd messed up, she knew she'd messed up, and she wanted more than anything to just take it all back. But she couldn't. And even if she could, she wasn't brave enough to try.
“Yeah,” she lied, eventually. “I mean, I’ve still got you, and ‘Trapta, and your squad. And Darryl woke up a couple of weeks back, so I guess I’ve got more hope than before.”
Quiet. Not silence—the hum of machines, the beeping of monitors, the soft hush of breaths. Tense. Itching to be filled.
“I’m sorry.”
“S’not your fault.” Catra raised an eyebrow. “Morally, I mean. Obviously they were your responsibility, but just ‘cos Thaymor was your first mission and all doesn’t mean you could’ve planned for… y’know. Her.”
Somewhere in the corner of the room, a nurse carefully stripped a bed of its old sheets, and laid out fresh ones. The rustle of fabric joined the quiet.
“I’m sorry—”
“I wanted to apol—”
Scorpia smiled as Catra cut herself off, too, but it didn’t feel warm. She nodded for Catra to take the lead. She didn’t think she had the courage to try again.
“I just… I wanted to apologise for the other day. It was pretty shitty of me to snap at you like that, when you were being so open with me.” Catra hoisted her feet up onto her chair, and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I should’ve let you down gently. Some friend I am.”
“It’s fine,” Scorpia said, although it really wasn’t. “I asked at a bad time, and it should’ve been obvious. And I ended up ruining games night.”
Catra chuckled a bit at that, and Scorpia found herself smiling, despite it all.
“What do you even see in me?”
Scorpia frowned. “What’s not to see in you?”
“Please,” Catra drawled. “I’m a mess. I only made it as far as I have because I gave Entrapta an opportunity to try something crazy. And now she’s off with Hordak working on who knows what kind of mad scientist bullshit, and I’m just a dumb failure with abandonment issues.”
“That’s not true!” Scorpia said, reaching out a claw to pull Catra close for a hug. For once, she didn’t resist, burying her face in Scorpia’s shoulder, hair brushing softly against her neck and chin. “You’re not dumb—you’re way smarter than every Force Captain I know. Whose idea was it to even get ‘Trapta on board? Who saw the potential she had? Anyone else would have taken her captive and thrown her in a cell, but you saw a talent that would help the Horde!”
“I still can’t beat Adora though,” Catra mumbled. “She’s kicking our asses out there.”
“We’re at a stalemate,” Scorpia said, patiently. “She’s just given the rebellion the boost they needed to start defending properly. It sucks, but it’s not like they’ve pushed us onto the defensive or anything.”
Catra snorted, a muffled sound that sounded to Scorpia half-hearted. “I guess. I still think we need to take her down soon, though.”
“Are you sure that you want to take her down?” It was a lot easier to joke about Catra’s obsession with Adora now she’d gotten her own feelings off her chest. It was a kind of moving on. Progress.
Catra pulled away, a sour look on her face. “Ugh, not you too. Lonnie won’t shut up about that dumb idea of hers, will she? I’ve not got a thing for Adora. I just…” Catra paused, swallowed, and took a breath. “I just miss my best friend. And every time I see her, it reminds me that I can’t ever have her back. That she left me.”
She sighed. Scorpia watched her with a curious expression as she stood up and stretched.
“I am sorry I snapped at you, though,” she added. “I thought games night would distract me from the whole ‘one year without Adora’ thing, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her anyway. I do that a lot, and I think I end up treating you and Entrapta like… I dunno, like you’re not really there? It’s kinda fucked up. I’m gonna try not to.”
Scorpia smiled. There was something almost bittersweet about her confession bringing out Catra’s introspective side. “That sounds like a good idea to me.”
“Yeah,” Catra said. “Still, I’m sorry. If you wanna take a shift with someone else for a few weeks, y’know, for space, that’s fine…”
“No!” Scorpia said, perhaps a little too forcefully. “No. It– it’s fine, really. I, uh, I just want to keep to routine. It’ll be easier that way, for me.”
“Sure.” Catra’s voice was quiet, almost fading into the sounds of the medbay as she walked purposefully to the door. “Well, I guess I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Yeah.” Scorpia smiled as Catra hung on the doorframe for a moment. “I’ll see you then.”
Catra flashed her a flat smile as she turned the corner, and—not for the first time that week, and likely not for the last—Scorpia’s heart seemed like a vacuum in her chest. She turned her back on the door anyway, tried to push out the thoughts of Catra that never left, not really, and sat in watch over her old friends as her shaking breath slowly settled, until the medbay was quiet once more.
I want to love this, but I'm not sure I can. I'm intensely ambivalent about it.
The good: This story is saturated with a melancholic maturity, a sense of largely decent people doing their best in ugly, messy circumstances. It's right up my alley. It's ambitious but effective: Behind all the adventure! and drama, She-Ra does have a tragic sense of life.
And to go along with that, you're teasing out some of the darker implications the show glosses over: The costs of war, borne largely by all those faceless soldiers.
But as impressive as all that is, it doesn't quite land. Why? Characterisation.
There's no trace here of Scorpia's bubbling brio. She's gloomy and pensive the entire way through. When we get free indirect, it's stuff like “Proms were stupid, anyway. They deserved to get blown up.” For dialogue, we get “The longer we keep this up, the more chance someone’s going to find those bombs” – a grimly practical complaint. The Scorpia we know was largely occupied with the shrimp. On top of that, at the end we get an unusually self-aware Catra at the end.
Now, I'm not saying you can't have a glum, grumpy Scorpia. Indeed, the reason we're all in love with her now is because Season 2 gives her some worries. But you need to justify it. You need to account for the phenomena. In other words, to show how this fits in with the chirpy Scorpia we've seen in the show. (Is she hiding her worries? Is it all a coping mechanism? Etc.)
A couple of other thoughts:
There's an odd lacuna before the final scene. Some drama at games night? I don't recall that happening in the show. If it didn't, and you're just skipping over a key dramatic scene … that's an unusual choice, but not a bad one. I thought it worth flagging, anyway.
The prose here is generally pretty good, and I have a thing for rich descriptions, but sometimes it could use a polish. In your first paragraph, between “dreary hum” and “carefully-ventilated corridors”, almost every noun has a modifier. It makes the prose seem plodding rather than rich. On the other hand, “She was not jealous of Adora./She was so jealous of Adora.” is a great turnaround.
In short, a strong story, but not such a strong fanfic.
The good: This story is saturated with a melancholic maturity, a sense of largely decent people doing their best in ugly, messy circumstances. It's right up my alley. It's ambitious but effective: Behind all the adventure! and drama, She-Ra does have a tragic sense of life.
And to go along with that, you're teasing out some of the darker implications the show glosses over: The costs of war, borne largely by all those faceless soldiers.
But as impressive as all that is, it doesn't quite land. Why? Characterisation.
There's no trace here of Scorpia's bubbling brio. She's gloomy and pensive the entire way through. When we get free indirect, it's stuff like “Proms were stupid, anyway. They deserved to get blown up.” For dialogue, we get “The longer we keep this up, the more chance someone’s going to find those bombs” – a grimly practical complaint. The Scorpia we know was largely occupied with the shrimp. On top of that, at the end we get an unusually self-aware Catra at the end.
Now, I'm not saying you can't have a glum, grumpy Scorpia. Indeed, the reason we're all in love with her now is because Season 2 gives her some worries. But you need to justify it. You need to account for the phenomena. In other words, to show how this fits in with the chirpy Scorpia we've seen in the show. (Is she hiding her worries? Is it all a coping mechanism? Etc.)
A couple of other thoughts:
There's an odd lacuna before the final scene. Some drama at games night? I don't recall that happening in the show. If it didn't, and you're just skipping over a key dramatic scene … that's an unusual choice, but not a bad one. I thought it worth flagging, anyway.
The prose here is generally pretty good, and I have a thing for rich descriptions, but sometimes it could use a polish. In your first paragraph, between “dreary hum” and “carefully-ventilated corridors”, almost every noun has a modifier. It makes the prose seem plodding rather than rich. On the other hand, “She was not jealous of Adora./She was so jealous of Adora.” is a great turnaround.
In short, a strong story, but not such a strong fanfic.
my first impression of this piece was that it was well written, with a solid construction and ample description, balancing out the dialogue that came later; my second impression was much the same. it was only after reading scramblers' mention of modifiers that i went back, looked at the opening paragraph more carefully, and realized that there were, in fact, a couple too many adjectives, making the description lean just this side of "too heavy".
here what i am trying to say, then, is that this entry may need a bit of work as a written piece, but it reads easily as a fanfic - that is how i originally read it, after all. highlighting the more tragic aspects of the cartoon, presenting to the reader the side of the Horde that the TV-Y7-ness of the show glosses over entirely, it has a number of original elements that would appeal to an audience on the lookout for a new fic to read, combining said elements with conventions like exploring the relationship between scorpia and catra and that must be a convention, if most of the entries this round revolved around it, right?.
the side of scorpia we see here fits in well with the themes mentioned; however, it is only one side of her. hints of the more light-hearted, oblivious outlook scorpia boasts for the majority of the show can be seen in certain lines - "she was not out of shape", for instance - but they are few and far between, and the lack of more of them leaves us thinking that there is something in scorpia's personality that is missing. catra, too, does not seem through the show to be the type of person who would be this introspective so easily; in contrast, lonnie and kyle, relatively short though their appearances may be, look and sound exactly like lonnie and kyle. characterisation, then, which at the moment fluctuates and isn't constant, is something that needs to be focused on.
here what i am trying to say, then, is that this entry may need a bit of work as a written piece, but it reads easily as a fanfic - that is how i originally read it, after all. highlighting the more tragic aspects of the cartoon, presenting to the reader the side of the Horde that the TV-Y7-ness of the show glosses over entirely, it has a number of original elements that would appeal to an audience on the lookout for a new fic to read, combining said elements with conventions like exploring the relationship between scorpia and catra and that must be a convention, if most of the entries this round revolved around it, right?.
the side of scorpia we see here fits in well with the themes mentioned; however, it is only one side of her. hints of the more light-hearted, oblivious outlook scorpia boasts for the majority of the show can be seen in certain lines - "she was not out of shape", for instance - but they are few and far between, and the lack of more of them leaves us thinking that there is something in scorpia's personality that is missing. catra, too, does not seem through the show to be the type of person who would be this introspective so easily; in contrast, lonnie and kyle, relatively short though their appearances may be, look and sound exactly like lonnie and kyle. characterisation, then, which at the moment fluctuates and isn't constant, is something that needs to be focused on.
I like your prose, and I like your overall construction, here. You also do a really good job of leveraging the super-tight third-person limited perspective here to give us Scorpia's without making it feel like we're being told what Scorpia's thinking. Nicely done!
What I'm having a little bit of trouble with, though, is how passive a lot of the story feels. The first two scenes are essentially just Scorpia reacting to what's happening, and while that does give us some nice insights into the headspace you've put her in, it came across to me as a bit event-less. The feeling is compounded by the fact that these are doing the whole behind/between-the-scenes of the show thing, which always makes it just a little bit harder for the reader to pay attention to things they think they've already seen.
The result of this bit of emotional detachment is that the last scene develops a bit of talking-heads-syndrome because the story didn't quite earn as big of an emotional investment from me as it could have. It's great dialogue that gives a complicated-feeling closure to Scorpia's conflicts, but for me, it was just a bit hard to follow along at that point because I felt like I had already expended a lot of emotional attention in the first two scenes.
I think the takeaway from my reading is, to make sure you maintain your reader's investment in the story. Give your reader reasons to care about your main character, which is more difficult to do when it feels like your main character isn't doing all that much for a lot of the story. There was this cool touch in the beginning, where you establish this idea of Scorpia being a caring mother-hen type figure to her cadets, but things like this never really crystallized into payoff because Socrpia spent so much of the story simply reacting to Catra. If you're choosing to tell this story so close to Scorpia's perspective, then giving her a bit more agency would really go a long way into making her a character we can root for.
What I'm having a little bit of trouble with, though, is how passive a lot of the story feels. The first two scenes are essentially just Scorpia reacting to what's happening, and while that does give us some nice insights into the headspace you've put her in, it came across to me as a bit event-less. The feeling is compounded by the fact that these are doing the whole behind/between-the-scenes of the show thing, which always makes it just a little bit harder for the reader to pay attention to things they think they've already seen.
The result of this bit of emotional detachment is that the last scene develops a bit of talking-heads-syndrome because the story didn't quite earn as big of an emotional investment from me as it could have. It's great dialogue that gives a complicated-feeling closure to Scorpia's conflicts, but for me, it was just a bit hard to follow along at that point because I felt like I had already expended a lot of emotional attention in the first two scenes.
I think the takeaway from my reading is, to make sure you maintain your reader's investment in the story. Give your reader reasons to care about your main character, which is more difficult to do when it feels like your main character isn't doing all that much for a lot of the story. There was this cool touch in the beginning, where you establish this idea of Scorpia being a caring mother-hen type figure to her cadets, but things like this never really crystallized into payoff because Socrpia spent so much of the story simply reacting to Catra. If you're choosing to tell this story so close to Scorpia's perspective, then giving her a bit more agency would really go a long way into making her a character we can root for.
Aw crap, I forgot to look at the opening lines of all the stories.
This one is okay. It's a pretty common thing to have a character surveying something from a high place, so unless it's really relevant to the plot, you might consider moving it someplace less overly dramatic or someplace more unique. When the point of your story is that she's somewhere really mundane, there's a temptation to make the story too closely follow that mood. If you want to write about something exciting, you make the story exciting, right? But when you write about something boring, does that mean you make the story boring? Some authors will.
That's not to say your particular story is boring yet. You do get through the description of it quickly enough, but it's all stuff we'd know from the show, so there's nothing new here, either. It's a really tricky thing to write about a bored character and make it interesting. Maybe rather than focus on the elements of her boredom, focus on what she's trying to do to amuse herself as time passes? That's also a good way to develop a character. Just a suggestion, but it may spice up this opener.
After we get into the story a bit, I see a picture unfolding of a Scorpia who's maybe a bit incompetent, but also marginalized. It's an interesting look at her. Though with the strict chain of command they keep, I'm surprised a cadet would be that casual with her and snatch a communicator from her.
Scorpia seems so concerned about "her kids," but we never learn who they were until more than halfway through the story, and even then only as a casual mention. She never found them after the battle. Seems odd, given how much importance she attached to them.
There are a few detailed mechanical things, and I'm only going to point out one as an example of how carefully you'd have to look to find them. This story's very clean.
This says Scorpia's eyes bit her lip and were surprised, not that Scorpia herself was.
This is the third most cliched sentence in fiction.
This is an interesting direction you're going, with Catra genuinely concerned with Scorpia as a friend. It's also surprising, since the show more or less has her outwardly saying friends mean nothing to her. She's being a lot more open here, to the point I'm not sure whether to take it as a rewriting of her character or a more behind the scenes look at her.
The writing here is very good, and it's an unexpected look at Catra. It does feel like it comes to a very understated conclusion. The whole thing was set up to be this big build-up to Scorpia acting on her feelings for Catra, only for her to have her efforts stopped before they begin. Then the final scene, while a cool look at Catra's side of things and unexpected attitude toward friendship, is stagnant on Scorpia's front. So it felt like that story ended before the final scene, then we got a short follow-up story.
This one is okay. It's a pretty common thing to have a character surveying something from a high place, so unless it's really relevant to the plot, you might consider moving it someplace less overly dramatic or someplace more unique. When the point of your story is that she's somewhere really mundane, there's a temptation to make the story too closely follow that mood. If you want to write about something exciting, you make the story exciting, right? But when you write about something boring, does that mean you make the story boring? Some authors will.
That's not to say your particular story is boring yet. You do get through the description of it quickly enough, but it's all stuff we'd know from the show, so there's nothing new here, either. It's a really tricky thing to write about a bored character and make it interesting. Maybe rather than focus on the elements of her boredom, focus on what she's trying to do to amuse herself as time passes? That's also a good way to develop a character. Just a suggestion, but it may spice up this opener.
After we get into the story a bit, I see a picture unfolding of a Scorpia who's maybe a bit incompetent, but also marginalized. It's an interesting look at her. Though with the strict chain of command they keep, I'm surprised a cadet would be that casual with her and snatch a communicator from her.
Scorpia seems so concerned about "her kids," but we never learn who they were until more than halfway through the story, and even then only as a casual mention. She never found them after the battle. Seems odd, given how much importance she attached to them.
There are a few detailed mechanical things, and I'm only going to point out one as an example of how carefully you'd have to look to find them. This story's very clean.
Biting her lip, her eyes kept flicking back to Lonnie, surprised as always by the cadet’s ability to remain calm when plans were crumbling around them.
This says Scorpia's eyes bit her lip and were surprised, not that Scorpia herself was.
Scorpia let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding
This is the third most cliched sentence in fiction.
This is an interesting direction you're going, with Catra genuinely concerned with Scorpia as a friend. It's also surprising, since the show more or less has her outwardly saying friends mean nothing to her. She's being a lot more open here, to the point I'm not sure whether to take it as a rewriting of her character or a more behind the scenes look at her.
The writing here is very good, and it's an unexpected look at Catra. It does feel like it comes to a very understated conclusion. The whole thing was set up to be this big build-up to Scorpia acting on her feelings for Catra, only for her to have her efforts stopped before they begin. Then the final scene, while a cool look at Catra's side of things and unexpected attitude toward friendship, is stagnant on Scorpia's front. So it felt like that story ended before the final scene, then we got a short follow-up story.