InsaneJournal

“Look,” Catra sighed, punching in the number sequence into the pad - it was some stupid, convoluted number she’d memorized just in case. Never know when you needed to get in here for blackmail or leverage, and she had always been equal parts survival and let me die, I’m trash anyway. “All I’m saying is that sometimes it’s just better to work smarter and not harder. Don’t you remember Entrapta going on about this? It was for her whole tiny food obsession.”

Hordak’s Sanctum had been one of those areas of the Fright Zone that hadn’t been explored since its arrival in Vallo, and she’d been fine with that. Did she need to be surrounded by weird technology and tanks full of suspicious bubbling liquid (bright green, even worse) for funsies? Absolutely not. But it was home to some pretty interesting projects and while Catra didn’t have the patience to learn the science behind it all that made it functional, she knew what a lot of things did and most of what had been made in the name of successful warfare.

The doors opened, and the laboratory inside (why call it a Sanctum, it was dumb) had electrical power thriving through the wires to keep it all buzzing - computers, machinery, that kind of thing. Catra was pretty sure that device that sucked the oxygen from her lungs was in here somewhere too. “As much as I love watching Adora haul heavy things we should really focus more on fixing the place and less on getting rid of the rubble and trash?? Shrink it, sweep it up, be done with it.”

All they had to do was find The Thing. She had a vague memory of what it looked like.

“Oh, I think I remember that! She once shrank a protein bar for me! It was…” Well, in the end, Scorpia was pretty sure that she could have just sliced a bit of the protein bar off for the same effect – even Entrapta had agreed that it wasn’t any cuter, just smaller and denser, “It was interesting! I have to say, I did not expect a single bit of protein bar to fill me up for the entire day. Oh! And she once shrunk down one of my tea cups! That was cute!” Except it had been Scorpia’s favourite tea cup, and then she’d lost it later that afternoon – it was just so tiny – and she had tired of the shrink ray pretty quickly after that.

She did feel a little bad for making Catra come all the way out here though. She realized that she was inconveniencing people just by having them come and help her, even if none of them seemed to mind, and she likewise realized that by not using the shrink ray, she was making things more difficult on Adora and herself and everyone else who was able to lift the heavy debris in Horror Hall, but she still felt a little bad for making Catra come all the way to Hordak’s Sanctum for it.

Still, she and Catra were the only two people who knew what it looked like, and Scorpia had completely forgotten it existed until about five seconds ago.

“You’re right, of course,” Scorpia said, the of course being because Catra was usually right – Catra was one of the smartest people Scorpia knew. Back in their days in the Horde, she might have said it fawningly, waxing poetic about Catra’s big beautiful brain, but now her tone was just tempered to a reasonable amount of admiration. “So uh, do you remember what it looks like? Was it the big laser beam thing, or was it more like a hose…” Scorpia frowned, trying to remember.

Entrapta had invented a lot of machines.

“Uhhhhh,” Catra frowned, closing an eye with a scrunched up face as if that helped the thinking process. It did, kind of. She scratched at her scalp, contemplating. “If I remember right it’s like - some kind of rifle-looking thing with a dial that sets the setting for the size?”

Yeah, that was it. Something like that anyway. The place was kind of a mess too considering Hordak lost it when she convinced him that Entrapta betrayed her, so - yeah. Definitely the crazy lair of a man going mad with science here. But it’s where he kept what was left of Entrapta’s inventions in case it could prove useful and if what they were looking for was anywhere in the Fright Zone, it’d be here.

She smoothed some bangs away from her eyes and approached a pile of mostly familiar junk. “That means all the big stuff’s out of the equation. Just watch what you touch and don’t press any buttons? Pretty sure we’ll recognize it when we see it.”

“Don’t press buttons, don’t bother with the big stuff, got it,” Scorpia said, adding a playful salute as she began her search.

“This is nice,” she said, after a moment, holding up what she was pretty sure was supposed to be an arm for one of Entrapta’s robot prototypes. “Like a trip down memory lane. I mean, not all the memories were great, exactly.” Looking back at them, compared to her life fighting Horde Prime’s forces with the Princess Alliance and especially compared with her life here in Vallo, which involved no fighting ever, most of the memories had been… not great. But there’d been good ones in there too, she thought. Ones that even Catra might have enjoyed.

“But we had fun sometimes, didn’t we? The Super Pal Trio.”

It’s funny. Catra felt like she had this exact conversation with Adora too - because while there were a lot of memories that were distinctly not good, some were. She had clung to those like a lifeline (as if that eclipsed all the other horrors experienced) and that hadn’t been the healthiest thing. There wasn’t harm in acknowledging the moments that helped them survive this place, though. They were important, even if she hadn’t allowed herself to appreciate it to its fullest back then.

“We did,” she smirked, sifting through a few small gadgets that caught her interest but shelved to the side - they definitely weren’t what she was looking for, and she wasn’t going to question the device that looked way too much like a vibrator. For all she knew it could have been but with a lot more functions than necessary. “Even though I was still an ass for most of it, anyway.”

There was no room for fun in the Horde, not after she made Force Captain (or if we want to be more honest, not after Adora defected) and then she just - kind of dominated the whole leadership role after Hordak (let’s be real, he was hiding in this lab most of the time trying to look scary). Catra had been work work work and violence violence violence, and very little fun fun fun.

But everything would have sucked a lot harder if Scorpia and Entrapta hadn’t been around. It had, at some point, because they weren’t. Catra never expected their absence to hit as hard as it did when she was always prepared to lose people. That’s what she got for having feelings and shit, it was a travesty.

To the next pile of mildly interesting stuff. Catra began untangling a set of cables delicately. “I miss our bowling games,” she then went on to admit. “I thought they would be the dumbest thing but they were kind of my favorite?” Scorpia had to literally drag her to them. There had been lots of hissing in protest. “Fucking Kyle, though. I’m still not convinced the games weren’t rigged - out of all the things he should have been good at it was tossing a ball incorrectly and somehow still knocking all the pins over??”

She used to get so mad about it. Now the memory made her laugh.

“Oh, Entrapta used to have a theory about that,” Scorpia said, rifling through another debris heap; the slabs of concrete might have proven difficult for other people to lift, but Scorpia tossed them aside like they were made of foam. There were, in fact, a few gadgets down there. One she recognized as Entrapta’s coffee machine – it only ever made tiny cups of coffee – but most of them she was pretty sure she’d never seen before.

“She used to say that it was the law of… of probability? I think? That since Kyle was just not great at a whole bunch of stuff, there probably had to be something that he was weirdly good at, and that was bowling! Even if tossed the ball between his legs.” Honestly, it wasn’t a terrible way to bowl, and Scorpia thought maybe she should try.

It would probably be easier to hold the balls with two pincers insead of one, at least.

“Of course she did,” Catra mused, maybe even recalling some of that chatter in the back of her mind? Scorpia’s statement tracked anyway. There were sometimes (or a lot of times) where she wished she’d been more attentive back then - paid more attention to the people that tried so hard to extend their friendship to her. Sadly, she’d been a stubborn shit.

So she was doing her best to be better. It seemed to be working. Look at where she and Scorpia were at now, after all.

After carefully discarding some of the unpromising gadgets, she approached one of those tanks (still bubbling with fluid, ew) and peered inside it due to morbid curiosity, hands pressed against the glass. “I miss her nasally voice,” she admitted with a sigh. “She’d be happy as pig in shit here. Not Fright Zone here, but Vallo here. Did you know she and Hordak are supposed to be a thing?? I don’t know if I want to congratulate them or throw up a little.”

“Oh yeah. Did you not know that?” Scorpia asked, a little surprised. Entrapta had talked a lot about Hordak. Mostly, now that Scorpia thought about it, to her – Entrapta would talk about Hordak, and Scorpia would talk about Catra, and they’d giggle to one another and eat tiny, cupcake-shaped ration bars. “They’re kind of cute together. Or, I mean, I assume they are. I never spent much time with Hordak, obviously, but Entrapta was always really happy whenever she talked about him and their lab experiments.”

There, at the bottom of the pile, was something that looked vaguely like a rifle, or maybe like a tube, and Scorpia began moving aside some more of the debris and the strange, unrecognizable inventions to get at it.

“I kinda did??” Catra huffed, then scrunched her face up into a hilarious grimace as if her sensitive nose caught a scent that wasn't pleasing to the senses. “I knew there were feelings there with them but I didn’t think it’d ever become a… thing. An actual thing. A relationship.” Since, y’know, she did send Entrapta to die and Hordak was kind of nuts himself except things worked out in the end, soooo. Yay? Whatever made them happy.

Sometimes she wanted a glimpse of what was even happening on Etheria - or what was going to happen, anyway. How total fuck ups like her and Hordak fit into the scheme of things now that Prime was banished by Adora’s magic. Rebuilding, space adventures.

Maybe one day.

Peeling herself away from the tank, she spun around to look at Scorpia. “I’m still holding out for her showing up here. And I guess Hordak too, if that makes her happy since everyone’s popping up all ‘coupled’ up. You and Flower Power are... coupled up, right? Officially…???”

“I’m glad it did,” Scorpia said. “Or, at least, I assume it did. They did seem pretty chummy after everything, didn’t they? Maybe Hordak will be less, you know, yell-y, now that he’s in love.” Love, she thought, seemed to make everyone the best version of themselves. Just look at Catra! Scorpia did, beaming at her.

She blushed a little, pausing in her reaching for the device. “We are,” she said, pleased and bashful both. “Officially and everything. Perfuma’s great, isn’t she?”

Hordak in love. It was a miracle Catra didn’t hack up a hairball right in disgust. Chalk that up to character development. She’d much rather focus on the updates of Scorpia’s love-life because that was at least cute.

Not that she’d ever admit that out loud.

“Yeah,” she agreed, mouth quirked into a smirk. “She’s alright.” In Catra terms that meant she liked her a lot. She spent a decent amount of time with Perfuma, too - they did the whole yoga thing together on a weekly basis, and it was weirdly easy to talk to her. “I’m happy for you. The both of you. But, uh. Mostly you. I’m glad you have someone who at least almost deserves you.”

It was a joke - Perfuma was perfect for Scorpia in every way. But still.

“If anything, I almost deserve her,” Scopia answered and then gave her head a bit of a shake. “Or, we deserve each other. Perfuma tells me that negative self-talk throws my chakra off so I should stop doing it.”

She finally pulled the rod free with a cry of triumph. It seemed like a tube of some sort, with a handle, one side longer than the other. The long side, Scorpia thought, must have been the side the shrink ray came out of, because she was sure, now, that this must have been the shrink ray. There was a dial on it, and one end of the dial had a tiny stick figure, and the other had a larger, sort of crooked stick figure, and if that didn’t mean shrink ray, then Scorpia didn’t know what did.

Catra had told Scorpia not to push any buttons, but this didn’t really have buttons, just the dial – which Scorpia turned toward the small stick figure – and a trigger.

“Hey, Catra! Look! I think I found it!” Scorpia said, turning her back to Catra and pointing the long end of the tube at a pile of rubble, the shorter end resting on her shoulder so that it faced Catra. She pulled the trigger.

First, Catra blinked and casually said, “Cool.” A literal split second later, she saw a pincer get dangerously close to where it shouldn’t be and then said, “Wait, don’t -”

Scratch that thought.

Things happened so quickly. A laser blast - a vibrant, neon green, why was it always green - shot out of the mouth of the device as it malfunctioned in Scorpia’s possession, coming apart. Catra was hit square in the chest. It looked like it should have pierced a hole on one side and out the other, except it didn’t.

Instead there was a blinding flash of light that swallowed her whole, crackling and fizzling. An explosion of light that, in seconds, collapsed on itself and what had been in the place of five-foot-two Catra was something (or someone) that was, in fact, not that size. The silhouette was familiar, though. Ears, fluff, blinking eyes that didn’t match.

She was tiny.

Really tiny.

But that wasn’t the troubling part. She wasn’t just tiny. She was young, barely a freckle in her cheeks. Round face, scrawny and short limbs, dark hair more than half the size of her actual body. A Horde-issued uniform meant for kids on her, somehow.

There was a stretch of silence before an ear-curdling screech, a hisssssss, and she was a fuzzy little blur on all fours scrambling around the Sanctum looking for a high escape. She found it in a thick pipe that went from the ground to a set of vents, and her claws hooked and dragged into the metal clumsily until she climbed alllllll the way up, headbutted the grate off and crawled inside.

It was dusty and dirty in there. She sneezed. Hissed some more, then sneezed a second - even a third time.

“You’re going to be in trouble!” she shouted from her hiding spot, her voice squeaky and small. “Lord Hordak doesn’t let people here!!”

Oh no. Oh no. This was bad, this was very, very bad. Catra, Scorpia noticed, wasn’t just smaller, she was also much, much younger and apparently still thought they were in the Fright Zone. Well, they were in the Fright Zone, just not on Etheria, and…

Scorpia shook her head to clear it of that train of thought. “It’s okay, Catra!” Scorpia called, attempting to put the pieces of the de-aging machine back together, somehow managing to break it even worse – pieces bent in her grasp, or snapped in half entirely. “Hordak gave us special permission to be here.”

Another piece snapped in half, and Scorpia gave it up for a bad job, dropping the entire machine on the ground instead. “But I’m going to need you to come down,” she said, opening her arms so Catra could jump down from the vent into her waiting embrace, which was obviously something Catra was definitely going to do.

“No!” was her retaliation, screeched out from her little lungs and with another hiss. The attempt was meant to be menacing but much like her voice, it was just squeaky. “I don’t know you!”

Catra was doing her best to figure out a route of escape - her vision could pierce through the darkness in the vents, and there was blockage she might struggle getting through. Maybe if she jumped on this lady’s head and use it as a springboard and ran she could make it out the door?

There was a lot to consider.

But before she plotted some mastermind escape plan, she grabbed a piece of rubble found in the vent and chucked it at Scorpia. “Go away! I’m gonna tell Shadow Weaver on you!!”

“But you do know – Ow! Catra!” Scorpia cried, rubbing the spot on her forehead where the rock had hit her. She held up her pincers to shield her from any more incoming debris. “Shadow Weaver isn’t here Catra. You need to come down! Oh, Adora’s going to be so mad,” she added to herself.

Catra was two seconds away from reaching out towards a bigger piece of rubble to fling (her aim was good the first time, maybe she should go for THE EYES) until Scorpia said that name. It caused her to pause, blinking rapidly, and she emerged from the end of the vent with caution.

Well - not completely. Scorpia could see the top half of her face. The hilariously large ears, eyes that had a bit of a glow in the dimness of the area she was in. They were still glaring at her with distrust but there was also that curiosity considering the Magical Name had been spoken. “Where’s Adora,” she demanded, pupils slitted. “If you took her I will fight you.”

“I didn’t take her. She’s here! I mean, not here here, but around!” Scorpia brightened. “In fact, if you come down here, I’ll take you to her.” She opened her arms wide, invitingly. “Just jump right down here, Catra! I’ll catch you and then I’ll take you to Adora!”

Right after she figured out how to fix this before Adora figured it out.

It was a tempting offer.

Catra was considering it. The baby gears in her brain were turning, and she was letting out this mrrrrrrrrr kind of rumble that translated into a sound of contemplation. But the internal debate didn’t last long either because, duh, she wasn’t stupid and if there’s one truth she had learned the hard way, it was this: you can’t trust anyone.

Except for Adora. They looked out for each other, always - best friends forever! She didn’t like it that someone was dangling the idea of her best friend being around like this.

“Prove it!” she yelled out, revealing a little more of her face to show Scorpia her teeth. Tiny razor fangs that should be intimidating to enemies! “Bring Adora here!”

Then she could make sure her best friend was fine and then pounce on Scorpia to save her. Sounded like a solid plan and she was very proud of herself.

Scorpia deflated, all thoughts of her fixing this on her own without Adora finding out until everything was hunky-dory leaving her. She looked again at the vent that Catra had holed herself up in, as if there were some way that Scorpia could climb up there herself, and very quickly dismissed it as impossible.

So she pulled out her phone. “Text Adora,” she said. And then told her phone, “Uh, Adora? There’s been a little – haha, that wasn’t intentional, but kind of funny, right? Oh, I guess… no… don’t send that.” She waited for the text to delete, and tried again. “Hey Adora! Everything’s fine! Really! Well, mostly fine! Anyway, we’ve got a bit of a situation? Here? In Hordak’s Chamber? If you wanted to come by. But again, it’s really not a big deal! Hahaha.”

That… was probably fine. She sent the text.

If there was one mundane task She-Ra was good for, it was undoubtedly cleaning the wreckage that was Horror Hall. Before she’d left the Horde, she’d never set foot there. It was Scorpia’s family’s castle from before Hordak, and there had always been rumors and scary stories whispered among the cadets about how it might be haunted. Kid Adora at her bravest had tried to go in on a dare at one point, but she’d heard a noise and went sprinting back to the familiarity of the bunk room.

Now, there was nothing scary about it. The Fright Zone was practically a different place since She-Ra’s magic had brought it back to its natural state of being. The very fact that it was here was still a little weird, and a lot of the memories associated with it sucked, but it was a better piece of home than the Crystal Castle ever would be. And she was happy to help Scorpia remake it to honor her family and transform it into someplace a little more friendly.

She just hoped she didn’t rename Horror Hall ‘Hall of Hugs’ like she’d heard tossed out there. It was like going from one extreme to the other, and there had to be some kind of middleground? But that was none of her business.

Catra and Scorpia had disappeared…somewhere. Adora was sure Catra had told her where, but she was in her groove, towing debris out of the castle with her earpods in so she could listen to music. She hadn’t even noticed how long they’d been gone until a text message pinged on her phone and she dropped her last load of junk on the ground to pull it from her pocket and swipe the message open.

Her eyes went wide when she did. Scorpia was not subtle in person, and somehow, that translated perfectly over texts, too. She got as far as ‘Everything is fine!’ and knew something was wrong. She sighed, plucked out her earpods to put them away, then started trudging in the direction of Hordak’s Sanctum.

When she got through the door and saw only Scorpia standing there, her brows knitted together in confusion. “Where’s Catra?” was the first question out of her mouth, hands settling on her hips.

“Catra’s fine,” Scorpia assured her. “There was a uh… a little mix up? But she’s not hurt, I promise! She’s just a little spooked, and I’m sure everything will be back to normal in no time flat!” And then she turned toward the vent and called, “See Catra? Here’s Adora! Safe and sound! You’ll come down now, right?”

Catra listened. Catra watched, and she sat up in a position that was, well - one that would be more comfortable for a cat than human, knees bent and her hands flat on the floor of the vent. The metal plating beneath her was wobbly at best, the screws on it loose. If she was any heavier she could probably fall through it, but she knew how to work around these kinds of things fine - and lucky her, she was tiny.

(Wasn’t always a good thing though, that made her an easy target to get picked on a lot.)

The double-doors slid open as the sensors detected someone approaching. Her ears perked, and she looked through a grate to lock eyes on who was supposed to be Adora but…

It wasn’t???

It was a lady. A big lady. Like, a super tall big lady with glowy hair and in armor and lots of muscles and she didn’t know whose muscles were bigger here between these two weirdos. They could kill her if they wanted to! That’s what they were probably trying to do anyway, and this was a trap, but somehow the other lady knew about Adora and - oh no. Oh no! WHAT IF ADORA WAS IN TROUBLE???

A low, pathetic excuse for a growl (she thought she sounded scary) rumbled from her chest, up her throat and echoed lowly if you listened for it. Catra allowed her head to emerge from the open part of the vent, and she looked mad.

“You’re a liar,” she claimed, fluffing up to display that she viewed the two of them as threats. “That’s not Adora! WHERE’S ADORA???” That’s when she started throwing things - any thing her baby hands could grab. Fallen rocks, pieces of broken metal plates. Then, she shrieked, “I WANT ADORA!”

When she exhausted her supply of random things to throw, she retreated back into the vent and stayed there and hissed up a whole storm.

So much had happened in the space of, like, two minutes that it took a moment for Adora’s brain to completely catch up. Not much spooked Catra, first of all, but apparently, something had — so much so that she needed to come down? Her eyes swiveled to find wherever her wife was hiding, and when a fluffy little head emerged from a vent a good twelve feet above them, her jaw dropped.

It was Catra. There was no mistaking that face for anyone else; Adora knew it too well, had always known it too well. But that face didn’t belong to her wife, not anymore. This was her childhood best friend, face sparse of freckles and more fluff than anything else. And she was riled up with the kind of indignant, frantic fury that Adora hadn’t seen from her since they actually were children.

But she didn’t understand why Catra didn’t recognize her? She was bigger, sure, but she still looked basically the same. She lifted a hand to examine it, like that might answer her questions, and — oh. Yeah, it did, actually. She’d forgotten to shift back to herself, but one golden glow later, that problem was solved. She-Ra and her fancy uniform was gone, replaced with Adora in sneakers, short shorts, and a red tank top that left very little to the imagination (because it was easily a thousand degrees, okay).

Once she was back to herself and had recovered from the shock of what she’d witnessed (not to mention the debris missiles Catra was launching at them), anger started to seep in. She turned on her heel to fix Scorpia with a glare. “What happened?” she demanded.

Scorpia yelped and shielded her head from the incoming missiles with her pincers – whatever shortcomings claws instead of fingers offered, at least they were large, armoured, and made excellent shields.

“Now Adora, don’t get angry,” Scorpia said in her best calming voice. “You have to promise not to get angry,” she said, and then waited a beat for that promise. The look she got instead made her swallow, and she continued on hurriedly: “Catra and I were looking for that shrink ray to help move all the debris and stuff, and then we thought I found it and I went to fire it at something – not at Catra – just to make sure that it still world and it misfired and it turns out it wasn’t? A shrink ray, I mean.”

She grimaced.

Nope, Adora wasn’t going to make that promise, and the glare she wore only deepened when Scorpia asked that of her. She was already angry, so much so that her reasonable side had taken a backseat. Since this was a highly unreasonable situation, she thought she was well within her rights to be pissed. Maybe she’d regret it later, but right now, it was all she could bring herself to feel.

“What is wrong with you? Both of you!” she snapped, her voice raising. A shrink ray? Who had asked for that? She and Scorpia were both completely capable of moving things. Maybe it wasn’t a quick process, but it was effective enough. “We didn’t need a shrink ray to get the work done, and even if we did, you don’t just point ray guns at people!”

She was yelling now, but she didn’t care. Was this not common sense? She knew she could be impulsive and make stupid choices sometimes, but come on. And why was it Scorpia being around always seemed to cause some sort of problem? First, her TV (not forgiven, not forgotten) and now her wife. That was ten million times worse.

She buried her face in her hands, forcing herself to slow down and take a deep breath. When she resurfaced, her expression was calmer, eerily so, and her fists clenched and unclenched at her side. “Where’s the machine? The… I guess it must have been a de-aging machine, right? We can just get her to come out and blast her back to normal.”

And that was another thing! Why? What sense did it make for Hordak or Entrapta or whoever the hell was creating these things to make a de-aging ray gun? Was that meant to be used against the Rebellion? She figured it was, most likely.

Scorpia grimaced again. Oh yeah, Adora was angry. She knew better than to try to defend herself (I hadn’t known the ray gun was pointed at Catra when I fired it), since that only ever seemed to make people more angry, not less, and so she moved past it.

She wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that Adora wasn’t yelling anymore, but her gut said worse.

“Okay, I think everyone just needs to take a deep breath in,” Scorpia said in her best soothing voice. The voice that Perfuma used for meditation. “In through the nose,” Scorpia said, and set an example by breathing in deeply, scooping her pincers toward her as if visualizing the breath.

Adora scoffed. “Scorpia, don’t breathing exercise me. I have every right to be mad about this!” Her fists were all balled up at her sides again, and despite wanting to be stubborn, she did take another deep breath. Continuing to yell wasn’t going to be good for this situation. She didn’t know how old Catra was right now — the glimpse she’d gotten left her thinking about four or five — but she didn’t want to yell and conjure up bad memories of Shadow Weaver. Everything was terrible enough the way it was.

“Just…find it so we can put her back to normal. I’ll get her down.” She turned away from Scorpia without another word, striding toward the vent she knew little Catra was hiding in. Another deep breath and a conscious effort to soften herself — her shoulders, her tone of voice, the expression she wore — and she knocked on the wall beneath the vent.

“Catra, it’s Adora,” she called up. “I know you’re probably kinda scared right now, but it’s really me. Can you come down for me so I can explain what’s going on?”

Catra had been bunched up in the vent, knees drawn to her chest with her hands on top of her knees - listening to the whole thing (they were yelling anyway, how could she not hear them). The pincer lady sounded crazy, ‘cause, like, she didn’t remember coming here to look for anything but she also didn’t seem like she was lying???

Though, as a rule of thumb, Catra also knew she couldn’t just trust people? People were usually really mean here - the exceptions to the rule were very, very rare.

Then there was this lady who claimed to be Adora but she couldn’t be Adora. She was a big person, and Adora was her size. Her voice was wrong. Where was her dumb ponytail?? What was the glowy magic trick and why did she show up even TALLER? Why were her boobs so big?

There were a lot of questions she wanted answered. She also did not want to come out of hiding, but Not-Adora approached and the way she talked to her was a little familiar except it… also wasn’t exactly right.

“I’m not stupid,” she retorted, her voice carried with a small echo. “I heard you. You’re loud.” Catra did, however, poke her head out again. Her eyes focused on Adora with cautious scrutiny as she carefully leaned half her body off the vent’s opening to get a little closer. Her nose was twitching. She was sniffing, trying to catch a better whiff of her scent. “Prove it. Prove that you’re my Adora.”

Adora was actually kind of proud of Catra for being so careful. When they were little things like that, it was hard to know who to trust. Even as adults, it was still difficult to trust people sometimes. They’d grown up training to be foot soldiers in a war that wasn’t theirs. They weren’t meant to trust anyone.

Luckily, she had a few tricks up her sleeve that should prove she was who she said she was even to a tiny Catra.

“Catra Applesauce Meowmeow,” she called out, her tone light and playful. “Nobody else knows that name but me, do they. You look out for me, and I look out for you. Remember? Nothing really bad can happen as long as we’re together.”

That was perhaps the best thing she could say to get Catra’s attention. Their promise, their forever. To think, those words had made their way into Catra’s wedding vows. They’d come so far, and now Catra remembered none of it.

Turns out that at this age the ‘Applesauce Meowmeow’ addition to her name wasn’t as offensive; it was more or less a bullseye for reassurance. Their promise was, too. Definitely made those slitted eyes widen, pupils growing in size. With her head curiously cocked to the side, her ears did a twitch and a somewhat submissive dip. It could still be a trap, right??

Right???

Something in her gut insisted otherwise. Emboldened, Catra pulled herself back up into the vents but it was only to reposition herself into a prime position to pounce. Back arched, butt wiggling - right before she leapt, tackling into Adora’s chest like a fierce cannonball of fluffy to knock her onto the ground and sit on her.

Catra sniffed her face before using those itty-bitty hands to pry her mouth open to peer inside. “You have all your teeth,” she blinked. “Your head got really big. I don’t like it. Who did this to you???”

Adora had high hopes her words were getting through to Catra. Decades of friendship and a relationship made her uniquely qualified to find the magic words. She wished she didn’t have to try to get through to her, but at least she wasn’t floundering here.

She still wasn’t quite prepared for the way she was leapt on, though, and was taken off-guard enough to be knocked to the ground by a ball of fluffy chaos. The anger still lingering in the depths of her chest eased when Catra began sniffing at her and pulling at her face like she always did. Some things really never changed.

“My whole self got big,” she laughed. “Not just my head. But no one did it. I just grew up. So did you, but there was an accident, that’s all. You’re supposed to be big just like me.”

“Obviously!” Catra exclaimed but also - what? Whatever, she would act like she knew exactly what all of that meant. But she at least seemed convinced that this grown up person was just the bigger version of her best friend, and that feeling solidified by hearing her laugh. That was Adora’s laugh, albeit a little deeper.

She clamored off her and straightened up to show how tall she was (which wasn’t very much), arms crossed over her chest as if she was determined to be defiant about something. “So what’s her problem?” she asked, chin canted towards Scorpia’s direction (why were her eyes sparkling so much). “We’re not suh-posed to be here, ‘Dora, we’re gonna get in trouble but she says…” Her ears lowered again. It wasn’t submission. Fear, probably, and it would make sense with how she whispered out the next words, “Shadow Weaver isn’t here. Is that true?”

This was all still super weird but her biggest worry was not getting in trouble. Hordak’s Sanctum was forbidden. She didn’t want to get punished for being here when she couldn’t even remember how she got here! There were rules she was willing to break but this wasn’t one of them.

Adora hadn’t known Catra putting on her best ‘tough kitten’ act was what she needed to finally relax, but it absolutely was. She smiled up at her tiny best friend fondly, pushing herself up on her elbows. She’d stay sitting, though, for now — let Catra feel tall and in control. This was all so weird, and she was trying to decide how best to explain it, anyway.

“That’s Scorpia,” she began, snagging little Catra’s tail and giving it a very light, playful tug. “She used to be a Force Captain. You’re right, if we were still in Etheria, we wouldn’t be allowed to be in here. But guess what?” Her eyebrows raised. “This isn’t Etheria. We’re actually in a place called Vallo, which has a whole lot of magic in it. Good magic,” she hurried to assure her. Mostly, since she wouldn’t exactly call pulling places like the Fright Zone and the Crystal Castle here good, but she wasn’t getting into that side right now.

She pushed herself up more, staying crouched down so she could keep her eyes level with Catra’s. “Vallo’s a good place. There’s no war here, and no Hordak, and no Shadow Weaver either. Me and you and Scorpia are all trying to make the Fright Zone better.”

Catra’s face did the whole scrunched up face thing, grumpy and puckered like she had bit into some sour citrus while Adora explained - and while her tail was gently yoinked, she pulled it back to her with a huff. “None of what you said sounds real,” she mumbled but, like, if this Big Person was Adora then maybe the rest of it was true, too. Adora wouldn’t lie to her, right?

No, she wouldn’t. Nothing really bad can happen as long as we’re together.

She let out a sigh, decided. “Okay,” Catra breathed. Softer and less guarded now, she reached for her arm to grab and sunk those pinprick kitten claws into her. Not on purpose - she wasn’t best at retracting them at this age, and she just really wanted to hold onto Adora. “Fix me. I don’t want to be little. I want to be a grown up like you. Scorpion Lady!! Did you find that thing?”

Scorpia hadn’t been looking for the deaging machine, mostly because she knew exactly where it was: laying in pieces at her feet. And so she’d spent this time mostly watching Catra and Adora, eyes sparkling because even if it was sort of terrible that Catra had become Kittenra, it was possibly the cutest thing Scorpia had ever seen.

She nearly cooed at Catra Applesauce Meowmeow, because if there was ever a name that was perfect for Catra, it was that. She awwed at “nothing really bad can happen as long as we’re together.” She very nearly giggled as Catra tried to pry Adora’s lips apart to study her teeth. She wondered how she had ever thought that she could be better for Catra than Adora ever could, because they were obviously made for one another.

And then she flinched when Catra asked her if she’d found the thing. At least Adora was in a better mood now. “Yeah, see, about that…” Scorpia said, eyes flicking to the pieces of machinery at her feet.

Adora’s eyes followed Scorpia’s, and her jaw immediately clenched tight. She hadn’t noticed the machinery at her feet — or, well, she had, but she hadn’t thought anything of it because this entire place was a mess. She should have known better. Of course the damn thing would be crushed; Scorpia didn’t have hands, she had giant pincers. She may try to be delicate, but she’d probably panicked after Catra turned little and that was that.

“Okay, we need to call someone and get this fixed. I don’t—” She let out a frustrated breath. She was lost. They’d lost Bow and she had no clue who else could they trust to put this right. “Scorpia, can you just…make some calls? Please?”

Scorpia nodded. “Right, I’ll make some calls. Who should I…call.” She finished weakly, trailing off at Adora’s exhausted look, and the corners of her mouth curved into small, worried frown, the inside tips of her eyebrows raising. She shot another glance at the teeny tiny Catra, and then at Adora with an apologetic look. This was her fault; she could figure out someone to call. “I’ll call… someone, don’t you worry.”

Catra frowned. She watched Scorpia make her exit from the Sanctum, feeling bad because she did seem - nice?? After her suspicion had ebbed, at least.

Poor Scorpion Lady and her pincers that broke stuff.

“You’re sad,” she observed, looking up at Adora. Catra tugged on her arm again. “I think you need a fluffy check. Do we still do those?”

Yep, Adora was sad, no denying it. She’d been waffling back and forth emotionally for a while now, and it was only more exacerbated by the recent disappearances - namely Richie. The downward swing was inevitable, and although she’d felt justifiably pissed, sad was better than mad, probably. She was already fragile, and combined with Scorpia’s unique ability to send her blood pressure through the roof, this time, she’d snapped. She’d feel bad about it later, most likely. She kind of already did.

Now they were in an impossible position. Breaking things would have been forgivable if one of those things hadn’t been the ray gun that had turned her wife into a five-year-old child. And it would be even easier to forgive if they had a surefire way to fix it, but they didn’t. All they could do now was hope, and her hope had been a little broken since Bow disappeared.

But when Catra spoke up, tugging on her arm, she gave in to the little one’s insistent grip and sank down to the floor again. It wasn’t a fix-all, but a fluffy check sounded nice. “We still do that,” she confirmed with a tired smile, pulling Catra onto her lap. “I could definitely use one right now. Thanks, Catra.” She kissed the top of her best friend’s head, stroking her furry little arms while she settled.

Her eyes fell back to the ray gun pieces on the ground, and she stifled a sigh. It was going to take forever — seriously, she couldn’t even guess how long — to fix that thing and set this situation right. She could already foresee that this would be a waiting game. There had to be something she could do to speed the process along, right?

It was like a lightbulb lit above her head, and she knew exactly what she needed. Magic. Wanda. (And an edible, if she was lucky, to soothe her frazzled nerves.) That would be the ticket, it had to be. Vallo was built on magic, surely it could fix this, too.

But, for now, she’d wait for Scorpia to find something and soak in the purring fluffball in her arms. As long as this stayed temporary? Maybe it didn’t have to be the worst thing in the world.