“Wow, this is amazing!”
She caught herself too late to preempt the uneasy looks from her companions. It was hard to explain anything to them without getting glared at or talked over or shouted down, but by now they should at least have figured out that she was on their side, that logically she couldn’t still be working for the Horde because the Horde as she had known it was gone, absorbed into an entity so vast and multifarious as to defy calculation, yet uncanny in its semblance, an incomprehensible strangeness wrapped in a face she recognized and a voice she knew—
“And … bad. Very bad.”
Scorpia offered a diplomatic nod and withdrew her claw from the radio antenna. Entrapta dropped her gaze to the waveforms mapped like mountain ranges across the screen of her tablet: easier to read than Scorpia’s expression, and less mutable.
“I can’t wait to analyze these recordings once we get back to camp,” she said, gesturing with the antenna toward the center of the Whispering Woods. “Something tells me they’ll have scrambled the source coordinates for a wide-range broadcast like this, but at least I can reverse-engineer the signal patterns and get a rough idea of what we’re dealing with.”
“Um,” said Perfuma, “so that’s a good thing?”
“Oh, definitely! It means we’re one tiny incremental step closer to figuring out where they’re transmitting from, which—once I’ve decrypted the metadata and duplicated the necessary authentication protocols—should reveal an access point I can use to hack into the astral net and locate where they took our friends.”
Mermista sighed. “So we’re barely any closer to rescuing our friend, Glimmer. Thanks, I guess?”
“No problem! I can start as soon as we get back.”
But when they reached the campsite they found Bow fretting over Adora, who had succumbed to fatigue before anyone had a chance to tell her about Horde Prime’s order for her capture. While the other princesses argued over interim leadership and contingency plans, Entrapta slipped back to her own tent, where she had jury-rigged a mobile lab to examine the fragments of alien technology she had been collecting since the invasion began.
She spent most of the following day at work, hunkered over a patchwork array of terminals scavenged from deserted guard posts on the outskirts of the Fright Zone, in the watery violet glow of the monitors and the hum of machinery. Late in the evening, after making a note of her progress in her voice log, she got up to stretch her hair and to see whether Adora had recovered yet so she could discuss her findings with Adora’s self-appointed guardian.
“Nope.” Bow took her shoulders and steered her away from the bedside, shaking his head. “Sorry, Entrapta, but it’s going to have to wait until she’s—”
“Wait?” Entrapta stumbled outside and turned back. “But it’s for science.” And our friends, she remembered too late, as the tent flaps pulled shut. That should have been the obvious part, should have gone without saying, but no one else seemed to think so. Get it right next time. She swatted the side of her face with a twist of her hair. Get it right or they’ll think you hate them. That you only care about tech and data and—
“—we don’t know where that is, like, in space.”
She looked around the clearing behind her. Small tents ringed the edge of a bare patch of ground with a campfire burning in a stone-lined pit at its center. Entrapta held her breath and inched toward the border of the light, straining for voices over the murmur of the flames and the Whispering Woods’ night chorus.
“Well, then, it’s up to us to make a plan to find her,” Perfuma was saying, rummaging in a gilded trunk on the ground at her side. “With these.”
Frosta sprang to her feet atop the log bench where she’d been sitting. “We don’t need dolls. We just need these!” She flexed her arms, and a pair of crystalline gauntlets condensed around her fists with a whiff of frost and a cold snap that drifted across the clearing with the smoke.
Mermista lifted an eyebrow. “What are you gonna do with those?”
“Punch Horde Prime.“
Perfuma cleared her throat and clasped her hands together. “Perhaps, if we meditate, we can access our princess connection to find Glimmer’s spirit out in space.” She didn’t sound convinced; none of them did. Entrapta crept closer. They needed her help. They needed science.
“Hello!” Seizing the lull in the conversation, she sidled into a vacant spot along the edge of the pit. “Oh, hi. Were you guys talking about space?”
Frosta and Mermista looked away, and Perfuma stared through her to the edge of the woods. Even Scorpia, who had listened in silence with Emily while the others spoke, shifted her gaze in discomfort. Emily swiveled toward Scorpia with a quizzical sputter of her circuitry.
Perfuma mustered a shallow smile. “We were talking about how to get Glimmer back from space. Did you, ah … have something to … contribute to our discussion?”
“May I?” Despite the chill of their welcome, she couldn’t suppress the excitement bubbling to her nerve endings, sparking out through her fingertips as she wrung her hands and bounded to Perfuma’s side. “I just love space! I’d do anything to go there. An entire universe of information, stars and galaxies and worlds and civilizations at our fingertips—”
Mermista groaned. “Okay, but we’re not going to space for your little pet project, remember? We don’t need to know all about galaxies and civilizations and whatever else is out there. Right now we need to focus on saving Glimmer.”
“Yeah … I … I know.” Entrapta sagged into her hair, half wishing she could wrap herself up in it so tightly she’d pop out of existence, half wishing she had never interrupted their meeting at all.
“Do you even know who Glimmer is?” said Frosta. “The Queen of Bright Moon? Leader of the Princess Alliance? Our friend?”
Entrapta blinked. “Oh, with the ….” She held up both hands and wiggled her fingers to suggest a cascade of sparkles. “Wait, she’s a queen now?”
Even in the firelight, Perfuma’s tan complexion waxed ashen. “You didn’t know?”
“How could you not know that?” Mermista’s voice held an edge like the crest of a storm-hardened ocean wave. “We must have mentioned it a hundred times since you came back from Beast Island. Were you even paying attention, or were you too busy collecting junk off the ground? Yes, Glimmer is the queen now. She was crowned over a year ago, right after Queen Angella disappeared thanks to your stupid portal!”
Scorpia gasped. Entrapta recoiled, yanking her mask down over her face and shielding herself with her hair. Blood roared behind her eardrums, filling her skull with static. A tingling, itching heat started between her shoulder blades and crawled along her spine, welding her bones into place. Through the cracked blue-green lenses of her mask the firelight blurred and shivered like moonlight at the bottom of a lake.
Perfuma and Scorpia started from where they sat, and Entrapta tensed, her hair and nerves bristling. If they tried to touch her or even speak to her now she might scream. She wouldn’t be able to help it.
“Listen, uh ….” Scorpia waved the other princesses closer and leaned into the circle, resting a claw on Perfuma’s shoulder. “I really don’t think she could’ve known about any of that while she was on Beast Island. And afterward … well, we all had a lot to worry about, you know? I mean, if you’d been stranded on an island for a year, it’d take you a while to get up to speed on everything you missed, right?” Her voice frayed as she spoke, and when she paused it unraveled in a frantic chuckle.
“That’s no excuse,” said Frosta. “She built that awful thing. If she’s such a brilliant scientist, she should have known what was going to happen when they turned it on.”
“Well, ah, yeah, see, that’s kinda, that’s just it.” Scorpia tapped her claws together in front of her face. “As soon as she found out, she tried to stop it, but, well ….” Another hiccup of laughter derailed her explanation. “You know how it is with the Horde! I mean. I know. But you still gave me another chance. All of you—even after I helped sabotage Frosta’s Princess Prom, and … other things.”
“Oh, that.” Frosta rolled her eyes and waved a hand with an icy air of dismissal, affecting the formal timbre she lapsed into when she thought she wasn’t being taken seriously by the adults around her. “So you conspired with the Horde to disrupt a diplomatic event between kingdoms bound by the ancient rules of hospitality. So what? It’s probably not even the first time that’s happened. Not like you built a machine that ripped apart time and space and almost made the world collapse into itself.”
Scorpia winced. “Like I said, it’s not—”
“Maybe we should give her a chance,” said Perfuma, with as much reluctance as if Horde Prime himself had arrived on Etheria only to plead for mercy. “She does know a lot about science, and … spacey things.”
“That’s right!” Scorpia brightened with relief. “And I can vouch for her. Sure, her methods might be kind of, y’know ….” She pantomimed a brief cavalcade of explosions and mimicked a diabolical laugh, which Entrapta realized with mild horror was supposed to be her own. “But I know her heart’s in the right place. And she was innovating circles around every one of our engineers back in the Horde.”
“Ugh, we know,” said Mermista. “We were the ones fighting off all her turbocharged murder bots.”
“Ahahaha. Right, right, you’re right. Well, I can guarantee she knows more about space than anyone else in the Rebellion—certainly more than the rest of us put together. And not just because she happens to have worked side by side with the only person on Etheria in a thousand years who’s actually been to space.”
Entrapta felt for the pendant she had worn under her shirt since the day the stars returned to Etheria’s sky. The glassy edges of the First Ones’ crystal pressed into her gloved fingers as she clutched it to her chest, waiting for her sprinting heart to slow beneath it. Scorpia meant well, but this was a mistake. Entrapta should never have offered to help where she was unwanted. For all she had longed to see the universe beyond Etheria, now she dreaded what she might find there. And at this rate they’d never let her go.
“‘Been to space?'” said Mermista. “Wait, are you seriously talking about Hor—”
“Can you guys. Please. Be quiet!” Bow’s voice jumped an octave as he strode toward the campfire from the direction of Adora’s tent. “Adora. Is trying. To sleep!”
Scorpia jerked upright. “Ooh. Sorry, Bow.”
“It’s ….” He sighed. “It’s fine. Just … try to keep it down. I know we’re all really stressed right now, but ….” He glanced sidelong at Entrapta, still huddled at the edge of the firelight away from the others. “Are you guys okay?”
Entrapta managed to unwind her posture slightly, enough to straighten her shoulders and raise her head. She lifted her mask and waved, grinning in spite of her distress. “Hi, Bow! We were just talking about how to get to space.”
“Oh, is that what you were trying to tell me before?” He held his tracker pad out to her. “Here, send me copies of whatever data you have. I’ve got some ideas I could use your input on, too.”
Hoisting herself on her hair, she took the pad and skimmed over the screen before stashing it in her overalls. “Great! I’ll get this back to you as soon as—”
“No rush,” said Bow, covering a yawn. “I mean, yes rush, but I probably won’t get to it until Adora’s back on her feet. Whatever it takes to rescue Glimmer, that comes first.”
“Oh, um, actually ….” Entrapta hedged a glance back toward the campfire and hesitated, fiddling with the ends of her hair.
Mermista rose, swinging her braid over her shoulder, and clapped a hand on Entrapta’s forearm. “All right, Geek Princess. You’ve got your chance. You know how to find Glimmer? Prove it. Dazzle us with your freaky space knowledge.”
Entrapta let out a squeak. “Really? You—you’ll let me? But you said—”
“Nah, you’re good.” Mermista’s deadpan intonation made it even more difficult than usual for Entrapta to decide whether this was a reassurance or some kind of threat. “Just don’t let us down this time.”
Definitely a threat. She gritted her teeth. “I—I won’t. And I have a plan. But it might be a little dangerous, and I’ll probably need some help with it.”
“Of course.” Perfuma stood and pressed her palms together. “We’ll do everything in our power to help a friend. Um, what is it you need us to do, exactly?”
She took a deep breath and exhaled, shaking the tension out of her hands. Across the fire pit, Frosta leveled a glare at her. Scorpia looked restlessly from one princess to the next as if anticipating their judgment. Emily swiveled toward Entrapta with a tentative whirring sound.
“Follow me.” Raising herself entirely off the ground to walk on her hair, she waved a stray tendril in the direction of her lab tent.
The spire loomed above the blasted shell of the Fright Zone like an arrow pointing to the stars, green-lit against the night. Drone ships combed the airspace around its flanges, and robots patrolled the wastes below.
With her hair, Entrapta raised the antenna over her head and confirmed the matching readings on her data pad. “The message from Horde Prime was transmitted through that spire, which means it’s got a wavelength connecting it to his main base of operation—one that we can track.”
“Great,” said Mermista from the brush behind her. “So track it.”
She peered over her shoulder. “Well, hypothetically we can track it. Horde Prime’s astral communication network is orders of magnitude more complex than anything I’m familiar with. I pieced together what I could from the data I had, but I’m going to need more proximity to the receptor before I can triangulate the origin.”
The other four princesses exchanged hesitant looks.
“I need to get close to the spire to track the signal.” While they concurred, she turned back to the spire to calculate her approach. Its silhouette dominated the horizon with a menacing elegance, pristine amid the Fright Zone’s industrial sprawl. Seeing it now, she understood why Hordak had invoked the glories of his brother’s empire with such reverent awe. At the source of that signal, some unfathomable distance from this world and everything she had ever known, she would find a ship of impossibly sophisticated design, the fulcrum of an empire vaster and more advanced than even the First Ones’ dominion at its height. She passed a hand over the front of her shirt, feeling for the edges of the crystal underneath, and started forward without thinking.
“Hold it.” Mermista stepped out from behind the bush. “That spire is crawling with surveillance bots. You didn’t think you could just dance right past them, did you?”
Entrapta paused and looked back, rubbing her chin. “Well, no, but now that you mention it, if I could just get a peek at their source code, I could program a virus that modifies their behavioral subroutines to do a harmless little dance instead of—”
“I don’t think we have time for dancing robots,” said Perfuma, her false patience grating. “We need to hurry up and find our kidnapped friend.”
“Yeah. Which means our only option is to sneak past them.” Mermista sighed and palmed her forehead. “This was so much easier when Adora was in charge.”
Scorpia nodded. “So what’s our backup plan if we get caught?”
“Ugh, I don’t know. I just said—”
“Punch the bots!” Frosta swung an ice-knuckled fist at an overhanging vine. A few of its leaves curled and withered to the ground, white-laced.
The screen of Entrapta’s data pad lit up with sporadic bursts of noise. While her companions worked out the finer points of their plan, she ventured a few steps at a time beyond the edge of the woods, holding up the antenna with her hair and adjusting her position by minute degrees until the signal came in clear.
“Did she seriously just—”
“Oh, come on!”
She wheeled at the approach of their footsteps, farther away than she realized and closing fast. A whip-thin coil of green snaked toward her waist and she dodged to the side, tripping over a half-buried pipe and landing on her hands and knees. The antenna and data pad clattered to the ground a few yards away.
“Entrapta!” Perfuma snapped back the vine and hurried to Entrapta’s side. “Are you all right?”
She pushed off the ground with her hair and sat up brushing dust from her gloves. Her mask had fallen forward over her face and she didn’t bother pushing it back.
“Hey, hey, hey, don’t crowd her.” Scorpia lagged behind the others, craning to see over their heads. “Give her some space.”
Frosta kicked at the exposed length of pipe. “We’ll never even get to space at this rate.”
“No, Scorpia’s right.” Mermista sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. “And Entrapta, you can’t just run off without telling us. We’re supposed to be working as a team.”
“I didn’t ….” Entrapta bit her tongue. Correcting their accusations—clarifying, for instance, that she had been walking, not running, or that she had already explained to them in no obfuscating terms that she needed to get closer to track the signal immediately before doing so—never seemed to militate in her favor, so she let it go.
Kneeling over her, Scorpia spoke in a low voice, barely above a whisper. “You okay?”
Entrapta pushed her mask halfway up and wiped her face with the back of her glove. “I’m not hurt.” With a stab of panic she clutched at her chest, relaxing only when she found the crystal there. “My data pad ….”
“Right here.” Scorpia blew a puff of dust from the screen and handed it back to her. “I, uh, don’t think it’s broken?”
She wiped her eyes, pushing her mask the rest of the way back from her forehead. The screen was intact, the case lightly scuffed, but the signal reading was gone. Sighing, she rose to her feet and reoriented the antenna with her hair. “I was getting pretty good reception over here just now. If I can just ….” She wiggled the antenna back and forth: radio silence.
“Um, Entrapta?” Perfuma’s gaze flitted over the surrounding crags and boulders. “We really need to get out of the open.”
“Hang on! I’m getting something.” She clambered onto a spike of rock jutting skyward. Waveforms scrabbled across the screen as she raised the antenna higher. A glint of movement caught the corner of her eye, and the display jammed with static noise. Before she could reposition herself, an icy hand congealed around her ankle and hauled her to the ground.
“Move!” cried Frosta, releasing Entrapta’s leg. The ice cast shattered and evaporated, leaving behind a stinging numbness that hampered her efforts to stand. Frosta dived for cover behind the nearest boulder, and Entrapta stumbled after her. Moments later a drone ship swept the corridor, laying bare the contours of the landscape in a grid of green light. After scanning the pillar she had climbed and the place where she had stood moments before, the drone emitted a self-satisfied beep and heeled back toward the spire.
Entrapta let out her breath. “Thanks, Fros—”
“You have to be more careful!” From behind an adjacent boulder, Perfuma sounded close to tears. “Are you trying to get us captured? Don’t you care?”
“I—of course I do!” Frustration welled to her throat and made her eyes burn, but if she let herself cry now, she’d never be able to explain what it meant to her, how terribly deeply she cared about all of it—about space and tech and the rebellion and Glimmer and Hordak—
“Yeah, right.” Mermista knelt beside Perfuma and Scorpia, glaring after the retreating drone. “How do we know you’re not just going to ditch us and join Horde Prime as soon as he makes you an offer?”
Frosta scowled. “Yeah, how are we supposed to know?”
“Because I told you—” Scorpia began, and stopped when the other three glared at her. She cast Entrapta an apologetic look, shaking her head. “Because I trust her, and I thought you all trusted me. Isn’t that enough?”
“Like, no offense,” said Mermista, inching forward to check the area for danger, “but you’re kind of a giant doormat, you know? And like, maybe, sometimes, you trust people you shouldn’t.”
Scorpia’s broad shoulders dropped with her gaze. “I know, I know I haven’t always been a very good friend, but Entrapta’s not like that. She doesn’t hide her motives or change sides for no reason. Even in the Horde, she always spoke out and stood up for herself when I was afraid to. If anything, I’m the one who let her down.”
Mermista signaled to the others, and they regrouped in the open between the two boulders. “Look, I know you’re trying to help or whatever, but this isn’t really the time. We need to get that signal and get out before our cover’s blown, assuming it isn’t already.”
“Scorpia.” Entrapta stared at her, but Scorpia kept her eyes averted.
Perfuma sniffed and wiped a hand across her face. “Before we move on, can I just say something?” She took Scorpia’s claw between her hands and looked up into her eyes. “I know you couldn’t have known this because you weren’t part of the Alliance back then, but it was so incredibly hurtful when Entrapta betrayed us. I mean, we actually thought she died in the Fright Zone. We were beside ourselves for months. I even dedicated a statue in her memory, and then—”
“A statue?” Entrapta looked to the other princesses for confirmation over the hollowing pit in her stomach.
Mermista groaned. “And then we found out she was alive the whole time, and she just didn’t want to come back because she was having so much fun doing her little messed-up experiments and sleeping with the enemy. Can we go now?”
Perfuma’s hands flew to her mouth like a pair of startled birds, and Scorpia blushed as red as her exoskeleton and tried to cover Frosta’s ears with her claws.
Entrapta lowered her mask. “We can go.” With a glance at the tablet screen she moved to brush the dust from her clothes, and the dense cloud of dismay that had settled in her stomach collapsed on itself like a dying star.
“Well?” Mermista’s voice was faraway and muffled, though she hadn’t moved. “Lead the way, Horde Princess. You’re the one tracking this thing.”
The words barely registered. Through the watery blue lenses, the severed cord in her hand became an abstraction at the wrong end of a telescope. Where the pendant had lain against her chest, the shape of its absence stung like an open wound.
“Hold on.” She snapped up the visor and the world rushed back in color, dizzying her. Reeling, she glimpsed a flash of pinkish violet at the base of the rock pillar a few yards away and sprang for it.
“Entrapta!” Crimson ropes of lightning whipped over her head and smashed into the pillar, shattering its peak in a cloud of dust and shrapnel and the acrid smells of chalk and ozone. She staggered and fell backward as fragments of rock glowing red-hot at their edges sleeted to the ground. Rays of green light sifted through the clearing dust as another drone ship swerved and retreated.
She swayed to her feet, eyes stinging. The First Ones’ crystal had vanished under the rubble at the base of the decapitated pillar, and the drones had begun to swarm, veering from their programmed courses to investigate the disturbance.
“Entrapta, come on!” Scorpia called from behind her.
She turned, clenching her fists. “You go ahead. I’ll catch up later, if … when I find it!”
“What?” Perfuma backed toward a gap between boulders, motioning the other three to follow. “Don’t worry about that now! The signal can wait. If you don’t get out of here, you’ll be captured too, and then we’ll never be able to find Glimmer!”
“I know.” A violent calm had seized her by the throat; she felt lightheaded, weightless, severed from her voice and from her body. Turning back to the fall of rubble, she roped her hair around a chunk of fallen rock and hurled it aside. “But I’m looking for my friends, too.”
“What are you talking about?” said Perfuma. “Your friends are right here! And we’re never going to leave you behind ever again!”
With a cry of exertion she overturned another stone. Her ears were ringing and she didn’t hear the bot’s metallic strides until it loomed over her, faceless but for a single diamond-shaped green eye. “Oh!”
Scorpia let out a yelp and was hushed by the other princesses. The drone’s gaze swept over the rubble and stopped at Entrapta’s feet.
“Hel … lo.” She stood frozen in the glare, cold sweat prickling her forehead and the back of her neck. Her voice shook. “You’re … very … technologically advanced.”
In response the drone leveled the laser cannon mounted on its right arm, and a shrill whine pierced the ringing in her ears as it charged. A cry escaped the vise of her throat as a blast of icy wind roared past her. Moisture condensed and crystallized around the drone and it toppled backward, flash-frozen.
“Come on!” Frosta grabbed her hand and took off running, dragging Entrapta with her. In the blur of her surroundings she saw more drones arriving on foot and in the air, the spire ablaze with warning beacons, the wastes swept bare and washed in green. Entrapta had no time to protest; the sickly hollow in her stomach was a black hole, annihilating everything she might have said.
A pipe burst somewhere behind them, swamping their pursuit in liquid sewage. Rakes of red lightning razed the drones still gaining in its wake, and a wall of ice reared up between the stragglers and the edge of the Whispering Woods. Entrapta closed her eyes, and the Fright Zone slipped away from her.
“I guess I proved you wrong,” she said to the screen. “I really am a failure. I let everyone down tonight, and now I’ve failed you too.” Swallowing, she brushed her fingers over the flickering image on the monitor and let her hand fall away as it faded. “I’m so sorry.”
At her side, Emily stirred from sleep mode with a vigilant chirp. Entrapta switched the monitors to standby and swiveled her chair to face the tent flaps.
“Who’s there?” Her voice was raw but it no longer wavered.
“Oh, hey,” said Scorpia. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“No, I didn’t sleep. Do you want to come in?”
A claw poked through the seam between the tent flaps, followed by Scorpia’s head and shoulders. Emily made an exuberant noise and rolled to the entrance to greet her. “I hope I’m not interrupting your work.”
“I wasn’t really working,” said Entrapta, “but thank you.”
Scorpia maneuvered the rest of the way into the tent, doubling to clear the low-hung threshold. “Well, if you’d rather I leave, just say so.”
She glanced around the cluttered interior for a place to sit. Cables sprawled over every surface, and the hulking archaic processor towers that occupied most of the floor space had gathered dust for decades in a Fright Zone surplus depot before Entrapta hauled them back to the campsite for her own use. Dim and sweltering even with an improvised ventilation system to cut the heat, the lab tent held more than a fleeting resemblance to the island of her exile, a jungle of decaying tech awash in synthetic twilight.
Scorpia eyed a disheveled heap of blankets and cushions in a corner of the tent. “You mind if I sit down?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Thanks! Oh, this looks comfy.” She fluffed up an oversized pillow emblazoned with the crest of Bright Moon and sat on it gingerly, taking care to avoid snagging her claws on the silken fabric. “You really got this place hooked up. I like it.”
“Oh … thank you.” Without looking back at her desk, she tapped a sequence into the keypad with her hair. Deep within the nest of cables and vents, something sputtered to life with a hiss and an effervescent splash. She reached inside with her hair and brought out a disc-shaped tray with a mismatched pair of stemmed glasses, each filled with a sparkling hot-pink beverage and garnished with an orange slice. “Fizzy drink?”
“Wow!” Scorpia’s eyes widened as she reached for the proffered tray and took the glass delicately in one of her claws. “So, uh … you doing okay? After … I mean, that was a rough mission. You did good, though.”
Entrapta set down her glass with a sigh. “It’s fine, but you don’t have to make me feel better about it. I messed up. The mission was a failure. If we can’t rescue Glimmer, or we get there too late and something happens to her, it’ll be my fault. Just like all that other stuff was my fault.”
“Entrapta.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, glass balanced between her claws. “We all did things in the Horde that we regret. I sure did. But you’re working twice as hard to make up for it, and if the princesses don’t realize that … well, look, they forgave me, and you’re my best friend, and I won’t give up until they appreciate you as much as I do. That’s a promise.”
She nodded, but the lump congealing in her throat prevented her from speaking. She pulled down her mask, turned her chair to face away from Scorpia, and hugged her knees to her chest until the words came.
“Sometimes I wish I’d just stayed on Beast Island. That I’d kept thinking everyone had given up on me and no one cared, so I wouldn’t have to let anyone else down. It was so much easier when I thought I was alone. I didn’t have to try to understand other people or try to be understood. I could just stick to doing the one thing I’m good at, instead of being bad at everything else!”
Her voice cracked near the end, and she heard the cushions rustle and the soft clack of chitin as Scorpia rose from the bed.
“That’s not … hey, you’re good at a lot of things. Especially being a friend.” Scorpia crossed to the desk and bent toward her, extending a claw. “In fact, I think the other princesses could stand to learn a thing or two in that department. And if I weren’t such a … a giant doormat, maybe I’d have the spine to teach them a lesson.”
“But they’re your friends. I’m just making things difficult for you.”
“No way! You and I were Super Pals first. If they’ve got a problem with you, then—” She broke off abruptly, and her encouraging tone grew somber. “Listen, Entrapta. I’m the one who messed up. I waited a whole year to go and find you after the portal thing, when that should have been the last straw. I should’ve deserted the next day! But instead, I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I was afraid. I didn’t want to hurt her any more than she was already hurting, and I didn’t want her to hurt me. I told myself I wasn’t going to take sides, but that’s exactly what I did by staying quiet. And that’s one thing I’ll never forgive myself for.”
“Scorpia ….” She twined her hair tighter around herself, biting her lip behind the mask. “Catra got taken by Horde Prime, didn’t she?”
“… Yeah. Yeah, I think she did.”
A pained silence elapsed before Entrapta turned her chair to face Scorpia again. “She deserves another chance too. If the Rebellion can forgive us ….”
Scorpia nodded, her outstretched arm still resting on the desktop. For the first time Entrapta noticed the small bright object she held in her claw.
She snapped back her mask. “Wh—how did you—”
“I was the last one to retreat, so I grabbed it on the way out. I don’t think the others noticed.”
She took the crystal from Scorpia’s claw and held it to the glow from the monitors. Light strained through the First Ones’ glyphs she had etched into its surface more than a year ago, spelling a cryptic message in plain sight. A pang of guilt seized her, and she slid the crystal into a drawer under her desk and locked it. “You didn’t have to do that. You could’ve been captured, or ….”
“Hey. Hey. None of that happened, so it’s all right.” Scorpia held out her arms, half shrug, half invitation, and Entrapta let inertia sink her into the embrace. “There we go. Just hug it all out. It’s gonna be okay.”
Entrapta didn’t feel okay, but she was crushed too tightly against Scorpia’s collarbone to offer any contradiction. She draped her hair around Scorpia’s waist and shoulders and patted her back.
When they separated, Scorpia stayed at eye level, holding Entrapta’s shoulders. “Listen, I was wrong to abandon you before. But I promise you I’ll never make that mistake again. We’re going to bring our friends home, together. No matter what it takes.”
She nodded, blinking the sting from her eyes. “Then we need to get back to the spire so I can capture that signal.”
“Right.” She took a step back, still bowed at the shoulders to avoid the overhanging cables. “We might have better luck sneaking in if it’s just the two of us, but—”
“Scorpia? Is Entrapta in there with you?”
Entrapta looked past Scorpia as she turned to the door flap. “We’re both here.” She scrambled down from the chair and ducked outside. Scorpia and Emily followed. “Did Adora wake up?”
Standing in front of the tent, Bow shook his head. “Not yet. I’m off guard duty this shift. General Juliet insisted on relieving me.” He yawned. “I should probably get some sleep myself, but I wanted to show you something first. Behold my newest invention!”
She blinked at the missile-shaped object that had appeared in his hand. “An arrow?”
“A remote-guided stealth reconnaissance arrow!” He held it out for her and Scorpia to inspect. “Well, the prototype for one anyway. I used the data you gave me to calibrate the cloaking algorithm so it wouldn’t interfere with the recording frequency. You may want to double-check my calculations, but if it works, we should be able to fly it within inches of any Horde spire without detection.”
“Oh, we can definitely use this! Do you think you can make more?” Waving her hands around, she bounced from her toes onto the ends of her hair. “With this technology we could be tracking communications from every spire on Etheria, collecting all kinds of invaluable data.” The hollow in her stomach gave an abrupt tug, and she settled back onto her feet. “Data we can use to defeat Horde Prime and save our friends, I mean.”
She braced for their disapproval, expecting Bow to scold her for making their friends’ rescue an afterthought, the fate of the universe second to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
Instead he smiled—wearily, suppressing another yawn, but without reproach. “Yeah, exactly! If we can gather more intelligence on their activities, we’ll have a major tactical advantage against the occupying forces. They don’t know Etheria like we do, and the Rebellion’s operations are so far off the grid they’d have to read our minds to intercept our plans. It’s perfect!”
“Yeah.” Entrapta smiled back, but a tinge of uncertainty soured her relief. Something Hordak had mentioned while they worked on the portal machine, a flag of foreboding lost in the aftermath—the reason she had to find him again, to save him from what he had sought and yearned for, if only she could remember what he had feared.
“Are you guys discussing strategy without us?”
She turned to see Mermista approaching from across the clearing, Perfuma and Frosta in tow. Scorpia waved a claw at them, beckoning them over.
“Oh. Hi.” Entrapta tensed and averted her gaze to the ground. “Sorry about before.”
“Actually,” said Perfuma, “we came to apologize to you.”
Entrapta looked around, but Perfuma wasn’t speaking to anyone else. “To me? For what?”
Frosta shrugged. “Ask Mermista. It was her idea.”
“Okay, but we all agreed to it,” said Mermista. “Don’t act like I dragged you out here by force.” She crossed her arms and turned back to Entrapta. “Basically we talked about it, and we wanted you to know we all feel bad about what happened on the mission. Like, I know I haven’t always been patient with you, and you can be kind of a space cadet sometimes, but we shouldn’t be getting mad at you for stuff you can’t control. It’s just ….” She sighed. “It’s been so hard fighting this war without She-Ra. And now Adora’s out of commission too, and I thought I could take over her job for a couple days, but it turns out I can’t, like, at all. So, you know. My bad.”
Entrapta stared back speechless. What did they expect her to do now? What did they need her to say? She hadn’t asked for an apology, but now she felt compelled to offer one in kind. Would it suffice to be sorry for the mission tonight or did she have to apologize for everything, starting with the way she was, the things she couldn’t change even if she’d wanted to? What good was an apology she couldn’t deliver on?
Maybe they didn’t need all that.
She draped a lock of hair over Mermista’s shoulder. “Thank you. For not giving up on me. I’m sorry about what happened, too.”
Mermista’s grimace threatened to become a smile in earnest. “Yeah. Well. Better luck next time, huh?”
“Speaking of which,” said Bow, “when do we get to take my new invention for a test run?”
Perfuma tilted her head, brows drawn in concern. “Bow, don’t you need to rest? Sleep is very important for refocusing your energy.”
“No kidding.” Bow suppressed another yawn. “But I get the feeling none of us will be sleeping soundly again until this is over.” He glanced back toward Adora’s tent.
“Should we go?” said Entrapta. “Back to the Fright Zone?”
Mermista raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Might as well. The bots will have cleared out by now, and if Bow’s got some new gadget to try ….” She looked to Entrapta with a faint smile. “Lead the way, Space Princess.”