Catra of the Crimson Waste (A She-Ra Quest)

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Scorpia and I drove a truck towards one of the Fright Zone's larger warehouses. The building was a huge, big, ugly blocky thing, a near perfect representation of the thrown together, utilitarian architecture of the Fright Zone. After getting to see some of the nicer structures in the world, I didn't think I'd be following the Fright Zone's aesthetics when I built my empire. I wanted something impressive, something people would talk about for centuries. But that would come later. First I needed the equipment that would help launch my conquest of the Crimson Waste.

Scorpia had already got me a Horde uniform and armor. We'd decided it'd be best if we didn't announce my return from exile. That would cause us to get way more attention than we wanted, and if absolutely needed, it'd be a trump card we could pull out if the moment presented itself. Thankfully, the helmet did a good job of hiding my face and ears, and while it wasn't particularly comfortable, I could hide my tail within the armor. People might recognize my more feline features, so the more human I looked the better.

We backed the truck up to one of the loading platforms and got out. To my pleasure, I noted the dozen other empty trucks already parked at the warehouse. It was late at night, so a lot of soldiers were already asleep in their barracks, and there wasn't much reason to drive at night where the Rebellion might ambush supply trucks unless there was a pressing need.

A bored looking guard approached us and saluted. "Name and purpose."

Scorpia gave him a smile that had a twinge of strain at the edges. "Force Captain Scorpia. Our purpose is, um, we need to requisition equipment. A lot of it ... for a mission!"

The warehouse guard frowned as he tapped a finger on his pad. "How much do you need?"

"Everything!" Scorpia said just a bit too quickly. "I mean, everything we can load up—on the trucks, obviously. Because trucks are the best for loading, obviously, again. Um, it's a big mission, so we need everything we can get."

The guard stared at us for several seconds. "Do you have paperwork? As a force captain, I can give you a bit of slack for grabbing a little bit of this and that for yourself, but for big orders I need to see the requisition paperwork."

Scorpia's smile became wider and more strained as she started patting herself down. "Um, right, paperwork. We would have some of that normally, wouldn't we?"

I rolled my eyes, though the helmet kept it hidden. "Remember how Lord Hordak said this was a very urgent mission and we shouldn't bother with any red tape, Force Captain?"

Scorpia blinked and then smiled more confidently. "Exactly. Sorry, my head is so on the big mission that I'm just not thinking about what's in front of me. Sorry soldier, but this is all need to know. And, well, you don't need to know."

The guard's frown became more pronounced as we threatened to override his petty authority. "Maybe you were told you don't need documentation, but standing orders are—"

I pulled out a pad. "If you want, we can call Lord Hordak and let him know you're delaying the urgent mission he personally ordered. I'm sure he'd be happy to explain to you why we're bypassing the normal protocols." I wanted to smirk at him, but the face-covering helmet ruined it. "I heard he was in a bad mood, though. Something about someone disturbing him while he was in the middle of working on a big project in his sanctum. The last time someone did that, he stuffed them in a vacuum chamber." I tried not to shiver at that particular memory.

The soldier swallowed. The last thing anyone in the Horde wanted to do was to become the focus of his attention when he was angry, especially if they were the reason why he was unhappy. Public displays were made for that type of thing. Another unpleasant memory I suppressed.

"Go on ahead," the soldier said while stepping aside. "Though I am marking down you made a significant requisition, Force Captain Scorpia."

"Oh, that's quite alright." Scorpia gave him a friendly wave. "You're just doing your job, we understand."

And probably about to get severely punished for botching his job, I silently reflected. Once it moved up the chain how he signed off on us stealing everything not nailed down, there was going to be trouble. Too bad for him, but everyone knew you weren't supposed to skimp on paperwork or procedure. In the Horde, if someone asked 'would it kill you to look the other way?' the only correct answer was 'yes, it quite literally could.'

Of course, pissing off a Force Captain was also a pretty good way to end up dead. Nobody ever said life in the Horde was fair.

We headed inside the warehouse. Stacked inside were rows upon rows of crates full of equipment waiting to go to the frontlines. Armor, weapons, electronics of all kinds, and more were just waiting for the taking.

Scorpia opened the back of the truck we parked. A dozen members of my gang piled out of the vehicle, all of them grinning as their gazes swept greedily over the bounty in front of them. There was more loot here then they ever could have dreamed of gathering for themselves in the Waste.

"Come on, get to work," I instructed them. "Load the goods onto the trucks. It's only a matter of time until someone comes by and sees something weird is happening."

Scorpia and I directed the gang on which crates were most important to steal and to take every truck currently parked and ready for loading. With that taken care of, it was time to move onto the next stage of the plan.



We headed towards one of the last places I wanted to return to: Hordak's Sanctum. This was a risky part to the plan, but then we weren't going to get anywhere without taking risks. We needed to find Entrapta, and the best place to look for her was where the most science was taking place. Unfortunately, that place was Hordak's Sanctum.

The layout to the place was different than I remembered it, no doubt due to Entrapta's endless tinkering. At the center of the room was the equipment that probably made up Hordak's portal project. But none of that was what I was concerned with.

I grinned as I saw my objective. As was her way, Entrapta was busy flittering around, doing whatever it was she was doing to the portal machine. She was utterly absorbed in her work and didn't notice as we approached her.

I took off my helmet and grinned. "Hey, Entrapta."

Entrapta momentarily froze before she lifted her mask and turned her head to face me. At the sight of me, her face spread with a big grin. "Catra!"

Using her hair, she vaulted over some machinery to land in front of me and surprised me when she all but tackled me with a hug. "So good to see that the completely lethal Crimson Waste wasn't deadly to you. I knew my data was good, but it's still nice to see that my theoretical models matched up with reality." She gasped. "And if you're back, that means you were successful in gathering the First Ones tech I detected!"

Entrapta's head bobbed around as she looked over every inch of me. Her smile faded at the end of her search when she failed to find any First Ones tech. "Where is it?"

Oh, I couldn't wait to see the look on her face when I told her... "Sorry, I couldn't carry an entire First Ones spaceship with me." I preemptively flattened my ears for what was coming next.

A squeal built up inside her throat before it burst out as a scream. Entrapta grabbed me by the arms, a smile of pure joy beamed at me. "Really?! You found an intact spaceship?! What state is it in?!" She started running from table to table, frantically grabbing pads and equipment as words tumbled out of her mouth. "We need to bring it here! No, I need to go out and see it! No, wait, I need my equipment to study it properly! This could be the single greatest discovery of First Ones technology in our generation! No, this century! No one's ever found an intact First Ones' ship!" She screamed again. "I need to study it!"

Well this was going exactly how I'd hoped it would. "Why do you think I'm here? Pack your bags, we're headed to the Wastes to secure the ship and let you study it as much as you want. Oh, and even better, we got Adora too. She can help out with translation, and you can take her sword apart to find out everything about She-Ra and how it works."

"Wait, you've got the Sword of Protection too?!" Entrapta started breathing heavily before she started spinning in place, jerking to go in one direction before heading in another multiple times. "Gah! This is almost too much good news! I mean, it's scientifically impossible to have too much good news. But there's so much for me to study, and only a limited amount of time to properly examine, theorize, and experiment with everything!"

Entrapta nabbed her tape recorder. "Note to self: don't forget work into self-cloning and other life-prolonging technologies. Hordak cloning technology offers ... intriguing possibilities."

Oh no, I could barely handle one Entrapta, let alone multiple versions of her. I needed to get her to focus, as much I could ever manage that. "So how soon do you think you could be ready to go check out our new spaceship?"

"Immediately! No, scratch that." Entrapta returned to scooping up equipment in a haphazard manner. "Need equipment for studying. Ideally, spaceship could be repaired for flight once again. Journeys to Etherian moons offer yet more opportunities for science. New breakthroughs, more experiments, more data. Potential scientific discoveries are nearly infinite! Assuming attempts to repair First Ones ship doesn't result in horrible explosion or other accident that results in horrible death of the crew and possible irradiation of a swath of Etheria." She stopped and frowned. "Problem with only possessing one recovered spacecraft, limits scientific opportunities for errors and experimenting."

"You actually think you could get it flying again?" I hadn't even considered that possibility. You'd think a thousand years in the desert would've done a pretty good job of ruining the ship, but it wouldn't be the craziest thing I'd seen Entrapta pull off. If she could actually get the ship back in working order...

Well, then I'd have a working spaceship. Everyone knows that holding the high ground is a huge tactical and strategic advantage, and space was the highest ground you could find. Turning the Crimson Wastes into a full-fledged empire was my dream, but I'd been a bit fuzzy on how I would go from uniting the gangs and taking over the Wastes to conquering the rest of the planet. Having the only working spaceship on all of Etheria made that dream a lot more achievable. "What do you need to get that ship up and running again?"

Entrapta typed furiously on a pad. "We need tools, equipment, materials, scanners." She tossed me the pad. "Everything needed is listed there. Oooh! I should tell Hordak! He'll be so excited that you're back and found a First Ones ship!"

She started running, but I grabbed her hair and hauled her back. "Focus, Entrapta. Let's get ready to move out." I quickly looked over the list. Some of this stuff would be pretty easy to grab, but some of it was pretty heavy equipment. And come to think of it, there was bound to be some useful stuff in Hordak's sanctum that wasn't on her list.

My eyes drifted over to the portal machine. Adora'd said that portal would wreck everything if I let Hordak turn it on. I couldn't conquer Etheria if he blew the planet up. Plus ... whatever it was Hordak was up to, it probably wouldn't be good for me now that I was about to wind up on his enemies list. Maybe a little bit of sabotage would be a good idea? Or I could take it all with us, and see if there was any way for Entrapta to use all that portal tech to help me out instead of Hordak?

Nah, that stuff was way too big. There'd be no way to sneak it out of Hordak's sanctum. Or at least, no easy way to pull it off. Maybe it would be better to just make sure he couldn't use it then. But how? Entrapta probably wouldn't go along with just smashing it up. Sabotaging it, then? If I could rig it to blow in Hordak's face the next time he tried turning it on, that could solve a lot of problems.

Entrapta tossed me a second pad. "Scratch that, just made more efficient plan for gathering everything. We ready to start packing?" She started shaking before letting out a squeal of delight. "We're going to go into space!"

I checked out the new packing plan and made my decision.


Vote 1
What should be stolen?

[ ] Steal nothing, there isn't time.
DC: None

[ ] Quickly scoop up what tools and materials that can easily be gathered and packed.
DC: 30 Intrigue

[ ] Gather everything on Entrapta's list.
DC: 70 Intrigue

Vote 2
What to do with the portal?

[ ] Leave portal alone.
DC: None

[ ] Sabotage portal.
DC: 60 Intrigue

[ ] Steal portal.
DC: 80 Intrigue