Chapter Text
After scrambling through the entire Fright Zone—which, come on, wasn’t really made for someone of her stature—looking for Catra for nearly an entire day straight, it was safe to say that Scorpia was frantic.
‘Freaking out’ might’ve even been a better way to describe it.
Scorpia had searched every nook and cranny in the Fright Zone (the ones that she could reasonably fit in, at the very least), every hiding spot that she’d learned over time that Catra liked to slink off to (with a bitter taste in her mouth, Scorpia realized that Adora probably knew all of the magicat’s old hiding spots far better than she herself did), and even asked around after her friend, all to no avail.
“I haven’t seen her,” supplied Kyle, and Scorpia’d had half a mind to fire the kid out of sheer frustration at the unhelpfulness of his answer.
Rogelio had looked like he’d known what he was talking about, an earnest and knowledgeable look in his eyes and an impassioned speech quickly leaving his tongue, which would’ve been absolutely perfect—if Scorpia had any idea how to tell what the lizard-guy was even saying. After twenty minutes wasted trying to get out of that conversation, she finally managed to excuse herself when she heard a clanging in the vents that signaled Entrapta’s nearby presence, and followed the trail of noise to the scientist’s lab, where she found the older woman lowering herself from the air duct and onto her strangely comfortable couch.
The Force Captain opened her mouth to ask Entrapta if she’d seen the third member of the Super Pal Trio before briefly reconsidering the action. When she’d told Scorpia about Shadow Weaver’s escape, Catra had told her that they couldn’t trust Entrapta, because she was too close to Hordak, apparently. And, sure, she’d been spending a lot of time in Hordak’s sanctum lately, but that was just because they’re lab partners…right?
No. Entrapta was still their friend. Of course Scorpia could trust her. Poor wildcat was just…going through a hard time.
“Have you seen Catra recently?” she finally asked—ultimately, more than once, because it was a bit of a struggle to get the scientist’s attention the first couple of times.
“Hmm…No, but…” Entrapta rubbed her chin thoughtfully, her hair forming a hand that snapped when she apparently remembered something. “Aha! I heard Hordak say something about ‘Catra’ and ‘transport’—something about an island? He didn’t seem very open to my offer to come along to collect data, even though we could always use more data and Catra’s so good at getting First Ones’ tech for us, and—”
Scorpia didn’t wait around to hear the rest of her friend’s confusing and convoluted spiel—as soon as she’d heard ‘Catra’ and ‘island’, she’d started to put the pieces together, and bolted out of the room. She almost barreled straight into Lonnie.
“Watch where you’re—oh, hey Scorpia,” she said, her voice adopting that almost patronizing tone it did whenever she spoke with the Force Captain (who’d be lying if she said she knew why, exactly, though she knew that the behavior made her uncomfortable regardless. Just another case of being treated differently because she was different). “What are you doing here?”
Scorpia couldn’t contain her worry. “I’m looking for Catra!” she blurted, then the rest of the words just rushed out of her, “I haven’t seen her since the other day, when Shadow Weaver—uh—and, and Entrapta mentioned that Hordak said something about putting Catra on a transport and—just, have you seen her anywhere?”
Lonnie was managing to look even more smug than usual. A firm smile on her lips, her chest puffed up, and a look in her eye as she laughed debasingly. “Oh, I don’t think anyone’s going to be seeing Catra anytime soon,” she said, bringing up a finger to tap against the shiny new Force Captain badge adorning her uniform.
Mouth open to absent-mindedly congratulate Lonnie on her promotion, the praise fell short of Scorpia’s mouth when she noticed the nick in the badge—a very familiar nick, which she recognized as where Catra’s claw had gotten caught when the badge got stuck during their makeover session before Princess Prom. Which meant that was Catra’s badge.
“Why—why do you say that, Lonnie?” she chuckled uncomfortably.
“Come on, Scorpia. Even you’re smarter than that! They sent Catra to Beast Island last night. Good riddance, if you ask me.”
Scorpia’s mind went blank.
Wildcat’s on Beast Island.
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With a rattling gasp, Catra woke up. Her lungs gulped down large, greedy breaths of air as she clutched at her throat—not-so faintly remembering the events prior to her loss of consciousness, in Hordak’s sanctum; his red eyes and sharp smirk as she struggled to breathe. She couldn’t remember anything after that, except for darkness. And now she was…well, she wasn’t quite sure.
Catra moved to push herself up, and hissed in pain when something sharp embedded itself into her hand. With a grimace, she pulled what she initially thought was a shard of glass out of her palm; upon further inspection, she could see the intricate lines and shapes engraved on the glass and recognized it as First Ones’ tech. In fact, it looked like the entire surface she was now standing on was covered in shattered tech, glinting here and there as they caught the light of the moons, occasionally being washed over by the crash of an errant wave.
It took her a mere instant to fully realize the implications of everything—the water, this tech-littered shore, the raw red skin on her wrists where her fur had been rubbed away.
She was on Beast Island.
Fuck. She was too weak to send Shadow Weaver here, lost her, and now she was being punished in her stead. And Catra had been so stupid as to try and lie to Hordak. Hell, she’d been so stupid as to assume that she wouldn’t be punished so disproportionately just for one mistake—she was the Horde’s Second-in-Command, for fuck’s sake! Catra was pretty sure she’d once heard, while Entrapta was excitedly prattling on about numbers and statistics and tech and bots, that she’d single-handedly managed to raise the Horde’s efficiency by 400%. Okay, well, maybe she’d had a little help from Scorpia and Entrapta—not that she’d ever admit that out loud. Regardless, Hordak couldn’t even manage to crawl out of his musty ‘sanctum’ for long enough to squash a rebellion headed by a group of teenagers (admittedly, one of which was the fabled warrior princess She-Ra, but the blonde behind the Sword wasn’t exactly the brightest, come on), and he sent her to fucking Beast Island, all because of one mistake! With a growl, Catra kicked at the ground, sending up a shower of glittering tech-sand and only succeeding, really, in scratching up the bottom of her foot, which only made her growl louder.
The magicat took a few moments to collect herself, knowing—based on the stories she’d been told about the island—that was really all she had before some razor-toothed/clawed/finned creature would inevitably try and eat her. But as it currently stood, it looked like she was the only living creature on the shore. There were, to her displeasure, several skeletons also littering the shore, a few of which were wearing Horde-issued uniforms. So much for armor being any semblance of helpful, she supposed.
The next thing Catra did was take stock of herself—her wrists were sore from where the handcuffs had been, her mask was thankfully still resting in its rightful place upon her head, and her Horde uniform was…ragged, at best. Her Force Captain badge was no longer affixed to her chest, which, of course. She dimly wondered who would get the promotion in her stead; certainly not Kyle, who somehow had managed to avoid getting outright fired so far, and not Rogelio—as good of a fighter as the lizard-guy was, nobody could understand him. So Lonnie, maybe? Or perhaps Scorpia would just take over the squad, instead. She wasn’t entirely sure what squad Scorpia was actually in charge of, now that she thought about it. Did she only get the promotion because she was a princess?
It wasn’t like any of that mattered, anyways. What mattered was that, just like everyone else in her life, Hordak had betrayed her. Him, Shadow Weaver, Adora…
Catra hissed again, pairing it with an angry growl that scratched unpleasantly at her throat. Hordak’s atmosphere-sucking-whatever machine must’ve done more of a number on her than she’d initially thought. Not too big of a surprise there, admittedly. It wasn’t like it’d been a pleasant experience the first time she’d struggled through the threat, although that time she’d managed to stay conscious—a feat that was by no way easy, mind you. Her throat was probably too raw to speak at the moment, not that it really mattered. From what she knew about Beast Island (most of which was only stories and thinly-veiled threats, but regardless), there wouldn’t be any friendly living creatures for her to have the pleasure of having a nice chat with. Not that she’d want to chat with anyone right now, anyways. Having ‘friends’ had clearly never worked out for her, and she wasn’t planning on making any with the fucked-up creatures that supposedly inhabited this island.
So, after wiping the blood from that stupid First Ones’ shard off onto her pants, taking a deep breath, and properly re-adjusting the mask affixed to her face, Catra resolved to do what she did best.
Survive, and prove everyone else wrong.
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