Notes: This fan fiction has / will have a storyline that is likely to be debunked as soon as future material is presented in canon. It is based entirely upon events in the first season of the show, written in a time when only the first season has been released. If you somehow dredge it up after future seasons of the show have happened and you see it not matching with canon events, please keep this in mind and consider this story an alternate universe. Darker than canon because of descriptions of wounds and death (a trait of many of my stories for other fandoms). I also like trying to explain things that don't make much sense and pointing out animation-errors.
Entrapta's "real name" in this story comes from the apparent real name of the original 80s character gleaned from a Masters of the Universe characters list.
Trapped
Chapter 1: It's All Over but the Crying
They stared in stunned silence. The remainder of the Alliance was well and securely out of the shaft. Even well away from it, they could feel the heat emanating from it.
They'd felt the convection radiating through the blast-doors as they'd made their way through each successive port. It reminded Bow of a forge and he had muttered something along the lines of "Why does the Horde design things this way?!" To which Entrapta had explained that it made perfect sense to her: The incoming cargo-chests off the skiffs would have to be purged of contaminants, biological and possibly magical. High-temperatures were also great for getting rid of anything earthen or sticky that could gum up anything with gears, as long as none of the parts of anything they brought in that came through the kiln-ports was made of lesser-metals.
The Horde's equipment would come in clean once it went through the flame-wash, and it worked in reverse for anything outgoing – all-in-all, a pretty effective security system in place to keep any escaped prisoners from hijacking a skiff (that is, if they didn't know the Fright Zone like the backs of their hands like Adora did, weren't intuitive master-hackers like Entrapta or weren't reprogrammed Horde robots with the ports' programming knowledge within their databanks like Emily). In other words, once the ports were sealed and the flame jets were deployed, hardware passed through and anything organic was toast.
Bow, Mermista, Sea Hawk and Perfuma might have taken a moment to appreciate such an interesting system if one of their friends wasn't getting cremated alive by it right now.
The final gate had just slammed shut as Entrapta looked back helplessly. She'd rushed back in, intent upon saving her robot, one that supposedly had some delicate software and lesser-metal components – or at the very least wasn't something she wanted to leave in the Fright Zone. The blast-doors slid up before she could make another move. As her eyes locked one last time with everyone else's, she seemed to know what was coming. Bow knew what someone's eyes looked like when they were afraid.
The worst thing about it was the smell. Just a few seconds later, after the fire flushed through the cracks, the stench of burning hair filled the immediate atmosphere.
The four survivors waited. They were shocked, of course, but moreover, each of them exchanged glances, each one telling the other that they were all waiting for the exact same thing.
No screams of pain came.
They both hoped and dreaded to hear sounds of unfiltered agony. It would be awful, but it would mean that Entrapta was alive and could possibly be saved – if they could find a way to get the door open and retrieve her.
The minutes ticked by and all was silence. The minutes ticked by and they knew that they had to jump into a skiff or risk death, possibly worse, for themselves. They had to pick up Glimmer and Adora – provided Adora was successful. No princess left behind – that was their mission…
…Well, except a single casualty of war, now.
Sea Hawk steered the skiff, looking only ahead, around the Fright Zone barrens. No one spoke and no tears were shed yet. Everyone was too full of adrenaline. Eyes and jaws were set in defiance. Muscles were stiff. Hearts were numb.
"Thank the Universe!" Perfuma called out upon seeing two running figures in the distance, traversing the wastes.
"There they are!" Bow cried, He pointed as Sea Hawk lowered the skiff. There was Glimmer – party dress torn and a little worse for wear, and She-Ra, scuffed up in her own right. It wasn't clear if she had the Sword of Protection, but she must have in order to be She-Ra. The thing seemed to disappear into magical dimensional pocket sometimes, at random.
As soon as the two got up on the skiff, Glimmer immediately gave Bow a bear-hug. She laughed. He sighed her name, grateful that she was alive. She looked tired, so tired.
The joy was short lived. Bow, Mermista, Perfuma and Sea Hawk watched uncomfortably as She-Ra's eyes scanned over them and caught that someone was missing. They all thought the same thing at once. It was never easy to give bad news.
"Wait… Where's Entrapta?" She-Ra asked nervously.
A collective pause. Downcast eyes.
Sea Hawk concentrated on steering. Mermista was about to talk, but gently bit her tongue. Perfuma silently thanked Bow for broaching the subject.
"Entrapta didn't make it."
Glimmer was the first to cry. Tears welled up in her eyes in an instant. Bow was unsurprised. The rest of them might have carried on in a quiet, grinding, destructive depression, but Glimmer was expressive. They all relied upon her emotion to carry them and to bring about catharsis.
"What do you mean?" She-Ra asked. A small denial, a tiny hope.
"She's gone," Mermista spoke up, sniffling and wiping her eyes with an inner mental "Dammit, Glimmer."
Perfuma looked down and away.
"Well, then we have to go back for her."
"No, she's really gone," Bow insisted.
She-Ra slumped to her knees on the floor of the skiff, the warrior-magic dissipating and returning her to the form of Adora, and Adora was a portrait of defeat.
She took a moment before catching her breath, the news running through her, chilling her veins. "We need to go back for her," she said slowly. "I know it's dangerous but… her people…Dryl… they'll want to bury her."
"There's nothing left!" Mermista shouted, balling up her fists and pounding one of them on the side of the skiff. Adora was shocked to attention.
"What do you mean? What happened?"
Bow spoke up. "As we were exiting the last chamber, that robot she reprogrammed got its cord stuck. Entrapta went back to free it and got…trapped in the chamber."
Suddenly, Mermista laughed. The rest of the group stared in shock. "I don't know if I should just hate her for it or appreciate the irony."
"Shut up." Perfuma snapped.
"I mean, it's weird, you know?" Mermista continued, "Little Miss Technology killed by technology… our trap-smith killed by a trap!"
"Enough!" Perfuma huffed, standing up to full height, balancing herself carefully against the subtle movement of the skiff. "We just watched OUR FRIEND GET BURNED ALIVE - TO ASHES! You should be ashamed of yourself! She's probably watching over us! What would she think?"
"Ah, relax; knowing her, she's probably laughing with me. You know her – the idiot."
"She was a genius!"
"A genius-idiot! I mean… going back for a robot that probably would have been fine? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen anybody do! Dumber than you setting your ships on fire, Sea Hawk! For someone so smart, she was remarkably stupid."
"You take that back!"
"Enough, ladies, enough!" Sea Hawk interjected. "We do no service to Entrapta's noble memory by tearing each other apart!"
"Deep breaths, deep breaths," Perfuma told herself, sitting back down and trying to regain her center of calm.
Glimmer was sobbing in Bow's arms. He rubbed her back. "Easy, easy there." He said nothing more. He didn't try to tell her that everything was going to be alright because he knew that it wasn't and wouldn't be. As far as he knew, not even She-Ra had the power to replace a lost life.
Adora, for her part, was shivering and clasping her arms. She clenched her teeth and tried not to show weakness. "Ashes," she said to herself in a whisper.
"What was that?" Bow asked.
"Nothing."
Now that she was aware of what had transpired, Adora was no longer going to insist upon any attempts to recover remains, either now or in the future.
A memory of her younger days slammed her with full-force.
It had happened three years ago. A trainee from another squadron had gone into one of the ports unauthorized and had gotten caught in a flame-purge. Shadow Weaver had insisted upon taking her squadron for a little "field trip" to the port before what was left of the unlucky young man had been done away with.
Shadow Weaver had called it a "lesson in not being careless."
The purge had not burnt the body to a neat pile of ashes. Instead, what remained was something Adora could only describe (if she was ever called upon to) as a pile of charred skin, red flesh and exposed bone. She would never forget the boy's front teeth staring up at her from that melted face – eye sockets and sinuses exposed, half-cooked meat barely clinging to a skull. She could make out parts of his uniform still clinging to parts of him, the fabric melted into what used to be skin.
The odor was beyond description.
Catra had thrown up all over Adora's boots that day. Shadow Weaver had scolded her for it and ordered a meeting in her chambers after the field trip had ended. Adora never knew what had happened in that meeting, but Catra had cried in her presence after it as soon as the two of them were sure they were alone.
For her part, Adora never told anyone about the nightmares she had after that day, not even Catra. She did not want to show vulnerability. She also had a growing awareness that whenever she screwed up, it seemed like Catra shared in her punishment and took the brunt of it, for reasons unknown to her. It was not justice, but that was just life in the Fright Zone.
She was supremely cautious around the ports.
She hugged herself, thinking about that long-dead boy, her mind flashing back between the image of his corpse to the last time she saw Entrapta's smiling face. She winced, trying to stop her imagination.
Charred meat. Bright teeth. Burnt hair.
None of them wanted to see Entrapta in that state.
The ride back to the edges of Rebellion-held territory was quiet, punctuated with a few sobs and sniffles. They shared the occasional memory of something or other Entrapta had done. None of them had known her very long, but they each had some small, warm thing to share. Bow knew the most, through fandom. He spoke about inventions of hers he'd seen before he'd met her and of a project for the Rebellion that they'd been working on together – a device for launching a large amount of explosive arrows at once.
Sea Hawk talked about how she'd made him a small boat out of a metal framework and a waterproof, fabric-bonded super-adhesive tape, just to see if it was seaworthy – and it was.
Perfuma handed Bow a small object. "She dropped this when we were sneaking around the Fright Zone. I think it was her favorite screwdriver. I was going to give it back to her, but we were on the run and…and…"
"Yeah," Bow said dully, turning the tool around in his hands.
The little group made it to the Whispering Woods. It was there, after a short argument, that they decided to break up. At the very least, Mermista insisted upon going home. Perfuma wanted to go back to Plumeria to try to regain a sense of peace. Glimmer could no longer teleport and was suffering from the dark magic that Shadow Weaver had used on her, but insisted upon stalling any homecoming to Bright Moon because she did not want to face her mother until she could figure things out and pull herself together.
Sea Hawk agreed to continue piloting. He'd take the skiff to each of the Alliance Kingdoms and drop everybody off before going back to his own port and keeping the liberated skiff for his boat-collection.
Each was a slow and sad disembarking. Through it all, Adora said not a word. So, this was the end of everything she'd worked for since she'd joined the Rebellion. It all fell apart over one life. It all fell apart because of her failure. She kept running different strategies over and over again in her mind, trying to pick apart something she could have done differently.
The final destination before Bright Moon was Dryl.
Adora wished she could enjoy the sight of the cityscape as she, Bow, Glimmer and Sea Hawk flew over it. Normally, she would have gawked at the shining buildings and various forms of transport going to and fro in the most technology-focused non-Horde held part of Etheria, but she didn't feel like doing much of anything but thinking. They would not stop there, in the city. Their destination was the outskirts, the mining-district, Castle Dryl.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, perhaps, they found just who they were looking for outside the castle doors. Adora spared a small smile for Entrapta's kitchen staff. They were serving a large group of people gathered outside the castle gates as they welded and wired, working from blueprints upon various weapons and communication items that had been ordered by Queen Angella as per Rebellion-contracting. Some of the more advanced and humanoid-shaped robots worked, as well, but unlike the human workers, they did not need to eat.
A plump woman whose name Adora never caught ran up to the skiff as Bow disembarked.
"How did the mission go?" she asked. "Where is Princess Entrapta?"
The shorter woman and the thin young man with the pointed ears – also names that Adora did not get - to her regret – came up behind the large matron.
"Butter biscuits!" she complained. "She didn't go off on some wild goose chase again, did she? Nothing that's not mechanical or ancient can keep that girl's attention!"
"Well," Bow began slowly, "The rescue was a success. I am here and so is Princess Glimmer."
Glimmer let out a sob and Adora hugged her.
The elder woman's smile fell and nervousness laced her features.
"I have…some bad news," Bow said. He held out the tiny screwdriver in the palm of his right hand. "Entrapta, she… we lost her. And… I don't mean that we lost-lost her, I mean…What I'm trying to say is…"
"Es'tra?" The woman mouthed. "Our Es'tra is dead?"
Bow nodded.
"No… oh, no, no…" the woman hugged the man next to her. The other staffer just looked up at Bow with pleading eyes.
"Es'tra?" Adora asked.
"Entrapta's real name," Bow explained. "Es'tra Vesselak. Entrapta is just a nickname. People started calling her that because, well… we've all been inside Castle Dryl."
"She preferred it," the large woman sniffled.
"We're sorry, we're really, really sorry," Bow said.
The large baker gently took the screwdriver from Bow's hand and looked at it quizzically.
"It's all that's left," he sighed. "We were unable to recover her."
Adora shivered. Glimmer figured she was hiding something, but did not want to ask about it.
The baker placed the screwdriver back into his hand. "You should have it," she said. "She was excited to work with you."
Bow closed his fingers over it. He closed his eyes. "Thank you," he responded. He tried not to notice how everyone in the area had paused and was looking at him and his companions. "We cannot stay," he explained after a few minutes.
Glimmer moaned from the skiff, trying not to phase out.
"We've been…hurt," Adora said at long last, holding Glimmer steady. "We need to get back to Bright Moon as soon as possible."
The Drylians looked on as Bow boarded the skiff and the remnants of a broken alliance departed toward the darkening sky.
