Chapter 7: Threading a Needle
Adora sat on the floor in the hallway right outside the castle war room and leaned against the wall, letting the white onyx touch as much of her back as she could to cool her down. The battle had been rough. They had just barely pushed the enemy forces into retreat once the ship above finally stopped spitting out reinforcements. If it hadn't been for Entrapta and the cadre of fighting war bots she had been stockpiling for that exactly that kind of desperate moment, they might not have made it.
Many of the foot soldiers who hadn't died were in critical condition, and even the majority of the princesses were in no shape to fight, although they hadn't lost any of them permanently, thank god. In fact, when Adora went through her mental catalogue of the injuries, she and Scorpia were the only two not in the infirmary.
Pain flared at her abdomen. Adora screwed her eyes shut and grit her teeth. Maybe Scorpia was the only one who had come out in one piece after all. Adora really should have joined the others in the infirmary, but they were stretched too thin as it was and she couldn't afford to let Catra and Glimmer down by sitting out the upcoming assault on Horde Prime's citadel. If anyone saw her in pain, they'd bench her, so she did her best to power through it.
"You don't look so good," a voice directly in front of her said.
Adora snapped her eyes open and looked up. Lonnie stood there looking down at her, covered in bruises and lacerations. One eye had nearly swollen shut on her, and Rogelio stood at her left, missing an arm.
"Neither do the two of you," Adora said, forcing a laugh.
"I was the luckiest of the three of us," she said. "Gonna be sore and in pain for months, probably, but at least nothing's broken. Rogelio's got a few cracked ribs but they'll heal quick, and that arm of his will grow back too."
"What about Kyle?"
"Kyle…wasn't so lucky."
"Did…did he not make it?" The mood between them grew dark. Rogelio dipped his head and Lonnie rubbed his back.
"No, he's not dead," Lonnie said, sighing. "He'll be fine, thank god. He just…won't regrow the leg. They propped him up on a chair in the infirmary as many of the beds as possible need to be free for people who actually need them. He's really pissed at me for making him stay behind for the assault, though."
"It's the right decision," Adora said, breathing a sigh of relief and flinching with another jolt of pain through her ribs. "Normally I'd suggest Rogelio stay behind too, but at least you can still move and somewhat fight without an arm. Kyle without a leg though? Different story."
Rogelio gave a grunt in affirmation and, when Lonnie cracked a smile at her, Adora couldn't help smiling back. When Horde Prime first arrived, she had worried she'd hold back the other princesses without her powers, but Kyle, Lonnie, and Rogelio had shown up at Bright Moon before the first wave and immediately jumped to aid their defense. Adora had fallen in with them sometime during the fighting, and the result was staggering.
Fighting techniques and homegrown squad tactics Adora hadn't practiced since leaving the Horde came back to her amidst a tidal wave of nostalgia, and the four of them had taken down more enemies together than Adora thought possible without She Ra. For the first time since breaking the sword, she felt like an asset rather than a liability. To say she felt grateful the three of them had appeared when they did was a grave understatement.
"You on the other hand," Lonnie said, her tone and expression turning serious. "You sure you're okay to fight? I watched you take that blaster hit directly to the armor back in that first wave, and you weren't exactly all there this time around either. I was worried about you, moving around without that breastplate of yours."
"I'm fine, I promise." Adora made her point by moving to stand, and the muscles in her side started to seize. Rogelio helped her get the rest of the way upright, and the disapproving look on Lonnie's face deepened.
"You look like you're literally about to pass out," Lonnie said. "Maybe you should sit this one out too."
"I can't." Adora turned away from them when she heard her voice grow thick with emotion. She wasn't going to lose it in front of them—they'd really make her stay behind if she did. "I can't, Lonnie." She took a shuddering breath, ground her teeth against yet another spike of pain as she did so, and forced herself to look Lonnie in the eyes. She just wished the tears in her own had gone away before she did. "Catra and Glimmer are up there. I'm not staying here while everyone else goes to save them."
Lonnie studied her for a moment before letting out a long breath. "Alright," she said, shaking her head. "Glimmer's a tough one, and Catra's no pushover either. I'm sure they're alright. We'll zap in there together, all of us will kick Horde Prime's alien ass, and get everyone home. And that includes you too, so you'd better have your shit together up there, Adora." She jabbed Adora in the shoulder hard enough to make her take a step back.
Adora grinned back at her, smug. "No one gets it together better than me. I'm really glad I'm fighting next to the both of you again. Thank you for coming to help us."
Lonnie and Rogelio nodded. As cohorts growing up together, nothing else needed to be said.
The doors to the war room opened and the smiles on their collective faces disappeared when Shadow Weaver stepped out into the hall.
"We're almost ready," she said, giving them a once-over. "Entrapta, Micah and I will test some final adjustments, but I think it's time we all have a plan for when we are finally aboard."
Adora, Lonnie, and Rogelio exchanged looks, then they followed Shadow Weaver inside. The war room looked completely different compared to how it was before the last wave.
Micah stood at the center of the room with one hand drumming his fingers on his chin while he stared down at an impossibly complex magic rune drawn into the floor. Entrapta darted around him, yammering with expansive gestures about calculations and probabilities and statistics while occasionally tapping furious commands into an oversized tablet she wore strapped to a forearm. The large boardroom table that had previously been the centerpiece of the room had been pushed off to the side. Scorpia sat alone at one end of it, glassy eyes staring right through everything.
Lonnie and Rogelio shuffled over to her after bidding Adora farewell and Scorpia perked up, imploring them to pull up a chair and sit with her after noticing them. Shadow Weaver strode toward Entrapta and Micah, and Adora followed.
"Adora, there you are," Micah said, interrupting Entrapta mid-sentence as they approached. "I was afraid something may have happened to you after finding out how many people we lost in that last wave."
Adora shook her head. "I'm okay, sir, I got luckier than most. Sorry for making you worry. How are we doing with the teleportation spell?"
"I think we have it," Micah said, gesturing to the designs on the floor. "It's not perfect, but I think it's as close as we're going to get it." He turned to Entrapta, who had busied herself with the tablet on her arm.
"I've run the calculations over and over again a thousand times," she said. "While Emily was assisting Bow, I also had her run several hundred thousand variations on her unused CPU threads, and we're 99.98% certain that the coordinate parameters we've used in conjunction with this rune should teleport you right into the heart of the citadel's throne room. Any adjustments, however slight, yield a less accurate arrival percentage."
"What happens in that two hundredths of a percent situation?" Adora asked.
Entrapta gave her a sheepish look. "You'll uh…end up in the vacuum of space most likely. It's not just the calculations. If the spell misfires or one of you puts too much or too little energy into it, then you may even teleport halfway inside one of the citadel's bulkheads or between decks. Maybe even inside one of the warships around it instead of the citadel itself."
"There's also the chance we may not reappear at all," Shadow Weaver said. "Entering the void between dimensions to teleport is easy enough, but coming back? We may get stuck with no way to return, much like a certain other queen I won't mention by name."
"It's like threading a needle," Micah said. If he had caught Shadow Weaver's jab at Angella, he didn't show it. "Sadly, this is the only option we have of getting up there. We either do this, or we hope the Emperor doesn't hold Adora's words against us when we agree to surrender after all."
Thinking of surrendering made Adora grimace. The ache from earlier flared, and she clutched at her side in pain before she could stop herself.
"Are you alright?" Micah asked, stepping closer to her. "I told you fighting in your condition was no good even before the second wave. You're pushing yourself too hard, Adora."
Adora was about to protest when Shadow Weaver interrupted.
"She has several bruised ribs on her side and still can't get in touch with her powers," she said. "But with how few fighters we have left, I'm not sure we can spare her."
Adora couldn't help her open-mouthed surprise at hearing Shadow Weaver vouching for her to keep fighting. Even as a child, she encouraged her to rest when needed, although Adora was certain it was out of a desire to keep her performing perfectly rather than any actual love the woman had for her. Hearing her advocate to keep pushing when even she could admit privately to herself that she wasn't at her best was unexpected. She shut her mouth and averted her eyes the moment she saw Shadow Weaver notice her reaction.
"I feel like I shouldn't be putting this on you seeing as I am both the King and old enough to be your father," Micah said. "But Shadow Weaver is right—we don't have the luxury to lose more people. I will go along with whatever you decide, but I want you to be certain of your decision. Are you well enough to fight and are we really going to go up there to take the fight to Horde Prime directly? There will be no one here to defend the injured if Horde Prime sends a third wave while we are up there."
Adora balked and looked around the room. She hadn't considered they fact the castle would be defenseless when they left. There weren't even enough Bright Moon guards to man the front gates. Would it even make a difference what she did? There were only eight of them in total including her. Seven if you took out Entrapta, since she was staying behind after handing over all of her fighting bots that still functioned.
Scorpia and her were the only princesses. Then there were the two badly injured Ex-Horde soldiers, King Micah, Shadow Weaver, and Bow when he got back from the armory. No She Ra. Were they really going to assault Horde Prime's citadel with just that? Could she really order everyone to go with such dismal odds?
A clamor sounded off behind them, and Bow hurried through the double doors into the room. He clutched a golden breastplate tight to his chest, and Emily followed close behind, pushing a purple hover cart laden with gadgets and weapons. Bow stopped to look around as soon as he got inside, and marched over to Adora as when he spotted her.
"I did it," he said to her, out of breath. "I fixed it up as best I could." He turned the breastplate to display for her and Adora felt her mouth drop when she looked.
She had raided Bright Moon's armory before the first wave, reasoning that if she couldn't transform into She Ra, then she'd have to make do with a normal-sized set of armor, different from the one she had worn when Catra first assaulted the castle years prior. That armor had let her walk away with her bruised ribs instead of a gaping, cauterized hole in her chest where the blaster fire had hit her, but it had left nearly the entire left hemisphere of the breastplate shattered beyond recognition. Adora had given it to Bow hours earlier, pretty much having written off ever wearing it again. What he had done to fix it was nothing short of a miracle.
"Bow, this is incredible," she said, tracing her fingers along its near-pristine surface.
"I managed to get it pretty much back in fighting shape," he said, turning the breastplate slightly so she could get a clear look at its curves and angles. "You can still see where it was originally damaged, but it should protect you almost as good as if that break didn't happen in the first place."
Adora took it from him to inspect closer. Sure enough, there was a thin indent down the side where the laser had hit, but she'd be kidding herself if she thought that would cause any problems. "I really didn't think you'd be able to fix it," she said. "It was a mess when I first handed it over."
Bow gave her a bright smile that clashed with the bags under his eyes. "I couldn't let you go out there without it. It saved your life the first time, and that meant I needed to get it ready just in case it needed to do so a second time."
Adora pulled him into a hug and squeezed tight. "Thank you Bow."
Bow hesitated, seemingly taken aback, before hugging her back. Happiness radiated from him for a moment when they pulled away, before the melancholy that had followed him around like a shadow since learning of Glimmer's abduction returned. He looked away from her, and Adora felt her own mood plummet in response. Lonnie, Rogelio, and Scorpia were crowding the purple cart Emily had wheeled in, examining the weapons and equipment and planning out who would use what and how.
"We're going," Adora said, turning back around to face Micah and Shadow Weaver with a renewed sense of determination. "We've already seen how ruthless Horde Prime is in conquering this planet. Surrender is not an option for us, and although I'd much rather have way more than just the seven of us going, I know that we'll succeed. We'll rescue Glimmer, we'll rescue Catra, we'll take Horde Prime as our prisoner if we can, or we'll end his life if we have no other choice. But one way or the other, we're putting an end to this invasion once and for all."
Lonnie and Scorpia gave an excited whoop as they smacked hand to claw, and Micah's eyes twinkled with inspiration.
"That's the spirit," he said. He nodded to Entrapta who tapped a command into her tablet, and a holographic schematic of what Adora guessed was Horde Prime's throne room appeared. Micah stepped close and peered at it. "Entrapta went to a lot of trouble to give us these layouts. They're only estimations from her scans into space, but they're the best we have.
A smile spread across Adora's face when she saw the layouts. "This is more than enough. Alright. We come up with a solid plan of attack, and go. There's no more time to waste."