Disclaimer: I do not own She-Ra or its related characters. All is the property of Noelle Stevenson, Dream Works Animation, Netflix, NBCUniversal Television Distribution, Filmation, Larry DiTillo, and J. Michael Straczynski.
Inconvenient Arrangements
Chapter Four: Contract Mandated Bonding
The royal gardens of Eternos were very different from the Imperial gardens on Horde World. While the gardens of the Imperial palace were filled with bushes and grasses from all over the universe, carefully tended, tripped and shaped to be aesthetically pleasing, and impermanent and replaced after every bad storm, the gardens of Eternos looked almost wild. Tall trees with thick trunks and dense branches, ground vines climbing out of the beds and up the walls, flowers of every variety growing wherever they pleased as if just allowed to take root wherever the wind blew their seeds. Hec-Tor was not used to something that was supposed to be part of a royal property looking so… unplanned.
The Prince sneezed, wondering if he was allergic to something in the gardens and if an epinephrine would react adversely with his medications.
Next to him, Keldor yawned. Board. His intended was board of his company. Not that Hec-Tor found the other Prince particularly riveting either. They had little in common and little to talk about aside from their pending nuptials and one could not fill an entire afternoon of contract mandated bonding discussing how much you hated said contract forcing you to bond. Keldor looked behind them at their escorts. The robotic diplomat Dylamug, and a Gar warrior named Sy-Klone. They both looked about as board and uninterested as Hec-Tor and Keldor felt.
Noting just how disinterested their chaperones were, Kedor grabbed Hec-Tor by the hand and pulled him off the grass-grown gravel path.
"Wha-!?" Hec-Tor was about to demand an explanation for the sudden action, but Keldor placed a blue hand over his mouth.
"Shh!" He hissed, ebony hair falling in front of one pointed ear. "Follow me."
Keldor began to climb up a vine-entangled tree with low-hanging branches and dense leaves to hide them from view. But when he saw that Hec-Tor was not immediately following him, he grabbed the other man's hand and practically had to drag the Horde Prince up. They sat on a one of the boughs, Keldor leaning around the trunk to make sure their escorts were not suspicious. As far as he could tell, they were laughing at the idea that Keldor had dragged Hec-Tor off for a bout of pre-nuptial… affection.
"What are we doing up here?" Demanded the Imperial Prince.
"Don't you wanna get outta here?" Keldor asked.
Well, actually, yes. Hec-Tor did want to get off of Eternia and away from this arrangement. But Brother really wanted Eternia for some reason and to get it, Hec-Tor had to marry Keldor. So he could not leave. A fact he could not believe he had to remind his fiancé of . "What we want is immaterial in this matter."
Keldor only rolled his dark eyes and tucked a strand of hair behind his delicately pointed ear. "Wow. They're got you really well trained."
"I beg your par-!" Was insulted, but the offense quickly turned to dismay as Keldor pushed him backwards and Hec-Tor found himself suddenly falling.
The sound he made was not Princely or dignified.
Eyes wide, talons clawing at –a wall. What he thought was a bush or part of a hedge maze, was in fact a vine-covered wall, and he was falling down the outside of it. Talons cut through leaves or scraped over exposed patches of stone, until he was able to finally gain purchase on a vine strong enough to hold him. Hec-Tor clung to the wall as if it were the only solid thing in existence.
Keldor slid down next to him, but more controlled. "First time ditching your keepers?"
"What have you done!?" Hec-Tor demanded.
"I told you. We're getting out." His intended scoffed as if this should have been obvious. "Don't tell me you were actually having fun on our 'quiet and leisurely stroll through the gardens'. He slid down the vines a fraction of a meter, expecting Hec-Tor to follow him. "C'mon. I'll show you the real Eternia!"
Hec-Tor looked up at the wall, gauging the distance he'd already fallen. He could climb that easily. Get back inside the castle, go to Horde Prime and made his brother see that this Prince Keldor of Eternia was not a suitable partner for a member of the Imperial family. But after he pulled himself up a little short of a meter, he began to feel woozy, the warning of an on-coming faiting spell, and decided that he would rather be much, much closer to the ground. Hec-Tor followed Keldor's example and used the vines to slide down the wall.
Their boots touched ground in a narrow alley behind the castle. It stank of city waste and there were vermin skittering over the stones. Hec-Tor leaned against the wall and breathed in the noxious air, hoping the dizziness would pass without him losing consciousness in the middle of a filthy ally.
"You having a panic attack or something?" Keldor asked.
Hec-Tor cast a sideways glare at him. Crimson eyes glowing in the dim ally.
Keldor did not seem the least bit impressed. Apparently, Hec-Tor was not very intimidating when he looked –and felt- like he was about to pass out. Keldor grabbed his hand again. "C'mon. There's a bar I like down this way."
Hec-Tor could not drink alcohol. It reacted badly with his medications. But he also could not pull away when Keldor dragged him down the ally and around a corner.
They came out on a semi-crowded street full of a diverse variety of Eternian races and alien visitors. It was more people than Hec-Tor had ever been around at one time and he suddenly felt inexplicably anxious. He held tighter to Keldor's hand and closed the distance between them, almost pressing his whole body against the other man's side.
"You afraid of getting lost or something?" He teased.
"I am unused to… this." All of this. Being in a crowded street. People not automatically making space for him and giving him a wide birth out of respect. Defying protocol, evading their chaperones, and stealing out of castle grounds. All of it. Hec-Tor was unused to all of it. What kinds of things did they teach their Princes on Eternia for Keldor to even know how to do this!? Never mind actually do it.
The other man only laughed. Keldor seemed to do a lot of laughing at him and Hec-Tor was concerned by the fact that he did not hate it. "C'mon, we're almost there."
He pulled Hec-Tor into a dimply lit tavern that stank of stale grain, alcohol, and the funk of perspiration from a vide and diverse variety of organisms. Hec-Tor had to cover his nasal cavity with his hand. It was rank and offensive to smell. How anyone could drink anything from this place was a mystery to him.
Keldor dragged them both right up to the bar, laid two silver coins on the counter, and grinned at the bartender when she asked how old they were. "Old enough to be married."
(The age of consent on Eternia was younger than the legal drinking age.)
The bartender continued to glare at them. So Keldor slowly placed a gold coin on the table along side the silver. The silver coins were placed in the bar's till, the gold coin disappeared into her pocket, and two tankards of some frothy grain-alcohol replaced them on the counter. "Just don't make any trouble."
Keldor gave a mock gasp. "Trouble? Me? Well, I never-!"
The bartender rolled her eyes again. "I know who you are, and I have Man-at-Arms on speed dial."
Another gold coin was placed on the bar counter.
"But silly me forgot to charge my com last night."
Grinning, Keldor pressed one frothing tankard into Hec-Tor's hands and led him to a table in the middle of the room.
Hec-Tor sniffed the drink cautiously. "I cannot drink this."
"Sure you can!" Keldor insisted. "Just put it in your mouth and swallow."
"I mean, it will make me very, very ill." Hec-Tor clarified.
"Yeah…" Agreed the other man. "But you'll have a lot of fun first!"
Setting his tankard down on the table, Hec-Tor pushed it away from himself. "I would like to go back to the castle now."
Keldor was already chugging his drink. He had a froth mustache when he lowered the tankard. "Aw, but we only just got here! I haven't even gotten into a bar fight yet."
Hec-Tor raised a baled brow at him. Princes were not supposed to slink down narrow allies, or get into bar fights with common drunkards. He opened his mouth to remind Keldor of this fact, and also made a mental note to inform Brother of this little escapade as evidence that the engagement should be called off and the alliance with Eternia sealed some other way.
But he didn't get the chance to.
At that exact moment, a large Qadian came up to their table. A dark scowl on his feline face, arms crossed over his chest with disproval. "You, Gar," he hissed, "you're at my table."
"Never mind." Keldor smirked at Hec-Tor, "I'm right on schedule." He turned around to face the cat-like alien –although, to Keldor he wouldn't be an alien, Qadians were native to Eternia- "I am? I'm so sorry, I had no idea this was your table, Mr. Torg Sisters Wholesale Furniture Warehouse! That is your name, I assume, as it's the only name written on it."
The Qadian's whiskers twitched asymmetrically. "You can't sit here, Gar."
"I can't?" He gasped, as if truly and honestly shocked. He looked down at his chair. "By the Goddess! It must be a miracle. Look! I'm sitting! Here!"
Losing patience quickly, the Qadian grabbed Keldor by one of the belts crossed over his chest. "Listen, you Blue Bastard, we don't want your kind here!"
Hec-Tor shot to his feet. No one grabbed a Prince like that! At least, in the Empire, no one would dare!
"What kind is that?" Keldor asked, not appearing to be intimidated by the hostile feline. "Gar, young people, or someone who can hold his liquor probably better than you."
"Let him go." Hec-Tor commanded, putting all the regal command of his station into the words. For half a second, to his own ears, he sounded just like Brother. A Horde Prime. Commanding, and strong. He stood up. Then immediately felt the same faintness from a few minutes ago when Keldor pushed him over the castle wall. But he tried to ignore it.
"And what are you supposed to be?" Scoffed the Qadian, unimpressed.
Not many people outside of Horde World actually knew what members of the Imperial Family looked like. They were so many generations removed from the original Horde Prime, and each suffered physical defects that sometimes altered their appearance, that none of them looked like the clones of the Horde military.
"I am a-"
"This is my fiancé, uh… Hordak!" Keldor cut him off before Hec-Tor could announce that he was a Prince of the Horde Empire and that Keldor was Prince Keldor First Born to the House of Miro. Apparently, that would spoil his fun. "Hordak, sweetie, say 'hi' to the nice kitty."
Hec-Tor frowned.
"Are you making fun of me!" Demanded the Qadian. He did not appreciate being called a 'kitty', anymore than Keldor appreciated being called a 'blue bastard'.
Keldor only smirked. "I'm usually making fun of everyone."
With a hiss and a snarl, the Qadian threw Keldor at the table.
He caught himself on its edge and used it for balance while he ducked a fast punch from the Qadian.
Hec-Tor, acting more on impulse rather than any conscious strategy, picked up the whole table and threw it at the Qadian. The feline alien had to jump to dodge the projectile furniture. His fur all puffed out, he hissed again.
But the action brought on another wave of dizziness. The physical exertion just a little too much for him. Hec-Tor's vison blurred as his body did what it had been threatening to do almost all day. He passed out.
He didn't get to see the rest of the fight. He wasn't sure what happened, exactly. But when he came to again, he was slung over Keldor's back like a sack, and the other man was carrying him down the same ally they'd first dropped down into from the castle wall. Hec-Tor groaned.
"You're awake." Keldor put him down. He had a swollen lip and a bruise on the side of his face, but nothing was bleeding and all his teeth were still there. "Wasn't that fun!"
"We got into a fight!" Hec-Tor was not fully recovered yet and getting worked up was not what he needed right now, but this Prince Keldor was… wild. He examined himself for injuries. Apart from the familiar soreness that came from laying on a hard floor, there were none. They must have ignored him once he passed out.
"Fighting is fun."
"Fighting is for clones." Hec-Tor corrected. He massaged the sides of his head. His vision was still a little blurry. "Why are you even getting into fights anyway? You're not a warrior. I was told you're a sorcerer!"
Keldor only shrugged. "Two things can be true."
"I should not have helped you." Hec-Tor shook his head.
"But I'm glad you did." Keldor told him. "You're supposed to be able to depend on your spouse. Married people should help each other."
…
Contract mandated bonding time with Entrapta was just as much of a whirlwind as his first few months with Keldor, but in a different way. Entrapta did not push him over walls, or drag him to seedy bars in the slums, or get into bar fights with the absolute scum of the planet. Entrapta insisted he take her on a tour of the shieldwall that ran the perimeter of the city.
She wanted to walk the narrow service shafts the maintenance workers used to keep it in working order. She wanted to see the gear housings that lifted and lowered the shield for a storm. She wanted to examine the turbines that collected the storms' energy. She wanted to watch the generators in action, powering the city with the raw power of the harsh world they lived on.
The interior of the shieldwall was almost as dirty and grungy as the outside. Rust on the exposed pipes, painted signs and safety markings sanded down to the base metal they were painted on, discolored wall panels, dust collecting in the corner where the wall met the floor.
But Entrapta seemed to be having the time of her life.
Wearing those baggy overalls again, looking like any other maintenance worker, several of the regular staff assumed she was an intern or a new-hire before they saw that she was in the company of an Imperial Prince. Hec-Tor had counted five people so far, who had approached Entrapta to ask her where she was assigned. Was she lost? What was she doing at this part of the wall? etc., before they noted Prince Hec-Tor Kur trailing behind her, his spine straight, and arms clasped behind his back. A perfect pillar of Imperial discipline and command. Then the stuttering and near incomprehensible apologies would start tumbling out of their trembling mouths.
Entrapta seemed oblivious to this, however. The moment she was approached by anyone who actually worked there, she would bombard them with questions. How many people per shift did it take to maintain the wall? How many shifts per day? Were they all skilled workers? What was the most common problem that occurred working on the wall? What steps did they take to address these reoccurring problems?
That actually wasn't that bad. It was about what Hec-Tor was coming to expect from her.
Then she stretched out a tendril of her prehensile hair and lifted herself up onto one of the large pistons that lifted the wall and the shieldwall staff all nearly fainted. Entrapta swung from piston to piston, and between gears, examining the moving parts –that were currently not moving- of the shieldwall. It was actually a little refreshing to know that Entrapta was shocking and uncomfortable to other people as well as him.
Most people, when they visited Horde World and wanted to tour the shieldwall, they wanted to ride hover bikes along the top and see how many laps they could do around the city in a day (the max to date was one and a half). See just how tall it was, how far into the dessert they could see, how small the buildings of the city looked from on top. Or see how many members of their species they could fit standing shoulder-to-shoulder across its width. But all Entrapta wanted to do was measure the cogwheels that could crush and kill her if they suddenly started moving.
She was nothing if not unique. Hec-Tor could give her that. Brother certainly had a talent for finding the most unusual partners possible for him.
Hec-Tor yawned, mouth stretching wide, displaying sharp crimson teeth. It felt like they had spent the whole morning here. He checked the chronometer on the wall. They had spent the whole morning here. It was afternoon now and Hec-Tor would need to take his medications.
"Entrapta." He called to her.
"Just a second!" She answered. Swinging from one impossibly large piece of machinery to another.
"Princess Entrapta." He tried again, putting stress on her title in an attempt to remind her that she had duties and responsibilities to attend to and could not spend all her time on leisure pursuits and hobbies.
Swinging on her hair again, she did a seemingly unnecessary mid-air summersault and landed directly in front of him.
Gosh! She was so short! Standing on her feet, without her hair adding any height to her, Entrapta barely came up to Hec-Tor's sternum.
"Did you need something?" She asked.
"It is time we break for lunch." He informed her without inflection.
"Oh. I'm not really hungry." She shrugged with her shoulders and made a dismissive motion with her hair.
Entrapta struck him as the kind of person that –when they were interested in something- would continue to focus their attention on that thing and ignore meals or not notice that they were even hungry at all. That, however, was not an attitude anyone in his family could afford. Every single Kur –including Imp, the most healthy of all of them- relied on medications and supplements, the vast majority of which had to be taken with food. Hec-Tor could not afford to skip a meal, and since they were required to spend time 'getting to know each other' before their wedding, she could not afford to skip a meal either. After they were married, she could do, or not do, whatever she wanted. But, for right now, she had to follow his schedule as strictly as he himself did.
"But I am." Hec-Tor informed her. "We will break for lunch then you may return to your study of the shieldwall."
"Oh. I'm pretty much done here." She announced, much to Hec-Tor's frustration. If she was already done, why did she make it seem like she didn't want to leave?
Lunch was served on an observation deck atop the wall.
The servants quickly set up a collapsible picnic table, covered it with a table cloth brought from the palace, and laid out the meal that had been prepared ahead of time. Complete with a covered ceramic cup that contained the battery of pills Hec-Tor had to choke down three times a day.
Entrapta seemed to ignore the table setting and the meal, however. Her attention was focused on the view. Finally, a normal thing visitors did when they came to Horde World. Admire the view.
The previous day's storms had thrown up the sand into many high-peaked dunes. Heat waves could be seen rising off the sides where Horde World's yellow sun glared down on them, baking the already burnt sienna landscape. Frost could just barely be seen sparking in the dark shadowed side where the suns could not reach. Horde World was a planet of extremes.
"It's really amazing anything managed to thrive on Horde World at all." She exclaimed. "I mean, apart from the dragon-roaches and the super-bacteria." Her gloves were pressed up against the observation glass that enclosed the deck. "What's the ambient temperature outside right now?"
"Inside the city, or out in the desert?" Asked Hec-Tor.
He selected several of the tiny items of food the kitchen staff had prepared for them. It took eight of them to equal the size of a normal bite of food for him. Why did the kitchen staff make them such tiny food? The morsels were so small, in fact, that he barely had to swallow. With something already on its way to his stomach, Hec-Tor tipped his dose of medications in his mouth and washed them down.
"The city has climate buffers that regulate the temperature, right?" She asked. "That's how people can walk around without freezing in the shade or getting cooked in the sun. But what's the rest of the planet like?"
It took him a couple of swallows to completely clear his throat of water and medications. Then another moment to remind his body that it was not choking and did not have to trigger the gag reflex. He took another sip of water just for good measure. "The average daytime temperature in direct sunlight is over 500 degrees Kelvin." He informed her. "Two-hundred seventy degrees Kelvin in the shade."
"That's so wild!" Entrapta did a theatric little twirl, her hair spiraling around her. She flopped down in the empty seat provided for her and popped a morsel of tiny food into her mouth. "Horde World is like one of those planets that doesn't have any atmospheric layers. Nothing between it and space to buffer the solar radiation or insulate the landscape. But it does have an atmosphere. We're breathing it right now! And it's not like the city is under a dome or anything. It's just dummy harsh outside."
Reluctant though he was to admit it, Hec-Tor did have to agree that Horde World was unlike any of the other –inhabited- planets he'd been to.
"The planet's previous owners did irreparable damage to its environment. So much so that they changed the climate to be completely inhospitable to their breed of life." He grabbed another handful of tiny food portions and shoved them in his mouth, just to be sure there was sufficient food in his stomach with his medications. "What is Etheria like? I am sure it is… mild, compared to Horde World."
Tapping her chin with a strand of hair, Entrapta thought. "Well… I wouldn't call it 'mild'. It's certainly more diverse than Horde World. But Etheria has got its own extremes. The Northern Reach is a permanently frozen tundra. I guess you could call it an Ice Cap. Then the Crimson Waste is a lot like Horde World, a vast desert, dry, hot, no surface water, it just doesn't have your temperature extremes."
"And Dryl?"
"We get a lot of weather in Dryl." She answered distractedly, picking up two tiny morsels and popping them into her mouth one at a time. Then washing them down with a carbonated sweet drink Hec-Tor refused to taste.
"And what does that mean?" He raised one bald brow, confused.
"Dryl is mostly a temperate zone." She supplied. "We get all four seasons and all the weather that comes with them. Snow in the winter, rain and storms in the spring, absurd humidity in the summers, thunder and lighting in the autumn, lots, and lots of lighting, I swear, the mountains add extra charge to the atmosphere! –then back to winter snow!"
"That does sound like… a lot of weather." He agreed, not knowing what else to say.
"I spend most of my time in my lab, but I'm told it can be fun." Entrapta informed him. "Skiing in the winter, rafting in the spring, camping in the summer, festivals in the fall. I'm not much of an outdoors person, but if you are you might like it!"
"I…" Because of his condition, Hec-Tor preferred not to do anything too strenuous if it could be avoided.
Skiing and rafting sounded absolutely terrible to him. Camping was a word that had different meanings to different people he found. For his family, 'camping' was rouging it in a slightly smaller palace or castle with limited servants and fewer amenities. That was not what the word camping meant to the vast majority of other people Hec-Tor met. And fesitvals… Hec-Tor had mixed experiences with festivals. Experiences ranging from 'we just have to light the brazier, then we can go home', to 'I just bought these two pills off some guy, let's pop 'em and see what happens', and everything in between. (Attending festivals with his brother and attending festivals with Keldor were two very different experiences.) The outdoor activities of Dryl did not sound appealing.
"When I am not working I usually spend my free time servicing or improving upon my armor." An activity that was also spent indoors.
Entrapta instantly perked up. Fuchsia eyes focusing on him with an intensity he was unused to. Showing an unfettered interest in him –not his planet's technology or adaptations, but him- for the first time. "Oh? Did you design your own armor? Are you an engineer? Robotic designer? May I take a look at your armor to see how you've integrated the prosthetic tech into your organic body?"
Her interest was almost too intense for him and Hec-Tor found himself physically leaning away from her. "We manage our own… defects."
She blinked at him, not fully comprehending. "You mean, you came up with that design to manage your condition all on your own? And maintain it all on your own? No one heled you. Even when you were a child? C'mon. You can't expect me to believe that you don't take care of Imp, or Horde Prime doesn't take care of Prince Zed! Everyone needs help sometimes! And married people should help their spouses."
…