Screams. Light. The chubby hand of Sparkles grabbing a clawed palm. How stupid she was, this one. Priding herself in being a "good one" and not giving up the dead weight a wounded warrior was. My head like an explosion, my mind scattered around blurred lines. I do not know how but the pink chub did something to the sounds. The burning continues. A forest. Sparkles. Her voice: "we're not far!". Everything is peaceful around, I feel like I am a rip in the fabric of space and time. Sparkles. A room, familiar, but the name of the place is somewhere I cannot found, in a piece of my memories that was spilled with the lights. I fall down. A brief blink of darkness. Adora. Will I die? I fall down.
Waking up there feels like the end of a very long fight in a dream I cannot remember right. The first thing I see is darkness again, but of another type: it is outside and not inside. It is not darkness, but the lack of light. Slowly, I see little patches around, some red, two purple, a white one. Familiar light bulbs of some sort of machine that purrs in the background. Far away, a whole patch of the place is covered with what Sparkles called "stars". I guess I am somewhere after all. A repetitive sound rises from somewhere on my right, like the beat of a sick robot's heart. I try to feel my hands, my feet, my legs, my arms. They are as heavy as they used to be light, numb like sandbags. I remember vagues faces in a bright light, the purple girl with red eyes, Shadow Weaver's mask, my throat burning and coughing and screaming around. I try to lift my head but I am paralysed. I want to scream but there is something around my mouth.
There is nothing so scary as being a prisoner of your own body when it is the weapon of your life. I panic and hear the sick robot come to life. It beeps like crazy, and finally a door opens and a hand switches on a blinding white light.
"Oh, she is awake, amazing! Good job Tiffany, I knew you would make it!"
This nasal voice and the naming of her helping machines. Entrapta. I hear a few beeps and things calm down. How did she… never mind. Things stopped making sense a long time ago, and I feel like trying to give them meaning is what made me end up here anyway. I see her wide almond-shaped eyes somewhere on the left. I want to punch her but nothing moves in me, and she keeps blabbering around.
"It is the first time I have to create a medical machine, you know, Catra? First I thought Adora could heal you, but she said she can't do it anymore, the sword is broken, she cannot access her powers and all that."
I try at least to release myself from a breathing tube I slowly became aware of that is shoved through my throat and burns in my mouth. She ignores me completely and continues:
"It was a challenge to stabilise the numbers of an organic body like yourself but thanks to the magnificent Shadow Weaver who fuelled a little bit of her magic energy in Tiffany's, it worked so. Much. Better. And now you are awake!"
"Entrapta, come on, calm down my dear" I hear this other, much more familiar voice sneer behind the door; thus my heart sinks when I see the dreadful mask of Shadow Weaver.
"Leave our sweet kitty some air" she adds, with a tone that cannot be anything but irony given the fact that I am struggling against this tubular gag. Would any of these mush-heads think of releasing me? Obviously no: Entrapta is too senseless and Shadow Weaver too cruel.
"Guys, is she awake? Catra, are you awake?"
A third voice, a head followed by a body through the door. The sorceress and the loony step aside to let her pass. She heads straight for me and immediately notices the problem. With the quick gesture of someone who did that quite often for the last few days, she grabs the tube and lifts it away. I gasp for some air and forgets for a minute the world around me. Air! Air! I never thought of being happy to swallow it again, until her blue eyes meet my gaze. She frowns and I retract in myself.
"Oh. Hi."
It all comes back. Is this what they call guilt? The Horde, the spaceship, Hordak, Glimmer, Horde Prime, the days spent struggling with my words to win some time for what? Ending up stuck here in a bed harmless with Adora on my side petting me like a child, and two of my dearest traitors saving me with their wretched science, Shadow Weaver and Entrapta. The latter adds up to my misery by an intervention filled with all the sense of a propos she is capable of:
"I am so glad you are awake! I was anxious to see my machine work on live action! I used the best of the technology that we had here to fix you all over. I even managed to put a piece of First Ones tech in you heart! It was very complicated to adjust everything to your organic parts, they are awfully slow to heal. Adora said that we should stick to simply rescue whatever was salvageable, but I still think a cannon-ball are is a good id..."
"Please" Adora interrupts her with a calm voice. "Maybe she does not need to know everything at once..."
I feel sick in my stomach, try to lift my head and fall down. My body not responding was unsettling at the beginning, but now it raises alarm. Most of it is covered with a white sheet; it thus hidden, my imagination goes wild. I am on the edge of breaking down. Adora tries to stop me. I want her off me, I do not want anyone to touch me right now, but my right limbs and left leg are quite numb and I just feel nothing in my left arm. Her lack of emotion is enraging.
"No, please, calm down, don't panic."
"What… what..."
The words are incredibly hard for my sore mouth. I hear the robot's heartbeat get mad. I turn my head to the left to get off her and I notice a heap of machines with several threads that disappear under the blanket. I finally catch a fold of the cloth in my weak fingers and pull to see where these connections lead. I feel her hand suddenly on the other side catching the sheet but it is too late.
On my left there is no arm.
No arm. Just my shoulder, covered with iron,, and a round empty hole vomiting wires where… The world is spinning around. What else did I lose? What happened to me? My body…
I almost pass out but her voice fishes me out of the dark. I blink slowly, and things become a little less blurred again. I notice her face, the purple that underlines her eyes, the wrinkles on her cheeks. Her hair in loose and untidy. She looks older, but in the heart.
"Please, Catra, calm down."
"What happened..."
"You saved me" answers Glimmer, who came in I do not know how.
There is suddenly too many people in this room. I want them to leave, all of them. Or maybe not Adora. But my heart tells me to endure it because the will to know is stronger than my fear.
"We stayed for days with Horde Prime. He kept me in my room most of the time, but you and him used to talk for hours. I did not understand what you were doing at first, I guess you were gathering information now"
I vaguely remember that. It seems so frivolous compared to the fact I nearly died. What… information? Maybe. Something like that.
"One day, you came in my room, looking all beaten-up and breathing like you had run for some time. You were speaking quite fast, I did not understand anything. You told me I'd better fine a way for us to leave soon or it would be the trouble of our life for both of us. I answered my powers were lost, and then…"
And then, I remember.
I stood here, dumbfounded, in front of Sparkles. Of course she had lost her powers. She would have left much earlier if she had them, as I understand now.
"Raaah!"
What should I do? How could I escape? What should I do with her?
Why did I escape?
This I cannot recollect now. All I have is this stupid idea: Horde Prime's vessel is way too big to land itself. I had been seeing them: little bottle caps fusing through the night, heading towards Etheria. None came back. I wondered how it feels to be inside one of these flying boxes.
I guess I do know now.
"While we were up there, they shot us with some lasers that went right through the capsule. I teleported alone, like instinct. You were not so lucky."
Of course. The good guys, not good enough to care or to try. She would not have tried to save me if it meant risking a single of her pink hairs. A wave of hatred flows so hard in my eyes she moves a step away. I guess she is not so proud of herself after all. I truly hope Adora and her had delightful discussions about this cowardice of hers.
"What… what are the..."
Stupid throat, unable to tell them all I wish I could tell right now. How I despise them for their hypocrite caring. How I want my left arm to be back.
"A laser shot directly through your shoulder. It burnt your left arm, damaged your chest, and part of your heart. Several of your bones were broken. Your head must have hit something, because we also found some cuts on your skull and neck."
"I short, you're lucky to be alive, kitten" purrs a voice in the back. I almost had forgotten the presence of her owner's.
"You..."
She obviously enjoys herself now. They all do: Entrapta experiments with a fresh guinea pig and I am lucky I did not explode yet; Adora pampers herself in her savior's complex and Shadow Weaver just knows how my anger to see her makes me rot from the inside as I cannot get it out right now.
"Maybe we should leave her some space." Glimmer says when she sees me blinking with tiredness.
I never had hoped for it but Sparkles has a point. Go before I find enough strengh to snap at all your self-satisfied faces.
Well, that is, after I take a nap.