Chapter 34: Pip

Catra settled into the corner booth of the Tailchaser, a cozy pub situated deep in Phoenix Station's mid-wards. The leather of the overstuffed seats creaked and crackled as she maneuvered into a comfortable position. A seat at the bar would have been preferable, but seeing as how most of the booths that would have been used to seat patrons were instead crammed full of mountains of packaged food and supplies, she was lucky enough as it was to have been let in and given one of the only open tables to begin with.

Vadim, the owner, came by and held a menu up for her to take. "Gonna browse?" he asked. "Or wanna do your regular?"

"I'll do the regular, and a club soda or something if it's not too much trouble?"

He raised both eyebrows. "You want a nonalcoholic drink?"

Catra rolled her eyes, bantering with him as they had for years by now. "I have a job too, you know. Can't be under the influence on the clock."

"You're clocking in to the precinct after eating here?" he asked, confused. "But you typically come after your shifts are up. Is Dax giving you a hard time about accepting a promotion again?"

"I quit the force, actually," Catra said, shaking her head. "Have a new gig lined up and this is my first day, I guess you could say. I don't want to mess it up." Salas had been overjoyed to hear she was onboard when she went to him, days ago now. Together they had planned their move for when Moriarty was due to give his rally. Today.

Vadim studied her for a moment, then shrugged and wandered off to fulfill her order. Catra liked the Tailchaser and she liked Vadim, precisely because he knew where her line was and never crossed it. Diving unexpectedly into a topic that Catra felt was 'too personal' was never an issue with him. Not to mention she also really liked his cheese fries.

Her meeting with Diallo was in an hour—they were going to infiltrate Moriarty's office together, and the fact she still hadn't gotten a good night's rest meant her nerves were frayed beyond belief; she needed every tool in her arsenal to keep calm, and wasn't above scarfing down junk food in her favorite dive bar right before if it gave her clarity.

Just the fact I was able to get in here was a miracle in and of itself, she thought, watching the waitress who tried to block her at the door careen through the establishment. She nearly crashed into the bar in her haste to get to it, scooped up as many packaged boxes of food as she could, and tumbled back out toward the line of people outside the front door without sparing Catra anything beyond an annoyed glance.

The Catra from a previous life might have shot back a smug face, but the Catra sitting there at the booth kept it classy. More refugees had flooded in during the preceding days. More than even the most pessimistic of doomsday experts could predict, and administration had commandeered all establishments—from the station's upper-wards down to the bowels—to provide emergency services for the influx. The line out the front door of the Tailchaser alone was massive, and Catra wasn't technically supposed to even get seated, since no shops were conducting regular business. Vadim had made a special exception for her and she was grateful.

A catchy theme song drew her attention to one of the TVs mounted above the bar. Catra watched the logo for the largest news network in their region of space play onscreen. An anchor duo, a man and woman both dressed in suits, introduced themselves and their topic for that afternoon's special: Moriarty and his upcoming rally, where he would outline his plan to keep the region safe and prosperous despite the Beast continuing to spread against ever more populous Imperial territories. The idea was to offer commentary both before and after the live airing of his rally speech.

"I've heard some concerning rumors lately," Vadim said as he rounded the corner back to her, balancing a platter with one hand and carrying a folding stand in the other.

"What kind of rumors?" Catra asked, turning away from the broadcast.

He placed the platter on the tray stand. "I've heard that the ignominite munitions might be losing their efficacy. Bullets that once could put down a thrall like any other person aren't working as well as they did in the last war anymore."

"Really?" Catra asked. "I heard rumors that Moriarty will finally open up the Atrium for the refugees. Everyone thinks that's going to be part of the rally speech."

Vadim snorted. "I'm more concerned about whether he's going to let more people dock in the station. Sure, open up the Atrium. I don't mind seeing all those pompous rich assholes get the panties in a twist having to share space with the refugees like everyone else, but we can't just keep funneling people here with no end. Sooner or later the station will reach capacity, and life support will stop being able to 'support' all the life on the station, regardless of where we put them. I'm barely able to keep up with the new emergency orders they put in for us."

Catra sighed. "The universe is going to shit and I'm sitting alone in a dive bar to stress eat. Let's hope they find a way to curb this sooner rather than later, then." When she saw the mountain of cheese fries in the basket Vadim placed in front of her alongside the largest virgin Mai Tai she had ever seen, she squawked. "Vadim, that's too much!"

"Nonsense," he said with a scoff. "You're the first person I've heard of getting a new job in this kind of climate, but if today's your first day, then you need to be fueled up. Besides, how many times now have I told you that you're thin as a rod? I don't know how you made it three years as a cop looking like a string bean, but if your new gig is as physical as your old then you'll need to pack on some more meat."

"I'm lean, Vadim," Catra said. "And we both know this isn't what I'm supposed to eat if I want to bulk up. You're going to ruin me." Vadim only laughed.

"The extra is on me," he said, referring to the comical portion sizes. "As a thank you for always being a loyal customer, and as an apology for the server at the door. She's new-ish."

"Don't even worry about it," Catra said, meaning it sincerely. "We're all under a lot of weird stress right now, so I understand. Thanks for making an exception and letting me in."

Vadim nodded and wandered off to help his staff hand out food at the front. Catra could hear the sounds of the crowd nearby, could hear the anguished and anxiety-stricken voice of men and women and children worried about where they're going to shelter and where they'd get their next meal after this one. It intermixed with the measured, energetic voices of the anchors on the TV, who were entertaining a guest on their panel and drawing out his predictions for the kinds of announcements that were going to come out of Moriarty's mouth within the hour.

Catra reached inside the collar of her shirt and pulled at the leather cord there. The apeiron Taline gifted her popped out, hanging at the end of the cord, shining blood-red, held in place by an elaborate knot that wrapped the entirety of the crystal. It was beautiful—a reminder of Taline's trust in her as Sentinel—and Catra had made a habit of bringing it out and staring at it whenever she was alone.

She put it away, chastising herself for being so ready to expose something so valuable and irreplaceable in public, and instead busied herself with her PDA. She propped her left elbow on the table and flipped through the menus on the screen while she picked at individual fries in the basket and took small sips of the Mai Tai. She briefly considered reaching out to Taline, again, before quickly and vehemently rejecting that idea.

It was embarrassing, how many times she had hemmed and hawed about reaching out and telling her of her plans with Diallo. It was especially bad in the days after having approached him and agreeing to help, since it felt weird to be both officially and unofficially going behind Taline's back on some undercover mission. And when she finally mustered the courage to actually do it—managed to actually send a call request through and wait—Taline had picked up, answering her with a harried voice, deep in the middle of preparing for Moriarty's rally with twenty other very important-looking people.

And that hadn't even been the worst part. Even after interrupting Taline's meeting, even after hearing Taline's concerned voice prompt her through the line, all the courage Catra had pulled together to make the call in the first place fled all at once, and she hung up after making a number of halting excuses Catra still couldn't think back on without flushing in embarrassment. She had vowed, right then and there, to erase the term 'butt dial' from her vocabulary entirely.

Diallo had been right, again; if Taline had been asking Catra to read between the lines and commit espionage on her behalf when commissioning her as a Sentinel, what exactly was Catra expecting her to say when she called her in the middle of an administrative meeting to ask about it?

She felt another flush of embarrassment creep up her neck. To distract herself, she navigated to Glimmer's contact card on her PDA and tapped the 'resend' button on the message waiting there—the one she had drafted and tried to send days earlier already. She watched the little 'sending' animation with bated breath, picking at another grouping of fries slathered with cheese from the basket and eating them.

The message failed to send, and Catra resisted the urge to rip the PDA off her arm and throw it at the wall. The PDA would be fine if she did, but then she'd have to apologize to Vadim for damaging his pub. Entrapta's gadgets were near-indestructible, even so many years on.

Reaching out to Glimmer again was a bad idea; she was looking for a distraction, not more worries. The fact she hadn't heard from her or couldn't get ahold of her still was bad. The chances she was still in hyperspace were slim, which meant that wherever she had been sent off to, it was dangerous and top secret. The last time something like that happened was when she was deployed to Rinne, and Catra feared for Glimmer's mental health as much as her physical safety if that's the situation she had been thrust into once more. It also didn't bode well for the conflict with the Beast as a whole, if yet another incident like that were to crop up.

When Catra dove back to her PDA a third time—desperate for a distraction from her original distraction—and came across Adora's name, she almost shut the device off altogether. Out of everything she could tempt herself with, why was she tempting herself with Adora of all people? Why did she even still have her contact info at all? It wasn't like she'd be able to send her a message. Writing anything to that contact of her's in the PDA would only forward it to Glimmer, who'd forward it to Salas, who'd get it to Adora maybe in a month. By that time, whatever insanity might have possessed Catra to write to her in the first place would long have worn off.

Memories and thoughts and emotions about her old friend flooded back to her, and she was too sleep deprived and tense to fight the tide. Catra wondered what Adora was doing, wondered whether she ever thought about Catra as Catra was thinking about her in that moment, and wondered about if she found a way to use She Ra again, even though it had barely been a week since Glimmer told her she still hadn't. All this while grabbing cheesy fries by the fist-full and shoving them into her mouth as quickly as possible, not caring that the cheese got all over her hands and stained her fingers with grease.

She was pulled out of her spiraling thoughts when a spike of alarm lanced through her mind. Catra's ears perked up, and her fur stood on end. Her heart pounded and she knew her pupils were slits because of how laser-sharp her center of vision had grown when she snapped up and looked toward the front of the Tailchaser. It felt as if something were stalking her with the intent to kill, although she had no idea what. Even her claws were out.

Catra counted heartbeats.

…One...

…Two...

…Three...

Someone yelled out front. There was a crash, followed by the sound of shattering glass: someone—not the first person who yelled, but someone different—had fallen, dropping a half dozen glasses and shattering them on the floor by the sound of it. Catra almost got up from the booth to investigate, but she heard Vadim ask the person who fell if they were okay, heard the waitress she bumped into earlier respond saying she was fine, and heard the sounds of the refugees around them help her up. Another person offered to help clean up the shattered glass.

A moment passed, and the waitress came around the corner, the front of her serving uniform stained with drinks. She rushed into the women's bathroom at the rear. Vadim popped back for a second too, grabbing a broom and dustpan before disappearing once again.

Weird, Catra thought. It was like she had picked up on something bad happening long before it actually did, almost like she had a premonition. That wasn't the only weird thing to have happened recently either, she thought, as she reminisced about what happened with Trayn's suspect and the Motherbrain back at the precinct. She really needed to get some sleep—pushing the gas this hard for this long couldn't be healthy.

When she reached for the fries again, she saw a translucent young woman, about as tall as her drink glass, standing next to the basket on the table and staring at it with big eyes.

"Fucking hell!" Catra yanked her arm away and scrabbled as far back into the cushions of the booth as she could.

"Well, that's rude," said the miniature woman, cocking a hip and giving her a sour look.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"I'm Pip!" The woman turned and faced Catra full-on, legs wide, both hands on her hips, and a giant smile on her face that reached to her eyes. She was the embodiment of sunshine happiness, and it especially creeped Catra out.

I have to be going crazy, she thought, pulling into herself. All those sleepless nights, all those caffeine pills and coffee…they've all caught up to me. This is it. I'm nuts. She took a closer look at the girl. Why does she look strangely familiar?

Pip wandered closer toward her on the table and stared straight up at her. "Oh, come on now," she said. "You aren't crazy. Well, maybe you are just a bit. I haven't seen much, but anyone would be a little crazy with all the nightmares you've been having."

"You…you're in my head?"

"Yes, of course I'm in your head, silly. I've been here for almost a week now. Don't you remember?"

Catra thought. What happened a week ago? The only thing was her talk with Taline after Glimmer left. The first one, where she showed her Evelyn's old lab and then…oh.

"You're the big project Taline's sister was working on before she died?" Catra asked, keeping her voice low. "You're a program?"

"I prefer the term artificial intelligence, thank you very much. But yes, I was Evie's last creation. Taline's had me since she died, and now she's passed me along to you."

Catra narrowed her eyes at the girl. She had a pixie cut and wore a sun dress that twirled with her movements. Catra lowered herself so her face was level with the table, driven by instinct, and slowly extended a clawed finger to poke at Pip's form. To her utter astonishment, she felt something when her finger passed through; Pip wasn't corporeal, but she was there.

"Hey, stop, that tickles," Pip said, avoiding a second prodding by disappearing and reappearing behind the drink glass.

"Why are you just showing up now?" Catra asked. "Taline gave you to me a while ago, didn't she?"

"She injected the nanites that let me interact with you like this a week ago, but it still took some time for them to activate, and then more time for me to get familiar with your physiology and psyche." Pip stepped out behind the glass and smoothed her dress. "I'm still not fully integrated, but I'm far enough along that I can finally manifest and talk to you like this."

"Huh." Catra sat back and considered that.

"I have to say though," Pip said. "I think your concern for your friends is really sweet."

"You think my what?"

"You keep worrying about Glimmer. And Adora. Especially Adora."

Catra's heart froze.

"She shows up in all your dreams," Pip said. "And just now you were wondering whether you should try and reach out to her again or not. It's sweet."

More images of Adora came flooding back, unbidden, and Catra panicked.

"See, you're thinking about her now, too. Also, I like your little arm device. It's old and really inefficient, but I could tell your other friends put a lot of effort into it. I mean, just look at all these messages."

Catra's PDA came to life on its own, and one of the first messages Entrapta and Scorpia recorded on it began to play on the screen.

"Hi Catra!" the both of them said, although Scorpia's voice and face were thick with tears. "So, we're kind of recording a lot of this one last minute since apparently you may be leaving tomorrow. We wanted to just—"

"Stop! Stop, stop, stop!" Catra mashed the exit icon. She had seen all the videos they had sent her over the years, including the ones Glimmer had transferred during their last meeting—she just hadn't seen that video. It brought back too many powerful memories she didn't know how to navigate.

The screen went dark and Catra rounded on Pip. "What the hell?" she said, practically exploding on her.

Pip shrank back with a fearful look on her face. "S-sorry," she said. "I just thought it was really cool and…I didn't know those were private. Sorry."

Catra massaged the pinch in her brow away and took a deep breath. Part of her wanted to ask how she could not know it was private when she apparently knew everything else in her head, but Pip had admitted she wasn't fully integrated yet either.

"It's fine," she said. "That video is…it comes with a lot of emotions attached to it. I still haven't watched it. I was just…surprised, seeing it pop up all of a sudden."

"I understand," Pip said, with an apologetic look. "This is technically the first time we're meeting so…I might have gotten a bit excited. Just, uh…just let me know if I start yanking up things I shouldn't and I'll back off."

"It's fine," Catra said. "It just caught me off guard, like I said before. Warn me next time you do something like that."

She had to admit, having Pip in her head felt a lot better than Shadow Weaver or the Emperor. Pip just felt like some overly happy buddy, eager for her company. That, along with the fact she was yet another example of the trust Taline had invested in her, was enough to make Catra actually feel happy about this development. Pip seemed to feel that emotion radiate off her too. The embarrassment wiped from her face, and the smile she had showed up with from the start reappeared.

Something else tugged at the corners of Catra's awareness, again like a premonition, and she looked to the bathroom doors. The waitress who had rushed inside earlier had left, and was standing there, frozen mid-step on her way back to the front. She had a new shirt on, and was looking directly at Catra with a perturbed expression.

::She can't see you, can she?:: Catra asked. To her surprise, the idea had formed in her mind, instead of as words on her lips.

"Nope, only you can see and hear me," Pip said. "You'd better be careful what you say out loud or else people will think you're just crazy talking to yourself. Good thing you've figured out how to communicate with me through your thoughts."

::Noted,:: Catra said. The waitress shrugged her shoulders before stalking away, and Catra let out a breath of relief. She glanced back down at Pip, who was waving goodbye. ::Why are you waving to her if she can't even see you?:: she asked, equal parts amused and exasperated.

"Well I don't want to be rude!" Pip said.

Catra still wasn't convinced she wasn't actually having a conversation with a figment of her imagination, rather than a real AI. If later, she found out she had indeed been going nuts, then she honestly wouldn't be surprised.

"I heard that," Pip said, offended.

The television above the bar drew her attention again with its music, and the anchors returned.

"And now here comes Moriarty, walking up the stage to give his annual rally speech," the female anchor said. "What kind of policies will he lay out for the denizens of Phoenix Station and the region in general? You've heard hours of speculation, now let's tune in and find out from the man himself."

::Time to go,:: Catra said to Pip, grabbing the last portion of cheese fries with both hands and stuffing them in her mouth before chugging her drink. ::I promised to meet Diallo as soon as the speech started. Unless you already knew that from being in my head for a week?::

"You've only been agonizing about it all day every day since agreeing to help him," Pip said, all sarcasm.

::Yeah, yeah, okay I get it. Watch yourself you cheeky robot. You may be in my head and can read my thoughts, but that can be just as unpleasant for you as it is off-putting for me if you don't behave.::

She had become aware of a fuzzy, roughly formed, separate entity in her consciousness that she guessed was Pip. Catra sent an amalgam of vaguely threatening impressions and emotions across the bridge connecting their psyches and felt a twinge of satisfaction when Pip squeaked next to her.

"Okay okay, I get the hint," she said. "I'll be good, I promise."

Catra smirked. Good.

Vadim said everything was on the house, but she pulled out more than enough to cover what the charge would have been and left it on the table. Pip floated up and rested on her shoulder. Catra felt at the sidearm she had strapped to her hip and at the stun baton against her thigh, double checking that they were still there. Then left out the back to go find Diallo.