Here it is folks, Chapter 1. Don't remember if I explained this before, but this story starts right after the end of Season 2, but from there it will strictly be AU. I may incorporate some ideas from Season 3 when it comes out, if anything meshes well with what I've got planned. But don't hold me to that. Anyway, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is produced by Dreamworks Animation Television, and both She-Ra and He-Man are owned by Mattel.

Chapter 1: 1.21

(Fourteen Hours Earlier)

The Crimson Waste.

A harsh, unforgiving expanse of stone and scorpion piss nestled deep within Horde Controlled Territory.

So named because of its high concentration of iron oxide which bathed the rocky terrain in a dark reddish hue; creating the illusion that the entire wasteland had been painted with the blood of its countless victims.

On any given day, this barren wasteland was all but completely devoid of life; save for those who were fortunate enough to have adapted to the stark conditions. However, on this day, one particular patch of rock was abuzz with activity. And unbeknownst to all those involved, this site would soon become the setting of a major turning point in the lives of four young people.

But I digress.

In the lowlands about five or six miles south of Scorpion Hill, there sits a large, crystalline structure; a tower supposedly carved from a single enormous shard of amethyst. For centuries, this marvelous testament to First One ingenuity had been hidden beneath a thick layer of rust; making it indistinguishable from the many other mesas that dotted the rocky landscape. However, thanks to some clever hacking on the part of the Horde's resident mad scientist, this ancient monolith had been found and restored to a fraction of its former glory.

High atop this shining monument to a bygone age stood a young feline like girl by the name of Catra. And as she leaned over the edge to watch the various soldiers and bots working to remove the last lingering traces of rust, she wondered if all her problems couldn't be solved by just jumping off.

For those of you not up to date on the latest Fright Zone scuttlebutt, please permit me to explain.

You see, not too long ago, young Catra had been a mere Horde Cadet, but through hard work, dumb luck, and good, old-fashioned backstabbing, she quickly rose through the ranks to Force Captain and eventually made it all the way to Lord Hordak's Second in Command. But alas, the good times were not to last. In her carelessness, Catra allowed the traitorous Shadow Weaver to escape before she could be transferred to the Horde's maximum security prison on Beast Island. And even worse, Hordak had caught her trying to cover up her mistake. By all rights, she should be dead. But fortunately, the discovery of the monolith provided her with one last chance to prove her worth.

Happy ending, right?

Wrong!

Catra knew full well how limited Hordak's sense of mercy truly was. She knew that if anything went wrong on this assignment, for any reason, she would be blamed and from there it would just be a short walk to the firing squad.

The jagged rocks below were looking friendlier and friendlier by the second.

Fortunately, before she could make up her mind, fate intervened.

"Hey Bestie!" said a voice in a familiarly cheerful tone. It was Scorpia; fellow Horde Force Captain and Catra's self-proclaimed BFF. "Listen, I know you're doing your whole dark and broody thing right now. And that's cool. But I just thought I'd bring you a little something-something to quench your thirst. Gotta keep hydrated if you're gonna be out in the Waste. Well, you do. I grew up here, so I'm just fine. Oh, Fun Fact, my people can actually go an entire year without food or water. Isn't that wild?"

The overeager arachnoid continued to ramble on as she was prone to do, but Catra quickly tuned her out. Instead she focused on the drink in her 'friend's' claws. It was nothing special, just one of Entrapta's fizzy beverages. Only Scorpia had apparently taken the time to pour it into a decorative glass and garnish it with a bendy straw and one of those tacky little paper umbrellas. It was all completely unnecessary, but ultimately harmless. So she just shrugged, gingerly removed the glass from her claw and said.

"Thanks."

Before casually walking away from the edge.

"Oh, uh, you're welcome." Scorpia replied; clearly not expecting such a genuine, albeit tame, expression of gratitude. "Anything for muh bestie.

"I'm not your bestie." Catra replied flatly before pausing to sniff the strange, fizzy pink liquid in her hand. "Pink Lemonade?"

"Yup. The perfect thing to help perk up a Sour Puss~" the bubbly arachnoid replied with a playful giggle.

Ordinarily, the young feline would've chastised her fellow Force Captain for such childish behavior. Heck, part of her wanted to smack the larger female upside her thick head. But alas, the rest of her remembered that Scorpia was the only reason she was still alive. It had been her after all who'd convinced Hordak that she'd be essential in helping Entrapta unlock the mysteries of the Crystal Tower. So instead she just signed and slowly walked away.

However, before she could get too far away, Catra felt a gentle 'hand' touch her shoulder. Unsurprisingly, when she turned back around she saw that her 'friend' had abandoned her usual bubbly expression in favor of something much warmer and, dare I say, maternal.

"Hey, listen, I know this whole thing with Hordak has you kinda freaked out. But don't worry. Everything's gonna be fine."

"Is it though?" Catra asked skeptically. "Think about it. Shadow Weaver was Hordak's Second for years and he was still willing to send her to Beast Island at the first sign of disloyalty. Just imagine what he'll be willing to do to me."

"Hey, don't even worry about that. This tower is like… a major find. It's gonna be a huge help to the war effort. And Hordak's gonna know that you made that happen. And this whole Shadow Weaver thing is just gonna be one of those funny stories we tell our grandkids."

"I'm not so sure." The young feline said despondently, only to be cut off when Scorpia knelt down to her level and gently forced her to look into her eyes.

"Catra, you mark my words." She said, sounding uncharacteristically serious. "I'm not gonna let that chalk-faced freak hurt one hair on your fuzzy, adorable head."

"Scorpia…"

"Just hear me out. I know you think I'm a goof up, and I know it's not always as loveable as I think. But trust me. My family has influence within the Horde. One call from me, and my mother will take back the Black Garnet. And if Hordak even tries to say no, every Scorpioni in the Fright Zone will turn on him. And then the Princess Alliance will be the least of his problems."

"You… you'd really do all that… for me?"

"Of course, what are friends for?"

In that moment, Catra felt something stir deep inside her. Something she hadn't felt for quite some time. Could it be…

But alas, her thoughts were derailed by a sudden, yet familiar blast of noise pollution. It was sort of like a weird hybrid of a girlish squeal and a witch's cackle. It was almost gut-wrenching, but easy to identify.

"Sounds like Entrapta's found something."

XXX

The top of the amethyst tower was essentially just a large flat surface; roughly three and a half times the size of the observation deck on the Empire State Building, for those of you who hail from a certain third-rate planet ruled by apes. Anyway, this surface was largely devoid of any structures, save for about two dozen circular, crystalline platforms that dotted the area and a strange, podium-like protrusion the rose up from the dead center.

It was here that Catra and Scorpia found the source of the disturbance.

Now, given that Entrapta was the Horde's resident mad scientist, the duo were used to her many, many, many eccentricities. However, dancing on her tendril-like hair with her robot assistant Emily while squeaking and squealing like an epileptic dolphin was, to put it lightly, a new one.

This bizarre display continued for another minute or so, before the young mechanist finally took notice of her peers.

"Girls!" she said excitedly as she absentmindedly dropped her beloved Horde-Bot. "You're just in time. I've just made the discovery of the century! No, the millennium! No, the epoch! No, the… what comes after epoch? Emily! Fetch me a thesaurus!"

The spherical robot beeped in response before scuttling off to do its master's bidding.

Catra, however, was in no mood such foolishness, so she decided to cut right to the chase.

"Entrapta, I understand that you're excited, but that's all I understand." The young feline said sharply. "Now, if you have something to say, say it. But speak slowly and coherently. Is that understood?"

The young tinkerer nodded in compliance, but even Catra's acidic tone could dampen her spirits.

"sigh. Well, as you know, I've been studying the information on the tower's data crystal; attempting to translate their words into modern text." She explained, apparently trying very hard to honor her superior's orders without patronizing her. "But I was having trouble because the… arrangement of the words was unusual; different from any of the First Ones data files I'd seen before. But after comparing them to my own notes, I realized that they aren't words at all. They're numbers. Equations! Coordinates!"

"Stop shouting." Catra commanded before adding. "Coordinates for what?"

"Well, this is merely a hypothesis, but based on the configuration of these formulas, I believe this tower may have once been a hub, a station if you will, for a First Ones Interplanetary Instantaneous Transit System." When this explanation earned her only a couple of raised eyebrows, Entrapta sighed and attempted a more simplified explanation. "The First Ones used this tower to travel to other worlds."

"Wait, you mean like teleportation? Like what Princess Glimmer does?" Scorpia asked inquisitively.

"Essentially. But on a much larger scale. But that's not even the best part." The young mechanist replied excitedly. "If I'm correct, this machine could be the key to Lord Hordak's plans. Using this tower, combined with the data collected from his previous experiments, we might be able to pierce the barriers of this reality and open a doorway to another. We could create a Stable Wormhole~"

"Entrapta, you're drooling." Catra pointed out; still sounding annoyed by her antics.

"Sorry." She apologized, quickly wiping away any stray saliva before continuing. "Anyway, the only problem is finding a suitable power source. The tower's primary generator is completely nonfunctional, and the backup is barely enough to keep this terminal working. In order to get the entire tower working again we'll need something that can generate approximately 1.21 kamegigawatts of energy. Do you even know how much power that is?"

"So much that you had to make up a new word?" Catra replied sarcastically.

"Yes!" Entrapta answered, clearly oblivious to her superior's sass. "But more accurately, it's about 18.5 times the amount of energy produced by a single bolt of lightning. And as far as I know, not even the power plant in the Fright Zone can produce that much; at least not without causing a meltdown."

"What about the Black Garnet?" the feline Force Captain asked directly. "We've harnessed its power before. And you said yourself that Rune Stones have near infinite amounts energy."

"Well… I suppose that could work." The young mechanist replied hesitantly. "But I'll need to run a few tests before we try anything. Hooking up the tower to an incompatible power source would be like putting an inferior grade lubricant into an internal combustion engine. It could permanently damage vital components, or worse."

Catra had a pretty good idea of what 'or worse' meant, so instead of pressing the issue she sighed and said,

"Very well. Keep at it and let us know if you find anything else."

"You got it, boss." The mad tinkerer replied ecstatically before throwing herself back into her work.

With that little bit of lunacy out of the way, Catra left to resume her brooding. But unfortunately for her, Scorpia wasn't having any of it.

"Hey, wait up!" the ample arachnoid said as she caught up to her superior officer. "Catra, I know you're still in a dark place right now so you may not have noticed, but all that was good news. Well, except for that last part, but whatever. This tower is gonna be a huge gamechanger. And you helped Entrapta find it. Hordak's totally gonna forgive you for losing Shadow Weaver."

"I know, and that's what worries me."

"I'm… not following."

"Every time things seem to be going our way, something bad happens. And this is usually the part where it does."

"Okay, now you're just being paranoid."

"Am I? Think about everything that's happened to us since we first met. Any second now, Entrapta's gonna activate an ancient boobytrap that'll blow up the tower. Or a bunch of robot worms are gonna come out of the ground to try to eat us. Or She-Ra will show up and…"

At that exact moment, an explosion went off somewhere close by; followed swiftly by a familiar battle cry.

"For the Honor of Grayskull!"

To which Scorpia replied,

"Okay, now that was spooky."

To which Catra replied,

"Ugh. She never misses a cue."

XXX

(Two and a Half Minutes Later)

'Well, this escalated quickly.' Scorpia thought to herself as she narrowly avoided getting an arrow through her head. 'I mean this really got outta hand fast.'

Understatement of the century.

In the two and a half minutes since She-Ra's arrival, the amethyst tower had been transformed into a warzone. Everywhere you looked there were lasers firing, arrows flying, guys getting thrown at other guys. It was pure pandemonium.

Over in the western quarter, Catra and She-Ra were doing their usual sword on claws melee; nothing out of the ordinary. While over in the eastern quarter, Princess Glimmer and the talking horse were keeping about two dozen Horde Soldiers on their toes. Up north, the archer guy, whose name Scorpia could not remember for some reason, had taken the high ground and was making short work of the rest. And smack dab in the center, Entrapta was still fiddling with the tower's terminal; seemingly unaware of the chaos going on around her.

All in all, the situation was less than ideal, but far from hopeless. Even if the rebels did take the tower, they were still surrounded by miles and miles of Horde Controlled wasteland, and Scorpion Hill was within spitting distance. Her kingdom's army was feared throughout Etheria and her mom knew a lot of bounty hunters who lived for this sort of mayhem. They could retake the tower in a day and Hordak need never know it was ever lost.

Yes, this would work. This was a great plan. Everything was going to work out just fine and nothing bad would happen to her precious little Wild Cat.

That made sense, right?

Suddenly, a familiar yowl brought Scorpia back to reality.

In the distance she saw Catra and She-Ra standing on one of the defunct warp pads. Well, the latter was standing anyway. The former was lying on her back with a sword pointed at her throat.

"It's over, Catra." The abnormally tall blond said to her former best friend. "Order your troops to stand down and surrender this tower to the Princess Alliance."

"Pfft. Or what?" the feline Force Captain asked dismissively. "You'll stab me with your big glowy pwincess sword?"

"Don't think I won't!"

"Please. We both know you don't have the guts." Catra said tauntingly. "You may have been the best in basic, but when it comes to real combat you'll always be second best."

"Catra, I don't wanna hurt you, but…"

"Why not?" she spat viciously. "I kidnaped your friends. I coerced one of your allies into joining the Horde. I even used one of your precious Rune Stones to ravage your ecosystem. What is it going to take to get you to take me seriously?"

"I know what you're doing and it's not gonna work. I won't let you bait me."

"That's funny. Shadow Weaver said almost the exact same thing. Right before I slashed her throat."

Something dark flashed across She-Ra's eyes.

"What?"

"Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah, Hordak promoted me to his Second in Command awhile back. And all I had to do to earn it was kill his previous one."

"You're lying."

"Oh that's right. She raised you, didn't she. She was the only mother you've ever known."

"She raised you too. That's how I know you're lying. You would never…"

"But I did. I killed that hatchetfaced ghoul. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

Back on the opposite end of the tower, Scorpia's heart and mind were racing with anxiety.

'What the heck is she doing?' she asked herself as she struggled to understand what she was seeing. 'Shadow Weaver's not dead. Why is she egging her on like this? It's almost like she wants…"

Suddenly, she remembered the sullen look on her friend's face as she looked over the edge at the jagged rocks far below. Perhaps in her mind the mission was already a failure. Which meant the only way to escape Hordak's wrath was…

"NO!" Scorpia yelled as she rushed over to prevent a potential tragedy; dodging arrows and laser fire with a surprising amount of grace and agility. "CATRA, DON'T DO IT!"

But alas, her pleas went unheard, as the feline Force Captain continued with her twisted plan.

"And you know what? I'll bet that even after everything that's happened, a part of you still loves her." She taunted. "I know she still loved you, Adora. I mean, why else would she call out your name?"

"Shut up."

"At least, I think it was your name. Kinda hard to understand her with all the blood."

"I said, Shut up!"

THRUST!

And just like that, Scorpia felt her heart stop.

The scene before her was so shocking, so unfathomably horrifying, that the sight of it made the arachnoid warrior fall to her knees. Catra lying there. She-Ra's sword sticking out of her forehead. Eyes frozen in terror. Lips curled into a mischievous smile.

Wait… What?

"Phhhh. I knew you couldn't do it." Said the supposedly dead Force Captain with an arrogant smirk.

It took Scorpia a few moments to realize what had happened, but once she did she breathed a sigh of relief. It had all been an optical illusion. A mere trick of perspective. She-Ra had only driven her sword into the ground beside Catra's head, presumably to scare her, not driven it straight through.

Internally, the young arachnoid chastised herself to jumping to such conclusions. Of course Catra wasn't really suicidal; she'd just been playing one of her twisted mind games. And of course She-Ra would never really try to kill Catra; she was one of the 'good guys', murder wasn't in her nature. She felt so ashamed, but more than that she felt relieved.

Unfortunately, this relief was short lived.

Moments later, She-Ra's sword began to emit an eerie blueish white light, which quickly seeped into the warp pad. From there, the energy spread to every nook and cranny, until the entire tower was glowing like a Christmas Tree; if such things existed on Etheria.

Naturally, this unprecedented turn of events sent the majority of the Horde Soldiers into a panic; several actually leapt over the side and plunged to their deaths instead of just using the freight elevators Entrapta had installed. Catra was in a similar panic, but with her hair caught beneath She-Ra's blade, there was very little she could do about it. Ever the hero, She-Ra attempted to free her archnemesis, but with her sword still pulsating with First Ones Energy, it was all she could do just to grab the hilt.

And all the while, Entrapta was still happily tapping away at her computer; blissfully unaware of all the chaos going on around her. Suddenly, something on the screen caught her attention, causing her eyes to light up and her mouth to stretch into a large, dopey grin. Then, at the top her voice, she shouted,

"1.21!"

And then the world became an explosion of light.

When the proverbial smoke cleared, Scorpia found herself standing alone atop the amethyst tower. Her friends and her enemies were nowhere to be seen.

"Catra!" she called, only to get no response. "Catra, where are you? Entrapta? She-Ra? Arrow Guy? I'm sorry I don't know your name!"

"Ugh…" groaned a familiar voice, prompting the young arachnoid to rush towards it.

Unsurprisingly, but to her great relief, Scorpia found Entrapta about where she'd left her; only now she was lying flat on her back and giving off the occasional spark of electricity. Apparently she'd been caught up in the backlash of whatever that energy blast had been.

"Entrapta, are you okay?" she asked concernedly as she gently scooped up the battered scientist and cradled her in her arms like a child. "Entrapta, I know you're kinda messed up right now, but if you could just please wake up and tell me what the heck just happened, I'd really appreciate it."

Slowly, the mad scientist's eyes fluttered open and a goofy smile spread across her lips.

"Well, aren't you a clever polar bear." She said drunkenly; her eyes glazed and unfocused. "All up on your hide paws."

"What?" Scorpia said confusedly. "No, Entrapta, it's me."

"Gasp. Emily! You taught yourself English!" Entrapta replied giddily before wrapping her arms around the much larger female. "I'm so proud!"

"O…kay…" the young arachnoid said confusedly before trying one last time. "Entrapta, I am Scorpia. Your friend. Can you please tell me what happened to your other friend Catra? Pretty please."

To which Entrapta replied,

"Burp for Mommy~"

And then she passed out again.

'Well, this is less than ideal.' Scorpia thought sullenly as looked up into the sky and asked herself. "Catra, where are you?"

End Notes:

This chapter took a long time to write, but I didn't want to cheat my readers by cutting out a bunch of important details just for the sake of a self-imposed deadline.

Anywho, thanks for reading and I'll see you in the next one.

Peace.