A/N: Do I have like three unfinished fics that I could be working on? Maybe. But I just watched She-ra, and it got the creative juices flowing. I tend to write about whatever my current obsession is, so this will last until something else grabs my attention, I guess.
Everyone in their squad knew that Catra held back during training. Whether out of laziness, or an unwillingness to outshine Adora, or some other reason, she always seemed to scrape by every exercise and test by exerting the bare minimum amount of effort. What none of them could have guessed was just how much she held back.
The first hint that Lonnie had of how powerful Catra could be was after their failed kidnapping of Adora's new friends. Catra had spent the better part of the day in some sort of meeting with Shadow Weaver and Lord Hordak himself, undoubtedly being reamed out for their failure to capture Adora, before locking herself in the training room for the rest of the day. When Lonnie had joined Kyle and Rogelio there the next day, they were greeted by absolute carnage. The floor was covered with the shredded remains of dozens of bots, deep claw marks gouged out sections of the walls, and even the ceiling had tiles ripped out - evidently used to scewer even more bots higher up on the walls.
Standing in the center of it all was Catra. Her back was to them, but Lonnie could see that she was barely even panting. Most concerning, though, were her ears. Catra's animalistic features were the most expressive parts of her body, usually reacting to how she was feeling even when she did managed to control herself. Now, her ears were pinned back, almost flat against her head, and Lonnie nearly gasped when she noticed the half-inch tear in the left one - as if someone had grabbed the top and bottom of her ear and attempted to rip it in half. Lonnie prepared herself for the typical shouting accompanied Catra expressing pretty much any emotion, but was surprised when her captain simply took a deep breath and turned towards them, leaving without a word.
In spite of her frankly terrifying personality, Kyle had to admit that Catra was a pretty good Force Captain. Sure, she was mean - borderline cruel at times - but the only time she ever lost in the field was when they were up against Adora and the princesses. Her strategies were usually fairly risky, but in the three weeks since he, Lonnie, and Rogelio had found her in the training room she had taken them on eight different missions to the front lines, and only lost three bots between them - all of which had been in order to keep from losing one of the men under her command. Her tactics still carried an element of risk to them, but they had evolved from all-out fighting the enemy, to systematically dismantling them. Half the time, Kyle had no idea what she was actually planning, considering he hadn't even engaged a Rebel soldier once in any of the missions, but he wasn't about to complain, especially now.
If possible, Catra had become more terrifying since whatever it was that had resulted in her ear getting injured. She no longer yelled at them, or showed much of any emotion beyond the constant lashing of her tail. She hardly even spoke to anyone apart from Force Captain Scorpia and the not-really-a-prisoner-anymore Entrapta. When she did, she didn't raise her voice, and her tone stayed carefully neutral. She didn't saunter through the halls, as she had taken to doing since she received her promotion, presumably returning to however she managed to sneak around when they were kids and she would suddenly appear out of nowhere next to Adora, and when Kyle did see her, she was tense - every muscle coiled like she was prepared to fight at any moment.
The only time Kyle did see Catra acting like she used to was in combat. It was like everything she stored up while they were in the Fright Zone was suddenly unleashed when a group of Rebels ambushed them on their way back from a routine resupply mission. One moment they were marching together near the border of Erelandia, Scorpia and Rogellio chatting while Kyle just listened happily, the next they're surrounded by no less than twenty Rebels, and Rogellio is on the ground, hissing from an arrow that pierced his shoulder. Kyle had just enough time to register his fear before Scorpia grabbed him, Lonnie, and Rogelio and started running through a hole in the Rebels' formation that he belatedly realised came from Catra pouncing on one of them. The four of them crouched in the nearby undergrowth and watched as Catra released an honest-to-Hordak roar and proceeded to single-handedly eviscerate the Rebels. Not one of them could lay so much as a finger on her as she wove between them, out maneuvering them before tearing into them with all the ferocity she had been missing over the last few weeks. In minutes, the Rebels were dead, and Catra had returned to them, curtly ordering that they set up camp and see to Rogelio's wound before leaping into the trees to patrol for any other threats.
It was Rogelio who decided to finally confront Catra. They hadn't been on another mission since the ambush, giving him time to recover from his wound. None of them had seen Catra since just after they had returned, and Rogelio had taken it upon himself to sniff her out. Sneaking out of their barracks while Kyle and Lonnie slept, he tongued the air, looking for his captain's scent, and followed it through the various pipes and tunnels that made up their home. It was slow going, even if he had been able to use both arms, he had never been as agile as Catra. Well over an hour of exhausting climbing later, and he finally closed in on her scent, only to taste the familiar metalic tang of blood alongside it. Hurrying, he rounded the last corner to find what looked like an old hanger. Inside, Scorpia and Entrapta were loading a skiff while Catra limped around them, performing final checks.
"What are you doing?" He hissed.
Scorpia and Entrapta flinched, stammering excuses before Catra silenced them with a look. Rogelio almost flinched himself when she looked him in the eye and he saw the barely contained fury in her mismatched gaze.
"I'm leaving," she announced, her voice steady. "What are you going to do about it?"
The challenge was clear. Even injured, Rogelio doubted he could take on Catra, let alone with only one good arm and Scorpia standing at the ready. Catra had been hard to like on her best days, but Rogelio did have to admit that she had easily outclassed the rest of them - barring Adora - while smelling as she did now. Listening to his instincts, Rogelio lowered his head, showing his neck until Catra took a deep breath, and the subsonic rumbling that only he and Scorpia could detect stopped.
"Where will you go?" He asked.
"Away," Catra replied, and, for what he was sure was the first time in front of someone who wasn't Adora, she allowed some of her defences to fall, overwhelming Rogelio with the amount of pain and exhaustion in her posture - not to mention the pheromones she was releasing. "I'm done with the Horde."
"You can come with us," Scorpia offered, looking to Catra for confirmation. Catra shrugged, limping off to complete her pre-flight checks. "You, and Lonnie, and Kyle. You could come with us, get away from all this." If it were just him, Rogelio would have immediately agreed; though not as badly as Catra, non-humans weren't treated with much respect anywhere in the Horde unless they outranked you. Considering his communicative issues with anyone who didn't have heightened senses like Catra, or Scorpia whose carrapace was basically one giant ear, the odds of Rogelio rising through the ranks weren't high. But he had Lonnie and Kyle to think about. Especially after Adora left and Catra was promoted, the three of them had grown closer than ever. Rogelio couldn't imagine leaving the Horde while the two of them were still there.
"I need to talk to the rest of the squad," he hissed.
Scorpia grinned and nodded. "Sure! I'll come with you. Hey, Catra! We'll be right back!"
Catra grunted, lifting a crate of rations. "Just don't take too long."
Scorpia smiled and led Rogelio to an old elevator that he had never even noticed, humming to herself all the while. What had taken him more than an hour of careful climbing took them no more than ten minutes given that nobody bothered to stop Scorpia. When they returned to the barracks, Kyle and Lonnie were already awake and rushed him as he stepped through the door.
"Where were you?" Lonnie demanded.
"We were worried," Kyle added, his voice soft.
"I was following Catra," Rogelio explained, using a mixture of hisses and hand signs. "She's deserting."
"What?!" Kyle squeaked, while Lonnie just rolled her eyes and scoffed.
"Of course, figured it was only a matter of time until she ran back to Adora."
"That's not true," Scorpia said, her voice firmer than any of them had ever heard. "Hordak wanted us to go out as soon as we got back after the ambush. Catra refused."
None of them expected that. Catra had been racking up victory after victory for the Horde, to suddenly deny express orders from Lord Hordak himself made no sense.
"Why would she do that?" Kyle asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Because of Rogelio's injury," Scorpia explained.
Lonnie rolled her eyes. "Please, Catra doesn't care about us."
"I don't... I don't know if she cares about anything, anymore," Scorpia replied. "When she refused to deploy us, Shadow Weaver - she..." Scorpia swallowed and Rogelio could smell the distress coming off of her in waves. "Catra only just woke up two days ago. She's leaving before something like this happens again, and Entrapta and I are going with her. If you three want, you can come too."
Rogelio walked over to join the other two as they whispered amongst themselves.
"What do you think?" Kyle asked.
Rogelio swallowed and looked down at his arm in its sling. "I want to go," he hissed quietly. "Even if she didn't refuse Hordak becaus of me, she still fought off an entire ambush to protect us. We owe her."
"You heard Scorpia, though," Lonnie argued. "It sounds like she's really messed up."
"If she's as injured as she sounds, maybe she won't waste the energy to go after us if we don't like it," Kyle argued.
The three of them looked between each other before Lonnie sighed and turned to Scorpia. "All right, we'll come with you."
Scorpia smiled brilliantly, and led the three of them to the abandoned hangar where Catra and Entrapta were waiting.
"We were about to leave without you," Catra grunted. Lonnie looked like she was about to ask something, but Catra pinned her with the same look that had made Rogelio submit as well. "Get on or go away, we're leaving." Without another word she leapt onto the skiff without so much as a wince and waited for the five of them to board before tearing out of the hangar at breakneck speed.
They flew to the edge of the Whispering Woods and turned East, traveling along the treeline for another three hours before turning and entering the woods themselves. Kyle stifled a whimper as they traveled deeper and deeper, Catra's nightvision guiding them through the rough terrain, until she found a clearing not too far from the edge of the Whispering Woods. Setting the skiff down, she powered it down and took a deep breath, focusing her senses.
"Water's that way," she shouted, pointing South. "Don't die."
Leaping into the trees, she focused once more on the smells and sounds surrounding her, looking for prey. There was no point in wasting the rations she had packed if she didn't have to, especially with five other mouths to feed. She lost herself in the hunt, allowing her instincts to guide her. She had already taken down three rabbits, and was nearly back at the clearing, when she spotted her first Beast. It had hooves on its back feet, while the front ones were clawed. Thick fur covered its massive body, a muddy brown to help camouflage it amongst the trees, its sharp, pointed antlers easily passing for scattered branches. It watched the clearing with beady, yellow eyes, waiting patiently as Kyle struggled to start a fire, twisting a stick in his hands atop another one.
A small yelp and the smell of blood in the air were the signal for both Catra and the Beast to attack. The two of them burst into the clearing at the same time, the Beast galloping towards a screaming Kyle as Catra dashed on all fours, ignoring the screaming of her body as she slashed one of the Beast's flanks, darting underneath it. The Beast reared back in surpise, determined her to be the thing that had the gall to attack it, and slammed its front paws back down, trying to crush her. Catra dodged its claws, running her much shorter ones across its foreleg before darting away. The Beast bellowed, revealing a snout full of sharp, crooked teeth. It lowered its head, trying to gore her with its antlers, and Catra snarled as it grazed her ribs, before she managed to grab on.
She may not have been terribly heavy, but Catra knew how to leverage what weight she did have, and swung herself on its antler as it raised its head, throwing the Beast off balance. As the Beast reeled, she used her claws to shear through the antler, surprised when it held up even better than the Horde's steel. She managed to gouge out about a quarter of the way through the antler, and immediately changed tactics, raking her clawed feet along its eye as she yanked with all her strength. The Beast screamed as its antler broke off with a loud snap and reared its head to clamp down on her shoulder, making Catra snarl, even as she grinned in victory. With her free hand, she lifted the antler and stabbed the Beast through its blinded eye, making it clamp its jaws harder for a moment before the antler reached its brain and it fell to the ground, dead.
"Show off," Lonnie muttered as she and Rogelio checked on Kyle. Catra felt her mouth twitch and allowed Scorpia to lead her back to Entrapta and the skiff where she cleaned and dressed her wounds under their worried gazes.
"Brought some food," she reported as she stepped back out of the skiff, shirtless and wrapped in bandages. She saw Rogelio carefully bandaging the blisters on Kyle's hand and sighed, rolling her eyes before grabbing her stun baton and approaching the pile of kindling sitting next to them. She noticed the way the two of them stiffened in fear at her approach, and ignored the way it made her stomach tighten as she clawed open the baton, removed the battery and some wires, and used them to make a short-circut atop the kindling, heating it up until it caught. With the fire lit, Catra grabbed one of the rabbits for herself and disappeared into the trees with the rest of the animals.