Notes:
Hey there, fellow dork-lovers! Welcome to my latest crazy experiment! Couple points for those who were ADVENTUROUS enough to click on this:
- This is a pet project I started plotting literally the day the show dropped back in November, and knowing how slow I am it'll probably be done next November. -_- Maybe earlier if Season 2 gets a date, because I don't want any loose ends in my fics by the time we get new plot stuff.
- This is also the product of someone who's watched System Failure four times as much as they've watched the rest of the show. I've got it bad, folks. Don't worry, I promise I'll still get tons of minor and major details wrong despite my experience and best efforts!
- Finally, this whole shebang takes place in a nebulous time-space I'm creating in between System Failure and Princess Prom where stuff is... like... halfway peaceful. Much as I adore(a) everything about SatPoP, my heart has still yet to fully come to terms with Entrapta's career shift, and thus I'd like to write her surrounded by blue skies and supportive princesses just a little while longer before I have to start writing Fright Zone stuff full-time. ^^;
Enjoy the show as it persists. There are candy arrows and tiny purple heart-shaped cakes in the corner.
~P
Princess Entrapta of Dryl was sleeping, and all around her was tranquil, quiet, metallic, technological bliss.
As she slept, a small spherical robot popped out of a nearby box, with a bell in its hand. It floated up and over to Entrapta, and rang it in front of her face for several seconds.
Entrapta didn't stir.
The robot stopped ringing the bell, and stayed in one place, seemingly in thought, before grabbing even more bells from its box, and ringing them at once while flying around Entrapta's head.
"Mmmmmm..." Entrapta seemed to stir, for just a few moments. "Shrink ray... waffles... perfection..." she muttered... before turning over in bed and continuing to sleep.
The robot stayed still for a short while, then pulsed, sending a signal to an infrared receiver on the wall. A blaring klaxon sounded, complete with industrial-brightness red lights that would pierce anyone's vision, whether their eyes were closed or not.
Entrapta stayed sound asleep, as the klaxons blared for two whole minutes.
The robot stopped the alarms, banged its head on a nearby table, then floated slowly over to Entrapta's face, and tapped one of its appendages towards her cheek.
The gentle touch of cold metal against Princess Entrapta's face, at long last, allowed her to peacefully awaken her from her slumber.
"Wha? Whoa! Who goes there?" Entrapta shouted, leaping five feet from the bed she'd been sleeping on, barely missing hitting the ceiling in the process, and smacking the robot to parts unknown with her hair. "So help me, I have a scalpel that can cut through any substance or body part you can care to name and and I'm not afraid to use it—"
Entrapta landed back on the bed, realizing that all was still quiet. She looked around, irises and vision spinning, before groaning in exhaustion, and grabbing her recorder from the small table next to her.
"Personal progress note: new self-maintenance drones not really working up to spec. Specifically, they're too..." she glared at the tiny, dented robot on the floor, still cringing from it having slammed into the wall. "...aggressive. New course of action: look into more effective, yet subtle ways to wake up. Like... I don't know. Some kind of blaring alarm." She paused, her finger on her chin in thought, then added, "Maybe with flashing red lights."
Entrapta turned off her recorder, took a deep breath, straightened herself, and crawled out of bed. "Computer, where are we?" she asked, wiping sleep drool off her face with her wrist.
"Approaching Bright Moon Castle," a deep male voice droned.
Entrapta sat at the edge of her bed with a start. "Whoa, already?" In three smooth movements, she hopped to her feet, opened her mobile laboratory's sunroof, and used her prehensile ponytails to boost herself through it and look outside.
Entrapta smiled wide as she marveled at the shiniest castle she'd ever seen in her life standing in the far distance. Of course, two castles was probably a small lifetime sample set, but it didn't make the statement false or anything.
She lifted herself out of her sunroof, and clambered around her surroundings with her hair, checking if anything had transpired during the night that required her attention. The metallic shine of wheel-less, hovering, metallic-gray-and-purple mobile home-slash-lab was still in perfect shape, devoid of any dents. Which was good, since she'd spent all of her pre-trip time buffing out the ones from previous experimental journeys. She went back inside, and took stock of her main room. Everything was in order here too. Nothing else to do now, but...
"Oh! Right!" She snapped her fingers. "Last thing on my list: at least for today, I need to look all, uh, princess-y."
She slammed her hands on the nearby dresser-drawer, grinning enthusiastically into the mirror before her. "Operation 'Look Out, Etheria, Here Comes Entrapta Like You've Never Seen Her Before' is go!"
Two hours later, after doing her daily body workout (which included jumping jacks and jogging around the Whispering Woods), her daily ponytail workout (which involved lifting weighted dumbbells to her favorite techno beats far away from the Whispering Woods), a long hot shower (with hot water provided by a nearby river and Etheria's only portable First-Ones-crystal-powered water heating and purification unit), a "quick" hair care session (forty-five minutes: a new personal record!), Entrapta was ready.
Almost.
She whisked open her closet, revealing a long line of identical (to the untrained eye, of course) purple overalls and white shirts. After careful consideration, she made sure to pick the purple overalls, and the white shirt with the perfectly placed oil stain—the one that looked like a tiny kitty if you stared at it for just long enough, but not so long that it instead started looking like an... oil stain.
Her goggles were always last. Entrapta snapped them on her head, while once more grinning in the mirror. Finally, she picked up her tape recorder again, now ready to make history.
"Bright Moon Expedition Log, Day One, Hour One. As we speak, I am getting ready to make my first real diplomatic visit, as a real Etherian Princess!"
She stopped.
"Wait. Haven't I always been a 'real Etherian princess'?"
She walked to a nearby swivel chair, and sat upside down in it, resting her back on its seat and draping her legs over its back. "Sure, but... this is the first time it's mattered, I guess?"
Entrapta's smile shrank, her expression becoming equal parts thoughtful and pensive. She blinked, and used her hair to propel herself right-side-up in the chair.
"Wow, yeah. This is the first time in a long time that it's really, truly mattered. Never looked at it that way before. Never really had to. Only now does it occur to me that I..." She idly spun in her chair. "...don't know how any of this is supposed to work."
Entrapta fell silent, every single one of her brain cells working in parallel to process this new revelation.
Less than a minute later, she was levitating herself—and the chair—up into the air via spinning ponytails.
"And that's what makes this so interesting!" she squealed, stilting herself out of her sunroof again. She stood on top of the vehicle's roof, holding her recorder as if it were a microphone, and she was the lead singer in a concert. "By my calculations, there's a whole sixty-five-point-twenty-three percent chance that I'm totally gonna crash and burn this, and make myself a complete embarrassment to the Alliance! Which would probably be bad in the long run, don't get me wrong—but observing the reactions in the moment would be fascinating and totally worth!"
With arms outstretched, Entrapta cackled as defiantly and loudly as she could for a full ten seconds, before calming down, returning back to her seat, and sighing. She picked up the recorder again.
"Then again, maybe they won't be mad? I mean, I am going to be visiting the people who came to visit me not too long ago. In fact, they're the ones who invited me. Maybe they're still... nice."
Briefly, Entrapta remembered her three recent visitors—the quirky blonde girl with the sword (who was supposedly the world's greatest warrior or something?), the energetic purple girl with the helpful teleports and the sparkles she was technically still studying...
...and Bow. With the, uh, bow. Who, had, well, saved her life. Technically twice.
And seemed to actually be able to keep up with her.
And who had professed a liking to her life's work.
And who had kissed her hair when they'd first met.
And who had proven to be pretty light and fun to hold in her hair.
And hadn't complained one bit while being held.
Her hair hadn't complained one bit, either. Nor had she.
...what was she thinking about, again?
Entrapta sagged in her chair, a lazy smile crawling across her face. Suddenly, she wasn't sure if she wanted to be an embarrassment after all. At least, not so quickly.
She rose from her chair, took a deep breath, and readied herself for her arrival.
"To be continued when more data presents itself. I mean, they're probably still nice. If nothing else, they've got to be way more mellow about this visit than I am."