Out of the Frying Pan

System Failure Part 2

Adora does not convince Entrapta to build robot archers or much of anything, because Adora's too busy ruining She-Ra with some infection so she's sick and totally useless in front of everyone and all she did was make them look worse. It was only incredibly important they make a good impression on the only person Bow and Glimmer know of who could help the rebellion get better weapons than bits of pointy metal.

"I didn't know She-Ra could get sick like that," Adora mumbles. And she wants to say, "What if it happens again?" but she can't. She can't. If they aren't already thinking that she can't say it, and if they are thinking it she still can't say it because then they'll know there's nothing at all she can do to make it not happen, that she's a liability.

Bow puts a hand on her shoulder. "It won't happen again," he tells her, and she gulps and nods. "We destroyed that evil She-Ra-hating disk."

"Good. I never want to feel that way again."

"A dopey idiot?" Catra says. "I have bad news for you. But whatever. Those robots weren't even tough."

"They were tough," Glimmer argues.

"Nah."

"You weren't there for the wall-cleaning bot, it..."

Bow tugs gently at the side of Adora's sleeve. "Soooo Adora," he says, slowing down. "I wanted to talk to you about how things went with everybody."

Ahead of them, Glimmer and Catra start to get distant.

"Well I, uh, I don't really remember half of it," Adora says, laughing awkwardly. "Or like, any of it after stabbing the first robot."

"Yeah...but, the thing is..." He slows down to a crawl and his voice drops. "So...Catra...was with me...when we bumped into the kitchen staff..."

"Catra just gets hungry a lot," Adora defends. "She has a fast metabolism."

"Huh? No!" He catches himself, drops his voice again. "It's not that. But she said some really disturbing stuff to them. Or, about them. I said they should come with us to help save you guys, and they said that, you know, they weren't princesses, they didn't have any powers. And Catra said that we should just go and leave them then."

"Oh yeah, Catra never thinks she needs help."

"Nooot exactly." He takes a breath, then it all comes out in a rush: "She, uh, said they were going to all die so we should just leave and find you guys on our own. And I was like, but we can work together, they can totally do stuff! But she said that they wanted to just wait and die so they should just die. And they got, you know, kind of freaked out by that. Because they very much did not want to die. They were staying where they were because it was safe, and they said that, and she started yelling at them that they were going to get torn apart by robots or starve or be crushed when the Horde realized the princess wasn't doing anything and flattened the place."

"Oh."

"I mean...it did convince them to try fighting, I think. But she sounded really...intense... And she said she was sorry she'd fought the robots when we first got attacked there because she would've let the robots have them if she'd known."

"It isn't that she actually wants people dead, she just, it's how she talks," Adora tries to explain. "She says the same stuff about herself. The reason we went into the Whispering Woods the first time was because she was complaining she was going to die of boredom. She probably didn't think anyone would take it seriously."

"She sounded serious," insists Bow.

"She just..." Adora finds herself crossing her arms, holding anxiously onto her own wrists, and she forces them apart and squares her shoulders so she's standing properly. "I don't know...she was always fooling around and being lazy, she said so constantly even in front of instructors, but she hated when she thought other people weren't trying. And she always did really good anyway, so it didn't matter, it shouldn't have mattered, because it worked fine for her. But one of the others, he was always failing training exercises, and this one time, he got separated and Rogelio doubled back and Catra got in the way. She told Rogelio that there wasn't any point paying attention to what was going on with Kyle. He failed the training most of the time so she said we should all just ignore Kyle, since we were supposed to be practicing for what things would really be like and he wouldn't be there after the first time or so. And then we all failed because of the argument." Lonnie and Rogelio were too busy railing at Catra that it wouldn't be her problem because she wouldn't be there at all by the time it was real to hear the next set of bots appear.