Chapter Text
It started slow. That was the part that sent Adora’s paranoia into overdrive. The entire morning had been a blur of feverish, desperate activity when reports of the Horde force moving in came to Netossa. Everything was done quickly as possible, Netossa setting up a web of magical barriers and directing the finishing touches on non-magical barricades around Thaymore, getting everyone in place because calls were already coming in that Perfuma and Spinnerella had engaged the enemy. The Horde could turn up at any second, they couldn’t afford to be caught unprepared.
And the Horde had just, let it happen.
No matter how Adora thought about it, the invading force should have been here at latest half an hour ago, if not sooner. No reports were coming in of obstructions or delays on the Horde’s part, just a slow, steady march through the Whispering Woods; the force too large and tight-knit for the Woods to redirect them off their course.
Netossa was taking advantage of the extra time to make sure no mistakes had been made in the hasty deployment. As far as Adora could tell, things had gone smoothly; a couple people had grabbed each others' equipment by accident, but that was hardly a real problem.
And the Horde still wasn’t showing up.
It was like they wanted to hit the Rebellion at its strongest, which didn’t match up with what Shadow Weaver had taught her about tactics no matter how Adora stretched her mind to try and make it fit.
Adora scanned the treeline, shifting her grip on the shield Netossa had given her. Where were they? There was a creeping dread slinking its way up and down her spine; she’d missed something, was missing something.
If this was how Catra had felt in Salineas before Shadow Weaver’s retrieval team showed up, Adora could understand why she’d wanted to run.
The dull roar of engines finally broke the silence, still faint, off in the distance, and a ripple of anxiety swept through the Rebellion forces. Why were they still so far away? They’d hit Perfuma and Spinnerella almost an hour ago, out on the edges of their line. Logically, Thaymore should have been hit first; it was the axis the rest of the territory was resting on. Had they expected to break through the flanks so they could hit Thaymore on all sides by the time they reached it?
The force headed for Thaymore couldn’t be that big if they had sent enough to keep two Princesses occupied for an hour out to the edges. Were they just trying to psyche them out? Were they hoping to make this into a siege rather than a blitz? They wouldn’t have needed to gather up nearly a force of this size for a siege on such unfortified positions, and there were still no reports of any of the weapons the Horde typically brought to one.
“You look nervous,” Netossa’s voice suddenly sounded next to her and Adora nearly jumped out of her skin. “You’ve got a platoon at your back,” Netossa gave her a quick nod, toying with a loose ball of threads in one hand, “and me to boot, we’ve got this.” The faint sound of cracking wood, like sharp thunder from this distance, rang out and the confident smile she was wearing wavered a little. “They’re taking their sweet time, though,” Netossa bit out and Adora couldn’t help the nervous laugh that pushed out of her.
“Yeah,” she admitted, rolling her shoulders and scanning the treeline again. “If they were fighting off monsters that’d be one thing, but this is…” she grimaced, “I don’t even know what this is.”
“Maybe they’re changing things up cause they lost some people who know the playbook,” Netossa shrugged, “or they’ve decided the best way to keep the Woods from messing with them is to take it slow.” That might be it, but even still this was weird.
“No guarantees in battle,” Adora murmured to herself. They had a plan, they just had to hold position- no matter how weirdly content the Horde seemed to let them do that- and with any luck the forces sent out to the edges would be running low sooner rather than later, then Spinnerella and Perfuma could move in to reinforce them and drive the Horde back.
“True,” Netossa said slowly, bringing Adora’s attention back to her, “but the sure bet here would be that we lose.” Her bright grin slid back into place, “so that’s basically our motto.” She inspected the tangle of thread in her hand before nodding to herself and pulling it down around her wrist. The whole thing seemed to squirm for a moment before she pulled on a thicker cord of threads and it shrunk down, conforming to the shape of her hand like a fishnet glove. Netossa nodded, twining the loose cord between the fingers of her other hand before looking up at the forest again as another, louder series of cracks shot through the air. “Sounds like they’re speeding up.”
Nervous chatter rippled through the Rebellion’s forces and Adora couldn’t help shifting on her feet again, itching for something to do. “Well,” Netossa clapped her on the shoulder, “if they’re gonna let us dig in, wanna help me show off?” The cocky edge to her smile was back full force, settling Adora’s nerves. Netossa clearly had a plan, and absolute confidence they could pull it off. “Should help with morale.”
“What do you need me to do?” Adora nodded, her grip on the sword settling.
“Start hitting them as soon as they break the treeline, you’re on offense, I’ll handle defense.” Netossa swept out past the barricades; Adora hesitated, throwing a look around the soldiers before she followed, her grip on the sword tightening again.
Netossa didn’t stop until she stood well in front of the furthest out magical barrier, still toying with the threads wrapped around her arm. Adora fell into step alongside her, taking a deep breath to center herself. She-Ra’s cold power shot up and down her arms, ready for her command. If Adora didn’t know any better she’d almost call it impatient, but the frigid edge on it never quite pressed further than watchful expectation.
Their tracker pads chimed from their spots strapped to their hips and Adora swallowed; the jamming signal had been deployed, the Horde would be breaking the treeline any second now.
The tanks came through first, a veritable wall of steel that crashed through the woods, leaving long, flat stretches in their wake.
Adora wasted no time calling up She-Ra’s power; she wasn’t about to charge directly into that, so she forced it along the length of the blade, trying to remember what this had felt like back in Plumeria. The sword warmed in her grip, glowing bright with the energy she was channeling across it, and she swung out. A long crescent of prismatic energy launched itself out from the swing, speeding across to impact against two of the tanks. They rocked back, metal creaking and green sparks flashing across their chassis before they went dark, settling back onto the ground with a crash.
“Now that’s more like it!” Netossa let out a laugh beside her and Adora felt herself start to smile, already prepping the next wave, when the rest of the line turned their turrets on her. There was a moment where every instinct in her body told her to hit the dirt, but Netossa’s hands twitched in her peripheral vision just before the tanks began to fire and a thick tangle of threads seemed to spring from the air around them, taking the barrage and deflecting it into the ground on either side of them with a grunt of effort from Netossa. “Keep firing,” she shouted, hands already starting to work as the tanks started to adjust their aim. “I’ll keep the barrier out of your way.”
Adora nodded and called up the power again even as she heard the cutting hiss of bows loosing behind her. The arrows couldn’t do much against the tanks’ heavy armour, but she could see bots starting to slowly march around the two disabled tanks, and more than a few of those went down as the hail of metal managed to pierce through to vital systems. The bots that were hit but didn’t go down started firing across the gap, but unlike the tank fire, Netossa’s web didn’t leap to stop them, instead letting the barricades and shields she’d set up earlier soak up the attack. Adora slung another wave of force across, disabling another pair of the still advancing tanks. There was a gap in the line now, and Adora felt nerves churning in her gut again as she caught a glimpse of the swarming activity going on behind it.
The hatch on one of the first tanks she’d disabled popped open and a lizardfolk in Force Captain’s colours hauled herself out, clearly growling to herself as she scrambled behind the tanks before raising her voice. “All units charge!”
The change in the bots was immediate. The swarm of activity behind the tank line surged and those few bots that had entered the gap began practically sprinting for the other side.
Well, that was Hyldren accounted for, Adora thought grimly as she threw Netossa a quick glance. She just nodded up at her, twisting the loose cord into an odd shape.
“Just keep at it,” she insisted, lashing the cord out. More nets unfolded in the air around them, launching forward to tangle up the legs of the recklessly charging robots. “Robots aren’t gonna be enough to stop the tanks from firing into a crowd.” Adora nodded, drawing up more power to keep disabling the heavier machines still firing on them.
It took a couple false starts- Netossa wasn’t anywhere near as fast or familiar to work with as Catra- but they started to fall into a rhythm. Netossa’s threads wove around them, flowing and jumping to accommodate Adora’s swings and then tightening back up to protect them from any returning fire.
Adora felt like her body was finally waking up after spending half the morning trudging through the dread of having to wait for the Horde to arrive, breathing easier than she had since yesterday. Netossa was starting to sweat a little, though, her breathing coming heavier as her eyes sharply scanned the field while she worked to predict where the next heavy blast was going to come from. No single hit to the web strained her that much, but the barrage might whittle her down bit by bit if Adora couldn’t finish taking out the line of tanks soon.
The gap in the line kept getting wider as more and more tanks went down, but the flow of robots wasn't slowing, even with the new waves having to scramble over their fallen allies. She couldn't see any trace of another tank line though, the roar of engines shifting instead of quieting when she disabled the last of them. She spared a glance to where Hyldren had been standing before, not really expecting to spot her, but she was still there, sat down on top of her tank now. Adora blinked as the Force Captain spread her arms wide. A high whine filled the air and suddenly a swarm of skiffs flew over the disabled tanks, zipping around above the robots fast enough that Adora could only keep track of two or three at a time, their crews hailing baton-fire onto Netossa's shields as they rapidly closed the gap.
Adora turned her attention to them, gathering power along the length of the sword before Netossa shouted a warning. “Stop! They're making us pick. I can't protect us from this many angles, stop the robots, and keep giving you openings in the shield.” Adora looked back to her, finding Netossa working furiously with a tangle of threads, “I'm going all in on defense.” She twitched a finger and her pad zipped up next to her head, letting her tap it with an elbow on the way past before getting back to managing the threads. “Archers, focus on mobile targets! We can hold this!” The pad dropped, powering back down. “Adora, you're on the robots. That's where most of their numbers are coming from, if they hit the wall we're gonna be on the backfoot.”
Adora nodded, turning her attention back to the battle. She called up more power, letting it flow through her limbs instead of the sword and stomping hard enough that it made her teeth rattle. A wave of force pushed out through the ground, raising spikes of dirt and stone through the field, but more importantly, compacting dirt in front of Adora into rock and shoving it up to chest height.
She pulled back the sword, more power flowing through and down its blade before she swung it out, blasting a scattershot chunk of the wall out to pepper the advancing swarm hard enough that a few detonated, shrapnel debilitating a swath of the bots and some of the blindly charging line behind them. A cheer went up from the line behind them, even as more arrows zipped by them, most missing the skiffs, but enough making their mark to slow or crash a few of the transports.
Adora swung again, weaponizing another chunk of the wall and following it up with a horizontal slash of the sword, power rippling out. Netossa's tangle tightened in front of Adora's chest as five heavy blasts sounded, impacting across the tangle all at once to a grunt from Netossa.
She looked out across the field, squinting through the haze of smoke all the downed machinery was already pouring into the air, and swore under her breath. There were mounted guns being set up behind the disabled husks of the tanks, using the downed vehicles as cover.
“Netossa, we might need to pull back here,” she shouted, stomping to send another wave of force through the ground, trying to slow the relentless flow of robots just a little bit more.
“We're fine,” Netossa shot back through grit teeth, “this was never gonna be easy. I think I can cover you for a few seconds if you need to get closer to take those out.”
“I'll need more than a few seconds-” The pads on both of their hips crackled to life.
“We've got heavy activity on both flanks,” Juliet's voice cut through the noise, “tanks on the north side, and reports of Captain Scorpia leading skiffs to the south!”
Adora missed a step. Another Force Captain?
Netossa growled out something Adora didn't catch before raising her voice. “Adora!” She shouted, grabbing her attention, “we're pulling back, you head north, we can't let them blast through that line, our guys can handle Scorpia's crew as long as they don't have any more tanks that way. I'll wall these guys out here. Get moving!”
Netossa started walking back, tossing the ball of thread she'd been working on backwards, where it unfolded into a covered tunnel leading behind the barricades. Adora gave her a firm nod and took off running, trying to ignore the heavy feeling gathering in her gut.
Catra was caught between two very intense feelings that wanted her to do the same stupid thing; different ones than usual, so there was that, but still.
Instead she was going through the stupid exorcises that kept her chest from healing weaker than before and the rest of her from losing its edge to all the bedrest. If she was doing them with a good deal more force than she was supposed to, that was her business and nobody was around to see it, anyways.
On the one hand, she was going a little crazy worrying about Adora, Glimmer, and Bow. She couldn't check up on them until she knew the Horde's attack was over; the wrong distraction at the wrong time could get them killed far too easy with how hard it was going to be to hold Thaymore without Catra calling them like an overbearing CO. What she wouldn't give to be there with them, so she could at least know what was happening.
She felt mostly fine, the itch in her chest and at the back of her throat was low enough that she barely had to think about her breathing anymore. She'd gone through her “physical therapy” routine twice already and a burn was only just starting to set in halfway through the third. Catra could run out to meet them, but she still hadn't been cleared for combat and- because the Rebellion was apparently run by an all-moron committee- that alone would make her a liability with all three of them because they'd start trying to protect her instead of focusing on the battle, probably Netossa and Juliet too.
Which wasn't even considering what Angella might have to say about it, which brought her to the other hand. She couldn't believe she'd passed out on Angella's desk. The fact she hadn't woken Catra up just made it worse, and she was trying very hard not to think about what she'd seen when she'd managed it on her own; that was a whole bundle of feelings Catra was definitely not equipped to deal with right now.
That it'd been the best sleep she'd had since Salineas? Even worse.
So yeah, she was fine, and she could absolutely just take off into the Whispering Woods. Maybe they'd even grab her right this time and she could bring some good old feral muscle to the fight in Thaymore so she'd never embarrass herself like that again.
She dropped onto her stomach to yell into the mat she'd put down, glad once again that she had her own space so no one would hear her.
This was so stupid; what was she, a kid? She's old enough to be running missions for the Horde and Rebellion both. She was too old to be throwing a tantrum over something like this- too old for it to happen in the first place, but that was the whole problem.
She was smarter than this. Part of her wanted to bundle it under Spymaster business, showing Angella that Catra trusted her to gain the Queen's trust- which she already had, another part of her unhelpfully supplied- so she could avoid being watched. Which she might have even been able to get away with telling herself if it didn't make the same thing in her chest ache that pulling away from Adora had.
She pushed herself off the floor, sitting heavily back against Adora's bedframe.
She'd gone to Angella because she'd been… alone. Angella was dangerous. Catra couldn't afford to let these people in, she couldn't be going to them for comfort, Moon's sake. But she just made it so easy.
Every time Catra thought she'd crossed a line, it was like Angella welcomed her over the threshold; even if half the time she looked sad that Catra thought she wouldn't be allowed past it. Sometimes Angella blew over the lines like she hadn't realized they were there and got the same look that Adora did when she'd overstepped, but she never backpedaled like Adora would. Blunt where she needed to be.
And yet, the real boundaries, the important ones, letting Catra leave when she needed to, not commenting when she had to come at things sideways… letting Catra come to her, not stepping any closer than she was invited; those she watched carefully. Not like she was looking for ways past them, but more like she was making maps around them. So careful where it mattered.
A blanket, settled around her shoulders, wings draped loosely across the wood on either side of her head. Warmth and soft light and Catra looked up to see- she shook her head hard, driving the memory out.
She didn't want to give it up, that's what made Angella dangerous. Catra needed to keep a level head about all of this, and throwing her lot in with the losing side because she got addicted to being… trusted, was the exact opposite of level-headed.
The Rebellion had better win this fight.
Catra took a deep breath, her chest constricting with more than just a bruised ache as she pressed the back of her head to the bedframe, closing her eyes. She needed to prove to herself that she could let all of this go if they didn't. She needed to leave without being dismissed.
She needed to know Angella's disappointment wouldn't sting the way Shadow Weaver's did.
She also needed to keep her mind from drifting back to the battle she could do nothing about. So, win-win, she supposed.
It took a while to find Angella- in part because Catra refused to go near her office again, no matter how likely it was for her to be there- but she eventually managed it. She was on one of the second floor balconies with a good view of the Whispering Woods, though her attention was on one of the “board games” Glimmer and Bow had tried to get Catra to play with them while she was on bedrest.
She'd refused, novels were one thing, but the board games they'd offered had all looked either inane or too much like the sort of strategy that would get Catra spiraling over Shadow Weaver's next move.
Angella seemed to be playing against herself, sat at a small table with her brow furrowed, hand hovering over the pieces arrayed across the board. Catra paused in the empty doorway, not wanting to disturb her thoughts. Eventually, Angella sighed and moved a horse-headed piece from its place.
“Do you know how to play?” She asked suddenly, making Catra jump in place a little.
“Uh, sorta,” she scrambled to recompose herself, shaking her shoulders to keep them from going squared the way her reflex wanted. “Glimmer and Bow tried to teach me last week, I wasn't really paying attention.” Angella's eyes flicked over to Catra, her face softening with a politely amused smile.
“Well, it seems we both need the diversion, would you like me to teach you?” She knocked a piece on one side of the board over before starting to gather up the pieces scattered around the middle and setting them aside. Catra hadn't gotten a good enough look at the board to tell if one side had won, or she'd just decided to reset the board in case Catra said yes.
It was a good chance, Catra didn't care about this game, and it was one of the ones that got the big picture looming in the back of her head. She could humor Angella for a little while, then just leave when she got bored or frustrated, it was perfect.
If it was anyone other than Angella offering, it would have been a little too perfect. An irony that Catra almost braced for the twinge of, but never came. She just nodded, moving to sit across from Angella.
The pieces all moved differently across the circular board, some could only move diagonally, some only in straight lines, some in semi-circle curves, some only one space at a time- one kind that actually had Catra wondering about the possibilities of could only move along a single loop of a spiral, two clockwise, two counterclockwise on each side of the board- but couldn't move through a specific path if doing so would make them pass over another piece without ending on that space. Angella's voice was calm as she explained the rules, patient and steady when Catra asked probing questions about the way they interacted with each other.
The point of the game was to cast a net around a specific piece of your opponent's; called the Lynchpin, it could move to the center of any area of the board that was surrounded by its own colour's pieces, so the trick was simple formation breaking. When the Lynchpin could no longer move and was surrounded by enemy forces, the surrounding player won the game.
It had seemed nerve-wracking when Glimmer explained it. She made it sound like the opening gambit was everything and a wrong move there would lead to your opponent simply blitzing the board. The way Angella talked about it, the opening arrays were just a starting point, and that sort of aggression easily curbed. She made it sound like a game of patience and consideration, things Catra didn't normally care much for, but she had nothing but time right now and needed something to eat up a lot of it.
The first round was over faster than Catra expected. She hadn't gotten blitzed, instead Angella baited her into breaking her own formations trying to take control of the center of the board. An object lesson on how to counter the tactic Glimmer apparently favoured. There was her opportunity to leave, let herself look like a novice who got frustrated over being tricked. She didn't even like this game, anyways.
Instead she set up a new starting array, glancing up to watch an impassive Angella set up her own side of the board to see if anything made her react.
That round lasted longer, Catra making heavy use of the spiraling pieces. The first round, Angella had almost seemed able to make them just appear wherever she liked on the board, and Catra was determined to figure them out. It was all about angles, if the right angle was chosen for their movement they could slip through formations, lock down areas of the board all by themselves, and surround a Lynchpin with as few as three pieces.
Angella seemed content to let her explore her options, making her own play for the center between rebuffing Catra's forward advances. Once she'd managed to establish her hold, Angella dismantled each of Catra's formations one by one, her own complex arrays practically stretching the length of the board using the middle as their anchor.
Catra didn't hesitate to set up a new set of formations. She could figure this out, it was just a web, a matter of seeing which pieces could move where. Once she got that down, she could win.
The third round dragged, each of them poking at each others' defensive lines and retreating when a single moved piece would render the spot they'd moved to vulnerable while preserving the defender's formation. But Catra was pretty sure she had Angella figured out.
She didn't tend to move most of her formations in ways that would compromise them, but she would decide one was essentially a loss at the start of the game and disband it, leaving all the pieces in that formation free to go on the attack while the rest played defense. Catra just had to shut down those pieces while setting up to pierce the defensive formations.
Catra kept three formations of her own on defense while she cut a swathe through Angella's aggressive pieces, capturing what she could and scattering what she couldn't while lining everything up just right. Then Angella moved one of her spirals directly from one of her stationary formations into the center of one of Catra's defensive formations. It threw Catra off for a moment and she looked up, studying Angella's face.
That didn't do anything. Sure, it would let her disrupt the edge of the formation at any time, perhaps even take one of Catra's pieces, but the formations could adjust if she blocked them, and capturing a piece without blocking part of the formation first would just lead to Angella's being taken in return. All Angella had truly accomplished was poking a hole in her own formation. She just watched Catra with calm interest, waiting to see how she would react to the intrusion.
She didn't take the bait, keeping the pressure on Angella's front line, and Angella compromised another of her own formations to put a piece in the exact center of the second of Catra's defensive lines. Catra blinked hard, eyes flicking up to Angella- who was still watching with that same keen expression- before going back down to the board.
What was she doing? Catra's eyes traced the lines Angella's pieces could move across, but they didn't meet up in enough places to count as a formation of their own. They didn't seem to connect to anything on the board, or even directly disrupt anything. Catra's eyes almost passed over her own Lynchpin without even marking it before something in her gut dropped.
The Lynchpin could only move to the center of her formations, but it wasn't allowed to take opposing pieces. She only had three full formations on the board, one contained the Lynchpin, and now in the center of the other two were Angella's pieces, denying her access.
She traced the lines of Angella's scattered pieces, noting which ones hadn't moved since Catra had broken her attacking lines.
They converged on Catra's last formation, ready to dismantle it. She studied the rest of the board, her straight-liners could make it back to reinforce quickly, but they were crude, and without easy access to her diagonal pieces- which would need at least three turns each to navigate the web of the board safely- they would only make things harder on Catra.
Angella had just locked Catra out of her escape routes without even having to take any of her pieces, and was about to smash her center apart. She'd been waiting for Catra to take advantage of the apparent weakness of her playstyle.
Catra’s eyes went wide.
“When was the last time you heard from Spinnerella?” She asked, a hand drifting almost numbly down to her own tracker pad. Angella blinked, that benign observation slipping off of her face to make way for a confused furrow of her brow.
“Twenty minutes ago, things are holding steady on the northern front.” Catra swallowed, that's what she'd been afraid of.
“I know who we’re playing against,” she yanked her pad up, fingers tapping the call sequence quickly. “But so does she.”