Chapter Text
She awoke with a start, the same headache from the last week forming in just behind her eyes. Blinking away the harsh light of the barracks morning settings flickering into life, she shifted and felt the familiar weight on her legs, comforting, grounding, even when she dreamt of that.
Squad Leader A05-1, by the Horde classification system, but nicknamed Adora by her squad, stared down at her. Catra, she lay curled up over her legs, her dermal implants visible on the back of her neck. She looked terrible, illness from the last group of implantations affecting her more than anyone in the surviving squad, Kyle included.
Everyone else was still sleeping, most needed recovery time, Commander Cobalt had been generous this morning by setting the alarms back by 5 minutes to account for the extra rest needed even though today was the day to return to training. She wasn’t feeling the need, her body awaking at the normal time, the dream still playing in her head, there was a cockpit but not the familiar cockpit of the Balanced Staff, no this one was made of some strange white and gold, there was a battle, she remembered being hit, she could see the Tiger’s Eye, at least she thought it was the Tiger’s eye, so that meant deployment? And there were other soldiers she didn’t recognize. She was up to her waist in water, but she wasn’t, her chosen skin was, which meant that this water was deep. Then there was the voice, cold but filled with desperation, it just kept repeating her name and saying the same thing, every night for a week.
“Adora, You must bring Balance”
She shifted slightly, her hand trailing the new implant at the back of her neck, it felt… right. The surgeons were impressed by how smoothly it all went and she was mostly recovered by the end of the day, rather than the week recommended for recruits receiving the neural bridge implant. A recovery time Shadow Weaver had praised her for. The rest of the Squad hadn’t been so lucky, an unprecedented infection spreading through the ranks, Gelda, Vin, Furia, Beastal, and Hori all dead or unable to return to active duty and reassigned, half her squad wiped out, with Catra and Kyle barely surviving it. She had held Catra through the worst of the fever even when she tried to hide high in the pipes of the Fright Zone. The thought had rattled her as the others were taken to the infirmary, she would have to work several times harder to make up for the losses.
Unconsciously, her hand had moved to gently circle Catra’s implant, it was red and raw, the fur around it shorn short. Catra had always suffered most from these implants, every time a surgery was scheduled she would hide and every time she was found and dragged out to the waiting room. “Without these” the surgeon would assure her “You will never see active duty.” and it would quiet her, until the convulsions and the vomiting. She would always suffer whilst Adora took every implant and would be out practicing them within a few hours.
As she gently brushed her hand over the torn skin and small metal contraption, Catra opened her beautiful eye, golden yellow staring up at her, and her mouth began to crook into that smile. She opened her mouth to say something when the Alarm to awaken the cadets began to blare, and she snapped her mouth shut. Catra buried her head into Adora’s stomach and she gently covered her ears against the Noise.
Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogellio all began to shift from their bunks, Rogellio handing Kyle a bucket as he emptied out yesterday's ration bars. Catra rolled over in the bunk off of her lap, stretching as she stood, a small grimace of pain on her face, and a barely perceptible trickle of blood ran down the inside of her arm. Adora moved to cover the injury before anyone could notice. Catra looked at her with an inscrutable expression.
Soon everyone was going through the morning routine, showering, dressing, grabbing “fresh” ration bars for the morning meal, it was all so mundane. Catra disappeared off at some point before grabbing food and the three others had all gathered in the mess, leaving Adora alone in the locker room.
Splashing tepid water onto her face, She stared into the mirror, same face she’d always had, same round eyes, same blonde hair falling loose around her shoulders, same slightly crooked nose from that fight with Lonnie a decade ago. So why did something feel different now?
“Cadets of Alpha Squad, please report to the hanger bay 274 to collect your mechs for final assessments.”
Shaking her head to clear it, she tied her hair back into it’s tight ponytail and began the jog down to the hanger bay, moving past active troops and other younger cadets, she made it to the bay and looked around, the huge hanger bay had mechs going from the smallest at only a few feet taller than the average recruit to the biggest mech of the army the 40ft tall Fury of the Horde, already the Sword of Duty, Mind of Metal, Grasping Claw, Toughened Hide, and Icewrought Sentinel were gone, likely scrapped and their resources used for other squads. The loss of those mechs really struck at something in Adora, The Tiger’s Eye also wasn’t in it’s storage unit. Which was strange.
But then she saw it, the Balanced Staff and she couldn’t help but smile, few things in Harrison's Horde could be called your own, not even often your body with the amount of surgeries it required to be considered a proper member of society, but if you proved yourself and worked hard enough, you could earn your own mech beyond the rank and file line. Her squad had worked hard for it, even Kyle, and there were perks for being the best squad in a generation and the Staff was her own, 20 tonnes of Plasteel and hard Ceramics all crammed into a 20ft tall beauty of a mech, painted in the red and blacks of the horde colour, She had spent so much of her free time working on it’s redesign, gone were the heavy rifle and exposed reactor core common to mechs mass produced by the foundry, instead heavy armour plating and a two handed staff made for close quarters combat as was her squads speciality. She felt a small rush of adrenaline just thinking about getting into her.
As she stepped into the cockpit the old familiar sensation of wires plugging her in, with the new joy of neural feedback, it rushed into her systems, and suddenly she felt…strong again, like she could protect everyone from the rebels, from the infection that took half her squad, from shado-…She pushed that thought down hard and focused on the basic start up routine.
A few minutes later, in her large mech, Adora approached the training field, followed by Lonnie in her spear wielding mech, Tomorrow’s Duty, standard issue in everything but the paint job, leather scraps highlighted over the vents and it’s weapon which meant it was only up to the Staff waist, Rogelio with his twin axes in the Beast Within, painted with a loose green on the pauldrons and a head taller than the Tomorrow, and Kyle the only one to have a true ranged weapon in The Screaming Warrior, his standard issue Horde rifle slung over the 12ft tall Mech, he thought it sounded intimidating, it wasn’t, there was no sign of Catra in The Tiger’s Eye.
“Good Morning Cadets, This will be your final examination and the first test of your new neural implants, your mission is to venture into the whispering woods and capture or eliminate the Queen of the Princesses, these violent instigators will use lethal force if given the chance, do not give it to them” Commander Cobalt had given the same briefing on a dozen training op’s before and would give it to dozen more recruits, he couldn’t sound more bored reading it from memory. “Any sign of recruit AC5-3?”
“She’ll be here commander.” Adora assured. He merely grunted in acknowledgement.
“Your time starts now.”
And with that the group dropped down into the training grounds, Adora descending first almost silently, without thought she engaged her back thrusters to cut her descent and landed disturbing no more than some dust, Lonnie came down next, landing with a *Chu-chunk* and taking position behind the rubble of an old mech, Rogelio came down similarly but aiding Kyle who landed with a loud thud, Both Lonnie and Rogelio looked at him, but Adora didn’t even acknowledge the error, scanning the surrounding she found the floor could shift and change and steel pylons jutted to the ceiling simulate the trees of the whispering woods. Moving quickly through the forest scanning for hostile troops at every interval of 10 seconds, the squad made quick progress down into the dark.
It was less than a minute later, approaching the primary objective that their was the first sign of trouble, namely, Kyle getting shot, a tracer round went flying over the Staff’s head in cover and struck kyles exposed mech in the shoulder toppling him immediately. The others all broke for cover, Adora manoeuvred from her current position behind a ‘Tree’ and was scanning for signs of the attacker, Lonnie had drawn a high caliber pistol. Whilst Rogelio was dragging Kyle to cover and assessing the damage to the Screaming Warrior.
“Tomorrow, can you see the shooter?” Adora had shifted into combat mode and was ready for anything, even if that meant a charge through a sniper's killbox.
“Negative Staff, its up in the trees but I can’t tell if it’s at position 3 or 4” Lonnie sent over a quick map showing several potential points.
“I’ll create a distraction, you find it and take the shot.” And with that Adora began to charge across the open field of debris. She saw the figure aiming directly at her, and she heard a gunshot.
The Sniper fell from the tree.
“Nice Shot Tomorrow.” Adora Praised
“What are you talking about, I missed.” Lonnie said, ducking back into cover.
The Staff approached the downed mech cautiously, only too see it’s sparking wires and a long feed cable where the head had been removed in a single clean blow, but before she could lean down to examine it, her proximity warning flared to life, the main target dropping down from above her. Reflexes kicked in her adrenaline spiking as she leaped backwards barely avoiding being skewered by it’s energy blades. With a quick motion her Staff was in her hands fully extended, the twin electrical prongs igniting, and the figure launched forwards in a mad attack, it was quick, but not quick enough, Adora and the Staff moving in Sync bought her staff round in a quick strike against the Princesses leg, a heavy crash and the thing was on the ground.
The Princess lashed out grabbing the Staff with all it’s weight pulling her down into a rough grapple, her staff fell away and suddenly she was attempting to tear this mech apart with her hands, the two rolled on the floor for what felt like minutes, her comms chattering to life as other sounds of gunfire filled the air. But none of it mattered only surviving this encounter. The two mechs rolled until they reached a ledge that wasn’t there a few seconds ago, one of the many hazards in the area, a moving floor to a hundred foot drop onto the steel floor of the training yard. Either of them could go over.
Suddenly a figure was behind the princess, It put one large foot on the princesses struggling back and rolled it off the edge, the Staff dragged with it, Adora scrambled and grabbed onto the edge of the ledge. The Princess tumbling away below her. She looked up into the the wildly unsafe design of Tiger’s Eye, the smallest mech on the Squad only a half dozen feet taller than it’s pilot. Her comms system suddenly clicked on. She hadn’t even realized she had subconsciously switched to a private channel away from the rest of the team so it was just the two of them.
“Hey Adora, How’s it hanging” Catra’s sultry tones oozed over the comm.
“Did you really just wait for us to get into trouble before coming into help, that is low Catra even for you.” The words sounded harsh but there was no venom in it.
“Ahhh…You know nothing's too low for me.” She purred out. Extending one much smaller hand down, the Staff grabbed on. “Now come on, you look stupid down there.”
The room was suddenly much better lit as the floodlights for the training ground came to life, and rather than a battlefield it was clearly just a repurposed set of warehouses. Several mechs lay scattered and destroyed but none of her squad, even the Screaming Warrior was on it’s feet, which meant Kyle wasn’t hit too badly then.
“Training Exercise complete in 3 minutes 12 seconds with no loses, congratulations cadets.”
A round of cheers went up amongst the squad. She had never doubted them, well, never doubted most of them.
“Please report for debriefing and your remaining lessons.”
Adora often thought about how much she hated being outside her mech, the Staff was strong, it gave her a fighting chance, and whilst she trained hard, nothing could match the power of being in a mech. If she could eat and sleep in the Staff she would. But unfortunately she needs to leave it from time to time, even the horde with all their strictures and rules about strength limit the amount of time a pilot can remain in their mech when not on active duty, but soon, with today's results, her and the squad would be granted that privilege. Active combat duty, a chance to really engage the Rebellion and it’s villainous ways.
Still there were a few perks of being outside of her mech, she felt the fur brush up behind her before Catra ever spoke and heat flushed her face before the words reached her ears, probably just the last dregs of adrenaline in her system.
“You should have seen how you looked, wrestling around on the floor like that.” Catra purrs into her ears. “You looked so stupid rolling around.”
Adora turned to face her and just stared at her for a moment, and in that moment Catra put a finger right in the middle of her forehead.
“What, did you hit your head or something? You really should be more ready if someone jumps you.” She said getting low as if ready to pounce.
“Catra, I…” Adora felt the need to say something to her.
“Adora.” The lighting in the room seemed to dim, as Shadow Weaver entered, seemingly floating a few inches above the ground.
Adora snapped to attention, a quick salute, Catra stood more languidly.
“Congratulations are in order over your time today, you did excellent work.” Shadow Weaver moved closer towards the two of them.
“Actually Catra did most of the work, I would have failed without her.” Adora said, grabbing Catra in a loose headlock and pulling her closer.
“Ah yes, how such a miserable failure like you, seems to be able to be in the right place at the right time to take credit from the rest of your team always disappoints me. Adora walk with me.”
Adora looked at Catra, who shrugged, and Adora walked off into the halls of the frightzone, leaving Catra alone in the Barracks…