Space Bat Month 2026!
This one’s sort of a combo post for days 8 and 12, love and missing.
Prepare to be Entrapdak’d, angst/comfort
To preface, this takes place on Darla after Catra gets her chip off but I make time bendy to include a Hordak moment that happened before that, for the vibes and parallels :3
Also is this space bat enough for the SBM tags? Genuinely would appreciate warranted feedback
Loved a Missing Piece
Her hand closed over empty space again.
Entrapta quickly withdrew from her pocket as her mask slammed over her face. Bow startled next to her and just barely snatched his hands back from the open panel of Darla’s they were working on as it fell shut out of her hair.
“Hey!” he squeaked. He huffed in annoyance and turned to face her with a stern face. “Maybe some warning next time? Because, y’know, fingers?”
Entrapta’s hair coiled around her as she backed away. “S- sorry!”
Bow’s expression softened. “Hey, it’s alright, accidents happen!”
She couldn’t think of words to respond with and only nodded. Her fingers brushed through the tightening ponytails.
“Entrapta… is everything okay?”
She perked up instantly. “Nope- I mean, Yep! Everything’s fine! Uh- I’ll be right back!” Her hair whipped loose and flung her into the nearest vent, leaving behind the concerned Bow.
Entrapta raced through the narrow chutes, carelessly catching corners and leaving dents in ducts where she forgot her own speed. Finding the right exit, she charged through it and tumbled into the engine bay. The semi-circle room was dark, lit only by the faint pink glow coming from the magic fusion reactor in the middle of the flat side. This type of fusion kept the room thankfully cool and she could feel the cold metal through her gloves as she crawled towards the tent pitched off the side of the cylindrical heart of Darla.
Around the middle of the cylinder there was a ring of little windows that let out the magic’s light and… why did it have to be this exact shade of pink? Entrapta winced and slithered into her tent. Inside, it was difficult to see. Her portable computer was shut off and carefully stowed so only a faint sliver of pink light lit the space.
She sniffled and pushed up her mask as she crawled onto the mattress she had stowed away in here, piled with all the spare blankets she could find. The back of her gloved hand came up to wipe at her eyes as she settled into the nest. “It has to work… it just has to work,” Entrapta whispered to herself as she pulled a blanket over her head to block out the rest of the light.
Entrapta lost track of time as she laid in the dark, twisting the fingers of her gloves while her mind ran probabilities over and over and over again. She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t hear the footsteps and whispers unfold into Darla’s engine bay. A knock startled her out of the 456th run of her formulas.
“Entrapta? Are you in there?” she heard Bow’s concerned voice ask.
Again, she didn’t know what to say or even if she wanted to speak at all.
A slight sniffing noise came through the tent. “Yep, she’s in there.”
“Catra?” Entrapta croaked and sat up out of the nest as a flap of the tent was pulled aside.
Bow kneeled down as the painful pink light filled the tent. “Hey, uh… can we come in?”
Entrapta nodded and wordlessly cleared space in the tent, her mind half back to running probabilities and the other half numbed. Bow took off his bow and crawled inside, then Catra kneeled behind him. Their eyes met for a moment before Catra turned away and mumbled, “I can just leave, if you want me to.”
“No, I just want the tent closed to block out the light,” Entrapta stated and Bow patted an empty space on the mattress next to him. Catra hesitated for a moment then crawled inside, thankfully closing up the tent fabric behind her. “Is something else wrong with Darla or your datapad again?”
“No, no, I was actually worried if something was wrong for you?” Bow began before cutting off with a sigh, “And if it was from earlier, I totally get it. I shouldn’t’ve gotten upset like that-”
“No, you were justifiably upset, I think. You almost had your fingers chopped off.” Entrapta stated. “I can always make you new ones though!”
“O… okay… I’ll keep that in mind… But it still seemed like something had you upset so we came to check on you. Do you want to talk about it?”
Entrapta looked at the mess of blankets beneath her and dropped her mask. “Uhm… give me a second to think,” she answered with a soft voice.
“Sure, no rush,” Bow said.
Her fingers brushed through her hair as she mulled over thoughts and ran another set of calculations. Slowly, her mask was pushed up. “I miss him. I miss him so much.”
“You’re talking about Hordak… right?” Bow said and Catra brought her knees up to her chest.
“Hordak…” Entrapta whispered and brushed a hand over her eyes again. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever have another lab partner like him again. Hordak was just the best- Oh, sorry Bow! You’re great, and I didn’t mean to offend you!”
Bow snorted, “Don’t worry, I am not offended. I’m not a lab guy. But I don’t really get like… uh… I guess, what made him likeable?”
“Well at the surface level not much because he made a concerted effort to distance everyone. I cross-referenced his actions with all my psychology textbooks and it really was by the book. He was also completely dysregulated with severe chronic pain and I can relate to struggling with dysregulation. Since it wasn’t really a genuine behavior, I ignored it and we ended up lab partners! And it was great! He would understand my ideas and would follow along with everywhere I went with them! He knew so much and could build anything! And he designed almost everything in the Fright Zone, it’s amazing!” Entrapta squealed, remembering the first time she got to lay eyes on his work. “If the Etherian’s Maker Society comes back after we get rid of Prime, I want him to join!”
Bow cleared his throat. “I, uh, I’m not sure that would happen- but I see why you would want that!”
“Oh, it would be so exciting to see what else he could make! And everything we could make together!” Entrapta exclaimed, her hair frizzing at all the ideas she had begun daydreaming again after leaving Beast Island. A moment later, she deflated and lilac hair puddled limply at her sides. “But I missed the chance to bring him back again and with the mind wiping you told us about, Catra, there’s a chance that… that I’ll never get my lab partner back.”
Catra sunk deeper into her knees, a hand coming up to the back of her neck.
Entrapta reached for her mask, but a lethargy came over her and the gloved hand dropped back onto her lap. At least it was dark enough in the tent to hide her face.
It was a while before Bow broke the silence. “Well… then there’s a chance that you’ll get, uh, your lab partner back! You can’t give up hope!”
Entrapta perked up again. “Oh I haven’t! Did you see the crystal I tried to give to Wrong Hordak?”
“I think? Maybe?” Bow said, scratching his head. “What about it?”
“I left it on the flagship!”
Catra sat up, her ears folded back. “What!? Why would you do that!? Didn’t it like, I dunno, mean something to you guys!? And you just abandoned it!?” she said, almost shouting then quickly folded back up. “Or whatever, not like I know anything about it.”
Entrapta smiled back at her, recognizing that Catra was speaking more through projection of her own pain, rather than genuine upset. So Entrapta ignored the behavior and continued. “I left it so that Hordak would find it!”
“Wait, wait, wait! How do you know whether he’ll-” Bow began before Entrapta, too excited to hold back, interrupted.
“I’m glad you asked! Originally, my plan was to find him myself, show him the crystal, and take him back onto Darla with us! But when we were hanging onto the outside of Darla getting pulled into the flagship and I saw just how massive the ship was, I had a backup idea that ended up becoming the main idea. Since the ship was sooooo big, it greatly decreased the probability of us finding him, and when I mistook Wrong Hordak for him, I realized I might not be able to find him at all!”
Entrapta paused and scratched at her chin with a lock of hair. “In hindsight, I should have anticipated that earlier since I have prosopagnosia… Well, anyway, I realized that finding Hordak might be off the table entirely so instead of me finding him, the question became could I make him find me? And the answer became Darla! And Darla was also the answer to the question of ‘how do we get out of a massive alien flagship with an entire Galactic Horde’s worth of clones on our twin tails!?’ And it worked just like I knew it would! Getting us out of there safe and sound!”
“…Buuuuut what about the crystal?” Bow asked.
“What crystal- OH! Right! Since we were in a highly compromised position, the crystal had to be left behind since we needed to go! Pronto! Stat! ASAP! So I made remote alterations to Darla in between running scans for the server room, thankfully everything got done just in time, so that she could overclock her forward shields and lock onto a specific sound frequency that my server room scans hadn’t picked up on yet which would have made it wholly unique to the environment for simple and easy triangulation! I took a calculated risk that what I assume are regular fusion-gravity engines, or maybe singularity impulse? No definitely just cold fusion on ion fields to space bend. I took a calculated risk that Darla would not fly through anything excessively volatile like that and I was right! The engines of Prime’s ship were most likely housed in the side super structures so the main body of the ship was perfectly safe to fly through! Or, uh… Perfectly safe for US to fly through! Wait, was I talking about something else?”
“…The crystal,” Bow reminded her.
“The crystal! So it was necessary to fly Darla through the ship, creating a whole bunch of mess, so that Prime would have to have his clones present in the vicinity for an extended period of time. Another key part of the plan I got from Glimmer telling us about the existence of the hive mind but also specifically what Wrong Hordak said about it when he was disconnected. When he mentioned that Horde Prime could see his thoughts, that let me know that the hive mind connection was incredibly detailed to the point that visual stimuli was transmittable. The only thing I had to be sure of then was that the hive network was not just uplines to Prime but a unilaterally connected network. Now, with what I know of Hordak’s biology and cybernetics, and with him being a clone of Prime, the data supported a unilateral network being present because there is no way in all of TECHNO-MAGIC that a being with any similarity with Hordak is capable of single-handedly processing a hive mind like that! If somehow Horde Prime was doing that then his operating temperature would be as hot as a star or hot fusion on plasma transformers! And Catra!”
The magicat startled with a squeak as Entrapta called her name but there was no time to call her cute when logic needed to be explained.
“You actually confirmed all my hive mind hypotheses when you were able to do a reverse entry into the hive mind to Prime! You not only showed the network to be unilateral in nature, but also to be constantly transmitting visual data- which was perfect!”
“Okay that’s… great. Ca-can we go back to talking about Hordak’s crystal now?” Catra mumbled, rubbing the back of her neck again.
“Oh I still am! Because knowing what I needed to made the plan a GO!” she shouted with excitement and rose up on her hair, making her head poke into the roof of the tent. “With the wreckage caused by Darla and the right connections within the hive mind, the perfect setting was ready for the crystal! Before the dust cleared, I stowed it away with just enough visibility to remain hidden from anyone unless they had deep emotional memory priming of the crystal. Tucked away nice and safe from being deeeep in the amygdala! And if anyone but Hordak did see it, he would still have access to the visual in the hive mind and would subconsciously seek it out! Thankfully, Hordak is a very visual person!”
“I don’t want to know how you know that…” Bow said under his breath.
“Okay! I won't tell you if you don’t want to know. Catra?”
“No thanks.”
Entrapta shrugged. “So, where was I? Oh, right! So to this point everything worked out how I thought it would and all that is left is that he finds the crystal, which will be a sure thing with the hive mind, and then…” She sighed and sank back down to her knees. “And then it falls apart here. I keep running and running the numbers, reading and re-reading research and there’s just no way to show with significance if…” Her words cut off and lilac hair wrapped around her.
“…If he feels the same way about you that you feel about him,” Bow finished her sentence. “Oh, Entrapta…”
Entrapta clapped a hand over her mouth and only nodded, not caring whether her response was visible in the dark as she let tears finally leave her eyes. Tears that had waited since finding the LUVD crystal in the wreckage of the Fright Zone, or waking up on Beast Island, or perhaps even back to the first time she ever felt alone in her life.
Her lab partner was left behind.
The air stilled in her tent, disturbed only by her soft, muffled cries.
Hordak was left behind.
Alternate theories that she usually had the fortitude to dismiss began to churn in her mind. What if her plan failed? What if the crystal was lost or taken by Prime? What if they never crossed paths? What if his memories were truly gone? What if he would never be complete again? What if Prime’s programming was too strong? What if he did remember? What if Hordak could be himself but didn’t… What if he never did in the first place?
Hair constricted around her as the questions continued, each unanswered and each louder than the last. What if after what if after what if what if what if what if what-if-what-if-what-if-WHAT-IF-WHAT-IFWHATIFWHATIF-
“He does.”
Entrapta startled and looked up towards Catra’s steadfast voice, meeting her heterochromatic gaze.
“Hordak loved you back.” Blue and yellow eyes shifted away. “I know you probably won’t believe anything I say- and I don’t blame you- but just… trust me on this. He loved you back, like, a lot.”
Despite no data being offered with her words and a painful history between them, she couldn’t find fault with Catra’s words, they were true. Something in her heart was willing to stake everything magicat’s words. “I believe you.” Entrapta felt a smile tug on her lips as a small ember of confidence over her plan reignited. “Thank you, Catra.”
Catra cleared her throat and looked between different corners of the tent. “Ye-Yeah, sure. No problem.”
Entrapta sighed and rubbed her eyes free of tears. “Thank you too, Bow, for coming to check on me.”
“Hey, of course, this is what we do for friends! And I get it with missing someone, it really sucks.”
“What do you miss, Bow?” Entrapta asked. “I want to repay your social kindness and etiquette says to- oop…” She covered her face with her hair and hands, “…to also not say that part out loud. Aaah~ sorry!”
Bow lightly chuckled. “All good, no need to apologize. I appreciate you asking. I miss my dads and brothers. It’s kind of weird because I didn’t miss them much before but now with Prime on Etheria…” He trailed off and Entrapta could hear him shift uncomfortably as her hair unwrapped from her face. “I’m really, really worried about them. My dads and I haven’t even heard from a couple of my brothers since Prime showed up.” Bow sat up straighter before continuing. “You know what? When we get back, I’m gonna work twice as hard to find everyone! Entrapta, you have any ideas?”
“Hmm…” She tapped her fingers together. “Ooooohh what if we captured and reprogrammed Prime’s flying drones! Or made stealth ones that could even spy on the clones! Or we could do both! We’ll find everyone and then-” she cut off with an excited squeak, “spy on high tech aliens!”
“Woo! That sounds like a plan! Sign me up for aaallll of that! And hey, maybe we’ll see Hordak somehow.”
Entrapta, too excited for words, clasped her hands in front of her as her hair curled with the feeling.
“What about you, Catra? Do you miss anything?” Bow asked.
“Actually… yeah. I miss my hair,” she responded, rubbing a hand over head. “Short hair is just weird. It’s never been this short before; I don’t think I was even born with short hair. It sticks up all stupid for no reason and it takes me an hour to wash it back into place. Also, I’m cold all the time now, and literally everywhere is cold! Ugh! What is with that!? Why do you all want to be icicles!?”
“I have hair. Wanna borrow some?” Entrapta offered.
Catra snorted. “Sure. Why not.”
“Okay, boop!” she said, sticking one of her twin tails over Catra’s head, who immediately broke out into laughter.
“I probably look so dumb right now! At least it’s warm. Pfft, imagine if Adora could see me right now!”
“Oh, hold on, I gotta check something real quick,” Bow said, taking out his data pad. He tapped at the screen for a few seconds before snapping it up in front of his face and saying, “Smile!”
A flash of light filled Catra’s horrified face.
“Aaaaand sending to Adora, now!”
Entrapta giggled as Catra fought off the lilac hair and sputtered. “No! You- pfflegh in my mouth- you can’t send it- don’t send it to her! Give me that!”
“Ohhh! Send it to me Bow!”
“Sure thing, Entrapta- whoa!” Bow cried out as Catra lunged for the data-pad.
“No! What, are you gonna send it to the whole princess alliance!? And you freaking blinded me with that!” Catra growled as Bow held her and the datapad apart.
“Actually, that was in the area of just 40 lumens. Ooo~ but I could probably pack a 10,000 lumen flashlight into a data-pad which could instantly blind someone in broad DAYlight! AHHAHA!!!” Entrapta began a correction, spiraling quickly into the possibility of another size vs power min-max engineering challenge.
“Oh really!? You should make one for me!” Catra said, still reaching for Bow’s data pad.
“Sure! One souped up mega-light coming right up!”
“Entrapta, NO!” Bow squeaked. “With great power comes great responsibility and she will flout the responsibilityyyyyy!”
“Entrapta, YES! Make it because I WANT IT!”
“And I’ll add a lens to focus the light into a laser that can instantly cook a WHOLE CHICKEN! For SCIENCE!!!! AAAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!”
Catra cheered and Bow mock cried over too many lumens as Entrapta doubled over, holding her sides as she cackled with laughter. Eventually, she caught her breath and wiped a tear of mirth away. She ran the numbers of her plan in her head for one last calculation, and this time…
They worked.
— — —
Far behind them, the Velvet Glove hung in the void of space with a gash cut into her side.
A nameless servant of Prime startled out of his meditation. This insignificant cell of the empire had been haunted by visions. The visions were of something that sapped at his attention. None of his brothers had experienced anything similar and it lacked enough significance to be brought to Horde Prime. Quirks could be experienced through the hive mind but they were rarely more than just subatomic particles charging through a piece of the mind. And it would be no surprise for a defect like him to experience more irregularities than normal clones. Kind recognizing kind. But there was something about these visions that warranted investigation;
They were all of the same pink light.
He had run the probabilities in his head over and over and over again and the chance of coincidence like that was one in a number so high that it resided in the next dimension.
No. This was no coincidence. There was something he needed to find.
With every meditation, every empty minute of emptiness between entering or exiting a pod and being powered down for his body to rest, every moment where his hands could be distracted but his mind left free, he mulled over these visions. He chewed through any other detail they carried until he found another similarity between them; a location on the ship.
The servant rose early from his short rest. He volunteered his labor for the continued work of repairing the damaged flagship and charted his way to the location, the very heart of the wreckage. He trudged through the rubble scanning for the color as he stepped over the work he should have been doing.
Another flash of the pink light. He quickly chased the vision in his mind only to realize it had come from his own eyes. The clone casted his gaze down and saw a slighted hint of the color at his feet. He knelt and brushed away light debris. Finally this torment could be laid to rest and he could serve his Lord in peace. The source of the visions was in his fingers at last.
A crystal.
He looked closer at it, raising a brow as he puzzled over the object. Why would such a small thing cause him such
imperfection.
Imperfection…
It turned to flash the pink light, completely filling his eyes, before reflecting the shocked expression on his face.
“En… trapta?”
