revivalproject | Some people have a bad day.

Prepared for a fight, Tony was still tense with his fists up as the shadow cleared, making him flinch at the sound of the girls' laughter and try to back away. This blonde girl was in every one of these memories so far, making Tony frown after her, starting to feel whatever betrayal happened between these two himself. But then, he also had a childhood friend leave his life just to come back and try to kill him.

Feeling displaced by this memory enveloping him, though, and Catra's transformation next to him, Tony found his frustration with her difficult to hang onto, glancing her way with inquisitive raised eyebrows instead that softened to an apologetic pout for what they both knew was going to happen anyway. "Are you telling me, or her?" he asked, and only gave Catra a beat before welcoming her to stick close to him as he followed the memory through the glowing door.

Her eyes narrowed, not really sure herself, before she padded after him.

"Wow." Catra stares at the towering crystal before carefully approaching it, circling round it before finally daring to try and touch. She tapped it lightly with a claw and shrieked, a red energy crackling briefly around her before she sucked her fingertip into her mouth with a frown.

Adora looked anxious. "...Maybe we should get out of here," she posed, but a shuddering groan from the doorway made the two of the start with worry, running to hide.

A red cloaked figure approached, with a masked face, and long dark hair that floated and defied the pull of gravity. She hovered towards the crystal the girls hid behind, groaning as she moved, and when she touched it the crystal emitted that same electric glow, making her sigh with relief.

She took a moment to steady her breathing, thinking she was alone, and she removed her mask to make it easier.

Adora gave a startled gasp, loud enough to attract the woman's attention, and though she tried to cover it with her hand, the face that spun round on them was truly frightening.

"GET OUT!" she cried, and the girls ran, Catra lagging behind Adora before the way out was obstructed by a wall of shadow.

"Catra. You stay," the woman said in an eerily calm voice, that crackling red energy holding the girl in place mid stride, a terrified expression on her face before she moved to stand at attention with a pained grunt.

"What the hell is that?" Tony asked as he followed the memory of Catra close enough to jump back with her as she was shocked by the crystal. He didn't follow as the girls ran, leaning close to the thing again, head tilted to watch the new figure approach out of the corner of his eye, then Catra curiously. He was moving again with the flurry of motion, watching the girls run by by focusing his scrutiny on this new person, hands held behind his back but sliding up next to her like he could smell her.

"The Black Garnet," Catra supplied, "...It's a Runestone. They're power sources for the princesses. Shadow Weaver figured out how to channel the power for herself though."

The woman- Shadow Weaver- ensured her mask was back in place.

"What do you think you're doing in here?" she purred, waving a hand which turned Catra on the spot to face her.

"We were just playing-" she started.

"Insolent child," Shadow Weaver interrupted, drawing closer, "I've come to expect such disgraceful behavior from you. But I will not allow you to drag Adora down as well."

"Shadow Weaver, it wasn't her fault- it was my idea too," Adora insisted.

"You have never been anything more than a nuisance to me," Shadow Weaver pressed on, ignoring Adora, "I've kept you around this long because Adora was fond of you. But if you EVER do anything to jeopardize her future, I will dispose of you myself," she growled, lifting Catra's trembling frozen form into the air.

"Please, stop," Adora tried again, this time putting herself between the two of them, arms outstretch to act as a shield to Catra. The shadows fell away and back to Shadow Weaver, who straightened with confronted with Adora, eyes softening behind her mask.

She wandered away from the pair of them, holding her head, and Catra gave a small whimper, still frozen in place. Adora ran after her. "She didn't mean to-" she assured, and Shadow Weaver stopped, voice far sweeter as she addressed her.

"Adora," she purred, "You must do a better job of keeping her under control." She released Catra without looking her way, and she fell to the floor with a sigh. Shadow Weaver delicately fixed Adora's hair, tucking it back behind her ear, "Do not let something like this happen again," she admonished gently, giving her a fond pat on the head.

Catra had pushed up onto her knees, holding herself and looking up fearfully, longingly, as she trembled.

It wasn't easy getting a read on who this person was to these children, and Tony ran his close calculations until she was moving away from him. He didn't have to be that close to understand perfectly well that the memory Catra was being restrained and that must have been awful, so he sidled further away from the scene to join Catra on the sidelines, hands still tucked away and in his pockets now but close to her shoulder. His stomach jumped as she fell int he memory, but he otherwise just frowned as he watched until the person gave Adora her pat. He cocked his head closer to Catra then like he was trying to keep his voice down in a theatre and muttered, "So why didn't she turn out to be a murdering asshole?" with a gesture of his chin toward Adora. "You got something better than, we were both abused and she bounced? Please."

Catra's eyes narrowed, skirting away with a frown, and the scene shifted again.

Shadow Weaver peered over a glowing basin, seeming to be working some kind of magic, while Catra leaned against the wall, looking very much like she didn't want to be there. She looked about the age she was now, give or take a year or so, much more practiced in that scowl of hers.

"For the last time, where . is . Adora?" Shadow Weaver demanded, looking to her ward.

Catra looked much more openly defiant than she had as a child, arms crossed. "For the last time, I don't know. You think I keep her on a leash?"

"I know you're lying. You two are close. She would never depart without telling you."

Catra narrowed her eyes, clearly affected by those words. "Then I guess she let us both down, huh?" she continued, refusing to budge.

"Have it your way," Shadow Weaver purred, "I all ready know where she is." Catra looked surprised, approaching Shadow Weaver's side. "We've been tracking her."

"Uh, then why did you ask me?" Catra demanded.

"Because you are going to bring. her. back," Shadow Weaver insisted, rounding on Catra.

"I don't think so," Catra declined with a smirk, and she started to turn from her when she was frozen in place with that same magic, giving a grunt of pain as she struggled against it.

Shadow Weaver only held her under it for a moment before approaching her from behind, catching her by the shoulders in a perverted maternal gesture.

"Your insolence will not protect her," she hissed in Catra's ear, "You will do as I ask."

Despite her trembling, there was still bite in Catra's voice as she spat back, "Yeah? Or what?" And Shadow Weaver grabbed her sharply round the jaw, forcing her to look back at her.

"Or you will suffer the consequences in her place," she warned, staring her dead in the eye.

In Tony's experience, they didn't have a lot of control over what actually happened in these dreams. If he wanted someone to leave, he couldn't wish for it hard enough, and if he didn't want to show something or change how it felt, he couldn't hide it. So he knew it was unfair when he said, "None of this is proving to me that you made the right call." He pointed to Shadow Weaver, the architect of this misery, and asked, "You still on her team?"

"I'm not trying to prove anything," she grumbled, looking to Shadow Weaver before they faded back to the bunk room. "She left," she answered finally, half dodging the question. "It's my team now."

"Oh, so now you get to push everyone around, I get it," Tony muttered, arms crossed and frowning absently at something over Catra's shoulder like this wasn't even that worth engaging with.

She narrowed her eyes and scrambled to climb to the top of the bunks to avoid that judging tone, jumping across a few to settle at one further from the entrance.

"Just get out here," she grumbled, crossing her arms.

Tony would have been glad to leave Catra to wallow in her own misery until she figured out being cruel wasn't the answer to experiencing cruelty, but they had a little problem. He opened his arms to the room, the door he had come in through long gone, and no other obvious option except a creeping void that was making Tony concerned that this girl was hiding some kind of slow onset brain degeneration. "What, do you expect me to go in there?" he asked, gesturing to the blankness.

Catra huffed, but eyes the growing expanse with a frown, gaze creeping back to Tony and then away again.

"If you go in there you'll disappear. Stay away from it," she growled, hoping back across the bunks and over the wall where the door ought to be, pounding at it and slicing gouges into it with her claws. "Come on!" she cried in frustration, near tears again, fists pounding into the metal walls to keep from letting herself cry.

The approach made Tony quickly slide out of the way, further from the door and closer to the encroaching nothing, glancing much like Catra had between it and her, not sure which he trusted less. It really wasn't clear if this new outburst was because she just really didn't want him here, or that void, but felt perhaps unreasonably optimistically that if she did just want him to leave that bad, she wouldn't really care what the void did to him.

"Hey..." he tried, inching closer again like he might risk putting himself between Catra and the wall where she could hurt herself. "I haven't died in one of these yet." That really was supposed to be reassuring.

She growled, rounding on him with narrowed eyes, not sure what exactly had her the most upset right now, hand poised like she might strike him next, but huffed out a breath and managed to calm herself.

"I don't care if you do," she mumbled, "It's not like I like you or anything."

"Yeah, noted, loud and clear, general," Tony dismissed, sidling closer yet, hand out to direct her away from the wall and maybe toward the void. "I'm just saying, there are worse things that can happen," he tried, other hand out like he could present another option besides 'inevitable death', and couldn't really come up with one. He didn't know what to expect from the nothingness and, honestly, kind of wanted to claw the walls to get away from it, too, so he couldn't make any other confident proclamations.

She frowned, a look on her face which suggested she'd come up against these sorts of odds more than once and opted for inevitable death over losing face. Still, she took a few steps away from the wall, heavy breath slowing, and ears turning in an embarrassed sort of fashion.

"Look...I don't want you to see what's in there-" she said, gesturing towards the void, "So just...pick some other memory so it'll let you out of here."

That was certainly different than being afraid of the void, and the behaviour made a little more sense now. Catra's memories were really insistent. As though he didn't quite catch what Catra was saying, Tony continued insistently, "I'm sure it's not that bad...", waving to draw Catra further away from the wall and to follow as he led them to meet the encroaching white.

"Don't go in there-" she tried to insist, ears pinning low, sighing as he crossed that threshold and triggered the memory.

The nothingness encompassed them both, swallowing up the room before spitting them back out in some other section of the base. A imposing man with red eyes -Hordak- watched as a sword hung at the center of it all, electric sparks arcing all around. That same girl, Adora was there, bound by her wrists and gagged off to the side, pleading and straining as Catra ran into the room.

"The Princesses are here-" she panted, "There's no time to waste. We need to open the portal."

Hordak didn't look back. "Where's Entrapta?" he demanded, "I need her."

Catra scowled, and then gave a cruel grin, thinking fast on her feet. "Who do you think let the Princesses in?"

Hordak gasped in betrayal, seething a moment before slamming his fist into the button before him, breaking the machinery. "But she-- She wouldn't," he insisted, and Catra laughed, even as he rounded on her.

"Did you really think she was on our side?" His features shifted from rage to shock, and Catra straightened, "Oh, you can't trust anyone, especially, a Princess." She turned to deliver a poignant glare to Adora. "They'll just use you to get what they want. Open the portal and let's end this."

Adora screamed desperately behind her gag and Hordak approached the lever.

Suddenly they were interrupted by the girl's friends, one of them shouting- "This way," as they burst into the room.

Adora knocked off her gag and screamed for her friend, "Bow!"

"Forget about them! Pull the switch!" Catra demanded, and that nothing seemed to be growing at the edges again, dancing just out of reach.

She was blasted aside by purple magic, growling as she slid across the floor. Hordak fought with the intruders, and soon the room was rumbling ominously, moments away from falling apart.

There was a dangerous, almost feral look in Catra's eye as she looked to the switch, and as she approached it Adora pleaded desperately- "Catra, please don't!"

Catra turned slowly to look at her former friend a cruel smile on her face as her eyes narrowed, and without a word she pulled the switch while looking her in the eye.

"Nooo!" Adora cried, the device rumbling to life, the sword throwing off light and increasing arcs of electricity, and then a blinding light swallowed EVERYTHING.

This wasn't so bad. Being in a void is about what Tony expected of stepping into a void, so he couldn't really be too uncomfortable now that all the noise was gone and he was left in the white light. That didn't mean he was any closer to understanding it, though, so to the void he asked, "What did you do...?" They had called it a portal, but it didn't feel like much of one to Tony.

"It was supposed to be a portal. To let us contact the universe outside of Despondos, to contact Horde Prime...But it didn't work like that," Catra explained.

Out of the nothing a room constructed itself, like the bunk room, but with a larger single bed, a red banner hanging above it. Adora was asleep in the bed, and Catra perched over her, trying to wake her.

"Adora?"

Adora woke with a start, grabbing Catra who started and tried to calm her. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Adora." She grabbed her wrists firmly to still her struggling, "Heh. Since when do you sleep in?" she asked, flashing a teasing smile, and Adora looked confused.

"...Where am I? How did I get here?"

Catra frowned, looking concerned. "Ah...you're in your room? Are you okay?"

"I...I'm fine. I was just having a weird dream. There was something I needed to fix."

"Of course you dream about work," Catra teased, "There's nothing to fix, Adora. Everything's perfect."

"Yeah," Adora gave an uncertain laugh, "It was just a dream."

Catra helped pull her up with a smile. "Come on. Get up." She jumped away and looked back with a playful laugh, goading Adora to follow as she ran out the door. Adora stopped to put on her jacket, pausing to look in the mirror and as she did she frowned, and for a moment the world around them flickered and buffered, like some sort of glitch.

Tony didn't really know what to do with this, what felt like, entirely separate memory, wanting to put it on pause so they could deal with the portal thing and address the fact that 'portal' was not a device which with people established contact and that should have been their first clue. This felt like another time in these girl's lives in this military where they weren't fighting and were more friendly again, making Tony watch Adora apologetically, feeling very much like she was Catra's long-suffering Rhodes now. He shrugged it off with a frown to turn to Catra and ask, "Why didn't she want you to do that?"

It wasn't as unrelated as it might have seemed.

Catra scoffed, rolling her eyes like Tony wasn't keeping up with things. "Because if Horde Prime sent the Horde the rest of his armies then we'd conquer Etheria. And because she knew the portal wouldn't work how it was supposed to. It happened before."

The girls walked through the halls, Horde soldiers stopping and saluting as they passed, whispering among themselves about Adora, and breaking into cheers.

"...What are they all looking at?" Adora asked.

"You," Catra supplied as though it were obvious. "The Invasion of Thaymor went perfectly. You're the hero of the hour."

"Thaymor?"

The memory fractured again, flickering and jumping like a skipping record.

"Oh. Yeah. I defeated the rebel insurgents at Thaymor. Yeah." Adora laughed, as though she just now remembered, "I did that."

"Oh please. You couldn't have done it without me," Catra teased, looping an arm over Adora's shoulder and pulling her close.

"Riiiiight. What would I ever do without you?" She shoved her playful, and Catra fell into another soldier who rounded angrily on her.

"Hey! Watch where you're going, twerp!" he threatened, before catching sight of the stern looking Adora and backing down.

"Force Captain! I'm sorry. I didn't know you were- I'm so sorry-"

"You'd better be. Dismissed," Adora instructed, her and Catra's arms crossed in a united front as he bowed and backed away.

Once he was gone they burst out laughing. "Oh, Force Captain, don't hurt me!~" Catra mocked, putting on a dramatic reenactment. "Oh. Too good."

"Where are we going again?" Adora asked.

"To the locker room. There's something I wanna show you," Catra insisted, leading them down the hall.

"Then why are we going the long way around? Let's take the side door right-"

She turned to point, but the door that had been there a moment ago was gone.

"What? It's always been this way. Are you sure you're okay?"

"...Yeah. I'm okay," Adora tried to dismiss, and Catra hurried over to examine her.

"Do you have a concussion or something? I know you get hit on the head a lot. But I figured your dumb little hair poof would cushion the blow."

Tony was still not following. It didn't look like it could have gone that bad to him, they were still a strong army and doing...whatever it was the Horde did. What Tony did say was, "Your memory is a little corrupted," not sure which parts of these glitches he was supposed to be following, and if the void had something to do with Catra's brain not working right like he had suspected.

"It's the portal. This isn't real," Catra mumbled, watching as the girls rough housed before falling into the locker room where they were greeted with a chorus of 'surprise!'

"What is this?" Adora asked, Kyle holding out a plate with few grey blocks mushed together, a drawing of Adora scratched into the top like it was some kind of cake. "Are those ration bars?"

"We wouldn't have been able to defeat the rebels at Thaymor without you," Lonnie proclaimed, "Plus, you were the one who convinced Shadow Weaver into letting us come. So, we all pitched in, took Kyle's ration bars for a week and made this."

"I'm hungry, but celebrating your victory is worth it," Kyle agreed.

"You guuuys," Adora moved to hug them, "You even got the gray kind! It's way better than the brown kind."

"Hey, it was Catra's idea," Lonnie said.

"Oh yeah?" Adora rounded on Catra with a smirk.

"Eh, whatever. Don't make a big deal about it," Catra dismissed with a grin.

"Wow. I can't believe you like me," Adora teased, grabbing Catra in a headlock, and giving her a noogie. "That is so embarrassing."

"Owww. Stop it. Get off. This is not because I like you," she countered, squirming free and pouncing on Adora. The fall bumped Kyle who dropped the makeshift cake, and the cadets broke out into laughter, admonishing Kyle and tossing bits of ration bar at each other.

"Adora-" The festivities were interrupted by the appearance of Shadow Weaver, "Get off the floor. You are the Force Captain who sacked Thaymor."

The girls sheepishly got to their feet, looking as apprehensive as they always did in the memories that involved her.

"Sorry, Shadow Weaver," Adora recited.

"And you-" She gestured to Catra, who wilted in apprehension, but then, what looked to be violent gesture turned kind, gently wiping some of the mess from Catra's cheek. The girl smiled in a way the memories suggested she never had around her guardian. "Look at you. You're a mess. Go get yourself cleaned up," Shadow Weaver purred, using that same sweet voice she used with Adora, petting over Catra's hair and cheek in a motherly way before gripping her shoulder gently. "You are no longer children. I have high hopes for you both. Do not waste your time on such foolish games."

Of course it wasn't real, none of this was real, though Catra's brain in general so far had a uniquely unreal quality to it that made Tony suspect she meant the portal gave her the brain damage, and now they were stuck in whatever fragmented dementia reality that left her with. That would explain why everyone was suddenly being so nice to her at once, instead of wicked at every turn. This theory didn't leave Tony confident which version of events were the reality, or even if it held any water--an abusive authority figure running hot and cold was not a far-fetched warping of reality. "They all leave you," Tony said, looking skeptically to Catra as all of these friends surrounded her enthusiastically.

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