Entrapta's Nightmare

Entrapta happily slurped on a small fruit smoothie, complete with a tiny umbrella and straw. She used her other hand to pop a small cupcake shaped like a kitten into her mouth.

“Log 175,” she spoke into her recorder. “It appears that after several simulated scenarios of the portal’s potential, there’s a 99.8% chance that reality as we know it will collapse and get sucked in by the gateway. Best to collect as much as I can. Oh how I envy one who can collect data when getting stuck in a loophole!”

Had Entrapta been in the modern world, she would’ve happily sung along to the band Muse’s song “Unsustainable,” and compared herself with Fu, the mischievous purple time traveling ki from the Dragon Ball Super show. He would bend reality and bring people together to fight in the name of science and entertainment. Oh, and getting to meet and debate with Bill Nye the Science Guy would’ve been interesting as well.

Entrapta shook her head and laughed. “Back to the task, shall we?”

Entrapta was lost in the working moment, fixing up another bot and trying to come up with an alternate safer portal machine to make. She heard footsteps from behind her and turned around. Hordak stood in the shadows, glaring down at her with angry red eyes.

Entrapta, however, was unfazed. “Oh, hi, there Hordak!” she said. “I remember trying to tell you that opening the portal would be very dangerous and cause everything to be sucked in and blown up. So now here I am, coming up with an alternative interdimensional gateway that could be opened with other types of First’s Ones…”

She was interrupted with a growl from the Horde leader, his sharp teeth bared.

“You would dare let the princesses in, behind my back?”

Entrapta stared back in confusion.

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hordak.”

“Don’t play the fool. I should’ve realized that trusting a princess could only spell trouble for the Horde.”

“I’m sure they probably let themselves in. It’s not my fault that I left Adora alone for a bit…I was just typing in potential scenarios on the screen to see what would happen if the portal were opened.”

“What’s done is done,” he sneered. He turned away from her. “And here I thought, we would be compatible…associates.”

“Well, we are still lab partners, right?” Entrapta pressed. “There’s no need to get upset over some minor setbacks.”

“This setback was not minor! I heard what Catra said, ‘did you really think she was on our side? Oh, you can’t trust anyone, especially a princess. They’ll just use you to get what they want.’”

Entrapta gasped. “She… said that to you? But that’s not true. I’d never…”

“I have no time to deal with your lies,” Hordak spat, cutting her off. “You have betrayed me and you betrayed the Horde. Your actions will have grave consequences.”

“But…but…surely you’d understand the dangers of the portal…and our love of technological advancement.”

“Maybe I should’ve killed you myself,” Hordak muttered, almost to himself. “Or banished you to Beast Island, along with the others who foolishly questioned my authority.”

“I’m telling the truth, I swear,” Entrapta protested. “I never let them in.”

Tears erupted from Entrapta’s eyes, even though she didn’t consider herself emotional that often. “Who will help modify your suits of armor and keep you company? Who will encourage you to keep going and pursue your goals? When will you realize…that being different is never a bad thing…”

“I don’t need your help nor your guidance!” Hordak bellowed. “I will get my revenge on Horde Prime and conquer Etheria on my own. And no more princesses will get in my way!”

Hordak yelled in rage and smacked her hard across the face. She fell down to the floor, quickly picking herself up with her lavender pensile hair.

“GET OUT, TRAITOR!”

Entrapta sprinted out of the room, as fast as her legs could carry her. Not too far behind, Emily, the round bot, hurried after her on four metal legs. She ran down the metal walled corridor, wiping tears from her eyes. From up above, she could hear Hordak’s voice.

“We are not friends, anymore…never were to begin with…”

In the back of her mind, she knew it was Hordak’s imp, using his voice to intimidate her. But she was too heartbroken to care.

“You wouldn’t, and yet you did let them out. You’re useless to me now. Useless…”

The word “useless” echoed off the walls as the blue imp flew around her, cackling as he went.

Entrapta swiped at the pest with her hair, but the imp dodged her extra limbs. She ran and came across the same screens she had typed in earlier. The screens glared red and a skull with crossbones stared back at her. A low rumbling sound came from the other room, and the hairs stood up on Entrapta’s arms and neck.

She could sense the portal opening up. Sprinting into the other room, she saw a figure pull down a lever. The figure turned around, revealing Catra, staring at Entrapta with an evil smirk.

Entrapta had been too late.

“What have you done?!” she cried. “Reality will collapse as we know it.”

“I only did what I had to do,” Catra replied.

Entrapta looked around at the collapsing room and the expanding cracks spreading through the floor and the ceiling.

“I have to get out of here,” she thought.

In the blink of an eye, Catra rushed behind her and stabbed her hard in the back with the stun weapon. Painful shocks of electricity flooded her body. She yelped in pain until her world went dark.

Entrapta slowly opened her eyes, panting for breath. Looking around, she appeared to be in a plain metal cell, nothing much save for a hard bunk bed and a hole that served as a toilet. A loud roar from outside jolted her completely awake.

“What…what was that?”

She lifted herself up to the window and peered through the bars. Vast palm trees and flora were spread as far as the eye could see. Ocean waves crashed roughly on the rocks and against a nearby cliff wall. Entrapta noticed a huge footprint in the dirt, which appeared to belong to a dinosaur. In various spots were animal skeletons of those unlucky enough to come into contact with predators.

Entrapta headed over to the door, and swept her hair underneath the small crack. She searched for a key or anything to escape, but there was none.

“Good luck getting out,” said a voice.

Entrapta looked at an adjacent cell and saw another Horde soldier inside.

“Or better, yet,” said another prisoner to her right, a gator man who had briefly defected to the Rebellion, “Don’t go out there at all…unless you want to get eaten alive by monsters.”

“Or get skewered by the savage tribes,” added the first soldier.

Fascination with the strange land plowed into her thoughts. Yet the sense of curiosity was quickly replaced by concern. She could still feel the burn marks on her back and skin.

‘Catra knocked me out…and sent me here. Will Hordak ever trust me again? Will I be stuck forever, abandoned by…everyone?’

“What is this place?” asked Entrapta. “I need to get back to the Fright Zone.”

The soldier sighed. “The place where “worthless” Horde cadets are sent to. Welcome to Beast Island.”

Hours later, Entrapta paced around her small cramped cell, lost in thought. Her mind briefly wandered back to one of her earliest memories, back at Castle Dryl.

She had only known her parents for a very short time when she was little. Both of them supported her in her pursuit of science. Even as an infant, Entrapta was endlessly curious, rather than scared of the world around her. She began using the short purple tendrils from her hair around the time she learned to walk. In her early years of schooling, she messed up on a science project, the contents blowing up in her face as her classmates laughed. While she broke down in tears back at the palace, her father said that failure is a vital part of all experiments. Adding to the conversation, her mother encouraged her to always try again…whether it meant following the steps, or taking an alternative direction. She had called it “divergent thinking,” a term Entrapta still endeared to this day.

Entrapta’s father was an esteemed inventor and engineer. He had been part of a team providing blueprints for the architecture of several Fright Zone buildings. He was an easy going fellow but also possessed a stricter side, (he was the ruler of Dryl after all).  One of his better known projects was programming the training fight simulations for the Horde cadets. However, he had also helped design the holographic map which Queen Angella used for the Rebellion. So in a sense, Entrapta and her family had been neutral from the start. His eyebrows were dark and his mustache black and bushy.

On the other hand, her mother was a scientist by day, artist by night. Her hair was short and lavender purple like Entrapta’s and could even stretch out like hers to a lesser extent. She taught Entrapta how to paint, and frequently, they would spend quiet time together in their room, using paintbrushes of various sizes and thicknesses to create unique strokes of color. (The colors were mostly deep purple, white, and black, Entrapta’s favorite colors). Though her mother, Entrapta also developed her love of tiny food and cute animals. Soon, painting cute kittens, pugs, dinosaurs, and outer space became a regular past time until she got older.

Times changed. Entrapta’s interests changed as well…from artistic to technical. She began using her recorder to keep track of her projects as a way to stay organized (and mostly to keep herself entertained). When her parents suffered a serious accident, Entrapta was left alone with her servers, both human and robotic. It wasn’t long before Entrapta became totally engrossed in her research and work, isolating herself from the outside world, and then from inside the castle walls.

Perhaps it was a new dedication to create something grand. Maybe it was to make up for the aching loneliness she felt, whenever her mind drifted to her parents. Entrapta still remembered posing in between the two robots she had invented, one resembling her mother, and the other, her father. She made a peace sign with her left hand and held a wrench in her right, clad in blue overalls, her thick purple hair in two buff ponytails.

“What were their names again?” Entrapta asked out loud to herself, briefly back in the present. “I think Dad’s name was…King Pliar! That’s it. Mom’s name was Queen Rachet! Now I remember!”

Whatever the cause of her closure was, she would’ve been stuck with only her robotic servants and friends, had Adora and the Rebellion not entered her life.

But then again…would that have been for the better? Adora and the others did abandon her after Adora had been rescued. Although things were fantastic for a while, with her having the freedom to work on anything she wanted, things then took a turn for the worse just before the portal’s activation.

“Catra’s my friend,” Entrapta repeated to herself. “My data said she is based on compatibility, proximity, and mutual interests. How could it be wrong? My data’s never wrong.”

Yet her mind flashed back to that searing pain she had received from behind her back. Did Catra literally betray her behind her back? Or was her mind overthinking things again?

Entrapta took a deep breath and tried to focus. She had to find a way to escape.