The Havoc Hypothesis





It started when the guards couldn’t get to their appointed posts without ending up in a cage, in one of the wastewater cisterns or suspended in a foot-snare from a ceiling. The traps never were deadly, merely annoying. Catra hissed as she tiptoed around where she knew a placement to be – well, unless the new recruit had changed it… again. She was certain that the traps would increase in lethal potential in time. It fell to Catra to impress upon Entrapta that they were to be used on the Rebellion, not all over the Fright Zone.



The Commander caught her charge hard at work and play over one of the security consoles, doing all of who knew what to it, shivering in pleasure, just short of drooling.



“We have to talk.”



“About what? Lay it on me!” Entrapta replied, not taking her eyes off the view screen or a single strand of hair off the keypads.



“About the fact that I can’t even get to my own room without setting off a trip-line, or an alarm, or a homicidal reprogrammed sentry-bot!”



“Oh, that! I thought you wanted to see me about something important. It should be any trouble for you to get around those things with your feline instincts.”



“I am NOT a kitty-cat!” Catra yelled, her tail bristling up.



“Oh, but your ears and your tail beg to differ,” Entrapta replied cheerily, “I haven’t quite determined your exact species yet, but how you respond to the new environmental stimuli is providing me with loads of data!”



“Data? Is that why I saw Captain Grizzlor running through the prison-wing, chased by a floating battle-drone with hand-scissors and a buzz-saw, his mane covered in little pink ribbons?”



Catra’s tone was demanding. Entrapta ignored her, engrossed in whatever she was tweaking.



“Well?”



“Codsworth didn’t mean any harm.”



“Codsworth?”



“Yeah! He’s a personal-servant robot, a butler… Lemme think…Yep, I did put him on the Haircare setting last. You know, long hair can be difficult to manage.”



“You ruined one of our battle-drones by turning it into a BARBER?”



“Ruined?” Entrapta said, turning her face to Catra and flipping up her mask with a big smile, “Heck no! I didn’t think you’d miss one little battle-drone. My hair requires a lot of upkeep, biologically-speaking, in order to be in optimal working-condition. When it brittles or gets too many split ends, manipulating finer tools can get a weensy bit difficult. You see, I designed Codsworth to massage oil into my follicles and to brush any hair I’m not using out so I don’t have to stop wor-”



“It was chasing Grizzlor. With. A. Buzzsaw.”



“You never know when you’re going to need a buzzsaw.”



“And the flamethrower?”



“Oh, that. You never know when you’re going to need one of those, either! I’m always using blowtorches! See, I’ll show you a proper weld!”



Catra ducked down as Entrapta, too enthused, flipped down her welding mask and whipped around with the mentioned device, from which she shot out a little jet of flame.



“Will you stop that?” Catra yelped.



Entrapta turned the torch down.



Catra paced, her tail flicking back and forth. “You need to run your new…inventions…by me first, okay?”



Entrapta just stared blankly – quite literally, as she retained her mask. She brought out her recorder. “Day 171, Fright Zone Log. It seems that the angry feline person wishes to impede the progress of my experiments. Fascinating. This may prove to become a fruitful investigation into human…or feline psychology.”



“Rogelio almost fell into a pit of lava in the simulation today – not a simulated pit, but real lava. His scales were thick enough to repel the heat coming off of it, but I don’t want you to modify the training modules quite so much from their original plans, alright?”



“Technically, when it hasn’t yet exited the volcano, it is called magma and the heat coming off of it is called convection. Now we know just what our lizard-friend is capable of, hmm?”



“We cannot afford to lose recruits to simulations!”



“Ah-ah-ah! I knew he wasn’t going to get hurt! I’ve studied the physiology of his species! Though I would have to take him apart to be sure!”



“We are not… taking Rogelio apart,” Catra rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, as if trying to get rid of a tension-headache. “Although you are welcome to take those sky-spies you clearly modified apart. They are not serving the Horde’s purposes.”



“They aren’t as advanced as Emily – not much to work with there, really, but what’s wrong?”



“You have them brewing root beer and cola! They’re supposed to be patrolling the perimeters and spying on our enemies!”



“Don’t you all like fizzy drinks? I like fizzy drinks. I couldn’t find any in the cafeteria. No tiny food, either. I ran out of my last stock from the Princess Prom. It’s so hard to deal with big food! And sloppy stuff! The last stuff I tried to eat had no flavor at all!”



“That’s because it was gruel,” Catra replied. “Meals in the Fright Zone are tailored for soldiers – a mix of protein and nutrients. It’s not supposed to be ‘good.’ I actually hunt and gather on the edges of the territory a little. Used to steal from Octavia’s personal pantry, too… well, we used to…Adora and me.”



“Day 171, Fright Zone Log – the angry feline person seems a bit sad when mentioning the blonde Rebellion-member. Detect bitterness in her voice perhaps brought on by feelings of abandonment. Pause. I feel the same way.”



“You could come with me,” Catra offered.



“Nah. I can deal with the ugly food as long as it’s tiny. Making it tiny will make it cute. I know! I’ll see if I can work up a shrink ray! It’s going to take some tinkering with the laws of physics, but according to my theories, the First Ones could do exactly that kind of thing when needed! All I need is fifty-yards of copper wire, that crystal…maybe a rubber duck…”



“I am beginning to think I’m wasting my time.”



“Hordak seems to like his new trap door.”



“Wait, you did that?”



Laughter echoed through the halls from the throne room. Catra involuntarily shuddered. With all due respect to their leader, there was nothing more disconcerting than his laugh, especially when it seemed to be particularly…“merry?” was that the right word for it? The Force Captain shook her head. “Hordak” and “glee” were two things that, in her opinion, really shouldn’t go together.



There was the sound of a scream and a splash.



Mantenna again. No surprise there. He was technically a commander, but everyone around the Fright Zone who’d met him considered him to be rather incompetent. No one knew why Hordak kept him around instead of shipping him off to one of the slave-holdings.



“I hooked in a command-relay to the throne,” Entrapta explained with her usual exuberance. “All he has to do is press a button. I told him that a light touch is all he needs, but I think he’s been slamming the thing. I’ll have to repair it within a month, I expect.”



“Peachy.”



Suddenly, Scorpia ran in, panting and pale.



There was a tiny flicker of flame on the tip of her tail.



“Did you get the stuff from the scrap-yard I wanted?” Entrapta inquired, nonchalant. “Just put it in the corner over there.”



Scorpia divested herself of a carry-bag. “Oh, wow, that place is a minefield! And the destructo-tanks! They’ve all gone crazy!”



Entrapta hoisted herself up on a hair-chair and carefully stepped over, mask up, finger on her chin. “Whoopsie. The new targeting system program I wrote for them seems to be a teensy-weensy bit overzealous.” She immediately thrust her recorder in Scorpia’s face. “Give me all the details!”



Scorpia shrugged her shoulders. “It was okay, I guess. I mean, I survived.”



Catra facepalmed.



She was beginning to think that their resident Princess was more of a liability than an asset.





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Shadsie, 2018.