Welcome back ladies and gentlemen. It’s time once again for a trip to Eternia, where the endless battle between good and evil continues. Join Ibentmyman-thing and Matthew K as they bring you a brand new story featuring some of your favorite Masters of the Universe characters. Welcome to Eternia…
One hundred feet below a rickety bridge that looked held together by tired, tangled vines, the Stormcloud Rapids raged. Grey-black waters churned hungrily, boiling against water-hewn rocks that jutted from the current, creating great white fountains as the water pummeled stone. Netossa clung to the bottom of the bridge, a quick drop and certain death hanging below beneath her straining muscles. Sweat beaded on her skin. Her fingers ached, and were beginning to betray her.
“She could have gone over the edge,” a slavering voice said. Leech.
“She’s not fool enough to brave the rapids,” a second voice snapped back. It was a female’s voice, higher and crueler than the voice that preceded it. There was a soft undertone to it, like the purring of a cat, that stood in stark contrast to the chill behind the words.
Netossa saw a drape of dark black hair fall to her right as Catra peered over the edge of the bridge. Netossa’s arms ached, but she held her position, ignoring the burning in her shoulders. All she would have to do was grab that hair and give it a good yank, but she would no doubt doom herself to the rapids as well.
“Send out the drones. This bounty hunter will not be allowed to ply her trade freely. Hordak wants all transgressors brought to the Fright Zone for judgment.”
Netossa would have laughed if the situation had called for it. It was typical that Hordak would think her something as crass as a bounty hunter. It would never occur to him that someone would right wrongs not out of the pursuit of coin but out of the pursuit of justice. While she respected the so-called Great rebellion for what they stood for, Netossa had her own ideas on how to fight off the Horde, and had too much invested to play by the rules of their organization. She preferred solitude.
Unfortunately her solitude had left her stranded and alone and hanging from the bottom of a bridge.
Over the crashing of rapids below, she could hear the thump of footsteps finally leaving the bridge. She didn’t trust her muscles to move, but she trusted them less to keep her hanging here. With one fluid motion she grabbed for the edge of the bridge and flung herself around and over until she was clinging to the edge of the bridge with both hands, dangling over certain doom.
Ignoring the sharp, stabbing pain that lanced through her muscles, she pulled herself up. She didn’t take a breath until she had flung a knee over the edge of the bridge and was anchored. She gave herself a moment to catch her strength, when somebody grabbed her arm and yanked her up. She let out a gasp as she was flung across the bridge and almost off the other side.
“Never try to hide from a tracker, my dear,” Catra said. Leech stood beside her, large form looming, eyes appraising her with a lascivious hunger that crawled beneath her skin.
Netossa lifted her numb arms and tapped a button hidden on the bottom of her bracelet. A pellet shot from a compartment, and a micro-weave net erupted from the pellet. Catra was faster than she anticipated though, and her sword flashed through the air, cleaving the net in two. It fell harmlessly to the floor of the bridge.
“So reliant on gimmicks instead of skill,” Catra said, flicking the edge of her blade with a manicured thumbnail.
“I don’t need lectures on gimmicks from a cat lady,” Netossa said in response, rolling her shoulders to get some feeling back in them.
Sudden fury arced over Catra‘s face. “Leech, drain her,” she ordered.
“With pleasure.” Leech approached her, his sucker hands pulsing. Netossa contemplated diving into the rapids, thinking it a better fate than having those hands on her.
Leech advanced, drowning out Catra’s smug face with his bulk. Netossa struggled to get to her feet but every muscle felt like it was weighted with a sack of rocks. She grabbed the edge of her cape as Leech advanced on her. Blindly, she felt for and found small button on the bottom edge of her netted cape, and pressed it. The clasp unlatched from her neck. She pressed the button again and the cape began to buzz slightly. She whipped it off her shoulders and threw it at Leech. Kinetic sensors translated the motion into an energy charge, and Leech howled as the capenet folded around him. He struggled but that only served to encase him in the capenet further, his jerky motions feeding the electric charge. In his pained struggle to get away he charged forward and dove straight off the edge of the bridge into the rapids.
Netossa watched the Stormcloud swallow him and carry him away, sparks spitting from her cape. She didn’t doubt he would live through it, but she hoped it would make him hesitate before using those hands on someone again.
“Incompetence!” Catra screamed. “You’re all out of tricks now.”
Netossa braced herself. Then something bright lanced through the sky. She assumed it was Horde-born, but Catra seemed just as surprised. Catra hissed as a cat would as the light swept over them, illuminating the bridge and the surrounding woods, the rapids, everything. For an instant everything within eyesight was blanked out by that bright light. Then it was gone.
Catra’s brows bunched, and she turned her attention back to Netossa. “Some rebel trick? Some rescue attempt?”
“I don’t need rescuing,” Netossa said.
Catra raised her hands to the mask that sat on her forehead. “Premature sentiments, my dear,” she said, and slipped the mask down on her face.
Nothing happened.
Ordinarily, there would be a glow, and the cracking and rending sounds of bones shifting as Catra assumed her feline form. Netossa was not prepared to fight the savagery of Catra’s animal form, but instead, Catra remained human. She slid the mask up and then back down. “What is…” Furious, she lifted the mask from her head. “What did you do?”
Just as confused but not willing to be crippled by it, Netossa didn’t wait for explanations. Instead, she covered the half-dozen feet between them and used Catra’s confusion against her, silencing her with a few hard fistfalls.
Catra barely put up a struggle before she dropped unconscious to the floor of the bridge, still clutching her mask tightly in her hands.
Netossa looked around. Despite the hissing of the rapids, Etheria seemed calm. But something had happened. Something had…shifted.
She turned and walked back the way she came.
