1837/Noodles and Nagging

Noodles and Nagging
Date of Scene:	05 August 2024
Location:	Obsidian Tower
Synopsis:	After Takashi comes into the office to find the aftermath of Glimmer and Catra's fight, he calls them in, where noodles are shared along with other discussion
Cast of Characters:	Takashi Agera, Glimmer Brightmoon, Catra

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Takashi Agera has posed:
    Takashi had spent most of Saturday morning and afternoon finalizing taking over the mostly empty space that was afforded to Testarossa Technologies, and therefore, to him and his group. Even with Dark Energy to do the heavy lifting, moving that much stuff around was tiring - so he went home in the mid-evening to his dorm room to get some rest on the bed, because he'd had to begrudgingly admit that he slept better in an actual place where sleeping was supposed to be done as opposed to just collapsing in a chair or on a lab table.

    Which meant that Sunday afternoon when he returned after taking care of some other things, he was greeted with the after-effects of Glimmer and Catra's 'disagreement'. It was obvious who was responsible - as due to the location and nature (and slightly energy signatures) of the destruction.

    Takashi grabbed his phone and fired off angry texts that went to both of them.

        >>TEXT to Catra and Glimmer: WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN THE OFFICE AND WHY
        >>TEXT to Catra and Glimmer: Don't answer that by text just get here NOW. Don't make me come and find either of you.

    Takashi looked up at the crystal, still intact, still with Melog on top of it. "What the hell, cat! If they were going at it why didn't you do something?" Melog responded merely by stretching with an arched back, licking its paw, and returning to being coiled on top of the crystal. Takashi walked out of the office and slammed the door with such force that something else in the room clearly fell and shattered with a loud noise.

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon took a while to arrive. The Princess of Sparkles arrived after in a shimmer of sparkles and...

And she had a shake. With a cherry on it. And whipped cream.

It was FRESH. She was in line and didn't DROP IT to get over here. Worst. Henchman. Ever.

"So... what happened?" she asked, glancing around the office. It took her a few moments to realize... "OH! Wait, did you mean the like... explosions and stuff?" She then took a slow, lingering sip of her shake. Trying to think of how to play it annnnd...

Finally, she just sighed. "Apparently I can be reallllllly annoying and we had a bit of a fight. You know how it gets, I blast her, she stabs me, I explodinate a room, she throws shards of glass. It's like, uhhh. What are those things called... Trust falls! With dynamite!" she offered, smiling to him before taking another drink... "It wasn't *that* bad. Like... just a... few walls. And I figured I'd get a drink, swing down to HR's office, see if they could like... build over it or something. I heard about something called 'spackle', apparently it works wonders."

Half. Of. A. Wall. Was. Missing. And a full window.

Catra has posed:
Catra arrives after Glimmer does. Not, exactly, immediately after. But after. The feline comes wandering in with a plastic bag that smells of food in one hand, and a bubble tea in the other. It's a blue bubble tea, absolutely full of those pearl-things. This is entirely relevant.

"...What?" she asks, having not heard a single word of Glimmer's explainatio. "I don't see the prob-- Ooohhhh, right, the wall. Well... I mean whatever, it's just a wall. Stuff like this used to happen all the time in the Fright Zone. You know, someone would get upset, Hordak would have a temper tantrum, walls would come down all over the place. You should've seen Shadow Weaver lose it when I took the Black Garnet away from her, I thought she was gonna explode without needing magic to do it."

The feline looks back and forth between Glimmer and Takashi. Her ears perk up, her tail does a little flick behind her, and she shrugs. "Anyway, what the hell happened is we're Etherians and sometimes we're emotional. Also we're girls and we're emotional. Sometimes at each other."

Catra falls silent again, looking back and forth between Glimmer and Takashi again. "I got everyone food," she adds, lifting the plastic bag up in front of her. "Black pepper stir-fry udon, with chicken."

Takashi Agera has posed:
    Takashi is... well, he's not entirely all caps fuming visually, but he is crossing his arms and looking very annoyed. "You can't spackle over this, Glimmer." he says, unable or unwilling to keep the deep reserves of annoyance out of his voice. "Yeah, you can be annoying allright." he agrees. "While I'm sure I can get it fixed up, you know we have a new boss, a new department, and maybe having a giant hole and a fight between two people on the same side is not the best impression to put forward?"

    "Do you realize that we're coming off our last boss getting killed?" and some other things happened around Takashi that the two of them weren't there for. "And there was blood in there, too. So you... destroyed a section of office, hurt each other so bad I'm concerned about your ability to fight, and exhausted a lot of your energy for nothing and I had to deduce all of that once I got here?" he continues, growing increasingly exasperated, even mad. There's actually a slightly visible darkening of the air around him and the occasional semiliquid ink-like trail following his hands. "Stuff like this shouldn't happen in my department and especially not when we're trying to make a good impression and keep our heads down so that we don't get painted with the incompetence brush due to who we were just working under."

    He is actually a lot more concerned, which leads to the annoyance, than he's letting on. "Are you both at least okay now?" he adds, some of the caring seeping through. "Who's blood is that, both of yours or just one? Do you have it out of your system?"

    Catra's presentation of food is clearly noted, but his questions are more pertinent.

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon cringed when he just seemed to get... matter. Oh... wow... She... might have actually stepped in it. She took another sip of her drink, glancing to Catra.

Ohhhh, she brought snacks! Maybe this was why Adora liked her so much. The way into that girl's stomach did seem to be through her mouth. But then, who's wasn't? The smile faded as he kept going... Oh... he... he was mad.

And the fact she was there AT the Beryl fight? Ohhhh, that didn't make it better. "Well, mostly my blood. I don't... think I cut Catra? Mostly just burns on my end. And we kept it mostly mild. I got a few scrapes but, what can I say? I'm a bleeder. I get it from my dad. It looks wayyyy worse than it was."

"And yeah, I think we got it out of our system," Glimmer said, glancing to Catra for confirmation. "We just, you know. Had to get it out of our system before we started working together, right? Better to try and do a little light murdering at home base, get it out of our system, right? Rather than doing it out in the field and causing it to all go bad. That'd be a disaster. But, hear you loud and clear, boss. Next time we try to murder each other, we'll do it out in the grounds, not in the room with the... walls." Pause.

"Though, in our defense, I didn't do that until after the fight was over, I uhhhh... was mad and I figured better out than in."

She motioned to the partial wall missing. Hoping to draw attention from him to her that she was the one who made the holes in the walls, and that none of them were Catra's. She was used to getting scolded, anyway.

Catra has posed:
"Don't forget when I was firing off at stuff I couldn't see," Catra points out, gesturing to the holes in a different wall than the one Glimmer's focusing on. "You blinded me with your first spell, the entire rest of the fight I did purely on what I could hear. Which," she sets teh food down on whatever remains of a desk, and reaches up to tap one of her ears, "Is enough most of the time, but you teleport and that makes it harder."

The feline slurps her bubble tea, then sets it down and unpacks the food, handing a box full of udon to Glimmer with chopsticks, and then holding out the same towards Takashi.

"So yeah, I think we're... It's... It's out of our system, at least for now." She shrugs her shoulders, and leans against the desk. Or what's left of it. "Honestly, that was a pretty minor fight for us. Last time we went at it we broke like half the Fright Zone. 'Course, that was more than just the two of us, but not really all that much more. Glimmer had Shadow Weaver and Bow on her side that time, I just had Hordak and he was being mopey so he wasn't much help."

Catra gives the box of noodles she's holding a little waggle. C'mon Takashi, everyone's happier when they've got full bellies. "Look, if the new king or whatever gets hurt feelings, just remind them that I brought back a mind control chip, and Glimmer is just as capable. Or at least almost." She can't resist getting that one in, can she? "We can deliver. We're worth a wall or two. They should be able to see that."

Takashi Agera has posed:
    Takashi sighs and begrudgingly takes the noodles. "At least you came back with food." Takashi gives that one to Catra. "For other people." he adds, gesturing towards Glimmer. "Sometimes I wonder what parts of your little act are real and what parts are just you being you." he says to Glimmer, right in front of Catra and everything.

    "And we aren't telling them about the chip because the last thing any of us want to do is find ourselves on the recieving end of some sort of technology-assisted Employee Improvement Plan." he warns. "As far as anybody not in this room knows, it was a dud anyways." he adds, before picking up the chopsticks. He was hungrier than he realized.

    "I am pretty sure I don't actually need to tell you this, but this place isn't the Fright Zone and it isn't Etheria. I'm not Hordak or Enwrappa or Shadow Weaver, and neither is anybody here..." Two out of three ain't bad. "... at least so far. So you can't explain things here with 'well we did it there' - you need to play by the rules of this world or you'll never get back to your own with the stuff you want to get." he adds.

    "Look, I know neither of you really care about my world or the people here. You're both stuck here and in different ways." he adds, pausing to slurp up a bit of noodle. "But we have a business arrangement that requires you to not make my life harder. Because for both of you - now that I know what you want, Catra - I'm your best bet at getting it." he continues.

    "You want to go home, without ripping an unstable hole in the fabric of dimensional reality with a sword you don't have risking killing yourself, and get back in the right stream? You need someone who has been to another world and come back, someone who can figure out how to do it again and get you where you want to go instead of dumping you out in some strange otherworld, and that's me." he notes, and also reveals that he oversaw some of that fight.

    "Glimmer, same with what you're after. I know you think highly of your friend but this is on a different scale than packing glue into an arrow cartridge - and you're kinda stuck with me anyways." he adds. "So even if you don't give a damn about me, or my work, or my goals, or my whole world - the time I'm gonna spend getting someone to come in here and deal with this without pissing off Director Testarossa is time I'm not spending on getting closer to fixing anybody's problems."

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon couldn't help it, she grinned a little at that compliment. "Yeah, you do wayyyy better than most when I do that. The lights out trick was a good plan, but honestly light blindness sucks. You've always been pretty good at predicting, though. Probably why you're such a pain in the butt to fight." She teleported over by Catra, putting the shake down and taking the udon.

"Ohhhh, chopsticks. I'm getting better at these." Not good. But... better. Not a big bar.

"Oh yeah... that. That... was... not a nice fight... Though the other princesses were there too. Well, except Adora. You'd captured her. But the others were trying to buy us time. Little known fact about that fight, the lizard guy and the girl with braids? Totally deserved a raise. They fought Mermista after watching her draw water from the Horde's sewage system. I would *not* have wanted to fight that."

Glimmer gave Takashi a sheepish grin. "About... that. Uhhhh... there is... a non-zero chance that Horde Prime miiiiight be back? Like. I'm hoping it was just a... recording, thing? Or something? But, ummmmmm... if he is? Uhhhhh..." She glanced to Catra. "If he is?" Slow, deep breath. "I know you won't want to hear it, the whole fairy tale, not real, thingie. But, um. If he IS back? He's likely going to come after Catra and Adora first. Cause like... he's a psychotic megalomaniac who wanted to wipe out the entire universe and he basically just sees me and the princesses as the toys to break to his will. But Catra and Adora were kiiiiiind of the ones to bring him down. Especially since when I saw him he was like 'There you are, little sister'. And that? That is definitely not a good sign..."

"... If you don't want to hear anything else about it, Catra, I can talk with Takashi about it later. I just don't want to see you getting blindsided or chipped again."

She then blinked. "Actually, you might want to work on finding out how to detect and extract those. Because that's how he operates. Back home he got most of us. And... the only person I really saw actually... resist it on their own was ummmm..." She then pointed to Catra.

"... And for the record, I do care about what happens to you and your world. Like, sure, the everyone being 'human' thing is kind of weird. But there are some cool things here. The games are cool. And look, chopsticks!"

... She was certainly... using them... kind of... knitting her food into strips... so she could eat it. In some ways, an incredibly impressive methodology of failure.

Catra has posed:
"I have better senses and reactions than any human," Catra points out. And in spite of the feline's usual snotty attitude, it's not a brag this time, it's just a fact. She does. (Well, at least she sees it that way, anyhow.) "It's a bit of an advantage. Most of the time. When I don't just want peace and quiet and have to wear headphones playing the most insanely loud music, just to drown out the rest of the noise..." she sighs, "Did you know on some days I can hear what's going on around the entire floor? The entire floor. It's awful. Try *sleeping* with that."

She picks up her own box of noodles, and starts devouring it like it's going out of style, pausing only to talk (and not talk with a mouthful of noodles and chicken). "But, this planet, it's... WHY is it just humans? There's no beastkin! Or at least hardly any. At least on Etheria I could walk around with, y'know, ears, tail, all that stuff, nobody cared about it. Here if I do that I'm told that I'll end up in a military base getting disected. So I have to hide everywhere I go. And I utterly hate it."

She resumes eating, and it really doesn't take her long to get down to halfway. Her box of noodles is loaded, too, in ways that Takashi and Glimmer's aren't; there is, for one thing, a lot of meat. A *lot* of meat, like she asked for triple chicken or something.

"I have literally no idea what you're talking about," she adds to Glimmer, "If you were Adora I'd accuse you of hitting your head really hard, but you are annoyingly good at getting out of the way. ...But I don't think I want to hear about this stuff. Not yet." NOt even the parts that make her look good, apparently.

She sighs, and shakes her head. "'Kay alright, message received. No trashing the place like I would the Fright Zone or Brightmoon." Yes she just said that. "Not unless it's self-defense. Or that... Joker... thing." She purses her lips, and flattens her ears. "Alright Sparkles. I won't try to ambush you again. ...Oh, and those two Horde soldiers you're on about are Lonnie and Rogelio, and I hate them, but they're good enough fighters. They always hung around with Kyle but he's afraid of everything that moves and a few things that don't, so that's why you didn't see him trying to take on Mermista."

And secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, Catra doesn't want to have anything to do with fighting Mermista either. Because water princess, that's why.

And also she doesn't want to admit, all this talk about Horde Prime is unnerving.

Takashi Agera has posed:
    Takashi tapped the side of his head. "Horde Prime... that's the like, world spanning creepy space dude you told me about? I'm less worried about that. My money in that sort of fight is some mix of the Board of Directors and the Sparklesquad Elite kicking his ass. Nothing you've told me about him indicates he's got more than resources and tech on his side, and if Adora and Catra beat him, I'm pretty sure Adora, Catra, and like 20 people can beat him. You were at the fight with Beryl, you know." he says. "I couldn't even read the energy remnants so many people were there. Just a big jumble." He admits.

    Takashi looks up, at roughly where the board room floors might be if the space in Obsidian remotely cared about geometry. "We've got our fair share of psychotic megalomaniacs." he adds. "I'm probably less worried about this than you think I ought to be, though. But yeah, my real priority with the chip is understanding how it works. So that it doesn't work on any of us." Number two is to emulate it in a different way. Number two.

    Takashi smirks. "Hey, I'm not entirely human! But yeah, the majority of folks here are, and the others would freak out. Wolfrun, Arf, they have similar issues with the way the world is." he admits. "But we're all hiding something." he says, demonstratively letting a coil of Dark Energy rise from his palm momentarily.

    "Yeah you'll notice I didn't get onto you for the desk when you swung at the clown, I was just dissapointed you missed." he adds to Catra. "Glimmer can fill me on why I'm not taking this seriously enough. But as a serious question, can I trust you two to actually work together if I asked you to go out and do something together? I've kind of avoided it given I could feel the tension but it seems like this may have let that off?"

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon gave a shudder. "Ugh, really? You hear that--" And then stopped. And her face went BEET red. "Wait, you can hear EVERYTHING? Oh my gosh... I just... oh... oh I am *so* sorry. Oh that explains those smirks you gave me and... ugh..." That meant she'd likely heard all of the talks she'd had with her dad off to the side... and her dad, as much as she loved him? Kiiiind of cringe at time.

"Honestly, though. Like... that sounds miserable. Ugh. People can be so loud and obnoxious." Pause. "And yes, I am including me in that." She then went back to eating.

And then choked. "They'd do WHAT?! Okay, seriously, first ANYBODY who tries that is going to taste EVERY sparkle!" she snapped, actually fuming. "Beastkin are perfectly normal! Like, most of our citizens are beast kin! What is WRONG with this PLANET?! GAH!" She angrily stuffed more noodles in her mouth. "Grumble mmble see them dissect anything with seventeen flavors of sparkles in their eyes rabble rabble..."

She nodded to Takashi before shrugging. "Yeah. I'm... hoping you're right. Him being a not problem would be nice. Maybe we could toss him in a jail cell or something and taunt him with... I don't know. Only giving him two extra firm pillows."

"... So I'm guessing I shouldn't let anyone here see my wings, then? I mean, not like I was planning to show them off but... yeah... And I don't see why not. Catra's pretty good in a fight, I've seen her break a lot of stuff and I think a lot of it was stuff she even intended to break," she said in a teasing tone. Then, she waited until Catra was scarfing down her food and...

"As long as we don't have to like, go undercover or anything. Last time I kissed Catra she was plotting my demise for like, days."

Yes, she did have to phrase it that way. It was only a cheek kiss after all. But Catra didn't need to know that.

Catra has posed:
Catra listens to Glimmer defending the existence of beastkin, and a little bit of the tension in her muscles drains away. She abruptly realizes that she's holding the chopsticks with them hovering halfway between box and mouth, and gets around to finishing the operation. She's a hungry cat, afterall.

"Yeah, it does kinda... suck," she agrees, about being able to hear so much. "And honestly, don't even get me started on having a superior sense of smell. You think just *hearing* people all the time is bad... At least I can put on headphones, walking around with earplugs stuffed up my nostrils is just not happening."

The feline eats a little more, and shoots a darkened look in Takashi's direction. "I was aiming for him," she grumbles. "I really wanted him to leave the room, begging for someone to reattach his arm. But he moved, and your desk didn't... And I really wasn't aiming for your desk."

And that may be as close to an apology as he's going to get.

"OKay, so... but the things we saw in the portal." Things we saw, like the old lady who looked like Catra, and seemd to have a magic stone of her own. Except it looked... wrong. Everything was wrong. "Horde... Prime, I guess that was, then? Really?" She shrugs, "I'd never seen him before," she explains. Or at least, she just doesn't remember it. "When he said 'Little Sister' he was addressing... me? Just... explain that, and just that. 'Cause I am nobody's sister. I've never had a sibling and if I was related to a galaxy-spanning megalomaniac villain who looks like his parents were a body builder and a skeleton, I feel like I'd know that already."

At that point, Catra picks up her bubble tea, and slurps up a big mouthful up the straw, with lots of the little pearls. And she's right about to swallow when Glimmer say something about kissing her. Instead of bubble tea going down the hatch, it goes right back out the way it came with a loud 'Sppppppfffffffffffft?!?' which, luckily, doesn't land on either Takashi or Glimmer.

"Excuse me-- WHAT?!"

Takashi Agera has posed:
    Out of henshin, with Axion in Standby Mode, Takashi is limited to his own natural control of Dark Energy, which means the shield he brings up isn't enough to stop a real attack - but the inky shield does come up to protect him from Catra's projectile bubble tea. Even if not needed.

    "Well, Maybe Glimmer should explain that too. Or maybe not." she adds after a moment's thought.

    "Sadly I didn't get enough of a view into what was happening to really have much opinions on all of that - I could hear things, and I could get data from them, but if you saw anything in the portal I didn't." he explains.

    Takashi sighs though. "Yeah, no wings or tails or Dark Energy in front of the mundanes. They might react poorly in one way or another - you could also hurt them as their mind tries to rationalize it. Doing magic in front of people without magic tends to result in weird things. We call it The Veil." he explains. "And like it or not, but a beastperson is a little bit magic, just like Glimmer's wings or my control of energy."

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon gave a light shudder. "Ugh, that sounds awful. Like, the air currents here are a ton off, but I only have to feel them, not smelling them. That. That sounds like an existence of misery. So many people smell *so bad*."

The talk about Horde Prime? That, however, got her to side. "Hmmmm... how to... right. So. How to..." Ohhhh, and there it was. That brought a grin to her lips. Seeing that reaction to the 'kiss'. One day she'd tell Catra the truth... it wasa kiss on the cheek of excitement. But for now? It was fun to just let her squirm from that.

"Desperate times called for desperate measures. Don't worry, I won't mention it again until you're ready. Now, uhhhh... some things you won't want to hear about him, but I'll limit it to as close as I can. He's... incredibly creepy. So. So. Sooooooo creepy. When he came to Etheria? I ended up getting warped up along with you and Hordak. Hordak got... mind wiped... or something. I'm not really sure?"

"But imagine the Horde. Now imagine *Everyone* there is Hordak. And just Hordak. But they don't talk differently. Or with *any* emotion. They just..."

She gave another shudder, putting the food down and wrapping her arms around herself. "He just... always... talked about his 'light'. How we would 'bask' in his light. 'All must bask in the radiance of Horde Prime's light'. And it was... terrifying. He was going to kill him... then you told him about the Heart of Etheria and how I was one of the keys for it. I became his... 'guest'... if you want to call it that... and you became his 'Little Sister' in his little... whatever that was." Glimmer gave another shudder, the look on her face... was one of horror and disgust.

"... I couldn't use my powers in space. When... you got me out of there? He... chipped you. *Forced* you to be the 'little sister' he'd claimed you were. IT was like... you... weren't even you anymore. He... grew extra hims in vats and... he called them his 'brothers'. He just... wouldn't... stop... talking... and it just made my *skin crawl*. If you see any weird clones of Horde Prime? Back of the neck, they have these like... weird... circular things? They're like... I guess... like those cable things you put stuff in? I saw you drop a bunch of them just ramming two fingers in them. I had to do it with a stick." Pause. "That was a really good stick, though. But, seriously."

"... If he gets his hands on you, Catra. Don't. Let him. Chip you. I swear. If he gets you, I'll find you. So don't... don't think nobody is coming for you. Okay? Ugh!" She teleported off, across the room, hands crawling along her skin like she was trying to brush just the feeling of his presence off her.

"'Little sister', 'honored guest'. It's how he talks and it's all creepy but it's so, so, SO vile and wrong and GAH! Don't. Trust. Him. He lures you in with sweet words and you almost, ALMOST believe he's something... he's something not so... horrific. And then he just... he's supposed to be *dead*! Hopefully that... that was just an echo. He's *not* going to get his hands on anyone here ever *again!* Oh, and he has like... robots, too. But that's like. Normal horde things, you probably can disable those on your own."

Catra has posed:
Catra tries again with the bubble tea and this time actually gets to swallow, before she goes back to what's left of her food (mostly a whole lot of chicken, which suits the little obligate carnivore just fine). And she eats quite happily, until about halfway through Glimmer's explaination.

Catra managed to accept Takashi pointing out the facts of the veil and beastkin being magic just fine. She still doesn't like it, but some things you just have to accept.

But this stuff about Horde Prime.

"Okay, that is just... unnecessary," she states, ears having gone flat against the side of her head. "I don't want to be anyone's sister, and I especially don't want it to be mandatory and attached with losing control of my own brain. But -- Wait, I... rescued you?" She perks an eyebrow upwards (above her turquise eye) and gives Glimmer a serious side-eyed look. "...Yeah, don't... tell me about that one. I don't think I want to hear too much about this thing at all. You've told me enough, I know if I meet him I've gotta fight him and not let him... get into my head. No matter which method he chooses to try." She keeps working on her food, until she's finished and she can lob the box with the chopsticks in it into the garbage bin -- which of course she lands.

"Clones, robots... I mean... Hordak was always trying to clone himself but he never got it to work. But he loved his robots. Although," she mutters, "Not... quite as much as Entrapta loved them..."

Catra picks up her bubble tea once again, and sips from it idly. "OKay so... to answer your question, Takashi, from a moment ago? Yeah we can work together. And I think we can work pretty damn well. Sparkles can do all the long range hitting with light magic, I can do the close range hitting with dark magic. ...I think we've got basically everything covered between the two of us." Her eyes narrow. "Our enemies won't stand a chance."

Takashi Agera has posed:
    "Robots, huh." Takashi muses. "Yeah, from what I can see of the chip on its own your tech is way ahead of our world's. Kinda like Mid-Childa's tech is... but on a whole other different level." he says. "I'd love to get ahold of it..." he adds and in that moment his eyes kind of sparkle like a certain other scientist's.

    "Anyways, we'll worry about that when it comes. We have other enemies for the time being. And other projects. I don't see any sense in preparing to fight a dude who is possibly beaten and dead. The info's helpful but I'm not gonna suggest we burn through too much time planning."

    "Besides, we have a more pressing issue in that Adora tried to rip a hole in reality and I might need her sword to accomplish something with less brutality. That whole thing is connected to what you both want - to go home, to resolve the... issue with the Moonstone." he says without outing Glimmer's Mother's location to Catra. "It's possible I'll need the sword to fix either, and it's highly probably even if I don't need the sword, having it - even for a little bit - would help me figure out how it does those things." he notes.

    "Then there's the day-to-day work as well. We have to keep grabbing energy and being useful around here or I'm gonna have a hard time getting the funding to answer any of these questions... and there's the matter of... well, I'm not doing this just for me either, and maybe one day I'll share with you guys what I plan for. But for right now we're all working towards the same goals anyways. If I can figure out how to get to Etheria that benefits all of us, same with sorting out the Moonstone's inability to move. The research I get can be turned to other things here. So we all have reason to keep working together. Which is good, because I would like to see your effectiveness turned on, well, our enemies."

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon gave a small nod, looking to Catra. "I know, right?! He's just... GAH! He was supposed to be DONE! Gone! Like, Hordak was bad enough but at least there was... something there. This guy? It's just... ugh. I can't even... Ugh! I still sometimes have nightmares of waking up and him chipping me or--" She then stopped, covering her mouth. That... that wasn't something she'd said to anyone. Slowly, she lowered her hands. "Right. Just... no."

She teleported back to the desk, taking her shake and practically downing half of it in a big, long suck. As if she could wash away the memory of him with enough sugar. Before putting it down and going into her udon.

After a moment, she swallowed and blinked. "This is really good, thanks, Catra."

She gave a light snort to Takashi's comment on the robots. "Ahhhh, there's the Takarapta I know," she said in a teasing tone. "Heck, make sure you can get those chips off and I'll try and grab you a full robot."

Pause.

"Well, okay. Like, 75% of one. You're smart. I'll try and get you enough it'll be useful. Hopefully it never comes to that and he's just a memory. Ohhhh. Right. And that's the old sword. It... huh... oh..." And then she looked thoughtful. Then sighed.

"Well, this *is* the original sword, the one bound by the First Ones. Ugggggh. Maybe if we're lucky Entrapta will pop up one day soon. I can't believe Adora was even able to open a portal like that on her own. She'd probably have a thousand ideas on how the sword works and how it can be used."

"... I could probably get you close to it... but I definitely don't think she'll let us borrow it."

"... I doubt she's going to listen to much of anything I say right now..." And there was, possibly, mayyyybe, just a hint of... annoyance in her tone when she said that. A frustration.

She then teleported up, onto the Moonstone, and knelt by Melog. "Want some?" she asked. "Catra got it, it's good," she said, offering the weird cat thing a piece of chicken. It sniffed... before taking a little bit of a bite. Then glanced to Catra for a few moments. Before taking another piece. "Thanks for being such a good little guard kitty. And yeah, I'll see what I can do. Maybe try to graciate myself with some of the other divisions or whatnot. You'd be surprised what people will tell you when they just think you're a vapid air head."

Catra has posed:
Catra's eyes narrow, and she glowers, tail lashing a couple of times behind her. "Oh, when it comes to Adora, I will absolutely steal her sword for you," she muses. "It's not *that* hard, I've done it before. Usually just takes a relatively low level of misdirection, honestly." Well, it's actually not quite that easy. But Catra has stolen her sword more than once. "Pity it won't work for me, though. Adora is 'special' somehow."

The cat seems content to leave it there. Her piece has been said. No need to antagonize Glimmer further right this moment -- Especially not after the last twenty-four hours. "Adora isn't in the habit of letting people borrow the sword, so we'll have to steal it," she confirms. "But that's doable. Anyway."

Catra looks over her shoulder; time to go in a moment here. But first. "Yeah, set me up with some fresh Youmas and I'll go get some energy," she offers. "That'll probably get me into some fights, and I'm fine with that. I like fighting. And I am so much stronger now that I was before, thanks to Sunbreaker teaching me magic."

Catra finally makes her way for the door. "But I've eaten, and I don't have my headphones, and it's... loud, out here, so I'm going to go get some sleep. Let me know when you need me to beat someone into a pulp."

Takashi Agera has posed:
    "Yeah but based on what you've told me there's some kind of time-related weirdness, since what people remember seems to be... off from each other, person to person." he says. "So he could be dead in your time and also seen through the portal. Not an issue unless he comes through to our side. Then it's an issue that needs dealing with. But really, he doesn't want to get involved here. I'll, I dunno upload kirakirafantastica magic to his mainframe and have him and his clones putting on broadway shows." He says casually.

    "I wish I'd been there to see how she opened it, that data would be a lot more useful to me. If she tries to wrench another one open do send me a text message." He says.

    Then Catra says she can steal it and he nods. "Well, right now just look for an opprotunity. Most of that magic nonsense is special on some level, connected, but if there's a connection that can be made there's a connection that can be created too, I'm sure of it." he notes. "But I'm not in a hurry... yet. I'll keep you both on dial though. So make sure you keep some attention on the phone."

Glimmer Brightmoon has posed:
Glimmer Brightmoon gave a light groan. "Ughhhhhh. Stealing the sword has *never* gone well for any of us. Even when I tried stealing it from her we still almost ended up dead and we were technically on the same side then," Glimmer whined. "But... fiiiiine. If it comes to it, I'll... help... oh this is so going to get me in trouble, I can feel it all the way to my glitters." She crunched up the now empty box, teleporting to drop it into the trash.

"Sleep well, Catra! I'm gonna head out, too. I gotta practice for a karaoke contest. It's going to be *so* silly. I'll keep my phone on me this time, though. So if you need me, you know how to get me." She grabbed her shake. "Good luck on your sciencing, Takashi! I'm sure you'd make Entrapta proud." She then teleported away in a flash of sparkles.

The only sound remaining the sound of Melog licking its paw.