Forever Fallen (Catra x OC She-Ra Fanfic)

7. The Forward Operating Base

Catra hadn't spoken to Harley since their conversation back in The Fright Zone even though they remained close to one another for the next few hours and the second they got to the forward base outside of Bright Moon, Catra disappeared along with a squadron of Horde officers and Harley was left to oversee the distribution of products.

It wasn't too hard for Harley to handle but because she didn't know what half of the goods were and where they were meant to be, it took her a while to comprehend just what she needed to do. She got there in the end, though.

Over the next couple of hours, the forward base grew emptier and quieter as squadrons were deployed, until nightfall when the entire station was empty, essentially abandoned had it not been for Harley's presence.

The girl leaned up against a crate in the far side of the room, her tablet hooked up against a data chip beside her and she began implementing her code-- the job she came here for-- but something out the corner of her eye caught her attention; a note tucked neatly against one of the workbenches not too far from where she was.

Harley deposited her tablet to the side, letting her code run its course as she walked over to the workbench, plucking up the note and reading aloud the name written on its face.

"'Princess Harley', pfft!" Harley rolled her eyes, the ghost of a smirk plastered on her lips as she folded open the letter, "I sent out a patrol to collect this for you. Figured you might want it back. Also, I took a look through it and made sure you didn't have anything that could be considered 'contraband' or something like that. I'll be back soon,"

"She didn't even sign it," Harley chuckled, shaking her head as she looked around the workbench, finding nothing. She flipped the note around and sighed.

'Look under the bench, dumbass' it read and Harley glared at the wall before her before bending down and searching the floor.

It was her satchel.

'How did I not see Catra come here?' Harley thought as she smiled, rummaging around through her bag and finding everything was normal. Mustn't have been any 'contraband'.

One of Harley's blue sticky notes poked out of a compartment in the back of her satchel and Harley extracted it, her attention snapping to the scribbled drawing of Catra on its front.

Harley shook her head again, smirking, "Cute,"

Then Harley tucked it neatly back where she found it and produced a small black case from her bag. She opened it and plucked up her glasses, placing them neatly on the bridge of her nose before drawing a hefty laptop case from the main pocket in her satchel.

She went back to her tablet, reaching into her case and pulling out her laptop. No WiFi, what a shocker. Harley opened an application from her dock and started ferociously typing away at it. Her tablet pinged and she affixed a cord from the device and connected it to her laptop, a string of code lining up on her screen that she expertly dealt with within only about fifteen minutes (of course there were some error messages but she fixed them rather quickly)

No longer did she have to deal with learning an entirely new language and work with lacklustre software. She finally had everything she needed to prove herself to Catra-- to Hordak; to the Horde. Catra wasn't the one she needed to prove herself to, she corrected herself, but she thought about it anyway.

Maybe she hadn't been trying to impress Hordak this whole time, maybe she just wanted to impress Catra. It would explain how useless she felt when she didn't get to see her. Nevertheless, Harley wasn't useless anymore. If her code worked just the way she wanted it to, she had what she needed to gain Hordak's trust and subsequently, Catra's.