A few months before an encounter with a sword.... 

“Come on, Lonnie, how tough can this be?” Adora said confidently.

“When we drew the short straw and wound up the only group of two? At least one missing teammate harder,” the other Cadet replied.

They were part of a group of Cadets undertaking an unusual training event, far from the normal training halls of the Horde  - out in a forested area no less, but not the Whispering Woods and their treacherous magical abilities. They waited at their spot in the testing area for the exercise to begin, beside a transmitter speaker. The only gear they had was a small tracker pad and a stun rod for each of them.

“But come on, think about this. Catra, Kyle, and Rogelio are spread across other teams. Then there's us, we're both in the top three of the scores all the time! It's actually unfair on the rest.”

“Yeah, we're both top three, Adora. You're always number one, I'm sometimes number two when Catra's feeling especially lazy or Shadow Weaver's especially vindictive.”

“Well, uh, I'm not always number one. You forget you were top scoring sometimes!”

“Six years ago. We were about twelve. And you had a broken ankle,” Lonnie pointed out.

“More than that, surely?”

Lonnie simply stayed silent, staring at the baffled Blonde.

“...Well, anyway, we're still the best team. And we're working against experimental bots, with real stun rods and no augmented reality gear. We can let loose,” Adora grinned.

Lonnie studied her own stun rod.

“Stun rods restricted to half charge and with only half battery life too. Hooray(!)”

Adora was about to give some other peppy response, but the voice of the Force Captain commanding the exercise came over the transmitter and cut her off.

“Cadets, I am Force Captain Icer. You will be testing and tested against an experimental less lethal capture bot today. This live test of the technologies it carries may represent a means to overcome the foe some day when you are on a real battlefield. You are split into nine teams of three, and one of two, your only allies are your own team mates. Teams may not directly assist or attack each other, nor may you leave your teams. You can engage the bots but your stun rods will only force a reboot – and will only be capable of about a dozen discharges. You cannot disable them all, or permanently.”

“Meaning we're being encouraged to evade...” Adora concluded as Icer continued.

“Your objective is to reach the centre point of the training area, which if you went directly following your tracker pads will take about an hour. However, your teams pads can also be used to summon the bots if you spot other teams. There is one use per pad. Therefore, you not only should evade bots, but the other teams that may be sending the bots after you. ”

“So it's not going to take an hour but with two of us... less bot summons, but we've one person less to be spotted,” Lonnie noted.

“A captured team mate is not a failure, but their rescue will not be possible, and if they had not used the bot summon on their pad it is lost. You will have to overcome their loss to succeed, if they fall. Those who succeed will offered a shot at further special training with elite members of a Horde strike team. Those who fail today, will have at least one week off from all training and other duties. You may begin the mission now.”

“...A reward for failure? Weird,” Adora frowned as they started moving.

***

About thirty minutes had passed, with Adora and Lonnie having evaded two other teams and summoned a bot group onto another. They had not spotted Catra, Kyle, or Rogelio. They had however come across an odd sight.

“...Are these trees covered in frost?” Lonnie whispered.

Adora shrugged, not sure herself. The area wasn't very warm, but the scene before them didn't really add up. A chilly white layer covered the bark of some trees, condensation rolling off them in a wispy fog. There seemed to be some patches of the ground where the ice was gone, though.

“We can try figure it out later I guess, we don't really have time to investigate it,” The blonde said.

They continued onwards, until after another ten minutes of sneaking, they first evaded another team, and then, they spotted the shape of a bot lumbering through a clearing. It looked like a standard Horde robot, a spherical green body, spider like legs, and a glowing 'eye' that held the laser blaster. Except this one was blue, not red.

“Bot... And it's not onto us!” Adora whispered, seeing the bot looking the other way.

“I guess not, but, it's blue?”

“Experimental, remember?”

Adora then spotted something else. The bot's laser had some kind of smoky residue leaking. A sign the blaster was damaged!

“...We can knock it out and pass by. Look, the laser's damaged, a stun rod shock should reboot it right away. That other team is heading this way too, so, we summon other bots, then there's a few waiting for them!”

Lonnie nodded.

“Alright. Let's go...”

They emerged behind the bot, stun rods ready. They moved slowly, as the bot seemed to be looking away, and then it turned.

The two paused, as the bot's eye glowed.

“Dodge!” Lonnie yelled, even as Adora was doing so.

But the blue eye merely flickered and poured out a little more 'smoke', falling downwards.

“Aw, faulty laser? What a shame,” Adora grinned, as Lonnie frowned.

“...Smoke rises, why is the smoke there falling?”

 Adora however was feeling cocky as the bot buzzed again, the eye glowing fruitlessly once more.

“Alright, let's just put you into a reboot and we'll be on our way...”

Standing with her stun rod cocked over her shoulder, one hand on her hip, she looked like the kind of confident trooper that would appear on some propaganda poster. Lonnie however merely looked confused beside her...

“Adora, I don't think it's a laser, it's some kind of-” Lonnie began, but the eye glowed again, and this time, it worked.

The blue blast, unfocused, washed over the two cadets and their surroundings. They were coated in the icy wash so swiftly Adora's confident pose was locked in place, cocky smirk and all. Lonnie's alarm too was suspended, her hand raising up for just a second, trying to shield herself in vain.

Icicles had formed over them, falling from their limbs, and their frozen hair. Lonnie's dreadlocks had turned almost white under frost, a bare hint of the brown they should be. Her hazel eyes locked in place below the flash-frozen moisture layer, and her olive skin tinted faintly blue even as white frost grew on her subzero form.  Adora's blonde hair was now almost pure white with frost, her paler skin almost turned totally blue under the growing icedrops. Her blue eyes were now locked as icy orbs, staring in confidence for the foreseeable future.

Cold 'smoke' dropped from the frozen pair, the same wispy fog that had actually leaked from the damaged bot's freeze ray. The bot waddled away, eye still leaking, with Adora and Lonnie left behind in icy stasis, until a few moments later another bot arrived to collect them. Any others who came across the scene would find just a strange icy patch made by the faulty bot's imprecise ray.

***

The exercise was over, and a dozen of the thirty cadets looked in surprise at the eighteen flash-frozen statues before them. Catra, Kyle, and Rogelio each looked wide eyed at Lonnie and Adora's frozen forms, stunned to silence as Force Captain Icer stood in front of the gallery of humanoid icicles.

He was a blue-skinned humanoid, wearing a standard Horde Soldier uniform that was coated in frost, apart from the missing arms of his upper jumpsuit. He was powerfully built, and icy condensation fell from his skin. Literally cold blue eyes locked onto his twelve surviving participants.

“Cadets, here you see the effect of the Freezer Tracker bots. Their freeze rays can instantly place a target into a subzero state of suspended animation. With assistance they will thaw in a few hours. Left alone, it could take some time. A week or so, in fact...”

A chilling smirk accompanied this as the remaining Cadets realised the 'reward' for failing.

“But you passed, you have proven yourselves. And you shall move on to further training! While your comrades here... thaw out. Come, follow me,” Icer ordered, and the twelve survivors obeyed in silence.

As they walked, taken right past the displayed losers, nervous glances at the eighteen fog-spilling forms were made. Kyle and Rogelio looking especially at Lonnie, while Catra's eyes fixed on Adora.

"Stop dawdling, cadets! You can move, so do it!"

Neither of the frozen two looked back as their squadmates went onwards to more testing and training. Nor did any of the other sixteen statues in suspended animation. All they did was stand there, coated in frost that was in no hurry to melt, chill mist dancing around their feet.