Mulan was a fan favorite.
It was one of those stories that the kids just demanded to hear over and over again, and by now they've practically memorized all of the lyrics to the songs.
But Jin told the animated Disney version of the tale with a few edits. Namely, removing anything that could be deemed Fire Nation-y such as Mushu being a dragon, or the use of fireworks and rockets. Instead, Mushu was a badgermole, and the soldiers used Earthbending.
They were small changes, ones that Jin wasn't entirely sure were necessary. However, given the fact that the Earth Kingdom had been at war with the Fire Nation for the last hundred years, it was best to err on the side of caution. Officially, there was no war in Ba Sing Se, but this was the Lower Ring. Everyone knew what was going on beyond those walls. The Upper Ring was content in living in their delusions, the Mid Ring could afford to turn a blind eye, but it was impossible not to notice in the Lower Ring.
Jin debated long and hard with herself over whether or not to censor her stories. She wasn't that good at putting personal twists to things, it always seemed to fall flat compared to the original.
There was a reason why she never wrote her own music, or told her own stories. Jin's strength lay in her ability to memorize, not her ability to create original work. She straight up did not have the brains for that.
True, she did have to take some liberties with the story she knew to adapt it for an audience, but the heart of the story stayed the same.
And at the very least, the end result seemed to please the kids, and that was all that really mattered.
A little while after Jin captivated an audience of kids with the story of Mulan for the first time, a petite thirteen year old girl came running towards Jin while she was in the middle of refilling her water bottle. A heat wave had settled across the city, worsening the drought that had already taken hold. But it seemed as if the young girl was completely unaffected by the heat that caused everyone else in the vicinity to slow their movements and seek any shade that they could find.
The little girl ran right down the middle of the street directly under the sweltering sun, seemingly completely unaffected by the scorching rays, with her chest puffed out and a fistful of loose-leaf papers in hands. A little ways behind her, a boy just a few years older chased after her, yelling something about something being stupid and not worth the effort.
But before the little boy caught up to her, the girl shoved the papers at Jin and started singing, "Let's get down to business! To Defeat! The Huns!" Then the kid broke out in a mad bout of giggles and yelled, "I MADE A STORY! Look, look, look! Come look! It's about Mulan! And you're in it too!"
Jin stared at the little girl blankly for a moment. Then before Jin could even say anything in response the boy plowed into the girl, almost knocking her over as he slowed down.
"Hey, watch it!" the girl snapped at him, "I'm trying to show Miss. Jin the story!"
The boy grabbed the girl's wrist. "Lani, don't run off like that again!" he scolded before lifting his head up to address Jin, "I'm sorry about my sister, she gets over excited a lot. We'll just be going now- ACK!"
The boy snatched his hand away and jumped a whole foot away from his sister. "Did you just bite me?!" his voice reached a higher octave as he clutched his hand to his chest.
The girl, Lani, showed off all of her teeth and clicked them together "Back off," She hissed, her hair almost puffing up with her hostile tone "I'm not leaving till I give her the story."
"Forget about your story! We don't want to waste Miss. Jin's time, and-"
"Woah woah woah, hold up, slow down." Jin said, finally cutting into the siblings bickering. The two kids instantly snapped their heads around at attention. "Now. What's this about a story?"
"UUUGH," Lani's older brother groaned, tossing his head back dramatically. "This is the stupidest way to do this. And for the record, I don't approve of any of this. But you know what? Fine. Do whatever. I'm gonna go buy food."
Lani's face scrunched up as she blew a raspberry at her brother's retreating form. "Fine! We don't want you here anyway!"
Then as if that entire exchange hadn't happened, Lani's whole demeanor took a 180, as her snarl melted away, replaced by a face of pure excitement. She bounced on her heels as she held the papers out and Jin took them out of reflex.
"These are for you to read!" Lani exclaimed, "I made another version of the Mulan story and I think it's super cool and I really want you to read it!"
Jin glanced down at the wad of papers and then shuffled them together so that they were all lined up, "So I see. Good Job! You wrote so much! Look at all these pages, there has got to be dozens of them! How long have you been working on this?"
Lani looked down at her feet bashfully at the praise. "All week," she said.
Jin whistled, "Now that's impressive."
"Not as impressive as your storytelling! The way that you just pull people into the stories, and all the acting, and different voices you make for the characters and all the songs too. It's like you're making fictional universes into a reality. It's what inspired me to write a story about Mulan! Please, I want you to read it cause I want to know what you think of it."
Jin moved to agree but then froze as she took a closer look at the sheets.
"Why does this keep happening to me?" she whispered, too quietly to be heard by anyone but herself.
The displaced woman liked to think that she was improving her reading comprehension. Dutifully attending classes, and studiously finishing all her homework. She was at a point where she could read any sign that hung in the busy shopping districts. She could read the labels of basic food products and household items. And she could even read some of the posters that had been hung up on various community boards scattered throughout the city.
The words were all neatly printed and written out by people with impeccable handwriting.
And the writing on the pages in front of Jin were decidedly not that.
The handwriting was incredibly messy, and perhaps if the words were written in English she would have been able to muddle through it. But reading the story as it was, was probably not something Jin could handle at her current comprehension levels.
There was suddenly a light tug on the sheets. Jin refocused and saw that Lani was quietly attempting to take her story back as her eyes moistened.
Jin realized that the little girl must have mistaken Jin's moment of panic as an indication that she wasn't interested in Lani's work, and Jin quickly moved to rectify that.
"No, no, it's alright I want to read your story, it's just…" Jin paused and breathed as she considered what she wanted to say. "I am not good at reading in general." she decided to say, getting straight to the point. Not playing it off as a joke, or trying to deflect away from it. "It might seem a bit odd that I can't at this age, but I am not from around here. I am learning, but these kinds of things take time and I'm trying to get better at it.
I'm not at a point yet where I can read everything that you've written, but if you would read this out to me, it would be very helpful." Jin held the papers back to Lani, a friendly grin forming on Jin's face. "And who knows, maybe you can help me out with my own reading abilities that I can exchange for help improving your storytelling abilities. How does that sound?"
Lani looked at Jin, looked down at the papers, then looked back at Jin. Then an equally large grin broke out across her face that matched Jin's own.
"Ok!" Lani squealed as she snatched back the sheets and flipped to the first page. "I'm gonna give you a summary first! Is that alright?"
"That sounds perfect."
"Great! Ok! My story is about Mulan, and how she's a super awesome warrior queen that has a plan to become a supreme being of goodness and power. And she learns earthbending too!
The goal is to find the biggest, strongest warrior in the whole wide universe who could beat even the Avatar without breaking a sweat so that she can learn from them. When Mulan finds the teacher, she'll show off her amazing skills and powers that would impress them so much that the teacher will beg her to become their student.
Then, Mulan estimates that it would take about a week, maybe two before she would be able to become a master of the other three elements. After that, Mulan will go out and fight a bad guy who threatens her and her friends. Then after that she'll become best friends with the Avatar team who would be so grateful to her that they'll let her join them on their quest to save the world.
After going on some really really fun and awesome adventures with her new best friends, Mulan is gonna split up with the team to go her own way. She would first go to one of the old Air Nomad Temples and tame a whole herd of flying bison that would take her all the way to the Fire Nation. That's when she'll march right into the Fire Palace and confront the Fire Lord AKA The Great Evil™ .
Then, epic battle music's gonna start playing before Mulan shows up at the Fire Palace because Jin's gonna be there and she's gonna be in charge of creating the right atmosphere for the final showdown. Mulan will throw open the doors to the Palace and dramatically walk through the halls until she reaches the throne room while Jin is singing: It's the Final Countdown DO DO DO DOOO! DOOBY DOOBY DOOOOO!
The music will slowly fade away until it's Just Mulan and the Fire Lord staring at each other very angrily.
The Fire Lord will get all angry and start pointing and yelling at Mulan, but she isn't going to be affected by that at all because Mulan would know that she is infinitely times better than the Fire Lord.
And Mulan is a nice person too. So she'll first try to talk to the Fire Lord and ask him politely if he could stop being evil and kindly launch himself into the sun so that he would stop being such a bother.
But of course he'll say no because he is The Great Evil™.
Mulan would be forced to fight him even though she doesn't want to.
Anyway, the epic fight for the survival of humanity would begin right as Jin would start singing really cool battle songs. And Mulan would time her best super cool move that finishes The Great Evil™ off will happen at the same time that Jin will sing the "You've been -insert dramatic pause here- THUNDERSTRUCK!" part of the song.
There would also be an orchestra to back Jin up.
Many orchestra.
A bajillion orchestra.
Cause you need boss music to set the mood and stuff. That's the rules.
It will be a hard-fought battle between Mulan and the Fire Lord, and a lot of buildings will be blown up. Like BOOM! But in the end, Mulan wins because she's a good guy and good guys always win no matter what happens.
Then Mulan's teacher will burst into the room just as Mulan punches the Fire Lord and knocks him out, and the teacher will be so proud of her! Then Avatar would show up and thank Mulan for saving the whole entire planet from The Great Evil™, and to show his gratitude the Avatar would want to give her all of his powers so that Mulan could become the new Avatar since she did so well at defeating the Fire Lord.
But Mulan will say no, and that she couldn't take the Avatar's powers or title away from him. Instead Mulan and Jin would go home and help bring prosperity to the Earth Kingdom, and undo all of the damages the Fire Nation had done. And even though she can't go home because her village was destroyed, she still finds peace once the day is done.
Then they lived happily ever after THE END!"
Lani finished by clapping her hands together loudly. But as she did so a few of the papers flew out of her grasp and both Lani and Jin scrambled to pick them back up before they were carried off by the wind.
"So whaddya think? Whaddya think?" Lani asked excitedly once she secured all the papers in her grasp.
Jin couldn't help but smile at that overeager face.
The story itself was definitely rough. Underdeveloped, lacked three-dimensional characters, didn't have much of a structure or good pacing. But the only thing that Jin could think of as she listened to the little girl read through the manuscript was that this was baby's first fanfic. And it was a self-insert fic at that!
A girl after her own heart. Jin felt a twinge of pride that of all the people Lani could have shown her story to, she chose to show Jin.
"I thought it was lovely," Jin said, "I have to say that you have great taste in music. I'm guessing that you've heard me sing them before?"
Lani nodded so fast that her head looked like a bobble head that was bobbling out of control.
"That's really cool that you managed to work them into the story like that. And really good dramatic timing as well! I also loved how you wove in the comedy as well. Especially with the way you called the Fire Lord, The Great Evil™. That was probably my favorite part of the story. And I know it's not to everyone's likings, but I appreciate the fantasy wish-fulfillment that your story revolves around. Sometimes it's just nice to hear a story that's fun even if it's not realistic.
That being said, I think there's always room for improvement. You remember how I said that I'm not very good at reading but I keep trying to improve whenever I can? The drive to get better can be applied to anything. We could edit the story together if you'd like, so while I help you make the story even better than it already is, you can also help me learn more every-day vocabulary, sentence structure and what not. So what do you say?"
Lani, who seemed to be absorbing energy from the compliments, suddenly adopted a very thoughtful expression on her face when Jin offered the deal. "Hmmmm," she said as she considered the proposition, "Do you think we could meet up after I'm done with school? Maybe two or three times a week to do this?"
"That would work for me," Jin answered with a nod, "Just tell me the time and place, alright?"
"Yeah, absolutely! Ok, I'm in. Let's shake on it!"
Jin laughed, and then reached out to grasp Lani's outstretched hand. Then something a little peculiar happened. Lani suddenly squeezed Jin's hand and an odd, manic glint entered her eyes.
"The pact has been sealed." The little girl rasped in a low voice.
But before Jin even had time to process what had happened, Lani had let go and instantly turned right back into the bubbly preteen that she was only moments before.
"Awesome!" Lani cheered, "I'll meet you at your usual spot where you perform in two days, same time as now. We can do some more work then! See ya!" Then without waiting for a response, Lani whirled around on her heels and booked it, leaving Jin to stand there completely dumbfounded.
Jin blinked once. Twice. Three times. Then took a deep breath. "What?" she said as she exhaled through her nose.
"Oh boy." Someone said to her right. Jin snapped her head around to see Lani's older brother standing there with an exasperated look on his face, holding two vanilla ice cream cones. "Did she do the thing where she shook your hand and did the really creepy voice?" he asked.
Jin nodded mutely. "Is that a something that she does a lot?"
The boy sighed, "Yeah, unfortunately. Eh, it's out of my hands now, so it looks like you're gonna be stuck with her hounding you for a while. She's a good person though. Really annoying, but also creative and I gotta give her props for that." Then he held one of the ice cream cones out to Jin. "Here."
Jin furrowed her brows. "You bought that ice cream for me?" she asked.
"No, I got it for Lani. But demonic little sisters don't get ice cream when they decide to go around freaking people out so, I'm giving it to you now. Take it, there's no strings attached."
Jin had half a mind to politely decline, but just looking at the delicious frozen treat while standing outside when it felt like it was 35 degrees Celsius out was enough for Jin to accept the cone that was offered.
"Thanks," she murmured.
"Yeah don't mention it." The boy said as he took a bite out of his own ice cream. "I should probably go see where Lani went. Odds are she's gonna try and find a platypus-bear to fight." Then he paused and looked Jin up and down. "Nice knowing you."
And then he left.
Once again, Jin was left on her own. Standing on a busy street corner in the shade offered by one of the larger buildings in the area with an untouched dripping ice cream cone in hand.
Author's Note:
What's this ! ! ! A back-to-back update ? ? ? Of one of my fanfics ? ? ? It's more likely than you would think.
Songs used in this chapter are: I'll Make a Man Out Of You from Mulan. The Final Countdown by Europe. Thunderstruck by AC/DC.
Thanks for reading! See you guys next time!
~Lost-In-The-Muse