Mai moaned as she tiredly fell upon her bunk's bed. The first week of training had not been pretty. Abhorring Captain Zou, Mai evened her breathing.
"As Mai just painfully showed you, doing a simple thing such as retrieving an arrow requires discipline. The one thing she had forgotten to keep in mind was how she was going to get down." Captain Zou chuckled, watching as Mai forced herself to her feet.
"She needed strength and discipline to climb her way to the top, but she also needed to think through what she was doing. Logic and common sense should have kicked in, but Mai is Mai."
Her enervated muscles gleefully accepted the rest; Mai's eyes instantly began to droop in fatigue. Then, just as usual, a certain loud, obnoxious voice disturbed her somnolent body."Yo! Mai! Wake up! How'd it go? You just charge right in here and fall unto the bed without saying a word. Sometimes, I'd almost be willing to swear that when it comes to beddy-bye-time, you are just like Mulan." Mushu loudly scolded Mai for not filling him in. Mai, rolling her eyes, murmured with annoyance,
"I ran a mile without stopping, did 100 push ups and pull ups, and I learned how to duel a man with a wooden sword even through the scorching heat. By the way, did I mention that to learn patience, my fellow soldiers and I had to sit on a hillside while doing sit-ups for two hours?" Tucking herself in, Mai rolled over, trying to fall asleep.
"Hey, girl! Just because a few measly hours of hard work doesn't give you the right to scold me! Who is older? Me, who is at least a thousand years old, or you, who is…who is…Wait. How old are you again?" Mushu's tail flicked about, unconsciously moving. Mai looked down, her mouth becoming dry.
"I'm fifteen. Let me get some shut eye before I use these 'new techniques' on you." The lie flowed bitterly over Mai's dry tongue. Fifteen? Honestly, Mai wasn't even completely sure how to spell her own name, never the less how old she was. It didn't matter, though. No one was there to tell her she was thirteen. That she was sixteen. Mai had grown up being a street rat, but thoughts about her past always haunted her. She made herself believe she was fifteen, as she couldn't face the idea of not knowing. She couldn't face admitting that the only clue of who her family was a dumb, broken locket.
"Fifteen? Girl, you're tall! Scrawny little pin, that's what I call you. Don't the army feed you nothin'?" Mai felt the sudden urge to laugh. Mushu danced over several topics, all of which Mai ignored. Lies constantly slipped out of her mouth. Trying to shrug it off, Mai found her eyes closing, memories flashing.
"Grandpapa, where did I get my locket from?" A young girl asked, her tiny face wrinkling with frustration as she tried to open the broken jewelry. Her grandfather chuckled, watching in amusement as the raven-haired girl picked at the locket.
"I found it the day I found you, Mai. It has an inscription, but my eyes can't read anything anymore." His voice rasped, his old age finally taking advantage over him. Mai pursed her lips, sticking her tongue in the corner of her lips in aggravation. She could barely read her own name; she couldn't even guess what the engraved symbols meant.
Shuddering, Mai pushed back the memories. Her grandfather was dead. She got over it. She moved on. Yet, somewhere, in the back of her head, memories that had lain hidden for about ten years began to resurface. The past, whatever it was, is over, time to think about the present.
"And then, that buck-toothed idiot, you're dang Captain, decides to ruin the moment and say, "Does this dress make me look fat?" Mai shook her head, partly out of confusion and partly out of annoyance. She had a lot to think about. Training was almost over with, it had gone on for months. Mai's body had indeed, roughened up, but every day, her aching sides reminded her that she was weaker then the others. She was a woman.
Her mind blurring into a cross between sleeping and dreaming, she never thought much of anything she heard until the next morning. She couldn't seem to get a ridiculous chirping out of her head. Nor could she rid of Mushu's loud, obnoxious voice. All she was sure of was that something was going to happen. Soon. Abhorring her worry-wart self, Mai finally let her fatigued body relax into a light slumber, unaware of the danger lurking ahead.