()-()-()
Mulan turns around.
"Grandma Fa?"
The old woman sits beside Mulan in the grass and takes her hand.
"So you're gonna be a man again, but you can't look like you did last time?"
She nods, dumbly.
"Well I know how to fix that," Grandma says.
Mulan blinks. "How?"
She smiles and pats her hand. "When I was your age during the war, we had foreign soldiers always coming and going through the village, barging into our homes to look for valuable things they could sell." She lowers her voice. "However, most of them were looking for young girls to rape. So before anything could happen to us, my friends and I figured out how to use clay and paint to disguise ourselves as old women whenever they came around. We became very good at it too."
Mulan raises her eyebrows. "You mean, you can change how my face looks?"
"Sure I can," Grandma Fa replies. "But makeup isn't permanent, so I'm gonna have to teach your lizard here how to do it."
Mushu's ears prick up. "Lizard?!"
A few moments later, they sit by the mirror in Mulan's bedroom. Grandma teaches her and Mushu how to glue animal hair to make her eyebrows seem burly, how to apply rouge under her eyes to make them seem puffy, and how to create a scar with clay and a chopstick. When she's done, Mulan faces the mirror and startles herself.
"Oh my," she mutters, running her fingertips across a little 'scar' that runs under her eye. Her once pretty, round eyes are replaced with hooded ones, swollen. Mulan's eyebrows had always been thick but manicured, now they're just thick. Her lips look thinner and darker.
Mulan is unrecognizable, and hope surges through her veins.
"What about my name? And papers?" she asks distractedly, testing her brows by moving them up and down.
"Covered," Grandma answers, holding up a scroll. Mulan opens and reads it.
"Xiang Yin? Is that-"
"My father," she answers. "Your great-grandfather, maternally."
"Hm..." Mulan thinks about it. "Do you think this scroll will be outdated enough for them to catch on?"
Grandma Fa shakes her head. "Just tell them you live up in the mountains. Nothing is improved up there."
Mulan hugs her grandmother, and stands up.
"Why are you helping me?" she asks.
"Because you're the hero of China, of course," the old woman says. "You need to go help that handsome boy you got!"
Mulan smiles, and bows. "Thank you Grandma."
As quickly as she did the night her father was drafted, she loads everything on Khan the horse and opens the saddle bag for Mushu and Cri-Kee.
"I need all the luck I can get," she tells them.
By morning, they arrive at the camp, only a few hours away from her home village. This camp looks pretty much the same to the one Mulan had trained at. Only this time there won't be training. Just packing, marching, then fighting. Then maybe death. Probably death.
She remembers the first day at camp last time, and how she blew it. Mulan has had her fair share of pretending to be a man, so she should be fine. If she keeps her mouth shut.
They approach the campsite and Khan slows to a trot.
"Now remember Mulan," Mushu warns, "this time our strategy's to keep quiet and blend in. The more trouble you getcha'self into, the more likely ol' Shanghai's gonna notice. Got it?"
They dismount the horse and Mushu hides below her collar as she walks into the campsite.
"I think I know how to handle myself, Mu-"
THUD! She'd run smack into the back of a short, burly man who swings around and meets Mulan with a growl.
Yao! she almost yells. She didn't know he was going to be at the front, and looking around, she sees Ling and Chien-Po.
"Watch where you're going, chicken-boy," he mutters.
She's about to spit out an apology, but Ling turns around.
"Yao, what did we tell you about being nice?" he shouts.
Yao pushes him away. "To be nice."
Ling looks up at Mulan and raises an eyebrow.
"Hey, do I know you?" he asks.
Panic alarms go off in her head.
"No way," she blurts, not remembering to deepen her voice.
"Yeah," Yao pipes in, "he do look familiar."
Mulan clears her throat. "No, my name is Yin. Xiang Yin. You don't know me. I live up in the mountains."
Chien-Po scratches his neck and Ling cocks his head.
"Hey, you kinda look like a guy we know. Well, girl, actually-"
Mulan punches him right square in the face. Her eyes widen; she did not mean for that to happen.
Ling grins stupidly in a daze and Yao narrows his eyes.
"Oh, I see how it is tough guy," he growls.
He leaps to tackle Mulan, but she dodges him and Yao lands on Ling. Ling hits Yao and Yao kicks Chien-Po, tripping him. He lands on all of them and Mulan is pinned at the bottom. As they all kick at Chien-Po to get off of them, a shout echoes.
"Soldiers!"
They scramble to stand up and it all seems very, very familiar to Mulan as she remains huddled on the ground shielding her head. She hears the crunching of boots become louder and then stop.
She looks up into the eyes of her husband.
()-()-()