()-()-()
Shang watches the young man scurry off and looks back at the group with a raised eyebrow.
"Yin is certainly an...interesting individual," he remarks.
"Kinda reminds me of somebody we used to know," Yao smirks, nudging him in the shoulder.
"Only this time he isn't really a woman," laughs Ling. "Well, maybe."
They all burst into laughter only to be cut off by a shrill scream. A particularly feminine scream, a scream that sticks a memory in all their minds of Mulan dangling from that rope, watching her love slip away into the canyon.
They all remember that scream very well.
Shang jumps up on his feet fast, and so do they. The noise comes from the valley where Yin had just meandered into. Everyone seems to be thinking the same thing because they all start to run across the strip of forest and down the hill.
Mulan bucks and violently pushes against the two men who'd caught her by surprise. Struggling, she curses herself for not being prepared. She could've taken them down much easier than this.
She sees Shang first and then the trio of men and her heart lifts.
Mulan manages to keep the Mongols from carrying her away until Shang rips one from her arm and she hears a deadly crack. Yao and Chien-Po struggle with the other one until a sword is plunged into his broad chest and he falls with a loud thud.
Mulan is astonished at how winded she is, she can hardly catch her breath. Shang yanks her up on her feet.
"What was that?" he demands.
"I," she gasps, "don't know. I...I think they were Mongol spies."
"Was anyone else here?" he asks, thinking of the scream.
"No," she answers. The men discreetly look at each other with a bit of confusion, but none say a word about the scream that sounded like their hero of China.
Later that night in her tent, Mulan silently packs up her things while Mushu paces around and rants.
"Girl, I bout got squashed!" he yells. "You got any idea how scared I was? I coulda died!"
"Mushu, you're immortal," she returns flatly. "Besides, it turned out fine anyway."
"That," he sputters, "is not the point! The point is that you ain't on your game, and if you gonna be fightin' a thousand of those kinda men, you need to step it up."
"I know, I know," she mumbles. "I don't know why I'm being like this."
"Well, ya better figure it out, girl. You got Mongols to fight," he says.
"Huh," she says suddenly, looking thoughtful.
"What?"
Mulan has wide eyes and distractedly picks at her bottom lip. Mushu becomes worried and crawls up on her knee.
"Mushu, what day is it?" she asks him urgently. He goes over to the burlap sack that holds her belongings and retrieves her calendar.
"Oh no," she whispers, looking at it.
Mulan's menstrual cycle starts over every three weeks. And this is her second skipped in a row.
"What?" Mushu asks, "Forget a birthday?"
"No," she replies quietly. "Mushu, I've missed my past two monthlies."
Slowly he begins to understand what she means. "Wait," he says, "does that mean-"
"I don't know!" she murmurs into her hands.
"Wait, hold up a second," he exclaims, "girl, why is there even a chance? You wasn't even married two hours when he left, how could-"
He gasps loudly, and Mulan winces.
"You little sneaky thing you!" he hollers. "I'm with you all the dang time, and you managed to get past your own guardian without me knowing! And to think, you was doing funny business with-"
"Shang!" she exclaims. "Oh god, I can't even tell him! If he finds out I'm me..."
She covers her face again. "I can't be with-child. I can't do this."
Mushu looks sadly up at her and cups her jaw between his claws. "Hey, if we can get through the whole Hun army, we can deal with this. We can figure it out."
"Mushu, if I really am expecting, what's gonna happen when I start showing," Mulan wonders.
"Well hopefully this thing'll be over by then," he says.
She curls up into a ball and blankly stares at the tent wall.
"If either of us die," Mulan whispers, "Shang will never know he was going to be a father."
The camp arises before dawn the next morning, much to the men's displeasure. Mulan doesn't care, she couldn't sleep anyway, just cried all night. The little doubt she had left is ruined when she finds herself vomiting into a bush.
She mounts Khan uneasily and grimaces when she hears Shang's voice shout, "Move out!"
And she finds the bumpy ride does nothing to help her queasiness.
"Where we goin', anyhow?" asks Mushu.
"The eastern border," she answers, "or somewhere on the way, wherever we meet the Mongols."
Ling slows his horse so that he rides next to Mulan.
"Hi Yin," he calls. "Hey, how're you doing? You look sick."
"I'm fine," says Mulan, remembering her man voice.
"Hey, it's too bad we killed those spies, they could've been helpful," he remarks, probably because they seem to be wandering along the countryside.
"Yeah."
Ling pulls his horse even closer and looks around him before leaning in. "Did you hear about General Shang yet?" he asks.
Mulan raises her eyebrows. "What about General Shang?"
Ling chuckles. "Well rumor has it, a couple buddies of mine were walking by his tent aaand guess what they saw him doing?"
This alarms Mulan. "What?"
"Crying. General Li Shang, crying. I didn't believe myself, but when he came out to the bonfire to tell us to go to sleep, his eyes were all red."
"Wow," she musters. Ol' hardhead crying. But why? Did he miss her too much? Mulan secretly hopes she is the reason.
"Ling!" somebody yells.
"Coming! See you later, Yin," he says.
The remainder of the daylight is uneventful except for the occasional mis-sighting of a Mongol soldier. As she rides along on Kahn, Mulan ponders her current situation.
If I live, she thinks, I am going to have a baby. A child. I am going to be a mother maybe.
Mulan and Shang always wanted children. Infact, had this war not been going on, she would've told him right about now, and he would've been so happy. The whole country would, even. A child born between Li Mulan, hero of China and daughter of the legend Fa Zhou, and Li Shang, son of the great General Li and a general himself. A person with near-perfect lineage.
And it's sad to think for Mulan that the child might not even get to live. If they were at home, what would they name it? What would their child be like? Would it act like them, or maybe not at all?
She looks ahead at Shang, leading the company on his white horse. She can't help but wonder what kind of father he'd be. Loving but stern, she decides.
As Mulan watches the flutter of his red cape, her eye catches something on the nearby cliff. More than one something. Mongol men, one aiming an arrow directly at Shang.
"Shang!" she shouts, speeding Khan ahead.
He looks up in confusion and sees the soldiers. Just as the arrow is released, he reels out of the way and yells "Ambush!"
Five men jump from the cliff and head for Shang, swords drawn. Mulan dismounts and joins the rest of the company, running to the burly men in attempt to kill. One catches Mulan by the arm, and she kicks him hard in the stomach before another sends a sword through his neck.
The fight doesn't last long, it being an entire company against five men. But Mulan can tell they weren't out to kill everyone, probably just Shang. And they were so close.
"It's late," he says. "Set up camp."
So an hour later, Mulan finds herself in the same position she was a night earlier- sitting in her tent arguing with Mushu.
"He ain't gonna kill you if you tell him!" Mushu argues, peeling away Mulan's 'scar' and the rest of her facial extremities.
"Mushu, I've made up my mind," returns Mulan. "He would send me home immediately, not to mention resent me for the rest of his life. I'll be fine, you even said."
She dips her hands into a bowl of water and rinses her face, enjoying the coolness of bare skin while she can.
"Yeah, yeah," mutters Mushu. "By the way, did it ever occur to you to WAIT TILL YOU WERE MARRIED LIKE A DECENT PERSON?"
Mulan rolls her eyes. "Sometimes, things just-"
They are both mute when footsteps become louder and the flap of her tent opens.
"Yin, I never thanked you for-"
Shang stops speaking when he sees exactly who he's talking to.
()-()-()