Author's Note: As Light Through The Veins pointed out to me, poor Louis is underused as far as fanfiction goes. So while I'm still planning on doing the Tiana/Naveen version of "Make a Man Out Of You", it will have to wait. I don't know how many chapters, as I might get the other requests done before returning to it. We'll have to see.

Song: "I'll Make a Man Out of You"

Original Movie: Mulan

Louis-centric! (I'm afraid this is not nearly as funny as I was hoping for, but I still like the moral, so…we're going with it).

"Pleeeeaaaaase!" Louis whined once more, his front claws clasped together as he pleaded.

Mama Odie sighed. "This is the sixth time in two weeks you showed up at my house askin' to turn you human! What good's it gonna do you? You got a good life. Ain't Tiana and princey treating you well?" Louis nodded.

"Oh, they treat me all right, Mama Odie, it's other people. They scared of me for some reason!" He rubbed the scales on his left arm with his right claw. "It's the scales and the teeth…don't no one want to talk to a gator."

"Not like they can understand you anyhow," Mama Odie muttered.

"Exactly!" Louis cried, not realizing the voodoo woman's point. "They all think I'm gonna eat them. Even the other members of the band. Please, Mama Odie, even if it's just for a while…"

"Just for a while?" Mama Odie repeated, petting Juju a little too hard as she thought. The snake seemed relieved a moment later when she sent him after her magic gourd.

"You mean?" Louis was up on his hind legs, staring at Mama Odie in disbelief. "Do you really mean it, Mama Odie?" She nodded curtly. "Remember, I want to have all my fingers and toes and I want the kind of belly button that goes in and doesn't stick out, oooh, and could I have hair? I've never had hair before!"

"Reptiles ain't usually got need for it," Mama Odie said shortly, waving the gourd above her head with a flourish. "This might hurt a little…"

"Ouch!" Louis cried.

"It ain't touched you yet!"

"Oh…sorry," Louis said sheepishly. Sure enough, a moment later when the magic did hit him he cried out in agony. It felt like lightening had struck him in the chest. His tail moved back into his body, his arms and legs got longer, his snout shortened and when he ran his tongue along his teeth, he found they were no longer sharp.

He ran to Mama Odie's bathtub full of gumbo and stared at his reflection on the surface. He didn't recognize himself. Instead of a gator was a tall, portly man with coffee colored skin. He felt on top of his head, feeling the little bit of hair there. "I wanted more hair than this!" he complained.

"You be happy I did anythin' for you," Mama Odie threatened, "Lord knows I could have just as easily ignored you…now, you pay attention. This here spell only works for twenty-four hours."

Louis frowned. "Isn't there any way to make it permanent?"

Mama Odie chuckled. "Let's just see how you feel about it after today. Go on now, scoot, I got me other business to take care of today," she popped him on the rear with a wooden stirring spoon.

Going outside, Louis would meet his first human challenge – getting back to New Orleans through the bayou, without the aid of a tail to swim with or claws and sharp teeth to defend himself.

"Well, if Tiana and Naveen could do it as frogs, I sure 'nough can do it as a human," Louis decided, taking a step off the porch and landing in the cold waters of the swamp. He slipped into the water. "So far so good…" a single mosquito buzzed down to him. "Well, hello there little guy….oh…wow. You got friends," he said, surprised when a small swarm landed on his skin. He screamed and started slapping when they all bit down, one after another.

He scratched at his skin, wincing. He'd never been so itchy before, and he'd certainly never had to worry about mosquitoes before. They hadn't been able to penetrate his scales. He fought his way through another swarm of mosquitoes, this time doing a much better job of avoiding them all, though the occasional one still bit.

He stopped in his tracks when he felt something slither between his legs. "Oh no…tell me that ain't a snake…" he muttered. He flopped over and started using the breaststroke, figuring it would be a much faster way to get out of the swamp then merely wading through.

It was much harder without his claws and tail to aid him. He could no longer hold his breath for twenty minutes at a time as he could when he was a gator, and his large size was even more of a hindrance when he reached the areas where trees grew closely together.

Several hours of his day as a human being were wasted on just getting out of the swamp. When he finally reached New Orleans, he was soaked and shaking. He was exhausted. His plump form had been fine for a gator, healthy even, but as human's go, he was out of shape.

Louis was relieved when he finally stumbled upon "Tiana's Palace". "Naveen!" he cried. Naveen was serving as maître d' today. He looked up from his podium and studied Louis.

"Do I know you?" Naveen asked, trying to recall. "If you do not have a reservation we may not seat you today," he sighed, "It is unfortunately most busy…and it would seem our patrons are none to happy about our trumpet player missing work today…"

"But I am ya'll's trumpet player!" Louis cried.

"You are mistaken, my friend," Naveen motioned for Louis to take one of the waiting section's seats. "Our trumpet player is a gator."

"I know! I'm him!"

"You do not look like a gator."

Louis sighed. "I met you and Tiana in the bayou, y'all were frogs, I tried to help y'all find Mama Odie but I got you lost, then Ray came in and helped, and she told you to dig a little deeper, then Tiana defeated the Shadow Man you got bamboozled by and then you got married." He said the story all in one breath, desperate for Naveen to believe him.

"Louis? Achidanza! We had thought you would not show up for work today…You do not look like yourself, my friend…You have not been playing with Shadow Men, I hope?"

"We all learned from your mistake," Louis snorted. Naveen took the joke good-naturedly. "It was Mama Odie."

"I thought she said she would not turn you into a human?"

"She changed her mind. One of them twenty-four hour spells," Louis explained. "Now, where my horn at? I want to blow the lid of this joint!"

"There is the Louis I know," Naveen agreed, pushing him in the direction of the stage. "Tiana!" Naveen cried, racing for the kitchen, "Louis is here. And he is uh…dressed most sharply!"

"Now what is that supposed to mean?" Tiana's voice grew louder as she walked out of the kitchen, a fresh bowl of red beans and rice in her hands. "I don't see Louis…oh, hello," she greeted Louis, assuming he was a customer, "Welcome to Tiana's Palace…"

"No, no, that is Louis!" Naveen insisted.

"….Naveen, honey, do you need glasses?"

"No, no, he's right," Louis insisted. "I met you and Naveen in the bayou, y'all were frogs, I tried to help y'all find Mama Odie but—"

"It really is you!" Tiana hugged him. "I can't believe it. You're human!"

"But only for twenty-four hours," Naveen added.

"Less than that, by now," Louis amended.

"Well, I'm happy for you, but you know you got a job to do. Jazz is one of the reasons people come here in the first place," Tiana nodded towards the stage. "So you better get on up there. …Maybe you should change first, though?" He indicated his muddy clothes. "Naveen, go grab one of the waiter's outfits for him."

"Will we have one in his size?" Naveen wondered aloud as he rushed off.

"Not like Mama Odie to do somethin' like this," Tiana noted. "You sure she ain't tryin' to teach you some sort of lesson?"

"Like what?" Louis laughed. "This is great so far!...Except the mosquitoes. You humans have such weak skin! And it itches!" He scratched at the red, bumpy mosquito bites. His stomach growled loudly, and Tiana handed him the red beans and rice.

"Here. Get something in your stomach before you go on to perform."

Louis thanked her before starting to try to lower his head down to the bowl. He spilled half the contents before he remembered that his mouth did not stick out nearly as far anymore. Tiana chuckled and handed him a spoon before going to fetch something to clean the mess up with. Louis gripped it in awkwardly, using his whole fist to hold it. His first try with a spoon was much harder than anticipated. It scraped the bottom of the bowl and when he bit down on the spoon, the rounded end jammed upwards into his throat.

He panicked and released the spoon, unfortunately allowing it to slide part way down his throat. Gagging and coughing, he pulled it out and set it back beside the bowl, eyeing it warily. After a moment's consideration, he finished his meal by using the bowl like a cup, this time more aware of where his mouth was. He barely spilled any.

"Your audience awaits," Tiana had come back with a towel and his trumpet. She handed the latter to Louis, and pointed to the stage, where Naveen was already plucking out some chords on his ukulele.

Louis bounded for the stage, excited. This was his big human debut. He loved playing at Tiana's Palace, but being human meant there was the possibility of other venues. He would never leave The Firefly Five, but he wanted the feeling of someone else offering him that kind of opportunity.

He buzzed his lips before lifting the brass instrument to his lips, trying to prepare himself. He fingered a few notes as the drummer counted out the rhythm of the song. When the drummer reached "four", Louis began to play.

The others stopped and stared at him, and Louis put the horn down, feeling inside the mouth of the trumpet for any sort of debris. The music he'd just made had been, in a word…horrible. "Heh heh," He faked a laugh. "Sorry. Technical difficulties. Let me just try again…" He chose a simple song, just a few bars of "Little Brown Jug", but the notes squeaked so horribly the rest of the band started to cover their ears.

Louis excused himself from the stage, motioning that the others should play without him. "He ain't as good as the gator anyhow," Louis overheard the trombonist mutter.

"Louis? Are you okay?" Tiana asked. She'd watched the performance with no idea of what to do to help. He shook his head.

"I don't get it…what happened?"

Tiana considered. "Your mouth is different."

"What?"

"Well, think about it…you learned to play jazz as a gator. You had a much longer mouth, and teeth to deal with…you overcame a lot of things that should have made it impossible to learn jazz, and it made you an even better player. As a human, you'd have to learn it all over again…"

"But until then, I wouldn't be able to perform," Louis realized, studying his trumpet. "You don't think this is what Mama Odie had in mind from the get-go, do you?" Tiana shrugged.

"There's no way to know," She admitted. "Do you….do you still want to be a human?"

Louis thought it over, and then shook his head. "No. I worked so hard to learn how to play. I've been practicing that trumpet since a riverboat man threw it over the side and I rescued it," he had the trumpet resting in his open hands, looking at his reflection in the metal as he spoke. "I suppose Mama Odie was right all along. I should have been happy with just playin' here. This is enough for me."

"Good…cause you know, if you stayed human, I think I would have had to fire you from the band," Tiana teased. "So, what are you going to do with the rest of your day as a human?"

"I think," Louis said, "That I'm gonna go watch those jazz shows I usually get chased away from. Maybe I can watch a thing or two to practice once I'm back to normal."

"I think that's a brilliant idea."

Louis left the restaurant, horn tucked under one arm, as Naveen descended from the stage. "Mama Odie trying to teach another lesson the hard way?" Tiana nodded. "Why that woman will not come out and merely say what she means! It is exasperating!"

Tiana chuckled. "I guess…but maybe this time, it drove the point home a bit better than just words would have."