Fairytale of Doom
By CrimsonStarbird
Chapter Four – They Sent Me Daughters!
Out of all the starring roles Erza had played during her lifetime, it was safe to say that Fa Mulan was not her most successful.
At least I got the horse, she consoled herself mentally, patting the side of the creature's neck as they hightailed it through a hurricane of squawking chickens and out through the Fa estate's gate.
Not that the horse had particularly wanted to go on a grand swashbuckling adventure with her. In fact, the horse hadn't wanted to leave his stable at all. He had thrown a tantrum when Erza had slipped between the stalls, stomping his feet and jerking away when she tried to touch him.
Erza may not have been a natural when it came to animals, but she was pretty sure that the best way to deal with unruly creatures was to make yourself look bigger than you were and assert yourself as the alpha. This horse just needed to be shown who was boss.
So, with feet spread, head raised, and sleeves rolled up, she had fixed the horse with the glare that was known to send hardened S-Class Mages running for their lives, and that had done the trick. Once she'd coaxed him back out of the corner he'd been hiding in, she'd finally managed to mount up.
Unfortunately, it seemed the disturbance had drawn the attention of the household.
Erza could hear voices converging upon the stables. Mulan's family, no doubt. Part of her was curious as to whether they would see her as Mulan, or as an imposter who had taken the real Mulan's place. The latter would suggest that this world had existed before they had been dragged into it, whereas if it was the former, it implied that the magic which had trapped them here had also created this world, and it wasn't independently real.
Mulan's horse hadn't seemed to recognize her, but then maybe Mulan's horse just didn't like Mulan very much. Or maybe that was so much not how one should treat a horse that he had taken offence on principle.
Whatever the reason, playing the role of Mulan in this fairytale was one thing, but pretending to be someone else's daughter was another entirely. The Master was the only parent she wanted or needed. Acting as though it were otherwise felt somehow unclean. Besides, she doubted the evil Huns would put their conquest on hold while she played happy families with a bunch of strangers.
So she and the horse burst from the stable in an explosion of feathers and straw, and set off in search of this army she was supposed to be joining.
There was one downside to her dramatic escape, however. In crossing the horse off the list of plot points Levy had given her, she'd had to forswear the second: Mulan's family armour. Sneaking back in to retrieve it now would be an impossibility.
Well, it wasn't a big deal. She already had the breastplate and sword that she had been wearing when she'd been transported here. And although she had noticed as soon as she had woken up in this world that she had no magic here, and no magic meant no access to her extradimensional wardrobe, she had no doubt that the armour she had equipped would fit her a lot better than someone else's heirloom.
It was nothing to be concerned about. She'd just take extra care to stick to the original story from here on out.
Speaking of which, she slowed the horse to a walk and rolled up her sleeve, bearing the forearm where she'd scribbled down her notes. Her heart sank. It appeared that, in the tussle with the horse, the ink had smudged. If she squinted, she could just about make out the third word: hair.
Oh, right. Levy had said that Mulan cut her hair short before going to war.
Erza drew her sword in one swift motion – and paused.
It's the colour of your hair.
Slowly, she slid the blade back into its scabbard.
How important could short hair be? It was hardly some big, defining moment, worthy of a dramatic orchestral score. Having long hair had never hindered her in battle. If anything, it was a benefit – a pennant of fiery glory, inspiring her friends and striking fear into the hearts of those foolish enough to challenge her guild. Heck, she probably didn't even look like the real Mulan anyway.
Surely not stopping to give herself a makeover wasn't going to affect the outcome of her story.
Everything else, though, she was definitely going to do by the book.
Erza's gaze drifted to her arm, dismayed to find that the smudges hadn't taken the opportunity to guiltily straighten themselves out into words.
Well, maybe the correct actions would become obvious as the story played out. If Mulan had managed it, so could she.
With a squeeze of her knees, she urged her horse onwards down the trail.
It wasn't difficult to find the army camp. The base did not sprawl or slump across the plains, but occupied a tidy rectangle of spotless white tents amongst untrampled grass. Banners bearing the emblem that the emperor's emissary had worn back in the town fluttered calmly from a modest height. Horses grazed at ease in a makeshift paddock; Erza could have sworn she saw her own steed giving them an envious look as they passed. It was the sound of chatter that reached her, not drums, not shouted drills, not the bird-like calls of sentries.
It reminded her of how the guildhall had been, with war's horizon still far distant.
Admittedly, the only time the guildhall had ever been this neat and tidy had been that one time the health and safety inspectors had come calling, and Mira had set off the fire alarm to buy herself time to carry out the fastest spring clean in recorded history. But the easy cheer of it reminded her. These people may have been fighters, but they weren't soldiers. They didn't know the horror of an avalanche of black-armoured enemies between them and their guildhall, outnumbered a thousand to one, dragging themselves beaten and bloody up that hill. They didn't realize, yet, how little their lives meant.
Erza sat up straighter in the saddle. She had to get back to Fiore as soon as possible.
Still, as she advanced into the encampment, she couldn't shake the feeling that she had forgotten something.
A hush slipped between the rows of tents. It rolled out from her like a mist, until even the dull thud of her horse's hooves in the grass sounded like the clash of steel on steel. Conversations ceased. Tent flaps pulled silently aside to disgorge their wide-eyed inhabitants. Every single person she passed was staring like they'd never seen a warrior on horseback before, food and drink and chatter forgotten.
Maybe this was why she'd been supposed to steal that family armour. Amongst a sea of brown tunics and breastplates so rusty they probably belonged in a museum, her custom-made Heart Kreuz armour sparkled like a gemstone.
She did not stop until she reached a tent so grand it had to belong to the camp commander. A wooden notice board stood outside the opening, reminding her of Fairy Tail's Request Board, pinned with recruitment notices and news from the front lines. She thought she could hear angry voices coming from inside the commander's tent, but they were too muffled for her to make out.
A weedy, blue-robed man paced back and forth in front of the tent. Erza recognized him from the town – Chi-Fu, she thought Levy had called him. In his right hand, he held a scroll which he was tapping agitatedly against his left wrist.
He was muttering to himself under his breath: "Pardon the intrusion- no, General Li, may I offer my most humble apologies for interrupting such a delicate family conversation- no, no, that won't do at all! Wouldn't want him thinking I had been listening in…"
By this point, it seemed as though the administrator was the only person in the camp who hadn't noticed her presence, so Erza gave a very deliberate cough.
Chi-Fu looked up with a start. "How dare…?"
His words dissolved into the same strangled silence that had ensnared the rest of the camp.
"Greetings," Erza addressed him, from astride her horse. "My name is Mulan. I am here to fight the Huns."
Chi-Fu's mouth worked soundlessly.
"The Huns," Erza repeated, a little louder, in case he hadn't heard. "I am here to help you fight them."
Like a broken animatronic, he raised his hand in staccato jerks to point a trembling finger up at Erza. "Y-y-you're a woman!"
Ah.
Come to think of it, Levy had mentioned something like that, hadn't she?
Erza squinted at the smudges on her arm. Yes, it was very possible that one of them said 'be a man'.
Oh well. Too late now.
She swung herself down from the ebony horse, who edged away from her, and faced Chi-Fu with her hand resting casually on the hilt of her sword. "Yes, and I have answered the call to fight for the emperor."
"The emperor does not want women," the man laughed, bewildered. "I believe I asked for sons. If you want to help the war effort, you can stick an apron on and go to the mess tent!"
"I see." Erza nodded seriously. "Is that where the Huns are likely to strike first?"
The laughter died away. Chi-Fu scrutinized her with his small, beady eyes. "Is this some kind of a joke?"
Erza blinked. "I understood that the Huns were the main antagonists of this story, and therefore that you would want all the help you could get to fight them. Was Levy mistaken?"
Chi-Fu drew himself up to his full height. He was still an inch or two shorter than Erza, despite his stealthy attempt to rock forwards onto his tiptoes. "This is a war camp. We, the most loyal and valiant men from across the Imperial Kingdom and conquered territories, are here to train and fight and give our lives in the service of His Imperial Majesty. This is not a place for women to play dress-up with fake swords and dreams above their station. Now, go home and stop wasting the time of people far more important than you – and I might be kind enough not to report this misdemeanour to your father."
"I'm afraid I can't do that. Beating the Huns is my way home."
Another reedy, high-pitched laugh. "And what does a wench like you think she's going to be able to do against the-"
She was a streak of scarlet. A whip-crack of fiery intent. So quick, so deliberate, it was as if she had remained still, and universe had rearranged itself to suit her purpose. It was the natural way of things that her hand would hold a blade, and that blade should pin the quailing man to the notice board by his fur-lined hood.
"My name is Mulan," Erza hissed, drawing out every single word. "And I am here to fight the Huns."
For a moment, nothing in this fairytale world dared to breathe.
Then Chi-Fu's gaze flicked over her shoulder. "An instant promotion for the man who arrests this wench!"
She saw the flash of movement reflected in the polished steel of her sword. Smooth and certain, she pulled her sword free, turned, and met the blow with such force that the other sword flew straight out of her assailant's hands. It turned a lazy revolution in the air and sliced through a tent rope, collapsing the canvas and adding a nice touch of disorder to the too-neat rows.
Another man lunged, almost as if he thought Erza had been distracted. She sidestepped the blow and drove the hilt of her sword into his gut. Beautifully she turned, in time to music only she could hear, disarming, tripping, bruising. The silver halo of her sword merged with the scarlet flame of her hair as she danced like an avenging angel.
Axes, swords, and spears littered the ground at her feet. There were oohs and aahs mixed in with the yelps of pain, from the soldiers who weren't foolish enough to have followed their brethren into a hopeless battle – and occasionally from her opponents too; she was fairly sure this was the third time she had given that short man with the black eye a sharp rap on the behind with the flat of her blade.
Losing patience, she kneed him in the groin and he finally slumped on top of the pile of defeated opponents: men developing bruises, sprains, and lumps on the head, but not one of them bleeding, despite their ill-fitting armour. She was too good for that.
She drove her sword point-first into the ground next to the pile of squirming men, and rounded on Chi-Fu. "May I fight the Huns now?"
He stammered something unintelligible.
Erza picked up her sword again and passed it patiently from hand to hand. Someone in the crowd gave a wolf-whistle.
"But- but I can't let a woman join the army!" he blustered, more to himself than to her. "It goes against the natural order! The emperor will have my head!"
Erza waited.
"W-w-well- I know! You can join the army – if you can pass the test."
"What test would that be?"
"Oh, it's nothing too difficult." Warming to his idea, he rubbed his hands together. His hunched shoulders twitched in a silent cackle. "Every man here could pass it, I'm sure. It's a very simple test we give to all our new recruits."
Chi-Fu led her through the crowd to a tall wooden pole stretching up towards the sky. It was perfectly, unnaturally smooth, without a single handhold. At the very top, an arrow had been lodged into it.
"All you have to do," Chi-Fu assured her, "is bring me that arrow."
"Very well," Erza said, sheathing her sword.
"Ah, not so fast, my dear," he tutted. A huge, gentle man, a bit like a cross between a mountain and a teddy bear, trundled over with a cart. Two weights rested within it. Chi-Fu continued, "This one represents discipline…"
He tugged the strap of the weight. It didn't move an inch.
"This one…"
He gave another futile heave.
"Would you like some assistance?" Erza asked politely.
He fumed a wordless response, so she decided to help him out anyway, fastening one weight around each of her wrists and letting them dangle. Were they supposed to be heavy? Well, maybe they were magical, and would increase in weight the closer she got to the top. Or maybe it was all a metaphor. Lucy had told her on many occasions that metaphors weren't her strong point.
A cough did little to hide Chi-Fu's angry flush. "Y-yes, well, that one's discipline, and that one's strength. You'll need both to get to the top. You may have proven that you've got more luck with a sword than these louts who have never held a weapon before today, but a true soldier must prove that they have brains and brawn as well."
"Ah, an excellent challenge," Erza nodded approvingly. "Very well. Allow me to be the first to attempt it."
She stepped up to the post, the weights batting against her legs. It towered over her like it towered over everyone, a defiant middle finger to the organized, accessible, convenient rows of tents. When she ran her hand over its surface, the wood felt perfectly smooth. There wasn't even a distortion between the grains to provide the slightest chance of a handhold.
Erza bent her knees, wrapped both arms around the post, and with a mighty heave, lifted the whole thing out of the ground.
The post swayed, threatening to overbalance, and she staggered back at first. On the second step she caught herself, legs straining to keep it upright. Then she slowly began to twist. Men scrambled to safety as they saw her tip it forward – and, with a crash that shook the earth, the post smacked the ground horizontally.
The arrow-embedded top lay at a frozen Chi-Fu's feet.
He didn't seem able to speak. Nor, indeed, did anyone else in the crowd, which was collectively watching Erza with bated breath.
"Will that suffice, or do I need to actually put the arrow in your hands?" Erza inquired.
"B-b-but that's impossible!" he stammered. "It took half a dozen men to get that post into position!"
"That's why you need me," Erza pointed out. She placed one booted foot atop the post like a conqueror. It wasn't the weedy administrator she was addressing any more – and indeed, the bruised, battered, and awestruck crowd of recruits were hanging on to her every word. "I have just come from the front lines of a war. Whatever your fears about this battle against the Huns, I can assure you that reality will be worse. Our enemies will be cruel, and we will be tested beyond our worst nightmares."
She raised a hand towards the sky, not even noticing the jangle of the weight against her wrist. "However! We can and we must win this fight! Believe in yourselves and trust in each other, and we will defeat the Huns!"
The resulting roar of noise from the crowd ripped at least three tents out of the ground.
A shellshocked Chi-Fu was staring at Erza. "Send me more daughters…" he whispered, and he tumbled to the ground in a dead faint.
Someone was singing.
It was beautiful. No, it was enchanting, a wordless entreaty for the sun to rise and flowers to bloom. Nevertheless, for reasons she couldn't quite put her finger on, Lucy found it unsettling.
As she lay there, the secret world behind her closed eyelids seemed to fill a little more with sound at every breath: the timid tapping of her heart, the swish and flow of waves, the curiosity of the seagulls overhead, and all of them were less wonderful than the singing.
And yet something wasn't right here.
Then again, nothing had been right since she had woken up in this stupid world as stupid Cinderella, so Lucy pushed herself upright with a groan.
The singing cut off with a yelp, followed by the sound of something sliding into the water. Frowning, Lucy abandoned her attempts to comb the sand out of her hair and looked around.
As she had guessed, she was sat on a gorgeous golden beach, her fingers just inches from the flirtatious waves. She knew the seashell towers that overlooked the beach all too well. That was Prince Eric's castle, alright.
And that rock, a little way out from the shore, appeared to have grown eyes.
Lucy blinked at it. The rock blinked back.
They were very blue eyes, Lucy thought. Compared to them, the sea looked a little too light, a little too turquoise, a little too shallow to hold the same depth of secrets. No, they were of the deep ocean, where night and maelstroms blurred the border between sea and sky.
"…Juvia?" Lucy asked out loud.
The rock gave a squeak.
"Juvia? That's you, right? Why are you hiding behind that rock?"
"Juvia…" Her voice became a plaintive cry. "Juvia is part-fish!"
Lucy couldn't help giggling. "You're a mermaid, right?"
"Juvia is part-fish!" she repeated adamantly. "And her clothes have gone missing, she's only got these tiny shells, and she doesn't know where she is, and seagulls keep trying to put cutlery in her hair!"
"Don't worry, I can explain," Lucy assured her, trying not to laugh. "We've been trapped inside a fairytale world by some accidental spell. I'm Cinderella, and you're Ariel, the Little Mermaid."
"…Oh."
"And Gray has been cast as Prince Eric, the prince you end up marrying."
"Oh!"
As Lucy had hoped, that perked Juvia right up. She rose out of the water and perched upon the rock that had previously been her sanctuary. Her storm-blue hair was plastered to her face in an unfairly elegant way; Lucy wondered enviously if it was part of the whole mermaid thing. Even the trickles of water running down her torso – which was, as Juvia had pointed out, really quite exposed, not that she had any reason to be shy about it – were artful. Her tail sparkled like it was the ocean's second-greatest treasure, after the illumination of her eyes.
Lucy found herself wondering, idly, if Juvia had always been able to sing that well, or if the magic that had given her Ariel's tail had also given her the voice she needed to make The Little Mermaid's plot work. Had she ever heard Juvia sing before? She wasn't sure if she had.
Eagerly, Juvia continued, "Does that mean Juvia and her dear Gray are destined to live happily ever after?"
"Maybe in a more literal way than you think," Lucy answered. "The First Master told us that the only way to break the spell is to play out our respective fairytales to the end, find our True Loves, and earn a Happily Ever After."
Juvia was looking like her dream had already come true.
Lucy was trying really, really hard not to think about what Gray definitely hadn't done right before the ship sank. To be honest, it was so unbelievable that it probably hadn't happened. Maybe she had concussion from the accident, and was misremembering an entirely normal conversation between her and her friend.
And on that note…
"Juvia, you rescued me from the sinking ship, right?"
"Juvia saw Lucy fall overboard when the lightning hit, and dragged her to the shore," she confirmed, with a shy nod.
"But what about Gray?"
"What about Gray?" Juvia wondered. "Was he there too? Do you think he saw Juvia being a hero?"
All the colour drained from Lucy's face.
She shouldn't have been on Prince Eric's ship when it sailed into that storm. She should have been in Lady Tremaine's estate, sweeping the previous night's cinders out of the fireplaces, keeping her head down and her fairytale intact.
But because she had run away and boarded that doomed ship, Juvia had seen her before she saw Gray, and saved her instead of him.
Thanks to her interference, the Little Mermaid had never met her prince.
"Lucy?" Juvia was asking anxiously. "Is everything alright?"
The kiss. The storm. Juvia singing to her, rather than a lovestruck Prince Eric.
"Yeah," she swallowed. "Yeah, it'll be fine, I'm sure. I can fix this."
The kiss, though.
"I can fix this," Lucy repeated, more firmly. If she didn't think about it, maybe it might never have happened. "Gray must have washed ashore somewhere else, that's all. Juvia, we need to get The Little Mermaid back on track. Are you familiar with the fairytale?"
Juvia shook her head.
"Okay, that's fine. In the story, the next thing that Ariel – that's you – does is trade her voice to the sea-witch Ursula in return for legs. That will enable you to come on land with the rest of us, find Gray, get your happy ending, and break the spell."
She was expecting Juvia to flinch from the thought of giving up her voice, but Juvia just nodded once. "Juvia was willing to die for her dear Gray. Losing her voice to stand by him once again is nothing."
The sound of her determination – the reminder of the story Gray had told her, of their grief-stricken battle against Invel – made Lucy feel even guiltier about something that had not happened and even if it had it wasn't as though it had been her idea, but before she could say anything, Juvia added, "Juvia promises that she will return with legs in order to finish her story of love!"
She dived back into the sea, and in a ripple of her jewelled tail, she was gone.
After a moment, Lucy clapped her hands to her cheeks briskly. Juvia was determined to make this work, so she would do the same.
Ariel and Ursula – that was quite a major scene, right? Ursula had her own song and everything. That would give Lucy plenty of time to find Gray from the shipwreck and ensure he was back here by the time the mermaid-turned-human returned to shore.
Cinderella's ball could wait. Lucy had accidentally broken The Little Mermaid, and she was damn well going to fix it.
All in all, Erza was rather pleased with how her entrance into the army camp had gone.
Alright, so she might have changed the plot a little bit, altered a minor detail here and there… but the soldiers had all come to acknowledge Mulan as a woman and respect her as a warrior eventually, hadn't they? All this meant was that she'd sped the story up a little. Which in turn, only brought Mulan's Happily Ever After closer. She hadn't broken the story, she'd improved it. Reaching the end from here would be a cinch.
Confidently, she approached the commander's tent. It was something of a shame that the army's commander hadn't witnessed her earlier display, as she could have skipped even more of this silly plot if she'd managed to win the general over along with the rest of them, but if the worst came to the worst, she was pretty sure she could set that post back into the ground and do the whole thing over.
The angry voices she'd heard from the tent earlier hadn't ceased. If anything, they only seemed more irate. "For the last time, son-"
It was a male voice that had spoken, middle-aged but made older by exhaustion, but before Erza could find out just what had worn him down, he was interrupted by another voice. This one was twice as rough, half as cultured, and sounded vaguely familiar. "I ain't telling ya again; stop callin' me son! That bastard Jose used to do it all the time."
A weary intake of breath. "Fine. Shang."
"Who the hell is Shang?"
Unfortunately for his scarlet-haired eavesdropper, the first man did not deign to answer this. Instead, he continued, making a herculean effort to be calm, "I am not going to force you to lead the recruits if you do not want to. I have already dispatched an envoy to the Guardian Kingdom, our old allies, requesting the assistance of their legendary general in this battle. However… I must admit, I am as concerned about you as I am about the upcoming war. I cannot imagine what could have happened overnight to make you so opposed to the idea of leading this unit against the Huns. It is a great honour to be given a commanding role at your age, let alone in a battle with the entire kingdom at stake. Are you worried? Are you doubting yourself? Please talk to me, son!"
There was a thud and a roar – "I told ya not to call me that!" – followed by the distinct sound of a body slumping to the floor.
Erza hastened inside. There was indeed a body: a man with greying hair pulled up into a topknot and bronze armour that fit him so well it couldn't possibly have been a hand-me-down like that of the new recruits.
He was sprawled, unconscious, at the foot of a man Erza knew well.
With lamplight glittering from an array of studs and piercings, and red eyes glinting brighter still, the Iron Dragon Slayer Gajeel shot Erza an accusing glare as she froze in her tracks. "What're you lookin' at?"
Erza said, "I… am not so sure I'm Mulan."
A/N: Oops.
Cue several chapters of trying to work out why in fact it was Levy who was cast as Mulan, and Erza and Jellal as Belle and the Beast... ~CS