CATHARSIS is a non-canon OC fate/series site, loosely based off of fate/apocrypha. Knowledge of the fate/series canon is helpful, but knowledge of fate/apocrypha isn't needed!
Mulan walks in tourist trap land. Colors blur around her, and foreign sounding dialects are exchanged as quickly as multicolored scraps of paper are in the hands of vendors. (Paper! It made her a little optimistic, to think that promises of payment could be held to these portraits of a single man. Bartering with her father could sometimes feel like quite an embarrassing affair.)
In the end, a tourist is what she is without her master around. How can she be a daughter with no mother or father? How is she a general without a khan? How is she a citizen without a kingdom, a shepherdess with no land? It didn’t take hours in the library to figure out that the historic Hua Mulan has no place in Taixuan except for the stories that mothers pass onto their daughters.
And that was fine. Truly, it was. Mulan did not relish in authority, and she did not require it to fulfil her duty. In some ways, it was even fun to spend time as a civilian again. She started off with relatively little spending money, gave a bit to a few disabled people in the street, and still ended up with more clothes that she can carry without bags.
Mulan doesn’t even have to look down at her flashing plastic box to know that it was around noon – she spent too many years on the road for that. It’s about to grab a bite to eat, and hopefully ten yuan was enough to get by.
The admittedly rather feminine man walks down the dusty streets with enough dresses to last him the entire grail war. General Li Xin
Post by General Li Xin on Jul 20, 2014 14:52:12 GMT
The gaze of a dead man floats on the scenery of colours. In his ears, the familiar language echoes in the tickle of another tune. He pretends to ignore the whiff of roasted meat and the cool air that hadn't touched him for centuries. He meets the changes - and the nostalgia that came along with all changes - with a taciturn resoluteness, focusing in nothing else but catching the suspicious large amount of prana he had sensed in the area. There is a deep solemn frown buried on his face, and it's not because he can't tell where that person is. He's presently tracking the wispy but certain trail of prana and truth be told, Xin is torn about this action he's taking.
After all, this prana thing goes two-ways.
Now, Xin doesn't know the technicalities of this magic war and magic soldiers, and if he tries to wrap his mind around it too much, he's not going to get anywhere. He's not one of the smart guys, sure, but he's not a dumbass not to at least suspect that if Xin can do it, then why not the Servant? It's probably a Servant. Xin had been able to instantly tell Zheng and Tian apart just by the prana they possessed. The disparity is way too huge, though all of them combined don't match to that fancy gold cup at all. Its presence makes it hard for him to breathe and Xin swears he's not being a pansy. It's...not natural. Leaving the place with that thing felt like a great burden was lifted from his shoulders.
Xin circles past a small crowd eating by a stall, his chin raised over the people who he already dwarfs by a few inches. There's really no backing down now. Like Tian, Xin's presence should be weaker than a Servant's but that doesn't really matter much if this guy notices someone's been following him. If it comes to that, then...
"Avoid combat." Zheng's voice runs in his head. "Run if you must. I know it's not a befitting request - nor a job befitting of your position, but only you can do it, Xin. No one will recall encountering you, but that's assuming you do survive the encounter..."
Xin walks past a dirty cripple feasting on a fresh, hot, steaming fried duck.
"The time to fight is yet to come. Abandon opportunities. I will not allow any of my generals to fall before the battle. I repeat, Xin - "
Xin's heart races. He sees a slim back and a wade of bags in tandem by the Servant's hands. The streets don't narrow and the people are not less packed.
"- Avoid combat. Retreat immediately when they take notice."
He grips a handle fully wrapped in black cloth on his back. He readies...
"Do not engage in combat, Xin!"
"Sorry, Zheng, but..."
But it's too late. A rolling luggage shoots out of nowhere in front of Xin, causing him to fall over on his face.
somewhere a bit ahead, mulan is enjoying her day by not thinking so much as the poor man behind her. even if she was ambushed (which she hadn't been for years), they wouldn't be able to use a noble phantasm in this crowd. if it was night time, she might have been more vigilant (okay, but she's still convinced that she can beat up any bandit in a fist fight).
food is the only thing that is truly worth buying for a heroic spirit, really. what will she do with anything else once the grail war is over? for every wrist bangle that she buys, she could have purchased thirty lamb skewers. hmm, lamb skewers.
just as she thinks about it, a well dressed man in a button up shirt runs past her. a food cart operator yells after him. it seems that he had overpaid and only grabbed half of his order. mulan asks if she can have the three skewers that the man left behind, and his only response is that the food has already been paid for before handing them over.
they are as delicious as ever. mulan is pleased that much has not changed, at least. the smell is divine for something purchased off a street vendor and the fat meshes well with the lean meat. the spices aren't quite what she remembers, but that does not mean that they are not delicious.
if there is the sound of someone being hit by a luggage behind her, then she does not notice it over the yells of vendors promoting their wares.
Post by General Li Xin on Jul 24, 2014 9:35:25 GMT
"Are you fucking kidding me?!"
Xin hits the ground and stays down. How the fuck did this happen? How did he fucking screw up just like that? He scurries to find the Servant in the sea of legs that are standing and moving about from his point of view. There is a rule of secrecy in this war: they're not supposed to fight in public and expose themselves. It's a pain in the ass. How exactly does one hide a war? How can it not go without a bang? Xin doesn't like it, but it may be saving his ass right now.
"That's right. Even if they saw me, there ain't anything they can do about it. If they leave, they'll forget about me. It's still really dumb, but no one cares about shit like that. I've gotta be thankful for anything I have."
But is it really going to be as easy as that? Xin locks on a pair of slender legs over a cart. That's definitely the Servant. What is he doing?
Xin is't going to spend another minute down here. He pushes himself to one knee and falls in deep thought for a second, ignoring the weird-looking kid who had pushed his luggage in front of Xin. The passersby has paid little to no attention to Xin and swerved passed by him like a poodle of muddy water they don't want to step on. The child, however, has been staring at Xin with doe-eyed bewilderment. When Xin turned to him, he grins widely and wordlessly, and then leaves, following the smell of lamb skewers.
no, something does cut across the sound of sweet, sweet commercialism. a young man playing his guitar to a mandopop song about five years old. it's unlike anything that mulan has ever heard before in her lifetime, so she stops to listen. she finishes her lamb skewers eventually and remembers that trash cans now exist in this age. she deposits the wood in a public bin and a few coins into the collection pot, as per tradition.
the song is about a young man in love. actually, every other song that he sings is also about love. love seems to be a very popular topic of the music of this era. mulan had never been seneraded herself, since she spent much of her youth leading armies. by the time that she had returned from the battlefield, young men were already chasing even younger women and her father had a nice respectable man lined up for her. which she happened to appreciate. mulan was certainly not in the mood to search for a husband after dealing with men for so long. it was not a marriage with the sort of passion that the musician's song conveyed, but she was not unhappy.
not very many people knew how to be unhappy. mulan wishes them all the luck in the world. not that it was saying much, considering how much of it that she has.
most of the musician's audience were young ladies. mulan might have been the only middle-aged man who listened for so long.
Post by General Li Xin on Aug 14, 2014 18:36:58 GMT
As the presence comes near, Xin slows down and once more looks left and right as he inspects the crowd with caution.
"He stopped?"
He hears the music and wonders if the Servants has stopped to listen to it. Does the mean he hasn't noticed Xin yet? He doesn't actually know just how far concealed he was as compared to a Servant. Maybe he's as good as a human being.
He maintains a distance and inconspicuously moves behind another person when one disperses out to reveal Xin's position. He tries to catch a glimpse of the Servant's face - maybe he can pass by him and steal a glance? It's a thought that he doesn't do. He decides to stay and see what the Servant will do.
