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"I've got the reports from Jasmine and her scouts! The troops are moving east. They think they're trying to encircle us."
Mulan looked up from the multitude of strategic maps and reports that were covering the little table she has used as a desk ever since they had finally reached the rebels' camp and she had taken the lead alongside Shang.
"Thank you, Merida. An attack from the east does indeed seem likely. How well prepared are your archers?"
"Prepared?" Merida snorted derisively. "It would make a lot more sense to ask how not-unprepared are they. They ken how to hold a bow and they sometimes hit something. Does that answer yer question?"
"In a way. It does not make me happy, though. The Government seems to have become creative. That Commander Megara Aurora has told us about worries me. Try to get your people prepared."
"Aye!" Merida dashed out again, leaving the report on top of the cluttered table and Mulan took a moment to sit down on her rickety chair. Ever since the beginning of the war - or the uprising, as the Government still liked to call it, denying the first attack was launched from one of their dirigibles - she had been commanding. First her girls trying to survive in the ruins of their once beautiful city, between steam soldiers and rockets falling, hungry and hurt. They did not leave when their husbands, brothers, lovers left to join the rebel army because they felt it was their duty to stay. They followed later and Mulan shuddered as she thought back, thought of the dreadful evening when the soldiers had closed in on them in that dilapidated storage hut and Merida had saved them all, thought of the gruesome night Jasmin nearly froze to death when they had waited for the boat to bring them to the rebels' camp.
"Mulan?"
"Aurora, good that you're here. Merida just brought in the scout reports. What can you tell me about Commander Megara? Anything you haven't told me yet, anything can help."
Aurora smiled. "I will, Captain. As soon as the Christmas celebrations have ended."
Mulan frowned. "Christmas?"
"Don't tell me you forgot about it?"
"I... did. And I do not think that I have time for celebrations..." She stopped as Aurora took her hand. "Come. You can worry tomorrow."