A Remix of Mulan

A dark skinned man in a black shirt, gray military pants and boots runs through a hiking trail leading up hundreds upon hundreds of meters like his family depended on it. “Because it does.”

He is almost at his destination, a plateau halfway up the tallest mountain in the world, Mt.Kinko. Formed through unknown means, Mt.Kinko is the tallest mountain on the planet, standing at a not so humble height of 14.69 kilometers, beating second place by a whole six-thousand meters.

Reaching his destination, he finds a lighter toned man standing in the middle of the plateau, holding a golden crown adorned with jewels over his head about to put it on before he stops; he turns around and sees tall, dark, and angry glaring at him into the ground.

“It doesn’t have to be like this Nobu!”

Two men stand on a plateau thousands of meters in the sky. One man is dressed in a black, short sleeve shirt and gray military pants and boots. The other is dressed in a yellow t-shirt over a pair of black camo pants, tucked into navy blue combat boots.

“What are you talking about Jiska? You have taken what is rightfully mine; the fate of my family rests on that crown!” “Rightfully yours? The only person that owns this crown is who’s inventory it’s currently sitting in,” the man in yellow retorts.

“I’m giving you one chance. Give it to me alive, or I loot it from your corpse,” the man in black says, holding out his hand.

“You know I can’t do that Nobu. I need this crown just as much as you do,” Jiska states calmly.

Nobu cracks his neck, “So be it.”

Nobu then dashes at Jiska, hands coated in flames, and throws a haymaker at Jiska’s face, hoping to end the fight quickly, but is sorely disappointed. He hits nothing but air, a trail of dust left as the only evidence that something existed in that space in the first place. Air split as Jiska sent an airborne roundhouse at the back of Nobu’s skull. Nobu, unable to dodge such a fast attack, made a solid plane of air to soften the impact.

He was still sent flying by the blow and landed a few meters away, rolling into a crouched position.

“I don’t want to fight you Nobu, I just want—” Jiska started, but was cut off by a blade of air sent at his face. With just milliseconds to react, Jiska tapped into his mana pool.

Mana is a force that everyone in this world has, and can access. It is a force that doesn’t affect the world outside of its host without instruction. Tell it to light something on fire, it will. Tell it to cover something in rock, it will. The problem is getting it to listen. It is as unruly as whatever you are trying to effect. Water, earth, fire and air are the hardest to control, but that doesn’t make them superior. In fact many magicians despise these elements because of their unwillingness to be controlled.

Another, less wide spread use of mana, is physical enhancement. This greatly increases the physical ability of the user, but at the cost of durability. This trade off leaves most magicians and martial artists not wanting to take the risk and end up dead. This technique is known as “The Glass Cannon.”

Jiska saturates his muscles with mana and quickly ducks underneath the blade of air sent at him, to shut him up. “Hey,

not cool. I was about to say that I want peace, but you had to make me reveal mana to the readers,” Jiska pouted.

“The hell are you talking about?” Nobu asked through gritted teeth as he sent wave after wave of air blades, basically forcing Jiska to play the hardest song of DDR on the hardest difficulty. (If you know, you know.)

Quickly getting tired of playing, Jiska rushes down Nobu, while still dodging a nonstop stream of blades made out of compressed air. Getting in melee range, Jiska grabs Nobu’s shirt and pulls him up to eye level.

“I honestly don’t want to fight you. I just want peace between our families, to become one family again!” he yells, full of emotion.

Getting out of the grapple, Nobu grabs Jiska’s arms, twists them to his back, and pins him on the ground. “What are you talking about? Our families have always been at odds; saying you want peace is the same as saying you want the system gone! It’s the way we live, and the way we are going to keep living!” He remembers who he is talking to and lets out a humorless chuckle.

“Well, I am going to keep living. Hate to say I can’t say the same about you.” Nobu lets go of Jiska for a moment, before stomping his head into the ground. Over and over, and over. He grabs the back of Jiska’s head, and lifts him up to his face, barely recognizable, and is nothing more than a bloody pulp at this point.

He drops Jiska onto the ground limply before going through his inventory and finding the crown. “Finally, the Omuni. A crown that grants the wearer nigh limitless power.

Making them a god.”

Before he can put it on, he hears a deep, vicious growl directly in front of him. Jiska starts to get up, his face and head somehow completely healed. A blue flame-like aura of a wolf forms around him, and starts making changes to his body. His teeth grow and sharpen, his muscles get bigger and tougher, and he grows about twenty centimeters.

His hands become more animalistic, losing a finger; his nails turn black as they grow and sharpen into claws. As this is happening, Nobu starts backing away from the very monster-like Jiska in front of him.

In a deep gravelly voice he says, “I thought I could talk to you, and you would see reason. But it seems I have to take a more physical approach.” He gets down into a low crouch, before lunging at Nobu.

Jumping out of the way, Nobu yells in surprise, “How can you do that? Only a Yang can control their Jingshen! Who are you? Why would you betray your family?” He roars.

“Betray our family? I’m trying to save it! The Yang’s arrogance and lust for power started this war in the first place! Do you know the origin of our family, Nobu?” Jiska asks in an almost condescending way.

Nobu stays silent, as if contemplating something. The rage on his face has yet to go away. If anything he got even more angry, basically being told that he doesn’t know the proud history of his own family.

“DO YOU?” Jiska roars, his form once more shifting. He grew another twenty centimeters, and put on at least fifty pounds of pure muscle.