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[The feed turns on accidentally with a noisy clatter and some shaking from the camera, as Mulan's device is knocked from her pocket and lands on the ground. The angle is a little off, not quite sideways but tilted upward and to one side.

At first there's nothing but darkness, an empty street, some thick wisps of fog rolling along the ground, and the sound of someone yelling off-screen, muffled and disjointed.]

--your ground, you motherless wretches! You demons! What, does Shan Yu send cowards to fight his war?

[At last Mulan wanders into view, looking off somewhere to the side. Her eyes are hazy and wide, visibly alert and wild with adrenaline, her hair half undone and her body dripping sweat. She looks feverish and her darting gaze seems to focus on things that no one else can see. Her sword is clutched tight in her hands.]

You think sneaking away, running around and trying to stab our men in the back will save you? I see you there! You cannot hide from me!

[With a roar she pounces on a broken, abandoned cart, kicking and stabbing it to further pieces. But then, in the background, a townsperson walks by.

Mulan catches the movement and spins on them instead, the two of them vanishing out of sight of the camera as she gives chase with sword raised and a maddened screaming battle cry.]

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[Briar knows this kind of scene. He's seen it, in his memories and his dreams. He hasn't talked to this woman before, but - she's not in her right mind, and he has to at least try to stop her before she does something she regrets]

Hey - hey! Stop! There's no enemies - whatever you're seeing, it's not real! You're going to hurt someone! Can you hear me?!

[Sorry, Briar. But as you can probably guess, she's not in any kind of a place right now to respond. And a little shouting isn't enough, at first, to immediately catch her attention.]

[Well, if shouting isn't enough... he's not too sure how well this will translate through the network, but it's worth a shot: sticking two fingers into his mouth, he whistles. Loudly. It's the kind of whistle that travels across mountains.

And he hopes it's enough, because he really doesn't want to have to go out there to stop her]

[[ooc: Do you have any specific plans regarding Mulan here? If you don't, and the whistle's not enough to snap her out of it, Briar might risk going out to try and find her]]

[The sound catches her at last - her head whips around and she walks closer in the direction of where her abandoned communicator is. She looks back and forth searchingly, intense and eyes feverish, but it doesn't occur to her to look so close to the ground.]

Who's there? Don't try to hide from me...I know I heard you!

[Briar breathes a sigh of relief. Okay, he hasn't snapped her out of it, but at least she's not going after a random passerby anymore]

I'm not hiding. I'm talking to you from your communicator. You dropped it, remember?

[Mulan slowly shakes her head, not in response so much to anything he's saying, but as a sign of her confusion and lack of focus as she struggles to clear her mind and focus her thoughts.

She shuts her eyes, seeming almost in pain. But her expression is still stubborn and fierce.]

I don't understand what you're saying.

Okay, I don't know what yours looks like, but you have something that you can use to talk to people, right? [And this would be so much easier if Briar knew what the devices everyone else seemed to have were called]

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