Erwin Smith the commander of the survey corps, was a stern man, who was willing to sacrifice anything, and anyone for the sake of humanity and everyone knew this. The man who cannot sacrifice a thing cannot change anything, but the man who can sacrifice everything can change the world. But what leads a man to become like that. Erwin knew it was in part what had happened to his father, but what in the world had lead him to become a commander of the survey corps, after all, the military police were the ones who killed his father. He had found the love of his life while being a cadet, and choose to chase titans instead of Marie.
These were often thoughts that crossed the commander's mind. He knew that someone had to do it, and someone had to being able to make the decision to sacrifice many for the greater good of humanity, but why was it him. It was his desire to see beyond the wall. The stories that his father had told him that day after school was the reason. He needed to see what life had been like before the titans had taken over. Books that he had managed to come across simply hadn't been enough to calm his raging desire to see the world, like he thought that they would. The reality was that they made him want to see the outside world more, and answer the questions not only his father couldn't but the new questions that the books provided. The books that he had were treasures to him whether more than any gold, they had knowledge that no one else knew in them, and were banned for free that others would be tempted to go outside of the wall, but also they would come to realise that the wall was their prison and the king was their jailer and not the titans.
The best thing about being the survey corps was not being able to go outside the walls, but the chances of finding new books. Much of the world near the wall had been destroyed so seeing what the world use to look like was almost impossible without venturing to far, which even with his long range formation was too dangerous just for sightseeing. He longed to see what the ocean looked like, and what it felt like to stand on top of the world's tallest mountain, where the air was so thin that he became hard to breathe, or in a rain forest so thick that the canopy made it impossible to see the sky and the trees grew so large that they had hallows a person could live in quiet comfortably. The thing that Erwin really wanted to see above all else was the crystal caves. The picture had made the cave look like it was sparkling with a beautiful clear blue lake right in the centre that made it seem like it was too good to be true, and impossibility that someone had dreamed up. He had to see it to believe that this could be real, something like that could not exist under ground, could it?
Once again Levi brought him back to reality, "this is meant to be tea?" For someone who grew up in the underground he sure was picky little man, but what did it matter when he is labelled the world's greatest solider against the titans. "We should get started with the meeting and discussing the courses of actions that are being taken on our next mission." The meeting went on to discuss the plan to catch to slow and small titans that had been located not far from the wall so that captain Hanji could perform some experiments on them. "So the plan is to entangle them, and then to restrain them with the wires from the cannons if necessary." Levi repeated. "That's only if the nets failure to be enough to restrain them after you get them to fall into the wires on the ground" Hanji corrected firmly. "I want these titans alive and able to start testing on them right away, I don't want to have to wait from them to regenerate." Hanji stated glaring around the room. Levi yawned while Mike shrugged it off.