Operation Titan
Summary: Mikasa, bent on avenging Eren's death, teams up with Rivaille, The Legion's greatest asset, to defeat the Titans, a terrorist organization bent on overthrowing the King.
Pairing(s): MikasaxEren, MikasaxRivaille
Setting: Alternate Universe
Warning: As already suggested in the summary, there will be character death. Also, Rated T for language and themes.
I am on the roll! Welcome to my second SnK fanfic! I got this idea way back, but never got around to write it down. The setting is a modernized SnK universe: an advanced kingdom divided by three walls, only without the actual Titans. So our protagonists will only deal with normal people without titan-shifting abilities. More AN's at the end of the chapter!
PROLOGUE
There was a knock on the door.
"Mikasa, are you up?"
Mikasa Ackerman exhaled loudly as she made one final push off the floor and went up on her knees, having just finished her morning pushups. Wiping sweat off her forehead with the white towel hanging around her neck, she quickly stood and turned towards the direction of the muffled female voice.
"Yes."
"May I come in?"
She threw the towel on her bed and walked towards her small closet for a fresh set of clothes. "Yes."
She heard the door swing open as she was grabbing a plain white shirt and faded jean pants. When she turned, she saw a tall woman in glasses and a white coat standing in the doorway, her lips stretched in a wide smile.
"It's a lovely morning, isn't it?" the woman said cheerfully, her bright eyes boring on Mikasa. "Did you have a good night's sleep?"
Mikasa quietly nodded.
"Well that's lovely, dear. Go dress up, have some breakfast and meet me in my office after, okay? There's something I want to talk to you about."
"Yes, Doctor," the black-haired young woman said in a flat, mechanical voice.
That seemed to satisfy the older woman somewhat. "Alright. See you later, then!"
What did I do now? Mikasa thought darkly as she watched the doctor turn on her heel and leave, the door closing behind her. Dr. Hanji Zoe was generally an energetic, motherly kind of woman, but the way her perceptive eyes seemed to see right through a person's mind had always made Mikasa uncomfortable in her presence. Nevertheless, next to Armin, the woman was her most frequent visitor, and that ought to count as something, right?
After taking a shower, Mikasa slipped into her shirt and jeans and went over to her mini-dresser to fix her still-damp hair. She looked at the built-in mirror and saw a young woman of twenty, her pale skin underlining the dark bags under her blue eyes. Her pink, chapped lips were set in a firm, straight line, and the blank expression on her face gave nothing of the turmoil going on within her.
Slowly, she began combing her hair with her fingers, then noticed that it now reached past her shoulders. Almost instantly, a male voice rang in her mind, making her pause mid-action and hitch her breath.
"Your hair's too long."
Mikasa's chest suddenly hurt, and for a moment, she just stood there, staring blankly at her reflection, feeling as if time had stopped and she was stuck in a loop, Eren Jaeger's voice reverberating off the pristine, cream walls of her bedroom.
"Are you alright, Mikasa?"
"If you don't fight, you'll lose. And you must win, Mikasa!"
"Mikasa."
"Mikasa, get out of here!"
"Snap out of it!" she said out loud, and that seemed to break the trance she'd found herself in. Blood came rushing in her ears and she blinked several times, realizing that she had gripped the edge of the dresser so tightly that her knuckles had gone white. Straightening back up, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying to regain her composure.
"You must win, Mikasa."
She opened her eyes again and gave a small, sad smile at her reflection in the mirror.
I will, Eren. Things just got a bit harder now that you're not around anymore.
Rivaille sat alone in a lone park bench, his dark hair and black overcoat billowing in the strong breeze that swept by. He kept both of his hands in the pockets of his coat, while his eyes surveyed the clear, forget-me-not blue sky overhead. From around him, the sounds of lively chatter and children's laughter filled the air, and the sensation felt foreign to him—as if they were from a whole other world.
How could these people walk on the same earth as him and seem so fucking happy? Were they living in a different dimension? Or, perhaps, were they on some strong drug that made them fucking immune to negative feelings? Looking back on his life, Rivaille couldn't pinpoint a time when he had laughed as loudly and freely as these people. Whichever direction he looked, there was only one landscape: a bleak, gray wasteland, filled with wild animals out to prey on each other. Anything aside from that was either a farce or a façade, treacherous and fleeting and phony.
Or maybe, he thought, a wry smile marring his face, he was just born extremely unlucky, damned to thrive in a special place in Hell. Well then, if that were case, then he might as well turn into the biggest, baddest monster that would rule the whole goddamned land. Maybe from there, he'd have a chance to reach the heavens above, where the rest of the world lived in their blissfully ignorant bubble of so-called happiness.
"Terrific," he mumbled to himself, resisting the urge to laugh at his own morbid thoughts.
"What's terrific?" a male voice said nearby, and Rivaille looked away from the sky and turned his head to its source, which was revealed to be a blonde-haired man in a green coat, walking towards him.
"Irvin," the dark-haired man said, watching as the new arrival took the empty seat beside him. "Don't you know what on leave means? Or are you here to take away my vacation?"
"Neither," Irvin Smith said. "I came here as a friend, not as your commanding officer."
"Cut the bullshit," Rivaille said with a frown. "So we happen to be taking a stroll on the same park on the same day? We are anything but a coincidence, Irvin."
Irvin's blue eyes bore on his dark ones. "Alright, you got me," he said, before he turned to observe the scenery around them. "I knew you would be here."
"There, that's a better answer," Rivaille said. He pulled out a hand from his pocket and revealed a half-empty pack of cigarettes. He shook it lightly and brought it close to his face, using his mouth to pull out a single stick.
Irvin was watching his actions from the corner of his eye. "I thought you quit," he said blandly.
"Ah shit," Rivaille said, ignoring him. "I forgot my lighter."
Wordlessly, Irvin reached for his coat pocket, produced a lighter and tossed it lightly at his direction.
Rivaille stared at the older man as he deftly caught the lighter with his free hand. "Would you like one?" he asked, before he lit his stick, took a drag and exhaled the smoke through his nose.
Irvin shook his head. "I'll pass."
Rivaille threw the lighter back at him. "So what brings you here in my little secret spot?" he asked conversationally, removing the stick from his mouth and flicking it to remove the ash from the tip. "Wanna spend some quality timewith me?"
"How are you, Rivaille?" the blonde man asked, his face a perfect clean slate. "I mean it," he added, as Rivaille made to open his mouth for another one of his sarcastic remarks.
"Humor me a little, will you?" The younger man took another drag from his cigarette. "As you can see, I'm very well into the road of self-destruction. Or, at least, according to that weirdo Hanji."
"You've met her?"
"She came crashing into my apartment the other week," Rivaille said, as if the memory pained him. "Been blabbering about getting me a date, or something."
"Well, are you going out with somebody?"
The ghost of a smile was evident on Rivaille's face. "Never dreamt of the day you'd ask me about my love life, Commander," he said with a straight face, and a small smile crept up on Irvin's face in response. "Though since you're very curious, I'll tell you that no, I haven't."
"You haven't," Irvin repeated. "That's a curious way to word it."
The statement made Rivaille pause, and in the silence that followed, the two men sat looking at different directions, their stiff shoulders indicating that the conversation had made a rather unexpected, awkward turning point. Rivaille exhaled a puff of smoke and watched it dissipate in mid-air, his eyes suddenly faraway.
Irvin was the one to speak first.
"Did you and Petra go out?"
Rivaille took his time taking another drag before he faced his commander once again. "No," he said simply, then he averted his gaze to a group of children passing by. "We didn't."
"I heard from Hanji that the girl had taken quite a liking to you," Irvin explained, his tone uncharacteristically careful. "I figured maybe she did something about it, since you'd worked closely together for years."
"Well that doesn't matter now, does it?" Rivaille spat, his voice eerily flat. "She's dead."
Irvin's hands curled into fists on his lap. "Indeed," he said quietly.
Another moment of silence passed.
"So what can't wait that made you haul your all-important ass all the way from HQ and trail me here?" Rivaille finally asked, shifting the topic. "Wait, don't answer that yet," he hastily added, before getting on his feet and going to the nearest trash bin, where he put out and threw away his cigarette butt.
"The latest intel just came in," Irvin said straightforwardly the moment Rivaille came and sat back. "I'm afraid you'll have to go back to work one day earlier. We're badly short in manpower, as you already know, and a matter of this urgency and importance can only be handled by the Special Ops."
"And that Special Ops Squad is made up of, surprise, just me," Rivaille said in an undertone.
"Not anymore," Irvin said, earning a curious glance from his subordinate. He inserted a hand in the inside pocket of his coat and produced a folder. "I have here the character profile of your partner for this mission."
Rivaille's eyes betrayed his surprise. "Partner?" he echoed disbelievingly. "You know I don't work that way, Irvin," he went on, his voice strained. "I need a squad, not a partner." He spat the last word as if it was a filthy, despicable thing.
"We both know that getting more than three people into this operation was a big mistake, Rivaille. Look at what happened to your squad," Irvin said firmly, and that seemed to immediately sober Rivaille up. "She is currently under Hanji's care, so you can find her in that place. I want to meet the both of you tomorrow night. Don't go to the office-I'll send you the time and place."
Rivaille didn't have time to react as Irvin shoved the folder in his hands and unceremoniously got on his feet.
"I know losing your squad is difficult," the commander said, his blue eyes gazing down on Rivaille's still seated form. "But unfortunately, you don't have the time to mourn for them properly. We have to move on and make sure that their deaths will not be in vain."
Rivaille avoided Irvin's eyes by looking pointedly down on the ground. "I know," he said.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Corporal."
Rivaille waited for the sound of the Commander's footsteps to fade into the distance before he finally looked up and examined the folder in his hands. Knowing Irvin, the mission would most likely be a covert one, kept even from the other high-ranking officers of the Legion, which was why he did not risk staging their meeting in the headquarters or his office. It was obvious that in light of the recent incident, the Commander could not afford to trust most of his members anymore, be it junior or senior.
So who's this unfortunate bastard that Irvin had chosen to work with him? It's a she, he reminded himself, recalling the way Irvin had described his new partner. If so, then she must have been exceptional, for the Commander himself handpicked her to team up with him, Rivaille, the Legion's greatest asset. But under Hanji's care? That part made him frown heavily. Is she handicapped or something?
Without further ado, he flipped the folder open, and the photo of a pale, young woman with chin-length black hair stared back at him with dark, baleful eyes.
Mikasa Ackerman, the profile said her name was.
So there it is, the prologue! Please, please let me know what you think of the story so far by leaving a review. Thank you for reading! :)
