After the dust from the attacks on wall Maria settled, after all the refugees calmed down and after the total missing from the previous titan attacks were accounted for, humanity saw that it did not have enough space to provide the needed resources for the new inhabitants of Wall Rose. It was no more than a year before a massive reclamation effort of Wall Maria was put together. The government collected a coagulation of soldiers to guide hundreds of thousands of people to their inevitable doom.
I am Amare Mugabe; I am one of the few pureblood "Africans", as they used to say, left in the human race. My dad was in the engineering corps. He told me about when he met my mom, and how they were treated differently because their co-workers weren't familiar with how they looked. That didn't stop them from inquiring about physics, engineering, but what they really wanted to know was how to take humanity to the sky. They would play with cloth and canvas around my house. They would tie a few knots and try to get it to float for as long as possible. From their household observations they were able to hypothesize that; "In order for a cloth like object to stat afloat in the air, it must have a constant movement of air inside of itself going upward." It was from this hypothesis they started to devote their lives towards humanity owning the skies.
One day I came home and they made an extremely small motor run by CO2 from the 3DM gear attached to a cloth that they seemed to have sewn into an orb. They got the engine to push air upward into the cloth fast enough to where it would float for about 4 minutes before running out of gas. I joined them in their research. After six months of expounding on that initial project, we were finally able to run their first model that could carry small fruit. A month after, that the orb was able to carry melons with ease for hours at a time. They knew it was time to do start with human transportation orbs.
It was April 6, 845, my birthday, when we made the first human transportation orb. We had it ready to launch. We put all of my parent's journals and books in it, along with a 145-pound weight to simulate a human. We were getting ready for launch when we heard some voices in the distance screaming telling us to stop. My parents took out the dummy and loaded me into the orb. They untethered the balloon and with me in it, it took off. I turned 16 the day that my parents were shot by the Garrison regiment as I watched ascending into the air on the orb. I later read a letter from my parents telling me they knew they were going to die and that I needed to join the scouts and introduce the balloon to them. Later on that year wall Maria fell and I was drafted a year later for the Wall Maria recovery effort.
Day 1: 7,000 Refuges, 300 servicemen
When my group of refugees set out from Neplay, the northern most district of Wall Rose, we were met almost immediately with a massive amount grouping of titans. Luckily for the soldiers they were mostly 3M titans and were therefore easier to kill. The ODM gear they had given us, however, seemed to be unreliable. It was at that moment in time I got my first kill of the titan. His face was disgusting. His eyes were devoid of emotion; his teeth had the bones of children with his nose stained with the blood of the people he had just eaten. I shot my hooks at the side of his neck and with the momentum carrying me I placed my blades down so far into the back of his neck and just like that, his scorching body fell to the fields as if all of his will to continue his feast on the innocent bodies of the refugees had been decimated and he just continued to steam lifeless. It was at that moment I killed the first thing I had ever killed, it was at that moment the hatred and anger rose in me as a fire in a dry forest. All the conditions were right to catch flames; a simple spark of blood lust was needed to diffuse all throughout the beautiful forest that was my humanity towards the titans. They were to now die. All of them needed to die.
I woke up with a close friend of mine's face in abject shock and fear. I asked Borko, "What the fuck just happened?"
He explained, "You killed them all, all of the titans died at your hands. You saved us all."
Borko and I continued to walk around camp. He told me that he had never seen anything so disastrously eloquent as my killing of the titans; he was scared for the refugees they were to guide from the seemingly animalistic rage that I had shown. I asked him about the casualty count and he said that of the 300 soldiers that were there to help the refugees only 50 survived the onslaught. The villagers' casualty count was astronomically higher than that of the scouts. Of the 7,000 we were to guide only 1,203 survived and of that 602 will most likely die of injuries by the morning.
(Borko's POV during Amare's rage)
It was terrible, my group and I tried our best to guide the villagers to relative safety but it was no use, we tried to fight but it was futile, we tried to use ourselves as bait but it was an abject failure. I saw them, eating my fellow soldiers, children, childhood friends, and almost myself. Out of the blue, however the titan that had me in his mouth, fell over dead. I pried my way out of his carcass stenched jaws to see who was my savior; it was no more than Amare. I saw him going around the feasting beast, then one after the other they started to drop. One slice of the nape after the other, handful after handful of refugees saved by him, but how could this be? Amare was part of the Survey Corps engineering firm. He had never seen any non-artificial combat in his life. I guided the villagers to relative safety and started to tend to the wounded. When Amare was done he did something that no one though possible. Amare, the humble engineer, killed off 13 3-12M titans by himself, when he got done with the slaughter of the butchers of humanity, he stood up as if he were intoxicated. He swayed side to side for approximately 30 seconds and passed out. He had not a scratch on him. The remaining soldiers and I swept his body up and took him to the camp.
Authors explanation: The camps the refugees were in were cocoon esque tree sleeping bags. They dangled from the branches high in the trees. While titans are mostly diurnal, it doesn't hurt to be cautious when you can. If you don't hang over 15M however, you could be a sitting duck for a night loving abnormal to chomp on.
These explanations of the equipment that the refuges were handed will come as they did in both the manga and the show.
(I do not have illustrations and depending on the success of this piece of writing, probably will not. The more you share the more likely pictures will come though.)
(Back to Amare and Borko on guard duty)
"So I killed all of them Borko?" I asked trembling.
"Yes Amare, I have never seen anything like it. It was as a well-rehearsed dancer. Almost to the finest detail of 3DM gear technique, it was perfect. The rest of the villagers and soldiers scurried away into the forest in fear. The way you bounced off of one dead titan to the next was beautiful. It seems like you had no fear in this either. You just killed them one to another. You did what humanity has failed to do for over a century, you turned your fear into rage. Enough so to where you killed 12 of them all by yourself, Amare, you saved me while I was in the mouth of one of the putrid beast. I was slowly making my way to the hot pool that was the fat little cunt's stomach." He holds back tears after saying this, he then inquires, "Why the fuck am I so weak Amare?"
"You're not Borko, you're human." I said trying to reassure my friend. At this point it was our turn to go to sleep and swap out with the next two guards who were supposed to be on duty.
End of Day 1: 50 Servicemen, 1,203 Refuges. 90% death rate.
Day 2: BY 8AM- 608 refuges 50 servicemen.
Borko and I woke up to count those who didn't make it through he night. Of the 602 who were severely injured, over 595 of them died in their sleep. This left 698 refuges out of the 7,000 we were assigned to protect. All 11 of the injured soldiers died in their sleep also. We started out with 300 soldiers; only 13% remained after one day. The worst part about this isn't the casualties, it's that we could still see Neplay in the distance. We may have traveled 6 miles that day. Over 90% of the people that had come on this mission with us were dead, for 6 miles of reclaimed Maria country. These numbers were these villagers' mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, friends so on so forth. It wouldn't surprise me if suicide became this days biggest killer.
The remaining soldiers held a conference with the remaining refuges as to how we were to survive much longer, or until we could get to the northernmost district of Maria. There we would find an almost untouched village that we could settle at. The plan was that instead of sleeping at night we should start sleeping during the day so we can avoid as many titans as possible. It sounded reasonable, I was just concerned how much light we could use to fed off the one or two titans we were inevitably going to run into. For this plan to work we needed some form of light. If we were to have a chance at survival in any form of modest numbers in any fashion that resembled unified and of high moral we needed light to take down the titans.
However, light seemed to be the least of our problems. What we as soldiers forgot was that a lot of these people lost their entire families. The mood of the refuges was low, they almost seemed like they had lost their will to contribute to the plan of survival, or just the will to survive in general. Who can blame them really? They have seen shit that no one should have to see. The faces of children changed from excited to return home to what would be expected from a child seen an unfathomable amount of bloodshed, of which, some was probably their close family. Taking that into account, what we need to realize is that these people need to have their losses justified.
As the sun started to set and the moon started to rise we looked at it to find that it was a waning crescent. This meant that we would only have a barley acceptable amount of light for a very short amount of time. We set out on our trail, in the semi-illuminated night. Borko looked over at me and said, "Do you think this was a ploy by the government to save resources?"
I calmly turned around, looked him in the darkened night eyes and slapped him with the back of my hand and exclaimed, "Do you know what saying that type of shit will do to us!? Listen, I know now that the government is using us to herd these refuges to their slaughter, but we cannot, I repeat, cannot let that happen!"
Borko calmly agreed. As we ended our confrontation we heard the last thing we wanted to hear. We heard the fast beating drum of a titan's footsteps quickly approaching us. OF the 39 Survey corps members left, 10 of us went to fight the titan; the rest guided the refuges to safety. Leading those was one of my most hated colleagues and racist little fucker Beatrix Ackerman. But I digress, at this point Borko, 8 other men and women, and me had to kill this titan, so that the refuges could get to the next forest before morning.
As we saw the titan come over the horizon, we saw her brown hair first, as she came and stood atop of the hill we found that we had three trees to work with. We broke up in five group of two. Borko and I went for the eyes so we could temporarily shut off her senses. As we were coming in we noticed that this giant of a titan had eight people in her hands. Borko in a stupid act of bravery went for her hands to free them. A-last it was too late. She had decapitated eight of our fellow soldiers. This left Borko staring right into the female titans mouth dangling from her right nostril.
Forgetting what I was supposed to be doing I put both of my blades into the sockets of her eyes. I then proceeded to go to the back of her neck and slice the nape, when I realized that the last of my blades had been used. She grabbed me from the back of her neck and proceeded to put me closer to her mouth. Then I got this overwhelming feeling of helplessness that I had yet to feel as a result I screamed, "BORKO YOU GODDAMN BITCH, DO SOMETHING, YOU CAN'T LET ME DIE LIKE THIS. WE GREW IN THE SAME FUCKING ORPHANAGE TOGETHER."
I always looked for light. I loathed the dark. It scared me honestly. I grew up afraid of the titans, especially in the darkness of night. It wasn't secure and my family sought to change that. I lived in Shiganshina for most of my life. My dad and younger brother passed when I was 13 from a plague that had stricken the district. The few doctors we had, especially Doctor Jaeger, worked to counteract it. After the plague settled and my mom and I being the only ones left in our house, we looked for security financially. She was a smart lady. Worked with the Garrison's illumination engineering corps on trying to light Shiganshina at night just in case of titan invasion. She claimed that the reason she left was because she got pregnant with me and my dad made more money as a broker, but after seeing her labor for hours at a time on a design, I knew at the age of 15 that she got kicked out for designing something that was way past our time.
One day I asked my mom what she was working on, she only would say that it would be something to make us 'secure'. After she went to bed that night, I snuck in her office and looked through her journals and specs n what she was working on. She had two major things that she wanted to diffuse to light up the walls. She had a steamed powered motor and a round globe that seemed to light up when connected to the engine. In her office is where I spent the rest of my night.
I was awoken by my mom on her desk with her screaming, "Why are you in here, didn't you read the sign Borko!? It told you stay out of here!"
Slightly distraught I answered, "Do you have any test models?"
My mother spitefully pulled my ear and we went down to our locked basement. She showed me a small motor that had been hooked to one of the globes that I saw in her journals. When she poured water into it the globe lit up, and stayed lit. It was beautiful. The light never flickered a bit. My mom had invented something that would change the world. This was what she was working on for two whole years. She then proceeded to show me another one of her pieces of work. She showed me a globe inside of a contraption with a handle. She turned off all of the lights in the basement and turned the handle in a circular motion. The globe began to glow. After her first showcase of what she had invented, she and I worked on the lights as mother and son.
One day I came home from the store to buy a replacement handle for our mobile light. I found blood all over the kitchen and saw a note from The Garrison saying, "You're next."
After I saw this I ran down to the cellar and got as much as I possibly could for the light globes. My mom had written specific instructions as to go about creating the globe. After I got all of what I needed I grabbed whatever food I could and ran as fast as I could. When I was nearing the interior of Shigonshina, I heard a crash and people screaming. I turned around and saw a titan that's head seemed to tower above our wall. In three minutes the door to the interior of Wall Maria was opened and I ran in as fast as I could. I will never forget that day sunny day in 845; it was the day humanity lost its sense of security.
I snuck onto one of the last refugee boats and went to the interior of wall rose where I joined the military, not knowing where to go, and was assigned to the Survey Corps to go on the Wall Maria recovery mission. During this year I grew a lot with a fellow orphan at the hands of the Garrison Amare Mugabe. Together we promised that we would leave the orphanage behind and use our knowledge that we gained from our parents to give ultimate security to the titans.
Amare and I went to training together as we were assigned by the draft to do. We were scared but excited for our mission to reclaim Wall Maria. We knew that we would save humanity. When we graduated we were almost immediately whisked away into the survey corps, along with on of 20 groups of 300 to guide one of 20 groups of 7,000 refuges. We were going to reclaim Maria and we were going to make humanity stronger than ever.
As I dangled in front of the titan's mouth I saw she was going to eat Amare and out of nowhere time slowed down. I climbed my way to the titan's eyes, took the blades that were inside of the titans eyes clipped them to my handles, grappled onto its forehead, hung suspended for a few seconds, shot my hooks at the nape, and killed the titan. She let out a massive crash and as I swung back to see if Amare was not hurt, he gave me a look of abject horror. He was inside of the mouth of the titan. He began to sob uncontrollably. I didn't have words at this point so I took him back to our group who was only half a mile a head of us at this point. At the end of our travels for the night, we found ourselves at a forest. We began to set up camp for the daytime.
Day Three: Over night the group had 12 refugee suicides, the rest of the 8 refugees who were injured died from their wounds, 3 refuges were eaten by titans in their sleep, and over all we had 585 remaining refuges. We had 1 serviceman who was eaten by a titan in her sleep, and the 8 that died in the abnormal attack. We had only 30 servicemen/women left. It appeared that traveling at night yielded far less casualties than traveling during the day.