Doctor Swift walked up to Samantha and draped a cloak around her with a sigh, arriving late on the scene. "I'm sorry you had to see that…" The excitement from before had calmed down, Garrison soldiers were still on alert and pacing about but now they were planning their next move instead of going on the defensive. "He's killed several people today already, mostly soldiers. I promise you we'll do our best to stop that man."
Sam choked back a sob. "Yeah… this can't go on." She glanced at the men carrying Jorgen's body away.
The doctor eyed her gently and sat beside her. "Is this the first time you've seen someone die?"
"I… I don't know… I think so…" The girl struggled with her thoughts, still not able to remember much besides her home, specific instances weren't coming to her, mostly just the setting. "Have you seen someone die before doctor?"
"It doesn't get easier. It's harder when it's someone close. At least this time it was a practical stranger. I mean you only knew him a few hours at best…"
Sam pulled away and glared at the doctor. "SO!? I'm not supposed to be upset because I didn't know him for long!? He's still a human being with thoughts and feelings and if you're not going to cry for him, someone has to!"
The doctor's eyes softened gently. "I'm sorry, that must've sounded crass of me. It's this world we live in, people, especially soldiers die all the time, you sort of get desensitized to it. It still hurts but becomes more casual. Sometimes I wonder… after experiencing everything we have, even if the titans disappeared tomorrow, would we still be able to go back to how humanity was a hundred years ago?"
The woman looked down pensively. Everything she'd known up to this point was a lie, she was the epitome of the humanity of the past and even one day in this world had already changed her. "I don't think so…"
"Neither do I." The doctor leaned up, looking up as the gloomy sky slowly stopped raining. "Sadly I think we're too far gone. However, nothing's impossible. I've worked with the human mind my whole life. You'd be surprised the transformations a person can make."
A scream drew their attention as a shower of blood splattered against the building next to them. "Since all you rotten cows are gathered in one place, I thought it was time to begin the slaughter…" Franz stood, swinging the blood off his sword as a garrison soldier crumpled at his feet.
Swords were drawn immediately as three Garrison soldiers stood around the gray skeleton-like man. "You idiot! Returning to the scene of the crime with such bluster! We'll cut you down right here!" One of them shouted as Doctor Swift got between Sam and Franz, pushing her back. "Doctor! Get the civilian to safety!"
"There's no crime in slaughtering rotten cattle that can't appreciate their grazing pen." Franz smirked, with a flick of his wrist he pulled out a small metal object from his cloak and shot it into the crowd of soldiers.
A bright light filled the area, blinding two of the unprepared soldiers temporarily and striking the third in the face, searing the right side of his head and causing him to fall to the ground in agony. "He stole a flare gun from the man he just killed before we could even see it! Get back Sam!" Doctor Swift roared as he spread both arms, ready to protect the girl as Franz swept the leg of one of the remaining soldiers and cut the throat of the other in one smooth motion. "You won't get past me so easily!" The doctor shouted as he held out his swords, swinging them at the man.
Franz's blade deflected the other man's but with a few more strikes the dual swords had the outsider on the defensive. "Finally, someone with a brain. I think spending all your time on the walls has affected the Garrison's ability to fight humans."
"Your luck has run out, you monster! Your traps will only last you so long!" The white-haired man called out as he once again locked blades with the other man, shooting a harpoon cable from his gear into the building behind him and dragging them both towards it, pressing Franz's back against the wall as his blades closed in dangerously near to his throat.
Franz ducked under the swords, shooting his own cable at the building across the way and flinging himself up to the roof top to escape the doctor. Swift wasn't going to end his pursuit so easily and quickly gave chase with his own maneuvering gear. The sword fight continued on the rooftops, Franz swinging his pointed sword to deflect Swift's twin titan-killing blades. "I'm afraid your luck is the one that's run out doctor. You and everyone else in these godforsaken walls. The free ride's over." The gray man's sunken eyes narrowed as he fired his cable into a chimney behind the doctor. As it retracted he swung his sword.
Swift easily blocked the glancing blow but it knocked him off balance. "Damnit, what's he planning…" Ivan groaned as he struggled to compose himself as he turned to face the attacker that just passed him by.
Franz grinned, swinging wide, going around the chimney and swinging back, launching his leg forward and kicking the doctor square in the chest.
With all the momentum from the swing the force of the kick hit Swift hard and knocked him off the rooftop. He quickly fired his gear's cables to catch himself but he only ended up slowing his fall before skidding into a hard roll along the stone streets, flopping onto his back with a groan.
Franz retracted his cable and hopped down, standing over the doctor and preparing to impale him with his sword. "Farewell, doctor."
"STOP!" Sam cried from down the street, tears in her eyes as she ran forward. "Please… don't kill anyone else…"
Franz looked confused at the girl as several Garrison troops ran towards the commotion and focused their firearms on the intruder. His sickly eyes lingered on the woman standing before him as he sheathed his sword. "Fine… I won't kill him."
The guards seemed just as confused as Sam at the man's apparent surrender. "Really? …that was easier than I thought." She blinked.
"But I'm taking you with me." Franz smirked, firing his maunevering gear cables on either side of Sam, trapping her in place as he quickly retracted them and moved forward, ramming into her and hefting her over his shoulder as he began to swing from building to building and sped away.
"Stop! Get him!" The Garrison troops fired their rifles into the air but they didn't have the range nor the expertise with non-titan related artillery to hit Franz from this range, especially not without endangering the girl. "He's heading into a more populated area, we won't be able to use our rifles there without endangering the people! Spread out and look for him!"
"Let go of me!" Sam struggled and kicked at the man's torso as they swung from the buildings. The extra weight forced them to keep low to the ground but with lots of quick turns and crafty swinging they were soon lost above a maze of buildings.
"Shut up and stop struggling or I'll drop you off a building." Franz said matter-of-factly.
A few minutes later Franz swung into the open window of a building he made sure was deserted. He dropped Sam to the floor with a sigh. "You're a troublesome hostage… But we should be able to lay low here for a while until they pass."
"Why are you doing this!?" Sam shouted, standing up with a wince.
"You're the girl aren't you? I heard some people talking about a woman who thinks it's almost a century ago before the walls went up. That's the reason you were with the military, and that would explain the look in your eyes." He grumbled, locking the windows and doors and sitting down in a chair that was the only piece of furniture in the room aside from a basic table.
"Yeah… that's me…" Sam lowered her eyes to the floor. "Is that why you kidnapped me?"
"I kidnapped you for several reasons. That is one of them, another being you were an expedient hostage to get out of a tight situation. The last reason is because… you remind me of my mother." Franz admitted.
"Y-Your mother…?" Sam backed up against the wall, afraid of what the implications of that connection might bring.
"That look in your eyes, they look big and innocent, but somewhere deep down, somewhere you may not even realize you're showing, there's a hardened soldier. You've seen some shit. And I think your story about who you are is full of shit too."
"You… you're wrong! I'm no soldier…" Sam tried to sound confident in this but she was so unsure of everything lately.
Franz stood moved closer, kneeling down until his thin face was inches from hers, staring her directly in the eyes, dim gray meeting deep blue. "Then explain these…!" With a swift motion he ripped the buttons open on her shirt. She quickly covered her chest but the shirt sunk down enough to expose her shoulders, collarbones and part of her back.
Sam's eyes wandered down and widened as she spotted thin white lines littered across her chest in random areas. "S-Scars!?" They looked as if they'd healed significantly over time but there were still a good half dozen across the area of her torso that was exposed. "But… that's impossible… I've never been in any battles…" She was in shocked dismay, feeling like a stranger in her own body. She hadn't changed clothes since she'd been brought in by the military but she didn't remember having scars yesterday! Horror washed over her as she felt so strange having scars and not remembering how she got them.
"Just as I thought, you're full of shit after all." Franz went back over to the chair and sat down, letting Sam button her shirt back up. "Still, it's quite ironic that we're in the same room. A man from outside the walls and a woman who's pretending they don't exist."
Sam's shocked eyes were drawn away from herself and towards the man. "You're from outside!? But those things are out there…"
"Have you looked at me?" He gestured to his discolored skin, bony frame and unkempt articles. "I didn't get this way by living in the lap of civilization."
"I… I guess…" Sam looked down, not quite sure how to address what happened to him.
Franz threaded his bony fingers under his nose and looked over at Sam with a sigh. "My mother, Margaret Ivo, was a soldier. A scout regiment officer, her survival alone was testament to her skill and she was well respected among the other soldiers. However, eventually she became a problem that some people wanted taken care of. She'd apparently been spreading rumors, vehemently convinced of something that troubled the higher ups and common people alike. And once my mother was convinced of something there was no way to silence her."
"W…What kind of rumor was she spreading?" Sam asked with wide eyes.
"That titans live among us." He said simply, shocking the woman. It all sounded so impossible to her and Franz didn't seem convinced either. "I'm not sure what it was, but something in her travels led her to believe that titans and humans were connected somehow maybe even humans could become titans or vice versa. I don't know if there's any truth to this and honestly I don't care. It has nothing to do with me and only influenced what happened next."
He leaned back in his seat, relaxing a bit but still giving Sam a glance that told her it wouldn't be smart to try and escape or anything. "A combination of fanatics, a titan cult and some elements of what has come to be known as the Church of the Wall believed her to be a blasphemer and attacked her. When she turned to her superiors with this information she was given no support and put on the run. You see she'd been set up. Whether it was true or not, the interior could not allow such a rumor to persist and pushed the cults to dispose of her, giving them the opportunity and lack of support from the military for them to do with her as they pleased without a public court marshal drawing attention to her claims. And do you know what those crazed cultists did to her?"
"N…No…" Sam said meekly, terrified by the story thus far.
"They threw her outside the wall. In sort of an ironic justice since she conflated titans and humans they exiled her to join the titans and meet her fate. But she was not immediately killed as expected. Through some combination of her personal survival skills, military experience, not drawing attention to herself and some dumb luck, she managed to survive and escape towards a more secluded area. The titans were there as well of course, but she found ways of surviving."
"I don't understand… if your mother was the one thrown outside the walls, why were you out there too?" Sam asked, pressing her back against the wall.
"Well you see… when my mother was thrown outside the wall, unbeknownst to even her, she was one month pregnant at the time." He said with a bit of malice, earning a gasp from the girl. "I don't know who my father was, I never really asked, it seemed too painful for my mother to recall. But for eight months she fended off the titans and survived until I was born, and then we survived together…"
"But how… everyone else is trapped inside these walls because no one can survive out there with those things! If you can survive then why can't they!?" Sam clenched her fists, feeling frustrated with her confusion.
"First our method worked because there were only two of us. While titans are drawn to devour even a single human, it's easier to hide two people than it is to hide say, a squad of people. Especially if you don't have any motivation to move or any goals to go anywhere. Second, I believe I would say that our method is not recommended. Titans derive energy from sunlight so we found our homes in deep caves, we moved rarely, and ate even more rarely, surviving off the moss and insects found within the caves. Hence my stunning complexion." He waved his hand over his gray skin with a hefty amount of sarcasm. "It was just the two of us, sitting alone in darkness, quietly waiting for most of my life. It might've driven us insane alone, but there were times we could move a bit, mostly at night when the titans were less active. That was when she would tell me the stories."
"What stories? What could possibly be worth telling in a situation like that…?" Sam sat wide-eyed at her captor.
"Stories of inside the wall. She taught me things about the ways of the city and how things worked within walls Maria, Rose and Sina. She spoke of them as if it were a fairy tale, some far off paradise. But I saw it for what it truly was." He shifted positions, his hands clenching his forearms as he pulled his legs closer to his chest. "A bunch of cows ungrateful for the luxury they lived in. Weak animals that didn't deserve the protection they received and corrupt governance that kept the cows well fed and culled. Why did these useless and stupid people get to live with any measure of security while we barely lived at all, there was no justice in the world." He grumbled, leaning back.
"…" Sam lowered her eyes, not sure what to say to all that, she really wasn't in a position to make social commentary when she didn't even know who she was anymore.
"This continued for several years, until a few years ago. We were moving between our network of caves in search of more food, apparently we misjudged the time, it's hard to judge night and day from inside a cave, the sun rose early and because we moved slowly and quietly we were still a way from the cave when the titans became fully active again. We were forced to run, to get anywhere as fast as we could. However she made sure that I stayed ahead the whole time and because of that… she was taken." Franz's face remained like stone but his eyes wavered for a moment with a hint of anguish. "For over a decade she'd survived on the outside, even while pregnant with me, her skills and knowledge had kept her alive. And she died that easily because she was more worried about protecting me than her own life."
There was silence for a long moment between the two, neither one knowing what to say. "For a long time I didn't know what to do besides keep surviving. Until one day I just gave up, I wandered out into the open and was prepared for the titans to take me. However before that happened I spotted something. A corpse, normally not a good omen but this one was the corpse of a fallen survey corps soldier that had ventured outside the wall during an expedition, and more importantly, their three dimensional maneuvering gear was intact. My mother had told me stories of earlier models of these devices so I recognized it instantly. I took it as a sign to take my revenge. For years I practiced with the device, scouring weapons from where I could and training against single titans near the cave I could pin down and pick off. Until just recently when I was satisfied with my skills and mounted the wall. I was surprised to discover Wall Maria had fallen, but it was easy enough to simply move inwards towards Wall Rose. And that is why I am here to repay you ungrateful cows for all the pain I had endured until now."
"There's no way you can call that justice!" Sam shouted. "I've listened to your story but now I'm fed up! Killing people indiscriminately won't change anything about the flaws inside these walls, you're just causing more unneeded bloodshed to satiate your own thirst, just like the titans!"
Franz sat quietly for a moment. "Perhaps you're right, maybe I can't do anything to actually change or bring down the world inside these walls, but the anger in my heart won't let me simply watch as humanity continues to fester like this. I'm too far gone to change my actions now. Humanity deserves to be put out of its misery and be shown the error of its ways for taking its way of life for granted!" He slammed his fist against the table. "It cannot be allowed to be left to rot and stagnate like this, I must cut away the dead flesh. A little pain will remind them how to be grateful to be alive!"
"That doesn't forgive killing good people, killing Jorgen!" Sam sobbed, clenching her fists.
"Honey I've killed a lot of people in the past twenty four hours, you can't expect me to remember names." Franz relaxed and leaned back, giving her a quizzical look. "A friend of yours? Does a girl without any memories of the walls even have friends?"
"Don't play dumb!" She squeezed her eyes shut, letting the tears roll out. "You killed him the first time we met in the alleyway before you killed those soldiers and fought with Doctor Swift!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about… this is the first and only time I've laid eyes on you. I didn't meet up with you before and kill your friend in some alley."
Sam's eyes widened. "You… didn't kill Jorgen…? Then who…?"
The door to the building was kicked open before she could ponder this any further. The white haired doctor stepped in, adjusting his glasses as he looked at the two people inside. "You should be more careful with all that shouting. There aren't too many abandoned buildings in this area we had to check to find you in." A mischievous grin spread across Doctor Swift's face. "Good, I'm glad I found you first."
